It's Kind of a Kick

The Digital Story is a blog, launch site for Derrick Story who is a renowned photographer, author and instructor of most things photographic. Derrick's podcast, oddly called The Digital Story, is one I listen to on my iPod while airlining around the country.

Anyhow, the term snap shot has been renamed in the Story world to Grab Shots which I actually think explains the action more succinctly. Now I am not one to necessarily toot my own horn but when someone else pulls your image out of a bunch and finds it worthy to display, that's cool. If you follow the link Reflections and Patterns, you will see it is not something all that spectacular. It was however, in the moment as they say.

So will this make Doug enter photo competitions? Unknown at this point. I have never been opposed to them but it has never been my thing. Who knows, that could change.

Take care all... Doug

Composition and Framing

Yes Edith, they do come together. If composition is how an artist places object in a scene and framing is how a photographer positions a scene in the viewfinder of the camera, what is it when both are used. Is it framposition or compoframing? Or does it matter at all. A good photo is just that... Good.

Here is an example of framposition. This first image is of a bronze figure called "gatherer". It was located on the ramp/walk around the Grand Rapids Public Museum during ArtPrize. In the background is the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel, the old Israel's Building and the J.W. Marriott Hotel.

Below is the J.W. Marriott Hotel as viewed from across the river standing next to the gatherer sculpture. At the base of the hotel is a the work of TAnya Vanden Bosch called Loop de Loop.

Here is a closer view of the painting. Actually it is painted vinyl applied to the first three floor windows of the J.W. Marriott.

So here is where the fromposition comes into play.

When I saw the name of the gatherer and saw Loop de Loop across the river I knew what I wanted in a final image. Thirty odd feet of painting in the hands of the gatherer.

It is most important to see the end, or at least have a concept in mind for these types of shots. If not they are all snap-shots and not necessarily great shots.

Take care all... Doug

Photo Passion

I just got done watching the most amazing, reflective, introspective, self-analyzing video on photography. I could probably come up with a few more descriptive words but I think you get my point. It is no doubt the best two hours I have spent in the past couple of years in photography.

Scott Kelby (left) goes on a personal photo-walk/workshop with renowned New York photographer Jay Maisel (right). Jay is 79 years old and expounds the most concise, to-the-point nuggets of insightful information as to who, what, and why we are photographers.

Here are just a couple of the take-away points from the video that I would like to pass on. Jay talks about triggers to shoot, when to shoot is as important as what we shoot. Photos should have surprises, content, triggers, and passion. All of which will draw the viewer thoughts into the image.

Jay touched a number of times on the triggers of photography. What is it that made you take that shot. Subject, foreground, background... What? it’s the whole thing. This goes along with many photographers philosophy of shoot the whole frame.

One of the best quotes that I took away from this video was when Jay was reflecting on something someone asked him in the past. That was, “Does he know what he is doing?” To that his response was “I’m going to discover what I’m doing.” That was very interesting as earlier this week I heard another statement at a friends funeral. That was, “If you want to make God laugh, just tell Him your plans.” Life is happening all around us, we just need to stand back, take time to appreciate it and the images will come to us.

One of the things I see in the popular photographic instruction arena is the notion of do this and you will get that. This is a sound instructional tool but what is missed is the need to do it your way. We are all guilty of mimicking other photographic styles until we develop our own but Jay puts it very succinctly in that he says:

Don’t learn to shoot like someone else...

Learn to shoot like nobody else.

What words of wisdom.

In some final thoughts over lunch, Jay gave Scott these words.

• Have fun
• Be excited for what you shoot
• Don’t shoot unless it excites you.

WOW! There is so much information to be gleaned form this video that I will no doubt watch is a few more times. It is not often i will take notes while watching a video but I kept on saying to myself, “I gotta get that!”

I would encourage anyone to go to Kelby Training and sign up for at least the one month membership for $24.95 if only to watch this one video. As an attender of a number of seminars now on photography, all off them have been good, but none of them have offered so much for so little. I must caution you though, with that one month membership, you can watch any of the hundreds of videos Scott and his team have put together. You will want more!

