The Online Photographer

The Sharp Edge

I'm going to be ready for spring. In previous springtimes, I spent most of my time driving around thinking, if I had a camera, and I were photographing, this would be perfect light and a great opportunity. (In fact if I were feeling cynical, which I'm not right now, I might say that's the state in which I have spent my life and in which I have mostly experienced the world.) But this spring, I'm going to be ready. I have my camera and its parameters in place; I've had some practice processing the files; I have an entire protocol worked out, from the kit I carry, to ingestion, to soft display of the results...so bring on the good light. I'm ready this time.

The thing is, though, I have to keep shooting now. Now. Because I need to keep in practice. Shooting with a camera is like shooting pool...every day you have to get over the initial rust and get back into the flow. Real pool players, if they haven't been shooting much, work intensively for some number of days—like, ten to fourteen hours at the table—because that's what it takes to get back "in stroke." Pool skills aren't just something you have and carry around with you and can deploy right away, cold, whenever the spirit moves you. It takes constant honing of the knife edge. Same thing with most skills that have a physical component. Most instrumentalists have to practice every day. Even vocalists. Athletes have to stay in shape by regulating their training. They can't just knock off for weeks and expect to stay right where they were.

Same thing with photographing. Most good shooters shoot every day. And even shooting every day, it takes a while to get back into it. And you still have good days and bad days. If you want everything you do to be natural and easy, you've got to keep your edge. I've heard plenty of stories of great photographers going out and shooting nothing for a while just to keep the hand and eye sharp. It's easy and cheap now, but you've still got to do it.

When I was learning zone focusing by feel with the Leica, I made it a habit to get the camera out every night and practice with it for ten minutes. Look at an object somewhere in the room, focus on it by feel, check for accuracy, repeat. It's not a bad idea with any camera. Take it out, pick out something to photograph, prepare to shoot whatever you're looking at...see how long it takes you to get ready to shoot. What are the sticking points that are slowing you down? Work on those things. If you have a spouse, go for a walk and ask your spouse to point to subjects. "That pine tree, vertical. That church over there, horizontal. Those flowers. That doorway, vertical." Whatever they call out, take a picture of it as quickly as you can—just for practice getting the camera around, holding it correctly, setting it, setting the lens, focusing, getting all ready to hit the shutter. Then put it back over your shoulder or back in the bag and do it over again.

Stay in practice! Whether with actual shooting or with exercises and drills. Shooting is a skill. Camera handling is a skill. They're not something that comes in the box. Touch the camera every day.

I'm going to be ready for spring.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Cliff McMann: "Just a thought but combine the two. Back when I was at NOVA taking photography classes, Sally Mann came and showed us her work organized by project. Some famous and published at the time like pictures of the kids. Some more personal such as her father after his passing, at rest in her home before his remains final disposition. Her regular pictures of her pregnancy as it progressed. The project that captured the struggling photographer in me was a series of still lifes. Objects partially submerged in water. It was beautiful subtle work, she was generous enough to share a lot of near misses, along with a few that she was happy with. I was inspired and spent a lot of time shooting really bad still lifes between my scattered opportunities to shoot natural light posed portraits (my true love in this hobby.) Every one of those still lifes was awful. But in retrospect made me better. A lot of them were shot in our basement, pictures of pool balls on a terrible cheap Sears pool table. I owe a lot of my 30+ year love affair with this craft to an hour or two of Sally’s unflinching willingness to share her process, and to a cheap MDF Sears and Roebucks pool table. I guess I’m thinking: practice on what’s close, especially if it’s something you love. There’s no obligation to share, but even your misses may have value to someone. Her willingness and honesty certainly affected me. Yours has too. Thanks to both of you."

Mike replies: I used to teach at NOVA! And I know Sally, and have experienced a few of her demonstrations of process. She should make YouTube tutorials....

Stan B.: "Robert Frank was supposedly the Steph Curry of camera handlers, could get the shot from whatever angle—and look good doing it!"

Mike replies: When I interviewed Ralph Gibson he told me some great stories about Robert's camera-handling skills. The best one: he told Ralph he was going to show him a trick, took Ralph's Leica, pre-focused it, set the timer, and carefully tossed it up in the air. Ralph swore he had a contact sheet with a focused picture of himself and Robert standing on the ground looking up.

Chris Kern: "Most good shooters shoot every day. And even shooting every day, it takes a while to get back into it....

"If you want everything you do to be natural and easy, you've got to keep your edge. I don’t think you actually need a camera to 'keep your edge' as a photographer. You can practice photography virtually by keeping your eyes open and visualizing images without making them. In fact, there may be some advantage to employing that approach to maintain or improve your photographic skills because thinking about the pictures you might shoot frees you from the mechanical distraction of operating the camera. The value of imagining a picture ('imagination' and 'image' are cognates, after all) shouldn’t be underestimated."

Olybacker: "You are quite correct. I have found after a lapse of some time, especially when doing 'street' or documentary photography, lack of every day practise soon shows up. The eye might be there but everything else that goes with it, timing, getting the feet in the right place, having the right camera settings, even speed of getting the camera to the eye quickly can all be gone. Even shooting landscape photos requires continual practise or the mojo goes away."

Dan Montgomery: "This post might as well be directed to me personally. I've never been a full-time photographer, but there have been stretches during which I had my camera with me all the time, and I used it as you describe. All for the better. Now I go days, sometimes weeks, without using a camera, but when I do, I need stills and video, run-and-gun style, often in bad light in tricky settings. Inevitably, in all the switching of settings and lenses, the hooking up, unhooking and re-hooking up of lavalier mics, of using, then not using, a tripod, and of shooting this part with video lights but this part with room lights, I end up with one or another camera setting all wrong (to be discovered only after it's too late), or I leave with the feeling that I didn't 'work' the assignment enough, or both. I tend to blame, at least in part, the overabundance of buttons, toggles and menu settings, but you are right, the bigger problem is my waxing and waning expertise at using those buttons, toggles and menu settings. (For the record, everything has always turned OK, but I know that everything could have been better.) Right now, the cameras are out, and I am going to practice just for the sake of practice. Thanks for the post."

Bryan Hansel: "Great post! In winter months, I use warm but bulky leather gloves to keep my hands warm. I can turn every dial, push every button, change lenses, add filters, and do almost everything needed with those gloves on. It's only through practice that that's possible. I've had other photographers laugh when I say that if I'm not shooting a lot in winter, I'll watch TV at night with a camera in hand and gloves on just to keep that muscle memory active. And then we go outside in –15°F temps and I watch them struggle with their cameras, take their gloves off often, and get freezing cold hands. The practice is worth it!"

The One That Got Away

The phrase "you should have seen the one that got away" comes from fishing, of course. But it ought to come from photography.

When I recommenced photographing regularly this past Fall, I got fish-slapped by something I knew but had almost forgotten: to photograph is to get pictures, but it's also to miss pictures. Every day I go out, I return with a mental list of the ones I missed. Sometimes there are none, but often there are two or three.

Those misses get burned into my brain. I have a very visual memory. When I think of a person, I used to worry about my memory because of the lengthening amount of time it was taking the name to come to mind. But then I realize that I can recall the face instantly. So there's nothing wrong with my memory: it's just that it's the visuals that come to me first. Being very honest, I can remember missed pictures from decades ago, a few of them anyway, and still see them in my mind's eye.

I'll give you just a few examples from recent outings:

One*: I'm at the Tractor Supply, and the woman ahead of me, who is also buying dog food, is talking to the clerk. Like a lonely old man, which I imitate sometimes, I butt into the conversation, and she immediately engages, and we trade pleasantries about our dogs. Then I notice husband, standing off a few steps, looking glum, irritated, resentful and bored, and giving me a bit of the stinkeye for chatting up his woman. (Or so I imagine.) Cut to the parking lot: their German Shepherd is sitting in the driver's seat of their dark silver pickup truck, illuminated gorgeously by the setting sun. All I had to do was ask; the worse that could happen would have been a refusal, and that's no big deal. The camera was right on the passenger seat of my car one parking spot away. But because of the husband's attitude I thought, naw. Result: potential picture of perfectly lit German Shepherd in the truck cab looking anxiously back at his masters, in tones perfectly suited to B&W, is burned on my brain, taunting me (still, and it's been a few months now).

Two: On another dog walk, it was too dark to take the camera. Dusk. On the way back I hear voices on the lake, and when I got a view between two houses I see: opposite shore, black; foreground objects, silhouetted; the water of the lake, bright with the reflection of the darkening sky; and, set in a perfect composition, is a bass boat with the motor off, one fisherman standing at the bow with his line in the water, a second one standing by the motor with his line in the water as well, all pretty much silhouetted. All of it a perfectly composed picture just staring at me. It would have taken some effort to get the shot; I would have had to find something to loop the leash to, would have had to trespass on an absent neighbor's lake frontage, which I'm not above doing occasionally when the houses are empty; and I would have had to ask the fishermens' permission, because they were close enough to the shore to talk to. I don't know if I could have brought it all together. But maybe. A potential catch that got away.

Three: Just two days ago. It's been one of those dreadful winter days, dark, wet, all grays and browns and blanketed with oppressive overcast like the world itself is depressed. I'm just driving to town for Chinese food. Why take the camera? It's a decidedly unpromising situation to encounter any photographs. But. The local Mennonites and Amish don't like being photographed, so I don't photograph them. But I'm not above getting a picture of a horse and buggy when the opportunity arises, as long as the people inside aren't featured. I've got a lot of desultory tries littering various folders, but no standout picture yet. So what do I see that night? An empty Mennonite buggy with a gaunt horse standing motionless in a parking lot by the lake. I just glanced at it on the way by, but as the car passes all the elements snap magically into visual arrangement and bam, there's the picture, just waiting. Eminently gettable. All I would have had to do was pull over. There was no one around. I would have offended no one.

Four: When I had just had the loaner Sigma for a few weeks, I was going out to walk to dog on a beautiful evening, and I almost took the camera with me. I argued with myself: it's hard enough to handle the leash; Butters tugs at me when I'm trying to hold the camera still; I've seen the route a million times, and know all the pictures. It's always the same, more or less. So then, not a hundred yards down the road, what do I see but one of the two or three most spectacular skies I've ever seen in the Finger Lakes, which is really saying something. A great dramatic heap of distinctly defined clouds above the opposite shore, lit up all around the rim by the setting sun behind it, with one giant crepuscular ray coming out of one side. It was so stunning I just stood there staring. To add insult, I was passing right by virtually the only spot on my walk where I have blanket permission to walk down to the lake's edge whenever I want to. All I needed was the camera with me and I would have had a picture I would have been proud of for the rest of my life. One of top two or three missed pictures of all time.

