Touch
Your indulgence, please. A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of getting to know a wonderful man named John on one of my workshops. He was an older man with a quiet sense of humor, a gentleman in every sense of the word and I really enjoyed my times photographing with him. At the time John was also going through some pretty hard cancer treatments and I admired how he moved through life with a sense of grace and charm- his antidote to what couldn’t have been easy. I asked him once what he had learned in his life. He replied without hesitation, “You never lose the need to be touched.” It hit me like a punch in the gut- a simple yet profound life truth that had eluded me for 55 years. “You never lose the need to be touched.” And now I sit in yet another hospital room. In July I was the patient but of late I have been the son, the son-in-law, the comforter for dear ones who can’t be comforted. I have the early shift, arriving when the world is dark and still and life lies somnolent and hushed. At this time of the day the hospital floor where I sit quietly hums from monitors and machines but there is little movement otherwise, in the halls, in the rooms, or on the bed where I stare. Visitors will come shortly- family, family friends, friends of the family- and the hall and rooms will quiver with activity even as the beds remain still. People will come in and news will be exchanged, updates provided, outlooks hopefully given and then they will sit and watch and wonder and pray. Sometimes small conversations will be exchanged with the patient and sometimes a gentle squeeze will be given but most times that is all. Discomfort is catching in hospitals. Touching is not. Human to human, skin to skin, hand in hand; contact, stroking, the embrace of arms, the shelter of two hearts- the true medicine of wellness and care- absent or fleeting from where I sit. I was once this way. I was once standoffish, uncomfortable with illness, emotionally overwhelmed, barely present. No more. I now dive right in, touching as long as I can, staying in contact as long as I can, being present with a prolonged squeeze, a long rub, a gentle stroke, a soft touch. It is usually inconvenient, often hard and often emotionally trying but it is always magical, always, always magical. Thank you, John. Thank you for your wisdom, for your courage, for your encouragement, your grace. I hope you never have to sit in a hospital room and wait for the rising dawn to bring light into the darkness. But if you do please push the darkness and sadness away with your touch. You too will feel the magic.
It’s all about the Background, Darling
Those of you who have suffered through one of my insufferable workshops will remember me going on and on about background. Usually its during a critique I bellow “background, background, background,” making my point by pointing out bright spots or other distracting things behind the subject. “If the brightest thing in your picture is not the subject, it is a big distraction and your picture suffers.” That is what I say. What I think is “What were you thinking? Were you thinking? Pay attention!!” The background of an image is a very important part of a photograph. It is so important that if the background is bad the photo is automatically bad. There are no exceptions. Bad background, bad image. This means that the background must be a deliberate choice you make. It is not something you just happen to get. You look for a subject and then confirm that the background is good. If the background is not good, no matter how good the subject is- you lose! Bad background that can’t be fixed means you don’t take the picture. (And if you do be very sure you do’t show it to me in a workshop!) Here are some examples of pairs of pictures with the subject basically the same but with the background dramatically better. There are two easy ways to control the background- moving the camera to get a better viewing angle or changing the f-stop to lessen the depth of field and soften the background. Examples of small position change in camera to improve the background: Examples of reducing the depth of field to make the background less distracting. The first pair shows the background I chose for the Texas Bluebonnet and then the final image. I spent a lot of time looking for a flower with just the right background and then some time figuring out which the best f-stop would be to give me the flower in focus and the background out of focus. These are deliberate decisions. With these examples it is plain to see how some easy adjustments make a big difference in the appearance and the impact of the photo. All it takes is paying attention to the area behind your subject and making the necessary changes.
