The Online Photographer

Access

We love cameras. I love cameras. It's an endlessly fascinating topic and my interest doesn't get exhausted. (For whatever reason—male apes like tools? I dunno.) BUT—and I deliberately made that a big "but," you see what I did there—the thing that by far has the most positive effect on my work is access. Do I have access to what I want to shoot, to the kinds of subject matter I like to make pictures of?

What that is is different for all of us, I suspect. Naturally there are common themes, because there are only so many themes (few enough, in fact, that motifs are beginning to become almost standardized in photography, as so many people take the same picture over and over again). But one photographer's meat is another photographer's poison (even if that poison is merely boredom), and what one photographer works hard to gain access to holds no interest for the next.

I've often wondered if this isn't the real benefit of a good idea. It unlocks a new avenue of access to the kind of thing we like to, and want to, shoot.

What are you happiest making pictures of—what kind of pictures have the highest satisfaction/gratification quotient for you—and do you have access to it? If you know the answer to the first riddle and can say "yes" to the second question, you're lucky indeed.

Cameras are great, cameras are fun, cameras can be talked about and fetishized and collected and mastered and that's all great. But having this camera or that one has seldom been the real determinant of whether I'm happy with my photographing or not.

Access—and just knowing what you'd like to have access to, which is sometimes a tough question—is much more important.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Eli Burakian: "I was lucky enough to have had dinner with Steve McCurry and James Nachtwey a few years ago when they visited the college for which I'm the photographer. I don't remember conversations very well, but the one thing that has stuck with me about our discussion that evening was just that, access. They both kept on harping on the fact that it's who you know, how you interact, how you respect people and what skills you have learned to gain access that will inevitably determine your success in the field. They just kept on saying access, access, access. It was my key takeaway from the evening. So many non-professional photographers think that what makes professionals are their skill at the craft. Although that is true, you need to be a good photographer to get the job done, the real skill is being there to get the shot in the first place. Skill is the beginning not the end. Technical knowledge can be learned from YouTube. Being in the right place at the right time (with the right people) is the real skill."

JOHN B GILLOOLY: "Access is king. The luck, or skill, of getting access is more important than camera skills in almost all cases. Bruce Davidson's access to his gang. Who had the inside access to Ali, the Kennedys, the President, or the beaches at Normandy. Sometimes it's pure luck but mostly it is being in the right place, recognizing that fact, and having the skills to then take advantage of that access. Pete Souza's access to President Obama. He's a very good photographer who was afforded access that no other person in the world had. His images are truly unique in that way.

"There are some things that I would love to shoot. First and foremost, an extended behind the scenes documentary project of U2—maybe making an album or on tour. I absolutely love the images of Jim Marshall and Anton Corbijn—the type of images that can only be shot off the stage, with trust and some level of invisibility. The real life of these people. I happen to be a longtime U2 fan so they would be my clear choice for this project. And I know, at this point in my photographic life, that I could bring value to that project—do it justice.

"Access is also crucial for everyday work. When I photograph PGA events, I have credentials that give me access to shoot the event. But if I happen to be buddies with Tiger and had access to him beyond the event, now you have something special. Now you have an opportunity to make images that are special. I have made images in surgery, construction sites, classrooms, boardrooms, and in the offices of mayors and governors and presidents. Sitting between the active runways at a major airport.

"Access is the starting point for that stuff."

Patrick Dodds: "A stage, some lights, some actors and actresses. Heaven."

Davide Saxe: "Interesting article, Mike. I have always been interested in shooting personal documentaries, and I noticed many years ago the there was something missing from my photographs. After researching the subject for a while, I also discovered that the problem was one of access. Most good photojournalists have the ability to meet local people, gain access to their homes and businesses, and find those special places off the beaten track—places that tourists and amateurs will never discover on their own. To do this, many of them employed 'fixers'—individuals who had local knowledge of the people, their customs, and language. These 'fixers' were very familiar with the area, could arrange the payment of bribes, if necessary—whatever it took to get their guys through the front door and get the story.

"In my case this was not possible because I was not on assignment, was not on an expense account, and did not stay long enough in one place to make it worth my while. Besides, I had no idea where to find these 'fixers' because I had no professional contacts who could point me to them. So I did the next best thing. I started going on photo workshops, led by professional photographers whose work I respected. The photographer leading the workshop would became the 'fixer' who knew the location, could get me in the front door, and take care of the translating and other details. They could do this quite easily because they had been photographing the same people in the same location for years and were very familiar with the area. It worked like a charm and as a result, I ended up shooting in people’s homes, homeless shelters, small village ceremonies, religious processions, and many other areas that I would have never stumbled across as a traveler or tourist on my own.

"By watching and learning from the workshop leaders, as they navigated through these issues of access, I learned to adapt some of these techniques and apply them to my current projects at home."

PhotoDes: "Lately (cooped up indoors) I have been experimenting with the art of still life photography. I know it's not at the top of the list for most but it has a place in the art world. Four things I've learned: lighting is full of subtlety, when tempered with flags, diffusers, reflectors, feathering, etc; backgrounds can distract more than any mistake in lighting; small-sensor cameras can be more useful than large sensor cameras for fine-tuning DOF in close-ups; and composition trumps everything else. The smallest change in the smallest object often differentiates the good and the bad. It's an enjoyable challenge."

Mike replies: The flip side of access to what you really want to shoot is to figure out what you do have access to and see if you can figure out a way to make interesting work out of it. Good for you for trying still life. It's better to work than not to.

JOHN B GILLOOLY: "I think there is also another kind of access that hasn't really been discussed. As it relates to photographing people, particularly strangers, but even with people known to us. There is a great amount of human work involved in the process of getting close; getting into a scene to the point where you are within it. Photographing people from very close quarters requires gaining a certain amount of access—and the images from there are different.

"The old quote from Robert Capa, 'If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.' For most people, this process of getting close, and then closer still, is a very difficult, if not impossible, thing. The ability to move closer is a type of access that is available to all of us, but not many people can actually do it. Very little to do with your photographic skills and much more to do with your people skills. Your personality type.

"My most enjoyable days shooting are the days where I have the energy, time, motivation and will to get in there and engage. There is a certain rush to that process. The process of moving in, taking that risk, getting close, gaining access. It reminds me of making that move to chat up a girl when you are a teenager! Similar risk/reward proposition. Similar excitement of the unknown."

[Ed. note: This is one of the few times in 15 years I've featured two entirely separate comments from the same person on the same post. I should have let John write the post! This is another dimension to the idea of access and a very important one.]

TC: "In 2014 I was standing at the bottom of a ladder that led to the second-story window through which students had taken over Taiwan's Legislature in protest of a China trade bill. It was historic, and, though I'm not a reporter, I am Taiwanese, and was curious to see what life was like inside. Could I go up? 'Are you a reporter?' The students manning the ladder asked me. I shook my head. 'I'm just a photographer.' 'Can we see your work?' Fortunately thanks to the advice of my friend Richard Bram, I kept a small book of my work on me. I handed it up. Several minutes later, the students reappeared, motioning me up the ladder. 'You can come in.' It wasn't my camera that had given me access, but the work I'd done with it."

Mike replies: It impressed me that Joel Meyerowitz, when he was making his book of pictures of redheads on the beaches of Cape Cod, used as his bonafides a copy of his book Cape Light that he carried around in a paper grocery bag. When he was requesting permission to photograph his subjects he used the book to reveal to them that he was what he said he was. The book showed him to be a dedicated photographer who other people took seriously.

Of course, not all of us have a famous perpetual bestseller to put into the bag in the first place—Cape Light is hugely popular and has never been out of print—but your experience shows us that the principle holds with an honest example of your own work.

John: "You're right about access being key, but it also points to an unfair world. For example, I know of one international organization some years ago that wouldn't give any photographer access to a no-go zone, but made an exception for National Geographic. Or Herb Ritts happening to be friends with Richard Gere. Would his career have taken off if they weren't friends?"

HABS HAER Photographer Stephen Schafer: "I wrote a short chapter on access in my snarky book. (Copied here.) You have to have time and access, and both are more important than gear. I'd rather have access to a subject with a phone-cam than a Leica and no subject.

Chapter 59. What does Brad Pitt have in common with the International Space Station? You’re not allowed near either one.

Access is your second most valuable commodity. Though it’s rarely mentioned, every pro has a wish list of people or places she wants to photograph, but can’t. You may have lucid dreams about photographing your favorite rock star, imagining how you’d pose them and light them and which lens you’d use. On the other hand, when that rock star hears his publicist scheduled another photo session he thinks, 'Crap, what a hassle. I hate photo shoots! How can I get out of it?'

When I wanted to photograph one of the most famous houses in Southern California, I spent many nights going to architecture events and eating rubber chicken at fundraisers, trying to meet the owner and having people introduce me so I could make small talk. She eventually decided to take me seriously, and gave me access to the house for three days, dawn to dusk. Hell yeah! (It only took two years.)

The things you want to photograph most are people you don’t know and places you can’t go. If you want to create images of celebrities, important people, exotic landscapes or exclusive places, you will find that having access can make or break your photography and you’ll be working far longer and harder to get access than during the three minutes you are granted with your favorite rock star for his portrait.

Animesh Ray: "I agree that for me access is very important. However, access can also be psychological access. I felt quite free in India in the 1970s to shoot people on the streets, as I felt I knew them well and could access their mind. When I came to the West, for almost two decades I was virtually paralyzed despite my best effort, because I couldn't access the people on the streets, psychologically speaking. This changed slowly. Some people, however, can access different levels of reality no matter where they are. Gueorgui Pinkhassov is one...his Instagram photos are examples of easy access in unlikely places. Another example is Sohrab Hura's work from his one-room apartment in New Delhi during the last few months that he has been confined there due to COVID-19 restrictions."

WHY Work Hard? (Part 3 of 3)

Part 1 is here
Part 2 is here

This was the original working title of Part I of this post when I started writing about "working hard" last week. It just got too long, is all. Ironically, this is going to be the shortest of the three posts. But it might be the most important. The topic today is: why work hard? What are you after? What are you trying to do?

It's important to have a clear idea of your objective. You have to know what you want to end up with. Then, working toward that goal makes sense. There are all sorts of reasons why you might want to work hard. I can think of a few, and I'm sure you can think of lots more...and only you know which ones apply to you.

• You want to achieve fluency, so that photographing flows easily and doesn't require much conscious thought.
• You want to acquire mastery, so your pictures get better.
• You want to take better pictures.
• You like the process...that is, you enjoy the work.
• You want to achieve technical perfection.
• You want your pictures to be more impressive to others.
• You want to completely control of your result.
• You want your skills to be honed for when something special happens.
• You occasionally get a really good photograph and you want that to happen more often, so you have more of your best pictures.

I don't think I need to go on here, because you can perceive the list is basically open-ended and depends on each individual. Maybe you want to express yourself better. Maybe you mostly want to impress your friends with your status as a "real" photographer. Maybe you want to create work that looks a lot like the acceptable standard of professional work, so that more clients will hire you. Maybe you want to have a show. Maybe you are obsessed with a certain subject matter and photography is a way to participate in that. Maybe you want to get into a particular niche market and you have to earn your bones to get there.

I can tell you why I work hard—although I often don't. What I'm usually working for when I work on a photograph is that I don't want it to look like I worked on it.

That might sound a little odd. But it makes sense to me. One thing I really value about photographs is a sort of offhand quality—like you're looking at something true about the world that the photographer noticed, and the taking of the photo was an easy and natural act that simply recorded what was there. Like the picture is a really good snapshot, a casual snapshot that really worked because you got lucky. The funny thing is that sometimes you have to work really hard to achieve this elusive quality! I usually don't have enough energy to do it. But I'm clear about what I want.

This old picture from Shorpy has that offhand quality I value. It's possible the photographer had worked for an hour in four different settings, and the man had never held that baby before. Or it's possible it was a casual single shot of a man who was already sitting just like that, holding his child as usual. You can't really know from the picture. It looks naturalistic and offhand, though, and that's what I tend to like. Sometimes, when I do portraits, I'll actually work to make a picture look less formal and more idiosyncratic, the opposite of what some other photographer might want to do.

Professional studio photographers work hard because they want their subjects to be as slick and perfected as possible. That doesn't move me. I have little patience for that kind of hard work because I don't value the goal. But there have been times when people who have sublimated that mindset will look at my pictures and criticize them because something that could easily have been "corrected" wasn't corrected. A tilting horizon, say. Tilting horizons don't bother me much. But some people have other aims in mind...they strive for representational perfection, and tilting horizons drive them crazy.

You see what I mean. In order to work hard, you need to be clear about why you're working hard...what you're after, what that hard work is intended to accomplish. Regardless of what you're after, knowing why you're working hard is a good first step toward finding effective ways to work and making your hard work count.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Jeff Warden: "Re 'I can tell you why I work hard—although I often don't. What I'm usually working for when I work on a photograph is that I don't want it to look like I worked on it.' In Robert Adams's essay "Beauty in Photography" (found in the book with the same title), he examines the importance of seeming to do the job easily, and his idea sits well with me: 'Why do most great pictures look uncontrived? Why do photographers bother with the deception, especially since it so often requires the hardest work of all? The answer is, I think, that the deception is necessary if the goal of art is to be reached: only pictures that look as if they had been easily made can convincingly suggest that beauty is commonplace.'"

Ways to 'Work Hard' on a Photograph

[This is the second part of a three-part post.
Part I is here.]

-

...So then the next question is, how does one "work hard" on a photograph? What does that mean, exactly?