The photographer's burden
Damn. You just never know where they are going to come from, and you never know when. There's no guarantee that you would have actually gotten the picture that was there; all you know for sure is that there was a good opportunity there waiting for you, sometimes staring you right in the face. Served me right. Carrying a camera is the photographer's burden. But you gotta do it. Take the camera.

Why don't these picture opportunities appear when I'm not actively engaged in photographing on a near-daily basis? I don't know, but that's the way it is for me. Once I start actively photographing again, they start to appear here and there. And—I'll just speak for myself—I know the best of the ones that got away are going to live on in my visual memory, sometimes for a long time.

Mike
Flickr page / New Yorker author page

*The TypePad compositor is very irritating when it comes to numbering things. If I type "1.", it immediately thinks I want to go into list mode, and supplies a "2." at the beginning of the next paragraph as soon as I hit return. There's actually a whole column in this: many, many modern interfaces add intrusive "helper" features just because they can, forgetting that control is actually more satisfying than being "helped" when you haven't @#$%! asked for help. Spellcheck gone awry is only the most common example of this. I say: stop helping, and give me control.

Original contents copyright 2023 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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Len Salem (partial comment): "The counterpart of 'the one that got away' is the one that serendipitously happens. Many years ago I was on holiday in Los Angeles, exploring with my then film camera. I saw a warehouse in a commercial district painted pink and standing out against a blue sky. In the UK no one ever painted warehouses pink. So I started taking a few photographs of it from different angles when I saw, out of the corner of my eye and about to come into frame, a jogger wearing a T-shirt in the exact same shade of pink as the warehouse. I waited a second or two and got that image. I would share it here but it is still in storage after a recent move and being pre-digital it is not on my computer. But I feel that photo was gifted to me somehow by a benign photo god."

John Krumm: "This is indeed a good sign that you are getting thoroughly back into photography. I have to tell myself to leave the camera home sometimes, because I'm doing something with my wife, and I want to be mentally present, but the occasional lost image flicks by. And think about all the lost images you never see, all the walks you skipped, early morning treks you passed on, country drives you canceled, and unexplored roads you drove by, eager to get home. As much as having the camera with you, you also have to be out there in the first place."

Mike Peters: "Wear your camera every day, every time you leave the house. In the winter or if it's raining, it's always under my coat. In the summer it's just there. I haven't left the house without a camera since the '80s. Most times I never use it, but when I see something, it's always there."

xf mj (partial comment): "The tension between dog walks vs. photo walks: I hear ya, Mike. I have tried so many elaborate leashing arrangements, while I attempt to hold the camera still for a shot, to somehow keep my tugging dog tethered and out of trouble. None of them really work, because sir Rocco always interrupts my composing somehow, or at least threatens to, and that distracts me from getting the shot and even just hunting the shot. Instead I'll hastily take pictures just to prove that 'Ha ha ha, Rocco, you didn't foil that one!' even when in reality the picture is just a tosser because of my haste. Of course I gotta be grateful to him because he is what gets me out of the house most times, especially in the dead of winter."

David Zalaznik: "Hi Mike, enjoyed the post. Your comment about asking permission of the fishermen struck me as something that I have rarely done beforehand. My goal has always been serendipitous moments and stopping to ask permission all too often would change the situation from what brought me to that moment. I start taking the pictures and, if they become aware of me working, I will stop for a moment, smile or wave and hold up the camera and go back to shooting.And I always take the time to talk afterward. I can think of only a handful of times in a 35-year career in photojournalism that the subject had an issue. Now, the clarification to that is I would take the photo only if I am on public property. And that goes for the Amish as well. They have a constitutional right to practice their religion and I have a constitutional right to practice my craft."

hugh crawford: "The mind is basically a camera, so they don’t really quite get away. My favorite film scene on that topic."

Dan Khong: "It is OK to miss a shot. For as long as there is still breath in our bodies, there will always be other opportunities."

Raymond Lee: "My father came to Hong Kong empty handed at the age of 12. His first job was an assistant store keeper for a rich family which had a son who spent money on photography. It's 1950. He ended up learning photography and darkroom techniques.

"Fast forward many years and I was 10, maybe 12, and I learned from him the basics. It's the early '70s.

"I didn't end up a photographer. (Nor did my father.) But I have been taking pictures since then. I like looking back at them. They remind me of occasions that I might have forgotten, or not, but they let me savour those moments.

"But I remember at one stage, probably towards the end of when film was mainstream, maybe around the mid-'90s, I made a comment to a friend while she was showing me around in Shanghai (where I visited for work): she asked, do you want to take a picture of this (some historical building)? And I said, I'd rather spend time looking at it and capture it in my brain. I did. I still remember that exact moment, and that exact scene, although the rapid changes in the city must have made it unrecognizable by now.

"So, my point is, if I can capture a moment with a camera, I'll do so. But at the same time, I always slow down to try very hard to impress the image in my brain. That way, if I missed a shot, there's a backup somewhere in my head—although theses days, in my 60s, memory is less reliable than early days floppy discs."

A Moon Never Hurts

On clear morning, when the dome of the sky is cloudless from horizon to horizon, I can see the line of sunlight from the Earth's shadow start at the top of the bluff on the shore opposite my house and creep down the bluff until it lights up the houses and reaches the lake. I've always thought it might be a good idea to get up before dawn and photograph it. This morning, opening the shade and looking out, I saw the day was brilliantly clear, and the shadow was halfway down the bluff, and I thought—a thought I often think—"Too bad. I should have been out there with the camera. Oh well."

Then I saw it—the Beaver moon, as this full moon is named, was setting above the bluff. I don't live right on the lake—what I like to say is that if my house were on the lake, it wouldn't be my house—and I thought, well, how fast can I get dressed and get down there? I shifted gears into hurry-up mode (like shifting the car from second straight to fifth), threw on some clothes, grabbed the camera, and jogged down to the lake—in my slippers! That's more exercise than I normally get all day, by the way. I'm generally better at naps.

Et voilà: Moonset.

(View large image)

[UPDATE Wednesday evening: This image and the one at "View large image" are variations of the first one I posted Wednesday morning.]

The rising sun has just reached the houses on the shore. That little slash of cloud wasn't there when I was looking from the window; it simply appeared; but that's all right, I like it. I think I can process this better eventually, once I understand it better—hey, even Ansel had to work on his "Moonrise" for years before he got it right. But that takes time. This was just taken a couple of hours ago.

Photographers are always looking for accents, something to save a scene from being just a scene. An oncoming car, a lone seagull—and the moon often serves this function. Every picture needs its punctum. The great 20th century curator John Szarkowski began a lecture about his own photographs by showing several slides while he talked about the fact that he didn't know, because no one can know, what really makes a good picture. Then he reached the punchline: coming to a slide that showed a ladder reaching into an apple tree, he said, "One thing I do know is"—on comes the slide—"a ladder never hurts!"—and suddenly the audience realizes that every picture they'd seen so far had a ladder in it*. The line gets a laugh.

Well, ditto for the moon, sez me. "Moonset" is no "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico," and I'm no Ansel Adams, and I like it all the same. After all, pictures can refer to and echo other pictures, right?

Mike

P.S. This picture is cropped to enlarge the main subject a bit. This is the first time that I've wished I had this lens, or this one...the first time I've had any GAS at all since I started photographing with the Sigma fp(m)'s in late August of this year. GAS always gits ya, no matter how happy you are with what you have.

*Compare John Szarkowski's comments (he never liked me to call him just "John" when he was alive—too familiar) with this comment by Keith Cooper of Northlight Images: "This is perhaps the difference between color and black-and-white. And I've found it takes people quite a while to get used to it. Once you do get used to it, you don't even notice you're doing it. And that is to think of shadows, particularly deep shadows, as objects in your composition. Now, this is very similar to the idea of negative space in composition, where what isn't there, and the shape of what isn't there, is as important as what is there; but, in black-and-white, it's much easier just to say, think of shadows as real things. As objects. Because that's how they can look." (Source)

Featured Comments from:

aaron c greenman: " The moon illusion is fascinating, and still unexplained as to why the human brain makes the adjustment. This past August in Crete, the moon rising above the horizon seemed so large (and so red) as to be almost impossible. Because everyone was so mesmerized (and reaching for their cameras), all the businesses on the harbor side turned off their lights to give a better view. But as impressive as the moon was to the eyes, it remained as small as normal in all our photos—which proves that it is a mental phenomenon, not an optical one. Anyway, thank you for the beautiful B&W shot of the lakeside in the evening...reminds me of my several years in Ithaca on Cayuga Lake."

robert e: "An unexpected bonus of waking up ridiculously early to help open the polls this (US) election day was seeing the lunar eclipse. The sky was crystal clear, too. What a picture: red Mars and red-shouldered Orion overhead and the red 'blood moon' low in the sky. I don't know what kind of equipment and skills could have captured that whole scene, but I didn't have either with me."

HDR Merge in ACR

Contrail Above Farm

Calm Hazy Day, Seneca Lake

A couple more new shots. I hope my new camera is not overstaying its welcome. If you look at the second one on Flickr, you can see some nice detail in the boat.

This last one is just a test shot. It was blazingly bright, with the sun glaring off the walk and the shadows all but black to the eye. I took three quick frames, one at metered exposure, one greatly overexposed, and the last greatly underexposed, and did an HDR merge in Adobe Camera Raw. It's very easy to do—you just open all three pictures at once, right click on any one of them and select "HDR Merge." The interesting thing about this is that I made all three pictures handheld rather than on the tripod. The dialogue box has a box to tick that tells the program to automatically align the images. I did get a few artifacts in this, and, also, when I took the metered exposure and simply processed that, it came pretty close to this result. So the jury's still out on whether that's a technique I'll use occasionally (when called for) or just ignore it and make do with one exposure in high-contrast situations. We'll see. It's at least another option as a backup for a picture I really want.

Mike

Featured Comments:

Michael Matthews: "Is it a lens effect—or has the pool shed developed a list to the right?"

Mike replies: 'Tis a little wopplejawed, yes. (Wopplejawed: Hoosier variant of whomperjawed, hillbilly/Southern for "askew.")

John McMillan: "My very Southern Ma loved the word, but pronounced it 'whoppyjawed.'"

Jim: "For years I shot landscapes only with 8x10" or 4x5" view cameras. Often I would encounter a scene where the range of brightness was too great to reveal texture in both the highlight and shadow areas. Then I would make a pre-exposure through a piece of frosted plexiglass, followed by a regular exposure. Here is one example, taken in bright morning light with deep shadows."

