I was reading in Nathan Armes’ blog earlier today when I stumbled across this TED story on James Nachtwey. This 20-minute video is well worth the time to watch. Nachtwey makes several important points in this monologue that really make me think about the role of journalism in today’s society.
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.
Why should I vote? The North Carolina primaries are not until May. I’m a registered Republican and the presidential nominee from the party has been selected. Why would North Carolina even hold a Republican primary (** for president**)? Would it not be a good idea to cancel the remaining Republican primaries (** for president**)? In North Carolina, I can’t switch over and vote in the Democrat primaries since I’m registered as a Republican. I would have to change my registration in order to do that, and registrations have to be changed at least 30 days prior to election day.
** Addendum **
I modified the contents of this post on 3/8/2008. Some local political groups who are campaigning against a local politician rather than for their own candidate in the congressional race are misrepresenting my idea behind this post, so I needed to clarify myself. I have read through their material and will be back with more about their mudslinging later :)
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…
I have still been experimenting with the extension tubes on my Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens. This photo was made using the 20mm and 12mm extension tubes (Kenko) with the 50mm lens at f/2.0 with a shutter speed of 1/60″. I used the Canon 550EX flash and bounced the light from a wall directly to the right on this image. I started out playing with all three extension tubes stacked (36mm, 20mm, and 12mm) but quickly figured out that it was just too much for this particular composition. I haven’t had an opportunity to spend much time playing with the extension tubes on the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L yet, but I need to try that out as well to see what kind of results I can get and add some working distance to the subject.
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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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I read a lot of photography blogs. I’m always more interested in what people are thinking rather than what they are shooting in most cases, but I occasionally stumble across something that really makes me cringe. I ran across this quote from this post over on Ted Byrne’s ImageFiction blog the other day…
“The Moral: When it isn’t your idea in the viewfinder, Don’t trigger the shutter.”
I can’t find much agreement with the idea behind the statement (be sure to read the post on Ted’s blog for more context.) The idea that I do agree with, even though it’s not stated in his post, is that photographers should always strive for something unique in an effort to differentiate themselves from everyone else who carries a camera. The main theme that I disagree with is that it’s a waste of time and effort to duplicate an image that has been done many times before. I suppose that self esteem and confidence may cause many photographers to avoid shooting a scene they have seen in pictures many times before, but there are several points of interest that surface when you examine the entire concept.
Have I seen it before?
If I travel to a new place that I’m not intimately familiar with, nothing I see will be overdone or cliche in my mind. I’m experiencing everything for the first time. I’m not going to spend time considering whether or not some other photographer has worked an interesting scene before I go to work on it myself. If my personal muse speaks, I will listen without hesitation.
I have seen it before.
If I was to travel to Yosemite or some other site that has been worked over and over by thousands of photographers, should I just leave my camera at home? I don’t think so. If I’m inspired in some way to shoot a scene that I have seen before, there is nothing wrong with that. The images I produce will be inspired by something other than a previously noted photograph in my mind. The image I create, even if it is identical (let’s consider identical for the purpose of discussion) to someone else’s photo, is still my photo. It’s my personal account of what was going on in my mind at the time I made the image. Should I beat myself up if I discover that my image is almost identical to someone else’s? No.
Besides the image…
A photograph is more than a photograph, or at least it should be. This part of photography gets overlooked too often… not just in photography, but in other arts as well. I don’t know what the most photographed subject in the world is, but I’m sure it has been photographed more times than I can imagine, and I’m also sure that a huge majority of those photos all look the same. The missing link in all those supposedly identical photographs is the inspiration behind the image. What caused the photographer to raise the camera? If the sole reason was to duplicate a previously noted photograph, then Ted may be right. If the inspiration came from some inner feeling, then no two images are really alike at all. You, as a photographer, may be the only one who understands the differentiation.
This small detail is the root of the problem. Photographers tend to be egotistical. We want praises from our work. The last thing we want to hear from an observer is something like “Wow… that looks just like an Ansel Adams photo…” We would rather hear “Wow… That’s amazing… I have never seen anything like that before…” For some reason, photographers also tend to show their work to a lot of other photographers, which is generally a recipe for disaster in the long haul. Those other egotistical photographers aren’t really going to spend much time pumping you up even if they do like your work. They will probably hold back the “I wish I had thought of that” comments… Those other photographers will be the first ones to tell you they have seen your idea many times before…
The reality…
Photography, as we know it today, was born in 1839. Almost 170 years and billions of photographs, how unique do you think you can be? You can spend all your time working on being different, or you can enjoy what you are doing and let your personal inspirations guide you. If you aren’t having fun with it, then take up knitting…
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Friday afternoon, I was reading Gordon McGregor’s blog the other day, I stumbled across an interesting post that led me to the SoFoBoMo project on Paul Butzi’s blog. I’m not going to re-hash what was written in these two posts, but I think the concept is interesting and I plan to participate. I’m currently thinking about what I plan to do for the project, and I recommend checking it out. Hopefully it will inspire me to self-publish more book projects in the future…
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This technique is one of those hit-and-miss situations. It’s difficult to get things to come out like you have pictured in your mind. The most difficult part of this process is being able to keep the camera steady while you are turning the zoom during the exposure. I set the camera on the tripod and composed the scene. I set the aperture to f/32 and the ISO to 100. I set the shutter to bulb mode and used my cable release to open the shutter. I twisted the zoom and used the cable release again to close the shutter.
I ended up using THIS photo as my image for the day, but I’m going to spend a little more time playing with the idea on some other subjects. I can see some opportunities to use a flash in this technique as well… maybe even coupling it with the multi flash mode that I used on the flag in my previous blog entry…
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