Posts Tagged ‘inspiration’
The Photo I Didn’t Take: Strix Varia
Photo of the Strix Varia, aka the “Barred Owl”, courtesy of Wikipedia
We all hear it echo in the back of our heads, “The best camera is the one you have with you.” You can’t take a photo if you don’t have that camera within easy reach (or even within reach at all). And we’ve all done it. Gotten in a hurry, I mean. Gotten so frazzled that we were late or that we thought we wouldn’t need it, so it stayed in the camera bag sitting on the kitchen table. Back at the house. 20 miles away.
That’s where my camera was on Saturday night. Sitting there, all pristine and warm and cozy with the 50mm f1.8 slapped on it on this chilled Central Texas winter’s night. I looked at it right before I walked out of the house thinking I wouldn’t need it. You see, I was going to a Christmas party and didn’t want to burden myself with having to play the camera guy for the evening. I’ve been roped into doing that before. It’s fun when I want it to be. But this night, I wanted to relax and enjoy myself, not worry about recording the evening for one and all to cherish.
… and out the door I went.
My friend’s place is out in the boonies. Far enough out of town that you can begin to see the stars again, but not so far out that the light pollution is gone and you can see the Milky Way. Close, yet so far. Their place is a bit set back from the road. And by a bit, I mean, you turn onto their drive way and travel for another five minutes as it winds back through the narrow strip of land that leads back to the rest of the ranch. Half-way there, you come to a small one-lane concrete bridge that they built over a wet weather creek.
So, like I normally do whenever I’m out there at night, I’m driving slow, driving careful, high beams on so I don’t hit anything that looks like a skunk, and making sure I don’t bottom the car out on the drive way. This night was no different. But then, it was.
As I said, I don’t like speeding on their property. It’s rude. Plus, with the recent rain, the driveway was a bit torn up coming up to the bridge. I took it slow and was creeping up onto it, avoiding the mud and the bottomless puddles.
I almost missed it.
The owl, I mean.
It was fully illuminated in my headlights, not more than five feet from the hood of my car. It just sat there, looking at me intently, perched all by it’s lonesome on the bridge guard rail. It stared and stared, as if it was willing me to turn off those blinding deer illuminators bolted to the front of my car.
The first instinct was to gently hit the brake. Check.
The second instinct was to reach over and grab the camera with my nice, wide open 50mm and get a photo or three before the owl flew off.
I reached. And felt. And scrambled. And where the camera wasn’t, a glass plate of brownies was. CRAP! My camera, my trusty sidekick … was AWOL. And then I remembered.
It was at home. 20 miles away. In the warmth of the house.
I knew it was back there, silently mocking me. If Nikon had an Easter egg in it’s bodies, that Easter egg would be a voice chip and speaker that would laugh hilariously at you whenever you needed the camera most, but failed to keep it at hand.
So, I just sat there, watching the owl watch me back. It was a face off for no more than a dozen seconds. And with that, he leapt from his post guarding the bridge to fly off into the pitch black darkness that wasn’t pierced by my headlights.
And this, my dear reader, is why it’s important to always have your camera. Because when you’re faced with an owl in the dead of night, you want to have something to remember it by. Otherwise, it becomes the photo you didn’t take.
And before you ask, it might not have been Strix Varia. I’m pretty sure it was based on the coloring, the markings, and photos of the common owls in Central Texas. But hey. I could be wrong. It was still pretty !@#$% cool to see an owl in the dead of night.
Cartier-Bresson never played with fire.
Like I told my last wife, I says, “Honey, I never drive faster than I can see. Besides that, it’s all in the reflexes.”
Jack Burton, Big Trouble in Little China
Yes. I’m watching Big Trouble in Little China tonight. I love this movie. It’s an 80′s classic. I bring it up because of a scene in the movie where Jack and Wang Chi have bet each other that Wang Chi can’t split a bottle in two with a large knife. Wang Chi hits the bottle. It, of course, does not split in twain, instead rocketing towards Jack’s head. The hand being quicker than the eye, shoots up and snags the bottle before clocking him in the face.
Why do I bring this up?
I’ve been thinking about Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment and trying to better understand sensing or predicting the moment where the photo is “right”. I tell you, I’ve shot more losers than winners trying to figure this out. Losing photos that is, not loser people. Anyway, this idea of capturing the decisive moment is difficult to grasp. It’s difficult to know what exactly this idea really means. There’s a group on Flickr to cover some of this. I spent some time reading through the discussions, as well as going back through some of Cartier-Bresson’s books to glean some useful information.
