Quo Vadis?

I’ll be resuming shooting people if plans work out for a photo shoot on Sunday. I’ve shot this model before. He loves modeling and has few boundaries! He’ll do nudes as well as as portraits and fashion shots.

Two days ago I renewed my model website subscription. I plan to start recruiting models again but before I do I need to clarify why I want to shoot models. In my naiveté, when I started doing photography, I shot fashion-type images but I didn’t doing anything to market my photographs or images to magazines, internet or print. I expected the models to get themselves professional modeling jobs using the portfolio I created for them.

I was just learning professional photography. Every shoot I did was a lesson on how to use the DSLR, how to set up lights, how to process photos, how to pose models, for crying out loud, I was learning how to just work with models! The shoots were vehicles for acquiring core skills.

Today, after five years, I have learned enough to be more discriminating about doing shoots. If I continued to shoot editorial spreads I’d have to get serious about breaking into print. Right now I don’t want to enter into the fray; I want to shoot at my own leisure rather than work with deadlines. But can I do this? Can I do superlative work without having to stress about it?

I’ve been doing pro bono work. Maybe it is time I start charging for commissioned shoots. By the same token, maybe it is time I work not with just any model willing to do a shoot with me but work with the right model for the project I have in mind. I need to shoot concepts, not just shoot for the experience. It’s time for focus, for shooting as a professional photographer. If I am good at what I do then maybe it is time I make money! Getting paid is incontrovertible evidence that I possess skills that others recognize enough to pay for with their own hard-won rewards.

I’ve labeled April my “back to basics” month but it’s really time to move on. It’s time to take stock of where I am and where I have been but more important: quo vadis? Where am I going? Where do I want to go?

Roses or A Different Order of Real

I enjoy company but there’s a tradeoff. I am not as focused when I am with others. My mind is not as sharp; I don’t see things as clearly. When I have company I do as much of the work before they arrive. Once they arrive I know I’ll be scatter-brained. My sauces are watery, my salad dressing bland. So I learn to do the work that requires precision before the company arrives.

On the other hand, when I am with one person whose company I enjoy, another kind of energy arises. I am more social. I take more risks. I worry less, I enjoy more. I am not as productive but I am more creative in the delights of enjoyment. I think maybe creativity comes in different kinds. Artistic creativity, for instance, may benefit from company because we exchange ideas and compete with each other but the actual work of creating we do in the quiet of our solitude. An artist may be a gregarious person but when creating he withdraws into himself. He becomes antisocial. Company is a distraction as anything is that is not part of the production process. Even preparatory chores like cleaning the workspace or changing clothes or getting a glass of water feel onerous. Creative energy is a monomaniacal master, jealous and unforgiving.

Last night I watched two videos from David Nightingale’s workshop on creating black-and-white images. I still find using curves and masks in Photoshop unwieldy. I get lost trying to understand what it is that I am doing, for instance when I am “erasing” or using a black brush as opposed to using a white one, what I am actually doing to the pixels of the digital file.

I did manage to produce this image of Arron that was encouraging. Using curves adjustment is considered by some to be one of the most advanced techniques in photo-editing because you have to rely on how you see the image. It’s something we learn to use better as we use it more and get a feel for the effect we create manipulating various points on the “curve.”

Processing digital images is very much like painting. I am not trying to recreate “reality” but make the image have a similar impact on the mind and senses as the object I photographed and those are two different things!

Slowly I am getting to grasp this and slowly understand a little more about the so-called creative process. Imitating “real” objects is not what it means at first glance. An artist works with his own mind as much as with the “thing out there” that is inspiring his creation. Art is a mind-to-mind transmission, just as Buddhism says enlightenment is! If it is not then real roses are better than a painting or a photograph of roses.

But roses wither and die while art works stay on and on, preserving their power to re-create the effect of vibrantly alive roses to other minds and they keep doing this into the foreseeable future!

A Good Image Plus Post-Production

Producing a good photograph results from two learning two crafts: the technicalities of using a camera, lenses, settings, and lighting and the aesthetics of appealing composition, structure, color, and emotionality.

