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Book Comment: Photographing Childhood

I end up buying a lot of books, some I find more interesting and useful than others. The difficulty that I have is knowing what level the book is pitched towards. Books about photographing kids can be a real mixed bag. I have found a few that I liked. Nick Kelsh‘s book ‘How to Photograph Your Baby: Revised Edition‘ is interesting. Not f stops and shutter speeds but more what it takes to get a good shot of your kids. Working through some of the ideas had a significant impact on the quality of the photos of my kids. Well worth a look.

My recent purchase was Photographing Childhood by Lanola Kathleen Stone. I regretted the purchase as soon as I’d clicked buy on the amazon.com site. What was I thinking? I take a lot of photos of my kids but I’m happy enough with what I’m getting that I don’t feel a need to pursue this hard. I was blown away when Photographing Childhood showed up on my doorstep a few days later and I began flipping through it. The book covers a lot of ground, beginning worth a historical tour through some of the masters who’ve shot children and then onto the only chapter that deals with technical issues ‘Tools of the Trade’ which discusses light more than it does f stops and shutter speeds (awesome!) before hitting ‘A Timeline of Childhood’, a tour through some contemporary photographers and dealing with issues of file storage. If you only read the the chapters dealing with the historical and contemporary photographers you’d be ahead of the game. Buried in this section is a primer on how to view new images and a list of questions to run through as your doing so – for me this was worth the price of admission. Even if your primary focus is not shooting kids this is a great book to have on your shelf. Go get it!

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Friday Inspiration: Joni Sternbach

When I first came across Joni Sternbach‘s photographs over on Chris Orwig’s site I was amazed that the photographs were ‘modern’ because they look like they were from a century ago. While I listened to the interview that Joni did with Chris Orwig it didn’t really resonate with me how much effort goes into making these images. The tintype photographs that Joni is producing really were the ‘instant photographs’ of the day back in 1850. These images are developed on site in a portable darkroom. It really is quite remarkable when you consider the hostile environment that Joni is working in. Check out the video for more.

Joni Sternbach – Photographer from ArtPark on Vimeo.

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Contrast Masks: An Initial Foray

The more I photograph the more I become aware of what I want to achieve with a particular photograph. Often when a photograph fails to wow me it’s not because I didn’t get the composition right but rather it is because it doesn’t leap of the page in the way that I think it should. My big struggle has been that I couldn’t quite put my finger on what the problem is it not sharp enough, not saturated enough not enough contrast. What?

I’ve never been much of a student of history but I do enjoy understanding how other people work and what tools they use. Watching the Christopher Burkett video I posted recently there was the mention of his use of contrast masks and the impact these have on his images. So why not give that a go?

Using ‘The Google’ I found this tutorial on the use of digital contrast masks on the luminous landscape website. Just following the tutorial as described I was able to take the image from last week from this:

to this:

Which with some final tweaks becomes this:


What do you think? Seems like an improvement to me.

If something’s worth doing it’s worth doing to excess. I’ve subsequently tried this technique out on 20 or so images with varying degrees of success. The contrast mask, not too surprisingly, reduces contrast which may not be the appropriate fix for all of my images. I’m starting to have a sense of where this technique will work for my photographs, generally for images that I take within 10 – 15 mins of sunrise and will try this out before I do any heavy lifting in photoshop. Try it out for yourself and let me know how things turn out.

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STEICHEN: Eduard et Voulangis


Lumiere Press are celebrating their 25 th anniversary with the release of STEICHEN: Eduard et Voulangis . As I’m sure you’re all well aware Eduard Steichen was an American photographer, painter, and art gallery and museum curator. Amongst other things Steichen was the first fashion photographer and the curator responsible for the family of man exhibition at the MoMA: An exhibit of 508 photos by 273 photographers in 68 countries were selected from almost 2 million pictures submitted by famous and unknown photographers.

STEICHEN: Eduard et Voulangis focuses on the period of Steichen’s life just after the first world war when he spent time in his home village of Voulangis, just outside of Paris, experimenting and developing as an artist. The volume pairs a very early portfolio of the early modernist work of Eduard Steichen, with an essay from Michael Torosian that charts the path of Steichen’s early development as an artist, his ascent in the orbits of Paris and New York and the confluence of cultural, aesthetic and personal events that dramatically forged his work as a photographer. My copy arrived just before I headed off for a trip to Europe and I’m looking forward to chance to dig into when I return home.

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Friday Inspiration: Christopher Burkett

I first came across Christopher Burkett‘s work in George Barr’s Book ‘Why Photographs Work: 52 Great Images Who Made Them, What Makes Them Special and Why‘. I have seen a number of Christopher’s photographs now either on his website or in his books and look forward to seeing some of his original prints in the next year. He really has captured some of the most magnificent images of fall color you could hope to see. I hope that you enjoy the video interview with Christopher below.

http://www.opb.org/programs/artbeat/segments/view/540

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Where Do You Turn for Fall Color?

