The Road Less Travelled... To Work
The point of the post is seeing. I'm not talking about becoming a zen master buddhist. Though I didn't have my camera with me and would have certainly been late to the office if I did, I noticed much more. The sun rose over the Potomac in a curry red and I began to plot my next shot with a long lens - cyclist or runners in the fore, huge sun in the back and the Lincoln Monument somewhere in there. Looking over my left shoulder to the West, there were a couple of vantage points that would give me what I was looking for along the Memorial Bridge. This weekend looks like rain, but who knows, there might be a shot worth scouting out regardless.
The next time you're out, sans camera, look and plan. You will learn to see without the chaff of camera and controls that can sometimes interfere with image composition. If in an unfamiliar area, bring a GPS along and mark the spot. Think about returning at different times of day or weather. Come back to it later... on a bike.
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In Print
Greg PatilloThe Project, Washington DC, 2008
There's nothing comparable to a nice print. Even in the digital age, books and hard copy pictures may never disappear (hopefully). While we spend a lot of time online or staring into tiny ipod screens, there is just no comparison to looking at a well-lit picture on a wall. Anyone can grab a digital camera and fire off ten frames, bracketing for every setting possible, choose a decent capture and post-process with acceptable results. However, real photographic mastery can still only be appreciated when workflow ends on paper. Most pros will likely agree that the greatest challenges still come from dominating color calibration and final output. Lightness values vary greatly from screen, to print, to lighting that falls on it. I once spent weeks on a b/w panorama because of the camera resolution and printer limitations. It was incredibly frustrating. However, I learned volumes about workflow and output with that one image than can be said here (future post in mind!). As within a darkroom, there is just as much work to accomplish in the digital studio if the end state is a photograph. A good printer, quality paper and inks are expensive. But learning the process of output is just as intriguing, frustrating and rewarding as capturing the image. Choosing prints helps narrow your selection of best images. Customers who will pay for a printed photograph demand quality. Those chosen to be hung on your walls at home will reflect a finer selection as well. I have a few that were printed in a home darkroom more than ten years ago. It is the timeless quality printed images provide that cannot be replicated on a monitor. I hope this post will inspire a few readers to consider printing a couple of images. It could very well change how you appreciate photographs. Maybe you'll spend more time in a gallery than surfing Flickr or countless websites. Consider the print.
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Canada Creek, Nova Scotia, 2009
I posted this image because of its ethereal qualities. Long time exposure to smooth the water and passing clouds. This image could have been taken anywhere, but it was shot while standing at the end of a remote jetty in Nova Scotia in the early morning hours. Note that I needed a headlamp to negotiate dulse-coated rocks (read: very slippery). Anything short of several minutes for an exposure and the frame would be black.
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Ditch The Telephoto and Get Closer
I like to use a 50mm lens for several reasons. It's light and compact. My particular 50mm has good contrast, has good bokeh, is fast enough for my uses and is relatively inexpensive. The issue here is getting close, related to my post on building rapport with the person being photographed. After warming up in an area and wandering around a bit, people acclimate to you. However, sticking a 100mm (or longer!) lens in someone's face can intimidate and turn people off. What is more, a telephoto doesn't let you get intimate and make good eye contact.
Separately, but pertaining to the two images is varying the frame from landscape to portrait and getting close. While I really enjoy taking environmental portraits that illustrate a person or animal in their environments, straight-up, close shots of someone with a distinct face really grabs the viewer. Granted, the guy in this picture was probably pre-relaxing prior to the steel drum ensemble and for sure assisted me in getting in close. But it worked nonetheless!
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Venician Air Guitar, 2005
I really like this image that says "Venice" but with a bit of humor. Good color, subject separated from the background, and direct eye contact. I had about five seconds to make eye contact first (read: rapport) and then click the shutter before we blew past him.
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Simplicity of Space - San Gimignano, 2005
Aside from being a great musician, Miles Davis was probably most known for not playing. To him, space was just as important as filling up the measures with notes. The same can hold true in photography. As mentioned in a previous post, here the background or the area surrounding the subject is important in that it provides breathing room and balance. When objects are in motion or appear in motion in the frame, it's usually best, though not universal, to provide more space in front of the subject. I prefer the bottom (original) image to the top (crop) because the space leads the eye from right to left and out of the frame, whereas the bottom image is too tight, increasing viewer tension because we cannot see that the space in front of the pigeons is empty.
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Canal Light, 2005
As in the post below, there are a million images of the Venice canals. Gandolas, restored wooden jet boats, sinking buildings. Here, the light splashes a bit of color against the green water and derelict building.
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La Basilica, 2005
My wife and I decided to take a spur-of-the-moment trip to Venice while staying with family near the Lake Cuomo area in 2005. Venice is photographed so much, the senses are quickly overwhelmed and it's sometimes tough to get a different angle on a familiar subject. Here, I stooped down to check out some glassware and the Basilica zooms into focus.
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http://www.faroutphotographic.net
Click on the title above. It's work in-progress for now, but should be finished by the last week of August. For now, most of my images reside on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnadowney2/). Following the website, I'll likely delete all but snapshots on Flickr.
