Project Photography
The advent of digital photography and inexpensive digital cameras has put personal photography within the reach of most people these days. Some camera owners uses these cameras for nothing more than creating family and vacation memories, and others take artistic and professional approaches to the art. I have lots of online friends who are taking the professional and/or artistic approach to photography. I have lots of local friends and family who choose the photo album approach. The two concepts are distinctly different.
The artistic/professional photographer has a specific set of goals. Their images are designed to perform a few specific tasks. The two main tasks are to create resale value and to showcase their photographic skills. This type of photographer may be involved in family and vacation style photography, but you won't see those images in their portfolios. The photo album photographer has a simpler set of goals. They are doing little more than creating image documentaries of their lives and events in which they participate.
Where do these two concepts come together?
I'm not sure that they do, to be honest. This is where my last blog post about Nostalgic Value ties in with this post. If you are reading this post, chances are that you are a photographer of some sort. You may fall into either of the two classifications I have offered here. If you fall into the photo album photographer category, you are already one step ahead of the game. If you fall into the artistic/professional category, you may be falling behind. If you are in the artistic/professional photographer category, ask yourself this question:
What photos have I made lately that will have lasting impact for more than myself or my customer?
It's kind of like pop music in a way. I often ask myself if Britney Spears will still have a buying audience in 30 years in the same way that Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin do today. Will Sponge Bob Square Pants be watched 50 years from now as much as the reruns of the Little Rascals? In reality, it doesn't matter. The real point is that we listen to or watch whatever we enjoy the most, without regard to what else is available.
People who have any passion for photography tend to spend most of their time photographing things they enjoy, whether it be kids, pets, brides and grooms, or fashion models. People who have a real passion for photography are also continuously looking for things to photograph. Sometimes it's even depressing when you can't come up with and idea and you have free time that you want to spend on photography. This is where project photography comes into play.
The idea of project photography is simple. You choose an idea or a theme and produce a set of photographs on that topic. If your favorite subject is your children, set yourself a goal of making 200 photographs of your kid(s) and printing each of them for use in a photo album. The time frame for the project isn't as relevant as actually completing the project. It's also possible to turn a project like this into a multi-year project that will contain hundreds or even thousands of images. The theme doesn't have to be children... it can be anything that inspires you on some level beyond photography. It might be a pet, a car, a place you enjoy spending time, a group of friends, or just about anything you can come up with. The point is to have an ongoing project that you can work on whenever you feel like it or when nothing else interesting comes to mind.
I currently have three ongoing photo projects in progress. As described in my last post, I have the My Town photo series that I work on occasionally or when opportunities present themselves. My interest in photographing people keeps me constantly thinking about my 1000 Faces photography project. Since I enjoy sports photography so much, I have recently started my L.P. Frans Stadium photography project. I chose the My Town project for the purpose of creating memorable documentation of what makes my hometown interesting and unique, including people, places, and events. The L.P. Frans Stadium project is for the purpose of documenting the stadium, people, and events that take place there each year. Each of the images for these two projects is printed as a 4x6 print and kept in a photo album that will grow to multiple albums over time. The 1000 Faces project will end up as a very large poster print with all of the faces on it when I'm finished. I'm not sure if I will make 4x6 prints of those images or not.
I have two main goals for each of these projects. The first goal is simple. I enjoy looking at the photos and recalling what was going on in my mind when I made them. My documentation that goes along with each image helps me in that aspect. The second goal is nostalgic value. I hope to look back at these images in the future and remember how things were as compared to how they will be in the future...
The Challenge
If you own a camera, take on your own photography project. The guidelines are as follows:
- Choose your project theme
- Choose how many photos your theme will contain (more is better)
- Set a loose goal on when you want to complete the project (weeks, months, years)
- Make the photos
- Keep a journal to go along with the images for future reference
- Print the photos and put them in an album
Also, try to keep nostalgic value in mind when choosing your project :)
Nostalgic Value
I can't effectively use this camera today because it's a sort of bastard when it comes to film. This camera uses 828 film which is no longer available. 828 film is very similar to 35mm film, with a few exceptions. It doesn't have sprocket holes and its a 28mm x 40mm frame size. There are some places where you can get this film custom made, but it's rather expensive and hard to deal with, so this camera is just something I like to look at now rather than take into the field.