Mike replies: As you know, Jim, but others might not, that's a technique called pre-exposure, meant to counteract the fact that B&W film has an exposure threshold—that is, it has to receive a small amount of image-forming light before it starts forming a latent image. Pre-exposure is meant to get the sheet of film into the reciprocity range so that shadows begin building immediately, allowing you, in theory, to give less exposure, and thus restrain the highlights, for contrast control. (And dappled sunlight in the woods is indeed surprisingly contrasty.) Pre-exposure is described by Ansel Adams in his photography series. I once built a pre-exposure box out of plexi—a black cube, open at opposing ends, with a sheet of translucent white in the middle. You put this over the lens and gave the film a predetermined small shot of non-image-forming light prior to taking the picture.

Personally, when comparing pre-exposed negatives with the same scene that was not pre-exposed, I couldn't reliably tell the difference, so I just dispensed with using the method. I imagined that maybe the film in Ansel's day behaved differently, and the corrective effect was more pronounced. Although it's possible my technique was simply not rigorous enough to achieve the intended effects, or I screwed up somewhere in the implementation, who knows. 

Rob Campbell: "Something that I think I notice: in the last picture, there seems as if something is missing in the tonality of the buildings’ walls. I can’t put my finger on what it is, exactly, more a vague sense of missing contrast than just due to the quality of light on the planks? I have sometimes found this very same thing on some of my own pictures, too. I don’t remember it from my film days. Any ideas?"

Mike replies: Probably just that we're looking at an 800-pixel-wide JPEG in which a whole lot of information has to be thrown away—including, perhaps, the texture cues for the walls. It's also possible that certain tones get compressed too much in the process of adjusting the sliders, with some "micro ranges" of tones becoming a bit too flat or too harsh. Another way of saying this is that the curve becomes discontinuous, with jagged peaks and dropouts. But I don't know for sure. Where I see it most is in the fact that digital just doesn't have enough information in the highlights. It's one of the main reasons (IMO) for using a high-resolution, high-megapixel camera—the highlights can have more information in them, and thus can look more natural.

Eric Brody: "Whether the merge to HDR works well seems to depend a lot on the scene. I often shoot five-shot HDR's at 1–2 stop intervals and combine them. When I look later at the original images, often one of them is quite adequate, so I toss the others along with the HDR. With the dynamic range of today's cameras—mine is pretty good—HDR is often not needed. When it's noticeable, it's UGLY!"

Hit Rate Zero

I had an experience shooting yesterday (finally got back to it after ten days of COVID) that sometimes happens. I'll go out, get into it slowly, but eventually "harvest" a few situations or stops along the way. I get into it, and various things seem to work. Then I'll get back home with high hopes and a catalogue of possibilities in mind and discover that...I was "cold" and didn't really get anything.

I only posted one fp-M sample picture from yesterday, "Vultures Eating the Remains of a Deer." Everything else, I felt, just fell a little short.

Vultures Eating the Remains of a Deer, Loree Road West of Angus

Ultimately there's a level of commitment to a picture that has to be there in order for it to have enough energy. With some of my shooting, I feel I'm just "playing tricks," returning to old strategies that I know work. Reflections, rocks, whatever. Bah. Many times they'll be things that I've seen a million times that other people do a lot, certain patterns and objects and "things I know that people will like." Odd things for sale at the side of the road. A car under a tarp. The old falling-down ruin of a house or barn. Or something a famous photographer made a picture of years ago that my picture looks kinda sorta like. None of it is really enough to give me a decent level of commitment to the picture. Or I'll take a hackneyed subject and "work it," trying to "make it mine," and then, reviewing the pictures, give too much credit to that effort, only coming slowly to the realization that it failed anyway. Sometimes when you struggle too hard to be clever is when you're at your least clever.

When I come home "empty" like that, though, something strange happens...I find that instead of working less over the lot, I'll struggle and work and worry over the files in that folder more. I try processing one thing after another, as if hoping something will offer itself. The feeling being, "there must be a decent picture here somewhere." Or, "something I tried must have worked." It's hard letting go of your failures. But you might as well. I've always felt that in photography there's not really any such thing as an "almost" picture. Either the picture works entirely or it doesn't work at all. Everything's a no that isn't a yes. And yet, we spend most of our time and most of our effort fretting and fussing over all the almosts.

Get out
Yesterday wasn't a total loss. [UPDATE: "Vultures" made Flickr's Explore feature on the 16th.] But I will just note that it took me a very long time—years—for me to learn that sometimes you can go out and not get anything at all. I always felt like if you shot a certain amount, some percentage must be "good." Even if it's a very small percentage. That's not necessarily true. Sometimes you can go out and get a hit rate of zero. It's possible. You just have to be ready for that, is all, and accept it. Sometimes, in fact, you can shoot for days, even weeks if you're stubborn, without accepting that your idea, the direction you're going, just has no energy, and that you need to redirect and reboot.

Being out with a camera is enough, though, actually. Because the magic can't happen unless you're out there with the camera in your hand. You're not going to find a picture sitting at home watching TV. If you're out and about, maybe you didn't find a picture. But you might have.

Mike

Book o' the Week

Migrant Mother, by Sarah Meister. "Each volume in the One on One series is a sustained meditation on a single work from the collection of MoMA." Forty-two pages with many illustrations. An engaging guided tour of the history and lore of "American photography's Mona Lisa."

This book link is a portal to Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as they help support the site.

B&H Photo

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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

Sean: "I save myself from a lot of unnecessary suffering by expecting and excepting bad days. I've adopted a why-not-me attitude to disappointing outcomes, all in the service of the long view. It's the variability of the reward that makes me get back out there; it's the not knowing."

Stan B.: "Just getting...the one (as above), is what it's all about—any more is added (and much welcomed) gravy. On (very) rare occasions, more refined editing can provide the percentage point that will turn that almost into a keeper; usually, almosts are opportunities to learn and practice much needed discretion and discipline."

Tom Stermitz: "'A good day fishing should not bee confused with actually catching any fish.'"

Ernest Zarate: "Again, we find a lot to agree upon. I could wax on about the shooting experience, the editing and winnowing drudge, and so on. But I’m going to turn that over to the late Henry Wessel, in this KQED video made in 2007. The whole video is a worthwhile 8:12 in length, but the pertinent section starts at 3:37."

Mike replies: It's been a while since I've seen that, and it was good to look at it again. I've always thought of Henry Wessel as the model of the kind of photographer I would have been if I had been a photographer. Seeing some of his work always makes me want to go look at more.

Ernest: "Hank was my professor at SFAI, and also my mentor and my friend. I visited him at his home in Point Richmond on many occasions, and he at my home in Elk Grove, California. We went on photo shoots together in Santa Cruz, California, and talked at length, over the decades, about photography.

"When I was considering not doing photography any more, he wrote a lengthy letter to me, and then met with me, encouraging me to stay the course, which I did. His approach to photography is ingrained in my approach to the medium. I don’t do 'street photography' any more, but his philosophy transcends any one style or genre, as did he. As an adjunct photography professor at the local community college district, my guiding question was always, 'What would Hank do?' for his acceptance of student experimentation, and validation of their efforts was paramount in his teaching style.

"I feel, like many of his protegés, fortunate indeed to have had him as a professor. Many other photographers added terrific and valuable insights into photography for me, but none did it with the cheerfulness, the openness, and the complete acceptance Hank did. I miss him to this day."

Nick: "Ugh, that thing where you get stuck on an 'almost'! Most of the photos I've taken that I like best required almost no fiddling beyond the basic (straighten and crop just a bit, mess with the exposure and conversion to get the tones or colors distributed right, sharpen, publish), while the ones I spend forever fussing with usually never even end up on Flickr. I've gotten a bit better at 'Nope!'-ing out of a near miss over time, but I still occasionally find myself wasting 20 minutes moving sliders around trying to fix an annoying tonal merger or something."

David Dyer-Bennet: "This is maybe the biggest difference between 'kinds' of photographers. For photojournalists, event photographers, anybody working on documenting things happening, failure is not an option. (And...this is true even if you're just doing it for yourself, as opposed to having a boss/client who will notice your failure.) Which doesn't mean we don't fail. Some days there are no picture that I rate three stars or higher—nothing with a spark of life to them. One must proceed with what one has."

Oil the Tin Man

Albert Smith wrote: "Re 'It was forecast to rain all day, and I was unhappy...I'm very glad I went out': I keep reading that dog owners are often more healthy because they have an obligation that precludes a sedentary life...you got to get out there with your pet.

I feel the same way about my camera. Many is the time that I got my butt off the couch to go for a photo walk. In hot humid Florida, it's hard to justify sweating through your shirt 10 minutes after you leave the air conditioning, but when I return with a nice shot that I'd have never got if I just sat at home thinking about photography, I too am glad that I went out."

Great point. I'll only take it one little step further: when you go out to photograph, especially if you're in a car, take the first pictures as soon as possible. In my mind I call it "oiling the Tin Man." I always feel a sort of reluctance or hesitation, almost a kind of timidity or self-effacement, before I've started. Left to my natural impulses I'll pass one potential shot after another thinking, no, that's not quite worth trying—I need to find something better to break the ice. Well, wrong-O, Tin Man. You're frozen. Get moving. Shake the rust off. Take some pictures even if they're no good—once I'm into the mindset of shooting I stop thinking about it and just get into the flow. And where that's concerned, the sooner the better.

I remember a story Bill Jay told—the great Czech/French photographer Josef Koudelka was visiting Bill at his cabin, and, first thing in the morning, Koudelka would head outside with his camera and start shooting. Bill was perplexed, because the rural subject matter had nothing to do with Josef's known work. When asked about it, Koudelka said he had to shoot three rolls of film a day just to keep his eye in practice.

I believe Henri Cartier-Bresson once said he shot two rolls of film (72 clicks, for you film virgins) before breakfast every morning for the same reason. Even if there was no promising subject matter at hand.

When I interviewed him in New York City, Ralph Gibson said that every time he heads out with his camera he knows he'll find something. (His camera, by the way, was a Ralph Gibson special edition Leica. That's how you know you've made it, when Leica makes a special edition of your preferred camera and gives you one. Ralph had it on a woven red leather lanyard, and left the studio armed with only a 90mm lens.)

To Albert's point about dogs, I keep the dog food out in the barn. It gets us out of the house and into the weather and the blue light first thing every morning. The sooner you get outside, the better the day goes.

Thanks, Albert.

