Twilight
Tis the season when our thoughts turn indoors and sugar plum fairies dance merrily on our photoshop keyboards. We really can’t be blamed. It’s cold outside! For the northern half of the country going outside during the pretty light of dawn and dusk means braving finger-freezing temperatures and turning our toasty tootsies to ice. For the southern half of our country who only thinks it is cold outside the end result is the same- hot chocolate, anyone? So here are two strategies to be productive when it is cold outside. First stay inside and go through all the images you took this last year and toss out half of them. Then do it again and toss out half again. Then select all your favorites and toss out everything that is left (or right) of those. You haven’t shown anyone those lesser images have you? Of course not, you only show people your best ones. So why are you keeping all the others? Ballast? Your computer doesn’t need ballast, like a teenage girl it needs space. You’ll feel better afterward, I promise and your computer may even talk to you at dinner! The second thing to do when it is cold outside is to photograph at twilight. You can do this when it is warm outside as well but the advantage when it is cold is that you can usually do it from your (warm) car or at least next to your (warm) car. Twilight is the time when it’s not quite day and it’s not quite night. I define it as 30-40 minutes before sunrise and 30-40 minutes after sunset. The reason twilight is such a specific time is because a very specific thing happens at twilight that doesn’t happen any other time of the day- the sky turns a beautiful deep cobalt blue. The blue is actually the shadow of the earth projected on the sky opposite the rising or setting sun (to the west before sunrise and to the east after sunset). Much later that 30-40 minutes the earth’s shadow is absorbed by night and the cobalt blue disappears. Also, during twilight there is just enough light for the outlines of buildings and boats and trees, etc to separate giving definition to your photograph. This is how you do it. Find a location with some lights on- harbors are great, skylines, village greens, snowy cabin, monuments, city parks. Find your composition with your back to the sun in other words, with your back to where the sun is about to be (sunrise) or just was (sunset). You’ll probably need a tripod or some kind of support because the shutter speeds are to long to hand hold. Set your camera to matrix or evaluative metering (reading the entire scene) and set your autocompensation (that little +/- button) to minus 2 or even minus 3. This is important. If you don’t do this you will not see the deep cobalt skies and you’ll write me a nasty note telling me what a numskull I am and then I will respond reminding you to do this in a less than charitable tone and then you’ll feel like an idiot and I will feel like a shmuck and you’ll give up photography and I will take being nice lessons which won’t stick and I’ll start drinking and growing chest hair and join a traveling heavy metal band as a roadie eventually ending up on your doorstep with my ten best mates and you’ll have to be nice to us because you are feeling so guilty for not following my directions fully. Where was I? Shooting at minus 2 or 3 autocompensation means you are underexposing the scene. In so doing you are actually forcing your camera to render the scene as it actually is and not lightened it up as your camera wants to make it. Underexposing brings out the deep cobalt sky. If you don’t underexpose the shot the sky will be a bland, blah gray. Professional travel photographers use this strategy all the time to get great shots. The secret is that it works, the cobalt appears, no matter the weather. It could be raining, cloudy, it doesn’t matter- put your back to the sun, shoot at the right time, underexpose and viola, magnificent photo! So at this time of year drive around at twilight and find some beautiful holiday lights with a nice clean background. Photographed at twilight the image will show lots of definition. If you do it at night the image will just be some little dots of light on a black background. then you will show this to me and tell me what a numskull I am and I will..oh, you get the picture- if you shoot it at twilight!
Inside a Church?
I know, it’s not my normal habitat nor is it my normal place for photography but sometimes you just gotta let all your rules go and and go have some fun. These are from inside St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. St. Peter’s is the biggest church in the world…by a huge amount…and it is where the Pope hangs. The Basilica is beyond (just filling in any superlative here) (and then amplify it by an even gazillion) (and then apologize because you are not even close). Realize please that this has nothing to do with religion for me but everything to do with architecture and art. And lots of WOW!! The point of this posting though is not how amazing St. Perter’s Basilica is but rather how much fun it is to take your camera into places you never have before or might not even consider appropriate for photography. My friend Rudy takes wonderful images at dance recitals. At first he had no idea what to do taking pictures inside but he tried and fiddled and is now under hire by the facility and producing beautiful shots. You might as well try, there is nothing to lose. Take your camera into a barn, a factory, a lighthouse, an old shed, an attic, an art studio, a silo…get the idea? Have some fun, see what you get. You may be surprised.
