12-12-13 Countless Unseen Details

Someone once suggested that "Countless unseen details are often the difference between the mediocre and the magnificent." When I teach photography, this is one of my many mantras: what helps our work rise above all of the billions of photos being taken is our close attention to details and our true understanding of what those details are.

This photo is not presented as an example of the "magnificence" but this detail of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City is. If you look at a broader view (click), you will will find that while the figure of Jesus is the centerpiece of the this facade of the cathedral, it is only one small part.

And I can assure you that the architects and sculptors did not intend for this statue to be seen with a telephoto lens attached to a high resolution camera as you are seeing it.

So why are the edges of the pages of the book so carefully rendered? And why is there so much detail in the face and hands of Christ that would not be seen from a distance?

The answer is simple: these were all done in a quest to create something that was truly magnificent.

12-10-13 Late Fall

It occurs to me that in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where this photo was taken, the ponderosa pine is visual white noise in that there are so many of them and, unless they are fallen or bug infested or on fire, they are rarely seen.

Good photography often involves being in the right place at the right time. But good photography also is about directing the camera towards things in ways that help people "see" scenes, events and objects in ways that make them worth noticing.

So today I present a detail of a lowly ponderosa pine which has probably been standing largely unnoticed for 50 years. And what is special about this tree branch? Perhaps nothing. But when photographed at the the right time with the right light, it is certainly interesting and, I think, worth stopping and looking at.

Canon 5DIII 1/200s f/2.8 ISO200 200mm

11-14-13 The Festival of Trees Metal Print Is Here!

Each year I donate a photo to the Lake Area Technical Institute Foundation to be auctioned at their annual Festival of Trees, which is quickly approaching. The photo usually has a winter theme and this year's picture is called "Spring Melt" and was photographed along Iron Creek last April.

Being a perfectionist, I rarely like my photos in print form but I have to say that this one, printed on metal, is pretty special. Of course it helps to have such great scenery. :-)

08-25-13 Singled Out - Morning Light on Grass #3

This is the last of three macro photos that are intended to suggest that photographers have the potential to make common things interesting by finding the right framing, focus and light.

08-24-13 Singled Out - Morning Light on Grass #2

Second is a series of three.

08-23-13 Singled Out - Morning Light on Grass #1

This is the first in a series that I am calling "Singled Out." The series is an attempt to show you that photographers have the power to make the mundane interesting. All it takes is the right framing and the right light. All of the subjects in this series are considered weeds.

08-01-13 Photographers At Work

In keeping with my "Working Photographer" theme from yesterday I post the second in a series. This time, the photo is of more mature subjects then Glenyce J. The subjects: Patricia, of Monterey, CA and Nicole of Houston, TX. The setting: Lakota Lake, the Black Hills, South Dakota.

And the event was my July Black Hills Photo Adventure, which drew participants from all over the US. (Well I'm exaggerating. The states represented were TX, CA and SD, which is almost the whole United States.) Anyway, we had a perfect morning to visit one of my favorite early morning photo locations.

It looks like Nicole and Patricia are having a good time, doesn't it? And they are smiling in spite of the fact that I made them get up well before 5am to enjoy the morning "golden hour."

Canon 5DIII 1/60s f/5.6 ISO400 200mm

03-26-13 Luminaire

I knew when I saw these "candles" (made by Energizer) at Target that I had to have them and that they could provide an interesting photo opportunity. Frankly, this shot isn't what I had envisioned when I was walking out of the store. But it's what I ended up with in an impromptu photo session last night.So what are we to make of this tableau? It could be that, to paraphrase Macbeth, it "[signifies] nothing." And it's no accident that I mention Macbeth, since in the speech where that phrase is borrowed, he also talks about a candle. Though his candle is "brief"; these Energizer candles are supposed to last 90 hours.Maybe its about loneliness, alienation and the meaninglessness of life. Yes, Macbeth talks about that too. ("[Life] is a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing.")And maybe I'm asking you to think too much. (At the end of the play, Macbeth probably thought too much; he should have put more thought in to his scheme to become king at the beginning of the play.)Maybe this photo tells the story of a photographer who should have been doing something more serious than playing with Energizer candles and his prized Canon 50mm f/1.2 lens.

