Artist imitating nature, with art

ISO 100, 100mm, 25 sec., f/18 - lightpainting

No, I’m not the artist I’m talking about.  Amazingly, this is an orchid made of clay, handcrafted, painted and arranged by Kevin of ClayNWire, who has much more patience than I can imagine and a great artistic eye for reality and composition.  He was set up at the recent Omaha art fair, standing in his tent behind his work table making even smaller flowers than this one (which is life sized) and cheerfully showing viewers how he performed this miniature magic with very tiny pieces of clay and wire.

A couple of photographers I know generate some revenue by shooting for “stock” agencies, which are companies that essentially rent images to clients for use in a variety of ways from news to advertising.   Companies might use stock instead of hiring a photographer for a specific job so “stock” photographs are rather general in nature and able to cover different uses.  Flowers are popular stock images for cards, calendars, screen savers, etc.  These photographers I know go out and buy fresh flowers, arrange them in various “poses” and photograph them to build up a portfolio of images for their agencies.

I like the idea of having models that are easy to work with but I’m still practicing how to light and compose such so all I need is one or two  versions instead of a whole bouquet.  When I saw Kevin’s products I realized this is the perfect training model!  No wilting, doesn’t need watering, always looks its best regardless of the time of day – how could I go wrong?!

So here’s my first experiment with it.  Lightpainting I’ve discussed in previous posts here and here.  It’s a more direct version of light control than I could get with my small strobes and perfect for items like flowers.  For this I used a small LED flashlight with a piece of gaffers tape on the end to narrow down the beam.  During the 25 second exposure I emphasized the center of each flower and then applied some backlighting to enhance the petal edges against the black background.  I like the depth this technique brings to the image, and it really helps that Kevin took so much time detailing the flowers with color and textures.

More of this practice and I’ll be ready to move to live flowers!

Forest Recycling

ISO 100, 108mm, 1/13 sec., f/4.5, EV-.7, 3 image HDR, Silver Efex Pro 2

Ecology happens on such an almost geologic time scale that we don’t notice how growth, death and recycling take place in the forests around us.  A stand of trees untouched by man will change as seeds sprout to increase the forest density, storms thin the crowd and wood rots back into topsoil in support of the cycle starting again in the spring.

The details make up the story, little aspects that might go unnoticed by the casual hiker or that are so familiar they fall outside our attention to the view around us.  We’ve all seen bracket fungus growing on fallen tree trucks, and maybe stopped to admire some truly massive specimens, but the little worker bees of the mushroom world usually don’t get recognized.

The group above, Sterium ostrea or the false turkey tail fungus, is one type of saprobe commonly found merrily decaying trees.  It’s so common, actually, you can find it in just about every state.  They are important to forest ecology not so much because they decay the wood, but because they do it over a long period of time, releasing the nutrients into the soil over several growing seasons (where the tree is big enough).  Lignin is the organic material that holds trees together and fungi of this type break it down to leave only the cellulose behind for the termites to devour.  The bands are growth rings and vary in color based on the type of tree.  Some mushrooms of this type were used by settlers to dye wool, recycling the tree’s chemical bounty in a different manner.

I found these in a forest near the Platte River a couple of days ago.  It was a blustery day and I wanted to make some detail images without fighting the wind.  A fallen tree trunk is pretty stable and the small size of these mushrooms (1-2″ in diameter) meant they were unaffected by the breeze.  It was a mostly cloudy day so I had a nice, even light coming through the canopy overhead.  Looking at the scene I knew it would be converted to B&W later so I exposed three images from light to dark to have a nice fall off of the light from top to bottom, and made sure to compose from the side so the ridges in the trunk would have nice contrast between shadow and light.  I’m working on my HDR technique to give results that look natural and I feel this one turned out very nice.  Would you have known it was HDR if I hadn’t mentioned it?

Life imitates art – hopefully

I’m trying to work on  my ability to see the basics of design elements so I can incorporate them into my photography, making images more interesting and fun to look at.  Just as painters do pencil or ink studies of parts that will eventually be incorporated into a larger work, I’m setting up deliberate designs and photographing them to explore how they look in my camera, how light works on them, how little changes have a large impact, etc.

The incorporation of leading lines and repeating elements in a photograph help guide the viewer through the scene, taking their eyes where the photographer wants, to places in the scene that are important to appreciating the overall image.  We’ll all seen this used well, with roads, telephone poles, fence lines, railroad tracks, etc.  I feel when it’s used really well the design element almost becomes invisible to the viewer, so obvious a part of the picture the viewer would be surprised when asked if they noticed it.  For the grand landscape I believe this is very important – the viewer should be enthralled by the overall scene, not the line of bushes taking their eyes to the background mountains.

At a recent workshop I attended this was the source of good discussions during the group critiques.  Sometimes it’s easy to put something like leading lines or repeating elements into your image because all the books say it’s a good idea, but doing so without reason can be worse than ignoring the opportunity altogether.  Our instructors were quick to point out where these elements appeared to be “kludged” into an image just for effect; unfortunately most of the classes images fell into this category so the learning was repetitive and reinforced.