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Hay Bales, Alberta, Canada
Friends sent this picture, taken around the Medicine Hat area of Alberta after a windstorm. The bales can weigh up to 2000 pounds and some may have rolled up to five miles. I suppose that's how they arrived in Nova Scotia (my photo below).
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The Rapport Imperative
Light and composition are certainly essential for a great portrait. However, what is often overlooked is the imperative for rapport with a person. Person. Not subject. Without a personal connection, portraits will trend toward uneasiness, lack of eye contact and strained expressions. Unless it's intentional, you'll feel it, the person being photographed will feel it and the image just won't work. When you take a picture of a stranger, you have a human responsibility to respect that person. This is probably why the best photojournalists understand the need to exercise caution and develop rapport before clicking the shutter.
I have relatively few portraits that I'm pleased with. However, of those that are good, I spent a LOT of time with the individual being photographed. I hung out for a solid hour with a homeless man under a Sao Paulo viaduct. Six rolls of T-Max 100 and one shot works. When looking at the negatives, there is a tangible feeling of tension at the beginning of the conversation and scrolling through, his expression changes and becomes completely relaxed into a hapless state, looking directly through the lens, mirror and into my mind's eye.
In our hurried and harried society, most people feel like they don't have the time (even on vacation!) to slow down and, at the very least, ask a someone their name. The image below was recently made while my family and I were on a spectacular road trip through Nova Scotia. We camped on a hill (Whale Cove Campground, Long Island) and before moving on, drove to Whale Cove Harbor where I met "Kemp." I hung out with him for about 45 minutes. Kemp's ancestors had lived in the same house, about a minute from where this picture was taken, for over 120 years. He is a line fisherman by trade and bought what used to be a derelict boat hull in 1998. Two years later, it was seaworthy and he waxed poetic about how the older hulls of lobster boats were far superior in the water in terms of speed and stability than newer models. "You can push anything through the water if you put a big enough engine in it. No one makes a good riding hull anymore."
Kemp continued to lament how the Bay of Fundy was being destroyed by drag fishing. I had known that draggers rip up the sea floor but what I didn't know, according to him, was that for every one pound of fish sold by draggers, 1200 pounds of sea life are destroyed. By comparison, for every one pound of fish sold by line fishermen, approximately two pounds of sea life are discarded. What is more, companies that employ draggers lobby politicians to vote against sea life preservation efforts at the expense of severe and irreversible destruction of the Bay and habitat for untold hundreds of marine species. "Many tourists that come up here chant 'Save the whales!' But what they should be saying is 'Save the Haddock!' Marine scientists concluded that many of the Minke and Humpbacks that frequent the Bay in summer months to feed were suffering from disease and parasites and therefore had nothing to do with bottom dragging. However, with the overfishing of haddock and destruction of plankton habitat on the Bay floor, whales are severely malnourished and their immune systems suffer, succumbing to what would otherwise be harmless."
And to think I just stopped by to say hi.
The bottom line - Say hello. Introduce yourself and ask a few questions before asking to photograph someone you're interested in. Better still, whether your in the studio or outside, put the camera down occasionally and talk. Show interest instead of the click-and-dash method. You will find that both you and the person you're photographing will enjoy good company. And it'll show in your pictures.
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PhotoWalkThrough
A great, easy-to-follow podcast and website full of excellent advice on post-processing. However, what makes this site unique is that it, as the title implies, guides the viewer through the creation of an image rather than punish us through dry tips and tricks tutorials. John Arnold produces a high-quality podcast, invites viewer input for topics, includes contests and concludes each show with readers' photos in a music-video-type slideshow. www.photowalkthrough.com.
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Lower Contrast
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Focus on the Subject but Concentrate on the Background
All too often an object, person or landscape appears in such detail that distracting elements are overlooked. Digitally removing them is tedious and unrewarding. As many great photographers have repeated, especially Ansel, begin with the best negative possible. It saves time and frustration. This is still true in the pixel age. Motor drives and infinite disk storage do not guarantee a great photograph. This is not to say that multiple exposures, bracketing and varying the camera angle are not important but cleaning up the subject area can mean the difference between a snapshot and "whoooaaa." I used to expend rolls of film, shotgunning the motor drive in the hope of getting The One when I had all the time in the world to compose correctly. When time allows, Be The Ball, Danny, and hang out for a while. Take some time to look, both with and without the viewfinder. Get closer, move around and then swim a bit in the frame to check the edges. More fun will be spent during the moment of making the image than annoying your family while you sequester yourself for hours, trying to erase branches, hands and corners of buildings.
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Purpose
After little thought to publishing a website, which I will soon have after years of laziness, I was recently inspired by a very good friend of mine to occupy a few more megabytes of cyberspace with some of my own interests and ideas (see craigcorlphotography@blogspot.com). Hence the almost instantaneous birth of Far Out Photographic. With as many websites as exist today, I have no aspirations of assembling a club or amassing thousands of random netizens for the sole purpose of bragging rights.
I used to DJ at Wesleyan University in Middletown CT when I was a teenager and thought it was cool when I'd receive a phone call from some anonymous fan who liked the current playlist, made a request or just wanted to tell me how much they couldn't stand the current crap I was playing. So, the occasional run in with a stranger or friend, combined with my passion for photography, has brought me here to talk all things photo. - John
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