Heh. “Useful information”. There is none. All the talk I’ve found doesn’t make up for the act of doing. I’m beginning to think it’s like pornography … you’ll know it when you see it. And not one second before. Ironic, isn’t it … understanding what the decisive moment should be requires knowing when the decisive moment occurs.
Cartier-Bresson is quoted in a 1957 Washington Post article, saying, “Photography is not like painting. There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.”
You see. Intuition. You need that. And that only comes over time as you take crap photo after crap photo. At least, that’s what it appears to my finely untrained eye. It’s like trying to drive down the road, blindfolded, while steering a northerly course by the sensation of the road turtles under your tires. Bumpbumpbumpbumpbump. Get good enough at it, and you’ll be able to judge not only distance and speed, but direction just from the sheer force of the ripple in your shocks.
But, back to Cartier-Bresson. He had years to develop this idea. I imagine he took his fair share of crap photos while slowly charting his course towards the decisive moment.
When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, and he looks you crooked in the eye and he asks you if ya paid your dues, you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol’ Jack Burton always says at a time like that: “Have ya paid your dues, Jack?” “Yessir, the check is in the mail.”
Jack Burton Big Trouble in Little China
Yes. I’m sure Henri paid his dues and that’s why he understood what it meant to feel his way towards a better photograph. Intuition. A gut check. Using the force. Whatever you want to call the alignment of the planetary photogenesis (hey, I don’t know what that means, it sounded good … go with it). It ends up manifesting in a tiny, imperceptible muscle twitch that impregnates the image upon our photographic medium of choice right before the moment divests itself from our very sight.
And what do you know. Sometimes it’s even a great photo.
The woman above is a local fire spinner in Austin. This was the first time I saw her spin. Very hypnotic. I’ve gotten to the point where I want to photograph something different with fire. Something I haven’t seen or tried to see before. Here, she’s up on a stage, replete with a large white background. You’d never know it from the photo, but ’tis true. She’s kneeling on the stage, arching back towards the screen, twirling the fire ever closer to her face in between her stripped arms. If the music hadn’t been loud, you would have heard the crackling get louder and softer, each time the poi flipped around closer to you. Woosh. Woosh. Woosh. Lovely fire. Lovely photo. Lovely woman. And this is me dancing with that decisive moment.
I think it worked.
Lost in a forest
There’s a scene in the movie Jarhead, towards the end where the marines are walking through the desert. You can see the waves of heat simmering up from the sand. Swofford is narrating, “A story. A man fires a rifle for many years. and he goes to war. And afterwards he comes home, and he sees that whatever else he may do with his life – build a house, love a woman, change his son’s diaper – he will always remain a jarhead. And all the jarheads killing and dying, they will always be me. We are still in the desert. “
That last line always gets me.
Somewhere, someone is doing the only thing they know and they’re … lost. One of the hardest things we, as artists, have to do is recognize when we’re in a rut. It’s difficult. Damned difficult. Sometimes you have to force yourself to do something different.
Last weekend I decided it was time to find myself lost in a forest with a camera. It has been wet and cool. We trekked out on a grey and somber day, happy to not be walking in the rain.
There’s a distinct crunch to dirt when it’s wet. It’s not so much that it crushes, but that it grinds and slips beneath your feet molding into the crevasses of your shoes. Then there’s the slow sucking lurch as your foot melds in with the red clay mud. It was a hard pudding and we were sloshing through it with wild abandon.
I like walking in the forest. It’s quiet. Not like the city where you can’t get away from the buzzing sound of engines, squealing tires, yelling, rumbling chopper blades, and the sounds of activity. The forest, it is a death knell, quiet and eerie.
And this lets you relax and unfocus. There’s an old saying about being unable to see the forest from the trees. It’s right. As an artist, I tend to focus deeply on getting right the very thing that’s in front of me. So focused that I completely pass over the detail that comes with everything surrounding.
“A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart.”
The combination of the grey, overcast day with the break in rain left the flora and fauna in quite a brilliant light. Everywhere we looked the greens were rich and lifelike, the browns were warm and inviting, the sheen left upon the world invited you to stop, crouch down, and navel gaze upon the mushrooms (and boy, were there LOTS of mushrooms). The decay out there was amazing.
And here I sit, one week later, staring at these photographs wondering why I’m still in this rut photographically. And all I can think is …
I’m a photographer and I am still in the forest. Lost.
Are you a God?
