Shutterfinger

Embrace Your Obsessions

I've got at least a hundred photos similar to this one and I'll probably shoot a few hundred more before I die. What can I say? I'm a sucker for contrasting graphic elements.

Sometimes I feel as if I'm shooting the same picture over and over again. I go out on a bright sunny day and the minute I see some sort of geometric interplay between light and shadow I get all excited. I do all I can to position myself in such a way that everything seems to fall into place so well that you can't imagine any element being anywhere other than exactly where it is. If a human being is part of the composition, so much the better.

I could shoot like this for days on end. Given the opportunity, I would. I also think nothing of loitering around a particular scene for minutes at a time, waiting for the light to be just right or for someone with just the right colored clothing to walk past. Sometimes I'm lucky and get the shot I'm waiting for, sometimes I'm not. I'll tell you this: I'm lucky often enough to believe the  adage that good luck favors the prepared.

To some this qualifies as borderline obsessive behavior. To me it's a sign I'm on the right track. I've learned over the years that talent is all well and good, but if you want to excel at something you've got to give it all you've got; live it and breath it; understand it to an extent that "normal" people find strange; practice it to the degree that you make it look easy when in fact it is anything but. You learn to swim in a pool that may not be all that large, but is as deep as you want it to be.

There's contrast in this photo too, but in this case the contrast is less about the bars in the background and more between the clothed, burly male in the foreground and the nude woman in the background. Once again, this theme is often repeated in my work.

If you want evidence, consider Ansel Adams and his western landscapes, Ralph Gibson's dreamscapes, Arnold Newman's portraits, Henri Cartier-Bresson's street photos, Elliot Erwitt's dogs, Diane Arbus' misfits... I could on like this for paragraphs. I'm sure I don't have to. Just consider this: For all their photos you've seen and are familiar with, they have hundreds more just like them that were almost-but-not-quite-good-enough for publication.

(By the way, this is why I have sympathy for photographers who can't seem to bring themselves to trash their borderline photos and instead they save them in the hope of future discovery and rescue. Obsessions aren't something you can simply switch on and off. At best they lie dormant, waiting for just the right spark to set them ablaze.)

So the question I'd like to ask in today's post is this: What's your obsession? What moves you to pick up your camera and venture forth, either into the world or into your studio? If you're lucky, it's something so characteristic of you that if someone familiar with you work was to see it, he or she would say, "I know exactly who took this picture."

Are You a Digital Photo Hoarder?

Is it time to cut down on the number of images you have that are simply taking up space on your hard drives? If the glove fits...

I read an article in the New York Times last weekend that made a convincing argument for the unseen costs of our reliance on digital data storage. What it said, in short, is that we're all drowning in data, much of which is redundant. One major effect is that it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish useful data from the stuff that's simply taking up space.

A second major effect is that cost of providing all that space: huge server farms that occupy floors of buildings, drawing electrical power and generating heat that in turn requires additional power for cooling. Worse yet, the amount of data in storage is growing exponentially. The problem is only going to get worse.

After reading this article I started to reflect on how much data in the form of digital images I have stored. My Lightroom catalog lists 20,300 images, give or take a few, and that's on only one hard drive. The backup drive has the same number. That represents digital files dating back to the year 2000, when I first starting shooting with a digital camera. The first few years have only a few hundred images. By 2005 I had 877. By 2007 the number had grown to 1798, and a year after that, to 4330. My average is now close to 5000 per year. Mind you, I make a regular practice of deleting files I think are taking up space for no good reason. Imagine how many there would be if I didn't.

I realize that some photographers shoot 5000 images or more in a week. If anything, that only reinforces my sense of unease. What are we doing with all these photographs? We certainly aren't printing them. We browse through them occasionally, but as the number grows the browsing becomes less frequent. We're most likely just storing them on more and more hard drives until the day they become either someone's legacy or headache.

Bear in mind that this observation has little to do with shooting style. If a photographer needs to shoot twelve shots to get one "keeper," that's fine with me. What I don't understand is why it's necessary to save the other eleven shots that were okay but not great.

Am I missing something here? It seem to me that if we behaved this way with possessions that took up more space, such as newspapers, magazines, or even photographic prints, our friends and family would stage an intervention and suggest that we get help. As always, you're free to do whatever you like--just don't say I never warned you.

Six Things You Can't Fix in Photoshop

I suppose if I really wanted to I could stitch all of these elements together in Photoshop, but 1) the idea wouldn't necessarily occur to me, and 2) it was a hell of a lot easier to just see it and shoot it.

You've all heard the expression, "I'll fix it in post." It's the photographer's way of saying that he won't sweat the fine details. Instead, he'll polish up the image in Photoshop or whatever other image editing tools he has on hand.