One of the most intriguing things that comes along with this camera is a collection of several hundred negatives of photos my grandfather made, and several notebooks of notes telling about each photo that my grandmother kept. My father has spent many hours digitizing those negatives, so at some point in the near future, I'll have digital versions of all the photos that were made with this camera. One of the things I want to do with those images is make some prints of various images and go back to the locations and shoot 'now' images to display with the 'then' images from my grandfather's collection.
According to my grandmother's logs of these photographs, my grandfather made photos with this camera between 1937 and 1941. The images abruptly stopped in 1941, and the only reason I can think of is that either film or processing, or possibly both, had limited or no availability due to World War II rationing. There are no negatives in the collection dated beyond the year 1941.
I have had tons of fun just looking through this collection of photographs. It's amazing to see how much has changed here in my home town since that time. Things are radically different for the most part. Not much has remained the same...
Now that all this has been said, the real reason I'm writing this blog entry is to talk about my personal My Town photo project that was inspired by my grandfather's snapshot collection made with the Kodak Bantam Special. I have been working on this project for several years, and it will be an ongoing project that won't end until I stop making photographs. Maybe some day, someone will pick up my photo albums and browse through the images and feel the same sense of nostalgia that I feel when browse my grandfather's photos...
For the last several years, I have been creating this photo collection to create some sort of snapshot image of what my time here is like. The images highlight people, places, and events in my area. I also write something to go along with each image. Periodically, I get 4x6 prints made of these images and put them in albums, along with the writings I create to go with each photograph. The prints and photo albums will survive any hard disk drive crash or unreadable DVD archives, so they are valuable part of the project.
Stop back by here later for my next post that will deal with Project Photography...
Being ready and being there…
I don't get to photograph golf very often, but when I do, I'm usually struggling to find action opportunities. This particular photograph is rather stereotypical of the sport, and it's similar to many I have seen before... better than some and not as good as others.
Approaching the game of golf with a camera is quite a bit different than most other sports for several reasons. First of all, it's not a sport with high levels of action in general like basketball, football, or baseball. It's closer to baseball than the others in the fact that you can anticipate action to happen at specific places and times. Just being there and being ready is the key.
As I browse through my photo archives, I see hundreds of almost images that suffer from the being ready and being there syndrome. Being in an unfamiliar situation makes it even more difficult. A photographer must be able to adapt to the situation at hand without flinching. This applies to all types of photography, not just sports. A landscape always exists and it's not going anywhere, but being there and being ready for the perfect light, weather, time of day, and composition is the photographer's responsibility. In some situations, being there and being ready isn't enough. In these situations, it's patience and persistence that pay off. In a previous discussion, we talked about working the subject. The idea of working the subject goes a bit deeper, in many cases, that shooting a bunch of photos from different angles and perspectives. It may often involve returning to a subject over the course of days, weeks, months, or years to harvest the perfect image.
Don’t forget to look…
I have been reading some other photo blogs lately where discussions of approaching the subject have been discussed. Paul Lester started the thought process with his Avoiding First Impressions post. The idea behind the post is the common idea of working a subject until you come up with the shot you really want. It's easy enough to fumble around a subject, snapping from different angles, perspectives, and lighting situations. In many cases, a photographer can visit a location many times until the weather and light lend themselves to a worthy photo. Some of his reader feedback led to a second post where the question of is there one approach better than another? question comes to the table.
These questions are always fun to ponder. It's like we are trying to formulate an equation to guarantee results. I consider myself to be a decent photographer, even though my interests are not very concise. How can I explain a situation where I spend an entire day out with the camera and come home with a few hundred photos, none of which are worth saving? Is it because I didn't work the subject? Definitely not...