Mike

Book o' the Week

Fred Lyon, San Francisco Noir. "The version [of San Francisco] that Fred Lyon celebrates in his new book is a classic San Francisco full of smoky jazz clubs, neon lights in the fog and sharply dressed men and women stepping on and off of trolley cars. Made mostly during the 1950s and '60s, Lyon's images are big on atmosphere and style, and hit many parts of the city that visitors love." (PDN)

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Featured Comments from:

Ernest Zarate: "Absolutely, 100%, totally agree with getting that first shot out of the way. I never had a term for it. I just knew that the first shot was the hardest for the reason you stated: in my mind, it needed to be 'special.' But then I found out my mind would play all kinds of games with me—if I let it. So, now I’ll grab a shot (or more with digital), thumb my nose at my mind, and get on with my shoot. (I have other ways of keeping my mind at bay and out of the way through my activities—it can be a trickster and an obstacle otherwise.)

"As for getting outside, I have my two sons, 13 and 15. I get them up, fix them breakfast, make their lunches (I spoil them, I know), pile them in the auto voiture and take them to school. Then, being up and about (and retired!), I have a good chunk of the day to myself. (My wife, bless her soul, has a ways to go before retirement.) Bliss."

Stan B.: "On his very first assignment in a war zone, pj Stanley Greene kept passing on scene after scene as not potentially good enough—until his driver/fixer said, 'You’re a photographer, get out there and start taking pictures!'"

Adam Isler: "Here are some additional examples along the same lines. Thomas Mann is supposed to have written for three hours every morning. And I believe it was he (or was it Mark Twain, or is it apocryphal?) would simply copy from a book when they couldn't think of anything original—as long as they wrote for so many hours a day.

"My own practice here in NYC, where I don't own a car and drive anywhere, is to carry my camera in hand and turned on almost anytime I go out. I find that having the camera in my hand makes me look for photographs and the result has been that I'm much more sensitized to the graphic potential of my surroundings than I was before I started doing this."

What Is the Story

In my "Secret Art" article (which fell off the front page of newyorker.com today, so that's over with, I guess), I wrote: "...numerous events can be commemorated with a single picture. It just has to be a good one, and to tell enough of the story...."

To which blogger Ann Althouse responded, "What is the 'story'?"

I love that. It is indeed the question. It's the question photojournalists and newspaper photographers have to ask themselves all the time. (Sometimes I'd be hired to tell a fake story, like the time I was hired to photograph a protest and only six protesters showed up. The police almost outnumbered the protesters. My job therefore became to fake the pictures by making it look like there were more protesters than there were. The client used a picture of three shouting protesters holding up a banner flanked by two policemen, all crowded into the frame. What you couldn't see was that, not counting me, that was exactly half of the total number of people at the event!!)

"What's the story?" is also an idealistic question. In practice there's also the matter of "...and what worked as a photograph?" Lots of times we know the picture we would have wanted, but it didn't work, and instead we got the birthday girl on the porch admiring her own cake. So then that becomes the picture of the 11th birthday because the one that would have told the story better didn't turn out to be such a good picture. To steal (and mangle) a quote from Robin Kelsey's Photography and the Art of Chance, the world is a mix of order and disorder, and what works as a picture is the sum of a series of accidents. Put shortly, you have to try your hardest to get what you want but then, later, when you edit, you have to put all that aside and also be totally open to what worked and what didn't.

I think one of the drafts of my article had a section about just how difficult family photography really is. That part survived as only one sentence: "Creating a comprehensive record of a family’s life is inherently challenging—it’s an extended, ambitious, and multifaceted documentary project...."

A neighbor once let me photograph his five kids playing energetically in their backyard. (With a manual-focus but autoexposure film camera.) None of them would cooperate in the least, so I had to get what I could on the fly. It was a real camera-workout, and challenged my shooting skills. I felt afterwards that although it's an ordinary subject, photographing moving kids in action is actually pretty difficult, right up there with the hardest shooting challenges I've faced. Well, the same thing is true of being a true family photographer, I think. It's an ordinary and natural thing to do, but to do it exceptionally well is very difficult, and requires skills, in at least some aspects, that most people struggle with. I doubt there are very many people with a truly comprehensive photographic archive of their family's life. I know I don't have one. My attempts are sporadic and inconsistent, the results not very well organized and incomplete.

It hasn't stopped me from trying, of course.  :-)

Mike
(Thanks to Oren Grad)

Book o' the Week

Grit and Grace: Women at Work in the Emerging World. Unfortunately, this will be the posthumous swan song of the indefatigable documentarian Alison Wright, whose untimely death at 60 in the Azores this year meant she never got to see it published. Wright's photography was inextricably entwined with her life's dedication to social justice, a sense of acceptance of humanity, and a roving search for beauty and color.

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Camera Face

I know, pool, but this isn't a pool post. Bear with me a sec...

Take a look at just the first fifteen seconds of this match between Josh Filler and FSR. When the video opens we see the stills photographer set up and ready, with just a few seconds to get his "grip and grin." Watch how the competitors perform their roles by putting on "camera faces," as they've done many times before, and then taking them right off again. Josh Filler in particular, as a child phenom who transitioned to major champion, is practiced at this—even though he's only 24, he's been in many finals.

I don't know, it just struck me as something you try to avoid when taking more personal pictures of people. Although it's perfectly appropriate in the circumstances. My mother had a distinct "camera face" that she put on when the camera was pointed at her.

Compare that to, say, Braylen Dion's portrait of sculptor Simone Leigh in The New Yorker. The picture appears to be casual and almost offhand, which I tend to like. The portrait had me studying her face for clues to her personality. Simone's expression is not a camera face.

Braylen's portrait (here's a great shot at his website) reminds me of a tip from a famous photographer I read many years ago—I think it was Brassai, although I'm not sure. (Ten years ago I would've remembered where I read it.) What he said was something about trying to steal an exposure of his subjects "in between" the faces they put on for the camera, so that their real selves could come through.

I might not know where I read it, but I've always remembered the thought.

Mike

Book o' the Week

 All About Saul Leiter. The Amazon writeup for this book says "Photography lovers the world over are now embracing Saul Leiter"—and oh boy, is that ever true of me—"who has enjoyed a remarkable revival since fading into relative obscurity in the 1980s." One of my favorite photographers. Beautiful photopoems. Saul's Early Color (which you can still get for around $300) was one of our all-time bestselling book links. (I bought two, one to thumb and one to not touch!)

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Featured Comments from:

Peter Conway: "At the risk of turning this political, which is not at all my intent, I've always felt that Donald Trump was the unhappiest president in my lifetime. Sure, you could find thousands of photos of him smiling, but they all looked like plastic, 'put-on' smiles, just like in the video. Then one day I came across this article in The New York Times, with a picture of Trump playing catch with Mariano Rivera, and it struck me that this was the first picture I had ever seen of him smiling, where he appeared to be genuinely enjoying himself. In the end it did nothing to change my opinion of him, but still, on some level, it was nice to see someone who never really seemed to show joy, appear to be happy in the moment, with no camera face."

Dave Richardson: "This post showed up in my Apple News feed. That’s two of your articles there in the last couple of weeks."

Mike replies: Cool.

David Glos: "Once again, you have sent me into a beautiful rabbit hole. Despite a strong affinity towards art, I don't follow the modern art world to any degree. But, that article was a beautiful portrait of a powerful force of humanity, and stirred a longing to seek out the work out of Ms. Leigh.

"I was also able to find the image mocking Oscar Wilde that Simone is making a tableau of. See here. Looking forward to her sculptural interpretation of the scene."

Bill Poole: "It's hard to escape the notion that the Braylen Dion photo is intended as a triple portrait of the sculptor with the two sculpted heads. Brilliant environmental portraiture."

Patrick J Dodds: "Resting Bitch Face? Welcome to the club."

Mike replies: I'll link to the original video, since it's such a classic,—featuring Milana Vayntrub, who was "Lily" in the AT&T commercials. (You can tell I haven't had a TV recently—even my TV commercial references are outdated.)

TC: "It's an interesting question, and I've been contemplating writing an article on it. From a filmmaking standpoint, some of the most 'authentic' reaction shots I got in a feature I directed came from actors in between takes."

Traffic Lights and Taillights

[Comments have been added.]

I've tried several shooting experiments recently. One was shooting square. I think I liked it, but unfortunately I didn't try it for long enough to really start seeing that way.

Or, I kept grabbing different cameras. Always the problem with owning more than one.

Another has been that I'm keeping a camera with an 84-305mm-equivalent lens on it in the car, so I can take pictures of faraway subjects as I wander the highways and byways of Western New York State (as I've discussed a time or two, I find a lot more pictures are far away here than other places I've lived). That's going well too, but, again, it's too early to know if it's a good way of working for the long term.

I think I just enjoy shooting, and I'm not sufficiently devoted to any particular parameters.

I haven't started experimenting with the A6600 yet. But it's been, you know, Winter.

Here's a question for the collective brain trust. Does anyone know why digital has such trouble rendering red taillights and traffic signals? Is it because digital has some particular kind of problem with LEDs and most taillights and traffic signals are LEDs these days? Or are they just much brighter than they seem to the eye, such that they're always blown out at anything like the proper exposure for the scene?

Several friends and I have been in a rather intense conversation about this over the past few days. Or rather, they're conversing and I'm looking on from the sidelines—they're much better technically than I am. Two of them have 100-MP Fujis, so we've been trying to determine if one of those does a better job with red traffic lights than, say, a G9 or an X-H1. (The consensus seems to be...a little better). One of them won't shoot scenes with a traffic signal in them because the abysmal rendering irritates him so much.

It didn't seem to be a problem with film. Although aside from several Pete Turners (such as this one—scroll down a bit) and Ernst Haas's "Route 66 Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1969," I'm not aware of any famous photographs with red lights in them.

Anyone know more about this?

Mike

Book o' the Week
Eye and Brain by Richard Gregory, Fifth Edition. "As far as I know nothing in the past 50 years is a better explanation of how humans see." —Hugh Crawford

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Alex Mercado: "It is due to the photon absorption rates of the sensor’s photodiodes. The red sensitive photodiodes are more efficient than those of the blue and green. Also those red photodiodes are also sensitive to infrared. If you point a remote control at your phone camera and press any of the remote’s buttons, you’ll likely see the IR light emitted from the remote as a false-colored flickering dot on your phone’s screen.

"A good read about CMOS sensors can be found here."

Mike replies: That link is way over my head, but I bet some readers will be able to read it.

John Camp: "Judging by what LED headlights do to my eyes at night, I'd say that they're way brighter than old-fashioned bulbs. They're absolutely dazzling. That Ernst Haas photo is terrific."

