More talk about vision

I have seriously neglected this blog for far too long. In part this has been caused by  a lot to do with my "other life" but a good portion of it does come from a struggle to produce anything meaningful with my photographs.

This past Friday I received an email from Pixelated Image blog that is written by David DuChemin. David has written another ebook called "The Vision Driven Photographer". I immediately downloaded the book so I could read it later that night. As I made my way through the short book, several concepts kind of solidified in my mind and helped me view how I take photographs. One of the main themes is that we all have vision whether we know it or not. Vision is a factor of who we are and what we believe or hold valuable. Our photographic vision comes out of our personal vision; they are tied together. Intent is important - without intent David says we are left with "accidental photography". An appropriate term for far too many of my photographs. the book goes on to say that vision is important because it helps our images express what we want to say.

If you are serious about your photography, I can highly recommend Davids ebook and the books that Craft and Vision have published on photography.

The book has a number of photographic exercises and I will begin practicing them in the coming weeks. I will share the results here, for better or worse. What does't kill me is supposed to make me stronger, right?

Struggling

I read a blog post today from David DuChemin from the Pixelated Image Blog about struggling with making meaningful photographs. This post is a must read for all photographers who have ever struggled to make a photograph, and this means all photographers. This post really resonated with me today, not so much because I am really struggling hard right now but becasue I often do. I go into many photo shoots just wondering if I can make a decent frame. The post on Davids site doesn't offer any magic remedies, or solutions to the problem other than to decide to get out of bed and go shoot again the next day. I was struck with how closely that mimics life in general. Sometimes the best we can do is get up and get going again.

I find it helps to go back and look at work from a year ago, or even 5 years ago. When I do this, I generally find my photographs are getting better. I also find it extrememly hepful to have others look at my photos and critique them. That is a big reason why I wanted to start this blog. I wanted to put my photographs on display; good, bad, or ugly.

Here is a photograph I took last week at a youth outreach, when I posted this photograph on Facebook, it got a very strong positive response from a friend of mine from High School. She saw it and it touched her. She is working at a large Youth Outreach in Sacramento tonight and the timing was right for her to see this photo. My point is that if I would have stayed home in the AC rather than going to shoot these pictures, this one never would have been made and it was a positive influence for someone. Don't be afraid to go shoot and do not worry about how the photos are going to come out, practice and trust that your practice will continue to pay off.

Shot with a Nikon D300 and 70 - 300mm VR lens.

STORM Outreach

I had the prvilege of shooting photos of a local outreach called STORM. The event was put on by the youth in our church and drew several hundred people from the community. There were three bands, a professional skate team, and a free BBQ. I can't wait for the next one in about six months.

Photowalk

Evening Photowalk

Once again, photographers in Yuba City will be going on a photowalk. What is a photowalk you might ask., First of all, it is not my original idea but rather one I have adopted from Scott Kelby, Jeff Revell and others who promote the idea of photographers getting together to walk an area of their city and shoot photos. I have found this forum to be a great way to learn to see photographs before you even pick up the camera. Every time I have done this, I have seen things in a slightly different way which is what this is about. If you are in the area, join us on Sunday the 19th at 4:00 pm, location is TBD.

The Boys of Fall

Huskies in control

Even though the weather is still warm, the days are getting noticeably shorter and as school resumes, so does Football season. Not having played, I didn't catch the fever quite as strong as some but this year as my son starts High School Football, I find myself getting excited for gametime each week. With two wins so far, the team is a lot of fun to watch. Here are a few shots of "The Boys of Fall".

Huskies - Ready for battle
Click on image to see it larger

Regrouping

 

Experimentation

Last week I was shooting photos at a football team fundraiser and after shooting numerous snapshots that will be great in a scrapbook, I wanted to do something more creative. The conditions weren't great for great photos, the light was pretty harsh and the players were standing between me and the sun. I stopped the lens way down hoping for a sun flare but what I got was a much slower shutter speed . I was also getting some nice looking silhouettes. I had not been thinking about the shutter speed but when I did, I realized I could do some interesting things with a blur effect.

I remember reading Joe McNalley book talking about shooting airplanes in the middle of the day, high noon, low contrast, and no shadows to speak of. He shot a photo of an F-22 that is a really spectacular shot, even when conditions were not right.

So, I shot what I could at the time. Let me know what you think.

Getting busy with portraits

It is time once again for football to start, back to school shopping, shorter days, and one of my favorite things to shoot as a photographer; senior portraits. While I have enjoyed every portrait I have ever taken, seniors are especially fun. These are portrait subjects at the top of their game and ready to take on the world, what fun!

I have several senior sessions scheduled and will post some of the results as they come in. In the meantime, I have pulled some recent portraits, some seniors and some engagement and some childrens portraits.

