2007 Calendars
October 23rd, 2006
I’ve published some calendars for the coming year with an assortment of my photos from the past few years. And I’ve included one calendar that is all photos from this summer’s trip to Lake Cumberland, Kentucky. The Lake Cumberland photos have not been published or even exhibited on the web before this calendar. If you’d like to have some of my photos, the calendars are a cheap, easy and useful way to get them. You can order them directly from the publisher here: http://www.lulu.com/Wayward
Urban Landscape
October 21st, 2006
I was in NYC in May to do a shoot with Theda and Kat in a rented studio. But the fire escape outside the studio was calling to us, so out there we went. I’ve been trying to talk Theda into doing one of my nature shoots out in the woods somewhere, but this may be as close as she ever comes to that. She’s a city girl. I’ll keep after her, though…she would look great out on some rocks or in a stream. This was shot with my 12-24mm lens at 12mm.
Theda’s Model Mayhem portfolio is here: http://www.modelmayhem.com/member.php?id=1518
Mandy Slides Away
October 19th, 2006
I’m not a big fan of anonymous on-line critiques of images. I’ve rarely posted photos on the many different places where people rip each others’ work apart. I don’t see the point of that kind of critique. I always look to see who is making the comment and check out their own work before I pay any attention to a comment. This photo is a good example. I posted it on Deviant Art and got a comment complaining that the poster didn’t like it because it looked like Mandy was about to slide off the rock…Well, dude, that sort of was the point of the photo…oh well.
I’m also not big on writing a lot of words to try to explain what a photo is about. I like that popular quote from Robert Frost when someone asked him to explain a poem, “You want me to say it worse?” If I could communicate what I want to say with words I would. I’m better at using a camera. And I like that you can each find what you find in a photo and it doesn’t really matter what I meant. I guess that comment came from someone with issues of stability or something. But, for me, writing about photography is like dancing about architecture. And, yes, I know, it’s possible to dance about architecture. Many years ago I had the privilege to see John Cage and Merce Cunningham perform together. It was an unforgettable experience that is with me today very strongly and still influences what I do with my art. And I’m sure Merce could have done a fantastic job dancing about architecture. And it is quite possible to write about photography. Possible, but very difficult. Very few who try succeed in doing it well.
Mandy is a fine model with an incredible, sculpted body…to me the perfect form to place on that rock in what appears to be a precarious position. And maybe it has something to say about the position of human beings relative to rocks in the scheme of time…or it can say whatever you find it saying…that’s fine with me…
I’m a Guest Photographer
October 18th, 2006
I’m the guest photographer over at D. Brian Nelson’s Hotel Room Nudes blog. It’s a shot of Theda taken in a unique hotel room last May. Go check it out: http://hotelroomnudes.blogspot.com/
In the Heat of the Day
October 18th, 2006
Here’s Lani in a mountain stream in North Carolina. This was another of those very hot summer days. 110 degrees. Not what you expect up in the mountains. We hiked to some waterfalls and it was all downhill to reach them. I kept thinking, “This is going to be ugly on the way out.” I was right. We shot for quite a while and Lani got to cool off in the water. But the uphill hike out came pretty close to giving me heat stroke. I think I was suffering from heat exhaustion by the time we got out. I drank at least a quart of water, but I was sweating it out faster than I could take it in. My clothes were totally soaked with sweat. (That’s the sexy, glamorous vision of doing nude photos that you had in mind, isn’t it?) I was getting light headed and had to stop every few feet to rest. Lani ended up helping carry the camera gear. When we got to the truck I was disoriented. We stopped at a gas station right away and bought a bunch of gatoraide and drank it down.
But the photos were worth it all.
Lani is a great model and a wonderful person. I don’t know if she is still modeling now or not. I haven’t heard from her for a while. She may have started medical school and not have time for modeling or e-mail these days. She’s a very intelligent, accomplished woman who helped me make some of my favorite photographs, including the cover photo on my book, The Figure In Nature.
About cropping photos. I started out in newspaper photography. Everything got cropped to fit. Not always the way I would have wanted them cropped. But I don’t really understand the idea that photos should be displayed “full frame.” Every composition doesn’t fit in the standard rectangle of the camera frame. I don’t think there’s anything wrong at all with cropping an image to make the composition stronger. That’s part of the job of the artist with a camera. This photo was cropped from the top and the bottom. I couldn’t do that in the camera. With the heat exhaustion and the sweat pouring down in my eyes while I was working I probably wouldn’t have cropped it in the camera even if I could have…but back home in my chair in front of the computer it is obvious that this is the right way for this photo to be displayed, so that’s how you see it.