Arthur Cooper
His name was Arthur Cooper, although it seemed most people in the bar called him simply Cooper. He was an older gentleman, in his 90’s I figured, dressed as a solid New Englander- a checked, button down, LL Bean shirt with a beige cardigan and worn brown slacks- neat but nothing fancy. You would call him natty in his day but his day was mostly passed and his clothes sagged on him now, a size too big on a body a size too small and shrinking. I guessed it was a familiar outfit, something he had been wearing without variation for years, something he didn’t change in a world that constantly did. And I guessed he was alone, and had been, for longer than he liked. He walked without a cane, his voice was steady, his stance strong and as he walked up to a barside table next to mine I watched as the regulars nodded and greeted him, smiling. He sat by himself, quietly, scanning the bar, waiting for a chance to be one of the crowd. He wore glasses, his hair white and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. What brought him here all by himself? Had he lived here all his life or was he just passing through? And what did he do in his day? I was drawn to him, this elderly man, strongly so, oddly so. You see I never approach strangers, never talk to people I don’t know. I leave everyone pretty much alone and I’m happy when they do the same with me. I am pleasant when I have to be but certainly not convivial with strangers always preferring solitude to inclusion. But with Arthur, a stranger, I reached out in this most public of places. Why? I think it was because with Arthur I knew there was more. With Arthur, I just knew he had stories. As I finished my food two stools at the bar opened up. He gathered himself and took one and I gathered my courage and took the other. “Hi. How are you doing? My name is David, David Middleton.” “Hello. Arthur, Arthur Cooper. Pleased to meet you.” “Pleased to meet you, Arthur. He shook my hand firmly and took a sip from a small glass of red wine. As the crowd swayed with a new surge of people wanting drinks while they waited for their tables I leaned in closer. He stared ahead, past the bar and into the mirror as if he were looking for someone in the reflection. We exchanged the usual pleasantries, the weather, the town, how things had come and gone. I felt there was more and I knew from his age he was anxious to tell. The elderly have friends but they don’t have cohorts, no one who knows what’s it like. They are the past living in the future and there is no one in the present who understands or even, if they are alone, who cares. I paused, knowing that stories only come with patience. I didn’t know Arthur, had never met him before but he was an old man and my experience with my 95 year old friend Hugh on the dairy farm told me that old men have stories they want to tell. If you wait, if you are sincere and if you listen, really listen, the stories will come tumbling out. “I came up here after the war, I was 33. A friend asked me to help out at a boy’s camp and 30 years later I still was. Met and married my wife up here. Bought the house next door to here. Raised two kids. They are gone now, don’t see them much anymore. My son lives in Virginia, my daughter in Tennessee. I have grandchildren but I barely know them. They haven’t been up for a visit for some time. My wife died 10 years ago and I have been alone ever since. I help out at the afternoon tea here everyday but I’m not much good for anything. I go home, have dinner, come back here, have a drink and then go back to the house and go to bed. Not much changes, its pretty lonely over there. That’s why I come over here. Company is hard to find at my age.” “I knew a man just like you, Arthur. He was a 95 year-old dairy farmer in Vermont where I live and I went over to his farm every morning so I could to help out. Got to know him pretty well over the years and he would tell me the same things. He was surrounded by people but he felt alone. He had no one to listen to his stories.” “He must have been in the war. I’m 95 as well. We all were. I was a bombardier in the Air Force, got shot down over Germany and spent two years in a German prison camp. Was bad but wasn’t so bad. They treated us about as well as they could, we got mail from home, enough food, took care of the sick. The Germans aren’t bad people. The major brought the plane down in a farm field, all 12 of us survived. Now that was good flying! We didn’t get very far, the Germans were right there and before we knew it we were all in the camp. It was quite a shock.” I looked at Arthur, this 95 year-old man, cradling his glass of red wine as he carefully cradled his memories. Nothing appeared extraordinary about him- he was more likely to be overlooked than noticed- and yet he had lived through an extraordinary period of history and had extraordinary stories to tell. If I had had a hour, a day, a week, a month to spend with him he would’ve told me stories day and night. As it was I had 20 minutes in a crowded bar with him but it was 20 mesmerizing minutes and my