I’ll close with a quote Jay made of Ernst Haas;

We don’t take pictures...

We are taken by pictures.

Take care all... Doug

P.S. I think the video series is available for free on KelbyTraining. Click here to try it out.

Planes, Trains & Automobiles

I was originally going to call this my ICT Photowalk as my plans were to go downtown Wichita KS and do a little photo-walking. I am out here for aircraft recurrent training and have the afternoon off so I thought I would go exploring. I did go for the walk but found it to be rather depressing. It turned into a drive by shooting session and a short walk. On the way back to the car I walked under a train overpass with an old steam engine sitting on display. The train was on display as part of the Great Plains Transportation Museum. This is a collection of a number of old train engines, cars and cabooses (or is it caboosi?).

Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe 3768 locomotive was built in 1938 and and was retired in 1958. This puppy weighs in at 500 lbs shy of 250 tons (the easy math makes that 499,600 lbs.) Believe it or not old 3768 could chug along at 90 mph. At $178,767 in '38 I can not imagine the cost of something like that today.

This old girl was manufactured in 1967 and used in passenger service until Amtrak was brought into existence in 1971. Yep, four years of service just doesn't seem right. Must not have looked the part for Amtrak.

This engine NW 2 was built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division of La Grange, Illinois. Starting in late 1948 the NW2s were manufactured in EMD's Plant #3 in Cleveland, Ohio. While Burlington Northern changed the paint scheme in the 80's the designation was changed to 421, it spent most of its life as Frisco 261 working the 29th Street Yards in Wichita KS.

Here are some real styling accommodations. I do not have any information on this particular caboose but it was heated as shown with the stove. Guess it beats sleeping on a stack of coal in the wind.

The title was a bit lame if I do say so myself but I did fly a plane out here, and had a rental car to get to the train museum. So there!

Take care all... Doug

A Grand Vista

Ok so the Grand Vista thing might be a little lame but it is the Grand River in Grand Rapids Michigan. But I really had no plans what so ever to go shooting the other evening.

Doctor: "Please lay on the couch and tell me all about it."

Patient: "Ok... Well it all started back when I was..."

So I  will not go to the screen play dialog but it did really start earlier in the evening. I was taking Sniper our black and white (looks like a border collie) Aussi and the sun was starting to give some better light. In the mMichigan latitudes we get a little longer golden hour during the fall as the sun starts to set towards the southwest. Anyhow, I saw the light (sorry) and knew I had been waiting for the sun to go further to the south to get evening shadows off of a red barn I have been waiting to shoot. So, I took Sniper back to the house, grabbed my gear and off to the red bard I went.

Of course the tree shadow was still on the barn so that idea went down in flames. I started back home when I thought about going downtown and seeing what I could get there. I have never really done any photowalking downtown.

The image above is a three shot pano of Grand Rapids with the J.W. Marriott and the Amway Grand Plaza prominently centered in the picture. I know, you shouldn't center things in the picture. But panos are different. If it works, it works. Now if you look in the middle of the river you will see an art piece that is entered in the Grand Rapids Art competition worth $250K. It is call "Grand Dance" by David Lubbers.

Below is another art entry which I could not find a reference to the name or artists but it too is entered in the competition. It is position on a walking bridge that used to be a twin track rail bridge back in the day.

Kind of looks like he is ready to leap off the bridge to me. 

The next two images are a before and after of one shot. The corrections were done in Lightroom alone and really demonstrates its versatility without having to make the jump into Photoshop all the time. This is the walking bridge I referred to just a minute ago and the building is the Marriott Hotel and Apartments. The light was just striking in this image.

BEFORE

AFTER

That's about it for today. I have a couple more from this photowalk for tomorrow.

Cya... Doug

Too Nice To Stay Home

I had some grandiose plans to stay home today and work on a project but the weather in West Michigan has just been beautiful these last couple of days. Great weather, Harley sitting lonely in the garage, it was a no brainer, out for a blissful two wheel adventure I did.