Gozer: [after Ray orders her to re-locate] Are you a God?
[Ray looks at Peter, who nods]
Dr Ray Stantz: No.
Gozer: Then… DIE!
[Lightning flies from her fingers, driving the Ghostbusters to the edge of the roof and almost off; people below scream]
Winston Zeddemore: Ray, when someone asks you if you’re a god, you say “YES”!
Ghostbusters
Inspiration strikes at the strangest times. No, I wasn’t watching Ghostbusters at the time, but I was staring at my big, beautiful 54″ DLP TV (that now has one lovely pixel that’s stuck in the on position). It’s a nice TV. Has a great picture, especially when the high def channels are running on it.
I was watching something on one of the Discovery channels when inspiration hit. I had been thinking about backgrounds because of the cookie setup I used for some recent portraits (written about in Boot to the head!). One of the things I look for now is an interesting background. Ok, maybe not interesting … different. Something I haven’t seen or done before.
So, this particular TV show has some very colorful moments in it when I realize that, if unfocused, would make some unique and easy backgrounds. I wouldn’t have to do much to make it work. But, what about a subject?
We have this statue in our living room. It’s a glorified candle holder. My wife says it’s some sort of Buddha-ish thing. It has quite a bit of detail in it. Bumps and curves and folds. 
Plus the candle, must not forget the pale green honeydew candle sitting upon it’s lap. In other words, something curious and attractive photographically.
Background. Check.
Subject. Check.
What’s next? The lighting! I’ve been playing with collapsing my umbrella to help control the light a bit more. I wanted something more directional than shooting through a white umbrella (which has WAY to much light, I’m finding). But, without access to a softbox right now, I make do with what I have on hand. So, collapsed umbrella with the flash bouncing into it, as opposed to through it. The light was certainly a bit crisper in the shadowline.
Toss in a flickering flame and you have something where the light is sculpted just enough to bring out the detail in the statue.
So, Background, check.
Subject, check.
Lighting, check.
Three simple things needed to make a good photo. In this particular case, I tossed the light to camera right and feathered it away from the subject. Pushing it so it was directly on and above put too much light and killed too much of the shadow for me. You can see it a bit better in the setup shot. The hanging edge of the collapsed umbrella is lined up so it would be just on the edge of the face.
One of the things I’m finding is that it’s worthwhile just trying something. Using the TV as a background was a stroke of chance (and man, timing the shot so the background was something useful was quite a pain in the ass). The two shots I have above were taken shortly apart from each other and you can see the big difference in style. I love the separation of the head and background made by the green sliver combined with the smoke trails vaporing off into nothing. I also love the fiery red background of the second combined with the single flick of orange flame. It works.
Oh, and the TV show? I think it was some documentary about the solar system, how it was formed, and how it would all come spiraling in to a despotic end, crushing our tiny little Earth. Makes for a cheery day, doesn’t it?
So remember: try it. It might work. It might not. And if it doesn’t, you’ve still learned something: how not to use a light, a background, or an idea in a particular way.
HDR Playtime!
Last month when I flew up to Chicago, we got diverted to St. Louis because of the nightmare that was the storm front rolling through the area. The sunset was beautiful. It was just us, the plane, the tarmac, and our fellow stranded fliers in the other planes around us. We were all in the penalty box and no one knew if we’d get out alive.
I didn’t have much else to do, so I popped over to the left side of our plane and just started playing with the bracketing on my d300. I had intended to play with HDR a bit, but never got around to touching the photos when I got back to Austin.
Until now.
It’s not great. I’m definitely no StuckInCustoms, that’s for sure. But hell, for a first attempt, it’s pretty damn good. Check it out in
large on black.
This was created with 7 RAW images all at f8, ranging from 1/100th to 1/1600th and tonemapped in Photomatix. I had to let it re-align things because I was handholding the camera and shifted around a bit while the photos were being taken. I think it did an excellent job.
Definitely need to play with HDR some more and see what I can come up with.
Fireworks or Bust!
If your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand … you might be a redneck. — Jeff Foxworthy
I, of course, don’t want to own a fireworks stand. Now, I’m not knocking those who do, but that aspiration just isn’t my style. Nevertheless, I did my photographic duty yesterday and camped out with the hundreds of thousands of other people at Town Lake in the blazing July heat. Yes, that fantastical Texas heat. As if the showering sparkles of gun powder laced in burning smoke, the army of fire ants, and warm drips of sweat weren’t enough.