I would love to work with you to make portraits you will be proud to display and will capture an important time in your lives. Please contact me and we can discuss your needs.

Thanks for looking,

Ed

Opportunity

Last week as I was shooting a graduation party I came across this scene. My direction from my awesome client was to shoot photos of the people at the party and the graduate and "anything else my creative eye saw". The direction I was given was really liberating.

I saw this scene and it looked almost identical to the one that my friends see out their front window. So I set my camera on Manual so I wouldn't shift either aperture or shutter speed and then I lined it up by eye. The result is 9 photos stitched together into a panoramic 10" x 96". Check it out big.

I'd love to put this up on a long blank wall in my house, I just don't know if I can afford the second mortgage to get a frame made for it! I may have to make my own frame . . . . . .how much would glass cost? Hmm, maybe I made it a bit long . . . . .

I hope you enjoy it.

I had a great time last Friday on a photowalk with some friends. I originally invited around 12 - 15 people and it looked like we might have as many as 10 or 12. Unfortunately, most people had to cancel late on Friday so only three of us went.

The intent of the photowalk was to increase awareness of photographic technique and to share some ideas on photography. By spending time together in the pursuit of photographs, we hoped to help solidify our vision for ourselves. In attendance were myself, another serious photographer who does very nice portrait work, and my teenage daughter who has just completed a basic photo class.

I will only comment directly on my own experience and say that I think the evening was a definite success. I say it was successful because we took some photographs, discussed some techniques, tried some different lenses and different perspectives and I know that I learned some things in the course of the evening.

I don't really care whether the photos were great but since the photos are the ultimate goal, I chose some I liked and posted them here for comment. Let me know what you think of these.

What one thing do you wish for most?

If you could choose just one thing to make your photography better what would it be? Would it be a lens? A new camera body, the latest software? Or would it be something else? Would a new computer make your photos better or maybe a new printer? I have been thinking a lot about what will make my photos better than they are now. One conclusion I am coming to is that a lot of stuff I spend time and money on do not directly make my photos and better, or any worse for that matter.

I think when we distill photography into it's core, it really is about us as artists more than the equipment we use. Don't get me wrong, we still have to have equipment but does it really have to be more powerful than a small city or can it be our old Pentax Spotmatic a 55mm f1.8 lens, and a couple of rolls of Tri-X and nothing more?

I think that for me sometimes I let the equipment drive what I can and cannot do. For instance, I justify a more expensive camera because the Canon G10 I have just won't shoot the shallow depth of field I want so I have to have the D300 and 85mm f1.8 lens. Or I get a Lensbaby so all of my photos have to have a lot of out of focus areas in them. While these functions of a camera or lens can be limiting, I am trying to view them as tools to capture what I envision. Now I just need to choose the proper tool for that particular circumstance. I really want the vision that we have talked about before and David DuChemin captures in his books so well. Joe McNalley also creates the look he wants because he per-visualizes it before he shoots it. I love to watch Joe because he often does not get it perfect the first time out and has to experiment some, just like us mere mortals! Gotta love it.

So besides a 24 - 70mm f2.8 and a 70 - 200mm f 2.8, I'd really like a good dose of vision for my photography. So what do you want when you go out and shoot? Equipment is fine, let us know what you need to make better photographs.

In this blog, I have focused a lot on practicing our own individual vision and I think that it is a critical skill for us as photographers. I believe we really need to get out of our comfort zone and try new things to show ourselves a new perspective. I have referenced David DuChemin's excellent e-books that can be found at Craft & Vision as pdf downloads. I strongly suggest that if you want to get better at seeing photographs, you buy his e-book series which can be bought for $5 each. It's a bargain!

When we are looking at stretching ourselves as photographers, we need to try things that are a little different or even wildly different than what we normally shoot. This could be switching from a telephoto to a wide angle lens, using only a "standard lens" and not a zoom, shooting from multiple angles. Basically it can be anything that leads us to a new perspective.

I shot these photos last year in the darkroom at Yuba College while attending a black and white photo class. I wanted to shoot some long exposure b&w photos in the darkroom so I shot a series first using my DSLR. By doing this with a digital camera first, I could figure out what my exposure needed to be with film. My exposure on these photos was about 30 seconds to a minute and my exposures with Tri-x were several minutes long.

These photos took me out of my comfort zone and made me thing about the act of taking (making) an exposure I wanted. Some may hate them, some may love them and that is fine with me because they made me think. Do these photos make you think differently about how you want to shoot photos? All feedback is welcome.