Mike replies: Isn't it? Always loved that one.

Peter Komar: "I recall reading a photography magazine from many years ago when Pete Turner was all the rage that he duplicated his original 35mm slides to achieve those classic reds, blues and oranges. It’s true if you duplicate your original slide on either duplicating film or same film stock as the original, contrast and color saturation increase. I tried it myself and it does work and of course this was long before Photoshop and digital. I also recall Pete Turner may have also duplicated the duplicate to further get those vivid colors. I also think that digital sensors just have inherent challenges with red in general, I always was disappointed in deep red color flowers and the results from digital was somewhat disappointing."

John Krumm: "All I know is that red is problematic with a lot of digital cameras. It easily blows out and loses detail. You still get red, just a very uniform red. I think some of the changes in the K-1 Mark II were supposed to address this problem. I've done experiments with red in bright light, and it's surprising how much you have to underexpose before the red channel is OK sometimes. "

Bill Bresler: "I must say that I appreciate snow much more now that I'm semi-retired.

"In regards to square photos: The first real camera I ever held was my uncle's Rolleiflex F. When I was in high school I worked for a mom and pop photo studio. They liked their 6x7 Graflex XLs, and that's what I learned on, but there was a beat-up Rolleiflex C on the shelf and I'd use that whenever I could. As soon as I could scrape up the money, I bought a Mamiya C-330. Sold that to buy 35mm gear for newspaper work. Regretted selling it. Finally bought my own Rolleiflex E2 from a retiring photographer in 1985. He had used that same camera to photograph our wedding in 1978. I still run at least a half-dozen rolls of Tri-X 400 through it each year. Traded a Leica for a Hasselblad 500cm. Liked it, but liked the Rollei better. Had a five or six year flirtation with the Holga. When I got my first iPhone I downloaded a camera app called 6x6.

"Yeah, I like the square, but I can't really say why. All I know is that in nearly fifty years of being a working photographer, using all kinds of formats, 35mm, 6x6, 6x7, 4x5, 8x10, digital everything, my favorite images, and the ones that I consider my best, and hang on my walls, are mostly 6x6. I always come back to it.

"About a year ago, I heard that Costco was shutting down their photo labs in local stores. I had used my local Costco for years. The gentleman who ran that lab for over 10 years knew what he was doing and trained those who worked for him how to make great prints. I started editing my 6x6 photos, scanned the negs and ordered about 30 15x15 on 16x20 B&W prints. I went to pick them up a couple of days before the lab closed. I spent many years in darkrooms but these prints were superb. He thanked me for having his lab print such beautiful work in their final days. It was kind of emotional, and probably the most meaningful validation of my photography.

"Sorry for the long and rambling post but you hit a nerve. The square works for me."

Mike replies: Great comment, thank you.

Dan Hillier: "With your traffic light question, I found this video interesting. From about 22 min., the presenter talks about how traffic light colours were chosen. But when you look at the graph that is developed, it is a bit of an Ah ha!! moment. I'm sure we've all seen that graph before."

Mike replies: Wow, what a fantastic presentation. He doesn't mince about, does he. Thanks for that, I really enjoyed it.

Joel Wolford: "Not a comment on the problem, but on the book containing the Pete Turner photo that you referenced: The Contact Sheet from Ammo Books. I recently purchased this book (it is available on Amazon now!) and it was just as informative and interesting as you stated. A nice addition to any photobook collection, IMHO."

Mike replies: IMHO too.

Tackled!

Just goes to show, shouldn't get caught chimping at the wrong time. Bam!

The announcer says "still photographer" but it looks like he was shooting video to me.

Back to the highlights,

Mike

[CORRECTION: This post originally said "chiming" instead of "chimping." Management regrets the error. The proofreader is no longer a Buc.]

Now You See It, Now You Don't

Landscapes are hard. I used to think landscapes are easy, but no. Landscapes are hard.

I think I just witnessed the fastest change of weather I've ever seen here in beautiful Upstate. Gorgeous Fall day: clean, clear slanting late afternoon sunlight (our air can be clear here, making the sunlight wonderfully vivid); wind gently buffeting the trees and stirring the fallen leaves; big defined white clouds wandering around against a blue sky. So I go into the pool table shed and knock down one set of balls, and come outside because Butters' friend Wex has arrived, and...the sky is solid gray overcast, no wind, and sleet is falling.

Ten minutes. By the hands of the watch. Wow. I was honestly actually a little disoriented, like I had done a little mini-Rip-Van-Winkle.

I used to think lots of things were tough to catch with a camera and you had to be smart and observant and quick on your feet—but that landscape wasn't one of those things. You could take a more contemplative approach with landscape, take it easy, relax a bit. It's so not true. Again and again I see something that I have to merely enjoy, because I can't even think about getting it in a picture.

Another example from today: as the lake narrows as you drive into town, the houses lining the far shore get pretty close. Today the angled sunlight momentarily illuminated a whole row of houses across the lake while the hillside in back of them was entirely in shadow. Very dramatic. But it lasted all of...forty-five seconds? Maybe twice that, maybe half that. My view was partly blocked by the houses on my side of the shore, so I drove down past about five houses until I reached a spot that was clear enough to take a picture. I just looked at the scene. Didn't try anything more. The light lasted five or ten more seconds and then that was that, the scene was gone. I barely had time to enjoy it, much less to get out of the car and unlimber the camera.

You have to get lucky with the light, and then you have to be somewhere where you can see what you want to see, and then you still have to be quick. Landscape isn't easy.

Of course I've never been convinced you can photograph from the car, and that's probably part of the problem, but that's another post.

I like this one, which I showed you the other day...

Same scene, different day, mmm, not so much...

Anyway, kudos and much respect to landscape people. Your subject is just as elusive as any other.

Mike

Book o' the Week

Our National Monuments: America's Hidden Gems by Q.T. Luong. Just out! Brand new. Publishing landscapes isn't easy either. Our friend QT (Tuan) Luong tells me that his new book will have to sell 6,200 copies out of a print run of 7,500 just to break even! And that's not including the labor and time it took to make the photographs. Fortunately, the predecessor book, Treasured Lands, has done exceedingly well. It has won 12 international awards and is now in its 6th printing.

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David Dyer-Bennet: "Really, you can photograph from the car!"

David L. (partial comment): "A serious landscape photographer would take notes after missing a fantastic but very brief scene like yours. Location, date, time of day, weather, equipment, focal length, where to set up, etc. Then one could plan to be there when the conditions occur again. I have a notebook with decades of detailed notes, locations, times, and camera settings."

MikeR: "My wife, who is much more knowledgeable about the 'content' side of photography than this old tech geek, has often said to me, If the picture is right and the light is right, take it right then. It won't be there later."

To Ask

By Kenneth Wajda

I was sitting under a patio umbrella in my yard yesterday, reading an issue of Popular Photography magazine from 1956, when something incredible happened. I made a photograph. In my mind. I saw the final frame. It was fully conceived.

There was just one small issue. I hadn't made it.

I couldn't. The elements were across the street in the form of three generations of guys—my neighbor who is the grandfather, his son, and his grandson—the three of them tossing around a baseball, playing a game of catch with mitts and all. What a photo opportunity.

But I don't really know that neighbor, only to wave hello to when he's out mowing his lawn or he sees me mowing mine. But otherwise, we've never spoken. I decided then to go—I crossed the street. Now it was too late to turn back. My neighbor saw me and came over to the fence.

I said hello. Explained I was watching them play and how I so want to make their photograph, a portrait of the three of them, seated on the ground against the side of that garage, gloves in hand.

The neighbor, the grandfather, asked, "What do you want it for?"

What do I want it for? That was his question—this is where we've come with photography in 2021.

I said I wanted it to give to him. And to give to his son. To make the photograph and give it to them so they would have this photograph that will quickly age as that youngster grows up, but will be priceless in 30 years. But I explained I knew it wouldn't happen if I didn't cross the street and tell them.

They were glad to pose and grabbed seats on the ground alongside the garage, a nice white clean background. They each wore their ball gloves. I was all set when the neighbor's granddaughter ran over with her own glove, so I told her to come on, get in there, sit with the rest of them. So it's a different photograph from my vision, but it's sweet all the same. A shot of the grandpa, his granddaughter, his grandson and his son, all posed together for my camera, gloves in hand. Thirty seconds and eight frames later we were finished. They thanked me. I said I'd get them a print when it's ready and then crossed the street back home.

As a photograph it's more special than any portrait of a dignitary, politician or celebrity I've made. This one isn't selling anything—it's just a small moment in the history of a family. Delivered framed, this will hopefully last in their homes for generations of new ballplayers to come.

Kenneth

Mike comments: This impressed me! I know I'm jumping the gun by presenting this early, but the situation Kenneth described really resonated with me. I probably imagine doing something like this virtually every day of my life. But Kenneth actually had the courage to take action, ask, and get the shot. I never do—or almost never.

And I love that "What do I want it for? To give to you." Seems like that would please most people.

Book of the Week

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk M.D. "Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence." A tough slog of a read, but full of revelations. And it reviews many strategies, both conventional and alternative, toward relief and healing.

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Patrick J Dodds: "Thanks for the powerful little story Kenneth / Mike. It has made my morning."

Daniel: "One important lesson from this. Take the shot when opportunity knocks. It may not be there later. Ask when appropriate—the worst they can do is say no."

Marvin Van Drunen: "When my wife and I are at a zoo, a botanic garden, a museum...really, anywhere and I see a family and the dad or mom is trying to take a selfie or a iPhone photo of their kids, I very often ask, 'Would you like me to use your camera or phone to take a picture of your whole family?' Usually, and I'd guess 95% of the time, the mom or dad or both get a big smile on their face and say something like, 'Wow, thanks.' I then do my best to get a nice snap, hopefully properly composed and I always get a big 'THANK YOU.' This doesn't make me some kind of hero, but I hope the families end up with a nice memory of their time together. It's very nearly the most fun a have taking pictures and I'm not even using my own camera. I'm sure lots of 'serious' photographers do this as well. I love it!"

Mike replied: Richard Avedon used to tell a story about a time this happened to him when he was the highest paid fashion photographer in the world. It occurred to him that it was ironic because normally people had to pay him thousands of dollars to take a picture for them. He didn't mention it. The people didn't recognize him. Somewhere there was a family who had a unique original Avedon and didn't even know it! Although it probably looked just like an ordinary snapshot anyway. Kinda funny though.

