Tag Archives: Photography

Photo Essay

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I know you’ve all been on the edges of your seats to see my photo essay, the final assignment for Digital Photography 201 at Illuminate Workshops.  The wait is over!  Of course, just in time for the final class, I had all sorts of legal adventures — trial prep! settlement! appeal! — and a major head cold.  So I didn’t actually attend the final class.  Or the make-up final class.  Or the make-up of the make-up of the final class.  What can I say – lawyers suck at non-law things.

The assignment read:

Decide on a subject whose story needs to be told.  … A story that is close and personal to you.

Shoot everything you can about your subject.

Make us see the subject from your perspective.

We were to edit down the photos first to 30, then to 12, print them on 11×14 paper, and present them at the last class.  But I missed the last class (twice) and I’m not good at following instructions anyway, so my photo essay has 20 photos, and is blogged, not printed.  It also reflects the fact that I ran out of time — even with an effective two-month extension — and had a cold.  Did I mention the cold?  So some of the photos reflect long walks around Denver thinking about my subject, while others reflect a bit of casting about my office last night for meaningful props.  But I think they show both my subject and some of the composition and developing skills we’re learning at (did I mention?) Illuminate Workshops.*

And the outtake … because nothing happens here without full canine supervision:

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* How’s that for apple-polishing?  And I’m not even getting a grade!

Photography practice: streetlights, bugs, and an orange dog

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Playing with the tripod and some longer exposures in the back yard.  I didn’t notice Saguaro in the first one, but it looks sort of cool.

Also having fun with the nifty fifty and bug photography.

Coming in for a landing!

And finally: practicing developing in Lightroom with an orange dog.  (If that modifier is misplaced, please know that *nothing* in this house happens without the participation of the orange dog.)

Nerd gear: dogs and photography

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I’ve been trying to figure out how to combine photography practice with dog walks.  Before today, it has consisted of:

Come.

Come.

Seriously.. come.  Here.  No, over here.

Sit.

Sit.

Good dogs!

[Put leashes on ground.]

Stay.

Staystaystaystay.

No!  Sit.  Staaaaaaay.

Good dogs!

[Compose.  Focus.]

Click!

[Pick up leashes.]

Let’s go!

Rinse. Repeat.

Until now!  I solved the problem with some gen-u-ine nerd gear:  a web belt and a large clip.

Now that is some seriously crappy photographic composition.  But you can see my nerd-gear dog-walking photo-practice hack.  And my ca. 1972 tennis racket.   Both the belt and the clip were available on amazon.com, with the interesting side effect that ordering the belt — which has oddly knife-shaped pouches that will be perfect for dog treats — put me in interesting company.

Guess the pouches weren’t specifically designed for dog treats.  Anyway, all in the service of my continuing efforts to learn how to use my Nifty Fifty.

Camera
E-510
Exposure
1/640s
ISO
100

A beautiful day in the neighborhood

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Brought my camera along on the half-mile stroll that serves as the dogs’ inspiration twice a day.  If you know what I mean.

I know I’m supposed to edit myself out of the photo, but I thought the reflection was sort of cool.

I wanted to get a photo of this dog — thought the black fence against the black and white dog was cool …

. . . .but forgot momentarily I was attached to a dog or two myself:

All is well.  After a brief discussion of who was alpha, we proceeded along our way.

Nifty fifty!

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While this could easily be a reference to my brother, who will soon be joining me on the other side of the half-century mark, it is in fact a reference to the lens that our photo teacher recommended as a great all-around lens:  the 50 mm with a wide aperture for interesting shallow depth of field photos.  He confidently asserted that it would not be expensive and would be a good addition to our camera bags.

Not sure what his definition of “not expensive” is but this did not gibe with mine:

At the same time I was pondering this advice, I was puttering around in our basement looking for the lenses from my ca. 1984* film camera  — which, like my dslr camera, is an Olympus — and found that I was already the proud owner of a 50 mm (ok, ok 49 mm) f/1.8 lens.

