f/1.8, with Canons $100 50mm II, on a Canon EOS 5D

Last month I led two Introduction to Photography courses and one of the things I saw repeated in each course  is that the beginners don’t want a lot. They are not asking to be the next Ansel Adams or Steve McCurry. But the one thing almost all of them do want is a simple portrait of their kids or friends with a nice milky background. What we more experienced shooters call, a sweet bokeh¹ Every photographer loves that soft, blurry background behind their subject. We all love it. We all love the way a shallow depth of field drops off and isolates the subject. It often creates negative space around the subject that is so soft and dreamy, our subject just pops out of the frame.

Well, I got good news and I got bad news.

First the bad news. You are going to have to face it. It’s really hard to get any kind of soft bokeh using a lens that has its widest opening at f/3.5. The math just doesn’t add up. It ain’t going to happen. These lenses are cheap introduction lenses and are not what we call “fast”. Fast means they have a wide aperture that lets a lot of light into the camera. It’s this wide aperture that gives you that bokeh you want. I am sorry to be the bearer of such bad news. Most people at the beginning stages of their photography are using standard kit lenses like an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6. These lenses are designed as starter lenses and as such, are cheap and very limited. Here’s a not-so-great workaround to your problem. Pull your subject away from the background quite a bit, then you and your camera get closer to your subject. This will make the depth of field drop off…some. But it will never give you the bokeh that a f/1.2 or f/1.4 lens will give you. OK, that’s the bad news.

Here is the good news. You can get close to what you want for just a little extra money. You don’t need to spend $1,300 on a 50mm f/1.2 lens. You can spend $100 on a 50mm f/1.8 lens and be just as almost as happy. Here’s how it works. Canon and Nikon both have a 50mm f/1.8 lens that is cheap! Here is the Canon version and here is the Nikon. Both of these lenses are around $100 and both have a fast, wide open aperture at f/1.8. These lenses give you a lot of light and a very dreamy bokeh that folks with the kit lenses aren’t able to achieve. It’s a lot of bang for the buck, so to speak. More good news; there are other options. Both Canon and Nikon make 50 f/1.4 lenses and they run only $350 to $400. This is also really good value and the bokeh is way better than the f/1.8 lenses. $300 better? Yes, no question. The last option is both Canon and Nikon offer a sweet 85mm f/1.8. I loved this lens when I had it. Many of you know, it seemed to never leave my camera. These are fast lenses but they give you a bit of telephoto and for around $400, it’s another killer deal that will amp up your creativity.

But eventually it comes down to your budget. Most people that are replacing a kit lens don’t want to spend $300+ on a prime lens²

So when you are making that last minute Christmas wish list, think about your images and what will take them to the next level. It just might be you need to add a little bokeh to your list.

There are people in this world that spend their entire life trying to get better at something they’re plainly mediocre at or even things they’re bad at doing. In fact, society has built institutions around the concept of “be better at what you are bad at; work on your weaknesses”. Haven’t we have all heard this sermon before?

I am here to say, baloney!

I used to live this way. I remember growing up and hearing voices, teachers, and other significant people in my life telling me to focus on my weaknesses and become a well-rounded person. What I’m advocating now is not a sweeping concept that applies across the board. Certainly there are areas we need to work on in our lives. For instance, when it comes to personality and disposition, I think we all need to work on our weak areas and become better people. If you are a bad father or mother, then you need to work at being a better one. My point is that when it comes to talent and shall we say “gifts” and in this case photography, I think we need to look at things in a different way.

The good Lord has numbered my days here on this earth and I don’t have the time to spend working on areas of weakness. Sounds bizarre I know, almost heretical. I truly believe my time is better spent on focusing on my strengths. That’s not to say I cannot learn something new, but at some point I need to decide if that new thing is worth pursuing or should be put aside. I want to be truly great at a few things. I have no desire to be mediocre at many–a “jack of all trades, but a master of none.”

In a world full of “not quite” and “almost”, there is a cry of “No! We want more than that”–a demand for people who stand out and who excel. People and organizations that spend a lot of money on an idea or project, call out for those who are the best. I want to answer that call. In the short time I have on this earth, I want to spend it bringing my really good up to really great and my really great up to awesome.

The world only needs one Steve McCurry or David duChemin. Be the best you can be at being you and in whatever you can excel. Be great at expressing your vision and your voice.