We all have some idea of answers to this question, I think. But I wonder if these ideas for a lot of us aren't actually quite vague and based on assumptions we haven't looked at very hard.

Robert Frank, who I sometimes think of as the J.D. Salinger of photography (there are some interesting parallels), created pictures for his book The Americans that looked like no more than casual glances or glimpses, some of them so apparently offhand that they resemble the accidental shots at the beginning of a roll of film when the film is being wound-on. Surely Frank's random-looking shots are not "worked on," right? They're as effortless as can be.

Did Robert Frank work hard for this photograph from The Americans?

But think about it for a minute. Frank crisscrossed the continent and took 28,000 pictures to end up publishing 83 of them. That sounds like working hard to me. Actually it sounds like working exceptionally hard...it's just that it's not what most of us first think of when we use the phrase "working hard on a photograph."

There are all sorts of ways to work hard on a photograph. Consider a still-life photographer who collects objects continually and spends days arranging some of them for a still life. Taking the picture might then be the trivial part. Or a portraitist who works for weeks to get access to a famous subject who she is then given ten minutes with. She's not going to work very hard in ten minutes, but that doesn't mean she didn't work hard to get the portrait. Or a fine printer who has invested in expensive equipment and worked for hundreds of hours to master digital post-processing techniques and to understand color theory. A single print might be routine for him, but he's worked very hard to make the printing routine. Or a travel photographer who arranges a shoot like a military campaign, planning itineraries, checking the times of day and the angles of the sun, and packing extensive bags and boxes of equipment. I worked for a studio advertising pro for months before the light bulb went off...his major talent was problem-solving. Art directors from advertising agencies would present him with a problem, and he had to solve it within a certain budget and in a certain time-frame. The pictures were usually slick and trival—anonymous ad photographs meant to be readable at a glance and to live very short lifespans. It was the problem-solving that he was good at and that he enjoyed.

Work it!
Another way to work hard is to "work" a subject, scene, or motif—take pictures of it from all kinds of angles, trying everything, spending lots of time, really looking—or coming back again and again to shoot the same motif in different light or at different times of the day or the year. I like that kind of working hard...it continues to be engaging for me. (And that's a plus, I think. I resist some kinds of hard work and embrace others. Maybe that isn't a reliable guide to what's going to help and what isn't, but it's nice to spend your hours and days on Earth in ways you enjoy.)

You'll might notice that this is a motif you've seen before.
It's the same sign you saw in the picture in this post.
Different camera, season, angle, light, and day.

How about just spending a great deal of time with a camera in your hand? I think that counts. I was once told that jogging benefits you in proportion to the amount of time you spend doing it, never mind how fast you go or how much ground you cover. For some, lots of time spent shooting is perhaps a good way to work hard.

A lot of photographers in the old days even "practiced" with their cameras, like musicians practice with their instruments, to quicken their reflexes and help them be ready for anything. I don't know if people do this any more. It might have been part of his legend (or legendizing, let's say), but supposedly Cartier-Bresson shot two rolls of film before he ate breakfast every morning just to get himself going for the day.

Sometimes, no doubt, working hard can be counterproductive. When I was a photo teacher, one phenomenon I saw again and again was when a beginning student would take an inferior negative and become determined to make an exceptional print with it. They'd struggle and struggle trying to make a silk purse of a sow's ear. (Heroic efforts in the darkroom were respected at that time.) I usually wouldn't discourage this at first, because it might have been part of what they need to learn, namely, that good negatives print easily and that even heroic measures with bad negatives usually aren't enough to save them. I'd put a stop to it if they were getting too frustrated or wasting too much time. Anyway, that's not the way to work hard on a photograph. I suspect the same thing happens now with students diving into excessive post-processing in attempts to make something more out of pictures that just aren't quite good enough, but I don't teach any more so I don't know.

Ambivalence
And my own experience? I admit I've had an ambivalent relationship with "working hard" on photographs. Success for me hasn't always corresponded to the amount of labor, time, or care I front-load any project with. Plenty of times I've started an ambitious project only to discover halfway through that a lot of hard work just isn't leading to the pictures being any better.

I'll give you one example. After admiring and studying Joel Meyerowitz's book St. Louis and the Arch long ago, I decided to try a similar project. Meyerowitz's book consisted of about a hundred large-format cityscapes of St. Louis, in many of which the arch or part of the arch could be seen. I planned to try something similar in Washington D.C. using the National Cathedral as the landmark. Spending most of my free time, day after day, week after week, I lugged my 4x5 all over the area around the Cathedral trying to find arresting photographs that had the Cathedral in them somewhere. It was frustrating because either the views of the Cathedral didn't come along with scenes I thought were pictures, or the pictures didn't contain any traces of the Cathedral. Of course, a big part of the problem might have been that I'm no Joel Meyerowitz.

Anyway, at some point I got the idea that a unique perspective of the Cathedral might be visible from the top of a certain building a mile or so away. So I started to try to get permission to take my camera to the building's roof. It took days. I had to go through all sorts of red tape, talk to one person after another, explain myself and my purpose again and again. Finally, I got permission to get on the roof of the building. The time was negotiated. And...the light was wrong. It was one of those glarey, hot, white-sky Summer days. And I was wrong about the viewpoint, too—the picture was just nothing special. Several days, all that work...and pffft. Nothing really to show for it.

Over the years I have noticed, let's say, a very imperfect correspondence between willfully working hard at photographing and whether or not the pictures are any good. But it really does beg the question of what you consider "working hard" to mean.

A friend of mine, a peer, a long time ago was in a photography graduate program. The big-name instructor believed in extremely heavy shooting. He shot a lot himself. I think his students were required to shoot 10 rolls of 120 a day, if memory serves. So, trying to learn vicariously through my friend, I experimented with it—I went to some gathering on the Mall in D.C. and forced myself to shoot eight rolls of 136, 280 frames, in an afternoon, much more than I would normally shoot.

It didn't help. I didn't get any more good shots than I usually do with one roll, or two. I liked what Jane Bown said—she's one of my favorite photographers—something to the effect that she noticed the first and the last pictures she took on a portrait shoot were the best ones, so she stopped taking all the ones in the middle. I still shoot lightly, even in digital.

Everyone approves...in theory
The amount of hard work I've seen poured into photographs and photographic projects over the years is mighty impressive. Some of it pays off and a lot of it doesn't. But there are all kinds of way photographers work hard on photographs. It's not just fastidious post-processing; not just careful printing; not just money or time expended; not just any one thing or any one particular strategy. There are all sorts of ways to work hard.

Yes, discipline is good, and everyone approves of hard work in theory. But surely, the thing to do is to learn what kinds of hard work pay off for each of us, and which kinds don't.

Next in this series, I'll finally get to the reason I started writing this triplet of posts in the first place!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

B&H Photo

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Michel Hardy-Vallée: "Failures are actually part of the work that goes behind a 'successful' photograph. You showed with the Cathedral story that many actions performed can produce nil result; now, you have to consider that not doing something is actually crucial to the making of a good work. After this failure, what are the things that you didn't do anymore, which thereby allowed you to succeed otherwise?"

Kenneth Brayton: "It took me many years to understand it is not about working hard. Hard work is cheap, everybody can work hard. It is about working smart."

James Weekes: "A friend of mine's father, in reaction to his son's whining about doing an assigned chore every day, told him to 'do it until you get used to it.' That is really effective. Once you are used to it it is no longer work, just part of your day. The only way that I photograph every day is because I'm used to it."

Mike replies: When I think of all the work that people like George Tice and Elliott Erwitt did for years as a matter of course it's quite humbling. They definitely must have made hard work routine.

Ronny A Nilsen: "'Chance favors the prepared mind.' —Louis Pasteur (1822–1895). Without having done some hard work to be prepared, you will not be able to take advantage of the 'easy to get' pictures.

Stan B.: "You can be as focused, imaginative and determined as possible—but if it ain't there...it ain't there."

Artistwithlight: "Myself, I worked so hard as an amateur that when I turned pro it it was like retirement."

Michael Fewster: "I enjoyed this post immensely and I have sent it to to many friends. Regarding your conclusion that a photographer needs to learn which areas of hard work pay off. I am reminded of the old advertising industry statement (and I am not quoting this accurately, you'll get the idea), 'I know that 50% of our advertising budget is wasted, I just don't know which 50%.'"

Working Hard on a Photograph

I mentioned at the end of the previous post that all three of my most favorite photos of our dog Lulu can all be seen in one post from 2011...this one. I have others I like, but those three are my favorites.

It's a funny triad to me, for one arcane little reason: I didn't work at all on two of them—and for the third, I worked like a sonofabitch. The contrast in efficiency couldn't have been greater.

Before I give you the details, let me remind you of a couple of things: first, Ctein's famous column "No One Cares How Hard You Worked." (Can that really be nine years old now?! That's hard to fathom.) Ctein credited the quote to Bob Nadler of Camera 35. Bob's/Ctein's point was simple: it's the end result that matters. You don't necessarily get any "extra credit" for pouring a lot of work into getting a picture. People are just going to look at the picture and react based on what they see. But the other thing I wanted to mention is that sometimes you do need to work hard to get what you want.

The first and third pictures of Lulu at the link were casual snaps taken on the day we met her. My then-friend Gabi brought Lulu downstairs to neutral territory (the alley behind her apartment building) for the big first meeting, which went well. Then Xander took Lulu's leash as we all walked to a nearby park. Since she had recently been feral, we didn't let her off the leash. Lying around in the grass at the park, I was casually snapping pictures like I always do. Not working hard in the slightest.

The middle picture was another kettle of fish altogether. It was a regular sight in the Winters: Xander, who was about 14 at the time, would get under a comforter on the couch to watch The Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle (a favorite retort at the time: "you're not the boss of me," which came from the Malcolm theme song), and Lulu, who has a light coat and often got cold, would climb in with him. If something caught their attention they'd both look together. I'd say something and both of them would look at me as if to say, "we're busy. What do you want?"

The first try at a picture was not even adequate. Second and third, ditto. I tried this, that and the other thing on various nights. One "nope, that ain't it" followed another. Nothing seemed to be working. It just wouldn't gel. You know what golfers mean by the term "grinding it out"? It means that you keep slogging even when things aren't going well, giving every shot your all (every time you see some tyro getting angry at his own poor performance on a golf course—as if the Universe owes him a good round, despite the fact that he never practices—just think, "not a grinder"). I finally set up a studio flash right next to the couch, worked out the exposure, and just left the light there—whenever the two of them were watching TV together I'd attach the sync cord to the camera and make another attempt. Finally I got the picture you see and decided I was satisfied.

The score
The point is that there's a rejoinder to Ctein's and Bob's claim: No one cares how hard you worked, true, but you have to work as hard as you have to. I'm reminded of my boss at the audio salon where I briefly moonlighted the year before Xander was born. He was an extremely effective salesman, and his method was this: he would decide what he wanted each customer to buy, and then he would work until he made that "score" as he called it. I saw him work for ten minutes once selling a $10,000 Krell amplifier (maybe $3,000 profit for the store—I forget the exact margin on each brand), but another time I saw him work for two days, devoting several hours each day, to sell a cheap Denon receiver to a guy with a thin wallet, to earn a profit for the store of maybe $90. The contrast in time-efficiency could not have been more stark. I asked him about it, and he just shrugged and said, "you work as hard as you have to to make the score." That's how he saw it in his mind.

I'll never make a salesman, but I think the lesson transfers to pictures. Sometimes you can take the most casual snapshot imaginable and it turns out to be wonderful. Other times, you grind. It doesn't matter. You just work as hard as you have to.

I don't like that middle picture any more than the other two. But I don't like it any less.

...To be continued. Next up: what does "working hard" on a photograph actually mean? What are some of the ways photographers work hard?

Mike
(Thanks to Ctein from long ago)

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Big Bokeh on a Budget

Many lenses that are popular (at least aspirationally) these days are big, heavy, expensive and fast (BHEF for short, if you'll tolerate it).

It's downright odd: when I started photography I shot Kodak Plus-X, which had an ASA/ISO speed of 125, but which I rated at an exposure index (E.I.) of 80. On top of that I used a medium yellow filter, which cut out another 2/3 stops of light. And my two "prime" (single-focal-length) lenses had maximum apertures of ƒ/2.8. When T-Max P3200 was introduced (with a true speed of ASA/ISO 1000—the "P" in the name stood for "push"), I found I could rate it at an exotic E.I. 800, and I went crazy shooting in what I considered very poor light. A wonderful experience.

Now, most cameras with decent-sized sensors have no trouble with ISO 1600, and many do well at ISO 3200 and even 6400. ISO 3200 means they need two stops less light than my old P3200! And nobody uses filters any more, so you don't lose any light that way.

You'd think we'd all be shooting with ƒ/2.8 and slower lenses now, and in a sense we are—or most of you are, anyway. You shoot with zooms. The good ones tend to have constant maximum apertures that are the same as that of my old Carl Zeiss lenses. But primes? For some reason, where those are concerned we feel we need lenses of exotic specification. ƒ/1.4, the former standard for a very fast lens, is boring and not fast enough.

As I say, odd.

Regarding d-o-f: for most of photography's history, photographers always wanted more of it. Lately, photographers want less of it. Why? I believe—my opinion—it's because large sensors and BHEF lenses are high status.

