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Peeling Brick

It wasn’t until recently that I became aware of Aaron Siskind and his photographs of peeling posters and peeling paint.  This style of  abstract seem to have penetrated the psyche of many photographers myself included.  Wanting to look for something different, I’ve begun a series of photographs of old painted signs, many of which are directly onto the brick of the building.  I have walked by the relatively non-descript building that was the subject for the image above many times before I noticed the faded signs.  My only explanation is that the building had been white washed, which when removed revealed the much older signage below.  I’m now on the hunt for more of these old painted signs, so let me know if you know of one.

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Rocks and a Sun Rise

I mentioned last week the process of virtual scouting that I use to help me find interesting places to photograph and to make sure that I am there at the right time of day to achieve the photograph that I am aiming for.  The image above was the result of spending an hour or so looking at the satellite map within google maps to find and interesting collection of rocks at the waters edge.  It was then a relatively simple task to work out what days I could expect clear morning skies and what the tide would be on those days.  I arrived here when it was still quite dark.  As the sky became lighter I was able to get a better sense of the beach and how I might photograph it.  Starting on the beach I made a series of images that had me getting closer and closer to the water until the final set, of which the above was the best, where I was stood on the rocks in the breaking surf.

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Drawing to Improve your Photography

On a recent archeological expedition in the basement I came across my copy of Betty Edwards’s book ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain‘ and the sketchbook that I had used for the exercises. It had been a while since I looked at the drawings and I must admit that I was surprised – they weren’t actually that bad. There were two exercises that stood out for me in the many that are in the book. The first was to copy a drawing that is shown upside down. Remarkably when you copy an image that is upside down you do a better job of capturing what us there than you do when the same image is right side up. Why? The exercise prompts a shift from the left brain, verbal mode of thinking, to the right brain, visual mode.  We become conditioned to name objects and to have a standard ‘symbol’ that represents the object rather than drawing what is actually in front of us. Having the picture upside down makes it difficult to recognize the image and so there is more likelihood that we will draw what is there than rely our symbol short-cuts. The recognition that we tend to rely on short-cuts rather than truly seeing spills over into photography.  I have wondered on more than one occasion whether using a medium format camera, where the scene before you is viewed inverted, would help advance my photography by removing the familiar, making me more reliant on graphic elements.

The second exercise that stuck with me was drawing a chair.  In this exercise, rather than draw the chair, you are guided to draw the space around the chair.  This is a great lesson in the importance of  negative space and how it defines the object of interest.  How negative space and the space occupied by the object of interest fit together within the boundary of the frame is fundamental to good composition.  Defining the boundary of the frame is as important in photography as it is in drawing.  While some may argue about the validity of cropping from the standard 2 x 3 format of the DSLR, it is unquestionable that some compositions would work better in alternate formats.

The drawing that I have been using to support my photography is the compliment to the writing that I have been working on.  My drawings roughly map out ideas for new photos that I have developed through some of the writing exercises. The drawings are not frameworks for future Photoshop constructions but rather ways to help me be prepared for what I may find when I’m on location.  While I may not find the exact drawings that I had imagined, they allow me to see opportunities where I may not have otherwise.

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Virtual Scouting

I was recently describing my process of scouting locations to one of my friends and their response made me think that it would be worth sharing here.  My process is evolving but here is how I’m currently approaching things.

I’ve been working on a project to photograph rocks at the waters edge.  My first move was to find some places where there may be suitable rocks.  For this I turned to google maps in the satellite view and at a decent magnification scanned the coast line close to home. Here’s a screen shot from google maps:

Once I’d found a good location such as the one above I plugged the location into the photographers ephemeris an iPhone app.  The app lets me work out the location of sunrise and sunset.  I realize that I could probably use The Photographer’s Ephemeris to fill the same function as google maps, and I may well transition over at some point, but I feel like I have more screen real estate with google maps than I can have with The Photographer’s Ephemeris.  Here’s a screen shot to from the PC version of the Photographer’s Ephemeris that can be found here.

Since I’m dealing with the ocean I check on the tide table to see whether it will be high tide or low tide.  There are lots of resources for this information.  Because it’s handy I generally use the iPhone app Tides.  There may be better applications for this available but this is easy and it works for me.

Then finally I check the weather using either the 10 day or hourly forecast on the weather channel website.

I’ve tried winging it many times and I’ve had spotty success.  With the process described above I’ve had a little more consistent success.