For all my heat-induced bellyaching, I have to say I did enjoy the show. I made the colossal mistake of parking close this year. You know, to save time getting to the show. Because I’m Lazy. Yes, with a capital “L”. Hung out with a few friends before the show so I could suck up some of their marvelous air conditioning. It was like seeing one of those signs out in the desert, “Last chance for gas, 180 miles.” You knew you’d better stop and partake of that brilliant resource before you found yourself out in the middle of nowhere, miles from relief and help, while pissing into the wind.
By 8:45, I knew I had to get over to the park or I’d miss my chance to etch the pretty sparklies onto a flash card for posterity. Say goodbye to Mr. A/C. Parting is such sweet sorrow.
I found a spot on the hill in front of the Palmer Event Center. It’s a shame it was the wrong spot. See, what I neglected to realize in my excellently sketched out plan was … well, you’ll see. Sadly, leave it to me to draw this plan out on the back of a napkin. When the ink soaked in like a bloodied pool, I discovered error of my ways. What was so wrong?
Well, everything was fine with the playing of the 1812 Overture. The guns were booming, people were jumping up in fright. And when the fireworks started, they … were. not. in. front. of. me. No.
They were off to my left. Right behind a lamp post. It was at that moment I wished I had one of two things: a rifle and scope or Dumbledore’s lamplight killer thingy. To say I was annoyed would be the understatement of the moment. Shame I had already unpacked all my camera gear and dug in to my little photo foxhole. I was fully engaged and had nowhere to escape to. So, I did what any good photographer would do.
I shot.
There’s a scene in Wild, Wild West where Artemis, acting as the President, is chastising West on his investigative style: “Shoot, shoot again, shoot some more, and then ask questions.” This thought bubbled up to the front of my mind as I laid on the camera trigger and didn’t stop shooting until the last explosive pot launched above the Austin skyline.
And as quickly as it had begun, it ended. Fifteen minutes to get in and find my spot. Fifteen to setup. It took me two to pack, and ten to hoof it out. I wanted to beat the rush. Sadly, I, like every other optimistic party-goer in Austin, decided that they would beat the rush too. Dave Mustaine kept my company the rest of the evening while I … moved a foot, stomped on the brake. moved a foot, stomped on the brake. Moved three feet … stomped on the brake.
Fireworks shows put on at Town Lake are an exercise in patience. But, only at their end. There are only five major north-south thoroughfares through Austin to get over the lake: IH35, Congress, South 1st, Lamar, and Mopac. South 1st is always shut down for big events. And the rest, well … imagine a parking lot. Only with pissed off drunk people. And it’s 47 bazillion miles long. It goes without saying that I wanted my bloody hovercar last night. I even called my wife and asked here where my hovercar was. I bet she stole it from me just to make me suffer.
But I digress.
Eventually, I made out of the area and onto IH35 wherein, I stomped on the gas, popped some Digital Underground into the CD player, and cruised through the city at high speed, deftly avoiding the drunk yahoos and their mishmash of weaving and bouncing off the concrete walls.
And that, my friends, was how I spent 4th of July in Austin.
If you’d like to see bigger versions of the photos below, check out my Fireworks Slideshow on Flickr.
Dirty Inspiration
I love Mike Rowe. Don’t know him? He hosts Dirty Jobs on Discovery. It’s a fascinating series about the dirty jobs that help make this world run. (Kind of obvious based on the title, eh?). Mike talks about the episode he did surrounding the job of a sheep herder. It’s a captivating and animated story that he tells.
A few things are impressed upon me from this video: the ideas of anagnorisis and peripeteia and the notion that your preconceptions are wrong.
Now, anagnorisis and peripeteia don’t necessarily apply directly to photography, but work with me. Anagnorisis and peripeteia are literary devices. Wikipedia, the source everyone loves to hate, notes that anagnorisis means discovery in Greek. It’s the sudden realization of a situation. In Greek tragedies, it was often preceded by a peripatetic event, a sudden reversal or turning point in the story.
With me so far? Good.
In the journey to become a photographer, one makes mistakes. A lot of mistakes. You forget to focus. You forget your batteries. You forget that larger f-stops give you smaller depth of field. You know, simple mistakes that affect how you achieve the photo you’re going for. If you’re paying attention, you learn from these mistakes. You have your “ahha!” moment. The lightbulb flicks on just above your furrowed brow right as you make the mistake and you think, “I shouldn’t have done that!”
It’s that realization that you’ve made the mistake that’s important. But, not everything is a mistake. Many times it’s understanding that what you just did failed for some particular reason outside of your control and figuring out why. Another “ahha!” moment. Discovery. Sounds so simple, right?