Albert Smith: "I'm so envious of those not afflicted with shyness or having introverted tendencies. I enjoyed reading this and liked the photo very much, but I'd rather run a marathon solo than interact the way Kenneth did with his neighbors. I can't ever generate the bravery to approach semi or full strangers to ask for a posed photo. These days when everyone is paranoid about ill intent, I never have an answer to the inevitable question, 'What are you going to do with it?' I see these potential photos often, always have a camera available and just can't get it done. I salute your boldness, Kenneth."

James Pilcher: "This post brought tears to my eyes; don't ask me to explain. Such a wonderful slice of humanity. Thank you to Kenneth and Michael."

A Strategy for Dealing With Recalcitrant Relatives

I thought I'd share a little arrangement I came up with years ago.

I was talking to my neighbor Ilene, and she mentioned that she doesn't have any good pictures of one of her (adult) daughters because the daughter "hates having her picture taken" and always holds her hand up in front of her face "like this" when the camera comes out. It's not easy to describe the "like this" in words—picture the motion you make with your hand when making a sock-puppet "talk."*

I'm of the opinion that you should mostly respect such peoples' wishes, and just not take pictures of them.

Operative word in present company: mostly.

Teens
Here what I did with Xander during his growing-up years. At about age thirteen he informed me that he didn't want me to take pictures of him any more. I agreed, but I explained to him that photography was my thing, and asked him if he would agree to cooperate with me four times a year for three minutes each time. Asking his permission each time, of course. Twelve minutes a year—little enough to ask.

He agreed to that, and that was the arrangement we worked under for the next five or six years. I'd take his picture every now and then—I'd just say, "can this be one of the three minutes?"—and the rest of the time I refrained.

Three-minute portrait of Xander at 14

It worked out fine. No complaints on either side. I have a couple of pictures of his teen years, which is much better than none, and he didn't have to deal with his dad being a dad all the time.

At nineteen or so he relented and said I didn't have to worry about it any more, that it was fine if I took pictures of him whenever I wanted to.

Anyway I just thought I'd pass this strategy along in case I'm not the only one who has to deal with a reluctant relative or friend.

Mike

*I have to mention that "reluctant subjects" can sometimes be pretty unkind to us photographers. And they might not realize just how inconsiderate their actions are. Years ago at my grandparents' summer home in Michigan there was a pack of kids from up and down the shore who hung out together all day, and I would take pictures. Virtually everyone got used to me and simply ignored me. One guy, however, felt awkward being photographed (or being photographed by me, I don't know which) and he ruined many of my pictures, some that would have been pretty good if he had just had the courtesy to ignore me. In many of the pictures he wasn't even close to the main subject, he was just in the background somewhere. I don't think people like that fully realize how impolite and unkind they are being to us. It's actually pretty hostile to purposefully ruin other peoples' pictures again and again.

Product o' the Week:

Fingertip Pulse Oximeter. The link is from TOP to Amazon. This relates to health, not photography—it replaces one of the advanced functions on the latest Apple Watch. Takes your pulse and measures your blood oxygen. For heart monitoring, checking for COVID (low blood oxygen is an early warning sign) and slow heartbeat. I'm learning to correlate the way I feel with the readings. Works with iOS and Android. Nifty little device, super easy to use, and cheap.

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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

Geoff Wittig: "I like your method of dealing with the photo-reluctant. My lovely wife just hates having her photograph taken, under any circumstance. I have a collection of photos of her hand in front of her face as that's also her go-to move. And yet many of my most cherished photographs are of her; after 42 years together many of them still transport me to moments of existential joy or poignance. So I'll have to ask her if she's willing to go along with the three-minute rule."

Sharon: "I love that photo. That is so good. I have the same problem now with my beautiful grandson. I'll try your approach."

Rick Twigg: "As a father of nine-year-old twins who have recently begun their anti-photography kick which I suspect will be the next 8–10 years, this may be the most valuable information I have come across in quite some time.  :-)  "

Xf Mj: "I've had this kind of problem with people I've dated. But I blame myself much more than them. Some people are great at taking portraits and candids, engaging them so that it's not uncomfortable, having the camera and process be invisible, and also having the quick deftness to get great results that make a subject happy to be part of any future photo-taking. With me as the photographer of people I admired, though, and especially when I was just getting into digital photography, I might as well have been taking their photo with Microsoft Word software running the works of a household vacuum cleaner. Awk-ward. I just took too long to get things the way I wanted and their patience immediately wore thin.

"I'm better now, and phones help, but there is still much room for improvement. I just don't have the knack and it's a shame. I've seen very natural portraits and candids of people from you, Mike, so your thoughts here about the unwilling subject still stand.

"In the other direction, I briefly dated someone who was really really excellent at photographing people, and I'm very grateful for her photographic record of me during that time. It's a real gift to see yourself in the best light (literally and figuratively speaking) and to know that you might sometimes look at ease to others. I think everyone she photographed felt that way and she always got great results."

Marc Lawrence-Howe: "I'd be curious as to how many people who enjoy photography actually hate having their own photo taken (at least by anyone other than themselves). ~raises hand~"

Sunday Support Group: If You Didn't Get It, You Haven't Got It

Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard
ne favorise que les esprits préparés.
(In the fields of observation, chance
favors only the prepared mind*.)

                                            —Louis Pasteur

-

I had one of those days yesterday. Let me describe it and see if you know what I mean.

I've got one hand in my pocket, and the other hand is
taking a picture (with apologies to Alanis Morrisette)

I had an hour to kill while my snow tires were being swapped out for my summer tires at Trombly Tire and Auto. So I brought the A6600 and Sigma 30mm Contemporary along, with my rain hat and a camera bag just in case I got caught in the rain, and I wandered around town for an hour and took a bunch of pictures. And all except one "turned out," as we quaintly used to say. That is, they were sharp, clear, and well exposed.

But I didn't get anything.

I've been through the files four times now on the computer, and I just don't think anything quite rises to the standard of being what some now call a "keeper." Much less printable. ("Printable" is still my standard for a successful photo, in my head, even though I seldom print any more.) They're just random snaps of buildings and sidewalks. Pictures I've essentially already taken  dozens of times. Yeah, I know photographs are all technically unique, but you know what Neil Young says, it's all the same song. I took the same pictures last month and last year and I could take the same pictures next month and next year. It's just me out playing my usual tricks. Just snapshots. And I don't mean that in the good sense.

In my somewhat harsh opinion, a lot of photographers on the 2021 internet ought to entertain this as a possibility more often: you just didn't get anything. I see an awful lot of random snaps that sort of resemble photographs that work, but actually aren't. I'd show you what I mean but I've never been comfortable holding real peoples' work up as negative examples; it seems too unkind. They didn't ask for my opinion. And of course, many of the pictures I see are by people who are new, young, inexperienced, or who (yes, let's face it) have the visual aptitude of Helen Keller.

But I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

One thing I've noticed when this happens to me is that I keep going back to the pictures in the folder and looking through them again. It's like I can't believe I didn't get something. First I'll select one and work on the file a bit, then think, nah, that ain't it. Then I'll go back again and select another prospect and work on that for a little while until realization dawns again: this just didn't quite work. This just doesn't quite make it.

My default attitude appears to be: hey, I worked for an hour, I got all this raw material, there has to be something here.

It's just that sometimes there isn't.

If you didn't get it, you haven't got it. It's not there.

Slagging off?
The other day, after I posted those five test shots in the "Mikey Likes It" post, longtime reader Ernest Zarate wrote, "I really like that puddle photo. It was a terrific coda after a string of pleasant, undemanding snaps of your walk." Shouldn't I consider that comment kind of insulting? He's complimenting one picture but sort of slagging off the others.

I didn't take it the wrong way at all, though, because Ernest got it completely right. "Puddle" was the only good shot I got during that little walkabout, and I already knew it before he commented on it. It was the only scene I "worked"—took multiple shots of while thinking and observing and moving around—exploring it through the viewfinder you might say—and when I got back to the house I was already thinking I hope I got it and wishing I had spent more time working it. Since we're looking at the little man behind the curtain here I'll admit I Photoshopped that one, too. (That might ruin it for you, but we have to be forthright with one another when we're talking about nuts and bolts.)

The rest of the pictures I took on that sortie are just incidental. (Although there's one lake shot I'm still deciding about.)

The magic of photography as I see it and as I practice it is that "sometimes the magic happens." That is, sometimes it comes together and you've got yourself a picture—according to your specific idiosyncratic tastes. I know it's the business of professionals to get good pictures on purpose, pictures others will approve of, of subjects they're assigned, so it's not like my view of photography is the only one. But for me, the whole point of photography is that those mysterious personal hits are out there, and sometimes you're going to find one. Or it will find you, however you want to look at it.

Discipline
Photography requires a certain discipline because you always get something. The camera makes a record of some sort out of everything it's pointed at. This puts the onus on us to successfully ignore all the drek and winnow out the ones that work. But just because we always come back to the barn with "results" doesn't mean we got anything. When we get nothing, we have to have the discipline to know we got nothing, and not try to force it to be "something"! I've probably spend three-quarters of my life as a photographer trying to pretend something works when I know it doesn't. As Cartier-Bresson says in one of his interviews, photography is a no-no-no-no-no-no-no-yes proposition. It's not enough to have the taste to select the yes shots. We also have to have the discipline to not be swayed by all the no shots.

Of course I love it when I get a yes. But truth be told, I'm actually kind of relieved when something is an obvious no as well. It's all those "almosts" that give me fits.

How I know which is which, usually, is that a picture starts to bore me before I'm even finished doing the basic editing on it. When I get a good shot, on the other hand, I can't stop looking at it...I want to revisit it again and again. I'll even come turn on the computer just to see it again. Like listening to a new favorite song over and over.

It's not like I don't know it when I get something good, so why do I try to force things to be good when they just aren't?

To my view—in my chosen style of working—it's all about those ones that work, and how you encourage chance. For me, walking around town making tight little compositions of doorways and architectural details is probably not the best way to get a good picture. But the fact is you never know what you're going to find. You have to get out there with a camera in your hand, get warmed up, get into the flow, and start looking and clicking. It's not going to happen when you're sitting in front of your computer thinking about it.

But getting out and working isn't a guarantee that anything will work, either. You can work all day and get nothing worthwhile; or you can kick the ground with your toe and find gold. You just never know. You have to trust your eyes and trust your gut to know which is which.

The two keys are to know it when you get something, and to know it when you got nothing.

Mike

*One of Ansel Adams's favorite quotes.

Book of Interest this week:

The Education of a Photographer, Edited by Charles H. Traub, Steven Heller, and Adam B. Bell, Allworth Press, 2006, 256 pages. A small but rich gold mine of short essays and interviews by and about photographers. Also available from The Book Depository with free shipping worldwide.