Most photographers are human beings (there are exceptions—see selfie by Slater's macaque in the inset illustration!), and human beings are highly influenced by status and standing. We are always trying to display wealth, specialness, and privilege. It's just the way we're wired as social animals. I have an 19th-century book about the old West called Beyond the Mississippi by Albert D. Richardson. In it there is an account given by a pioneer about an encounter with an Indian brave. This "noble savage" [that idea is a construct of the 18th-century Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau] spent a good deal of the interview bragging about how many wives and horses he had, unfortunately not in that order. He also brags about how generous he is in gift-giving, because that was a major status-marker in his tribe. I was struck by how clearly that guy thought he had it all goin' on. And doubtless he did, for his time and culture. His attitude struck me as being little different from that of a spoiled son of a billionaire bragging about how many Lamborghinis and b-----s he has.

In case you want to achieve shallow depth-of-field (i.e., lots of "bokeh"), there are other, more efficient ways to do that than buying a big, heavy, expensive lens of large maximum aperture. (Which of course you can do if you want to.) That lens only gives you less d-o-f / more bokeh than a slower lens of the same focal length at the same focus distances. That is, "if all else is equal."

Beyond the Mississippi, published in 1867

But, to quote Ctein, "all else is never equal." Just as there are some cases where you want to use the exact same standpoint and get more d-o-f, there are many cases where you can adjust. So if you're just after that lotsa-bokeh look, you can plan to do one, or both, of two things: either get closer, or choose a longer lens.

Re the first, getting closer: in theory, cameras with rigidly fixed lenses focus on a geometrical plane that is parallel to the plane of the sensor (the reality departs from this somewhat). Depth-of-field scales to how close or far that plane is to the sensor, which can be roughly understood thusly: if you get four feet of d-o-f when focused at 10 feet, you'll get four inches of d-o-f when you're focused at 10 inches. (It's not actually that exact, for various reasons, but this is roughly true). Go look at a bunch of macro pictures of flowers or bugs on Flickr, for example. They'll all have gobs and gobs of bokeh everywhere, because they're all taken close up. Then go look at pictures of distant landscape vistas. Most of them have no bokeh anywhere, right? That's because at distant-vista focus distances, there are huge amounts of d-o-f.

The other thing you can plan to do is just use a longer lens. Insofar as d-o-f is a property of aperture and focal length, it's identical regardless of the size of the substrate (film or sensor). Take a 300mm lens for 8x10 film and a 300mm lens for 35mm film. On 8x10, 300mm is a normal focal length, and provides a reasonably wide angle of view. On 35mm (24x36mm, same as FF), a 300mm lens is a long telephoto with a very narrow angle of view. But, from the same camera position, aimed identically, if you superimpose the small rectangle inside the big one, the image from both will overlap, and the d-o-f will be the same. It's just that it will appear to be much more on the larger film and much less on the smaller one because of what else is in the frame of each. So if you want to get more bokeh, just pick a longer lens—even if it doesn't have a large maximum aperture—and move back. Voila! You've just achieved the bokeh of a shorter BHEF lens with a slower lens.

This is why fashion photographers often shoot models with 300mm lenses. (Notice the camera the model is toting.)

Granted, the pictures are somewhat different because of the different standpoint, but there are infinity pictures available. You can usually make do and choose one that works for the different standpoint.

For more bokeh, get closer or shoot a longer lens or both. In real life, you don't get any extra credit for having super-fast apertures on any given focal length. Unless you really insist on having the dog's nose out of focus...and maybe even the cat's.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Al C.: "As we bear witness to the dawn of computational photography, how much longer before your favorite LR, C1, or DxO workflow will include a bokeh slider, a de-nervous check box, and maybe a bokeh-ball clone/repair tool? Can't be that hard. My bet is Topaz will be first with AI-bokeh.

"All the heretofore expensive qualities of a lens—contrast (macro and micro), color rendering, distortion, vignetting, CA etc.—can mostly be corrected/enhanced in software with minor adverse effect on IQ. Soon, that will be true of bokeh. Would be great fun, actually.

"Odd, then, to see the latest glut of ridiculous cost-, weight-, and size-no-object lenses. Might this be the last gasp, as when a tree seeds like mad before dying?

"Unlike bokeh, one critical optical defect which is impossible to correct is flare resistance. Ironic then that many of the recent BHEF lenses sport stellar MTFs (look at the new Nikon Z mounts) but are very middling and disappointing regarding flare resistance. Not surprising, considering their ridiculous optical formulations and umpteen surfaces on hand for reflections."

Tutorial: Shoot at Middle Apertures

"Aperture" come from "apertura," which means "hole" in Latin, and refers to the variable opening in the lens. The f-numbers, as they're known, are odd and appear mysterious to the uninitiated:

ƒ/1,   ƒ/1.4,   ƒ/2,   ƒ/2.8,   ƒ/4,   ƒ/5.6,   ƒ/8,  ƒ/11,   ƒ/16,   ƒ/22,   ƒ/32,   ƒ/45,   ƒ/64,   ƒ/90

Photographers find it helpful to memorize this sequence.

The sequence is "an approximately geometric sequence of numbers that corresponds to the sequence of the powers of the square root of 2" (Wikipedia), but you don't need to know that. What's easiest to remember is that every other one approximately doubles or halves. Each single one doubles or halves the amount of light that the aperture allows to pass through the lens: that is, ƒ/1.4 lets in twice as much light as ƒ/2, ƒ/11 lets in half as much light as ƒ/8, and so forth.

The aperture is defined (Wikipedia again) thusly:

The f-number of an optical system (such as a camera lens) is the ratio of the system's focal length to the diameter of the entrance pupil ('clear aperture'). It is a dimensionless number that is a quantitative measure of lens speed, and an important concept in photography. It is also known as the focal ratio, f-ratio, or f-stop. It is the reciprocal of the relative aperture. The f-number is commonly indicated using a hooked f [like this: ƒ] with the format 'ƒ/N, where N is the f-number.'

The f-stop is a measure of lens speed, "speed" in this case referring how much light is able to pass through a particular lens. The f-ratios of a lens are stable properties of that lens when you hold it in your hand when it's attached to nothing...and they do not change when you put the lens in front of variously-sized recording substrates such as sensors or film.

Generally, spherical lenses, and most aspheres, perform best—and the resulting pictures look best—when you use middle apertures.

Konica T3 viewfinder diagram: What do those funny "Aperture Scale"
numbers mean and where should I put the "Meter Needle"?

It was one of the very first things I learned in photography. Shooting with my Dad's shutter-priority Konica T3's, I wondered where the aperture needle in the viewfinder should fall and what those odd numbers meant. Dad's friend Arnie Gore, a commercial studio photographer from Milwaukee (you can read the great story of his Nikita Khrushchev picture here), told me the needle just needed to be "somewhere in the middle," and to avoid the top two numbers and the bottom number. Crude, but it's actually still pretty good advice. The reason to have a wide aperture lens is so it's there when you need it (and, in the old days, to make an SLR easier to focus)—not to shoot at that aperture constantly and unthinkingly.

With most lenses, for best

performance, stick to

middle apertures

Two things happen theoretically with lens performance in the case of most lenses. First, aberrations diminish as you stop the lens down. Then, diffraction begins to soften the image as you stop down too much. So with most lenses there is an "optimum aperture"—that's the aperture at which aberrations are not further improved by stopping down more, but at which diffraction is not increased needlessly. Another way of saying this is that it's the widest aperture at which diffraction is the limiting function. A lens that's so good that this pertains at its widest aperture is said to be "diffraction limited."

You don't need diffraction-limited lenses for pictorial photography. In fact, as I said in the post "Bazooka Joe," you don't need good lenses for pictorial photography: artistic expression can potentially be achieved with a lens that has any kind of properties.

As a rough rule of thumb (assuming you want what is misnamed "optical quality"), the optimum aperture on fast lenses (ƒ/1.4 and faster on FF, let's say) will be two or three stops from wide open (ƒ/2.8 or ƒ/4 on that ƒ/1.4 lens) and it will be about two stops down for a slower lens (so, say, ƒ/5.6 on an ƒ/2.8 lens).

Does that mean you should always shoot your ƒ/1.4 lens at ƒ/4? No, because you're also thinking about depth-of-field and how much light you need to pass through your lens given the ambient lighting conditions prevalent at the scene. Also, in practice, the middle apertures of a lens are so close in terms of optical performance that there's not much visual performance difference between, say, ƒ/4 and ƒ/8 on our fast lens. Yes, the optimum aperture might be theoretically best, and yes, you might be able to discern the difference while pixel-peeping—but if viewers can't tell the difference between pictures taken at the optimum aperture and pictures taken at the two apertures next to it, then—if you're considering only sharpness in the plane of focus—it doesn't really matter which of the three apertures you choose.

Basic rule o' thumb, then: for best lens performance, stick to the middle apertures. But among all the apertures, choose the one that will give you the depth-of-field you want or the exposure value you want. Among the middle apertures, the optical performance between the various choices will be so close as to make no easily visible difference.

Depart from the middle apertures when you need to or when you want to; the middle apertures are merely a convenient default.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Trevor Johnson: "ƒ/1.2, ƒ/1.7, ƒ/6.3 or ƒ/7.1 are oft encountered in today's world: plus others."

Mike replies: The scale I gave are the whole stops. The ones you list are intermediate values. ƒ/1.2 is one-third stop faster than ƒ/1.4; ƒ/1.7 is a half stop, midway between ƒ/1.4 and ƒ/2; ƒ/6.3 is one-third stop slower than ƒ/5.6; and ƒ/7.1 is one-third stop faster than ƒ/8.

I'm not sure if this is still the case, but in the '90s lens apertures were only accurate to within about a sixth of a stop, so listing apertures in thirds of stops was a bit suspect. But ƒ/1.8 sounds faster than ƒ2, so it's good for marketing. Yet if it is only accurate to within a sixth of a stop then it could be only 1/6th of a stop faster than ƒ/2—a difference most people cannot see—and still be within tolerances. Modern Photography used to list the real f-stops of lenses they tested, and they often weren't quite the same as what the labels claimed.

Greg adds: "Manufacturer's f-stop designations for photographic mirror/reflex are the worst. My 500mm ƒ/8 Nikkor is a half of a stop slower than ƒ/8, and my 600mm ƒ/8 Vivitar Series 1 is actually 2/3 of a stop slower than ƒ/8. Ironically I've found that the f-stop designations for telescope reflex lenses (way smaller market out there for these lenses) are totally accurate and right on."

marcin wuu: "First thing I do with all of my fast primes is take a piece of duct tape and tape the aperture ring down on its widest setting for good. I ain't buyin' those shallow d-o-f monsters to stop them down, damnit."

Mike replies: I initially hoped you were kidding, then I read Jeff's comment in the Comment section. So maybe you aren't.

Luis Aribe: "Just for the record, the Latin is 'apertura,' from which the English 'aperture.'"

Mike replies: Thank you Luis. Fixed now.

Gordon Buck: "Mechanical devices work best in the middle of their design range."

Mike replies: Yes. And to "stress" any such device—and coincidentally to reveal their quality—examine the extremes of those design ranges.

Peggy C.: "Re 'Basic rule o' thumb, then: for best lens performance, stick to the middle apertures.' As someone else pointed out, and the way I heard it, lo these many years ago, was 'ƒ/8 and be there'."

Mike replies: The old photojournalist motto.

s.wolters: "Good statement! But there are exceptions to this smack dab in the middle rule. I am a lucky owner of the Olympus 17mm and 25mm f1.2 lenses. These are designed to be used wide open. Both lenses peak around ƒ/2 to ƒ/2.8, so very close to their widest aperture. But even with these lenses I prefer to start with ƒ/4 to ƒ/5.6 rather than ƒ/1.2. Usually I’m more interested in my subjects than in blur."

Mike replies: True, and that's why it's useful to know your lenses' optimum apertures. Lens designers can optimize their designs for specific f-numbers and specific focus distances. Many lenses are, indeed, being optimized for wider apertures these days. A few, as Scott K. pointed out in the Comments section, are diffraction limited and thus are at their best wide open. It's not necessary to know, but it helps to know.

Sunday Support Group: What the Fuji X-H1 Is Not Good For

SA*

I remember hearing years ago that veteran daily photographers never switched cameras lightly, because "you lose a year"—that is, it takes a year before the new camera is completely familiar and its use second nature.

So I constructed this handy chart:

Average length of time photographers used film cameras: 10 years

Average amount of time it took to become fully familiar with a new film camera: one year

It struck me at the time that this was not something to be casually dismissed. It seemed like a lot to risk a whole 10% of your working life to a camera that was not yet fully familiar to you. But then, it was a necessary evil, every so often.

Then it occurred to me that these numbers would be different for digital cameras, so I added the following to my chart:

Average length of time photographers use digital cameras: three years

Average amount of time it takes to become fully familiar with a new digital camera so its use becomes second nature: more than three years

The equation has changed somewhat!

Still learning the ins and outs of the X-H1
and getting used to it,
Mike

ADDENDUM: Look what Ned Bunnell had to say on his Instagram this very day! A nice coincidence. Charles Harbutt's Travelog is one of the great forgotten books of the hippie generation, in case you don't recognize the name.

P.S. Do you use aftermarket books like the one linked to learn your cameras?

P.P.S. The $999 closeout price of the X-H1 is still a spectacular bargain, but note that they are almost gone (the link is to Amazon; B&H doesn't have any left) and the camera's mysterious unpopularity probably means there won't be an X-H2.