Prom time of year

I had the privilege of shooting prom pictures for my daughter and several friends last week. Not only was it a great experience and gave me some nice images for my portfolio but it also helped the kids out. Everything these days is much more expensive then when I went to prom about a thousand years ago. This was a really fun group of kids who had a good time in front of the camera. I only have one regret from this shoot and that is that I did not have more time with each couple to try different poses. Some were ready to be finished after the first shutter release and others were willing to keep going.

The goal here was to give each couple a few really good shots of them in their prom finery and not hold up the rest of the kids too much. As the day was warm, it was necessary to keep things moving fairly quickly. Fortunately, I have a good friend, Dane Wilson who I shoot with regularly who offered his help. So Dane and my son both helped by getting the couples in place quickly and then holding a sunshade to keep the harsh sun off the kids faces. We got all the kids processed through within about 1 1/2 hours.

These photos were shot with a Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 85mm f1.8 lens. In most cases, f5.6 was used to keep enough of the couples in focus. In retrospect, and if I had some more time, I might have shot a little more wide open to get a softer background. Overall though, I am happy with these photos. Let me know what you think . . . . .

Computer headache

After a frustrating weekend with major computer problems I finally got my computer back up and running. I had to have some heavy duty help though because I was out of my element for sure. (It's great to have smart friends - actually it's just great to have friends!) When we finally got things figured out, it was a bad memory stick causing the conflict which was fortunate because the fix was relatively inexpensive. The negative side to the story was that I ultimately had to reformat my C drive which means I lost all my settings, favorites and my music library. I am still trying to recover all my data.

When I had this computer built by Circular Systems in Sacramento a little over a year ago, I specced two 320GB hard drives so that I could back up all my photos to a separate physical drive. I highly reccomend Circular for computers, they can build you anything you might want and will work with you to get you exactly what meets your needs. In this case, that second drive was a lifesaver. All my photos were saved on the D drive and fully recoverable. With the low cost of hard drive storage these days, there is really no reason to not have a backup drive. In fact, I saw 500 GB Western Digital and Seagate drives this past week for about $50 each.

Another great idea is imaging software which allows making a copy of everything on your hard drive in case of a problem. It was this "image" that allowed me to get my Operating System back up and running. I used Acronis software to make the image and I know there are numerous other options as well.

After all the drama with computers, I did actually get out for a little while and went with my son and friends to the "Spring Get Together" Car show on Plumas Street in Yuba City. We had a good time shooting some very nice cars. The weather was perfect for this kind of outing. Shown are a couple of examples . . . . .

You can check out my articles about event photography at Examiner.com Let me know what you think or if you have ideas about events that might be interesting for readers.

Insurance

This was supposed to be a post about the type of tools I use when I am practicing my photography. I plan to highlight equipment, including cameras, lenses, tripods, cleaning gear, camera straps and computer hardware and software I use. Instead, this is a warning to all readers to make sure they properly back up all their images and their documents on their computers. This evening as I was doing some routine computer work, my main desktop locked up and will not allow me to boot it up. I have some good help dealing with it but even with the help I can't get it working. There are still some things I can try and can ultimately take it back to the shop that built it.

The warning is really to make sure your images are safeguarded. I am confident that even if this computer were dead, which I am pretty sure it is not, I can pull my internal drives and save all my images prior to 2010. I have two Western Digital 320 GB drives and the second drive mirrors (backs up) the images on the first drive. I essentially have two copies of all my photographs. The critical photos, I also back up onto CD or DVD as added insurance. For all my 2010 photos, I have started saving them onto a Western Digital My Mirror Edition Hard Drive which backs everything up on to a second drive within the same enclosure. I got mine at B&H Photo in NY. Western Digital has discontined my model in favor of a 2TB version (1TB for each drive.) It currently sells for $175. Pretty inexpensive insurance I'd say.

I am no computer expert and don't plan to become one but I do plan to take a hard look at how I back up my files to make sure my methods afford me the greatest protection that is reasonable. I would encourage you to do the same.

Creativity in Photography

Creativity is an elusive concept and something may photographers struggle with. It does seem that while a lot of us have a hard time with creative blocks, it's not really something we spend a lot of time talking about or working on. I think we may be making a mistake by not spending more time discussing the nature of the creative blocks. It's my opinion that if we did more things like photowalking and working with other creative people, we might reach a kind of critical mass that would propel us to the next level of creativity.

In an effort to stimulate creativity, I have been reading the excellent e-books written by David DuChemin. His books cost just $5 each and are a great bargain. His first two books, "Ten" and "Ten More" are extremely practical and filled with exercises designed to get us thinking and working at pre-envisioning out photographs. They also are aimed at getting us totally comfortable with our cameras so we can interpret our own vision in our photos.