Original contents copyright 2021 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.

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

Leon Droby: "On days when I come back from the field knowing I have nothing (and, like today, knew I had nothing even before I left the field), at least I got some practice time in."

Rob White: "I believe it was Ansel Adams that also said he considered it a successful day if he got one good shot out of a hundred."

Mike replies: He also once said 12 (or was it 15?) really good shots was good year's work. I'd like to find the quote....

Jeff: "'Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.' —Ansel Adams."

Stuart: "Oh where did you get that hat, where did you get that hat? Apologies to Sullivan. No—seriously—where did you get that hat?"

Mike replies: It's an Outdoor Research Seattle Sombrero. Surprisingly effective at keeping rain off of you even when you're not wearing any other rain gear. I use it when I take the dogs out when it's raining or when I meet friends for walks on days that threaten rain. I always feel faintly ridiculous when I wear it but it's actually not that bad looking.

Bahi: "Happens to me often. And, sadly, I often take the easy way out: I treat the best of them as usable."

Stan B.: "I've contemplated this very topic quite often. No, all the sincerity and effort in the world does not guarantee success—at least in the short term (your daily outing). Point in fact, one day last week I walked the entirety of the Las Vegas strip from Fremont St. to the Luxor casino (approximately seven miles). For that effort in 100 degree heat, I got one keeper (at the very, very end). The following day after that exercise in near self immolation, I decided to take a different approach. I went to a café, had two of the most delicious cappuccinos I ever had in the USA, took a (very) short walk, sat down for a Margarita, and on the way back to the hotel walked right into the keeper of the day. Now, I don't have to tell you which is the preferred manner of working for the very same result(s)."

Albert Smith: "One culprit for me is the lack of financial investment/cost to shooting digital. When I shot film, I had to ask if this image (in the finder) was worth 75 cents? This made me more selective and much more inclined to really tweak the composition before pressing the shutter release. It also taught me about exposure because slide film had no 'fix it in post' rescue plan. I went out yesterday and today, and have over three hundred images on my card. I just went through them (before seeing this post), and am shocked how I can see the evolution of a final shot...move left, get higher, reduce exposure, etc., all represented by an actual crappy shot. When I shot film, my goal was to only have that last, fully tweaked and evolved photo.

"I'm glad that I'm not paying for film and processing anymore, but it might improve my photography if I shot like I was."

Thomas Rink: "I think failure shouldn't be dismissed too easily. Sure, it feels better if you've made some successful pictures—but if you are able to recognize failures, this also means that you know what works for you. As a seasoned photographer and artist, you take this for granted. But apparently this is something that many are missing, or feel insecure about. This is judging from the vast amount of books, forums and videos which aim to teach what a 'good picture' is and how to make one. Better times ahead!"

Luke: "I recently 'got one,' the best in a long time. I saw it, I 'worked' it, I knew it. I printed it big. Half the satisfaction for me is just confirmation that the process still works: I can see it, and work it, and get it. And happily delete most of the rest."

robert e (partial comment): "Perhaps the photography lesson that took longest to sink in for me was to stop trying to re-take the photo after the fact, in post. You got it or you didn't, as you say. A hard lesson, but so liberating when it does sink in!"

Three Pictures Under Discussion

So let's look at a few actual pictures. These all come from the same sharing site and several are made with the same lens, but there's no need to read anything into that.

A digression first
Before I start, though, I just wanted to comment on one thing in passing: in looking for a deliberately soft lens that doesn't go for the analytical/clinical/forensic look, I happened across one of those very cheap third-party manual-focus lenses (I sometimes jokingly call them "fourth-party" lenses—you know, sorta like "off-off-Broadway"—but nobody gets the joke). It only costs around a hundred bucks, and it looks like it might be quite nice for intentionally less-than-sharp portraits.

So then what does the first review say? "This lens is total crap! It's soft at every aperture!"

...Which seems unfair. He's criticizing the fact that the $100 lens he bought is not the same as a $500 lens. Whose fault is that though? His, if you ask me. If you insist on a lens that renders like a $477 Nikkor, then save your money for a bleepin' $477 Nikkor, ya broke-ass, no-cash-having jamoke. Leave the soft $99 lenses to those who are looking for soft lenses.

There, now I feel better.

Picture 1
Okay, now on to the pictures. When you open this first picture, just look at it sitting a normal distance from your screen, without being critical. Pretty standard, right? And looks okay. At a glance, you know what's going on: sharp, in-focus blooms in front, fading into progressively more blur in the distance. So now take a look.

But zoom in by clicking to enlarge it two times, and we find to our astonishment that virtually nothing in the picture is sharp, save a few leaves on the left-hand side of the frame. None of the blooms are sharp, not even the one at the lower right which seemed like the prime candidate at first glance.

But remember 3R prints, the once-ubiquitous standard so-called "drugstore prints" that were 3.5x5 inches in size? This would look fine at that size. Those 3R prints were optimized to mask slop and imprecision of many kinds. It was a system designed to routinely make silk purses out of sow's ears.

Picture 2
Or take this one. Now, in my humble opinion at least, this portrait (which gets the important things right, the expressions and what it implies of the relationships—and it's a nice enough composition, too) has a few more pressing technical problems, specifically a tonal scale that's way too short and what looks to me like a virtual green filter (you can see it in the gums, which should be a much lighter tone that doesn't draw attention, and that characteristic mottling of the skin tones. Light skin often has slight reddish mottling which is nearly invisible, or rather inoffensive, to our eyes, but it's highlighted in an unpleasant way when you make the reddishness darker with a green filter). But again, if you look at it uncritically at the original screen size, it looks fine. But, enlarged, the boy (middle figure) is clearly less sharp than the other two and the face on the left is less sharp than the face on the right.

When I was a custom printmaker (I always said "custom printer" but that was before a "printer" was a black plastic box made by Epson), I would often call clients to inform them that a certain negative would only go to a certain size. My clients were mostly photographers, and they would almost always assume that I was talking about technical parameters. They might reply something like "I've enlarged Tri-X negs from the Hassie to 16x20 before and they looked fine." Sometimes I was indeed talking about technical parameters, such as the size at which a slight touch of camera shake became too obvious. But I was usually using my judgement about the size at which that specific image would most effective. For example, if I were printing this picture, I might suggest a smaller size as the max, to avoid drawing attention to the disparity of sharpness between the three faces. Printing it overlarge would just draw the viewer's attention to the differences in sharpness, and those differences are absolutely immaterial to the picture.

I might even cheat a bit and actually soften the sharpness of the face on the right. Have to be careful with that, though, because that would never be something you want to call attention to.

Picture 3
It's actually not easy for non-specialists to detect very small amounts of blur, whether it's out-of-D-o-F blur or camera shake. I'm more sensitive to it than the average bear*, but I can't claim to be infallible. Sometimes you almost intuit its presence depending on how large you're seeing the image. On this third and final picture, there are three women dressed in blue T-shirts front and center. Look at the middle woman first when you open the link.

She looks fine, right? Comma, at that size. But, again, after you enlarge this and look critically, you can see more easily that she's actually not at the plane of best focus. The woman on the left, with the tiara and the portrait of the photographer in her purple sunglasses, is the most sharp. The smiling woman on the right is now clearly out of the depth of field, even though she's in the D-o-F at the smaller size.

I would probably have simply placed the focus on the middle of the three women and stopped down one more stop. That can sometimes be a bit risky, of course, and I'm betting you know why: because if you misjudge and get the woman closest to the lens—the woman with the tiara—a little too soft, you draw too much attention to that. (As a general rule, subjects closest to camera position need to be sharp, and it can be distracting if they aren't.) Hence the extra stop of increased D-o-F, as a safety margin...assuming I'd have the presence of mind to adjust in the heat of the moment, which I probably wouldn't. But those are the things that experience teaches you to judge.

(Oh, and that "portrait" of the photographer in the sunglasses? I'm betting it's the other photographer. It seems to me that the three ladies are looking at someone taking their picture, and it's not the guy who took this picture. Because of the angle of their heads, I'm betting we're seeing the other photographer in the sunglasses, the one who they're looking at. Just my interpretation.)

How to evaluate your own pictures
So how can you start to get a sense for the optimum sizes of your own pictures? There's actually a pretty easy way, although it takes a fair amount of experience. Assuming your eyesight works for the distances involved and your room is big enough, just fill your editing monitor with the image, and stand up and back away from the monitor! As you move farther and farther away, notice how the image subtly changes and how the level of visible detail gradually diminishes. If you study what you see and learn to "feel into" the image and how it works, you'll start to get a sense of how much each image can take of enlargement, and the way different degrees of revealed detail "work" for that particular picture.

As mentioned above, though, I'd encourage you not to look at mere technical parameters, but rather to look at how the specific image is functioning in terms of content and meaning. All of what we've been discussing is a judgement call, a balancing act, based on what in the picture you want to call attention to, and what would be a distraction that would detract from the picture if it is spotlighted too much. This is influenced by technical parameters but is not a technical issue at root. It depends on each specific picture, and how you want that picture to work.

Mike
(Thanks to Junpei, Jim, and Glen, the photographers of these three pictures)

Ed. note: The second link was missing when I posted this. Gah. Sincere apologies for the inconvenience.

*That's actually a Yogi Bear reference, and if you even recognize that name you're showing your age as badly as I am.  :-)  Five life points if you know who the cartoon bear was named for.

ADDENDUM: Here's some truly trivial trivia for ya. Do you know why Yogi Bear had a collar?

The answer, says Wikipedia, is because it allowed animators to redraw only his head when he was seen speaking, and not have to redraw his entire body. This was a cost-cutting measure by Hanna-Barbera, the studio that produced the cartoon. It reduced the number of frames needed for a cartoon from ~14,000 to ~2,000.

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Original contents copyright 2021 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.

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

Gavin Paterson: "It’s Yogi Berra, baseball player, but I do have an advantage, as I worked for the Australian subsidiary of Hanna Barbera in the '80s, when we still produced animated series for USA networks, such as the Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Yogi Bear, and the Jetsons—now that’s showing my age!"

V.I. Voltz: "Yogi Bear was named after Yogi 'You can observe a lot by just watching' Berra. My kids watch YouTube; we had to make do with cartoons, which, at first, were in black-and-white."

Rob de Loe: "You can do as many of these posts as you like...."

hugh crawford: "I got the bear reference, but you missed the opportunity to call out your Boo Boo. Did you know there is a Daws Butler stream on Spotify?"

Mike replies: I never knew his name before! Thanks for that.

w98abee: "The Yogi Bear reference was like deja vu all over again."