One Step
One of the things I most enjoy when teaching a workshop is helping people when they are out taking pictures. Because I don’t take pictures during workshops I spend my time wandering around looking through cameras, making suggestions and answering questions. Doing this is the most effective way to teach photography because the experience is real and the effect immediate. I can show them all kinds of pictures in the classroom but none of it will have the impact of seeing the same effect through their camera. When I am wandering around one of the first things I ask a person is “why are you standing here and not over there or there or there?” The answer I want to hear is it is because if the camera were anywhere else the picture would suffer. The answers I often hear are less compelling- “My camera bag was here.” “It was by the bench.” “It didn’t seem to matter.” “This is where I stopped to rest.” Sorry, not good enough. Where you take a picture is vitally important and will always have an effect on the final image. I’ll go even further and say that for any one picture there is only one best place to stand or set up your tripod. And that one best place is not a very big area. How big is it? It is less than one step in size. One step. Not two steps. Not several steps. One step. Anything larger than one step will have a noticeable effect on your composition. If you find the best place to take your picture, a step to either side will make the picture worse. Here are some examples. The courtyard was visually chaotic when I first looked through my camera but with one step to the right I was able to hide the distant middle post behind the close one and the entire composition simplified. The background of the short-eared owl shot was really contrasty at first but with one step to the right I was able to put the owl in front of the dark shadow behind it and simplify the composition. The indian paintbrush was nicely composed at first but when I took one step to the right the diagonal lines were much more interesting and the composition improved dramatically. (I don’t always step to the right. In fact, since I have moved to Vermont I have been moving to the left more and more. Seems to work better up here.) So be mindful of what you are doing and where you are setting up to take a picture. One step can make a big difference. Let it work in your favor.
Old Friends revisited
I am still going through my 700+ scans of the slides I sent into Scan Cafe and have found lots of images I had completely forgotten about that I still like. I don’t really, really like them but I like them none the less. The reason I don’t really, really like them is because every one of them has a flaw that I see whenever one pops up on my screen. Some have compositional flaws- too tight a composition, distracting stuff on the edges, bad merges, not great background; some have technical flaws- focus is off, depth of field is either too much or too little, viewing perspective is wrong; some just need to be a bit better- light isn’t great, subject could be better, foreground could’ve been better, should’ve gotten closer. They’re nice but I am not taking any to the prom if you know what I mean. Looking at these old friends does make me think of a few things. First, what am I going to do with the many thousand of slides that I didn’t select to be scanned? That ceremonial pyre is sounding better and better all the time. Second, why haven’t I gone to any of these places and reshot them? Every one of these images is at least 15 years old, some or more than 20 years old. With the equipment and the knowledge I have now I could get some really nice images, prom worthy images, if I went back and reshot them. Plus, it would be great fun. The circumstances would have to be the same- some of these images represent years of going to the same place and finally getting a great situation- but that’s okay. I now have the time to pick and choose and go to just the best places at the best times to try to get the best shots. So why don’t I? [nggallery id=19] Perhaps it is complacency. Okay, it is certainly complacency. Shame on me! I got into photography for the joy of taking pictures- we all did. It developed into a job but I always tried to keep joy and necessity balanced when it came to taking pictures. I don’t think it is balanced any more. Over the last 10 years I have repeated said to myself “been there, done that.” How about you? Have you said that to yourself? Shame on us! That’s complacency and we have let it crowd out our joy of going out to amazing places and the thrill of taking pictures. We need to stop this behavior right now. [nggallery id=20] Here is what I am going to do: every year I am going to take a trip to revisit some of the places I used to love to go and photograph just for the fun of it. I will not have any projects in mind, I won’t be following a shooting list, I’ll just be out taking pictures at my old favorite haunts. Four or five days of good photography, good food (I hope) and good fun. Try this yourself. Doesn’t have to be any place exotic (but what a great excuse to go somewhere exciting again!) just someplace you used to love to go and haven’t gone in a long while. Yes things will be different but that’s okay, we are jut having fun. We can go back to our camera clubs and projects and shooting lists when we get home. Are you with me?
The World of Video Revisited.