This evening I have been reading David's book "the Inspired eye Notes on Creativity for Photographers." Several things David had to say really resonated with me. First David starts off by saying creativity isn't easy. Oddly, this makes me kind of happy. I like the idea it's not just dumb luck or luck of the draw that makes our creativity work. He goes on to say that work will generate creativity and that we probably won't find creativity without work. Again, I find it comforting to know that as long as I am trying, inspiration may come to me. Ultimately, it's the idea that on my worst shooting day, there is still hope.

The images I have posted here were both shot in the same morning and were both a little bit out of my normal shooting modes. The first was shot with a Nikon D300 and 70 - 300mm lens from a tripod. I was forcing myself to shoot in manual mode and was looking for abstract images or shapes and colors. The second was shot handheld in my car while driving. Again, I was using a D300 and an 18-70mm Nikon lens for this shot.

Motion Exposed

The following article is one I posted in my column for examiner.com

The tools needed for effective event photography can range from cameras, lenses, tripods, studio lights, computers, and software; the list can be endless. The simple truth is, you can be very effective with a limited number of tools but one tool is absolutely essential. That tool is vision.

Vision means the ability to understand the type of photo or photos you want to take and includes the ability to manipulate your equipment to capture the image you have as your vision. As an artist, you need to spend some time determining the type of photograph you want and the steps you may need t take to achieve that photograph. Some equipment can certainly make your job easier but it really starts with a concept in your head and the knowledge to make it a reality.

The knowledge does not necessarily come easily but there are many ways to help yourself gain the knowledge and confidence to shoot what you want, the way you picture it in your minds eye. Books are an excellent choice as you can read them and re-read them, referring to them as often as needed. Several books that are highly recommended would include: The Hot Shoe Diaries by Joe McNally. This book covers editorial style photography using small flash units to light your subject. This book is an excellent way to learn lighting techniques. Another source for lighting tips is the incredibly popular blog called The Strobist blogspot. The blog has dozens of tutorials and assignments designed to help photographers learn to light with small flashes. Finally David DuChemin is a Canadian Photographer who has gained quite a following and has begun publishing his own books including as series of inexpensive e-books designed to inspire photographers to attain their vision.

Read these books, check out blogs, look at as many photographs as you possibly can and above all else, get out and shoot photos as often as you can. The more you walk around with camera in hand shooting subjects that inspire you, the better you will be able to achieve your own personal vision.

Divine Guidance?

Last Friday I had to run errands for the family and at the last minute decided to grab the camera bag. I had an idea for shooting some photographs of the Bike Around The Buttes which is held each spring and benefits the children in our community that have Type 1 Diabetes. This year was the 25th year! While I was out looking at the ride course, I happened on this scene which looked like God was trying to tell me which road to travel.

Shot with a Nikon D300 and AF-S 70 - 300mm ED VR f 4.5 - 5.6 lens. Shot on Aperture Priority with final cleanup in Adobe Lightroom.

Here was another looking the other direction through the Buttes. It ended up being a great morning to be out.

The more complicated and confused my daily work life becomes, the more simple, pure, and enjoyable the act of photography becomes. As I was reviewing some engagement photos, I came across two that I liked and the client liked very well. Shown here for comments.

Portraits

Along with the exercises in David DuChemin's books, I have been working on my portrait skills and found that I love environmental portraits as much as any others. Here are a couple I have done recently. Senior portraits and engagement photos are a lot of fun to shoot.

I can't wait to shoot some more of them. If anyone is looking for senior portraits, headshots, family portraits, or any other photographs, let me know, I am sure we can work something out that will satisfy your needs.

Making up for lost time

I have neglected this blog for quite awhile but now plan to make up for missing posts. I will continue to post some photos that were taken in the past and will post some new ones as I take them.

I have become very interested in the ebooks of David DuChemin andhave been reading "Ten" which discusses how to become a better photographer without buying more gear. Davids book have exercises which I will be working through in the coming weeks. I will report the results here on these pages.

In the meantime, a photograph from a couple of years ago that I find quite intriguing.

Practice, Practice, Practice

Over the past month or so, I have had little time for creative photography but have been able to read a little bit and thought I'd pass on some suggestions. Joe McNally's excellent books; The Hot Shoe Diaries and The Moment it Clicks are both exceptional books and need to be on your shelf if you want to light anything with speedlights. I have also been following David DuChemin's excellent blog at http://www.pixelatedimage.com/blog/and found that I really resonate with what David has to say about finding personal vision. One of the things David advocates is practice using our photographic muscle, something I know I need to do more of.

On a recent business trip, I carried my G10 and took photos out the window of the airplane which was my only option for shooting anything on the trip. If nothing else, it did exercise my mind and eye as I searched for patterns, texture and light. Here are a couple from that trip.