Ideas and Imagery #4

When I first started shooting I just didn't understand black and white.  I couldn't figure out why people didn't prefer color.  We see in color, and there is so much beauty in color, I just couldn't imagine shooting anything in black and white.

As I started to seek out stronger compositional elements like shapes, lines, and forms, I also started to experiment with black and white to try and understand how it changed and focused my pictures.

What I hadn't realized was that I was shooting at times of day where black and white conversion was less effective such as low contrast times like sunrise and sunset.  There just wasn't enough difference between light and dark to give things shape.

What I also found is that processing in black and white simplifies compositional elements.  When you are trying to represent shapes, lines, and forms, black and white helps distill an image down to remove the distraction that color can sometimes cause.

I also liked that I could remove detail from the shadows to form shapes.  The black and white in this photo make the bridge wires, road, and vehicle shapes stand out from the sky.  Where the blue sky might draw your eye past the bridge, the black and white version helps you focus on the bridge and semi trucks.  It accentuates the shadowy truck against the sunlit truck above and creates a dynamic between the two.  In color, the clouds become the subject, and the red in the flag pulls your eye away instead of merely balancing the image.

It is funny how your perceptions can change with a little bit of effort and a desire to see things in a different way.

Ideas and Imagery #3

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than it is to be good.  I followed bees around this bush for at least a half hour and have done this on more occasions than I can remember.  Shooting bees with a macro lens is challenging in all sorts of ways.  Shooting mid day gets your shutter speed up high enough to stop the action, but the bees are twice as fast when its hot, and depth of field is so shallow you can't get them in focus in time.  Waiting until later means you have to bump up your ISO, which is OK until you try to crop in tight, and the detail is lost to noise.

In the end it wasn't technical prowess that got me here to this result.  Knowing the technical things got me in the ballpark (and I'm sure there were things I overlooked here as well).  In the end it was perseverance and patience that resulted in this shot.  This bee sat in this spot resting long enough for me to get one shot off with the eye in focus.  I could have skipped the 50 other photos I missed on and just waited for this one.  The big question is whether I would have seen this if not for the other 50.

Ideas and Imagery #2

It's important for me to keep an open mind about the pictures I take.

This is a shot taken in downtown Portland, and I'd like to say that I intentionally shot this with the backpack in the frame.  I didn't.  In fact, I shot this, came home, and was disappointed because I thought the bag was a distraction.

Being relatively new to photography at the time, I had really only shot landscapes, nature, and cityscapes, and if there was something or someone in my shot I would get frustrated.  The bag ruined the shot for me at the time.

Over time though, I kept coming back to this shot and I wasn't sure why.  I ultimately realized it was the backpack that was an entry point to the shot for my eye.  That backpack adds a narrative that the shot lacked otherwise.

Since this lesson, I try to keep my mind open to new possibilities that push my goals for a shot.  If you go into a shot with your eyes closed, you just might miss a better shot right in front of you.  Had I seen the bag to start with, I would have missed this one myself.

Ideas and Imagery #1

This sunflower shot was taken in 2011, shot in Auto mode on my Nikon D5000.  We bought the D5000 for family pictures in December 2010, but I had really wanted a DSLR after trying one and seeing the photos that came out of it.

I love this shot because it was one of the first where I was trying to make something that justified owning much more camera than I knew what to do with.  It would be another 6 months before I even tried to shoot in manual.

Looking back on this shot now, I know why I like it.  If you had asked me when I took it, I wouldn't have been able to explain it, mainly because I had no idea why nor the language to communicate it.

But this was a beginning of sorts, and one of the first steps on my way to becoming passionate about photography.

An ending and a beginning...

After a year of planning, wrestling, and editing I finally get to introduce my photography to the world.  While I am likely writing this entry for an audience of one so far, it is my hope that others find something interesting in what I have to say both with my pictures and my thoughts.

The words I write will be centered around images, but there may be room and times for other discussion.  Mostly I will take the opportunity to share some of the images that may not have made the cut to stand among my best.  I feel those images need a home as well, and will share them with some insight on how they came to be.

With that, this is the end of my year-long journey toward sharing my vision with the world and the beginning of this site as a home for my work.  I hope my images inspire others as much as they inspire me.