The joy of going both ways

 Photography  11 Responses »
May 202009
 


KISS!
Sometimes, you’ve just got to try the other side. One side may not offer enough! OK. Stop! Hold it right there. Get that smirk off of your face and your mind out of the gutter. This ain’t that kinda party, folks! Sheesh! When I said “going both ways”, I meant film and digital. What were you thinking? Well, the title ought to get the view count of this post pretty high! ;-)

OK, so on to photography. I was going to blame Chris Klug for this, or give him credit. However, I just purchased another one of my fantasy cameras. At least from back in the day when I couldn’t afford it. A medium format camera. A Mamiya 645e with a 80mm/2.8 lens. I bought it off of eBay. This baby is clean and in mint condition. It even came with the original warranty card. Mamiya stopped making these in 2000. I got it for $345. In 2000, they sold for about $700 brand new. The size of the negative is 6 cm x 4.5 cm. Included with it were 2 rolls of B&W film, TMax 100, and TMax 400. For those of you not familiar with medium format, you get 15 shots / roll on 120 film, 30 shots on 220 film with this camera.

I got the camera nearly a week ago, but was thwarted by daily thunderstorms. Today, cloudy, but no thunderstorms. So, off to the beach I went. Folly Beach, SC. It was quite windy and the surf was up. The winds were blowing a continuous 15 – 20 MPH, with gusts up to about 30 MPH. It was a tad bit breezy.

I had decided to shoot exclusively film until I used all 30 shots, then I’d pull out the digital. Well, I almost made it, but I did take a few digital shots while I had the other camera on the tripod. There were some things unfolding a little further down the beach that I wanted to capture, so why not?!

The tide was pretty high, so I couldn’t really go down to the beach, but had to stay up on the sand dunes, but it was pretty fun anyway. I had no feedback. I had to trust that I’d get the shot. It was weird going back center-weighted metering and having the only thing in your display being a red L.E.D. read out of the shutter speed. Simplicity at it’s finest.

It took me slightly over 2.5 hours to take 30 shots. The rolls are sitting here waiting to be mailed. I have no idea how they will come out, but that’s some of the fun. I have 10 more rolls on the way. They should arrive tomorrow. Perhaps I’ll wait until I shoot 2 more rolls before mailing them off to Arizona to be processed.

I really enjoyed that outing. It was a nice break from auto focus, chimping, changing ISO’s, etc. Just me, the camera, and faith. K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple, Stupid!

Oh, yeah! Since I’m coming out of the closet and everything … My name is Paul, and I shoot RAW, too. Ouch! That hurt!!!

 Posted by Paul at 9:39 pm

Why it didn’t work.

 Photography  12 Responses »
May 192009
 


I don’t think that I’ve ever talked about this before. I want to talk about looking at those photos that didn’t work. Not that they didn’t work for technical reasons like: Out of focus. Over/Under exposed. Head cut off. Feet missing. Etc. I’m talking about the endless numbers of photos that just don’t say anything. You know the ones that I’m talking about. The ones that you download from your memory card, or perhaps got back from the lab that are just … not working.

Rarely do I take the time, other than a cursory glance, to see why something did not work. I think that I’m missing a good opportunity to get better. Partially, I’d like to blame digital photography for that, but it isn’t really the medium, it’s the photographer. I still use 2 GB cards. Shooting compressed raw will get me about 120 – 130 shots. I rarely fill a card any more. A quick glance at Lightroom shows me that I shoot, on average about 50 – 60 shots per outing. Thinking back to my film days shooting 35mm film, I would shoot 2 – 36 exposure rolls at a time. The reason? I had one development tank that held two 36 exposure rolls of film. When I shot large format, 4 x 5, I shot 16 shots in an outing. Right. I only had 8 film holders, 2 sheets each.

As film is an exhaustible resource, I think that I was more careful. There’s no erasing and doing over. Also, there is cost with each roll and cost of development. So, I wanted to constantly improve so as to get a higher percentage of keepers.

The photo above, taken at Isle Of Palms, SC did not work for me. I saw these guys playing volleyball and it reminded me of summer. I wanted to catch the quintessential beach moment. That iconic moment that would remind me of summer. I didn’t succeed, in my opinion. So, what went wrong?

The first thing that I noticed is that it is confusing. Not simple enough. There are too many distracting elements taking away from the scene. One distracting element is too many. The first that I noticed were the extra guys on the right, also holding volleyballs. Before looking at this picture, I closed my eyes for a bit, then opened them, looked at the picture, and tried to think of what was the first thing that my eyes landed on. The guy in the bright orange shorts. Perhaps I should have noticed this when I first framed the photo. It certainly is noticeable now. Although the photo’s intent was not to be about the volleyball players themselves, but about ‘summer’; I think that the shorts distract.