Consider: 1.) it's not even two years old yet. 2.) it was originally priced at $1,900. 3.) its development cost was very likely a great big honking whack. 4.) $999 is less than: a.) a Sony RX100 Mark VII point-and-shoot; b.) a Nikon D750 on sale, c.) a Sony A6600 on sale; d.) a Fuji X-T30 with kit lens; e.) a Canon 90D; f.) a Panasonic G9 Micro 4/3 camera on sale; g.) either of its Fuji stablemates the X-T3 and the X100f; h.) an Olympus E-M5 Mark III; i.) a Ricoh GRIII; j.) a used 1984 Leica M6; k.) 20 sushi dinners at $50 each including tip; l.) one Starbuck's Pumpkin Spice Latte Venti every morning on the way to work for less than a year; m.) a mere six pairs of Ugg boots. Now, admittedly, the X-H1 is not good for keeping your toes toasty while padding around the house on Winter days, while also standing up to occasional trips outdoors while the dogs pee (I covet a pair of Ugg boots, but cannot bring my cheap self to drop the toll). But then, you cannot ask a camera to do everything.

*Satire Alert.

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Neil Swanson: "I jumped on the $999 bundle. I had an X-Pro2, with the three 'crons, and had never handled an X-H1 at all. The specs were very good and the price, well how could I not. Turns out I like camera very very much. I truly don't understand complaints of its size. Without the grip its small. If you'd been shooting Nikon D3 or D4 cameras you've gotta laugh at size complaints. What do these guys shoot, Minox? The X-Pro2 was my first mirrorless so I had nothing to compare it to. When I got the X-H1 I discovered a much better EVF. It is my first camera with a folding back display. The shutter release and the sound of the shutter is crazy good. Very much like the best Leica M2 I ever had after service by DAG. The X-H1 is my first IBIS camera. Love that.

"So what did I do? I sold the year old X-Pro2 and got an X-Pro3. The EVF is large and improved, folding rear display, fine, not an issue for me. The AF is screaming good now. So much of what I like in the X-H1 is now in the X-Pro3.

"Knowing there may not be an X-H2 is sad. The X-H1 s excellent. It needs little improvement. Add the latest sensor and AF guts and boom, done. An X-H1 with a grip and a 'cron is a fantastic package. I used it alongside my D4S shooting a show at the Beacon Theater in NYC. It was a breeze working one to the other.

"I really want an X-H2. Please build it."

Dogman (partial comment): "Aftermarket books? Oh, yeah. These days I seldom even open the manufacturer's owner's manual. It seems they delight in arranging the manuals in such a way that confusion ensues. All of the aftermarket books I've used have been better prepared and more useful. And I always buy them in e-book format. Kindle app in the iPhone means the book is always with me."

Stan B.: "I think the 'problem' with the X-H1 is that it's an 'in between' product like the Leica M5 or M8. That is, it incorporates proven technology into a package that some find unattractive, and others have already found just fine elsewhere...."

Hugh: "I have bought the following: Canon 5D, 2005; Canon 5D2, 2008; Canon 5D3, 2012; Canon 5D4, 2016; Canon 100D (SL-1), 2017; Canon RP mirrorless, 2018. Only looked at the instruction books for the 5D4 and RP to set up the WiFi transfer. The rest is essentially the same camera. Who cares if there are better cameras from other makers...my muscle memory hasn't needed retraining, and I never need to look at the camera to change settings. If I'd bought Nikon, I'd have followed the same pattern. Life is too short to change camera systems. Plus, I don't need to spend money on new lenses."

Dillan: "I just bought a new EOS R on Boxing Day (December 26—it's kind of like Black Friday for Canadians). I can attest that the EOS R is way more complicated than my last camera, an original 5D. There are so many features and adjustments available, it makes my 5D look like something from another age. Three years to become proficient? That might be true!"

DavidB: "Thom Hogan's (bythom.com) Nikon camera guides are always excellent. I've used the D700 and D750 guides."

Mike Ferron: "It takes the average Olympus user approximately one year just to activate the very useful 'Super Control Panel'!"

Greg: "Have been using Nikon D700's since they first came out in 2008. When I shoot sports I use a D4, when I need to a D850, but for 95% of my images I rely on the D700's since their operation is second nature to me after all these years. Guess I just don't fit into the three year cycle...."

Mike replies: That speaks very well for the durability of the D700.

Dan Khong: "When one changes cameras, it's not like changing a car in which one gives up one car to trade to a new car. Most times, there is an overlap between owning a new camera till one sells the older camera and even that might not always happen."

Mike replies: Good point.

Pictures for Discussion: Figure-Ground Relationship

Introduction: In July 2017, in response to a reader who wrote, "examples would help a lot to clarify!", I answered:

"It's a problem. I could find hundreds of examples of what I consider 'bad' photography, easily, but how could I present them? If another person's  picture is used as a subject of a critique, it's legal under Fair Use (probably—Fair Use is never 100% certain), but I'd have to be taking someone's work and holding it up as a negative example. As a normally courteous person I have trouble with that idea. I wouldn't like it if that were done to me. Over the years I would have loved it if I could have put up pictures I find on the Web to discuss—many pictures of many kinds, to discuss in all kinds of ways. But I just don't think it's polite to do that to the people the pictures belong to.

"It's a big difference between the Web and a classroom. In the privacy of a classroom you can use specific pictures as examples, easily. But I have a problem with doing the same thing here."

Back to now: I've decided that perhaps I can do that with pictures that the makers have donated to be more or less rights-free on Wikimedia Commons. So from time to time I'll look for pictures there that illustrate various principles we can talk about.

But please, I am NOT ridiculing the photographs and certainly not the photographers! I have made every mistake under the sun, as all of us have. On the contrary, I thank them for letting us use their pictures for discussion.

Here goes.

A quiz: What basic mistake did the shooter make in the following picture? Think about it for a minute before you click through.

Anna Anichkova, "Rolls Royce" (fragment), Vintage Car Rally, Aphrodite Hills Resort, Cyprus (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Flash in the Pan

Guest post by Jay Burleson

Jay Burleson, Flash in the Pan, 1756 French Infantry
Musket Demonstration, Fort Ticonderoga, New York

This photograph is, for several reasons, one of my favorites. Taken in 2015 with a Leica M9 and 75mm ƒ/2, the exposure, composition, and timing were all done well; the subjects are isolated from the background; and all three reenactors express varied and intriguing facial expressions. Most of all, you are seeing a demonstration of an extremely geeky process, frozen in the midst of happening—the firing of a flintlock musket. (Yes, referencing the recent TOP article, firearms aficionados also fit the definition of "geeks." Often right out to the extreme edge of the bell curve.)

The firearms pictured are modern reproductions of the French Charleville musket, first manufactured in 1717. Its production ended sometime during the 1840s. It was a .69 caliber smoothbore flintlock muzzle-loading musket used by French infantry forces around the world, including in many battles at and around Fort Ticonderoga in the mid-18th century. The flintlock mechanism was developed in the early 16th century and was pretty much the standard for firearms until the early 19th century.

The basic working of a flintlock is simple: the hammer, under spring tension, is holding a piece of flint, and when the trigger is pulled, the flint pivots forward forcefully and scrapes the flint against the frizzen or steel, resulting in a shower of sparks that ignites a small amount of black powder in the pan. From an engineering standpoint, the entire system is elegant in its robustness and simplicity.

When the black powder in the pan is ignited, some of the flame created by the burning powder enters a small hole, called the touch hole, drilled through the side of the barrel into the barrel's chamber, which subsequently ignites the main charge of powder in the barrel. The lead-ball projectile, which is seated into the barrel on top of the black powder, is then propelled out of the barrel.

If, under the stress of reloading your musket in a life-or-death situation, you forget to put a charge of black powder in the barrel, the flame from the pan has nothing to ignite, hence it's just a "flash in the pan." Most reference authorities agree that this—as illustrated in the photograph—is the origin of that phrase "flash in the pan," meaning "something which disappoints by failing to deliver anything of value, despite a showy beginning."

Despite my title, I do like to think that this photograph does deliver something of value, after its showy beginning!

Jay

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Keith: "An interesting side note regarding flintlocks; unlike the primer-based ignition in modern firearms, there is a noticeable delay between pulling the trigger and the actual firing of the gun, requiring a 'follow through' of maintaining the sights on target for an additional second after pulling the trigger. Failure to do so would yield a shot way off target. This delay earned the mechanism the alternative name of 'flinchlock,' because any flinching by the shooter is greatly exaggerated by the delay."

David Dyer-Bennet: "Very nice! Getting the priming charge so clearly is fairly rare."

Disguises

TV cameraman (and, of course, TOP reader) Mike Plews wrote a nice comment to yesterday's post about approaching people in the street—he said that a tip he gives to "new kids" is to lose their sunglasses.

I second that. A few additional tips—keep your hands out of your pockets, keep the camera out in the open, and no hoodies! Light clothing helps too, in my opinion, unless you look like the business in dark clothing. Short sleeves in Summer—people won't think you "have something up your sleeve"! Anything that helps you look more like what you're presenting yourself to be can't hurt.

A photo vest helps...even if you don't have anything to load into the pockets and you don't actually need the vest. Remember, people are going to be sizing you up quickly. Photo vests remain useful in that they look faintly silly so they're seldom worn as fashion—who would wear something so dorky unless they needed it?—so to many people they still telegraph "photographer." And that helps you with your bonafides. 

Consider this guy. Who could take that dude for anything but a photographer? And note, no sunglasses, and nothing on his head, and light clothing, and nothing up his sleeve. He's old, too, which helps—people are less threatened by oldsters. If you're younger, you'd best be charming.

You might consider Lee's getup to be a disguise. He's a real photographer who has disguised himself as a photographer.  :-)

Of course, your attitude is the main thing. Peter's got mad skillz in that sense. Me, not so much.

If you're anxious, people are going to pick up on it right away. (Three guesses how I know.) As strangers appraise you, an anxious attitude is a turnoff. My advice is, be fully prepared for a "no" answer and have the ability to treat it like the proverbial "water off a duck's back." If you're all set and ready for rejection, then there's no need to be nervous.

Here are a few photo vests from Amazon, and here's one from B&H. Unfortunately you cannot purchase a good attitude. If you could, I'd recommend it.  :-)

Mike
(Thanks to Mike P.)

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Amazon.com • Amazon UK • Amazon Canada
Amazon Germany • B&H Photo • Adorama

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Josh Hawkins: "Relaxed, approachable smile. It’s been my go to for 20 years. If that doesn’t smooth everything over be prepared to have a nice friendly conversation about who you are, what you’re doing and why. And always stay nice and positive even if you’re not going to get a good photo."

Gordon Lewis: "As a veteran street shooter I can confirm that the less intimidating you look, the better. This of course can mean different things to different subjects, but generally speaking, any photographer with reasonable emotional intelligence has a sense of how intimidating they may seem to other people. I've never been a fan of photo vests and the like, but you'd be surprised how often I'm asked if I'm a pro photographer simply because of the way I carry and handle my equipment. I don't do this intentionally, it's just that most people can perceive that experts move differently from novices.

"The takeaway here is it helps to look like you're confident and know what you're doing. Final tip: Consider what type of person you're approaching for a photograph. I once approached an extremely dapper gent in Philadelphia and asked if I could photograph him. When he asked why, I replied, 'Now surely you didn't leave home today looking this fabulous without thinking that maybe, just maybe, you might turn a head or two.' He grinned and said 'Where do you want me to stand?' The point isn't to use flattery per se but rather to look for a seamless way to introduce the idea of taking a photograph. Frankly, considering you're probably standing in front of them with a camera on your neck or shoulder, they should hardly be surprised if you make a polite inquiry."

Dennis: "Some years ago, when my daughter was a younger child, a photographer took pictures of her on the boardwalk in New Jersey...at first, my parent's instincts jumped to attention, but he was a friendly older gentleman wearing a photographer's vest with a couple of cameras, and he approached us after taking a few shots and talked briefly to us—might have asked for some information, I can't remember. In hindsight, it may have been Bob Krist—I vaguely recall him looking somewhat like Bob does in pictures, and I bought a book of Krist's photos that features some taken on that same boardwalk around the same time period."

Martin D (partial comment): "Personally, I'd rather not be seen in one of those photo vests. I am already rather deficient in the fashion department, and I want my young daughters to accumulate the right sort of memories of their dad! I don't need such vests to look even more geeky.  :-) "

Dogman: "When I shot film, I loved my vests. Especially when traveling—you could carry guide books, maps and brochures alongside rolls of film and extra lenses. But digital cameras and the iPhone kinda did in the need for a photo vest. But I'm not givin' up my cargo pants and Tilley hats...."

Tom: "This is all well and good, but what we really need to know from Peter is how he manages to get a woman he's just met to sit and have a cup of coffee with him."

Mike replies: Your comment made me laugh, because when we talked on the phone I told him that that had never happened with me in my entire life.

Street Portraits

If you read Peter's post from yesterday carefully, you can discern a few things. First of all, it started with simple connection on a personal, human level—a look, a smile, a greeting. Then, engagement—an invitation to have coffee. Next, as anyone might do who was beginning a conversation, he listened, learning her name and where she was from and so on. Then they found common ground, in that he had some familiarity with Somalia, where she came from, and he was sympathetic to her feelings of sorrow about it. Finally he asked if he could take her picture, and got her on board by respecting her own desires for it ("Yes, and please say I am a woman without a country").

So it went like this: contact, engagement, consideration, identification, empathy, and collaboration. Am I wrong about that? I'm not saying all that was programed or deliberate—obviously it just unfolded naturally—but I think you can see all those stages clearly in his brief account of the encounter.