Producing a good image results in turn from learning two crafts: producing a good photograph and learning post-production!

Nowadays, in an age where digital photography has clearly won the field, post-production is almost de rigueur. Just a year ago, professional photographers all chorused their deprecating remarks about using Photoshop to enhance their images. Now more and more of these professional photographers are coming out of the closet: post-production is becoming essential to make their images stand out in the crowd.

No doubt an image is only as good as the photograph taken by the photographers with his camera but post-production has a lot to say about what images finally look like. It’s the details that make or break a good product.

Again no doubt about it I am still on this learning curve, learning the tri-fold craft of creating a technically good photography, learning the aesthetics that goes hand in hand with learning the post-production to create the final image.

To top it all off, the greatest teacher is experience or the time I take to actually do the work. There are manuals and workshops to take, of course, and they are instrumental but nothing takes the place of what one learns simply by doing, and doing is risking. It’s all about trying, failing and learning from both trying and failing, and celebrating when somehow I get it!

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Elegance in Black-and-White

Arron & Tara in Black and White

For years I’ve been collecting books on branding as an essential component of marketing and earning money from the business idea of the moment. It was during the CreativeLive webinar with Jazmine Star that I think I grasped what branding really is.

Branding is not creating the logo by which I identify my products. When I properly undertake the process of branding, designing a logo might symbolize what I have arrived at for my brand. The logo is not just something pretty to affix to my work to let others know it’s something I did. Branding may not even lead to the creation of a logo although for me a logo is some kind of Holy Grail. To finally decide upon a symbol that would identify what I do would be the culmination of the sequence of actions that I now know as branding.

Branding is like finding my voice when writing a novel or short story but not the voice I need for a particular work. Finding one’s voice is arriving at a self-recognized mastery of the craft which translates as confidence and the freeing of the creative impulse because the craftsman feels safe within the parameters that he has defined as his style, as the level of quality he knows he can achieve and must achieve to consider that particular work done.

I date the formal start of my pursuit of professionalism in photography when I shot Kaleb, my first model, in May 2008. I remember asking my neighbor’s son to pose for me against my first white vinyl white background and remember how intimidated I was at using studio lights. The lights I started to use then were actually part of a set meant for video lighting. My original idea when I embarked on what I called then a “sabbatical” from my regular profession was to do videos. A few minutes into shooting Kaleb I felt excitement that I had not felt before. It was crazy, a kind of illumination, as if I had broken through a wall into a new dimension. I felt alive; I felt I’d found me!

I didn’t know then what the process would be like. I didn’t know then what I know today, two and a half years later. I had heard Joseph Campbell talk about “following your bliss” but what registered was an intellectual insight. Now, looking back, I see that what I did was follow my bliss. I found something that not only felt magical and exciting but something that seemed to access parts of my personality I always knew I had but never dug up to reach the light of day.

Everything that I’ve done since is my branding path. I look back amazed at what I’ve learned. In 2007 when I decided to take the leap into the unknown I didn’t know what I was leaping into. I told myself I would take four years, the same number of years a young person would take to complete an undergraduate degree and I think I was right. I didn’t have the raw data to come up with the time period but surely there’s a reason that a bachelor’s degree takes four years. I think one must take the time, not only to finish the course work but also to gain the experience both while doing the course work and in-between. The in-between time is as important, the time between decisive actions. It’s when losing our way that we learn what we didn’t think we needed to learn!

At this point I feel my studies and experience have brought me very close to the level of mastery that I call branding. Reaching that would not be the end of mastery but the beginning. I’ll have more to learn about the medium and the technology involved in manipulating and shaping it but it’s enough mastery to propel me into becoming a professional, a professional photographer.

I took this photo of Arron and his new girlfriend, Tara, in color. As I’ve been doing with most of the RAW images I’m shooting, I process the image to the correct white balance and color correction then play with softening the light or creating high contrast derivatives or, in this case, creating a black-and-white image. I liked what I did with this image. The shadows are dark; the two faces stand out as if from primordial soup, two lives floating together. It’s elegant.