I like to recall a few words of wisdom occasionally that I have heard many times from another photographer... The muse is fickle... The ability to effectively work any subject is going to be directly related to your personal interest in that subject. Some subjects speak with a stronger voice than others, making it easy to find your shots. Others are a little more quiet and subdued. When I find an interesting subject that doesn't jump out at me and automatically guide my camera to proper angles and perspectives, I tend to just stop what I'm doing and spend some time looking rather than shooting. When something attracts my photographic interest, it's always quite beneficial to determine exactly what attracts me before I start shooting. Getting back to the fundamental elements of image design, it's easy to remember that shapes and textures tend to attract our eye as much as color and contrast. When I approach a specific subject, I tend to look in those directions more often that trying to create a photo that simply documents what I saw. The photo at the top of this post doesn't very nicely describe the context of a Christmas Cactus, but it perfectly demonstrates the elements of it that catch my attention when I look at them. In this case, I didn't work the subject. I loaded up my 50mm lens and a 36mm extension tube and shot two images after spending about 5 minutes looking around the flower and gathering a piece of black foam core to use as a backdrop. I did get a photo I like though...
What are the advantages of working the subject?
One advantage is that you might stumble across an idea that you would never have encountered otherwise. You might also catch a few worthy images of those ideas during the process.
What are the disadvantages of working the subject?
There probably aren't many other than the possibility that you might never see what you are photographing...
Lost in the Technology
Digital SLR cameras continue to improve in quality and capabilities. I'm quite confident that theses cameras have surpassed the 35mm film market in many ways, and are approaching the medium format market rather quickly. As digital cameras develop, one of the areas of 'improvement' in each of them seem to be lowering the noise on high ISO images with each new revision of the image sensor technology. There will come a day when you simply can't get a grainy image when you want one. You will have to find a way to add it with post processing techniques.
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Is Photography Dead?
Is Photography Dead?
Article by: Peter Plagens
Newsweek Magazine – December 10, 2007 – pages 94-96
I was browsing the current issue of the current Newsweek magazine when I stumbled across an interesting article titled “Is Photography Dead?” As a photographer, headlines like this one always catch my attention. I have seen and participated in so many debates on issues of photography that my mind immediately starts to roll with ideas of what might be found in articles like this one. The first two sentences in this article grabbed my attention…
“How is that even remotely possible? The medium certainly looks alive, well and, if anything, overpopulated.”
How could photography be dead? Is it remotely possible? It seems like everyone has a digital camera or a cell phone camera. In fact, overpopulation is an issue. The author of the article brings William Henry Fox Talbot to the table early in the article by including an 1844 Talbot photograph right under the main headline. For anyone who has studied the history of photography, we know that Talbot is really considered to be one of the fathers of modern photography. Using a Talbot photograph to launch this story creates an anchor or starting point to help describe how photography has evolved since its beginning. Modern photography, as we know it, began in 1839.
“In the 1920s, small, inexpensive fast-shutter cameras like the Kodak Brownie appeared. By 1950, according to Kodak, nearly three quarters of American families owned cameras and took 2 billion photographs with them. By the 1970s, they were taking 9 billion pictures a year, and most of them quick, informal snapshots.”
I would hate to see what these numbers look like today. The advent of digital photography makes it extremely difficult to estimate how many photos are taken annually. I’m sure a large majority of them never get printed and are only displayed on computer screens. Once the initial expenditure of a digital camera is made, it doesn’t really cost anything in terms of film and processing to make photos. Any way you try to imagine this, the numbers of photographs being made are increasing exponentially, and will continue to do so.
After reading through this Newsweek article several times, I have I keep coming back to one simple conclusion about the author. Peter Plagens, like many other viewers of photography, has his own expectations about what he’s supposed to be seeing. His pre-conceived notions about what photography is supposed to be clouds his view on what photography can be. The following quotes from the article support this evidence:
“Yet wandering the galleries of these two shows, you can’t help but wonder if the entire medium hasn’t fractured itself beyond all recognition.”
“But it’s also a major reason that, 25 years after the technology exploded what photography could do and be, the medium seems to have lost its soul. Film photography’s artistic cachet was always that no matter how much darkroom fiddling someone added to a photograph, the picture was, at its core, a record of something real that occurred in front of the camera.”
“By now, we’ve witnessed all the clever tricks that have turned so many photographers – formerly bearers of truth – into conjurers of fiction.”