What a far cry that is from the way I take street portraits. I'm shy and reluctant, so I try to sneak pictures surreptitiously or take a hurried shot and move on.

It's possible that many of us have it backwards—we approach situations with the goal of getting a good photograph out of it. Then if we have an interaction with our subject on a personal level, that's a bonus, an extra. To Peter, photography is about life, not about photography. It might be better for me to do it the other way around—my goal might be to make a human connection first, and then, if a good photograph happens to come out of it, that's the bonus. And better photographs sometimes come out of doing it that way anyway. Of course different photographers have different ways of working that are right for them. There's no right or wrong way.

I had mentioned to Peter earlier that I haven't photographed any of the Mennonite people in my area because they don't like it, won't give their permission, and respond resentfully if you try—so I don't. He said he didn't know about the Mennonites, but that, in his experience, if you are clear about what you're doing and go right up to people confidently, without being afraid to get in their space, and then deal with them on a human level and take your cues from how they're reacting to you, you can often take their picture and they're fine with it. Ironically, he said, people will react much more negatively when you try to hang back twenty feet and "steal" a photograph than if you go right up to them with nothing to hide. So it's possible that it's actually harder to take a picture when you're more timid than if you act confidently and clearly.

Humans are remarkably good at evaluating the intentions of strangers—we often make determinations within a split second about the potential threat of a person approaching us. "If I don't think what I'm doing is all right," he said, "how can I expect them to?"

Mike

Peter Turnley adds: Thank you all around, Mike. It might be important to add is that powerful photographs don’t come from a formula—they are about the human story, they most often emanate from human sincerity and authenticity, and, as in life itself, genuine compassion seems to go a long way.

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Hans Muus: "Beautiful—the picture as well as Peter Turnley’s remarks. They made me realise that, quite unintentionally, I have made my best street portraits that way. And his explanation, or is it advice, makes me stronger or more certain of myself. Up till now, after having met a stranger in the street, I often hesitated to ask the photo-question and get my camera out, out of a certain uneasiness to spoil a kind of fragile intimacy that had just been developed, by suddenly wanting to exploit it to my own ends. But actually it is a much more friendly action than the other, sneaky way around, and it might even benefit the other person in ways unforeseen—as per the Somalian woman, presently without a country. Thank you, Peter, and thank you, Mike."

Paul: "Exactly like Anders Petersen: 'To me, it’s encounters that matter; pictures are much less important.'"

Roy Feldman: "When you are working as a freelance photojournalist fear and hesitation is overcome by knowing you wouldn't be hired by that publication again if you don't come back with the shot. This causes one to force yourself towards confidence (not pushiness). If you approach people with the attitude of 'hey, it's my job to get this picture,' without any rudeness or assertiveness, most people are remarkably welcoming and gracious. Being sneaky never works and doesn't make you feel particularly good about yourself."

Bruce Bordner: "My problem 'these days' is that whenever I am about to take a candid un-staged shot the subject(s) will see my camera and immediately pose, ruining it. It's a reflex—they've been trained to look good on the Internet. I have to tell my friends 'stop waiting for the shutter: ignore me.' I don't use any social media so I don't even know what to expect, but it limits and contorts the images I was attempting. I have to be sneaky to get any reality."

Paul Braverman: "A lovely story and more proof that if there’s a friendlier place than the streets of New York City, I haven’t found it. Peter’s advice about photographing strangers is no doubt solid but it has its limits. I lived in Santa Fe for a while. The local Indian pueblos were obvious subjects for photography, but the Indians were having none of it. They were notoriously camera shy, and weren’t—for obvious reasons—too thrilled with the white man in general. I tried introducing myself, I wrote letters, I even attended a tribal council meeting to explain what I had in mind. No dice. For some people, and the Mennonites might be among them, there is no approach that will work."

Mike Plews: "A while back I watched video of Albert Maysles photographing people on the street. He would walk up to people and say 'you have s nice face, may I take your picture?' Seemed to be working pretty well.

"As a TV news guy I approach people all the time. It pays to go slow, be respectful and know when to gracefully take no for an answer. I have about a 50% success rate. One tip I give the new kids is to either lose your sunglasses or put them up on your forehead before approaching people. This seems particularly helpful when dealing with authority figures."

[Albert Maysles, 1926–2015, was half of the "direct documentary" filmmaking team The Maysles Brothers. Among other accomplishments, they made the famous film Gimme Shelter about the Rolling Stones' 1969 tour that captured the notorious violence at Altamont that resulted in the death of a spectator. —Ed.]

Clay Olmstead: "I once took a photography workshop from Mark Thiessen; he told us to use our camera as a way to connect with other people, not to separate ourselves from them. This is exactly what he was talking about."

 

The Magic Happens: the Golf/Tennis/Pool Paradigm in Photography

Here's one really flat-out great thing about photography as a hobby. By way of explanation-by-analogy, permit me to open with one of my patented digressions.

A number of years ago, when the best center in basketball was Shaquille O'Neal, I realized with swelling pride and a fair amount of amazement that I was just as good as Shaq.

...At free throws. During one particularly bad game, I read in the papers that Shaq hit two out of ten. Well, I can hit two out of ten free throws, my brothers, my sisters. Seriously I can. Just like Shaq did, I can pour one in for every five tries or so. That's how good I am. 

(Well, that's how good I was. I can't say I've shot a basketball more than, I don't know, eight times in this, erm, millennium.)

Lest you think I am cherrypicking, I will have you know that I was actually rather good at set shots, unguarded, from beyond the three-point line. For what reason I do not know. But I was. Shaquille O'Neal? One three-pointer in his entire NBA career. Uno. Me vs. Shaq? I like me. Give me nineteen years in the NBA like Shaq had and I would roll, I would rock, I would rage, I would dom-in-ate—I bet I could double, triple, even quadruple Shaq's total of three-pointers. (Because, you know, they'd be leaving me unguarded on account of what a threat I'd be.) I want a piece of that man's paycheck.

Golf: Once, playing alone at Pine Hill golf course near Pellston, Michigan, I stood at a tee on, yes, a hill, facing a distant green surrounded with, yes! pine trees, and realized that, even though it was a par-three hole, it was a long par-three hole, and there was no way I was going to reach that little tiny green way over there in one shot, so I might as well not try. Assuming I'd reach the green in two, I took a relaxed, easy swing with my trusty three-wood, which I used in place of a driver. Imagine how startled I was, how astonished, when the clubhead seemed barely to touch the ball, and the ball jumped off the club face with a crisp little tock! and sailed in a soaring arc through the air for what seemed like a minute, landed on the green, and bounded and ran another twenty feet or so to end up mere inches from the cup. What?! Wait, I know! I'm secretly great at this game, that must be the explanation for that! Yep, that must be it. Did you see that?

I looked around, hoping someone had, well, seen that. No one had. That's what happens when you play alone on a weekday.

But it turned out I really was great. I hit a shot just that good not even a year later, and an even better one a year after that. In fact I'm so good I probably averaged one completely impressive pro-level shot per year. (Sorta by accident, but hey, flukes count.)

It kept me coming back. Well, for a while. My secret greatness at golf turned out to be a very well-kept secret.

Tennis: The same sort of thing happened in tennis when I was a kid. Every now and then I would hit a shot so brilliant and blistering it was a creditable imitation of Jimmy Connors. (The great James Scott Connors was a big deal the last time I played much tennis. Get off my back, I'm old. So is Jimmy). Of course, you could argue that almost every shot Jimmy Connors played (except the few he flubbed) were as good as, well, Jimmy Connors shots, but that only about one out of every two or three thousand of my shots approached his standard. You could argue that, but I would be ignoring you, recalling my admittedly rare achievements through a Rose #3 filter.

Pool: Finally, regarding pool, I used to occasionally post a "Your Shot of the Day," which featured great pool shots. No one here likes pool, though, so I don't do those any more. But if I did, I might perhaps post this fun shot by Jeff De Luna of the Philippines during the World Cup of Pool finals this year between the Philippines and Austria.

The game is Scotch Doubles 9-ball. Jeff must hit the blue 2 ball, and is trying a long bank off the short rail. But as he's getting set, the 30-second clock is winding down (you can see the progress bar in red in the lower left-hand corner of the screen), and he calls for a time extension. But oh no! he's forgotten that his teammate Carlo Biado already used their one extension for that rack a few turns earlier. As time runs down to the buzzer the ref quickly tells him he hasn't got an extension. So you could see what happens for yourself, I might, in the old days, have embedded the video, like this:

...But since I don't do any of that any more, I'll just mention that I'm quite good at those long banks off the rail, and have hit shots like that many times. (They're not actually as hard as they look.)

Anyway, my theory is that this is what keeps people playing sports like these: It's because every now and then they hit a magnificent shot that's as good as it can possibly be, as good as a pro could do, as good as someone famous could do, as good as they see on TV. So they know the feeling. The only difference for us amateurs is that we do it less often. Sometimes far less often, admittedly, but still...we admire the greats and the pros because we identify.

The parallel to photography must be obvious to you by now. The fine, fun, fantastic fact is this:

No matter what stage of development you're in, no matter what kind of equipment you have, no matter what your level of innate talent, no matter how consistent or inconsistent you are, you're going to take a really great shot every now and then if you keep at it. Snapshooters do it; long-time Leicaphiles do it; phone snappers do it; view-camera sheet-film shooters do it; in fact, anyone who enjoys using a camera regularly will do it. It's not even the old principle that "a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then," either, because it's part of the way photography works. We're all out there waiting for the magic to happen. The great art photographer Sally Mann once told me that she "never knows where that next great shot is coming from," she only knows it's out there. An acquaintance showed me her daughter's phone snap of her granddaughter not long ago, and I said, "That's a great photograph." (It was, too. I should know, I told her, I'm an expert.)

Moments of greatness are not denied to anyone, when you think of it. Get out, shoot, shoot some more, maybe some more after that, and sooner or later, or perhaps later than that, the reward will come. The magic happens, like a gift from the Universe. When it does it's just a great big kick, one satisfying treat. It's one of the best things about photographing. Keeps us coming back.

Damn, I'm inspiring myself. I gotta get outside!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Gordon Lewis: "Great analogy, Mike. I just think you should have mentioned the obvious corollary: The difference between pros and most amateurs is that the pro is expected to perform at a high level consistently, even under adverse conditions, whereas the amateur can be satisfied with only occasional flashes of brilliance. Another hopefully encouraging thought is that the best photographers are careful not to show their out-takes, while we ourselves are all too aware of our own. Make a consistent practice of editing the wheat from the chaff and you're likely to feel a lot better about your work."

John Fleming: "Any time you want to post a 'Your shot of the day' please feel free. I enjoy these very much and, oddly, I was looking at a couple of these just yesterday as I had saved your links to them."

John Camp: "You're absolutely correct about all of this. I've played golf for a long time, and I once remarked to a fellow golfer that every single time I go out, I hit a shot that Tiger Woods would have taken at the height of his career—roll in a 20-foot putt, chip to a couple of inches, etc. But that 'doing it all the time' thing is the big catch in life."

Speed: "My favorite lucky shots are the ones I don't even remember taking. They make up for all the great shots that weren't."

Richard Skoonberg: "One of the great art photographers, whom I have had a chance to work with, Chip Simone, talks about finding the 'gift of the day' when he goes out shooting. Truly no one knows where that next great image is going to be found. It is a gift."

Three Strange Dogs

I think I need a vacation! I had a dream last night (as happens from time to time) that I was taking pictures. I was at home, but somehow had a high view of a body of water, which my home in life doesn't have. Three strange dogs had entered my house, which for some reason my dogs didn't object to. Their owners were there too, and I tried to use the dogs to make friends with the people, but, even though they were in my house, the people ignored me, corralled their dogs, and left without acknowledging me. I felt a sense of separateness and hurt feelings—but on behalf of my dogs, who need more canine company and were being deprived of it. At that point, through a window, I noticed that a huge, dense black band of stormcloud, moving in from behind me, was about to obscure the sunny day, which you could still see underneath the cloudbank, above the water. I grabbed my camera, but I couldn't open my eyes, so I couldn't see anything in the viewfinder. When I finally pried my eyes open I took several pictures, but no matter how I tried to adjust the exposure the camera overcompensated for the dark cloud and blew out the sunny highlights over the water in the distance. Giving up, I turned my attention to a view inside the house, which had turned into a dank, crumbling basement. In the composition there was a minor element, a small, spherical glass globule like a clear Christmas ornament or unfrosted lightbulb that I wanted to position against a contrasting blotch of sunlit concrete, to make it stand out, but each time I took the picture, the camera's algorithms, with flashing rectangles in the viewfinder and electronic beeps and blips, repositioned the objects in the viewfinder to its liking, spoiling what I was trying to achieve. I tried again and again, moved the camera this way and that, but the camera wouldn't allow me to control the geometry of the arrangement. I didn't know how it was rearranging reality, and worried that maybe I had gotten behind on developments in the tech.

A "frustration dream," then. (Dreams are often reducible to categories.) Is it a bad sign I'm dreaming of camera handling? I watched Anomalisa last night, which is a disorienting experience. Like I say, maybe I need a good long rest in the healthy air and healing waters at some sanitorium somewhere. Like in an old novel. Hello, Dr. Cheswick, Dr. Taber, Dr. Frederickson, Dr. Scanlon—the famous Dr. Scanlon—Mr. Harding, Dr. Bibbitt, Dr. Martini, and Dr. Seefelt.... Maybe it means I think cameras go too far in trying to be helpful? Maybe it just means I should spend more time practicing. Or reading the manual. I hope none of you are psychologists!  :-)

Mike

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(Not) everything must fade away

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John: "I resisted the impulse to begin deconstructing the dream, knowing that I could not outdo this assessment."

