J.DELL Photography

It seems Jason and I are already starting to playing off of each other’s commentaries. That’s a good thing, though. That must mean we are causing each other to pause and think, and that thinking helps push us forward on our photographic journey.

 Jason’s last post was spot-on: Always be looking; always be ready. Being ready is one key element to making good photographs. As Henri Cartier-Bresson put it, “Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.” Like most photographers, I am often asked, “What is the best camera?” My answer always begins the same way: “The one you have with you”.  Be ready.

 There is a counterpart to being ready, though, and that is being prepared. Just what exactly is the difference between being ready and being prepared? Quite a lot. Here are two examples of what it means to be prepared.

  The first: My wife handed me a calendar a couple of weeks ago that featured bird photography. I am used to seeing stunning work grace the annuals of organizations like Audubon and Sierra Club, but this one was from neither. I let myself be drawn into each month’s photograph, while at the same time looking for the photography credits. My wife graciously and proudly commented, “You could do that”. I quickly replied, “No, I couldn’t”. She countered, “With all the equipment you have?”

 Ah, indeed she is half right. I am ready to take photos like the magnificent ones in that calendar. I have a tripod and monopod and professional bodies and focal length that reaches out to 1000mm, I almost always have gear with me or close by, and I am always looking around. That makes me ready from an equipment and “seeing” standpoint, but that does not make me prepared. What my wife and many don’t stop to consider about accomplished bird photographers is the amount of time they invest in preparing. In the case of successful “birders”, they not only have the right gear and photographic knowledge, but they study their subjects – the birds themselves. They know their habits: eating, flying, perching, mating, nesting, rearing, migrating. Everything. Then they go out and position themselves and wait, and wait, and wait. That is being prepared, and that is what it takes to be a bird photographer with a worthy portfolio and work that appears in the likes of a Sierra Club calendar.

 I put the hummingbird photo in this post to further drive home this first example. This is the type of bird photograph my wife has seen me make. She thinks is it great, and that is great. When I look at it though, I see it as just “cute”. Not bad, not great, just “cute”. The story behind this photograph is that this little creature gave me about an hour of opportunity to get great in-flight shots. He/she was not darting off with any movement I made, but was literally taking an interest in me. Guess what? I could not get any. Was I ready? Yes. Was I prepared? Nope.

  The second example: Portrait photography is something I know very well, and what you see below is from some recent work. A mother contacted me a few weeks ago and wanted a special portrait for her husband for Fathers’ Day. Using her daughter, she wanted to re-create Norman Rockwell’s “Girl at Mirror”, and she was looking for a photographer who could pull it off.

 She didn’t want the photograph to be somewhat like the famous Rockwell work; she wanted it absolutely as close as possible to it. She had been gathering props for several weeks, and she was literally interviewing me about what I saw in the painting and asking specific questions about what I thought was needed to be successful.  I started my answers with, ” . . well, he (Rockwell) painted the suggestion of window light coming in from the left, so we will put a large rectangular softbox in vertical position on the left and low . . “  My answers earned her confidence. To make this portrait, here are the elements I needed to know and prepare: Light modifiers, position/perspective and focal length, depth of field and light falloff, white balance, color balance, contrast, working with models and posing, story, and an understanding of Rockwell’s piece.

 Getting everything just right on the day of the shoot was even a little more difficult than I predicted, but the preparation was crucial to the outcome. The mother was ecstatic with the portrait, and nearly as important I felt I paid proper respect to the famous painting by working very hard to get all the little things right. The lighting diagram below should drive home the point if I have not already.

 I have not studied hummingbirds to prepare to make an Audubon quality photograph anymore than a bird photographer might know how to work strobes and light modifiers to get the lighting just right for this portrait. Preparation is the key when it comes to bird, portrait, or any specialized area of photography.  Being ready results in making photographs, but being prepared results in making photographers.   Through preparation we learn, and learning pushes us ever forward on our photographic journey. When preparation combines with always being ready, that is when we capture those magical moments that Cartier-Bresson tells us vanish quickly and can never be brought back again.

 Those are the captured moments on which portfolios are made.

You don’t have to be an avid photographer for long before you hear the virtues of black and white photography preached. What does this have to do with making the best of a bad situation? Before we directly broach that, let’s take a step back to our childhood.

