Fast as lightning.

All photos in this post taken by Jessie Brandon. Click on an image to view full size.

© Jessie Brandon, 2011

The debate over what is the best camera, best format of camera or even what is the best lens has been going on long before digital media ever was even conceived. I really had no plan to address this issue especially since David duChemin did such a fine job just this week. Certainly my words are no match for his. But then something happened last night.

Mom on the beach

Last night my daughter got excited, again, about taking and making creative images. Here is the back story; we decided to go for a family walk on the beach. My wife loves to pick up driftwood and bring it back to the garden. But, last night there was no driftwood in sight. So we sat on some rocks on the edge of the ocean and watched a storm moved through. I pulled out my iPhone and opened up my Hipstamatic app and started snapping shots of my wife and the storm. Jessie, my daughter, soon grabbed my iPhone from my hands and started playing with it. In fact she got obsessed with it. I joked with her and suggested she should try to take a picture of the lightening lighting up the horizon, knowing there was no chance she would catch it with an iPhone. I showed her that if you hold the shutter button down how you can have it “triggered” and ready to go off as soon as you lift up your finger. It wasn’t a minute later that a lightning bolt struck, then one struck immediately afterward. Jessie lifted her finger off the shutter and shot her picture. She tried to catch the first, obviously not knowing there would be a second. But she captured the second bolt. I was amazed!

She got so excited that she started taking pictures of everything, our feet, us walking down the beach – everything. I’m always amazed at how good of a compositional eye my daughter has. What she doesn’t have is patients, at this point in life, to fiddle with f-stops and shutter speeds. I wish she did, but she doesn’t. And so, I’ve wrestled with how to keep her interested in something she’s obviously very talented at. Sometimes, I think to be a photographer you have to have a fancy camera with buttons and dials. But I’m seeing that the true photographer is the person who has the joy and excitement of creating moving artwork even if it is with an inexpensive app and an iPhone. The phone might be the way to keep Jessie’s interest in the medium. I bought her a Canon Rebel but it stays most of the time in my dry box. I guess it is a lot of effort for a 14 year old to get the camera out, shoot, then download the images to Lightroom or even iPhoto. But the iPhone seems to have that immediate gratification that she needs. Hipstamatic helps with that, giving her creative options with different lenses and film effects.

So what’s my point? The point is, fancy gear and tons of money is not necessary to make beautiful, artistic images. For fulfilling art, it doesn’t matter the camera or the lens. A camera is nothing more than a black box with glass. What matters is your vision. Can you express it in a creative and communicative way? For me, my expensive gear gives me a creative control. For Jess, for now, maybe the iPhone and this app is all she needs. Certainly, these pictures talk. They tell a story. They are the voice of a 14-year-old. And I think they speak loudly.

Dad and Mom

Mom

Dad

This is a short post today. Just long enough to encourage you to explore and stretch. I just wrote that the geek needs to play by the rules to develop an instinct, where as the artist can break the rules anytime. Note: I didn’t say anything about the geek bending the rules, or pushing the boundaries. Still, maybe this post is more for the artist. I hope we don’t get so bound by an idea that we can not rework it and have fun with it. I’m not talking about someone else’s photograph. I’m talking about concepts in both design and technique.

Take for instance the design concept of a frame within a frame. Most people when they hear this and often when it’s taught, they take the idea of a frame and literally put it just inside the frame of the photo. A typical example would be the photo above of the boys fishing. Here you have a frame created by a tree and the ground for three fourths of the image. Quite literally a frame within a frame. Better still, look at the image at the top of the three young Muslim boys standing in the archway a.k.a. the frame. It works, it’s a nice picture. But look below what happens when you pull out keeping the boys within the frame of the arch but including more arches and more of the story. Now you can see that the boys are actually in a madrasa. It is still a frame within a frame but much looser. Don’t be so literally bound by a concept or a teaching that you don’t have the freedom to push the edge and explore.