I started trying to figure out how to use it with my current dslr camera.  It didn’t fit directly, and the first two calls I made to photography stores that will remain anonymous resulted in the advice that (1) this was impossible and (2) that it would cost me $150 for an adapter.  Seriously:  just that contradictory.  But I went on ebay, ordered the adapter in the (blurry; damn!) foreground of the photo above — for $14 — and voila!  I have a nifty fifty!

Clearly I need to learn more about how to use it, but damn it’s going to be fun!

BTW, I actually grew this pepper.  But that is for yet another blog post.

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* Faithful readers who are paying close attention and/or are related to me will say, “ca. 1984?  but didn’t you say you got your 35 mm camera for high school graduation?  And you graduated high school in 1978, so what gives?”  The full answer to that will have to await another post that I’ve been meaning to write about having my backpack stolen in Singapore with my camera, money, and passport from the lobby of the Sheraton, putting my frantic mother** on a plane back to the States, contacting the law firm I was working for in Taiwan,*** being put in touch with a Chinese pop star who happened to be a friend of one of the partners, who loaned me money and took me out to dinner****, which allowed me to scramble around Singapore in a taxi getting a new passport, visa and plane ticket.  I was cameraless until that summer when, back in the States and visiting friends in New York, I bought a new one almost identical to the graduation gift, and carried on with my untutored but enjoyable photographic career.

** You think I could have afforded the Sheraton on my own at that point??[UPDATE: ******]

*** And that is one of the other reasons for this post.  Just the other day, I found myself trying to explain what a telex was.  It was sort of 1984’s email in a way.  You typed into a teletype machine in (say) the Sheraton in Singapore and it would print out momentarily at (say) a law firm in Taipei.

**** If you think the style disparity between me and Miss South Africa was vast, I only wish I had a photo of my dinner with Theresa Teng.*****  But, alas, the thief had my camera.

***** Only when I googled her for this post did I learn that she passed in 1995 at a very young age.  RIP, Theresa.  You did a very good deed for a very lost and scruffy Waigwo student at the height of your stardom.  Above and beyond.

UPDATE:  ****** For the record — see Comment #1 — this was not my mother’s fault.  I violated Travel Rule #1:  Always Keep Your Backpack With You At All Times.  I’ve also violated Travel Rule #2:  Don’t Stay In A Hotel With A Preying Mantis on the Bed.  And #3:  Always Wear Sunscreen when Lying on A Beach Below the Tropic of Cancer, even in February.  And many more, I’m sure.  Live & learn!

 

 

Chicken photography

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Today’s photography practice: chickens.  One of my friends who is currently raising chickens* asked me to photograph them, and I jumped at the chance to try to improve my skills in the color and motion departments.  Motion turned out to be key.

Chickens move.   A lot.  Sort of randomly.  And just when I thought I had one of them in focus, she would turn and run.

Luckily at least Leroy’s tail plumage was pretty enough that this resulted in several not-bad photos:

I finally solved the motion problem by using the “burst” feature, which takes a quick series of photos every time you hit the shutter.  It ended up sounding like a high-fashion shoot:  clickclickclickclickclickclickclick cmon, ladies, show your stuff! clickclickclickclickclickclickclick work it!  work it!  etc.

This resulted in a couple of pretty decent chicken pictures, at least for an amateur.

As it turned out, it was my first paid photo gig:

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* Not the one who named her chickens “Sesame,” “Soup” and “Enchilada.”  Another chicken-raising friend.

Random s**t photography

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When I started my first photography class, the instructor asked us to state what style of photography we were interested in.  What was stunning to me is that the rest of the class (“Digital 101″) had answers.  That is, they each knew the name for the styles they were interested in and rattled it off for the class.  I thought to myself, “random shit and southwestern colors,” but those didn’t appear to be standard categories.  I listened to my classmates, chose two that sounded close, and replied, “landscape and architecture.”  Everyone nodded knowingly, that is, knowing more than I did about the styles of photography to which I had just randomly pledged my interest.  Well, not totally randomly because — as I think I’ve mentioned — I determined quickly that my photographic interests do not include “portrait.”