I tried to crop him out, but he is so close to the player with the red shirt that it made that player uncomfortably close to the edge. Perhaps if I had worked around the scene a bit until I thought I had captured the moment. Too much bland sky. It was really hazy. There are some details in the clouds that could have been brought out, but it still didn’t improve the photo. I even tried it in black and white with a crop, which improved the picture a little; however, it shifted the emphasis, I think, from ‘Summer at the beach’ to ‘Two guys playing volleyball’. So, it still doesn’t work for what I was trying to say.

Were I to do it again, I’d try to get in closer, work in some background elements, slightly out of focus, if available. Elements like people sunning themselves, kids building a sandcastle, etc. Of course, I’d pay a bit more attention to the edges of the frames and watch out for people in orange shorts!

I did, however, come away with one that I thought worked fairly well. The theme here was friendship. I watched these ladies for a while. They were obviously good friends, or perhaps sisters. I don’t know. Eventually, after playing a bit, they just sat in the surf and talked. Friendship.

 Posted by Paul at 7:24 am

Freedom of expression

 Photography  3 Responses »
May 182009
 


When I read a post like this, Why I became an artist, from Chris Klug, I am encouraged. I am encouraged because Chris openly admits that some things affect him to the point of bringing him to tears and of his desire to create the same type of art. There’s a lot of courage expressed here.

Why does that encourage me? Because, here in the US, and in many other cultures, men are brought up to be manly men. That is to deny our feminine side. The side that can be moved to tears. The side that is warm, caring, and sensitive. As a child, my mother said that I had a very tender heart. That is because if something hurt me, I would cry, then it would be over. My father, on the other side, could not tolerate much of it and wanted for me to stop crying immediately. Not much has changed in all those years. There are not a lot of bottled up emotions in me, thankfully. Tears allow those things to be washed away.

Nature has provided a fantastic balance for us. Both men and women have both masculine and feminine traits, not in equal measure of course, but both still there. From the time that we are born, we, as males, are taught that to cry is to be gay, ‘like a girl’, or to use Arnold Schwarzenegger’s term, a Girlie man. I don’t think that it has anything to do with sexual preference, to be sure. I’ve cried many times throughout my life, but have a very, very, strong interest in females! Heck! I even married one!!! :-)

Certainly, it’s not culturally acceptable for a man to cry, weep, or tear up openly. Chris alluded to this in his post as well, saying that:

When I use it to teach in my storytelling class, there’s point where I have to be in the back of the room, behind the students, because I know I’m gonna fight back tears. –Chris Klug

I don’t imagine that if it were a woman teacher, she would feel the need to go to the back of the room. We see women crying all of the time. When was the last time that you saw a male cry in a movie, other than at the death of a good friend or family member? I cannot recall a time? It makes other people uncomfortable. What about in real life? What I have found out is that that uncomfortable feeling has to do with them, not with your actions.

So, where am I going with this? I think that arts give us, as men, a way to creatively express our feminine side without the fear of being ridiculed. I can easily talk to another man about why I took a certain picture, or how I ‘felt’ (nasty word for a man) when I was there and they listen, and then kindly cast it off as: “Well, he’s a photographer … that’s just how they are.” LOL! Eccentric, I guess. For the most part, male artists are given a pass to experience certain feelings and still be able to keep their ‘man card’.

When I’m around my friends, coworkers, or strangers, I feel no need to hide my sense of awe at all that is around me. I can gaze openly at cloud formations, point out the light on a particular flower, or whatever I want. It’s quite liberating, actually. Here in my blog I can openly state that: Yes! I do cry when it hurts, not just physically hurts, emotionally, and I’m still a man.

Art is a wonderful thing. I’m glad that someone thought of it! It allows a great freedom of expression.

 Posted by Paul at 8:04 am

By request: The process

 Photography, Spirituality  7 Responses »
May 172009
 


In response to the The value of critique post, Scott C said:

What I’ve found the most helpful are sites where a photographer posts a picture and then walks through their thought process in choosing the subject, composing, lighting, post-processing, etc. That type of talk-through helps me see into the photographer’s ideas. I can accept or reject the outcome, but at least I know why choices were made. This in turn helps me rethink my choices when I shoot because I have new ideas.
–Scott C

This statement has been at the back of my mind for several days and now, as things bubble up to the surface, I think that I’ll make an effort to answer it. Certainly, this speaks to my specific ways of doing things.

I am an intuitive shooter. That is to say that if I feel something, which sometimes gets distilled down to a single word, I’ll take a picture of it. While framing, there may be a mental discussion on how best to convey that one word. That word might be: awe, funny, tender, sweet, amazing, profound, or a number of other words.