By the way, all the photo edges used in this post are from onOne Software‘s PhotoFrame 4.6

Henri Cartier-Bresson said “In photography, visual organization can stem only from a developed instinct.”  I think what he meant here by visual organization is basic design principles and composition. These are things that can definitely be developed over time and yet he still uses that word “instinct”. As much as we want to believe that compositional rules and principles of visual design can be taught, I think there still has to be a certain small seed of instinct or intuitive ability, if you will. So, the best of both worlds is a photographer who has what some people call “an eye” and a teachable spirit. Put these two things together and almost anything is possible.

But what happens to a person who may not have the “eye”? All is not lost. Even the worst photographer can get better if they are teachable. They may never become the best but they can become much better by following the simple rules of composition.  Some people like to say, “Rules are made to be broken.”  That’s fine for the intuitive artist. But for that person without the intuitive abilities having no real set of rules can be scary. Boundaries can be comforting. For these people maybe rules should be looked on as guidelines for their photography.

Let me try to put this in another way. In English, the word “rules” can be used in at least two different ways. It’s the same way we use the word “law” or “laws”. We have both the laws of nature and civil laws. You might say in a roundabout way civil laws are based on the knowledge of the laws of nature. We put up stop signs at intersections and make it a law that a driver has to stop. Why? Because the law of nature states if someone enters the intersection at the same time that I do, one of us is going to get injured and possibly die. So in some ways the laws of nature dictate or govern the laws of man.

When we talk about compositional rules–or “laws”–what we are really saying is that there are principles that go beyond us that are just a natural way in which people view images. These laws or rules in composition influence the way we produce our photographs. I’d like to suggest that people, who are not intuitive when it comes to visual design, will lean strongly on compositional rules and laws and they will actually use them as their own personal laws or guidelines when producing visually arresting images.

For some of us—including myself—this would be very stifling and in fact, rather suffocating. David duChemin likes to refer to “the Geek and the Artist”. It is the geek who uses these laws to their advantage and it is the artist who has the liberty to break them to their advantage. I think for a novice photographer it is better to have someone criticize your work by saying you seem bound by the rules of composition than to have someone say you have no concept of composition or design.

Almost everyone can learn what shutter speeds do to an image, what an aperture does to the depth of field and to a photograph. Someone can be taught how to pan a photo or how to read a histogram. But it’s much harder to teach someone why to use a 16mm lens versus 200 mm lens. In fact in my years of teaching, this type of a concept is more difficult to teach than straight compositional principles. What I have found is that even the most ardent geek can feel like an artist when they put themselves under the rules of composition.

In closing, let me say there are no photo police. There are a lot photographers with inflated egos that will tell you that you should never submit yourself to a set of rules or boundaries. If you err on the geek side of photography and find your images lacking strong compositional elements, then I urge you to put yourself under the discipline of compositional rules. At first it might feel remedial and feel as if you’re bound by these rules. In fact, you are, but it’s a voluntary servitude as you work on training your eye and your mind. It’s discipline and it is only for a season. If it helps, think of it as tying up the geek and releasing the artist.

Un-suckfilters, everybody has one. Oh sure, you might not want to admit it, but you have one. Everyone does.

Back and white conversion or for the more creative duo-toned conversion has got to be the number one un-suck filter. We have all be tempted, but we must resist the evil that is known as duo-tone – at least when it is used to convert a bad image to a…bad image in two tones.

As a photographer based in an exotic location and one who travels to even more exotic locations I often get people emailing me to look at their travel galleries. I have seen some of the most appalling imagery exhibited as their strongest work only because it was shot in an amazing place. A bad image shot in India is still a bad image. A bad image shot in London is still a bad image.

I have come up with a partial list of popular Un-Suck Filters. Maybe you have know some others?