Yes and no.
When I started shooting, I had a brand new camera in my hands, a bunch of book learning in my head, and my personal experience amounted to a photographic hill of beans. In other words, I was fresh off the boat and I knew it all. All I had to do was get the camera off automatic, twist a few dials, and my inner magician would appear, flashing the scene with The Light Fantastic, and I’d have amazing and emotionally charged photos.
Great concept. Reality left a little bit to be desired. Ok. That’s the understatement of the day. Blast! That’s when I begun to realize that there was something more to this than whacking the Easy Button and waiting for the benjamins to roll in. As Mike put it, I had a bit of anagnorisis and peripeteia on my chin.
Mike touches upon this idea of challenging your preconceptions. He’s right: what if it really is “Safety Third”? Think about that. It goes against your nature to even consider that. Right or wrong, what’s important here is that you make the leap between what you know is correct and true to what is sheer crazy talk. It’s this leap where the interesting ideas come from. I’ve often heard this as: when shooting with other photographers, if they start shooting something to their left, you start shooting to their right … because something interesting is being missed over there.
In the end, what it comes down to is this: we spend our moments looking at what we’re doing and testing ourselves in order figure out a better way to do it. If you’re good, you question yourself and your routines. If you’re better, you listen to those questions and do something with the answers.
Me? I’m going to go wipe these bloody bits of anagnorisis and peripeteia off my chin and find something right to shoot.
New Rules: How to shoot a datacenter
[Ed. note: I wrote this years ago while after encountering a photog at a day job in a datacenter. I recently came across it again and thought it would be fitting here. Enjoy!]
Today I was tasked with the job of being the grand overseer of the pretty people and the magic picture box trolls who were rummaging around in one of our datacenters. (read: corporate used one of our datacenters for a photoshoot. They had a professional photographer and a bunch of “pretty people” who were trying to act like sysadmins, scampering hither and thither in our room).
If you’re a photographer taking marketing shots of a technical area, I’m going to give you a short guide on do’s and don’ts that you and your models should follow.
- Do show up on time and listen to the rules the nice sysadmin gives you.
- Don’t be put off when the nice sysadmin tells you that you can’t shoot in the room he has to work in while he’s overseeing you.
- Do ask questions about what you can and can’t do.
- Don’t just start touching the pretty lights.
- Do ask for assistance touching the equipment.
- Don’t look for a wall of monitors in the datacenter. The datacenter is for computers that are remotely managed. We don’t like the datacenter. It’s cold, loud, and obnoxious. We therefor spend as little time as possible in there to save our hearing and keep our butts from freezing off.
- Do pick models that look like they’re sysadminish geek types. I’ve been a sysadmin for almost a decade. The number of pretty people you brought in to act as sysadmins equals the number of pretty sysadmins in the continental US. It just doesn’t happen.
- Don’t ooh and aaah at the pretty lights and have your models make fake poses pointing at them. It looks silly.
- Don’t have your models squat on the floor, looking down the length of a cold isle. It looks stupid.
- Contrary to popular opinion, sandals are not usually worn in a datacenter. We don’t like how our feet hurt when we accidently drop computers on them.
- No matter how much you think she is, the gorgeous blonde with the lime green, mid-thigh flowing skirt is not a sysadmin. No. Not ever.
- In raised floor data centers, air moves from the floor up to the ceiling. It generally moves pretty fast. We move alot of air. Things have to keep cool. Why does this matter? Unless you want a Marilyn Monroe moment, your models should not be wearing lime green, mid-thigh skirts. No matter how much the overseer wishes she would just walk back and forth over the perf tiles.
- Don’t pester the sysadmin about what he thinks should be shot. He’s a sysadmin. He’s not a photographer. If he was a photographer, he’d be doing your job, not his, and likely be getting paid just as well, if not better, than you.
- Do complete your research before the shoot. This will help you compose your shots appropriately.
- Don’t ask the sysadmin how he would best show “virtualization” in a datacenter. How would he do it? He’d do it like IBM. One big fucking empty datacenter. One rack. Right in the center. Nothing else around. No, it’s not sexy. Get over it.
- Sysadmins don’t generally walk around in high dollar clothing from the Gap, Ambercrombie and Fitch, or Banana Republic. That shit’s expensive. We work in dirty environments. The last thing we want to do is waste our precious money on getting expensive clothing dirty because we’re doing our jobs.