But first, I have to be able to really see it, whatever it is. Our eyes play tricks on us. If you don’t believe it, just go here and have a look! Having that knowledge, I think is one key to ‘seeing’. I realize that my brain seeks to fill in the details with what it believes should be there based on prior experiences. It sees labels and assigns prior knowledge to that thing: “That is a blackbird. Over there is a tree. There are some people fishing, etc.”. Basically, it’s telling me that I already have ‘knowledge’ of what these things are, so I don’t need to explore.

When I’m out, most times I try to form a disconnection between the label and the thing. This is accomplished quite easily, sometimes, if you are patient. Have you ever written your name over and over and over again? Soon, the letters don’t even make sense anymore. They become gibberish. This is the same thing that happens when I sit quietly in a location. First, when I arrive, it is Azalea Park in Summerville, SC. Next, it is a bench in a park. Next, some trees and a path. Next some light, shadow, and a breeze, etc. Then it starts to fade into a bunch of abstract things. Soon, I start to see only shapes, colors, and activities with no labels attached. I can feel this shift. That’s when the single words, more like ideas than labels, start to appear. That’s when the shooting begins in earnest. It usually takes me about 10 or 15 minutes to get there, sometimes less, sometimes more, sometimes it just doesn’t happen. Prior to that, the rest is just warm-up on the way to that state. I’m easily brought out of this moment. All it takes is a word or two from a stranger, which happens frequently, or perhaps a call on my cell phone. *Poof*, back to left brain mode and thinking.

Sometimes, simply staring at something causes this transformation. Staring at a puddle, for example, that has plants sticking out of it suddenly becomes an exotic island full of possibilities. This is letting the labels drift away. Perhaps you have done this yourself. Have you ever found a nice place to lie down and have a look at the sky as the clouds drift by? Suddenly, after a period of relaxation, they are no longer clouds but all sorts of other shapes. If someone distracts you and you try to continue to see that other possibility, it’s difficult. You’ve slipped out of that moment. Thought and labeling have resumed. Back to clouds they go!

As for post processing, that too is a different realm. Again, I’m seeking to portray an idea that I had, rather than an actual photo of some ‘thing’. Sometimes what I see during the shot and what I see during the post processing are quite different and I come up with a different intention than when I started.

About this photo and the process: When I first arrived at the park, it was my intention to take a few photos, read a bit, walk a bit, then head home. I sat on a nearby bench for a while, read a little, then moved over to brick wall just at the head of this small path and continued to read. I stopped reading for a bit to have a look around. It was then that I noticed the different intensities of light and how this small path looked very inviting. So, I took several pictures using different focal lengths. In post processing, it looked pretty nice, but in color it looked ‘nice’, but it didn’t seem to portray what I wanted, which, I think was an invitation to walk down this path, or perhaps just look down it. I tried several variations of toning and finally landed here, giving it the proper amount of nostalgia, I think, and an inviting look.

Well, Scott, I hope that gives you a look into my process. A brief summary would be: I go. I wait to see what happens. I try to capture it. :-)

 Posted by Paul at 7:23 am

Post processing and where you live. A connection?

 Photography  10 Responses »
May 142009
 


Somewhere near Seattle
Steve Weeks has a very interesting post, Perceptions Real or Imagined, on his. He talks about the differences in post processing between people. This thought has occurred to me before, but not quite in the way that he talks about it. He talks about two people, he and a friend, doing post processing on the same image. He has the images posted on his blog. The differences are quite intriguing. They are both lovely in their own right, but I certainly lean more towards one than the other. I won’t say which so as not to pollute your own judgment. You can probably guess which one that I like better because it is more in alignment with my own style.

His post got me to thinking about a couple of things that I have heard through the years. The first about a photographer, whose name escapes me, that moved from somewhere in the northeast, New Jersey I believe, to San Diego, California and how it greatly affected his photography as well as the way that he saw things. The second, from Colin Jago, a Scottish photographer, who once remarked that someone told him that he should increase the contrast on his photos to make them ‘better’. He replied that he worked hard to make his photos just the way that he perceived them. That his area of the world had pretty flat lighting and was overcast a lot of the time. Therefore, his photography reflected his environment.

I began to think about how our own environment that we live in from day to day has an effect on how we might post process pictures. I have lived in the south all of my adult life, first Texas, then North Carolina, now South Carolina. They all have one thing in common, lots of sunshine. Therefore, mostly everything that I see has a nice, crisp edge to it. I like contrast. There is very little gradually transitioning light and soft shadows, save for the edges of the day. Therefore, most of the images that I post process are going to be pretty snappy. I have no problem with the contrast slider, as that is just the way that I see things.