“Photography is finally escaping any dependence on what is in front of the lens, but it comes at the price of its special claim on a viewer’s attention as “evidence” rooted in reality.”
“The next great photographers – if there are any – will have to find a way to reclaim photography’s special link to reality. And they’ll have to do it in a brand new way.”
The repeating pattern in all of this shows Mr. Plagens’ notion of what photography should be. He believes that photography should remain a simple documentation of reality in some way or another. In fact, photography is probably one of the first artistic mediums that has been held to such standards. I’m burned out on listening to this type of commentary.
Maybe the term photography itself is subjective. That, in a way, differentiates it from other art forms as well. It’s not often that people view a painting and find themselves questioning whether or not it really is a painting. Most sculpture is fairly obvious as well. Photography isn’t so cut and dried. Maybe we don’t really know how to define photography, but we seem to know it when we see it. The line gets hard to distinguish when we start looking at photographic art. Sometimes the art may be pure and simple photography. Other times the medium may be obscured. We may be looking at some form of art that contains photography, or is loosely based in photography. How much straight-from-the-camera material must an artwork contain for it to be called photography? 51%? More? Less?
There are a couple different schools of photography that must be considered when talking about the validity of photography. Photojournalism seems to be the preferred method of the author. The purpose of photojournalism is to describe reality. Manipulations and editing of photojournalistic images doesn’t include the introduction elements that did not exist in the original image. Legal manipulations of photojournalistic images should not include modifications that change what the viewer would think of the photograph. It’s also generally unacceptable to remove any element of the image in photojournalism. You can crop an image as long as it doesn’t change the original theme or idea of the image by doing so. There are also numerous accounts in recent history of photojournalists getting caught and fired for falsifying reality through the process of image manipulation. Some of the more interesting cases of this include instances of photographers staging a scene to create a story rather than capturing life as it happens. This can be just as deceptive as digital alteration of a photograph.
Another school of photography is photographic art. Photographic art encompasses a lot of different ideas, and it is also difficult to define. When I view my own portfolio of work, I have some images that are photojournalistic in nature others that are photographic art. I have staged scenes that either mimic life or create an altered reality. I have also manipulated images in such a way that they would not be photojournalistic in nature. In my opinion, to be considered an artist, I have to inject some of myself into the final product. That injection may or may not allow the final image to remain within the realm of photojournalistic imagery. In this article, the author cited works of quite a few photographers to make his points more clear. Some of the classic great photographers such as Dorthea Lange, Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, and Robert Frank were used to illustrate the author’s idea of photo realism. On the flip side of the coin, photographers such as Andreas Gefeller, Didier Massard, Thomas Struth, and Cindy Sherman were used to illustrate the broken aspects of photography. If you should decide to Google a few of these photographer’s works, you will see the chosen line between what the author believes photography is or isn’t.
Maybe at some point in the future, viewers will learn how to look at photography. Critics shouldn’t really concern themselves with how an image came to be. Ultimately, one of two things will happen when we look at any image. We will either like it or we won’t. There is always the possibility of indifference, but if we are thinking about like or dislike of images, it’s fairly easy to classify them. If we spend too much time trying to classify images by type, we won’t really see what the artist is showing us.
The Next Step (Part 2)
I was glad to see a couple comments from some friends on the first half of this monologue. Both friends who left feedback on the original post are accomplished photographers, and I admire their work. Both of them, however, posted ideas that aren't what I had in mind. I stopped the first half of this post without answering my own question intentionally. I was sorta hoping to get some feedback with ideas about what the 'next step' in this game is or should be. Joe and Nathan both agree that the next step should be pushing and expanding boundaries. Both of them also agree that teaching is a worthwhile endeavor. I agree with both ideas, and I'll also discuss them here.
Pushing the Boundaries:
Exploring new artistic concepts and venturing outside the box is definitely something everyone should do. This idea, however, is still an mid-game concept in this game of chess. After securing the center of the board, our objective becomes one of breaking down the defensive barrier of our opponent and ultimately producing a checkmate. The checkmate is our goal. Getting outside our box with the camera may help expedite this process if we don't already know what our final goal will be. Exploring new ideas may help us realize the unknown goal. We may stumble across something that sucks us in like the smell that triggers our senses when we walk past the Godiva chocolate shop in the mall. We know there is something good there, but we just have to walk inside to see what it is. This idea does examine ways to the 'next step.'