Larry Gebhardt: "Man I hate the 'frustration dreams,' but they are usually at least slightly interesting and the only ones I remember most nights. Some days I feel like I'm stuck in one of them when trying to get a digital camera to do something I know it can, but I just can't remember how to get to the right menu or combination of settings. I've been back shooting film lately and there's something so nice about the simplicity of mechanical cameras with black-and-white negative film. With the Hasselblad it had been several years since I used it, but with just a few options it all came back in an instant. Of course there were film cameras with a multitude of custom settings, AF quirks, etc, but I never really used them extensively. On the other side I've never really found a simple digital camera that I could be sure of the results after letting it sit for a while."

Ernest Zarate: "If you do go to that sanatorium, keep your eyes open for the lead nurse. Rumor has it she can do a real number on your head."

Mike replies: Whew, I'll say. And freedom just required stepping out the open window.

The Biggest Flaw I See in Pictures*

In one way it's curious that Henri Cartier-Bresson is known for "the decisive moment," and for things like Joel Meyerowitz's description of him darting and pirouetting through crowds like a hummingbird, wielding his Leica like a hibachi chef's knife, because it downplays the amount of time he must have spent sitting around waiting.

Because as I understand it, one of his picturetaking strategies was to find a nice setting, and then wait around until something happened in it. Who knows how long he had to wait, but he was a committed, uncompromising guy, so I imagine that sometimes it must have been pretty long. A guy on a bicycle comes along a cobblestone street at the bottom of some stairs; a little girl runs up a long set of steps between some whitewashed buildings; a fat man ambles across a kids' playground; a man hops over a puddle behind a railroad station.

One PJ I know, who is a nice guy and not otherwise prone to criticizing others quietly calls modern digital-tsunami photography "camera-pointing." I think I can be just a tad more subtle, in the hope of being helpful...what I think is that too many photographers take too many photos that are just settings.

The settings need a "punctum," in Barthian terminology.

And what is punctum? A brief definition: "The book [Barthes' Camera Lucida] develops the twin concepts of studium and punctum: studium denoting the cultural, linguistic, and political interpretation of a photograph, punctum denoting the wounding, personally touching detail which establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within it" (Wikipedia).

A visual example would make my point more clear:

This is a good example of a picture that is just a setting. I think it's a nice setting, but it's not quite a picture. It's empty of the needed "touching detail." To be a successful picture it needs a punctum. Two young lovers sitting cross-legged against the stone wall, heads bowed together; the hand and arm of a passerby who is disappearing beyond the left-hand side of the frame; a sheet of white paper blown on the wind against the dark stone; an airplane in the sky in the extreme upper-right-hand corner of the frame; something obtruding from a window.

It could be anything. But it needs something.

Many pictures without a particular accent (in which case we might call them "scenes") can work, but, still, most we see are just settings. I think it's the biggest flaw I see in all the photographs I look at out on the Web. Endless waves of pictures washing ashore in which the photographer has found yet another setting, but that is all.

If he had liked the "geometry" of this street corner in Albany well enough, I'm sure old Henri would have waited patiently for ten minutes or an hour for something to happen—something to create a moment, decisively.

But I'm lazy, so I snapped this exposure, settled for a setting, and moved on.

Mike

*But not yours. Please don't reflexively assume I am talking specifically about you, because I'm not!  :-)

[UPDATE Thursday: I'm seeing a lot of misconceptions in the comments, for which I always blame the OP—failure to communicate in a few cases is inevitable, but failure to communicate in many cases is usually the writer's fault. I probably shouldn't have brought up "the decisive moment" or studium/punctum and I probably shouldn't have used just one example. My problem is that I don't like to use real pictures found out on the wild Web when I need negative examples—I don't think that's fair to the people who took the pictures, to single them out and criticize them for what I see as failings.

However, rather than further overspecify my meaning—and that partly because I'm still way, way upside down on comment moderation and it's driving me crazy—I think it might work to say it more simply. What I mean is that taking a random, approximate, undemanding snap of something isn't enough, alone, to make it work as a photograph. There needs to be something in it; it needs to have something. Something that gives it a point, something that draws in the eye, something that you can connect with, something to make you pause and think, something about it that has some measure of beauty, something, anything, that helps an exposure rise above the common mass of everyday average sorta-almost-maybe exposures. Something that touches the heart or engages the brain or reflects the truth or comes together in a form that has particularity or peculiarity, or grace or order, or surrealism or oddity, or meaning, or some other uncommon quality or qualities. Something, whatever it is, to make a picture a hit, not a miss...to someone.

As the now-probably-dated** expression has it: ya feel me?

**Because by the time an expression filters down to me, it's probably not current any more.

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Harsh reality

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Dean Zepick: "David duChemin's classes on travel photography talk about this. Just sit for an hour in a location and wait."

Mike replies: The strategy has another advantage too, which is that when you stay stationary for a while, people stop paying attention to you. Try it sometime, if you haven't—when you first appear and take up your position, you'll draw attention, but after everyone nearby has satisfied themselves that you're just standing there, you become invisible. They won't notice when you occasionally raise your camera or look down into the viewing screen.

Andrew Molitor: "I am pretty sure that most of the suggestions you have for punctum would actually be characterized as just more studium by Barthes. In fact, as best I have been able to determine, punctum means the telling, wounding detail, that only a supremely sensitive soul, to be specific, Roland Barthes, can detect.

"I cannot tell if it is that my reading habits have changed lately, or if there has in fact been a massive spike if references to Barthes in the last year or two. He keeps popping up."

Mike replies: A punctum by definition has to be specific to each individual viewer, because it's defined by the effect it has on each of us. That's why Barthes uses Barthes, because he's the only frame of reference he has access to, by definition. And I can't judge whether any of my examples might work as a punctum, because I can't see them! I don't see them because they don't exist. If I haven't see it, how can I guess how seeing it would make me feel? I'm only giving some examples of details that might have been in the frame. But maybe something else would have happened, something I can't foresee or imagine.

For me—and therefore quite possibly not for you—the first picture in this post is an excellent example of punctum. The little kid climbing out of the window is a detail that actually has the ability to continue to be startling to me even long after I've already seen the picture. I just can't quite guess what was going on here or what was running through the photographer's head, whether the girls were posing innocently or knew about the kid in the window, whether the whole thing is to be taken at face value (i.e., the girls didn't know about the kid in the window and the photographer was paying so much attention to the girls that he/she simply didn't pay any attention to the kind climbing out of the window) or it was all a deliberate put-on.

I have to say I love that picture completely.

Joseph Brunjes: "This subject is beautifully discussed by Sam Abel in his National Geographic lecture about his book, The Life of a Photograph. It used to be on iTunes U but I just found it again on YouTube."

Dennis: "I suspect this is a can of worms that probably warrants a much bigger conversation. The punctums (puncti?) you listed are mostly people with the others freezing motion of something moving through the scene. So I think that will make some readers assume that you're trying to say those are the types of things an image must have. I can think of plenty of photos that lack a decisive moment, but still include a personally touching detail. Like a tricycle left on the sidewalk in front of a house (instead of just a house). Meaningful words on a sign in front of a church or diner. Even a whimsical clash (or coincidental match) of colors. There's plenty that can be done to turn a setting into a scene."

Mike replies: Exactly so. That falls under "the perils of using only one example."

JOHN GILLOOLY: "Upon an additional reading of this post, I think it might explain a bit more. It seems that most people are able to find stadium and punctum in their own photographs—almost every one of their own photographs. In the commercial setting, this has taken a bite out of some less critical areas of the business. At most institutions, there is somebody that 'loves taking pictures' and that person is quite enthusiastic to offer their photography skills for free. While the photography may be quite bad objectively, they see both studium and punctum in their images. I think this is also why it tends to be very difficult to successfully edit your own work. It's not easy to separate your experience with the photograph enough to determine whether it objectively possesses these qualities. Or shall I say, whether others are likely to find those same qualities in the image."

David Comdico: "As a sturdy and simple heuristic, I think the setting/punctum rule elaborated here is useful. For example, when wading through the vast number of images we are inundated with it seems to me a reliable reference point.

"When faced with more sophisticated work and deeper analysis, obviously things get more complicated. For starters, take the texts associated with these ideas: Cartier-Bresson's essay in The Decisive Moment and Barthes' Camera Lucida: both have had a monumental impact on photography—nd, being subtle arguments, are (and have been) easily misread.

To give two brief examples: Cartier-Bresson warns against the simple staging of photos: 'The elements which, together, can strike sparks from a subject, are often scattered—either in terms of space or time—and bringing them together by force is "stage management," and, I feel, contrived...the world is movement, and you cannot be stationary in your attitude toward something that is moving. Sometimes you light upon the picture in seconds; it might also require hours or days. But there is no standard plan, no pattern from which to work.'

"In Camera Lucida Barthes states, 'However lightning-like it may be, the punctum has, more or less potentially, a power of expansion. This power is often metonymic.' And then goes on to associate (and expand upon) a dirt road in a Kertesz photo with that of a personal experience in Hungary and Romania. That is, the subjective nature of the punctum will tend to erase the image itself and expand beyond it through associative substitution.

"This can, obviously, go on at length (there is much more that can be said about the demonic properties of metonymy). But nevertheless the Pareto Principle still applies."

[Heuristic: "Involving or serving as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving by experimental and especially trial-and-error methods." (Merriam-Webster). Metonymy: "A figure of speech that replaces the name of a thing with the name of something else with which it is closely associated" (Literary Devices.net). For example, "suit" for "businessman." Pareto Principle: Also called the 80/20 principle, that " for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes" (Wikipedia). —Ed.

Mike's only comment to David: in my heuristics, I like simple and sturdy!  :-) ]

Hans Muus: "What a coincidence: my most recent photo, shot January 3, 2019, made me think about Roland Barthes' 'punctum' just a few days ago. At the end of a very grey and dark day suddenly a late sun shone almost horizontally from under the cloudy canopy and lit these houses with a very distinct triangular shape of light. This shape, together with the old fashioned sun screen in the dark at street level and the open dormer windows on top welcoming the sun, drew my attention. I focused and framed the picture. I didn't wait for anything else, just made a bit of haste because I couldn't see how long the sun would last. And then, with my eye glued to the viewfinder and about to press the release button, a young woman's head appeared, as it were inviting the sun much more strongly than the open windows would ever be able to do on their own. You could say it was she who pressed the button and made the photo.

"I didn't take another one, this was it. And I will never forget the feeling I got, of revelation almost, when her head appeared in the viewfinder."

Mike replies: That's a picture.

Thanks for the nice example. And since we're already talking about Cartier-Bresson, he described a similar feeling when the fat man slouched across the courtyard where the kids were playing. I wish I could find it—where he talks about it, I mean—but I can't.

Manuel (partial comment): "The 'decisive moment' is often misinterpreted as the instant something happens before the camera and must be shot immediately, or will be lost forever. While this take is true to some extent, it's a rather superficial one. As Cartier-Bresson himself explained in at least one interview I read, the decisive moment is when everything inside the viewfinder lines falls into place, thus creating a meaningful and interesting composition. You hit bull's eye when you mentioned the bicycle picture: it was when the rider moved across that particular point—between the handrails, which drive the eye to the bicycle—that the scene became a meaningful photographic composition; that was the decisive moment."

[Below is the picture we're talking about, and we're just using it as an example, not holding it up as any great paragon of perfection. Henri is a great photographer, but no photographer is a god. —Ed.]

Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Earthrise and Merry Christmas!

Fifty years ago today—50 years ago this morning, at a few minutes after 10:30 Central U.S. time—a former USAF fighter pilot named William A. (Bill) Anders, who is now 85 years old and lives in Anacortes, in the State of Washington on the West coast, took one of the indisputably great photographs of the 20th century.

Even if you've seen this before, watch and listen as it happens—

Bill Anders was later the Chairman and CEO of General Dynamics, and started a Foundation to support educational and environmental issues. Oh, and do you happen to remember that scene in the movie Top Gun where the pilot played by Tom Cruise encounters a Russian plane and gives the pilot the finger? The pilot who did that in real life was none other than the guy who took "Earthrise," Bill Anders.

I've seen this clip before but it's inherently moving. Each time I see it I enjoy it. And if that's not just the quintessential "hurry up and get the shot" moment, I don't know what is, unless it was Ansel frantically setting up by the roadside near Hernandez. (First, get the shot.)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you! From here in the Finger Lakes of Upstate New York to wherever in the world you are.

I'll be back after Christmas. We have a backlog of topics to cover. May great blessings be yours.

Mike
(Thanks to Gary Morris via Jack McD., and PDLanum)

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Tim S: "Thanks! Great background info on one of my favorite images. It has been a background on my phone and computers for years. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to TOP!"

Yoram Nevo: "And he said: 'Oh my God, look at that picture over there.' A photographer state of mind. Merry Christmas Mike, from the sunny winter of Israel. Best wishes for 2019, your regular—Yoram Nevo."

Rod S.: "Thank you for the link. The reconstruction is beautiful and adds significantly to our collective understanding and appreciation of the Earthrise photograph. I recall vividly watching as a 12-year-old the reading of Genesis 1 during the live television broadcast by the crew of Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve 1968. During the reading, the television image was of the cratered lunar surface passing beneath. The clear implication to me was that we were, at that moment, re-living how God might once have gazed down upon the early Earth. It was electrifying."