Guy Couture: "Thanks, Mike, for this clear explanation. I think it's the first time I see it explained this way. No doubt you're a good teacher."

Mike replies: Gracias Guy.

Jim Kofron: "Photography is 90% mental, the other half is camera gear...."

Steve Renwick: "The bear's namesake might have said, 'Most pictures are not as sharp as they look.'"

Lawrence Huggins: "Why would you bother to devote any of your time to writing about three such unexceptional photos?"

Mike replies: Because they are...

Cary Talbot: "Nice examples to illustrate your point, Mike. Reminds me of something I read in a photography book by Scott Kelby. He was stressing the importance of zooming in on your image when 'chimping' it on the back LCD to make sure you nailed the focus because 'everything looks tack sharp on a 2.5-inch screen.'"

Mike replies: Yes. And, in like wise, just as with the old 3R prints the small size of a smartphone-as-display masks a multitude of sins.

John Robison: "Ah yes, 3R prints. I well remember an ad by Keystone Camera for a cheap 126 camera, comparing results from it to a Hasselblad. Of course, in a magazine reproduction at a 3R print size, there didn’t appear much difference.

"When working at a camera store, more than once customers would bring in a strip of 35mm negatives with the sample 3R print and ask for a 8x10 enlargement. Grabbing a 10x magnifier would often reveal that the neg was just not up to that degree of enlargement. It was surprisingly hard to explain this to customers. Some would insist that we send in their order anyway. Once a year, at inventory time we always had a box of enlargements refused by customers that were written off and discarded.

Mike replies: They never want to take your word for it, do they?

Have a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Strategy

Apropos yesterday's post, Thomas Mc Cann said: "Don't you have memory buttons where you can store presets? My Panasonic G9 has a get-out-of-jail-free button marked iA (Intelligent Auto) which I resort to when I get flustered."

I'd say that's an important element of camera setup for anyone who either doesn't use their cameras every day or isn't naturally an electronics maven (some of you have an aptitude, I know). Start by assuming that occasionally things will go wrong and you'll inadvertently and unintentionally set something on the camera without realizing what you've done or how to undo it. Having and knowing a quick way to reset the camera to a familiar basic setup is a good failsafe. You might never need it, but you'll know what to do if (or, in my case, when) the need arises.

I've set up various cameras that way but I hadn't done so on the X-T1, which I was was using when I got "stuck in Sepia." For all its knobs and dials and its basic transparency, The X-T1 is still a computer.

Carl Weese wrote an article for us about using Custom Modes in 2015. It's worth reviewing. I'm going to.

Memorable
It's worth noting on the way by, however, that sometimes bad things are good things. Cold and flustered, I accidentally put the camera into sepia mode and then didn't know how to undo it. But that made me think okay, so what can you do with sepia then? I don't usually take pictures of barns. But a barn is a conventional pictorial subject and sepia is a signifier that telegraphs "picturesque" and "old-timey," appropriate for Americana, so I figured I'd put the two together. I'm not making grand claims for the picture, but it's now a memorable one for me. All my photographic life I've liked the idea of trying things at least once. I made a sepia-toned darkroom print once—just one, to try it. So now I've shot a digital picture in sepia mode. I'll remember it.

Mike

Book Product o' This Week:

Is it too late for this? 2021 is still young. There are two reasons to value these Michael Kenna calendars from Nazraeli Press: one is that his originals are 8x8", so these pictures are meant to work at wall-calendar sizes. The other is that Michael's calendars can actually increase in value! Dan Smith suggested this, and he reports that some older ones sell in the hundreds of dollars. "The printing is excellent," Dan wrote, "and the calendar is beautiful."

The above link takes you from TOP to Amazon. This week's pick is not available at Amazon Canada, but 2019 is. Hey, the pictures are still good. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

 

Original contents copyright 2021 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.

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

Photo-Dawg Syndrome

I went out photographing yesterday.

Here are two little things I've noticed. I don't know how important they are, or if they relate to you.

The first is that I have a mild case of old-guy syndrome. Or let's call it "Photo-Dawg syndrome." It goes like this: I wake up in the morning, and there's been four days of snow but now the sun is shining and it's warm(ish) and absolutely gorgeous. And even though there's the pandemic and I can't photograph people and I'm not really a scenery photographer, I'll think, I should get out and photograph today, it's beautiful, perfect day to get outside, etc.

...And then I remember all the photographs that are out there, all of which I've taken before, the same-old same-old, seen it before, been there done that. Not to mention the innumerable better photographs of exactly the same type that I've seen from others, others who like that sort of thing better and are more energized by enthusiasm and therefore work harder at it because they're more motivated.  And then I'll reflect how comfortable I am with my toes toasty warm and how much nicer it would be to stay right here, comfortable and cozy.

You know, it's that old "why bother" impulse. I guess that's called being "jaded"...

Jaded, adj., Tired, bored, or lacking enthusiasm, typically after having had too much of something.

In contrast to younger humans, who respond more like this.

Playing
But the second thing I've noticed is this: When I actually do get started photographing, I don't want to quit. Once I'm out and started I get charged up, revved up, and I don't want the light to fade or the day to end and I want to keep clicking the shutter. I keep looking around for something else, anything, to photograph. I just want to keep going.

I don't know whether this is because I go out photographing too infrequently and I have a pent-up urge to do it, or I enjoy being out, or I enjoy how the camera changes my ability to look and see, or whether I just like taking pictures. Maybe I just like operating the camera—it could be that simple. Lee Friedlander, one of my touchstone artists, once said that he starts photographing because he likes to play with the cameras. (Or something to that effect—it's been 35 years since I've seen the quote.)

And I've always felt that way. I remember feeling that way when I was a kid, taking pictures with my Dad's old postwar Zeiss. I loved the sound the shutter made (somewhere between a zip and a snick) and the way the sound marked the slice of time and the view through the lens you just sampled.

I still like it—jaded Photo-Dawg or not.

Mike

(P.S. I'd add a photo to this post, but I'm too jaded to go out to the car and fetch the camera. Just kidding. I think.)

Book o' This Week:

In honor of Black History Month, an eloquent Black voice on the issue of race. Pulitzer-prizewinner Isabel Wilkerson's much-lauded book Caste: The origins of our discontents is a good book for our historical moment.

The above link takes you from TOP to Amazon. Here's the book at Amazon Canada. "As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases."

Original contents copyright 2021 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:

Mikey: "I get those exact same feelings too. I know that nothing I photograph will be anything new or unique, and might garner maybe a second or two of interest by a couple of people on social media. It's downright demotivating from that perspective. Then I look at the skyrocketing cost of gear nowadays, and the cost/benefit of continuing this hobby is starting to make me wonder if it's really worth it. I mean, what in the world am I spending thousands of dollars for, just to take a picture of a bird that nobody cares about?

"But on the days when I am motivated, I absolutely enjoy the process of taking photos. It gets me outside for some fresh air and exercise, I love fiddling with all the knobs and dials and playing with perspectives, and I can spend hours in Photoshop immersed in post-processing. It's that whole process that keeps me coming back, even if the end result is derivative. I guess the joy for me comes from the journey, not the destination."

SteveW: "Yep. I like to lap swim, and usually go about three times a week or so. I'd go more if not for the pandemic, but pools in my area are limiting attendance. Anyway, every time, bar none, I have to drag myself to the pool. Once I'm in the water swimming, I'm happy as a clam, and love it. Back (pre-pandemic) when I could go to the gym, it was the same deal—once I was there, I loved it.

"Thanks for today's blog. I need to apply this same attitude to getting out with my camera."

Darin Boville: "There's a weird phenomenon: When you don't feel like smiling, if you smile anyway you will feel happier. Causation can be reversed—smile first then feel better. Same way with art-making. Not in the mood? Start anyway; soon you will be in the mood and wonder why you didn't start two hours earlier. Starting is the trick, not getting in the mood."

Rob Campbell (partial comment): "Photo-Dawg. Yes, I recognize the syndrome immediately. I think you hit the nail on the head with your reasoning: one has already covered one's local turf thoroughly; ad nauseam, in fact. It's what happens if one lives away from cities: one becomes dependent on larger motifs in nature, rather than on just the kind of tighter, conveniently scaled compositions favoured, on his city walks, by Saul Leiter. Which I guess is why so many landscape people seek out wide-angle lenses, whether they are the best tools much of the time or not. Close-ups in nature share too many similar features to remain exciting for very long: another rock, another tree...that's why the grander vista—think Tuscany—appears to be rather fetching: so many slightly hidden details once you start to study an image, which today, with our newly-found Internet impatience, we probably don't care to do very much. As a result of heart attacks, I have managed to be convinced that I need a lot more exercise than I used to give myself. Consequently, to dull the boredom of solitary walking down the same old roads, streets and boatyards, after my wife died I began to carry along a camera in order to give myself some sense of doing, rather than just existing during that trudging along for an hour or two. I never carried a camera before I was alone, unless for work purposes. All of which really proves the late Terence Donovan's oft-quoted words: the greatest problem for the amateur is finding a reason to make a photograph. How true that turned out to be in post-pro times!

"Playing. Okay, it can be fun, but rather than thinking Friedlander, I guess I'd be more inclined to think of the late Garry Winogrand: he perhaps unintentionally proved, by leaving so much unprocessed film at his death, that the results ultimately don't mean squat: it's the therapy in the snapping that matters."

Dennis Mook: "Classic shutter therapy. Perfect prescription for what ails you. A sure cure."

Kye Wood (partial comment): "Mary Poppins always says that 'A job once begun, is half done.'"

Fred Schumacher: "I live in the boreal forest of far north Minnesota. Winter here is six months long, but I photograph every day. This week, air temperatures have ranged between low of –46°F and high of –5°F (not wind chill). When I go out, my Olympus TG-6 is always in my pocket. From our dining table, I photograph birds and deer at the feeder. When I'm out skiing, I photograph animal tracks. Population density is one person per square mile. A trip to the supermarket is a 90-mile round trip, but there's always something to photograph. Today, it was a snowshoe hare hidden in the snow, the only mark of its presence being its black eye."

Julian: "Re '...I remember all the photographs that are out there....'

"I hear you on this one, however, for me, the only way that I can keep making my own photographs is to remember that they are totally insignificant and hardly anyone will see them. That frees me to just make pictures I like; sometimes other people like them too. Thinking I was making significant Art was frequently paralyzing for me."

Mike replies: Great point. I suspect we're all different with respect to what "frees" us, but each of us absolutely needs to know what does it for ourselves.

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.

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

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(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%.'"