It’s almost peak fall color here in Massachusetts. I had grand intentions this year of talking some trips North to Vermont this year but I have missed my window of opportunity to do that. There are a number of websites that will either give you a prediction of the color or that use a network of spotters to give a more accurate representation of what the current status is. Of course if you live in New England like I am fortunate enough to do then these websites are useful, not so much if you booked your trip a year in an advance.

Okay so where to go? Not sure how you prepare for trips to new locations but I usually will use a combination of on-line searching with digging through books and if I can get some local knowledge so much the better. Jerry and Macy Monkman put together a book a few years ago called ‘The Colors of Fall: A Celebration of New England’s Foliage Season‘ that I quite enjoyed. They then followed that up with ‘The Colors of Fall Road Trip Guide’ which gives you a range potential New England trips, from ones that might be familiar such as the Park Loop Road in Acadia National Park to what might be less expected such as Rhode Island Beaches and Mansions.  While the book highlights good vantage points for leaf peeping it’s not specifically targeted towards photographers.

Countryman press have a range of books for the photographer that I’ve mentioned here before and that I’ve found generally useful.  The Photographer’s Guide to Vermont and The Photographer’s Guide to the Maine Coast both by David Middleton are good resources when planning trips at anytime of the year to either Maine or Vermont but especially during fall.

While it looks like I’ve missed my opportunity to travel north this fall I’m making the most of the color nearer to home.

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iPhone Lomography – My Current Workflow

As I’ve mentioned before here, I’m having a blast working with the camera on my iPhone, largely pushing into territory I had previously thought was not for me. One of the presets that gives an effect that I like is ‘Lomo’ in the app Phototoaster. Not being a student of history it took me a while to realise that ‘Lomo’ actually refers to a camera, the Lomo LC-A, that has somewhat of a cult following. Characteristic photos from the Lomo LC-A have effects caused by light leaks, strong vignettes and rich, saturated colors. Often lomographers will shoot with slide film and cross-process to give strong color shifts. Take a dip into the Lomography photostream here.

While I mull over the purchase of an LC-A+ I’m going to continue playing with my iPhone. Read on to see how easy it is with the iPhone.

I am typically using Camera+ rather than the camera app that comes with the iPhone. Here is the image as shot. Lots of problems with this, my biggest criticism is that I should have been closer to crop out the sky and the trailer. You can zoom with Camera+ but be aware that it is a digital zoom – in effect you’re just using less of the sensor. If I have to crop I’d prefer to do it in software after the fact. I’ll admit that I think cropping is not a big deal particularly with my DLSR but is an issue with the small files that come from the iPhone, so try to get it right in ‘iPhone’ as it were.

The first step is to bring the file into PhotoForge and do some preliminary editing. Photoforge is a great app with lots of capabilities, curves, sharpening, cropping, textures, frames and effects and is one that I highly recommend. One of the neat things is that Photoforge has layers so you can work in a layer based manner if that is something that you’re used to. I generally am not using layers but I’m also just doing very simple edits. I will generally look at the levels panel and tweak there if I think the image needs it. In this case it didn’t a levels adjustment and so I moved on to add a bit of contrast using the curves function. I didn’t like any of the other tweaks that I might usually add and so I saved the file back to the photolibrary and jumped into Phototoaster.

I’m almost exclusively using Phototoaster now to add the Lomo effect. There is a Lomo effect in PhotoForge but it feels a bit washed out for my taste. I cropped the image to a square to remove the distractions and applied the Lomo effect which can be found …

I like the square but also wanted to see what else I could do. Here I didn’t lock the crop to a particular ratio and came up with this crop that I particularly liked and as before then added the Lomo effect.

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Contemplative Photography: Book Comment

The deeper that I delve into photography the more I realize how hard I find it to create a successful photograph using just a rules based, intellectual approach. The successful images come when I apply the technical understanding to capture the scene that really stopped me in my tracks. Being able to be stopped in my tracks happens when I slow down and quiet the chatter. This kind of slowing down and taking time to quiet the chatter is something that I’ve come to naturally but is something that I have heard both Michael Kenna and Paul Caponigro refer to. Michael Kenna has called this communing with the land, while Paul Caponigro refers to his stance of silence and to having to shut up when the subject calls to him.

Some call this contemplative photography. It was this phrase that caught my eye when I was browsing amazon.com and that led me to The Practice of Contemplative Photography by Andy Kerr and Michael Wood. The focus here is on seeing clearly or as Cartier-Bresson puts it ‘putting one’s head, one’s eye and one’s heart on the same axis’. Kerr and Wood break down contemplative photography into 3 distinct phases: The Flash of Perception – the recognition of something special that is likened to ‘being awoken form sleep by a loud noise’: this is then followed by Visual Discernment, maintaining the contemplative mind after the flash of perception and then finally, Forming the Equivalent, taking the picture that is equivalent to your perception. Each of these stages is explored in detail with their own chapters that include assignments to help you practice and example photographs to provide inspiration. The example photographs aren’t exemplars or templates to be repeated since we all will respond to our environment in different ways and as a result make very different photographs.