Most all of us had building blocks when we were kids. We enjoyed seeing who could build the tallest tower, then the thrill of playing demolition crew, and then building all over again. When I first mentioned those blocks, what were some of the first mental images that came to you? For most, color comes in first or very soon after. Building blocks have been around for decades and are still a staple toy today. They are ubiquitous not only because they are fun, but because those red, green, orange, yellow and blue blocks teach children about color. The names of colors are among the very first things we learn, and we go on to learn that important meaning is often attached to colors. Red means “stop” and “danger”; green means “go”.

Is it any wonder then that when we start our photographic journeys we gravitate toward color, and our first instinct is to capture color. How many landscape photographers have sunsets in their portfolios? The answer is “all of them”. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have anything against sunsets and I would being lying through my shutter if I told you I have not photographed many myself. I love them, too. Let me ask this, though: Have you ever seen a stunning black and white photograph of a sunset? They do exist, but are fewer and far between. Why is that?

To hone in on part of the answer, allow me to ask another question: have you ever seen stunning photograph of a botanical in black and white? For most or even all of us, the answer is “yes”, yet when we think of flowers we are also extremely likely to think first of color. So, why are there more captivating monochrome photographs of flowers than of sunsets? 

Dreary Day Botanical

To answer that question, we need to go back to our childhood building blocks, which in turn takes us back through “making the best of a bad situation” and all the way home to “Finding Beauty in Everything”. Though our first thoughts of and lessons from our blocks are about color, they also taught us other things. They taught us about circles and triangles and squares and rectangles and cylinders. They about taught us about shapes and form and lines, and in a subtle ways also about reflective light and depth.

Now think again about a dramatic monochrome photograph of a flower. Why is it still captivating? Because it dominates the frame with elemental forms and lines, and conveys layers and depth. In other words, a photograph of a flower is not just about its color. It can not only captivate and stand on its own without color, but the absence of it actually showcases the sheer beauty of its form. Can this be done with sunset photographs as well? It is very difficult and rare, but yes it can. If you can go back to a memorable monochrome sunset, study it closely. It is very likely that its form and lines and the direction of light are extraordinary, and why it can stand up in the absence of color.

So what does all of this have to do with “making the best of a bad situation” and “Finding Beauty in Everything”? It is very simple: When bad weather like Jason had in the Spokane settles in, the color we gravitate toward is absent. That should not mean that our cameras and photographic vision have to go in our bags until the sun and color return. Look for lines that pull the viewers’ eyes into your photograph. Find shape and form that can fill the frame and strongly communicate your subject and message. Look for ambient light that tells a story; if you look hard enough, you will find it exists even when it is dreary and rainy and there is no color in site.

Not too long ago I was in Spokane Washington for business. While there myself and a fellow photog decided to spend our evenings taking pictures. Our choice for the first evening was Coeur d’Alene Idaho. This, at first, seemed to be a bad decision. Although Coeur d’Alene is a beautiful place, the weather was not so beautiful. It was cloudy and drizzling the whole time we were there. One of the problems was that the weather was almost too bad to shoot but not good enough to have the camera out for more than a couple of moments. With all of that said we decided to make the best of it anyway.

The results of this situation are evidenced in the photos attached to this post. Instead of having what would be generally considered beautiful we had to search for it. We had to look and to find. We had to find the beauty in the situation and capture it before it was gone. I am sure many photographers have converged on this location. It is a very beautiful area. But will you see them on a cold and rainy day? Probably not.

Remember always when you are in a bad situation sometimes you need to put your camera away and call it a day. But you also have to know when to find the beauty in the scene before you. Like Kenny Rogers says in his song the Gambler “You gotta know when to hold’em and know when to fold’em” Just remember that some of the best pictures you will take will be in less than optimal conditions. You won’t always have the time to compose and setup and check twice. Sometimes you gotta go with your gut and take a chance. Remember to always find the beauty in everything and keep your eyes and mind open to the unexpected in life.

 

When Jason first launched his photography business and chose his tagline “Finding Beauty in Everything”, I thought it was a great reflection of his enthusiasm for seeing subjects and making photographs. I also paused, though. I paused to think about whether I am open-minded enough myself to decide there is beauty to be found in everything.