One of the other things I’ve found interesting and sort of unexpected is the question of when and how much to stage a photo.

Now obviously, Saguaro doesn’t wear glasses or read a Kindle,* so I do a bit of staging when I’m goofing around.

But I was a bit taken aback at how much the instructor seemed to assume that we would be rearranging the scene before us, and not just by asking the owner of the naked behind we** were photographing to clench.  When your preferred photographic genre is random shit, however, you can’t stage.  It’s right there in the rulebook.  It has to be random.

So when I found this excellent collection of randomness and color on Santa Fe Drive,

I knew it was a perfect shot for me.  And you have to trust me, that’s just how I found it.  Possibly TMI, but I don’t even own a bra in that color.   Nor does Tim.  Nor either of the dogs.  Herewith a couple of other random photos, with many more to follow, I’m sure.

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* He reads e-books on his laptop.

** The editorial we.  I’ve never actually photographed a naked behind.***

*** Well, not a naked human behind.

OMG OMG I can make panoramic photos!

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I know, I know:  2009 called … to congratulate me on discovering its Photoshop technology.  I just learned that Photoshop Elements will take a series of photos and create a panorama.  I started with . . . ok ok I have to fess up to something first.  We are supposed to prepare a photo essay for the class I’m taking and because I have no imagination, my essay is on . . . ramps.  I know, right?   Get over it.

My original concept was to photograph small, out of the way, unlikely ramps, like these two in rural Maine somewhere north of Portland.

I was clearly in need of some coaching in the technical and compositional departments, but you get the idea.  My concept was on some level to be able to say to large international chains that remain out of compliance in 2012, “you see!  Ralph’s Home Sales of Somewhere Off Rte 1 in Maine, managed to install a ramp; so can you!”

Since I don’t have the time to go anywhere out of the way, I’m left trying to tell a story through photographs of various ramps around Denver.  During the class session in which we critiqued one another’s first few essay photos, my classmates had lots of helpful advice like, “your theme could be dogs!” and “you could sit at a coffee shop for a day and photograph the people who patronize it.”  But I’m stubborn and don’t have time to sit at a coffee shop all day, so ramps it is.  And dammit, I think it’s kind of cool.  And!  It turns out that panoramic photography is sort of an interesting way to show how a ramp relates to the accessibility of the building it serves:

This was my first attempt at panoramic stitching.  (That term gives me the mild creeps, with a sort of Frankenstein vibe.)  It was so much fun, I spent today trying to dream up fun ways to use the technology.  Turns out graffiti walls make cool panoramic shots.

So does the dragon on Su Teatro’s building.  I was too close and trying to do too much, but it’s sort of cool.  I think I need to go back in the morning when there are no cars and photograph it from the middle of the street.

Here are three more ramp panos.  The first — on 17th at Curtis — is more an illustration of how several levels can come together in an almost imperceptible way.

The ramp below is on University Blvd just north of Asbury, and what I liked the most isn’t really visible from the pano:  The fact that the ramp starts low on the right, rises to the entrance and then the red wall keeps rising at the same angle — decoratively only, I believe — continuing the slash of red color from one side of the building to the other.

Finally, this is the west entrance to the DU aw school which is not visually very compelling, but lends itself nicely to panoramic treatment.

Since I was already wandering around the DU campus with a camera, I had to take the following photograph that to me poses a deep and unfathomable question: did anyone anywhere on the design team have an 8th Grader?  Access to an 8th Grader?  A friend’s 8th Grader to whom he or she could have shown this design?  Does anyone even think like an 8th Grader?  In other words, DOES ANYONE ELSE SNICKER WHEN THEY SEE BENCHES MADE OF LIPS?

Or is it just me?

Detritus on the mean streets of southeast Denver

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A broken jar of pickled carrots on the sidewalk of S. Pearl Street.