One really good point that I haven’t seen in many photography technique books was offered by Jay Maisel, one of the instructors.  He said repeating patterns can be very effective when leading to something interesting but when used as the main subject they get boring.  His recommendation for photographers wanting to take this approach is to break up the pattern at least once in the overall design.  Give the viewer’s eye something to stop on, linger on, think about, before moving on down the line.

Examples:

 

Your basic repeating pattern and leading line

Here a place to pause while viewing but more of a speed bump than stop

More stop than speed bump ("why is that piece on its side?")

Now you've got to stop ("what is that? oh, half a domino")

Certainly it’s easy to construct such images on a tabletop with regular pieces of something, but how to apply out in the real world?  That’s what I’m practicing.  Maybe it’s a line of trees next to a prairie all in fall colors except for a single pine.  Perhaps rows of corn with a windmill in the middle of the field.  I don’t know but I want to be better at recognizing the opportunity when I see it and building these little models and photographing them helps me see them in the viewfinder.

More practice like this and then I’ll go out to look intentionally for specific elements I can build an image around.  My hope is it all becomes automatic in the future, a reflex action that stops me in front of a scene because all the elements work to portray a story or emphasize a feature.  That’s how I differentiate the master outdoor photographers from all us yet-to-be masters.  And how I want to stand out to viewers.

Tired of lighting your subject?

Play around with different lights and exposure on a subject long enough and you’ll reach the point where it just gets tiring. Why can’t subjects just light themselves?

Oh, wait. They can.

ISO 100, 50mm, 10 sec., f/2.2

So I’ve got this tube of phosphorescent paint lying around (it’s a long story) and I’m wondering what to with it.  Just finished a session practicing lightpainting and realized here’s something that truly paints with light.  I squeezed out this shape (sculpting is not my thing) and played around with exposures, both of light on the paint to make it glow and setting on the camera to capture what is really dim light if you’re a digital sensor.

OK, that was fun.  What’s next?

ISO 100, 50mm, 10 sec., f/2.2, Photoshop Filter Extrude, Exclusion Blending Mode

This is what Photoshop is for – just screwing around with an unusual image to make it more unusual.  I can’t imagine how these settings might find their way into a landscape or portrait but now I know what they look like on an image.  Never know when you might need such a look…..

Photography is not recording reality (according to Ansel Adams), it’s the recording of your perception of reality.  Because of any number of technical differences between our eye/brain system and film/sensor/display system a photograph will remain merely an attenuated version of what we really see.  This is not a limitation but merely an acknowledgment that it is the photographer who “makes” a photograph, not the tools used.  And as any creator knows, you can make something any way you want.

 

 

Directing Light

Back in October I attended a workshop for mostly outdoor photographers but the sponsors had a few instructors that have branched out into different areas with techniques that can be used just about anywhere.  One fellow, Dave Black, gave us insights on his experiments with lightpainting.  Dave is the creator of several iconic sports images, especially from the Olympics, and now he has expanded his scope to try other compositions and tools.

Lightpainting is essentially opening the camera shutter in the dark while focused on a composition, and then using light to “paint” those elements of the scene the photographer wants to highlight.  It has been done with strobes and handheld flashes in the past by other photographers but Dave has started using focused, continuous light sources like flashlights, spotlights, etc. to put the light exactly where he wants it and nowhere else.  Done well the technique can really increase the drama of a composition, be it a tabletop display or a landscape.

I finally found the type of small LED flashlight Dave was using at the workshop and started playing around for myself.  Initially I started small – just a state medallion with raised relief.  First attempts were to find the right angle and duration for the light to just light up the high points on the medallion.

ISO 100, 50mm, 15 sec., f/8

Next I tried some of Dave’s methods of sweeping the light across the object to result in areas of light and dark that contribute some sense of depth to the image.

ISO 100, 50mm, 15 sec., f/22

By now I’m wondering what other types of lighting will do, especially smaller, pinpoint light sources.  Nothing much more “pointed” than a laser so I played around with a small laser pointer until I learned how to use it to illuminate the highlights from one direction and use the LED light to bring out some detail from the other direction.

ISO 100, 50mm, 15 sec., f/22

So now I’m really feeling cool.  What else can I try this out with?  In Dave’s class he set up some still life displays of boots, belt buckles, ropes, spurs – typical western scene stuff.  I was thinking of something equally three-dimensional but without testing my creative design skills.  Why not a person?

ISO 100, 50mm, 15 sec., f/11

The statue is by (and copyrighted to)  Thomas Blackshear and is named Joyful Noise.  Might as well use a happy model, right?  Because I don’t photograph people hardly at all this was a challenge to get the lighting the way I wanted it, but I feel being able to use the penlight and put the light right where it needed to be was easier than trying to arrange strobes and light modifiers.   Even with this little exercise I’m starting to realize the benefits of continuous lighting in the studio.

The penlight I’m using (and that Dave was using) is a Streamlight Stylus Flashlight.  It’s a single LED and runs on AAAA batteries.  I found mine at Interstate Battery for about $20.

This is a simple technique anyone with a dark room and a tripod can play around with.  Use your creativity to set up still life compositions and then use the light like a painter uses oils to emphasize some areas and draw the viewer away from others.  If only landscape photography was this easy – but the sun rarely shines exactly where you need it in such a focused manner.