For landscape and abstract photography, there is certainly a broader range of subjects that viewers might find beautiful. An image of an antiquated, abandoned barn standing alone in a rural field and against a deep blue sky might be considered as beautiful as an image of a mountain range reflected in a flat calm glacial lake. Age and antiquity are not  barriers, and are even sought.

I also do a lot of portrait photography, though, and in my work I am constantly reminded of how our culture’s definition of beauty is indeed very narrow. Many of my portrait subjects are young children, and people often comment how often that must be “tough”. In one way, though, I find it some of the easiest portrait work to do. It comes down to the fact that most people easily find joy and beauty in viewing the innocence of kids in portraits, and the kids themselves are not self conscious about how they look in a photo.

This is not at all the case when photographing adults. Just like with kids, lighting and composition and the technical side of photography are important. However, there is often an additional difficult element that requires skill and experience to approach: By and large, the older we get the less we like to be photographed. That goes for yours truly, too. One of the most important skills for a portrait photographer is the ability to connect with the person in front of the lens, and as much as possible make him or her forget that he or she really does not enjoy being photographed.

So what is it with us adults in front of the camera? It’s really not that difficult to figure out. Most of us wish we were younger, thinner, less gray around the temples, more muscular, more shapely, etc. etc. etc. There is no doubt these wishes have cultural drivers. True story: My wife – who is by no means unattractive – was looking over my shoulder as I was preparing a portrait I took of her for printing. She rarely lets me photograph her because she never feels “made up” enough. She said, “It looks sort of blurry. Why is that?” What she was seeing was not blur, but some softening I often apply to portraits to ease the out-of-the-camera sharpness which tends to exaggerate wrinkles and imperfections in skin. I explained this, and showed her how the photograph looked exactly as it came out the camera. It took her less than a second to say she liked the “softer” one better. Suddenly, her description of the portrait changed from “blurry” to “softer”.

The pre-print editing I did on that portrait certainly is nothing close to the “Photoshopping” done for fashion magazines. Still, my wife undoubtedly liked the softened portrait because her skin looked more that like that of a model – a model who has makeup professionally applied and her photograph air-brushed. So why do I do this at all in my portrait work? Is it to make my subjects more appealing to my own eye? Actually, the answer is no. It is to make my subjects as pleased and comfortable as possible with how they feel they appear in the portrait.

 Undoubtedly, the mass media has a huge impact on our self-image, and especially so in the case of the female sex. So to answer Jason’s question of who decides what is beautiful: It is our mass media, and it goes way beyond just what we consider to be the ideal female form and face. It extends to the perfect home, the perfect car, the perfect lawn and garden, and to just about everything in our lives by which we think others are measuring our worth as people. However, the media is making those decisions because we allow them to do so.

It does not have to be that way. We can start deciding for ourselves what is beautiful, and making our definition much broader than what the mass media is choosing. One of the fascinating and even magical things about the camera is it does not see things the same way our eyes do. Because of that, photography and spending time looking through the lens can be an avenue to seeing the world in a new way, and finding beauty where you never noticed it exists.  Just see for yourself.

As Dorothea Lange put it:

“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. . . “

Finding the Beauty in Everything.

What is beauty?  Who decides what is beautiful and what is not?  Why do we care so much about beauty?  These are important questions and they deserve real answers.

We live in a society that is obsessed with beauty.  People spend countless time, money, and energy trying to live up to a socially unfair definition of beauty.  This definition changes with every generation but the resolve of our obsession remains constant.

What is the socially approved definition of beauty?  Look around.  You will find supermodels, super cars, and supermen.  Take a look at the magazine rack of any retailer and you will see models that have been photoshopped into oblivion.  Look in any phone book and you will be amazed at all of the ways you can become beautiful.  The TV promises a beautiful body and beautiful skin.  The doctors promise beauty beyond even your own recognition.  But is this beauty?  Are we confusing appeal with beauty?  I think we are.  Beauty exists outside of this social definition and beauty can be found everywhere.

All of these things are what this blog is about.  We will try and answer the questions that opened this blog through our words and or photography.  Hold on tight everybody it is time to start “Finding the Beauty in Everything”.