- No, we will not stop doing the regular work in the datacenter so you have a “cleaner” shot. It’s a working production environment. Completing our jobs is worth more to the company than your pictures.
- Do thank the sysadmin for all his help.
- Don’t call the sysadmin “dude” or “buddy” or “pal”. He has a name. He told it to you when he introduced himself to you.
- Don’t get pissy when the sysadmin can’t remember your name. His only concern is that you’re not fucking up his environment while you’re getting your shots.
- When the sysadmin tells you to stop doing what you’re doing, you will stop. You will cease and desist. You will move into a place not immediately connected with what you were doing. If you don’t, he will get pissed and likely remove you forcibly from the room. Why? Because you just fucked something up and he’s realized it.
- When the sysadmin tells you to leave, you will. Have a problem with that? Please go talk to your contact, who will talk to his boss, who will then talk to the sysadmin, at which point the sysadmin will give justifiable reasons for the decision. Boss will side with the sysadmin. Get over it.
- When the time comes for your photoshoot to end, you will pack up and leave. You will not go over your time. The sysadmin has been stuck in this room with you for several hours. He’s tired, cold, hungry, and probably has to take a leak because he’s been unable to leave the room unattended while you’re in there. Also, it’s probably quitting time and he wants to go home.
- Do take the sysadmin’s rules as law. He has been given final say about your existence in his world. You’re there as a guest. Don’t fuck it up.
- When you fuck something up you will have your models leave the room and a representive from the photo shoot will stand out of the way and be present when things are being fixed. Your rep will be respectful and quiet. The sysadmin’s job is to fix this visit from the fuckup fairy and then convey to you what damage has been done and what it has cost the company.
- Stay away from the networking gear.
- Stay away from the networking gear.
- If there’s networking gear, stay away from it.
- The thing that has all the blinky lights and the pretty tentacled masses of cables coming out of it. Yeah, stay away from it.
- No, the sysadmin won’t turn his music off. He’s using it to help protect his hearing from all the loud noises. Yes, those pink and purple things in his ears are ear plugs. He’s using them to cut out the white noise in the room so he can hear his music.
- Don’t freak out when the sysadmin whips out a knife to work on something. He’s a professional. He’s not going to bloody his tools with the likes of you. Well, as long as you don’t cause a visit from the fuckup fairy.
- No matter how sexy you think the other room is, you’re not going in there. The last photoshoot that happened there is the cause of rules 26 through 29.
- Be nice to the sysadmin. He might take bribes. Offer him food and drinks. He likes free things, especially if they’re highly caffienated.
I will say, though, the young lady in the lime green skirt … damn.
[Ed. note: The model in the photo is Hayley. She is not a sysadmin.]
How do photos affect you?
Last night, a friend and I went to an exhibit of Fritz Henle’s photography at the Harry Ransom Center. Excellent exhibit; you should make the trip down there to see it while it’s still in Austin. While going from one photo to the next, we began discussing how there’s a natural flow to some photos that makes them appealing … or quite the opposite: turning your stomach because they’re composed in a way that’s just so utterly jarring to the natural order of things. I didn’t pay much attention to the discussion after we left the exhibit until today at lunch when having a discussion about one of my recent photo shoots (last Tuesday’s in fact).
I’m not exactly sure what drove me to do this. I’d seen the idea some place else and wanted to expand on it. 
Basically, I wanted my model completely wrapped in plastic. Tightly. We covered her head to toe in a cocoon of pallet wrap, split open a small hole to breathe from, and I went to town with the camera. One of the photos I took was a closeup of her exposed lips. This was soon after the model started getting a bit claustrophobic because the breathing hole was too small. No biggie, rip it open a bit more, and we continued on.
Today, I was talking with another friend at lunch about this photo. Her reaction to the photo was one I had not expected: she said she immediately got lost in it, got claustrophobic, and then had to force herself to look away and breathe to calm down. I can see how this photo goes against the norms of society (who wraps a person in plastic for fun? :-) and can be utterly jarring. I just didn’t expect the photo to affect someone that deeply.
Do some photos do that to you (in the “I have to turn away right now or I’m going to pass out” sort of way)? What was it about the photo that did it? (And I’m not really concerned about the photos that are blatantly fucked up … I’m more interested in those that, at first blush, seem ok until you really look at them and get dragged in).