It’s hard enough for me to just be really great at being me. I know I’ll never be a great writer and I wouldn’t want to become one at the expense of being a really great photographer. Recently I started to build in support for my writing by hiring a proofreader and editor. I know my limits. I know what I am good at and that’s where I want to put my efforts. To borrow a phrase, I want to spend my time going from good to great!

So, you want to get better at taking photos. Ok, great. Are you ready to work at it? I often get this comment either in the form of a question or a declarative statement. It reminds me of my own declarative statement that I keep coming back to: “I need to lose weight.” In many ways both of these problems and their solutions are similar.

For both losing weight and getting better at photography, you need to be determined and willing to work hard to see progress. This is not something that’s just going to happen. You will no more find yourself waking up 30 lbs lighter than you will waking up one day and putting a camera to your face, miraculously start shooting like Steve McCurry. It simply doesn’t happen that way. It takes many hours sweating at the gym, pushing yourself to burn those calories, changing old eating habits and creating new ones. In the same way, it takes the novice photographer hours of working with his kit and a willingness to develop new habits. Neither will happen without time and determination so let me suggest a workout regime for you.

In the gym, you need to know what equipment is used for which purpose. You can’t expect the bench press to tone your legs. It won’t happen; it wasn’t designed to do that. In the same way, you need to know what your camera can do. Learn those buttons and dials. They are not there just to make the camera look cool—they all have a purpose. You may never use them all but you still need to know what they do. Get very familiar with your gear. Not only do you need to know what these buttons do, you need to know where they are even with your eyes closed. No kidding. Every photographer can tell you stories how he or she missed that “Decisive Moment¹” by lowering the camera from their eye to try to find the ISO or meter button. When you take the camera away from your eye you risk losing the shot. Trust me I know. Here is a drill you can do. Take your finger and touch each button on the camera and say the name out loud. After a few minutes try to do it with your eyes closed. Repeat this till you no longer have to look at the camera. Now try it up to your face. Keep at it till you no longer need to lower the camera from your eye to change a setting²

Not only do you need to know what your camera buttons do, you need to understand what they do. It’s no good knowing where the shutter speed dial is if you don’t understand what the shutter speed does and what it will to do to your image. You need to not only know but also understand your camera. Make no mistake, there is a difference. In fact, this was probably the hardest thing I had to do early on. Knowing that the aperture affects the depth of field is one thing; understanding what the aperture does is another altogether. Realizing you can keep your aperture at f/1.8, but by moving closer or further away from your subject, your depth of field still changes shows an understanding of how this all works. So does knowing that an image shot at f/1.2 evokes a completely different feel in an image shot at f/22. The same goes with shutter speed. Get familiar with what shutter speed you need to use when a person is walking, a bicycle is passing or a car driving to give you just the motion blur you need. Also, understand how the ISO is connected with both the aperture and the shutter speed. Understand the “exposure triangle³” and how each part of that triangle affects the other. And for goodness’ sake, take the dang camera off program mode and start shooting in manual, aperture priority or shutter priority! Contrary to what some folks say, program mode does not stand for “professional”. In fact, it is a crutch that controls creativity. It’s like those vibration machines I see at the mall here in Asia. They tell you, you will lose weight with them but the only thing they do is make you lazy and keep you from your hard workout. Program mode will only keep you from learning your craft. Photographer, Bambi Cantrell has a great quote, “Most young photographers can’t tell an f-stop from a bus stop.” Don’t let yourself be one of those.

Every weekday I go to the gym, walk the treadmill and work on my back and abs but the one area in which I fail is my eating habits. I’ll never lose the weight I want because I can’t keep from snacking and returning to the trough. The same thing happens with neophyte photographers. They are going to have to stop some of those old bad habits and start developing new ones. I don’t know all your bad photographic habits but I bet I can guess a few. How familiar does this list sound?

1. Framing your subject in the center of the image
2. Shooting with a telephoto at a shutter speed too slow to hand hold the camera
3. Getting excited and shooting in a hurry, thus not composing your shot
4. Not keeping your sensor clean
5. Not “zero-ing out” your settings after or before each shoot
6. Did I say, shooting in a hurry?
7. Using your popup flash just to get the picture
8. Using any flash directed straight at your subject
9. And lastly, shooting in a hurry

Developing new habits and patterns will keep you from getting a fat database of junk.