More from Venice
It was a dull and dreary rainy day here for most of the day. when the rain finally stopped it was simply dull and dreary. but I am in Venice so I went out and took some shots and then played with the windows of Venice. Nothing original about any of this but it occupied me and forced me to look at more of the details of the city than just the canals and gondoliers. None of these pictures individually are very exciting but when viewed together as a kind of window mosaic I like the visual effect. I didn’t look for any particular kind of window nor did I rearrange their order. These are the 20 windows I shot in about a hour wandering the area close to St. Mark’s Square. The reason for all the diversity in architecture in Venice is that since the Middle Ages Venice has been the main crossroads between the many cultures of the near east, mideast, Islam, Christianity and Southern, Central and parts of Northern Europe. This position allowed Venice to accumulate not only great wealth but also great power. The various window styles reflect these influences- from 500 years ago to the present. And therein lies the magic of Venice- you can step through the centuries by just turning a corner! [nggallery id=30]
On a Walk in Venice
I’m in Venice now. The train arrived last night, got to my hotel room at 9:30, in bed by 10pm. Sunrise is at 7am so at 7:15 I was out wandering the streets of Venice. I didn’t go out earlier because the streets were too murky and since I didn’t have any twilight intentions and was concentrating on street photography 7:15 was perfect. Even more perfect was the fog that was clinging to the city. Empty streets, Venice!, fog, all the time in the world- life is good!! All my photography was handheld- no room for a tripod on the very, very narrow streets of Venice so I cranked up my ISO to 1600, shot mostly wide open or close to it, always in aperture priority, used image stabilization, shot in short bursts and tried to brace myself on anything I could. I shot 284 images and kept 22. Six were teaching shots, 6 were whacky fun shots (see my previous blog) and 6 out of the remaining 10 I really liked. The last 4 will probably get deleted to. Please note my wildlife photo- “pigeon thinking great thoughts” on the Roman columns. I’m going out tomorrow morning again but it looks like it won’t be foggy. Might be rainy though, that’s not bad. Care to join me? (I’ve added 3 more shots from the next day’s rainy walk) [nggallery id=29]
Fun in Venice
Okay so these aren’t my standard shots but what the heck- when in Venice by whacky! I processed these by what I call my Slider Slapping technique- In Lightroom slapping the vibrance and saturation slider as far to the right as they could go. No thought, just fun. The more color in your picture the better. I’ll post more normal pics soon. And no I wasn’t drinking, but I’m about to! Soave anyone? [nggallery id=28]
Gesture
Many times it is the little things that make a big difference in your photography. And lots of times we don’t even notice these little things despite their importance. When photographing people or animal portraits gesture is a very compositional element of your image. Gesture is the position of your subjects arms or legs, the tilt of the head, the twist of the body. And the slightest difference can make a big impact on the overall impression of the image. The catch is that gesture is almost so subtle that it goes unnoticed. We spend so much time looking at the subject expression or the background or just trying to get the auto focus bracket where you want it we pay scant attention to the legs, arms, or hands. Here are two pictures taken moments apart. Whenever I am doing any portraits I shoot in a burst of 6 to 8 images. This assures that I will capture the smallest differences in the gesture. I found this accordion player on the banks of the Seine in Paris. He was surrounded by a crowd of people and having a good time playing for the people. I went up and put some money into his case and asked quickly if I could take some pictures. He smiled and nodded yes so I knelt down to get to his eye level and took about 45 shot. I kept three. One of all the player, one close up and one teaching close up. The reason I threw out the other 42 was either because his expression wasn’t the best or his hand gesture wasn’t the best. I got about 8 I liked and kept the best 2 (plus the teaching image). So while you are taking a picture of someone or some animal after you get the background and exposure and perspective all figured out then concentrate on your subjects expression and gesture. It will make all the difference.