It’s a bizarre curiosity for me, I guess, understanding the design dynamic that goes into making a photo that’s sole purpose is to tweak a person in what may be perceived as a negative way. I mean, it doesn’t take much to make a photo that someone looks at and gets turned on by. But to make one that has a subtle but gnawing detail in it that sticks in your subconscious and eats at you? You know the kind of image I’m talking about … it’s the train wreck one. You just have to look at it to figure out what went wrong, when, and where.
I think a lot of it just comes down to wanting to know how to affect the mood and emotion of the viewers of my photographs in any way I choose. Like I said, it’s easy (in my opinion) to make something that warms a heart. I think it’s harder to do something that turns one frigid or throws chills up your spine because we naturally don’t wish to encounter those things. They’re potentially painful.
As an aside: I recently got access to a well stocked library again (and one that should have some excellent photographic resources), so I think I’m going to spend some time going through to try and understand where this idea is coming from. Just something for me to think about.
The model here was a trooper. We had her wrapped up for over an hour or so, pushing her this way, shoving her that way, rearranging her until she fit the light the right way. Apparently it’s hard to move around when your body is mummified in plastic. Who knew?
Oh, and Fritz Henle? Yeah, you really ought to go see the exhibit. It’s free at the HRC and worth the 30-45 minute walk through. Excellent work (although, I’m really not big on his fashion photography … but I digress).
Changing of the Guard
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.Niccolò Machiavelli
Friday was my last day at work. After almost 11 years there, it was clear that I needed a change of pace. I start the new job on Monday. Same type of work, different setting. It should be slower paced and more relaxed. Not much to say beyond that. I’ll probably have a bit more time to work on my photography. I’m going to miss working with those folks. Quite a few were like family.
Friday evening quite a few of us met up for happy hour at Serranos to send off me (and my boss, who coincidentally, also found a new job too). Took a few photos, had some taken of me. It was quiet, but good. Sad to go, but looking forward to the change.
White: The Prequel.
Not much of a blog update. I’ve been furiously working my way through photos from three photo shoots over the last week and a half, trying to get everything edited, uploaded, and distributed out to their respective models and clients.
And I’m bushed.
Donica and I had a shoot Wednesday two weeks ago. She wanted to do something different and I wanted to practice with my new white muslin. I think it worked out well. Especially when you realize that up until this point, I’d stuck to grays and blacks for backgrounds. This was something completely different. The work I did with Donica in understanding how to use this tool ended up being put to good use in the White: The New Experiment.
Overall, I’m fairly happy with how the high key photos turned out. We shot some low key things too. Mostly because I was getting bored with the white and wanting to try something different that evening. I’ve shown some of the high key photos around and gotten some good feedback. Mostly, I need to watch out for having the model wash right out into the background and get some tile board for the front part of the muslin ( the part nearest the camera) in order to help get rid of the cloth ripples I was experiencing (and about ready to bang my head through the studio wall because of it too).
In other news, there’s been someone of a heated discussion on the Strobist Austin discussion group regarding allowing the group to accept moderate photos in the pool. There are some decent reasons, both for and against for doing this. 
Tonight after considering the comments (of which, most came from moderators … I don’t know what that means … do we just care more because we have to work at keeping the pool clean?) In the end, I opened it up to see how well we deal with it. If it becomes a problem, I guess we’ll figure it out then. We’re all adults, I think we can handle this.
Anywhoo, without further ado … more Donica photos! Enjoy.
"I’m going a hundred miles an hour down a dead-end road."
Just some notable quotes that struck me as I was listening and watching this.
“I placed myself against my peers this year and was ready to walk away from the camera for good. I have so far to go and I’m tired. It was time to reinvent myself again but I didn’t have it in me to even try.”
“I’ve been driving as fast as I can for as long as I could remember. I’ve been stuck at this breakneck speed and it seems as though I can’t get out of first gear. By the end of last year, I was throwing rods and the gaskets were blowing out like birthday candles.”
“Chances are you have your voice. You can say whatever you want to say right now. So what are you saying? What are you doing with the time you have right now?”
“Some of you are the real top ten photographers in the world and the rest of us don’t even know you’re alive. You don’t even realize how amazing you are. Some of you are just getting started. Be patient. Don’t rush. Chill out. You are on your way. Some of you suck and you really need some help.”
and shortly followed by
“Every photographer in all of the history was a horrible photographer for some period of time. They learned. They grew. They had dark days. They persevered. That is the way of the artist.”
Talk about hitting you like a five pound sledge. In the grand scheme of things, I haven’t been a photographer for long, but I’ve definitely stepped into these dark, lackluster corners of creativity. It’s sort of cathartic and uplifting knowing that even pros get this way at times.