I used to have a trainer. He would always harp on me about the details, the small things that I was doing wrong when working out. He would gripe at me for turning my wrists wrong when I was doing curls or the position of my back when doing squats. He kept telling me that if I wanted to see results more quickly to concentrate on my form. I might be pushing this analogy to the breaking point here, but you might call understanding composition and visual weight (how your eye moves around an image) as developing good form in creating an image. There’s a reason why we don’t generally stick the subject in the center of an image. It creates a stagnate image, one without movement. There is a reason why we shoot low to the ground when shooting children; it creates intimacy and keeps them from looking overly vulnerable. Why does shooting in the midday sun make things look flat and boring? These are all examples of ways to take control of the photo and make it yours to communicate your vision–what you want to say. Understanding these things and turning them from happening by luck to happening by intention makes you a better photographer.

No workout regime will work overnight. As I said earlier, it takes time, determination and hard work. So it is with photographers. You can do all the above, but you have to keep at it. You will not see the results overnight. It will take weeks, maybe months. But you will see results. Just as fad diets don’t work for long-term weight reduction, fad photo techniques and image processing will not improve your photography. You can’t get good by cutting corners. Lay off the HDR for now and focus on the skills and techniques listed above and in a few weeks or months you will start seeing a vast improvement.

I hope this helps and gives you some encouragement. If you live in the Penang, Malaysia area, I will be teaching a short three-hour introduction to photography at my house in the mornings of Dec 11th and Dec 15th. Email me for more information.

My secret notebook

…it is this: “I sometimes get others to say what I cannot put so well myself because of the weakness of my language, and sometimes because of the weakness of my intellect.”

Of course, that’s not my quote, it was penned by Michel de Montaigne, who, Wikipedia tells me, was one of the most influential writers of the French renaissance. Bloody show-off.

However, it’s a nicely self-deprecating quote with which to begin a guest blog spot. I reassured Matt that I’d behave myself on his blog and likened being invited here to being asked to look after a friend’s child. It’s a terrific responsibility and you just hope that you can return it safe, clean and free of swear words.

I guess two out of three won’t be too bad.

So, back to Montaigne who understood that we sometimes find that other people have already written down thoughts that echo our own but in much clearer language than we’d be able to conjure up – and with correct punctuation in the right places to boot. And I’ve found this to be true. I frequently read articles and blogs where the author has said something that I completely agree with but in more concise, more evocative language. It can be tremendously reassuring to find that somebody else has already been down the path we are on and there’s a wonderful sense of kinship when we read something that really resonates with us. A kind of eureka moment.

A few years ago I decided to start collecting some of the quotations that struck a chord with me. I was in New Zealand at the time, slowly travelling around South Island in a campervan and with plenty of time to read each day. I found that I was reading lots of things that I wanted to remember so I picked up a rather unglamorous notebook in a newsagents in Christchurch and began copying out sentences from novels, lines from song lyrics and snippets of overheard conversations. Anything that really resonated with me went into the little orange book and it’s here now, in front of me as I type this, my tiny box of gems.

At this point you might be saying to yourself, with some justification, “This is all very well Gavin but what has the content of your notebook got to do with photography?”. To which I’d reply, “Good question”. Indulge me for a moment longer and I’ll explain.

Photography has got nothing to do with camera equipment. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Photography has got nothing to do with apertures, lenses, shutter speeds, tripods, exposure values, composition, pixel counts or starburst filters. Especially starburst filters. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you differently.

Photography is all about heart. Respect, sensitivity, humility, confidence, perseverance and heart. But mostly heart. I’m pretty sure that if you’re a regular reader of Matt’s blog that you will already understand this so I know that I’m preaching to the choir. You will already appreciate that a photographer who takes pains to understand and empathise with their subject from a position of equality will produce images that far outshine those produced by a photographer who arrives with a snazzy camera but a bag-full of bad attitude. It’s the quiet photographers, the considered and contemplative photographers who manage to convey beauty most effectively. Ansel Adams said “There are always two people in every picture: the Photographer and the Viewer“. If that’s true, and I happen to think it is, then your personality is going to come across in your images. Would it be foolish to suggest that quiet, considered and contemplative photographers inevitably produce quiet, considered and contemplative images? I don’t think it would.