• B&W conversion
• Color and color grads effects
• General over processing in PS or LR
• Heavy vignette
• Highlight slider in LR (has to be mine)

Here’s the skinny: If a photo is out of focus no amount of detail in the shadows will change that. If an image is compositionally bad, it will be compositionally bad in back and white as well. As a growing photographer, you need to spend less time working on Photoshop and Lightroom tricks and more time working on composition and craft. Do you know what a well-composed photo looks like? Are you familiar with your kit enough to quickly capture an image in focus with the exposure you want and in a compelling composition? Forget correcting it in Photoshop. Truthfully – you might be able to correct a bad image a bit. But what does that say about your vision and your craft. It just tells me you’re lucky!

By the way, drop by ProPhoto Coalition for more articles on photography.

I just finished my first ever Introduction to Photography course here in Penang this morning. I had eight students with varied experience, all gather at my house around my dining table for a look into how to get the best out of their cameras. I must say, three hours seemed more like three minutes. But with the help of a snazzy (I must say) Keynote presentation, we were able to stay on task yet answer most of the questions and still have some time left for some practical work. I had wanted to take everyone to the beach to shoot, but it rained rather hard here this morning. So, when it stopped for a few minutes, we ran into the road in front of my house and shot some mini-assignments. The aim was not to take pictures of the beach, but to practice what we covered in class. So we were still able to accomplish that. In fact, I must say I was quite impressed with the images they came up with right on my road. It just goes to show, a good photo is made not taken.

In the three short hours we were able to cover the basics:

1. how to hold your camera
2. button and dials
3. the exposure triangle
4. aperture (depth of field)
5. shutter speed (motion)
6. ISO
7. exposure compensation
8. basic composition:
   • rule of thirds
   • uses of lines
   • negative space
9. plus a myriad of trick and tips

The students seemed pleased. One student wrote,

“Thanks! I love the course. I learned a lot about the artistry rather than just aperture/shutter speed etc…”

If you’re a new photographer or know someone that would have benefited from this three hour introduction but missed it, don’t fret! I’m running the same course this Wednesday, December 15th from 9am till 12pm. There are still plenty of spaces for this Wednesday’s course. Just email or call me (+60 164908704) for information or registration. It is a great value for only RM 150 or $47.  Join the fun!

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
Aristotle

This morning I met with some friends of mine for coffee. My buddy Hans tossed out this quote he’d recently read in a runner’s magazine of all places. He thought it might spur some challenging conversation. We were discussing this more from a theological bent and how this effect our life, work and art.  So, in the tradition of Socratic dialogue I offer you the same.

The first part of this is really the premise and the second part the application. The premise is “We are what we repeatedly do.” A lazy man derives his title because he’s lazy. A hard-working man, the same. A painter or a photographer because that is what they do. Maybe this is the case for you, do spend more time taking photos than just about anything else or is it just a weekend hobby for you? What makes this difficult for me to hear is I spend more time writing a blog, tweeting, working with Lightroom and keywording photos than taking photos. But then, just maybe, that’s what a photographer is these days or maybe, that’s what a working photographer is (I hesitate using the word “professional”.)  How much time are you actually spending on your craft?  Most photographers I know are almost addicted to taking pictures. They can’t help but, it’s in their blood, “it’s what they do”, thus it is what they are.  I worked with a guy that used to say, “if you want to know someone’s real values, you watch how they spend their time (not listen to their opinions or posturing). Ouch!

It’s the second part of the statement but I find the most intriguing. “Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”  I think what Aristotle is saying here, is that excellence is not an accident or a fluke. It is not a one time thing. Oh, sure, you can have an excellent photograph. But that does not make you an excellent photographer. The excellent photograph might very well be a fluke and you, on the other hand be a lousy photographer. Give a monkey a camera and eventually he’ll come up with an award-winning photograph. Quite frankly, there’s probably a lot of monkeys with cameras out there dubbing themselves excellent photographers. No, I think Aristotle is absolutely right here. Excellence is gained by habitually working at your art. Aristotle goes on to say;

“Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.”