On my trips to California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. Same things. Lots of light. Lots of contrast. So, it was like not leaving home at all. In December, I had to go to Seattle, Washington for a business trip. It was my first time to the cloudy, rainy, low contrast northwestern part of the U.S. I was able to take a few pictures, but when I started to post process, the ‘snap’ wasn’t there. I did play with the sliders, but felt, based on what I had seen while walking around, that that particular contrast just didn’t exist there.

I’ve since gone back and looked at some of those photos and am challenged on how to post process them through eyes that were raised on sunshine. The photos, though some are interesting, seem to lack life. I guess that I just don’t have an appreciation for that type of environment. Although, to be fair, I did go in the dead of winter. The natives tell me that it is quite amazing around July. Then, the sun actually comes out!

I’m certain that it has nothing to do with the area, just my view of how things ‘should’ look based on where I have lived for most of my life.

Have you ever had any such experiences?

 Posted by Paul at 7:57 am

Make me care

 Photography  7 Responses »
May 132009
 

First off, I have received my copy of David duChemin’s book, WTF, or Within The Frame. It was waiting for me at my door when I came in this evening. Much thanks to Kara Murphy and to Peach Pit for the fast shipping. The book was just released a few days ago!

This evening, I started reading the book … very slowly because there is lot of good content and he talks a lot about vision, which is a topic that is very interesting to me. Along about page 13 there is a section entitled: Make Me Care. Here, David talks about getting to know what you love to photograph, but more important, making it your goal to get good grasp on the visual language of photography. That is, making sure that you can convey your message in a passionate and powerful way, not just a technically good picture that documents something.

Remembering that communication is not only what you say but how you are heard … Like a child learning to speak, it allows us to move from babbling incoherently, to speaking simply but brokenly, to one day being able to clearly ask for that thing we want. –David duChemin

I think that this is a very powerful statement and probably the most difficult thing to do in photography. To express one’s feelings through an image and to make someone else care about that image. Certainly, some subjects are a lot more universally appealing than others. Photographing the a war-torn area and seeing the conditions of the people will probably elicit a response much faster, or deeper, than a photograph of a ladybug on a grass stem.

For me, the end goal is not necessarily to make someone else care, but to do my best to bring out the reason why I took the picture. To invite someone to stay awhile and ponder the photo as more than just mere eye-candy. I think that particular road is one that we stay on for a while and learn more about every day. We get better with our tools, with what we put in the frame and what we leave out. We get better understanding of quality of light, of choosing the right moment to click the shutter, and of course, better in post processing. But, with all of that, what really makes the difference, I think, is that we get to know ourselves much better and start catching those peripheral glimpses of our vision and are better able to hone them to a finer edge.

I can tell already that I’m going to really like this book. It’s meant to be read slowly, absorbed, and pondered. If you are to the point where you are in search of ways to improve your vision, I’d recommend that you pick up a copy, find a nice comfortable place to sit, and enjoy this book. I would imagine that my copy will become dogeared at some point as it will be a reference that I come back to from time to time for inspiration.

 Posted by Paul at 12:19 am

To clone or not

 Photography  14 Responses »
May 122009
 

First off, I really like this picture. This fellow, as I was waiting for a picture to happen, landed on nearby rock and began to sing. I eased around a nearby bush and started taking pictures. There was nothing that I could do to get rid of that plant that seems to be growing out of his back, but I really didn’t want to anyway. I had a number of variations of this shot. One of them even had the plant seeming to sprout from the top of his head.

Mind you, these ‘defects’ can be easily ‘corrected’ using the clone stamp tool in PS; however, I like the natural look. Nature is perfect, not in the sense that we have come to expect, but perfect just as it is. No clone tools are needed. :-)

I have, from time to time, used the clone tool to remove the “hand of man”, such as telephone wires, other times I have left the wires in because I felt that they added to the overall aesthetic of the photo. It’s probably one of the least used tools in my arsenal. I do my best to move around to avoid them, if possible. In other words, I want what’s in the camera to be what’s on the paper or the screen. Of course, we make choices as to what to show.

Each time that I think of using the clone stamp, I think of the Dove Real Beauty campaign where they show the difference between the woman who comes into the studio and the transformed unreal beauty that comes out at the end after airbrushing, Photoshop manipulation, make up, hair, etc. Nothing about her is real anymore. Her photo is simply someone’s idea of what perfect beauty is. Unattainable proportions. Unblemished, pore-free skin.

I feel the same way about nature. There is a lot of beauty there and it doesn’t need my clone tool to help it. Where I do use the tool is in restoring old photos. Invaluable.

Finally, that is not to say that the use of this tool is wrong. Overall, I don’t use this tool much at all. I think that it can lead to sloppiness out in the field, “I’ll just remove that later with the clone tool”, and a bit of dishonesty, or failure to recognize the beauty that is already there … just as it is.

 Posted by Paul at 12:00 am
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