What about this notebook then? What’s the connection? Well, it has come to serve as my pocket self-help guide. More by chance than design I’ve accumulated quotations which offer encouragement for when I’m lacking self-belief and which offer guidance for times when I can’t remember what the path looks like, let alone in which direction it might lay. It contains reminders for me that although life has a habit of throwing obstacles in our way, others have been this way before and overcome them. It contains quotations that help strengthen my resolve and reinforce my commitment. It contains pages that define the sort of person, and consequently the sort of photographer, that I aspire to be.

I’m conscious that I’m currently blowing away the facade of English reserve that I’ve worked so hard to establish and replacing it with something much more touchy-feely. How unbecoming. Oh well, the damage is done now so I might as well continue by bringing you a few random quotations from the pages of my notebook. I encourage you to start your own notebook of quotations. Include anything that you find really appealing. However, write down only the things that really strike a chord and which speak to you on a fundamental level. It doesn’t matter if you forget about it for six months, just keep it safe and you will, I promise, return to it in the future and be impressed with how clever you were to write down something many months before which seems so pertinent to your current situation.

On perseverence (and mountain summits):

“The summit is… sublime. It is hard not to start grinning, perhaps laughing, for no particular reason. An innocent laughter that comes from the core of one’s being and expresses a primal delight at being alive to see such beauty. But… it isn’t easy to climb to 3,451 metres above sea level. It requires five hours at least, one must cling to steep paths, negotiate a way around boulders… grow breathless… and crunch through eternal snows.”
Alain de Botton

On a successful attitude to travelling:

“Every place is a goldmine. You only have to give yourself time, sit in a teahouse, watch passers-by, stand in a corner of the market, go for a haircut. You pick up a thread – a word, a meeting, a friend of a friend of someone you have just met – and soon the most insipid, most insignificant place becomes a mirror of the world, a window on life, a theatre of humanity.”
Tiziano Terzani

On pursuing your dream:

“Integrity: includes the value of consistent pursuit of these chosen projects which give purpose and meaning to one’s life.”
Edward Craig

“And as usual when you start doing exactly what you are, whether you’re a writer, whether you’re a catamaran sailor, you pretty much start in for the most demeaning work you’ll ever do in your life.”
Jeff Buckley. Genius musician.

On defining love and commitment:

Josh: “I’m just saying, if you were in an accident I wouldn’t stop for beer.”
Donna: “If you were in an accident I wouldn’t stop for red lights.”
West Wing, Season 2, Episode 18

On photography as a religion:

“If I was going to be something I’d probably be a Buddhist. I’m just a photographer.”
Steve McCurry

On finding your way:

“There are many new roads in Kathmandu. The oldest of which is named New Road.”
Jeff Greenwald – Shopping for Buddhas

On keeping things in perspective:

“When it all comes down to dust, nothing that you or I or anyone else on earth can create is anything more or less than a gasp in the wind: one prayer scattered among billions of others, all equally holy and all eaten at last by the rain and the wind.”
Jeff Greenwald – Shopping for Buddhas

On plain speaking and keeping things uncomplicated:

I was staying in a beach hut in Samoa and met with other travellers for dinner. As a group of strangers, the introductions obviously came first. The following brief but very direct conversation took place at our table between a straight-talking, no-nonsense Australian girl and a rather taken aback French man:

“Hi, my name is Jane”
“Is that Jayne with a Y?”
She paused, looked at him with an expression of horror and replied,
“Of course it f***ing isn’t“.
Jane (without a Y) – Tanu Beach, Samoa

On maintaining one’s priorities as an Englishman:

“A man cannot appreciate truth or beauty unless he has tea in him“.
Anon

And finally, on thoughts of one day returning home:

“Now I dream of the soft touch of women, the songs of birds, the smell of soil crumbling between my fingers, and the brilliant green of plants that I carefully nurture. I am looking for land to buy and I will sow it with deer and wild pigs and birds and cottonwoods and sycamores and build a pond and the ducks will come and fish will rise in the early evening light and take the insects in their jaws. There will be paths through this forest and you and I will lose ourselves in the soft folds and curves of the ground. We will come to the water’s edge and lie on the grass and there will be a small, unobtrusive sign that says:
THIS IS THE REAL WORLD, MUCHACHOS, AND WE ARE ALL IN IT”
Charles Bowden

__

Gavin Gough is a travel photographer and writer. He also runs tours and workshops in his adopted home of Bangkok.
Find out more at his web site or blog.

This is full frame. Click to enlarge.