Now there is a lot of words! But I think he is saying, you are excellent at something when you have the means to be able to choose to do it well and to do that thing well over and over again. He doesn’t just leaving it there, the last part says “in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.” In other words you’ve made right choices by what you know and the results are excellence. This ability to choose excellence time and time again, gives you the moniker of excellent at your craft.

So, how do you achieve excellence so that you can choose it? Aristotle answers that as well, when he says, “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation.” (interesting that he calls excellence an art.) This one is pretty straightforward. You train at being great and you make it a habit. This kind of goes back to the whole Zen aspect of things we’ve talked about before. You do something over and over again until it becomes a part of you and you can do it without thinking about it. I’ve had several e-mails lately asking about composition and how do I frame an image etc. The fact is, most of the time I don’t think about it, it just comes naturally when I put the camera to my eye. But it wasn’t always that way. I had to work at it. I used the rule of thirds to train me. I use the concept of visual weight to beat my creative eye into submission. I consciously thought about it while framing images, over and over again until now it just happens. Wax on, wax off. Take off the jacket. Drop the jacket. Hang the jacket. Are you working at becoming an excellent photographer? Don’t think it will just come easy?

Photographers can cause ripples.

Recently I had an email from a reader who had some basic photography questions. He was dealing with some pretty common issues that most beginners deal with. He has been frustrated that his images, though taken in some very exotic locations don’t seem to grab the viewer. After I looked over some of his images and made some strong suggestions, I got the email below.  His questions are typical for where he is in his photographic journey. I figured the answers I would give might be helpful for others in the same place. So, I thought I would share them with you. I hope any beginners reading this, will find them helpful.

Beginner: Regarding composition — is there a book that you would recommend above the others?

Matt: Yes, several. But the one to start with is by Michael Freeman called “The Photographer’s Eye” from Larks Books. Michael goes into great depth covering composition and design. This book has really become a standard for beginners and advanced photographers alike, and no better place to start.

Beginner: The human side of my struggle in composition. A lot of the time I am walking around through a market etc and taking a lot of pictures on the fly.  I am not looking at the images after I take them but just trying to get the scene before people start to react to the camera.

Matt: This reminds me of an old joke. A guy walks into see his doctor and tells him, “Doc, it hurts when I do this.” The Doctor replies wisely, “Well, stop doing that!” The answer is stop walking through the market and stop and experience the market and it’s life. You will never get more than”snaps” if all you do is breeze through a place and take snaps. We get good images because we seek them out, we watch for them, we observe life around us. If you are there for a few minutes and raise a camera to your face, snap a picture and then move on, yes, people will react. But, the converse is true if you slow down and join in what is happening around you. Buy some fruit. Ask questions. Show them you are genuinely interested in them, once they see that, they drop their guard and you can take plenty of photos. You will find most of them will not mind you taking their image. The bonus is that many of them will go about their daily business and pay no attention to you. Now your subjects are relaxed around you, they don’t feel threatened and you get candid images that you can take your time making, frame in the camera and not feel rushed.

Beginner: In practice how do you deal with this?  How do you try to really compose the picture well while at the same time mitigate against the scene changing with the introduction of the camera. How much time do you spend framing a shot vs cropping later?

Matt: As I said above, you really need to slow down and experience the scene. At the risk of sounding rather Zen, imagine it this way. If you throw a stone into a puddle you will make quite the splash and plenty of ripples. But wait and those ripples subside and everything goes back to normal except, the stone is in the middle of the puddle. Think of yourself as that stone. When you first enter a scene you create quite a stir. The best thing you can do is calmly wait with your camera at your side. Let the ripples subside and eventually people get used to you being around and start to relax and soon you will be allowed to shoot without much changes in the scene around you. As for the second part of your question; I frame the image I want in the camera. If I have to crop in Lightroom it usually is only around 5- 10% of the image.