Jaz suggested that to find one’s style so clients will know what to expect from the photographer, he or she might choose three words that define what he means to capture and produce. I like evocative images, what one might call romantic in the sense that Beethoven composed romantic concertos. Certainly I like beautiful images, images that a viewer would want to keep around because she enjoys looking at it. Finally I want the image to be striking, a surprise combination of shapes, color, texture and content, an image that clients would come to associate with the work I do.

To find this is to find my brand. Tonight finding that brand feels like just around the corner from where I sit to write this, at Panera Bread on 82^nd and Allisonville in Indianapolis!

Handheld camera with 50 mg lens makes surprisingly good images!

I was worried about shooting these two models with Brian. Somehow with the Canon 7D, using zoom lenses with stabilization control I end up with blurry images. Moreover my photo shoots the whole of this year were all done in the studio where I controlled the lights. In fact I have been shooting with more variety of lighting sets-ups since adding Alien Bees to my arsenal of lights.

Brian asked the models to contact Peak Performance on the city’s northeast corner, theorizing that since the gym was a standalone gym, not a national chain affiliate, they would be more likely to consent to use shooting on their premises. It worked and I went along for the ride.

The first half hour of shoot I turned out blurred, unusable images. I finally put on my F1.8 50 mm prime lens and decided to shoot manual. It worked! The colors were surprising. They were not as rich as what I get with either daylight-range strobes or Tungsten but seemed more alive! I am hooked!

I am really grateful to Brian for forcing me into this situation. Watching Jazmine Star’s five-day workshop shooting a wedding on location with minimal use of any artificial light wa invaluable! This was a major step forward for me.

Exploring Black and White Conversions

Converting a color image to black and white offers many more possibilities than I thought possible. Shades and tints can vary and Photoshop offers several ways of achieving effects, including what commonly is called “high contrast” processing that is so popular nowadays  especially among young people conditioned by images in magazines for young fashionistas, both male and female. Here’s an example:

Yielding to contemporary tastes in portrait imaging

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If you can’t beat them, join them. The saying dates me and that’s ok. I’ve been processing my portraits and model pictures with traditional color correction but it seems everyone likes their pictures to look like what glamour and edgy for-young-trendsetter magazines display. Images are not longer for showing people’s “true colors” but for showing them in highly unusual color. Color is taking center stage, not far behind the actual image itself. Frankly I kind of like the new trends. My interest in photography started out as interest in simple shapes and color. When I got into people pictures I found out about white balance and skin tone corrections. Now finally I am coming back to my first love. People looking like Dracula, like the vampires that are popular with young moviegoers and novel readers. Maybe realism is getting to be too much with the plethora of reality TV! So, I’ll keep on exploring “special effects” on Photoshop because they seem to be what clients want and it’s going back to my first loves!

Austin head shot

Believe it or not I am just discovering the color possibilities of photographic images! My favorites are often model shots so I look to web and magazine print galleries for what other photographers are doing and what these markets are buying for their products. I’ve avoided doing trick shots, creating mostly traditional poses so these are what I have to work with. I’ve paused my lynda.com subscription to work on two excellent books on digital photography by Scott Kelby. I need to do more with Photoshop, as well as do more lighting and exposure projects. I think I’m getting to the point where I should explore creating tangible products with my photo images, like books and DVDs. Before the year is out I think my activities can start generating income. That’ll be sweet!

Radial Blur Filter

Playing with the Radial Blur Filter

This is from The Photographer’s Guide to Portraits by John Freeman. Working with the Pencil Tool, Alpha Channel and the Radial Blur Filter.

Exploring Photoshop’s Text Tool

At the museum outdoor theater

I’ve not worked with the Lynda.com tutorial learning Photoshop’s basic features. I get impatient to do something more tangible with the images I already have. Learning for me comes in fits. I settle down to learn slow and sure then explode into acts of spontaneous creation that sometimes leave me dissatisfied for being so undisciplined. I guess I’ll need to be more accepting of my energy cycle while still trying to mold and bend it when I can. This is from Scott Kelby’ Down & Dirty Tricks for Photoshop 6.