I must admit that I enjoyed reading and working through the book. I also find the connection made between photography and Buddhism interesting too. Kerr and Wood argue that both contemplative photography and Buddhism are concerned with clear seeing. They argue that clear seeing is the ultimate antidote for confusion and ignorance, freedom from which is a key tenet of Buddhism.

The book is not all sunshine and roses – I can’t help but take issue with the notion that the use of telephoto lenses and filters adds an unnecessary artifice resulting in plasticky photographs. Does this mean that we should only be using ‘normal lenses’ that mimic the human eye? Hardly. One of the reasons that I’ve been disappointed with my results in the past is that I haven’t been able to simplify the scene to a point that makes me feel satisfied when I see the image on the computer days later. Similarly using a filter to ensure that I don’t blow the sky out, to compress the dynamic range of the photograph is increasingly important to my being able to capture a successful image. I would argue that you should use whatever tool or tools it takes to be able to render the image that you felt and that the key is to reach a level of fluency with those tools such that the technical doesn’t get in the way as you move to making the image that stopped you in your tracks. A minor quibble with a book that I have enjoyed working through over the course of the last few months.

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Paying Attention to What Has Your Attention

“If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.”

―

David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

I love the quote above from David Allen, the productivity guru most well known for Getting Things Done or the ‘GTD System’. It’s so right, on so many levels. Ignore the things that you should be doing and they will demand your attention, even if only to stop you from sleeping because you’re thinking about those issues as you try to nod off.

It was this David Allen quote that I was mindful of when I was away in Martha’s Vineyard a week or so ago but really in a very different way.  I do find it difficult to photograph if I’m not fully present and this can take some time to get to if there’s all kinds of other stuff unrelated to the scene in front of me that I’m thinking about.  Fortunately I have no problem quieting everything else to focus on what’s in front of me, although it can take 15 – 20 mins and a couple of hundred frames to get into the zone.

What I am aware of though, is that I can be so intently focused on the scene that I have framed that I frequently ignore the moments when my intuition tells me there’s a great photograph to be had. This could be paying attention to some stuff that I would consider to be a little weird – such as the image of the shells and seaweed above – and would normally walk by, simply reframing from the position that I’m already in or could involve a bit of a wander to get to a place where the light is doing interesting things.

How clear what the photograph is also varies – it can be crystal clear or could take a bit of work to get there. The work usually typically involves simplifying the image so that it has just the elements critical for whatever caught my eye, whether it was interesting light, a vivid color or something odd happening such as how the waves came together in the image below.

I feel that some of my better photographs have been in response to listening to my intuition and so, as is the case in many aspects of life, paying attention to what has your attention is equally applicable to photography and is a work in progress for me.

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Alison Shaw Workshop: Thoughts & Comments

I’m just back from a week on Martha’s Vineyard to attend Alison Shaw’s workshop. It was a really fun week, great to catch up with old friends and make some new ones and to immerse myself in photography.

Like most of life, you get out of a week long workshop what you put into it. That means being at the location an hour before sunrise and staying at the evening locations until well after the sun has gone down. That makes for some very long days, especially if you try to edit photos when you get home in the evening. By mid-week everyone is a little punchy, filters are gone and everyone is in the groove.

This was the second time I’d visited Martha’s Vineyard, the first time was for Alison’s workshop last year. As a consequence the novelty factor is still very high for me even with places that most people are very familiar with such as Edgartown or Menemsha. While we went to some of my favorite spots, Lucy Vincent Beach and Vineyard Haven Harbor being high on that list, there were a few new places included in this workshop. We made it over to Chappaquiddick and after a stop at Mytoi, the Japanese garden, we headed for East Beach. While East Beach does not have the spectacular surf that Lucy Vincent Beach has there were enough photo opportunities to make the trip well worthwhile. One of the things that I appreciate about the locations that we visit is that they are rich with photographic opportunities, so even someone like me is able to come up with 3, 4 or more different photographs at each location.

Alison has an easy going nature and teaching style that she is able to adapt to the level of the student. While I could imagine some workshops being all about the instructor leading them, that’s not the case here. You get as much help as you need. While there is plenty of in the field instruction from Alison and a reasonable amount of classroom instruction, for me the real learning comes from the critique sessions. Alison was commenting on 80 + images every day, remarkably many were very different even though we were all at the place. I found that while I learned a lot from the critiques of my images, I learn just as much from the critiques of the other students.

For the September workshops Alison is usually assisted by Donna Foster. Donna splits her time between Charlotte, North Carolina and Martha’s Vineyard. I can’t say enough good things about Donna. Last year she really talked me off a ledge when I was in Menemsha and lost for something to shoot – if you’ve never been, think rusty junky old stuff and lots of it. Then took the time to review my images that I had brought with me and showed me that yes I was actually improving by sequencing and commenting on them. It was the boost I needed.

The week is rounded off by a group dinner and show. It was fun to see the progression in everyone’s work from the start of the week to the end of the week. I had an excellent time and look forward to spending another week with Alison in 2012.