Beginner: For rule of thirds and off center subjects, how do you setup your cameras auto focus system for times when you are doing “quick shots” and moving fast?  Typically I set it to use the center point so that with my old camera it wouldn’t pick the wrong thing to focus on.  What do you do?  Do you let the camera decide where the best focus point is in those situations?  Are you able to just really quickly change the auto focus points on the camera?  Or do you focus lock and then frame?

Matt: It is not a good thing to ever let the camera decide things. The camera is rather stupid, it doesn’t have a very big brain. This is the very reason we don’t shoot JPEG. We don’t want the camera making decisions on how the image should look, right? So, for heavens sake, why would you let the camera decide the focal point of the image? You have two choices as you mentioned and I do both. You can scroll through your AF points and set the one point that corresponds to the composition you think you will be shooting. I only do this if you have time and good contrast. The outer focal points are not as sensitive to contrast as the center point and thus not as quick to focus. The other way, is  to keep the center AF point your active point; focus and then recompose. Using the center point will give you a better chance at nailing that focus as it is more sensitive to contrast and focuses quicker. However, be careful. The fact is if you are using a very narrow depth of field and you are close to the subject, you can in fact focus on say someones eyes, then recompose and then be out of focus. The film plan is a flat surface and if you are close to a subject, when you tilt the camera to the eyes and then recompose you change the distance of the film plane to the subjects eye. The change is very slight, but if you are working with a 1.2 lens like I often do, then you might see a difference. It really comes down to using the technique that works for you for that moment. But, do me a favor, don’t ever keep all the AF points active and thing you cover all your focal bases. If that is your method, you are in for some out of focus images.

Beginner: So far I typically snap the picture as quickly as possible (and keep moving) and then crop later.  But I am betting there is a better way.

Matt: There’s that snatch and grab thing going again. Take your time, compose in the frame, and savor the moment. Observe your surroundings. Save your pixels and compose in the camera.

Beginner: I guess in the end I see the distractions (telephone lines etc) but I am not always sure how to change the composition without changing the shot by my presence.

Matt: You just answered your own question. You have to change your presence as you put it. I would simply say change your position. When looking through a lens and composing an image, often – maybe even most of the time – distractions can be eliminated by shifting a few inches or feet. Look at the example below. The first image had all kinds of distracting elements behind the woman. But, by moving over to the right a few feet, not only did I find a cleaner background, I also (and this is a big thing!) found much better light. Remember, when you move, the quality of the light changes. The fact is, the light stays the same but the angle you view the light changes. So, beware of  the background as well as the light quality. I will change my position for either or both, as in this case.

Beginner: Last question –  I have lightroom, but I don’t have the full version of Photoshop do I need it?

Matt: No. In fact 95 to 98% of my work never leaves Lightroom anymore. Lightroom is so incredably powerful you only really need Photoshop to do a few things like cloning  or perhaps some difficult spot removal. I will say this, that the new Photoshop CS5 has Content aware delete and cloning that is remarkable. I have never seen anything like it. But, in short, no. You really can get by on Lightroom alone. Do your self a big favor and make sure you have Lightroom 3. There are some really great books that can be of some great help. Scott Kelby’s, “Lightroom 3 book for digital photographers” and Martin Evening’s “The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Book, The Complete Guide for Photographers” Both look like real winners. I just got both of these yesterday from my buddies at PeachPit. Then of course, I can’t mention Lightroom 3 with out talking about David duChemin’s new book hot off the press, “Vision & Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom“. I don’t have it yet. But David gave me a sneak peak sometime back and, like all David’s books, it promises to be the one you keep returning to. More than a “how-to” book on Lightroom. This book promises to help you use Lightroom to express your vision that you had when you took the image to begin with.

I hope this has been helpful. If nothing more than a gentle reminder that you can’t stand with your feet nailed to the floor and expect to get great images. You have to work the scene and the light. Spend time with your subjects and learn to see the image in the camera when you take it.