02-12-13 Back In the Days of Film

Here's a photo that was taken with my Canon film camera 12 years ago. Yes, film! If you look closely, you will see white specks. Those are dust specks on the negative. And if you look closely again, you will see film grain. Holy cow!My workflow for this photo was as follows

Visit the Como Park Conservatory in Minnesota

Take the photo

Go home

Develop the film in my makeshift darkroom

Scan the negative with my very slow high resolution film and slide scanner

Put the scanned file in a folder on my Mac

Burn the folder to a CD (yes, a CD)

Put the CD into a CD case

Put the CD case in my very crowded closet

Forget about the CD case for 12 years

Look for a shirt that fell off the hanger in my closet

Find the CD case

Forget about the shirt and everything else

Post the photo after minor retouching in Aperture

There you go. And, if you ask me, I like the photo but it's not all that special. As if no one else ever stood here and took the exact picture. . . .

02-03-13 Death Star?

This photo is the result of a totally serendipitous process. I have been playing with a Canon Speedlight and a Canon infrared trigger (the ST-E2) off and on for the last few days. I have also been using a snoot to focus the light on macro subjects. I started with the Christmas cactus I photographed in natural light a few days ago. I then moved to a freshly printed dollar, thinking that bright, focused, angular light might result in something cool. (It didn't). And then, just a short time ago, I went prowling for something with shape and texture and I found a Shure microphone I just happened to have lying on my den floor. (Why? You ask. There's no good answer for that question other than there are a lot of things on my den floor.)And this is the result. I like the picture but, as I've often said, that doesn't mean it's a good picture. What I like, though, is that I think I've made a fairly usual thing look interesting because of the the point of view and, more importantly, the way I've used light. The other thing I like is that I used a iPad mini box as a reflector on the right side of the subject. Beyond that, my "studio" is nothing special in this photo. In fact, here's what the shot set-up looks like:There really was as much ambient light in the room as you see in the snap shot. The reason everything besides the microphone is so dark in the final photo is that the Speedlight was bright, it was very close to the the microphone and the light was focused by the snoot.Canon 5DIII 1/60s f/9.0 ISO200 100mm

01-31-13 A New Arrival!

Wow! Yet another "How To Be A Better Photographer" blog??!!! Yes. The story is that a year ago, after assigning a blog project to my Social Media Marketing students, I decided to create a blog that does something different than this one: I use explicit teaching tactics rather than the subliminal ones I use here. (You didn't know that I was often secretly trying to educate you?)And so (a year later!) I have launched "The Better Photography" blog. My mission is to teach and enlighten and, from time to time, to talk in more technical detail about how I create the photos that show up here. So how about visiting my new blog? And you really should subscribe to it because it won't be quite as regular and this one. What? You haven't subscribed to this one yet? Just go to the bottom on this page and put your email address in the blank provided. No obligations. And you can cancel at any time.

01-11-12 #18,791

This photo is the last photo I took in 2012. I was entralled by the fact that the bag of chips got puffy as our airplane reached altitude. It was taken with my iPhone and given what I was trying to capture, it is a failure. It was also the 18,791st photo I took last year.I am posting a throw-away photo today so I can talk about two things that are running through my head:First, this photo is obvious proof that every shutter click doesn't generally produce a gem. My rough calculation is that I might get something that is close to as good as it gets for me about once every 1000 times I take a photo. That's a ratio that isn't very good and which is no doubt one of the evils of the digital era of photography. I have been reading about Edward Weston and he was much more deliberate and calculating in his photography. I need to be more like him.Second, I accept Malcolm Gladwell's thesis in his book Outliers that what we call "genius" is often a combination of the right genes and the right environment. But you also need to add in 10,000 hours of concerted and guided practice. By my calculations, not including all of the time I spent teaching photography last year, I put about 800 hours into my craft in 2012 (including the production of this blog). Eight hundred hours equals twenty 40 hours work weeks.The reality is that by Gladwell's suggestion, I have several years to go before I have a chance of being a genius. Or at least really, really, really good. Do I have the will? Will I find the right teachers? And will I ever feel like I've reached some kind of peak or pinnacle?The answers to the first two questions are "Yes" and "I hope so." The answer to the last is "Probably not." I quoted the poet Robert Browning yesterday in my first year photography class: "A man's reach should exceed his grasp. Or what's a Heaven for?"But at least we strive. . . .