After spending time at Lucy Vincent Beach, other Martha’s Vineyard beaches pale by comparison. That’s not to say that there are interesting images to be had here. I decided to forgo the bandstand in Ocean Park and headed down to the beach. There were a couple of piles of rocks and old pilings at the waters edge that caught my attention. The image above was one of the more successful images.
“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.
Over Labor Day weekend I spent some time playing with my regular lens walk around lens, Canon’s 24-104, but using it at the wide angle setting. I know that wide angle lenses can cause distortion and have particularly noticed curved horizons as the a byproduct of working with the wide angle. Converging verticals and keystoning are also other hallmarks of a wide angle lens.
I’ve read all this in books but hadn’t really internalized it until I made this image:
Sort of annoying because I wanted to include a big open sky.
Keeping the sensor parrallel to the lighthouse resulted in this:
A little better. When I got this home I used the function within lightroom to correct for the lens used and got this image:
I looked at this for a while but couldn’t put my finger on what was the problem with it. Then it dawned on me. Correcting for lens distortion made the lighthouse ‘chunkier’ than it actually seems in real life. There’s a lesson for all of us in that – be careful with automatic settings. They work great the majority of the time but not always.
I finally decided on how I wanted the image to look and came up with this:
Tons of fun and some good lessons.
I’m getting ready to head over to Martha’s Vineyard for a week of photography starting Saturday. What better way to spend the week than being given a tour by the photographer who literally wrote the book on ‘Photographing Martha’s Vineyard‘ – Alison Shaw. Alison is a fine art and editorial photographer who lives year round on Martha’s Vineyard and has done so since she came for the summer in 1975 and never left. Here’s Alison talking about her book and photographing on Martha’s Vineyard:
One of the things that I like about digital photography is how easy it is to try things out and get immediate feedback. I have heard people say that they are switching back to film because the constraints of using film force them to be more creative. For a while I almost bought that argument. I do believe that all innovation is a creative response to overcome a problem, obstacle or constraint. Why not instead of retreat to film use digital technology under a defined set of rules? The instantaneous feedback that digital offers can then be used to adapt, modify or improve upon what you’ve just done. This past labor day I was playing with my usual walkabout lens the Canon 24-104 but using it at the wide end of that range just to see what I would get. I had fun, answered some questions and ended up with the image above. If all my labors were like this they wouldn’t feel like labor!
I had two surprises last week at my favorite beach for sunrise photography. I had probably been photographing for 15 mins when I noticed that there was a fire further up the beach – it was still quite dark at 5 am and so hard to miss. As I looked closer I realized that there was someone sat at the fire and so I didn’t feel a pressing need to rush over to investigate further. I did have a chance to chat later – it was someone on the first night of their vacation so excited to be at the coast that they wanted to be sure they saw the sunrise and were keeping themselves warm while they waited. As it got lighter I also realized that there was a sailboat anchored in the cove and I rushed over to take the shot above. While it’s hard to tell from this image, the sailboat was probably in about 12 inches of water and must have been on the bottom at low tide. I’m not sure what kind of boat can stand that treatment but it made a nice change.
Often when we are looking at the charts of both familiar and new sailing waters we see areas marked off as ‘fish traps’ – no go areas during particular times of the year. In our home waters of Narragansett Bay I have yet to see any evidence of the fish traps but nevertheless we stay well clear just in case. In the bays towards the end of Long Island however it’s a very different story. Nets strung out between poles like the one above are a common sight. I have yet to work out what kind of fish these nets are intended to catch or in fact to ever see anyone paying any amount of interest in them but they are a dominant sight just of the beach where we take the kids swimming. If you know more I’d be delighted to hear about it.
Normally the presence of water makes things rusty. For me, quite the opposite is true. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to get out with the camera in any serious way and I really felt it this last weekend. I was surprised that it took me one session to get back into a rhythm. I sometimes feel like this even when I have been shooting regularly – the first 15 – 20 minutes are essentially me stretching and warming-up so that I can work towards the image that I have in mind. If anyone has good ideas for a series of ‘stretches’ to make that first few moments on location more productive I’d be happy to hear them.
Fortunately the weather held out while I was at the beach which meant that I was able to get a few sessions in and came away with at least one image I was happy with.
I’m getting ready to head off for a long weekend at the beach again. It feels like one last summer adventure before Autumn gets her grips into us. I’m hoping for clear skies so that I can work more on my project capturing still things such as rocks in moving water like the image above. This image was taken at the beach earlier in the summer during a longer stay that I had. I got up early many mornings, taking full advantage of the fact that since I was only moments away from the beach I could get precious extra minutes in bed. I generally like to arrive well before sunrise and generally shoot until sunrise. I like the amount and quality of the pre-dawn light which allows me to easily blur the water as I did here. This morning I once again learned the lesson that you need to be very careful when shooting around water – a rogue wave soaked me to the skin, fortunately I got my camera safely out of the water, and though I was a little shaken up I continued on shooting to get the image above.
I’ve had a busy few weeks so it was great to be able to spend a week at the beach with my family. My blackberry quit working partway through the trip which meant it was more than a vacation than usual! Although I was on vacation I still managed to get up before sunrise on a couple of occasions and be back home in time for breakfast with the family. I spent much of the time playing with these pilings that were at the waters edge. Last year you could see a pair of pretty heft pipes running between the pilings, I’m not sure whether it was man or nature that buried them but they are gone for the time being. I’m still trying to build in the habit of multiple shots per idea and so I worked around these pilings as much as the ocean would allow. The beach drops of quite steeply here, so it’s easy to quite literally get in too deeply. Of the images I shot on this particular morning this one stood out in the first round of image edits.