Here is a shot that all my readers will know. It is of a little Gujjar girl in Kashmir. One of the fun things about this image is it is so very, very sharp. Here is the EXIF data from the image:

Camera: Canon 5D
Exposure Time: 1/500 sec
F-Number: f/3.5
Exposure Program: Aperture Priority
ISO Speed Rating: 400
Exposure Bias: -1 EV
Metering Mode: Pattern
Focal Length: 85.00 mm

I was, if I recall correctly, a good 6 to 10 feet from her. Below you will see that this image is so sharp, that you can see the scene behind me, when I photographed her, reflected in her eyes.

Click to enlarge.

So what is all this about? Why blog on how sharp digital images are? We all know they are sharp. Is it because this makes me better than Steve McCurry? Ha! If only that were true! No, it is because I bet you have started doing something that I have found myself doing. That is tossing away images that are not razor sharp. Any slight softness, slight movement and out it goes. I found I get so obsessed with sharpness that I loose sight of the beauty of an image. I don’t see the moment in the image for the slight blur. For an image to work it doesn’t have to be this sharp. Maybe even sometime it shouldn’t be. Let me show you some images that I almost tossed, but I have now changed my mine and feel they are worth keeping even though they are not all that sharp. I will compare a nice sharp image with a soft or even blurred image taken at the same time, but a different “moment”.

Click to enlarge.

Here is a shot of a man clutching his Qu’ran. It is a nice image. Sharp. Yes, there is glare in his glasses. But, even with out the glare there is emotion missing here. It is not a bad image and technically it is perfect.

Click to enlarge.

Here is the same man a few seconds earlier. His head is bowed and he is not looking at the camera. But the look give much more emotion, a since of thoughtfulness, or contemplation. You don’t get that in the previous image. The soft focus or movement as it is here, work to make this a stronger image. Let’s look at an even more stark example.

Click to enlarge.

Here is a similar shot. A Ladakhi woman sitting looking off to the left of the frame. A nice shot, right? But look at what the much softer shot below communicates.

Click to enlarge.

Here she is holding the beads to her head and there is real emotion here. Yet, this image is soft by all account. Not with movement, just soft focus. Now I admit, I should have been better at nailing the focus, and I think this might have been a better image had it been in focus. But does this make this image unusable? Not in the least! In fact this image is fast becoming one of my favorites.

I want to make sure you understand me. I am not talking about accepting sloppy camera work. But none of us get it right 100% of the time. I have known I am capable at getting razor sharp images like above, so I have not even looked at some of my more emotional images if they are soft. Of if I did, I cursed under my breath at my bad luck and tossed the image out.

All I am saying is we need to not forget what is good art. I cannot continue to throwout soft images just because I know I can get razor sharpness and didn’t get it. You cannot say that McCurry’s images are any less impressive or beautiful because of the softness of film or camera movement. So, if it is good enough for a Master like McCurry, I think I need to stop and realize technology has, dare I say, blurred my vision. I am missing the art for the mechanics and in danger of trashing some real jewels.

Had a great opportunity yesterday. I sat in a lecture and slide show by Steve McCurry. You know who he is, you just might not recognise the name. All I have to say is “National Geographic Afgan Girl”, yep! He is the guys. Really fun to listen to him wax about his years on the field and how certain images came about. Most of what he had to say was pretty rudimentary, but I did like his comment on light and color. He says he prefers soft indirect light from somewhere behind him when he is shooting a portrait, no surprise there. But I made a very interesting comment about color. He said something to the effect that the less color the better. He prefers muted colors in an image. Except when it the colors are playing off each other, as in some of his Holi images in Rajasthan. Over all it was an enjoyable time.He seems like a very personable guy.

In other news. Lightroom 1.1 is here. If you are a photographer and not using Adobe Lightroom, shame on you! Check out the latest at in at Rob Galbraith’s website. This is an amazing application. Dennis and the rest of you need to add this to your “must have” list.

Hmm, still no word on the new plane or new part.

I got got word that the Temple Cultural Art’s Center want to so a exhibition of my images. It will be in Nov of this year. Also, whilst I was away on this trip, Scott & White hospital as asked to show my images in their gallery as well. Some time in ’08.

One of my idles, Steve McCurry is opening a exhibition of his images in Waco on June 30th. He will be there to open the show and do a short lecture.

OK. I need to go check on my flight.