Now please understand: I have nothing against Photoshop or post-production. I use Photoshop myself, along with a host of other image editors. It's just that having had the benefit of years of experience, I'm quite clear on what you can't fix in Photoshop and would be foolish to try.

I also try to avoid having to spend an hour in Photoshop to fix something that would have taken a few seconds to correct beforehand. I find it helps to keep these things in mind when I'm doing a shoot where second changes are either impossible or unlikely. What follows is my list. If I've overlooked anything, please feel free to contribute.

1. Camera position
If you're not as close as you'd like to be you can crop, but if you're too close there's no way Photoshop can help you zoom out. True, stitching multiple images together into a panoramic could help, but even here some camera positions are better than others. It's a lot easier to make sure the camera is at the right height and angle before you release the shutter than after.

2. Lighting direction and quality
If the sun is at high noon, Photoshop can't help you make it look as if was low in the sky, and vice-versa. Similarly, it's hard to transform a cloudy, overcast scene into a bright, sunny day. You may be able do it if you have enough supplemental lighting or light modifiers, but again, these come into play before you release the shutter, not after. The better the quality of light is to begin with, the easier time you'll have in post.

3. Image out of focus
De-focus is easy. Bringing an area of the image that's out of focus back into focus is next to impossible. Sharpening helps with minor imperfections, but it's no substitute for the real-deal. That's why you should aways check for critical focus whenever possible before you take the shot. You'll be glad you did.

4. Image blurred by camera and/or subject motion
This is another one where there's very little that Photoshop can do to fix something that's broken in this particular way. Although image stabilization or a sturdy tripod can minimize or prevent camera motion, there's nothing they can do to prevent subject motion. Sometimes there's just no substitute for a fast shutter speed, more light (supplemental if necessary), or both.

5. Lost data
Every digital photographer who has a clue what they're doing knows that there's no much you can do to recover highlights that are more than a stop over-exposed, even if you shoot raw. Some of us tend to forget, however, that under-exposure can be a problem too. Although you can boost the brightness of areas that are darker than you'd like, you also boost image noise when you do it. You'll usually end up with a lot better image if you make sure the dark tones get enough exposure, even if you have to use supplemental lighting or reflectors to do it.

6. Lack of vision
I'm not referring to literal blindness, although Photoshop can't do much for that either; I'm refererring to a lack of any real concept, intent, purpose, or creative spark. If it's just another photograph, just another mundane recording of a common subject or event, you won't find what you're looking for in Photoshop. Combine clear vision with a mastery of Photoshop, however, and you'll be a force to be reconned with.

So that's my list. Have I overlooked anything obvious? In any case, what you'll find that all six items have in common is that if you don't have your act together before you press the shutter, you drastically narrow your odds of doing so afterwards. And if you should discover that your images are perfectly fine as-is, with no need for additional tweaking, well, I ask you: Would that be so bad?

Shoot a Little or Shoot a Lot?

As soon as I noticed the similarity in pose between the mannequin and this young woman on her cell phone I raised my camera to my eye and snapped this photo. As soon as she noticed me she changed her pose. And as with so many of my photos, I either captured the right moment or I didn't. In this case I did. I would shoot more pictures that day, but not here and not of her.

One of the questions that came up from my previous post, "How to Shoot With Film" (thanks for asking, Paul!) is whether I shoot a higher volume of photos with digital than I do with film. It came up because film shooters tend to be more sparing with their use of the shutter release button than digital shooters because of the tangible and immediate costs associated with film. It's not just the cost of film and processing, it's also the effort it takes to get film, film processing and printing, and in many cases, scanning. Even if you do the processing and scanning yourself, which isn't unusual for those who shoot black and white film, it's no trivial task.

Digital photography has costs too, of course. Anyone who's had to upgrade their camera, lenses, computer, hard drive, software, and printer can attest to that. Still, because it's so easy to shoot hundreds if not thousands of photos at a time without having to pay for film beforehand and processing immediately afterwards, that's exactly what some photographers do. The rationale for the "shoot a lot" approach (or is it a rationalization?) is that it's better to shoot first and edit later because by shooting a lot you're "working the scene" and wringing every last bit of photographic potential from it. Others say that shooting a lot of exposures at one time helps them to get warmed up, or that it helps improve their ratio of hits-to-misses.

That's all well and good, but the "shoot a lot" approach has never worked that well for me. For one thing, I'm more of a decisive moment photographer than one who depends on volume to capture the shot. For me there's normally only one moment when the composition, lighting, and color palette are all in perfect balance. Any additional shots may yield photos that are just as good or better, but if I'm shooting a subject in motion the original moment has passed and will never be repeated.

If the subject is motionless, any other shots once I've settled on a composition are just duplicates and unnecessary in a digital workflow. It may take me 3-6 shots to settle on a composition, but that's it. Dozens of shots would be out of the question and if I absolutely had to I'm pretty sure I could get it right with just one.