Mike replies: It was the most-watch TV program ever, at the time. Here's the address from the crew:

William Anders: "We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

James Lovell:

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Frank Borman:

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called the Seas: and God saw that it was good.

"And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas—and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth."

Corn (and Kyle Batson's Roof With a View)

A couple of days ago I mentioned that it's tougher to see horizons around here at the end of Summer, before the corn is harvested. This year it's been especially noticeable, because we had a longish dry spell and then a week of rain, so the corn seemed to spring out of the ground all at once; first it didn't seem to be there, and now a week or three later it seems to crowd the view from every angle.

In response, David Brown wrote, "Two possible solutions to your corn problem: 1.) A car-top platform with a ladder, like the one Ansel Adams used. 2.) A step-ladder on roof racks on your car. Take it off the racks and use it on the ground. I'm not suggesting you set it up on top of the car." Bill Mitchell added, "Ansel Adams's greatest contribution to photography may have been the car platform (not the Zone System)."

I knew there a great opportunity to mention Kyle Batson was going to come around sooner or later! I love it when this happens.

I will not make any puns on the word 'corny'
But back to corn. First of all, I had been drifting through life in a state of ignorance, imagining that corn was getting taller because of genetic engineering. That might be true, or it might not, but it turns out that the world record for a cornstalk is 30 feet. Some kinds of corn are taller than others. Anyway, it seems to me that "normal" corn when I was growing up in the Midwest was 6–8 feet tall, and that more lately, around here, I've been seeing corn that's 8–12 feet tall. I guess all I can say with certainty is that a wall of 12-foot-high corn at the edge of the roadway makes a pretty formidable "fence" blocking the view. Especially when, as often seems to be the case, the road has a ditch beside it and the field on the other side of the ditch is elevated a little bit above the level of the road to begin with...as usually happens on one side of the road or the other when the road runs across a gentle hillside.

David and Bill are perfectly correct that being able to get up on top of your vehicle is a big advantage in getting a better view. Not disputing that and not criticizing their solution. Actually, in '87 when I did my one and only view camera project, I would stand on the roof of my little Mazda 323 sedan, as the "bumples" on the roof when I sold the car gave witness.

But there's a little photo-existential problem here, one that "crops up" (er, sorry) from time to time: it's the tendency we all (I mean all us photo enthusiasts) have of assuming problems are technical when in fact they're visual. Because, yes, a telescoping monopod, a stepladder, and a roof platform are all valuable for seeing over the top of the corn: but how do you know when there's a view to be seen above the corn when you can't see the view because of the corn? That is, how do you know where to stop and get up on the roof, or deploy the stepladder? The point is that you can't see the horizon. So you don't know where a good view might be because you can't see it.

Of course a lot of times you can see a little bit of it, or you can see enough to make an educated guess. But I'd say that that's the greater part of the corn problem.

You only live once
But on to Kyle. I usually try to mention when I meet readers, and I neglected to do so when Kyle came by because he wanted to clean up his website before I linked to it, and the mention got put on the back burner, which is a perilous place for anything to be where Yr. Hmbl. Ed. is concerned. Kyle and I met in Corning for lunch one day. He had quit his job, sold his house, and customized a Sprinter van into a camper! It's now his domicile. When we met he had just embarked on a circuit of the country in the van. He told me he just wanted to make sure he had some adventures as his life passed by, or words to that effect.

Kyle Batson at home

And apropos of the current topic, check this out:

Now there's a roof with a view. That'll let you see beyond the corn.

If you'd like to follow Kyle or see more of his adventure, here are his links:

http://www.kylebatsonphoto.com

http://www.desirepath.life

http://www.instagram.com/kylebatsonphoto

http://www.instagram.com/desirepathlife

Mike
(Thanks to David, Bill, and Kyle)

UPDATE: Kyle Batson writes: Hey, Mike! It was so good to be able to meet someone whose writing I admire so much. I am currently in Montana just having passed through Yellowstone. My roof perch came in handy recently to photograph some elk by the edge of the road. It’s a nice place to be, especially to gaze up at the Milky Way in the middle of a forest. I hope to meet again, and if anyone sees me driving around their neck of the woods, be sure to say hello!

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Moose: "We too travel in a converted Sprinter van, but converted at much less effort on my part by the folks at Pleasure-Way in Saskatoon. "What I want to know is how he got up on the roof. There are ladders that attach to rear doors, and which I've considered, but I don't see one on his van."

Mike replies: Here's a viewpoint that shows the ladder. But Moose, do note John's comment below. Let's be careful up there!

John Camp: "As a Midwesterner inflicted with corn and low horizons, I once had a roof rack on an SUV paired with a very compact folding stepladder that I carried in the back, with pieces of plywood that I put in the roof rack to stand on. One thing bothered me, and makes me a little queasy when I see pictures like that of Kyle standing on his Sprinter—the possibility of becoming so involved with the photo-making that you fall off backwards. I had less room on my SUV rack than Kyle has, but the problem is more one of inattention to the danger than it is of room. And if you fall off backwards, you'll most likely land on your head or neck...I solved some of the problem by buying sailing safety cables that allowed me to snap into the roof rack. I couldn't fall off, but I couldn't move much, either. In any case, roof-top photo-making has to be done with some care."

Edward Taylor: "It would appear that Kyle is quite good as a photographer, judging from the links to his site that you provided. Thank you."

Stan B.: "That van is one sweet setup—perfect size!"

Your Photo Assignment for Today

I've been spending an embarrassing amount of time on dating sites lately, because I am a.) lonely and b.) evidently unteachable via experience*. I have learned a few things, such as, things are bad for a lot of people in the Philippines.

One of my standard jokes is that I knew I was getting old when I would see a pretty young woman walking a dog and I'd find myself admiring the dog. Well, one of the ways I know I'm getting even older is that I look at profiles on dating sites and I either want to critique the person's photos, give them tips on how to do better, or offer to come do their photos for them. (This last must sound creepy, because no one's ever taken me up on it. Their loss, however, because, seriously, I would do a splendid job and I'd work for nothing. Hmm, even that sounded creepy.)

I'm sorely tempted to show some of the worst examples, but I do try hard not to show negative examples on TOP, out of respect for either the photographer or the subject or both.

One young lady made a complete hash of a selfie in a mirror. The mirror only occupied about half the frame; the phone she was holding up was blocking half her face; she was looking at the phone screen rather than at the reflection of the lens in the mirror; and everything that was reflected in the mirror was out of focus.

She was cute (what little I could see of her), but my old-guy gene kicked in and I couldn't help myself: I wrote her a note offering some tips for how to do better selfies-in-the-mirror.

Strange to say, I have not heard back from that particular woman. There's a surprise.

But then I thought, hmm, wonder how hard it actually is?

So I self-assigned myself. (Was that re-redundant?) Here's my best attempt:

But I really had to work at this. On several attempts the lighting was atrocious; a couple of other times the excessive detail of the pitiless digital sensor and lens made me look like I was desperately in need of botox, when in actuality I am only mildly in need of botox; and, of course, the client here is recalcitrant and cantankerous and has an unrealistic self-image. (As I always say, I'm 35 from inside here.) And you really can't see the screen with the phone held out of the shot. It's pretty tough getting everything to line up.

And I know I look grim, but the ones in which I attempted to smile made me look like Peter Lorre in M:

But really. If you want a tricky little challenge this week, try doing a halfway decent self-portrait in a mirror with a phone, without showing the phone in the photo. Don't expect to knock it right out, either. It looks like a lot of non-photographer types on dating sites should be able to do better than they do, but it's not as easy as it looks.

The best way to get great portraits of yourself is still to hire a good photographer! You wouldn't sell your house without a realtor, would you?

Mike

P.S. This really is the last phone-photo post for a while—I got a notification from B&H Photo that the Sony A7III has shipped and is en route.

* Actually I was just being funny with "b."—in fact I've met several truly fine people on dating sites, who I liked a great deal even if we didn't have that essential "spark." Statistically the best way to meet a future partner is through a friend, by far, but eHarmony says that "20% of those in current, committed relationships began online and 7% of marriages in 2015 were between couples that met on a dating website."

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Larry Gebhardt: "Mike, I'd try this experiment but my wife would probably catch me and wonder what the heck I was doing. Then I'd probably need to really be able take a good selfie for the dating sites."

Jim Hamstra: "Actually you know you're old when you see a pretty woman walking down the street and you think 'I bet her mom is hot.'"

Euan Forrester: "When I was Internet dating, I didn't have a good horizontal 'cover' photo and since I mentioned in my profile I was into photography I thought I'd better take a nice one. I noticed lots of peoples' cover photos were of themselves in front of pretty backdrops, so I one evening I drove up a mountain road where I knew there was an overlook that I thought would be quiet. I got there a bit late, and it was darker than I hoped, so I set up an umbrella on a light stand, gelled my flash, and put the camera on a tripod with a radio trigger. Just as I finished getting set up, the local ski hill above my overlook closed and car after car started streaming down the hill right past my location. Then someone got their car stuck right beside me and a giant crew showed up to try and get them out. All the while I'm blasting away with my ridiculous 'ultimate selfie' setup. It took me almost 300 frames to get something I didn't hate, all while trying to not look too embarrassed in my photos, and then I sheepishly packed up my gear and high-tailed it down the mountain.

"I ended up meeting my now live-in partner through the site with that as my cover photo. I eventually told her the story, feeling very proud that I persevered through my embarrassment and had managed to find someone as wonderful as her. She replied that she didn't actually like the photo very much."

David Maxwell: "I suppose that as someone who primarily enjoys writing poetry, songs, and fiction, I ought to try to avoid writing comments on blog posts! Seriously though, I have lost track of the number of times over the years that I have started writing comments on your posts only to delete and walk away. I'm not sure what your ultimate goal is with the online dating, but I met my wife of almost 3.5 years online (she gave birth to our first child last Monday). I used OkCupid, a free site with a somewhat sleazy reputation. It was pretty interesting to say the least, and I encountered a bit of wackiness, but I met some really cool women, and, as I mentioned above, married one of them."

JG: "I always promised the women I dated that, if nothing else, when they eventually broke up with me—which they invariably did—they would have some great photos of themselves to post online when they go looking for their next boyfriend. And sure enough, whenever I would stumble upon one of their dating profiles afterward, many of the photos had indeed been taken by me. Sometimes many years earlier, but that was the next boyfriend's problem, not mine...."

Mike replies: I figured I'd better feature this one because we might never get another from you.  :-)

Stephanie Luke: "Nicely lit and exposed, goes without saying—although I just did. But I am intimidated by that guy and his unwavering stare. Also, what is in your hand, just out of the picture? An axe, perhaps, to go with the outdoorsy, he-man outfit? (Yes, I know it's a camera, but still...). I bet you have a nice smile, and from this female's point of view, it would be more inviting to see it!"

Mike replies: Thanks for the input Stephanie...just FYI, this is the mirror-selfie I actually use on the dating sites:

Yup, complete with, um, toilet. Oh well.That's where the mirror is.

Labeled with the date so people know it's recent. It's actually a more characteristic look for me, too, as I am usually smiling like a happy dog. But one very intelligent woman from around here complained that she hated selfies with the phone in the picture. "They're the worst," was her verdict.

Can't please all the people all the time...and most of those people are looking at my profile. Ba-dum-PAH.

(Another Mitch Hedberg joke, modified.)

Still Life: Found vs. Constructed

Of the many, many identifiable genres of photography (I'm sure there are more than you think, and the work of some people is beyond category), the ones that most naturally appeal to me are portraiture, candids and "environmental portraiture" (meaning people in their surroundings), and still life.

Regarding the last, there are two basic kinds—constructed and found. Constructed still life ranges all the way from creating amazing ephemeral artwork just for the camera, to the happy activity of arranging objects to be photographed...a great many people get huge pleasure from this, and many people are amazingly good at it. Anything that empowers their practice is something I'm in favor of.

But what I really like is "found" still life...happening upon objects and their settings in the course of ordinary life and stopping to make a careful photograph of them, perhaps rearranging them somewhat but sometimes not. I have on my wall in the kitchen a giant print of an apple that Paul Butzi made for me. It gets a lot of comments, almost all positive, but a professional once criticized it because the background, he said, isn't perfect. True, but it happened to be a just-washed apple I saw sitting on an old army jacket in a kitchen, and I photographed it just as it was. No perfecting involved. In fact, no anything involved, except looking carefully and using the right focus and aperture.

I've never done enough still-life photography to make anything of it...no special concerns have ever emerged, no personal style. But I love it and always have. It was one of the first things I explored when I got the first camera I ever bought for myself.

If you do still life, do you prefer constructed or found?

And, do you have a go-to lens for it or do you just use whatever you have on the camera? I tend to do the latter.

Mike

P.S. To add pictures to the comments, the original must have a URL and be no more than 800 pixels wide, saved in sRGB. Then use the following code in the comment box to load the image:

If and when I find the picture I wanted to use as an illustration to this post, I'll add it.

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David Francis: "Now that I'm in my mid-seventies, I quite like the idea of subjects that don't move and don't object to being photographed, Apart from that, I like the opportunity that still life photography provides for developing my lighting skills. Most of my subjects are of the found variety—things that are interesting as a whole or that have interesting visual details. But there is almost always an element of construction in these photographs as well, largely in terms of selecting the background, setting up the object, and arranging the lighting. As for equipment, I often use my Nikon D7000 with a Tokina 100mm macro lens, but I have also used my Panasonic GX7 with a 20mm lens, and a Canon G10 in macro mode. All great fun, and every now and then you get some really interesting results."