Photo by Ramy Salem

I talk to myself.
There – I’ve said it. I know, you think I’m nuts. That’s not new news–but that’s a whole other topic.
The fact is, I talk to myself. Whenever I put the camera to my face, I talk to myself. Sometimes audibly, all the time in my head. I ask myself what am I shooting? Where is the picture? Where’s the story? What’s the story? Is this the best angle? And so many other questions. Maybe some photographers look at a scene and can view it through the lens of their mind. I can’t. I need to have the camera to my face. I need to look through the camera and view it through the lens that’s on it. I can get a guesstimate without putting it to my face. In fact, that’s how I choose what lens to put on the camera, by experience. I know pretty close what it will look like with a 17 mm lens or 200 mm lens. I know the amount of distortion an object will have with a 17 mm and I know from experience if that’s what I want or not to help tell the story. I know the compression I get with the 200 mm lens and whether or not that will help tell the story. But there are so many other questions left unanswered. So I raise the camera and lens to my face and I talk to myself while I frame the subject.

Do you talk to yourself? Is that something that you do to help you take your photos? If it’s not, it probably should be. You should be asking yourself all kinds of questions when you look through the lens of your camera. Not just about what you see, but what you don’t see. Is this the best angle? Is there anything distracting behind the subject? Maybe I should move three steps to the left. Is that bit of sky going to be too bright behind my subject? Is there a pole running through someone’s head? Is there a horizon line or horizontal line of any kind going through my subject head? These are all important things to be asking. You don’t find the answers without asking the questions.

We’re talking about being observant with purpose. Asking yourself specific questions to help develop your eye. Get into the habit and I promise you’ll have better images and you’ll tell a better story.

If there is one question I get whenever I teach or discuss composition it is, “Yeah but do you shoot with all these compositional rules in mind or is it something you see afterwards?”  To put it another way, are these compositional rules prescriptive or descriptive? And the answer, of course, is a little of both.

Now, when I run a seminar or workshop and teach a load of compositional rules, I don’t expect my students to go out and start applying all of the rules right away when they are shooting. The fact is, when we go shooting, we are thinking about the subject almost to the point of becoming myopic. We become oblivious to everything else around us. Hopefully, we will try to think about a few of the basic rules of composition at the same time, such as thinking about where the subject falls in the frame, where the lines or elements in the frame are that we can use to draw the viewers eye to the subject. But there are a whole host of compositional elements that we never think to look for in a photo. And quite frankly, most of those would fall in the category I’d call descriptive.

While cropping, positioning the subject in the frame, the use of contrast and balance, being aware of the foreground, middle ground and background, rhythm or repetition and yes, even eye-lines can all be things  that we look for in the view finder there is so much more that will help us in zeroing in on that great image once we get it into Lightroom. These are the factors that help you select powerful images.

When I am in the field, I will often take 5 to 10 images of any one subject. I work the subject for different angles, light, expression and gesture. After I import the images into Lightroom, a lot of the other compositional elements come into play. It is now that the strong images rise to the surface. There’s a chance, and over the years it’s gotten a lot more than just a chance, that I know which image is going to be the strongest before ever importing them into Lightroom. But certainly, once the images are in there, a few images will stand out among the rest. It is now that I look for strong elements of design and composition, things that I might never have seen in the viewfinder. A good example is an image I shot of some farmers winnowing their barley harvest.

This image has some very strong repetition of triangles. I saw one maybe two of the triangles when I was shooting. But later when I look at the image in Lightroom I saw many, many more. I have marked a few above, but there are still more in the frame to be found.

Much of composition is learned and reinforced with practice and self-assignments. Then later, sometimes much later, it enters into the intuitive part of the brain. One day you realize that you are not thinking about diagonal lines curves and vectors, they just start showing up in the images. This is a lot like any art or sport. You learn technique so well that it becomes second nature. I fenced in college.  I was mediocre at best. But I fenced against some of the best. I can tell you they were not thinking, perry, repost, lunge, disengage.  It just magically happened. It was all second nature. Because we practiced the techniques over and over again. And so it is with composition. The more you practice, the more you critique your own images, the more it will become second nature.