Teaching:
I would love to teach, and suprisingly enough, I have been working on that idea for a few months. It's not visible on this website yet, but I'm working on an online classroom, but it's quite time consuming to write the text and prepare lessons for a class. I think that teaching photography would be quite rewarding in many ways, but I just don't have a great venue for that... yet...
So what is the next step?
As I mentioned in the first part of this discussion, lots of photographers spend many hours producing images in an effort to receive external validation from their circle of friends. This is a valid part of the game, but I think we need to look inward instead. What is the subject (or subjects) that we love to photograph on a personal level? Should we remain random and just pay attention to whatever we see or should we focus to produce a body of work that encompasses our personal passions?
I guess the answer to this would be based on overall goals. If photography is providing the bread and butter, we may be limited in what we can do towards our personal goals beyond putting food on the table. In some rare instances, it is entirely possible to let your passions provide for you, but there are only a few who can make that happen. Most of the professional photographers I know are booked up with weddings and commercial work to the point that their personal passions in photography take a constant back seat. There is one in particular who is in such demand in my town that he takes his vacations and leaves his camera gear at home just to get away from photography for a while. Maybe his commercial work has become his passion, but it wasn't like that for him when he started out in photography.
There is nothing wrong with commercial work being the passion. By the same token, there is nothing wrong with flowers, pets, children, wagon wheels, and sunsets. I simply believe that the key is finding out what or where the passion is and following it...
The Next Step
Canon EOS 30D / Canon 50mm f/1.4 @ f/2.0 / 36mm Extension Tube / 1/100" / ISO 200 / Incandescent Light
We're finally getting some more rain around here, so playing outside today is out of the question. I wandered around the yard for a few minutes, camera in hand, before the rain started coming hard enough to push me back inside. I was just in the mood to photograph something, and I didn't really care what it was. I haven't been spending a lot of time lately on my personal endeavors in photography, and I'm in a little withdrawal at the moment.
Daisies, and flowers in general, seem to be the brunt of many snide remarks within my personal community of photographers. My associations with other photographers seem to be at a beginner and amateur level, and those people love to spew words such as cliche and overdone and stereotypical. "How many times am I going to have to look at photos of flowers? If I've seen one, I've seen them all..." I don't know the answer to these questions. If I had to venture a guess, I would probably say that those who make these comments are in a stage of trying to produce their first masterpiece or something. They know it won't come from a flower, a pet, or a child... or at least they think it won't. Their objectives are fairly narrow though. They try to impress those within their community. When you find yourself in a group of photographers that is learning various processes and techniques, you quickly realize that what's important in any given photograph whatever topic, process, or technique is on today's table. The choices of subject don't seem to be as significant as a technique or a compositional aspect.
I know when I was starting out in photography, I fell into this mode of operation also. Technique was more important to me than anything else. Through this process, I learned technical skills with the camera, and today I'm quite comfortable with technical ideas. I can make my camera perform whatever task is before me. I can make technically great photographs of the most mundane subject with absolutely no problem. When a photographer reaches this point, what's next?
The next step is the tough one. Everyone can learn how to use a camera. Some may take longer than others, but anyone with the desire to achieve can learn the process. Moving beyond that level is where the real challenge in photography comes. There are no books on this subject, and there is no formula for success.
My Photography Backup Strategy
The Hickory High School Varsity Cheerleaders ride an antique fire truck during the 2006 Hickory Christmas Parade...
As a photographer, I have unique requirements for backing up my digital photographs. I make a lot of photos every week, and the sheer amount of storage space required for that is tremendous. I don't delete anything. I even keep my bad photos just in case there may be some oddball use for them in the future.