Mike adds: David sent me a beautiful "found" still life as a printed card (along with a donation to TOP, for which many thanks, David), and it's a beautiful little print. I've left it out where I can see it since it arrived.

Dennis (partial comment): "As with other subject matter, the answer to this is that what I like to look at and what I like to do aren't necessarily the same."

Ken James: "I think that still lifes [the correct plural BTW —Mike the Ed.] are my favorite also. Just this morning walking the dogs my friend and I were talking about this very thing, even about found and constructed. I have always really been a studio photographer, so I tend to constructed, but I am working on found. My current undertaking is to find some way to make my constructed more creative and appealing. I like to do simple things, but they are of limited appeal, meaning only to me. For me, a very timely post. Thanks. You are working that wrist quite a bit seems to me." [And paying for it —M.]

The Forces of the Fall

The lower branches of the fallen oak. Some of the
broken sections are twelve inches in diameter.

I'm still experiencing significant aftereffects of the storm—power was off for 30 hours and it's been restored, but unfortunately several circuits in my house are dead, including my entire office (and that whole end of the downstairs). I assume this has something to do with the handoff between the backup generator and the power from NYSEG (pronounced "nice egg," our local power utility), but I haven't yet been able to get through to anybody who can help. 

So I'm breaking my rules and writing from the book computer, upstairs. Hopefully just for today!

They had a lot of snow in Britain and Ireland too, I hear.

Out and about
Yesterday and the day before were days to be prized here—dramatically gorgeous—and I did what was, for me, a lot of shooting. I went out several times.

Two things I noticed to mention. For one, I actually filled up a whole card. "Ran out of film."

Many of you probably do this regularly, and have long ago worked out protocols for making sure you have extra cards in reserve and handy. But I habitually shoot sparingly, normally of static subjects, so I ordinarily spend a lot more time thinking and looking than I do actually shooting, and it's been so long since I've filled up a whole card that I can't even remember the last time. So on my third jaunt out of the house...whoops. No more card space. It's also been a long time since I left the house with anything more than one clean card in the camera—I just so seldom need it. 

I think this was because, much to my surprise, I found myself shooting action. I don't usually do much of that. I'm guessing those of you who shoot action are used to shooting a lot of exposures. Or at least a lot more than I usually do. 

Something and something else
And that brings me to my second observation, which is that whenever I go out meaning to shoot something, I almost always end up shooting something else. I first learned this when I spent a year shooting with a view camera long ago (I'm not naturally a large format guy, as I wrote about years ago). Frustrated with my tendency to shoot carefully pictorial compositions, once I just swung the camera around and took a picture of what was behind me. Then I started doing that whenever I set up the camera, and found that the "behind my back" picture was better about one out of five times.

This teaches an important lesson, at least for me, which is that whenever you go out to shoot, you can find something. It just might not be what you think it's going to be. It certainly wasn't for me yesterday. (More about that later.)

That thought was expressed to me by the great Ralph Gibson when I interviewed him many years ago. Paraphrasing, he told me something like this: I've been doing this for so long, and I'm good enough at it, that whenever I head out with the camera I know I'll come back with something.

Or actually, it teaches two important lessons: the second is that while you're shooting one thing, remember to stay alert and alive to every other possibility, everything else around you. Even when you know where the pictures are you never know where the pictures are.

Documenting is different
Anyway: fun day, out an about with the X-T2. Shooting is fun and it cures all the other ills associated with the hobby of photography. 

I did some more documenting of my downed tree, too, which is an ~80-foot oak (I paced it off), about three or four feet in diameter at the base. It came up by the roots because the ground is so soft now. It was a violent event: the fall snapped many living branches, some of them eight or ten inches in diameter, raggedly in half; the corpse of the tree in the yard is a jumble of broken wood and tells a vivid tale of the forces of the fall.

I'll have some more pictures of that, too, when I get back up to speed. Documenting the felled tree, knowing it won't be there long, reminded me of another of my beliefs, which is that shooting in a documentary mode—just for information, to show the reality of a scene to someone else in a photograph—is to us photographers like scales and finger exercises are to a pianist. It keeps you in practice and cleans up your mind, clearing away all your arty and pictorial and compositional quirks and pretensions. We should all do that every now and then just to keep us healthy, even if only as an exercise. (As I think I once said, photography isn't about photography, it's about the world.)

I don't have my usual footer macro up here to add to the bottom of this post, so I'll just sign off and leave it at that. More anon. March has been quite the month so far.

Mike

[UPDATE: Got the power to the office restored about 1:30 thanks to troubleshooting help from the generator people. All is well. —MJ]

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Bryce Lee: "Running out of space on an SD card is interesting. Normally those of us who were raised in the era of 20- (later 24-) and 36-exposure rolls of film learned early on to be small 'c' conservative when deciding upon exactly what we want to photograph. I still function in film mode when out doing my photography, regardless of the capacity of the inserted SD card. An old habit difficult to break."

Stan B.: "'I don't care so much anymore about "good photography." I am gathering evidence for history.' —Gilles Peress."

Joseph Reid: "One of the best yard-care/exercise experiences I had while owning a house in Upstate NY was having a sick tree felled professionally and the trunk cut into two or three long sections. Then I took over and made firewood out of them using wedges, sledgehammer and axe. I could only do a bit at a time and it took several weekends. But it was great, exhausting stress relief. Splitting those trunk sections was a primal experience."

Joe: "Re 'Even when you know where the pictures are you never know where the pictures are.' Oh my, yes. So true. And that principle brought me to a habit that I've developed: When I'm shooting a subject, of course I always reach a point where I'm finished. I've covered all the angles, I know I've got the good shot in the camera, I've done what I came for. I'm tired, it's in the can, and I'm eager to go home and dump the images onto the computer. But for the past few years I've made it a habit to stop and take a one-minute break to walk through the location, looking up and down and behind and inside, thinking: what else is here? What did I miss? Isn't there one more shot I can take home? I swear, 50% of the time I'll frame a shot that hadn't occurred to me before, and 50% of those times my favorite shot will come from that last idea."

Mike replies: That comment says the same thing my post did but much better. Lovely.

Ann: "About 20 years ago, we lost a 30-foot oak. No storm, no soft ground. I was just sitting at home reading a magazine one night, and it fell over with a huge crash. Rotten at the base of the trunk. The interesting part was that we had just the week before finished building a six-foot-tall cedar fence. The tree fell on a section of that beautiful, sturdy, brand new fence. The posts on either side of where the tree fell were intact and standing up straight. The section that the tree hit, however...shattered. Not a single piece of wood left in between those fence posts that was longer than six inches. That falling tree was a powerful force."

Controlling Lighting

There are two primary reasons to try all different kinds of photography.

One is to improve your chops.

The other is to find out what each kind of photography is like to do and whether it's for you.

When I took studio lighting in school (from a man who would later be a good friend and who is also my son's grandfather), I wasn't very interested in it. There were several reasons for this. One is that I don't like photographing what I can't see. I disliked all my experiments with flash for this reason. Somewhere, I have a set of pairs of pictures I used as teaching tools, of different scenes or subjects, identical except that one was taken with on-camera flash and the other with available light. I didn't like taking pictures with flash, for the simple reason that I didn't know what the result was going to look like.

The other reason is that control doesn't appeal to me. The opposite—serendipity—appeals to me much more. I want to explore with a camera and be surprised by what I find—adapt on the fly to what I see.

Lots of people, however, love the control aspect of photography. There's nothing wrong with that if it appeals to you.

I mentioned recently that I once was a full-time assistant for a studio pro for six months. I learned a lot in that time. My boss was a total control freak when it came to his pictures, and for very good reason—his sets and models cost money, and hence, unpleasant surprises or technical breakdowns or delays cost money.

One little story about him (I won't name him—he was so difficult to work for that one of his former assistants had T-shirts made for all the other assistants in town that said "I Survived ____ ____.") He once had to shoot a brochure for a travel company. One of the pictures he wanted to take was an overhead view of a man and a woman in bathing suits floating on air rafts in a swimming pool. The would be facing opposite ways, holding hands in the middle, and each would be holding a drink in the other hand. He rented a scaffold, hired the models, devised his lighting scheme, found a swimming pool painted the right color of blue, etc.

To assure himself he could get the brilliant effect of sunlight on water, he rented an indoor pool and lit it with artificial light. But there was a problem—the lights couldn't reach the bottom of the pool. He threw all the watt-seconds he could at it, but the light couldn't penetrate the water with sufficient intensity. So he had to switch to an outdoor pool. But it drove him up the wall that his shoot was dependent on sunlight. Never mind the fact that it had been sunny for a month and there was nothing but sun in the forecast—he just hated having to rely on God rather than Speedotron for the lighting for his shot. Everything went fine, the day of the shoot was sunny, and he got the shot. But he complained for a long time afterwards about not having been in control.

There's nothing wrong with having ironfisted control of every aspect of the shots you want to make, including your lighting. I will freely admit that my long-ago boss, the studio photographer control freak, probably made more money from sales of photographs in one year than I have made in my entire career. His was a true Mom-and-Pop business—he did the shooting and oversaw the technical stuff, and his wife did the books and ran the business side of things. They had a 50-foot sailboat, if that's any indication of their success.

As for me...well, one of my favorite lighting situations was shooting a portrait of a friend. There was a north-facing window in the attic of a garage at my grandparents' summer cottage. There were old sheets covering disused furniture in the attic and I used one of them as a reflector. It was hot as hell and I wanted her to wear a particular sweater I thought she looked great in because its green-gray color matched her green-gray eyes. She did, but the "sweater" in this case was literal—it made her sweat! Windowlight on one side, a large sheet hung on the other side, her tanned skin glistening, and the dark rafters of the garage making the background all but black—the light was utterly gorgeous. But it was all completely improvised as I went along.

We all need to know what our own character and personality is. And it's best to go ahead and go with that.

Anyway, all I wanted to say today is that the best way to play around with lighting on a small scale are probably portraits, still life (that's the plural of "a still life"), or macro shots. Start by finding examples you might want to emulate.

The smaller the subject, the less you need a studio, or an improvised studio space, to set up your lighting in.

Triptych by Sean Tucker. Rembrandt lighting with a single Godox AD200.

If you didn't see the video Wolfgang Lonien linked the other day, you should watch it. It's good. The photographer's name is Sean Tucker. I really like the work, the lighting, the planning, the concept and all, but those aren't even the only great things about the video; Sean's seriousness and his work board are both inspiring examples to follow. Well worth the time it takes to watch—it has stuck in my mind for two days now.

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Bill C: "An engaging post. I began my journey into photography with a landscape and urbex focus, and later (after I had kids) evolved into shooting events, with a particular interest and investment in learning how to shoot ballet and dance. So working with the available light has been the norm. However, I've more recently been challenged to shoot studio type work, like promotional work and headshots, that require using studio lighting. I've enjoyed the learning process, even if it is a bit frustrating at times.

"Having control over light means having the responsibility of control over the light, and that definitely adds to the workload. The additional equipment and technique required is also a steep learning curve. But it is very satisfying on those occasions where you manage to capture it! It definitely gives me significant appreciation for the experience and talent of true professional photographers. Finally, I have to say that the Sean Tucker video is one of the absolute best I've seen on YouTube. It is honest, informative, and inspirational on many levels. Thank you so much for passing it along to your readers!"

Robert Fogt: "Having worked for thirty years as a museum photographer, I have to say that lighting—without a doubt—was perhaps the most challenging and FUN part of the entire experience. My 'small parts' bag held, among many other widgets, wire plate stands and various little bits of reflective materials, and small concave cosmetics mirrors to position behind the subjects for edge light. I'd go so far as to compare it, Mike, to playing pool! After digital became the new Polaroid and offered all that detailed and immediate feedback, I would occasionally have to remind myself that it was time to just take the picture and move on to the next. You could just get sucked down the lighting rabbit hole! Fun, indeed."

Roy J Feldman: "Your first point and second don't really match up. You don't like flash because you don't know the outcome; you don't like total control. Well which is it?"

Animesh Ray: "On the one hand, you don't like to take photographs with flash because you like to see what is being photographed, on the other you like surprises. I find flash photography in near darkness, especially on the streets, is full of surprises. What you are after, I think, is control but not too much and surprises but not too much. (Smiley face!)"

Brian Taylor: "Sean Tucker's impressive video reminded me how much richer portraits can become when they emerge out of real relationship. As you probably know, the question of absent fathers, and mentoring, has surfaced regularly in discussions of men and masculinity. With good reason I think. Like many men whose fathers had been traumatised during the second world war, my younger self was unable to find, or accept, the kinds of relationship Sean evidently had with his portrait subjects, so I was pleased to see the subject being explored photographically. I was also pleased to hear Sean's cautions and reservations about street photography (in another of his videos), though much more could be said about that ethically complicated genre."

Warren Jones: "Ha! My father in law loves doing studio work with lights. He has seemingly every kind of light, light stand and light modifier imaginable. He always talks about getting the light just right. Yep you guessed it...he is a control freak!"

Michael: "Thanks for that, Mike. All of Sean Tucker's videos on YouTube are worth watching. He is serious in a way that invites us all to be serious with him, and to understand that photography is like life: it's all there, to learn, to suffer, to enjoy, and even sometimes to be enlightened."