Things that make you go HmmMMmmMMmm.
Hello. My name is Travis and I’m a Firefox Tab-a-holic. I first realized I had a problem a few months after my first hit of Firefox. I was young. I thought I was invincible. I could quite anytime because I was only using it to relax. First it was just one or two tabs a day. And I began seeing how much better I thought my life was if I just had a constant stream of two or three. Sometimes it was a crazy day and I ended it with seven or eight open. But each tab was so very important as it contained useful information to me.
Always useful.
But soon, I discovered that I couldn’t get enough of them. I was popping them like a mescaline-crazed nerdy Hunter S. Thompson on a crack binge with a typewriter and a bottle of whiskey. I was opening five and six tabs an hour, leaving them open for days and weeks, always going back to reference each page. Bookmarks? Bookmarks are for pussies. You don’t ever go back to a page once you’ve bookmarked it. But an open tab is a constant thorn in your side. A reminder of something you must act upon.
Once it’s open, do you keep it? Do you read it it? Do you leave it there until you have more time to come back to it? Maybe you just let it sit there and stew like a half-written poem bubbling and boiling until it erupts with the furor of a mad poo-flinging monkey. It’s a hard call when it comes to having to close a tab. They’re all like my children now. Could you cut off one of your children? I thought not.
Anyway, tonight I had an epiphany. I have a problem. I just can’t let go of my tabs. I had 48 open going back months. Things I popped open intending to “read later”. I have a tab open from Sept 2008. Why do I know that? Because it was a blog posting from some random blogger I follow, dated from September.
As I looked through each of these tabs this evening, I remembered why I kept them open. There were bits of paragraphs, little thoughts, and random sentences that leapt out at me for one reason or another. And I’ve come to the conclusion that if I don’t write something about them, they’re going to haunt my tabs till kingdom come.
So …
Over on Positive Space Blog, Dave drops this quote:
Just as important as being able to stand up for your choices when you’re right is an ability to admit when you’re wrong. Maturing as a designer means learning how to tell the difference.
Dave Shea Creative Advent 2008
… and it gets me thinking. I’m pretty stubborn about my opinion and it is pretty difficult for me to take a step back and listen to opposing ideas, but once I realize I can do it, it is refreshing to hear what other people have to say about a design or idea. It sort of goes back to what I was talking about in Thievery gets you everywhere, only a slightly different facet of it. If you’re not paying attention to the ideas of others you’re going to grow stagnant with your own opinions and thoughts.
Over on Look for the guy with a hammer
Yeah, the right tool for the right job. Don’t second guess yourself about it.
I don’t remember where I saw this quote by Diane Arbus, but I liked it nonetheless.
I never have taken a picture I’ve intended. They’re always better or worse.
Diane Arbus
It’s a struggle to come up with an interesting photographic idea. What I’ve found with following through is that sometimes they work, most often they don’t. Some of my favorite photos have come from happy accidents and others are born of an idea that turned out so much better than I could imagine.
Finally, sometimes you just need to try a different path. I’d been in a slight rut lately with my photography. James, a photog buddy of mine, invited me out to the studio Monday night to shoot with Stephanie. He’d wanted to do some white-faced photos of her with makeup on. It was a good evening. We ended up playing with the idea of the makeup, mostly. She was quite animated at times and kept opening her eyes really wide (which would freak James out … and she’d do it again and again creating a vicious circle). It was fun. Different, but fun.
Thievery gets you everywhere.
Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery–celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from–it’s where you take them to.”
– Jim Jarmusch
By way of Wizwow’s blog.
This sort of dovetails back into a conversation I had with Morgan a month or so back about certain photos being done already. We were talking about pinup art at the time, but it really translates into many other realms in photography. Take The Red Cloth as an example. My inspiration for that came from an ad within Instyle … or some other women’s magazine. I forget.
As a photographer I look all over the place for ideas and suggestions on what to do next. Heck, at one point I was going through every single photo that came across the Strobist Flickr group stream to see what other people were doing. Alas, I can’t do that any longer because of the sheer amount of stuff that comes across the stream now. But the point is, I gather my creativity from seeing what else is out there. Or what isn’t out there. You have to pay attention to both.
I take the bits and pieces I like, remix them, and throw them against the wall like spaghetti to see what sticks. Quite a lot doesn’t.
I think Jarmusch had it right. Nothing is original. But, the way we cut and whack at those things we pilfer makes them original long enough for someone else to steal. It’s the nature of the art.