The result: On a normal day's outing for personal (i.e., non-professional) photography I normally shoot no more than 72 exposures, the equivalent of two rolls of film, give or take a frame or two. Even so, I eventually delete at least half and sometimes as many as three-quarters of them. I may not shoot a lot at one time but I shoot often enough that pictures have to earn their keep on my hard drives. Life is too short to spend hours sorting through mediocre photos again and again. Better to delete them once and for all and be done with it.

But that's just me. I have no idea whether I'm the norm or not, nor do I care. My approach works for me and that's all I need to be concerned about. The question for today is, what works best for you? What do you consider a normal day's output, and of that output, how many are keepers vs. candidates for the trash or recycle bin? Do you think the best way to improve your hit ratio would be to increase the volume of your shooting or reduce it?

As always, there's not necessarily a right or wrong answer here folks, just food for thought...

How to Shoot With Film

I shot this back in my Leica M4 and Kodak Plus-X days. If it weren't for the overcast sky I would have used an orange filter to darken the sky a bit. That's the sort of thing you get used to doing when you're in a film-shooting mindset: You try to get as much right before you release the shutter instead of afterwards.

True story: I was out shooting one afternoon with my Canon EOS-1n when I decided to step into a coffee bar for a hot latte. A young woman in her early twenties who was seated at a nearby table noticed my camera and asked half-jokingly, “How do you shoot with that thing?
    “Beg your pardon?”
    “It’s a film camera, right? There’s no screen on the back.”
    “Oh. But there’s still a viewfinder. I just look through the viewfinder.”
    “But you can’t see what you’re getting. How do you know if the exposure is right or if you got the right expression?”
        At that point it became clear to me that we were talking across a generation gap. She was a young photographer who had never used a film camera and was genuinely interested in how I managed with a camera so different from what she was used to.
        What follows is a summary of what I told her, which I tried to make as objective as possible. There’s no judgements on good or bad here, just obervations on similarities and differences. Regardless of the imaging medium, the goal is the same: good pictues. (Please refer to my previous post for a discussion of what “good” means.)

Choose your film with the end in mind.
Digital cameras allow you the luxury of converting a picture from color to black and white and back again. You can alter the white balance to match a wide variety of light sources. You can adjust the ISO upwards if you’re in dim light or downwards if you’re in bright light, all without having to change the imaging sensor.
        You can’t do that with film. If you buy a black and white film you get monochrome images. You can convert color film images to monochrome but the result will be different (and not always in a good way) from what you’d get if you had used B&W film to begin with.
        Even within similar types of film, there are differences in how they translate a scene. Some films are high in contrast, others are low. Some have a saturated color palette, others give muted colors. A film that’s wonderful in bright daylight can be a challenge to use indoors under mixed lighting. As a consequence, once you find a film you like you tend to stick with it. It’s not unusual for a photographer to have a favorite portrait film, a different film for street photography, and yet another one for product photography.

Know your film like the back of your hand.
Films—especially transparency films—don’t allow as much latitude for adjusting the ISO as you have with digital. That said, negative films often benefit from a stop or two of extra exposure, which adds to shadow detail without harming the highlights.
        Try this with transparency films or a digital camera, however, and the result will likely be overexposed highlights with lost detail that can never be retrieved. What makes film cameras more challenging to use is that they have no instant feedback feature. You never know for sure whether the exposure was right until you get the film processed and review the results. Film shooters compensate for this with experience. They’ve shot often enough with the favorite films in familiar situations that they know what to expect and when and how to tweak their exposures to make sure they get the shot.

Pay attention.
Long-time Shutterfinger fans are probably chuckling to themselves, “Here he goes again…” but it bears repeating: the ability to Be Here Now is essential to producing memorable photographs. It’s also essential to operating most film cameras. They have only a few controls and few if any menus, but what there is matters a lot. You may have to set the aperture, shutter speed and focus all manually. You may have to use a separate exposure meter or guesstimate your exposures. If you get careless and open the back of the camera at the wrong time you could ruin an entire roll or sheet of film.
        Knowledge of these pitfalls tends to focus your attention and because there’s no preview image to distract you, you’re motivated to concentrate more on what’s about to happen than what happened a moment ago.

You’ll need to develop an analog workflow.
Forgive the pun, but just as with digital processing, you need to put some thought into how to process your film. Will you do it yourself? Will you do it in a rental lab? Will you use a custom lab? Will it be local or mail order? Do you plan to scan your film for reproduction? If so, repeat the previous questions.
        The good news for computer phobes is that if you so choose, you can devise a workflow that all but eliminates the need to use a computer to produce photographs. Just don’t go too far with this idea. After all, no computer, no Shutterfinger, and that would be a crying shame.