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Winter Lane

I was starting to think, hoping really, that this was going to be the last image of snow I was going to get this year and then we had more snow showers earlier this week.  Natures way of telling us that there’s still a chance of more snow yet!  I would love to visit Cades Cove in the Smokies and make my own image of the lane that I’ve seen done by so many other people.  Unfortunately my on-going commitments means that it will be a while before I get to do that trip.  Instead I continue to look for opportunities closer to home.  I noticed this lane when I was out hiking one weekend and I’ve been returning to make a series of photographs from this spot that show the changes with the seasons.  I now have two of Winter and will work in the coming year to complete the set with good images of Spring, Summer and Fall.

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Poke the Box Workbook

On the heels of the Poke the Box book comes the Poke the Box Workbook (click here to download it).  There’s lots of encouragement in this short (23 pages) workbook to start something and to help you develop the habit of starting.  You aren’t told that you need to jump right in and try to take over the world.  Instead there are a number of examples of small things that you can do today, such as picking the restaurant for dinner if you don’t normally do that or speaking up in a group, that will get you into the habit of starting something, of Poking the Box.

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Black Rock

Not too far from my home on the south shore is a curious little island.  What intrigues me the most is the building.  Is it a house, fishing shack, government outpost?  Is it abandoned?  I’ve never seen anyone there at any time of the year.  One of these days I’ll find someone to borrow a boat from and go exploring.  Until then I’ll be trying to work things out from the shore.  The light here dies well before sunset.  On this particular evening I spent a while poking around on the beach and realized that there was some nice soft color developing in the sky.  Fortunately I was able to get the color in the sky while the island was still lit by the setting sun.

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Poke the Box and the Art of Shipping

I’m a huge Seth Godin fan.  My first intersection with Seth was around 2000 when I came across his ‘Bootstrappers Bible‘.  It was around the time that he was ‘Unleashing the Ideavirus’, the marketing book that he gave away for free as a pdf.  For a cash strapped book fiend like myself this was awesome but at the time I missed the point totally.

With 10 more years on the tires I’m finally getting the point and even more so now that I am taking photographs and writing about that process here.  I think that many of us worry about having our work ‘stolen’.  For some this is more of a concern than it is for others.  I may be a contrarian but it seems that the worst thing that anyone who creates anything to share or sell to the world is not having their work stolen but not having an audience.  For no one to care what you’re doing.  Why not instead figure out how you can reach the broadest audience possible and do that?

Seth’s new book is called ‘Poke the Box‘ and is a riff on some of the themes and ideas that he has been pushing for the last few years.  Namely you have to get your product out of the door.  Starting is not enough, you have to finish too.  You have to ship!

For many this involves overcoming what Steven Pressfield calls in The War of Art ‘The Resistance’.  That overwhelming fear of failure, of being rejected, of humiliation after putting your heart and soul into a project.  Seth Godin refers to this a the lizard brain.  Our instinctive response to danger or fear.  One way of course if listening to what the lizard brain is saying to do and then doing the exact opposite.  It requires practice but becomes easier with time.

Seth was interviewed by Dane Sanders this week and the video can be found here.  As always, a provacative conversation.

Get ‘Poke the Box’.  Read it.  Read it again.  Figure out how you are going to make a difference and go do it!

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Sunrise on Glacial Erractics

One of the beaches that we went to when I first moved to Boston’s south shore is littered with large rocks.   They are an odd sight on an otherwise normal shoreline and were certainly something of a curiosity for me, having never seen anything like them before.  They are  glacial erratics, rocks that are out of place in terms of size and shape for the other rocks found in that area and that were transported as part of a glacier.  I’m quite taken with these as subjects for my photos, which means I’ll return frequently until I’ve had my fill.  It could be quite a while.

On this particular morning I had been trying out some wider views.  I walked away to see whether I could get an image of a single rock and as I walked back down the beach I saw the image shown above.

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Writing to Stimulate Ideas

Recently I pulled together a small portfolio of my coastal images with the intention of figuring out how to expand on the set.   Sometimes this is obvious, for me however it wasn’t clear in this case.  General advice would be to have a range of focal lengths, different light, different times of day, different weather, alternate view-point… the list goes on.  What I was struggling with was more foundational – what am I trying to say with this body of work, what is the major theme.  Many of the photographs in the portfolio weren’t taken ‘intentionally’ but were more my response to what was in front of me.  This of course makes it exceptionally hard when people review your images and say ‘that looks good do more like that’.  I didn’t know what ‘that’ was!

My solution was to spend 15 or so minutes describing my initial impressions of the images as a set.  I didn’t want to dwell on each image and be too thoughtful, but rather capture my initial impressions, very much like what I had done when I originally made the image.  This brainstorming session has been enormously helpful.  Not only do I now have a clearer idea of my intention but the brainstorming has also given me a list of potential new projects that would fit with my other work.  I also found the process enormously energizing.