It’s in the timing
October 17th, 2006
There is a very small window of time when photos like the moon shots below can be taken. At each full moon there is a time when the moon is rising and the sun is setting and the light is right. Of course the weather has to cooperate as well. But the key is that the moon is in full sunlight. The exposure for the moon is the same as for any subject on Earth in full sun. So there has to be some sun lighting the subject on Earth or the dynamic range of the scene will be beyond the ability of the camera to capture both the light and dark ends of the exposure. You get about 15-30 minutes. Working fast is essential. After that, if you expose for the subject on Earth the moon will become just a white disk. Not nearly as interesting.
Nemesis and I waited a year for the conditions to be right for those photos. During that wait some suggested that it would be better to just photoshop a moon into a photo and not bother with the technical challenges of shooting it all together. I think you can see in the photos below that the effect of the moon light on the photos is a critical part of what makes the photos work. You can’t get that with a photoshopped moon. Well, maybe a master at photoshop could manage, but it’s one heck of a lot of work. I use digital tools to capture my photos, but they are pretty much “straight” photos…what I saw through the lens is what you see, adjusted in terms of tone, but not content. I have no problem with artists who create images in photoshop…that’s just not what I do, at least right now.
Today’s photo is a shot that also had a very short window of opportunity. The sun lit up those ferns for only a few minutes. I got the model, Charlie Rayne, into the right position and fired off a few frames. It’s been a very successful photo for me. It was published earlier this year in French PHOTO magazine. And, I like it.
Shelly in the river sunlight
October 15th, 2006
Here’s an older photo from 2005 of the beautiful Shelly in North Carolina. It was one of those very hot days last summer when the heat index was 105. We were driving around hunting for a good place to shoot and decided to try under a bridge. I’ve had very good luck over the years shooting under bridges. The light can be very nice, there are often good backgrounds, and no one on the highway above can see what you are doing.
This shot was taken just out from under the bridge. The rocks were perfect and Shelly was still hidden from the highway. But the light was what some photographers would call bad – harsh direct sunlight through the trees making shadows and hot spots. The scene was bright and glaring with the colors washed out. I don’t believe in good light or bad light, rather I see light as easy or challenging. In this case it was simple to control the exposure to allow the highlights to record detail while letting the limited dynamic range of my digital camera drop the shadows down to what I find to be attractive dark tones. The photograph looks nothing like the scene that I saw because I used the exposure tools available to me to alter it to the scene I wanted to record.
I’m often amazed at how poorly the art of proper exposure is understood by many photographers. When I started taking photographs I usually used a hand-held exposure meter and a Nikon F with no built-in meter. That gave you a pretty good chance at guessing the right exposure. The advances in technology since those days have made the guesses more accurate. In fact, the modern exposure programs built into most cameras are much smarter at determining the best exposure than any photographer fumbling around with a spot meter. But if you want to alter the tonal scheme of your image it helps to understand what the meter is doing to know how to change that to get the effect you are after.
I remember going to a seminar years ago where a photographer talked about his detailed spot metering technique, taking readings from every part of the scene and calculating the perfect exposure. Then he went on to say that he always shot a 9-stop bracket anyway! If you are going to shoot a 9-stop bracket you can just leave your exposure meter at home, one of the exposures is going to be right. Of course, this photographer was sponsored by a major film manufacturer, so we can guess the motivation for that advice.
With digital cameras that’s really pretty simple. There’s no need to guess about the correct exposure any more. The histogram that digital cameras provide gives a graph of every tone in the photo. We can now evaluate and adjust the tones using math on the actual image, not estimates from a light meter. It provides a great creative tool to those who understand and take advantage of it.
Another Moon Shot
October 14th, 2006
Here’s another photo from the Harvest Moon shoot with Nemesis. This one with a bit more telephoto effect to enlarge the moon’s apparent size.
Nemi is a very fine model. Well worth working with if you are a photographer in the Ohio area. She does mostly fetish modeling these days, but is versatile enough for many different kinds of work. You can find her under that name on Model Mayhem and some of the other modeling sites.
Just starting
October 8th, 2006
OK, now I’m no longer the last person on the planet who doesn’t have a blog…I’ve decided to give this a try and see if I can maintain it at a level that makes it worth anyone’s time to read and view what I’m photographing.
This is a shot I did during the Harvest Moon. The weather cooperated and the moon was at it’s closest point to the earth in its orbit that night as well as being full. Nemesis and I had been waiting more than a year for the right moment to do these photos. I took my D200 and my 80-200 2.8 and a doubler and we headed out to a small lake near where we live. It all came together pretty well.
