Doug was wanting both standard business headshots:

…and some that would show his love for the outdoors:

We met at my place and did both an indoor studio setup and then went outside to play in the stream that runs through my property.  Many thanks to Doug for the being up for an adventurous session and for the great conversation about all sort of outdoor stuff.  (I now know what Stinging Nettle looks like

“I can’t make this same photo again.”  Alright, what’s a new way to look at it then.

I think it’s a common problem, and one I struggle with often. We get tired of where we’re at, tired of the groove we’re in and give up. Breaks are good, but I think the most exciting creative advances for me have been when I push through boredom. Keep shooting…

Once you’ve been through that cycle a few times, you often see it for what it is. I get excited, thinking about what’s on the other side of the struggle.

But some images really hit home not because they’re exactly what I had in mind, but because they’re ideas that are finally beginning to solidify.  I’ve been thinking a lot lately about lighting, and making it more controlled and (often) more subtle.

This has been one of the instances where equipment has gotten in the way.  I’ve been using radio triggers for my speedlights for a while now, and one of the frustrations has been that I can’t control their power from the camera.  I often settle for rough lighting, a bit too hot or a hair light that’s not showing .  I can’t bare to ask my subject to hang on any longer and just go with it.

I recently purchased an SU-800, something of  a luxury item, never required because I can always get away with what I had.  Like my D300 compared to the D70, I really like how the SU-800 helps get the equipment out of the way.  Less fiddling means more creating.

Better equipment doesn’t make better photographs, but what I’ve really liked about the upgrade to professional level gear is watching the line between me and the images I want to make blur.  Less fiddling, less fighting, and less fumbling.

Cities are great for this, things are mostly straight to begin with, and the task is to line things up in interesting compositions.  I find woodland scenes to be more challenging this way, because they are so much more random.  I wonder if this is why my nature work is more about pulling out the details?  Really, I think that is caused by my curiosity: I habitually lean in for a closer look.

Back to the city, one of the main things I learned from Noticing was the importance of saying something special.  Of comminacting an idea or emotion in an image in a way that, when possible, was new and different.  I found myself often, when out in the yard with camera, composing an image of a flower and recognizing the shot.  I had done this before, I’ve got to find something new here.

This last weekend I went to see an artist’s talk by good friend Andy Chen at the KellarMahaney Gallery in Zionsville.  In his talk Andy mentioned something that he’s said to me in the past, that the projects we take on need to be things we have ready access to.

I think a big reason why this might be is that it simply allows us to work past the obvious.  In thinking about spending time downtown I’m excited to explore it deeply, to look past the surface.  I think it helps that I’ve spent so much time wandering downtown with my camera already.  Not only did it help me learn to compose an image, but it also gave me time to photograph the obvious.  Now I can get down to really looking for the special views and moments of my town.

This seems to be cyclical for me.  I get tired of the groove I’m in and shake up the snow globe till the snow settles and I find a look I’m happy with.  This is where I’ve been since early December.  At home I’ve been steadily working, looking at lots of photos, thinking about what I like and what I don’t, and trying to replicate the feel of the ones that speak most clearly.

At the end of this, with the ideas really starting to take shape, I spoke again at the Photo Venture Camera Club that I belong to about lighting.  I explained at the start that I wanted to show some of the ideas I had been playing with, but that there were still some pretty rough edges.

One of the ideas was the home made Lightbreak that I wrote about a few weeks back.  I’ve also been playing a with with Christmas lights as a backdrop for portraits.  I have two strings of standard larger bulb outdoor lights and one set of net lights, like this.  These are what I used for the portrait in this post.

It’s been great having the club to practice teaching on.  I’d like to think I get better each time I teach, but it wasn’t the case this time.  With the plastic globe snow still settling I presented ideas that weren’t fully formed, but close.  The talk was a bit of a struggle, mostly knowing what I had in mind but not quite.  Add other frustrations, like a light stand coming apart, and it was a triumph when i finally made a photo I was happy with.

It was a relief both for the teaching moment in the club and for the work I’ve been doing these last few months.  Projected on the screen I recognized finally what I had in mind during all the time struggling with half-formed ideas.

I first thought I’d use something like thin craft foam, it’s not expensive (I got a 36″ x 60″ roll from a hobby store for $8) but it would be difficult to make certain patterns, like branches, for example.  I thought that maybe I would cut out the shapes and glue them to clear plastic sheets, and then thought a better idea would be to just use black marker.  I think I’ll be using the black foam as flags, that’s something else I’ve been needing anyway.

Naomi had some scrap heavy plastic sheets I could use.  She purchased these also at a craft store a while back, so I don’t know how much it cost, or which store specifically.  While running errands yesterday she stopped in at Bates Art and Design and picked up a Pilot Super Color Marker.

I used a fine-tip Sharpie to create a 2.5″ grid, and then used the Pilot to create the thick lines:

After some test shots I decided to thicken the lines more than they are in this photo.

Naomi is much better drawing freehand than I am, so she spent the evening making me a branches pattern.  I haven’t used that one yet, but it looks great.

About the lighting for Carmen’s photos, the background is a Speedlight shot through the grid cookie.  For Carmen, I first started with an Elinchrom Quadra into a 53″ Octobox front camera left, but it was spilling too much onto the background.  I swung it around, to light over her shoulder, and brought in a Lastolite 2 stop Trigrip to reflect in some fill.  It wasn’t enough, so I popped another Speedlight behind it to shoot through.

It was a pretty great year for me, photographically, and personally. I have Crohn’s Disease, I’ve had it fifteen years now, maybe?  I’ve mostly got it under control, so a mostly healthy year for me is pretty great.

A happy and healthy family, solid and secure job that on top of doing what I enjoy as the main thing (writing software), allowed me to practice the craft of photography and helped support me with equipment.  Couldn’t ask for a better way to get started.

And ’09 was the year I found my voice, and if you’re struggling with what it is you want to say, and how you want to say it, my wish is that this year, you’ll figure that out.  It’s no small thing, and finding myself significantly further along that path at years end I count myself fortunate.

Thanks for all the support, I don’t think I’ve said that here yet and I should have.

Happy New Year, everyone.

The trouble is that I don’t enjoy writing in the same way I enjoy photography.  With a camera I feel like a fish in water, with writing… sometimes the words come easily and sometimes they don’t.

I imagine writing would get easier (and better) with daily practice, but with only so much time something would have to give…

I had, and have, the understanding that I was working on at least two fronts: the technical and the expressive.  While I didn’t really know what it was I wanted to say, for a project I wanted to tell a story that was more than what I could say in a single frame.  I knew that I had a good ways to go technically, both in the field with my equipment and back post processing the images, so while I thought about things to say I practiced.

I look at a lot of images.  I follow quite a few people on Flickr and a good few blogs.  I often see work that I found intriguing and think to maybe go in that direction.  I’d think about this while quietly walking in the yard, absentmindedly taking in, and sometimes photographing, the world.  I’d think about maybe photographing steaming coffee in coffee shops like Cinnamon while looking at leaves.

It’s funny how the painfully obvious can go unnoticed.

I keep waiting for the drive to finish one, but I only ever get the spark to start them…