My first attempt to blog from Flickr.  I’m working on my photo essay for the class I’m taking but as always discover that I’d much rather shoot photos of random shit than meaningful shit.  This amused me because where else but South Pearl Street would the litter consist of a broken jar of pickled carrots.  If I’d had the patience of a real photographer, I suspect in a half hour or so after this photo, the sun would have caught the orange in just the right way.

More randomness from Pearl Street:

Da Bear

Anyone know why I can’t insert a second photo from Flickr?  Guess you can only blog one photo at a time!  Too bad for you, readers!

Does this make me an Illuminati?

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As will soon be tediously clear, I have started taking photography classes.  Not for the first time, either.  I got a serious 35mm camera* for high school graduation, took a class at the local rec center, and somehow convinced myself I knew what I was doing.  There ensued some deeply meaningful but thoroughly awful photographs, including a few that got published in the Swarthmore college newspaper after I beat out a highly competitive field of approximately zero other people for the title of Assistant Photo Editor.  So not kidding.

Herewith an example of my deeply artistic but pathetically incompetent college photography and dark room skills:


I carried the camera around campus for four non-contiguous years and then around Taiwan and other parts of Asia for the next three non-contiguous years, taking the occasional brilliant photograph, and boatloads of expensive-to-develop 35mm crap.  Actually, one of my funniest sets of travel photos was from a cross-country drive I took somewhere in the middle of law school, in which I guess I discovered real mountains for the first time, because I have close to an entire roll of slides devoted to distance shots of fields, lakes or — most commonly — the road with mountains in the background.  I now call that “the view from my morning commute.”

A few years ago, Tim gave me a seriously good DSLR camera and after spending too long using it on “auto” while trying to remember what the eff an f-stop was, I decided earlier this year to take a class.  I’m having a blast!  The first round of classes — Digital 101 at Illuminate Workshops — reacquainted me with f-stops, shutter speeds, and ISO, introduced me for the first time to the majority of the buttons and data on my camera, and then moved on to a long-overdue introduction to composition.

We had homework, which like a good little student nerd, I did.  For the first class, the instructor asked us to experiment with shutter speed and aperture:

For the second class, we were supposed to take a portrait and a “macro.”  Oh, and I forgot to mention, the instructor displays and critiques our photos.  My classmate Gabriela went first. Her macro was a stunning photo of a jade bracelet on a mirror.  Her portraits looked like this:

The reason her portraits looked like this is because SHE TOOK THIS PORTRAIT!  Why, might you ask, is Gabriela in Digital Photography 101?  No clue, but she is hilarious and asks great questions, so I’m glad she’s there.  For example, had we not reviewed Gabriela’s boudoir photo of a shapely — mostly naked — woman photographed from behind, I would not have learned that to get good photos of a naked tuchis, you have to request the owner of the tuchis to, um, clench.  The class discussed this in a professional manner, while I exerted superhuman effort not to snicker.

But then it was my turn.  Here is my macro homework .

Seriously.  We went from jade bracelets and naked tuchii to, um, a rock. Luckily my portrait homework was of my mother-in-law, so I held my own in that division!  (Though, for the record, she was fully clothed.)  The instructor was very kind to my rock, but did use it to start to teach us how Photoshop can be used to make photos more interesting.

So I’m planning to use the blog to post my photography practice from time to time, and I’m putting all of what I think of as my more interesting practice photos on Flickr, so if you’re really bored, you can hop over there and take a look.  I’m partial to architecture and abstract and averse to portraits, so there will be lots of stuff that looks like this:

Which likely only I find interesting.  Still, the occasional “ooh” or “ahh” in the comments would make me smile!

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* My photography instructor – and most of the world, I gather – would now call it a “film camera,” because of course in 1978, we didn’t have digital cameras.  If I recall correctly, this is called – in the linguistics biz – a “back formation.”  I love back formations.  Think about it: acoustic guitar; snail mail; chicken fried chicken.  I’m not sure about the last, but I love it just the same.