The Microsoft Windows operating system creates a special "My Documents" folder when it's installed on any personal computer. This is simply a logical place to store documents that you create, including photographs. Within the My Documents folder, there is another special folder called "My Pictures" for photographs. This folder is my starting point for saving photographs that I shoot on a regular basis. In my "My Pictures" folder, I have created several folders, but the primary photography folder is simply called "Photos." Each time I shoot a batch of photos, I create a new folder within the "Photos" folder that is named with the date and subject in this format:
2007-11-12 - Purple Garden Flowers
When I name folders like this, they stay in alphabetical order with the newest folders at the bottom of the list and I have a sequential view of all my current photo shoots.
My PC has two internal 160gb hard disk drives and one external 120gb USB hard drive. Every morning at 3am, my PC runs an automated scheduled backup of the "My Documents" folder to my secondary internal hard disk drive. This process creates my first backup of my photography and any other documents that exist in my "My Documents" folder. The purpose of this backup is to have a recovery option if my primary hard disk drive fails. I can simply replace the drive, reinstall the operating system, and then restore my personal data, including all my current photography. The problem with this procedure is that my hard disk drives are not large enough to keep ALL my photography online all the time. My primary hard disk drive would fill up rather quickly. This is where my external USB hard disk drive comes into play.
My PC runs an automated script every night that just copies the contents of my "Photos" folder over to the external USB disk drive. At this point, I have two backup copies of my photographs. The first backup exists on my secondary internal hard drive and the second backup exists on my external USB hard disk drive.
Periodically, my primary internal hard drive starts to get full, so I have a need to free up some space. At this point, I start copying my older photo shoots in the "Photos" folder to DVD for storage. After I copy them to the DVD, I delete them from my primary hard disk drive, but leave them on my external USB hard drive until that drive starts to get too full. The external USB drive allows me to have up to 110gb or so of current photography readily accessible without having to go back to DVD to get images that I may need. As the external USB drive starts to get full, I delete a few of the older photo folders from that drive to free up additional space. The external USB drive currently lets me keep 4-6 months of my most recent photographs online. I hope to replace the 120gb drive with a 500gb drive soon, which should let me keep a lot more photos active, but I just haven't done that yet.
This backup method is a very inexpensive and fairly comprehensive way of backing up large amounts of data. The only problem I see with this method is the fact that I'll have a LOT of work to do whenever DVD is replaced with some other type of storage media in the future. With backups of digital data, I can't rely on DVD for a lifetime of usability. I have already run into this issue once when I decided that I needed to make my hard backups on DVD instead of CD. I had to load all of my CD data back onto hard drives and burn all that to DVD, which took quite a long time to do. That day will come again when DVD is replaced by something else that is higher capacity and more reliable.
In reality, I could build a RAID-5 disk drive array with a lot of storage space and keep all of my photography online all the time. The fault tolerance of a RAID-5 array is rather good, and the likelihood of losing all my photography would be slim, but not an impossibility.
It's sort of ironic when you think about how much more complicated it is to back up digital photo files as compared to filing away strips of film :)
Keeping Up with Blogs
I guess if you are reading this, you are a blog follower and possibly a blogger as well. I follow quite a few blogs myself, and I have been searching for the best way to keep up with what's going on in the blogs I follow. In the beginning, I was using Live Bookmarks in the Firefox web browser, which works rather well, but in my case, I also use My Yahoo as a home page in my web browser. I just happened to notice the other day that My Yahoo has a new beta format running that you can try. I decided to switch over and take a look at it, and I am fairly happy with the new format. Just before I discovered the new My Yahoo beta, I had started setting up my blog feeds on the Google Reader. Since I'm already using My Yahoo as a home page for news and other stuff, I figured I would give it a try for managing my blog preferences as well.
After I switched to the new My Yahoo Beta page, I clicked on the ADD PAGE option at the top and created a blank page for my favorite photo blogs. On the "Personalize this Page" button, there is an option to add RSS feeds, which will pop the blog feed right onto the page. If you are using the Firefox browser, there is an RSS feed button on the right edge of the URL box that will also allow you to add the feed to your My Yahoo page. This option adds the feed to your MAIN My Yahoo page, but the feed display can be dragged and dropped onto the secondary page and then moved around by dragging and dropping as well.