I suppose I should tell you why I have decided to devote some time to learning proper video technique. The reason is pretty simple actually. It is because it is becoming increasingly apparent these days that video is an expected part of every website, presentation or promotion. And not just any video- high quality, professionally shot with professional audio. So if I want to continue to do book projects and promote myself professionally video is a necessary piece of the process. Back to the gas station. When last I blogged I was off to a local gas station to try to shoot a short 30 to 60 second promotional piece. We had already done a video of an interview of a long time customer (Bob) using two cameras and three mics so we had a story line to follow. Basically, we were trying to illustrate the interview. As easy as that sounds the madness is in the details. Just the act of pulling up to the pump was shot five different ways: with a camera behind the driver for a point of view shot, with a camera hanging out the left side passenger window on a counter-balancing steadying device, with a camera magnetically attached to the left side of the car behind the front tire, with a wide angle lens in front of the car that moved to the right as the car pulled up to the pump, and with a fisheye lens in front of the car that made it look like the car was about to drive right off the screen. All those shots we used for maybe 8 seconds of video. Then we needed shots of Bob rolling down the window to talk to the attendant- one shot from inside the car, one shot from outside in front and one shot from looking over the shoulder of the attendant. Did I mention shots of handing and also of taking the credit card? Of opening the fuel door? Of taking out the gas cap, of picking up the nozzle, of placing the nozzle in the gas tank, of taking out the nozzle from the gas tank? Of washing the windows (from inside and out) of the attendant walking to and away from the car and on and on and on? Oy, this stuff is hard!! We did all this shooting in 25 minutes with lots of redos, comic errors, horrendous shots, people walking into the shot, cameras appearing out of nowhere, misfocusing and the uncomfortable cutting of important appendages. We also included just pieces of appendages that were equally uncomfortable. Oy, this stuff is hard!! The result, expertly edited by Bob, was a truly and quite remarkably mediocre video. I am being kind actually. It was bad. But it was our bad and our first bad so that made it…well, still bad. We are going back tomorrow to shoot in the garage. Bob is sending what we did to them tonight. I’m figuring by then we will be greeted by a swarm of flying wrenches. How many shots of that do you think we will need?
Oy, This Stuff is Hard!
My brain is about to explode! And no, it is not because my NY Giants are actually in the Super Bowl with a half-way decent chance to win. It is something even harder to fully comprehend- video! Not the simple amateurish-looking video you see on U-Tube but the lush, almost cinematic video with deep rich sound and wonderfully storytelling you see…well, you hardly see at all. The place I always see it is on Bob Krist’s website and that is why right now I am at Bob’s house trying to get my cognitive arms around this completely different and confounding animal called video. Turns out, there is very little overlap between shooting stills and shooting video. At their most basic both remain being about capturing light- the prettier the light the prettier the still and video. Both can also be done these days with digital cameras, even inexpensive digital camera, and get great results. In fact, one of the best Nikon cameras for video is the D5100, a $750 camera. When shot next to my D3s, a $5000 camera, the D5100 produces far superior video. Bob also showed us the little SONY HV9X, a point and shoot camera that he has used to take beautiful video clips. The BBC even uses it for some of their news footage. Just like with still photography, you don’t have to spend loads of money to get great images. That’s where the similarities end as far as I can tell. When shooting video, it is all about the passage of time, something still shooters never think about. Every video you have ever seen starts at the beginning of something and goes to an end of that something. You haven’t noticed it before because when done right the passage of time is seamless and invisible. For me, so far, capturing the passage of time is as seamless as a patchwork quilt and as invisible as the Empire State building. Oy, this stuff is hard. So after 30 years of photographing stills I am adding video to my repertoire and trying to learn to think completely differently about telling a story. Rather than 100 images to tell the story about a farm or a lobsterman or whatever in a book or a presentation with video you get 3 to 4 minutes. With 15 – 20 clips per minute that’s 45 to 120 three to four second clips. A clip is a single action or scene. 100 of them! Oy, this stuff is hard. Oops, class is about to start again. We are going to a local gas station to try a video about filling up a car with gas. Sounds easy doesn’t it? It no longer does to me! I’ll give you a complete report on my next blog.