I ended up in Saugatuck Michigan for a late lunch. Normally when I ride like this I bring some camera gear and this was no exception. I had on the ready my Canon 40D with an EF 24-105 f/4L IS lens and a circular polarizer screwed on. That is such a great combination for walking around with.

I would consider this a mini-Photowalk so here are a few more pictures of my little venture in Saugatuck.

Not quite as neat as the moped but these wild rides seem to be harmlessly corralled by the dock.  Maybe its just a Tuesday in September in Michigan. Probably not the vacation wonderland.

Walking down the dock there was only one boat that had their lines coiled neatly. This may seem a little OCD to some people but when the lines are coiled they are much less likely to get knotted.

This next one is just too funny. Each one of these slips has a Barbecue associated with it. I count ten in this image. It kind of reminded my of my dad when he would go down the block to one of his buddies and they would sit on the back of his boat and drink martini's talking and watching the cars go by. To me it was an awful expensive lawn chair.

Finally the name on this last image caught my eye. Hope the name on it represents a personality trait and not a religious movement. Hmmm!

Later in the afternoon today I shot downtown Grand Rapids and hopefully I will have some of those up tomorrow. For now, I'm out-a here!

Cya... Doug

Patterns

Repeating patters are sometimes the basis of art, other times they are simply the necessity brought by the designed purpose. In this case seats at an open air auditorium. Mor specifically the seating for the Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois.

Shot a number of weeks ago on a photo walk with my brother-in-law. Actually there were four families there but the two of us went our own ways and hooked up with the rest for lunch later. We were just wondering and shooting what ever drew our fancy. This shot was with an EF 24-105 f/4 L IS lens mounted to a Canon 40D. Details being 1/50 at f/9 with an ISO of 100, center weighted metering in aperture priority at 67 mm. Just some basic RAW editing in the Develop module in Lightroom.

I could have left it at that but Nooooooo! Not me, I had to go further. I was looking at a multi-color seating, possibble a bayer pattern (check it out on Wiki here), or a rainbow of rows. Once I brought it into Photoshop and realized the amount of work it was going to be, I shifted gears to a minimalist approach. The of wedding trick of colored flowers on a black and white.

Only this time it would be seats in an auditorium. To which I have aptly named...

The Red Zone

You see, I could have colored them blue, or yellow, or green, or really any other color if I had wanted to. Red simply was a more striking color than the others. Besides it honors the existence of the current red seat in the auditorium. Kind of a zen connection if you will.

Ok... Yadi, Yadi, Yadi! Bla, Bla, Bla! I'll give it up. Red just looked right... So there!

Take care all... Doug

My First Photowalk

I give Scott Kelby full credit for energizing the global photographic community to get out and take pictures on the same day. It was a fabulous concept. The obvious result of his global photowalk was to get our community out and about, taking pictures with each other. You can look at Scott's Photowalk posts here. Meeting new people and starting friendships. What I hope is a secondary result of eight thousand plus photographers with DSLR's out on the street is to demonstrate that photography does not equate to terrorism.

However we have been photo-walking for years. Here are a couple of images that I took when on a family venture to Chicago in July 2007. We had family in from California , and Las Vegas and were wondering around the downtown area. I had my EOS 400D with two lenses, the 17-55 kit lens and an EF 70-300 IS f/4-5.6 USM lens. Walking and talking with family that had an agenda did not mix very well with city photography. It is not just a stop-shoot-walk deal. It is more of a stop-shoot-look-wait-shoot-look-shoot-shoot-shoot-walk deal. Needless to say it was not long before the group had moved beyond view and around the corner. They were gone. This actually made it more pleasurable from a photographic stand in that I was no longer feeling like I was holding up the group. I would meet them when we had pizza later.

This is what I call my Stop and Go images. I am not sure how efficient it was for sequencing traffic but the entire row of stop lights changed at the same time. It did make an interesting set of images though. The specs: EOS 400D, EF70-300 IS f4-5.6 USM, 300mm, 1/250 at f/5.6.

Hey... Go out and have a great weekend... Doug