The Basement

Basements. I could spend all day (or night) down there. As a kid they used to frighten me. Great place to explore these days... your own or, even better, someone else's!

This is mine. What's in yours?

A Matter of Inches.

Patience is a virtue that many of us do not often possess. We see something and we want it. The line is long so we turn and leave.(OK, so this just might be me!) Anyway... this same lack-of-patience can show itself in our photography, too. Sometimes we see a scene, point the camera and shoot. Done. No problem. Well, not no problem. Actually there can be many problems in the way of unwanted elements in the frame. Elements that, had we taken 5 seconds, could have been easily avoided. A matter of inches in most cases, really.

Here's a backyard. Nice green grass, decent light, cool shed, canoe, etc. Fine. But it is kinda messy, isn't it? All that crap on the left. Do we need that? 

I don't think so. Shift to the right a little bit.

Better. But even those bits of blown highlights on the far left distract, don't they? So just a couple more inches and...

Gone! A much cleaner image with an actual point of interest now.

Taking those few extra seconds to really scan around the viewfinder and eliminate the unwanted bits before tripping the shutter will, more often than not, result in more pleasing images.

Have fun.  

Scene Changer.

Let's have another go at trying to spice up a somewhat dull scene. To keep it simple we'll use similar colored gels as before. Also we're not posing anybody. Have to work with what's happening naturally. OK, to start with we have Rachel up in the garret preparing to do taxes. (Fun!) Anyway, this is pretty much a straight forward shot. This is how the space normally looks. Ugly, incandescent, overhead lights.

So, two things, no wait... three things right off the bat. 1) Underexpose the scene by about a stop. 2) Add a flash at about model's eye level, off to one side. 3) Get down low to eliminate distracting background clutter.

OK, this is pretty interesting. Looks like maybe the sun is coming in from a side window (it's not!).

Next, let's add another flash. Splash it against the back wall with a purple/bluish gel to give it maybe a little flair. Same general perspective, throw in a vertical shot, maybe a foreground element or two and well not such a boring setting after all!

Velvia 100 and a light table.

Shot some film the other day. Yes...film! Slides. Chromes, if you will.

I have to say, I sometimes really do miss film. There's nothing like that tactile reality. A sensation that's painfully absent from digital. Throwing a roll of 36 slides onto a light table and watching them come to life. Slowly scanning each one with that 8X loup. The colors! The sharpness! (if you have a steady hand and a good lens!)...there's nothing like it.

But time (and technology) moves on. Digital has done wonders for my photography. No denying it. And if it weren't for my digital camera (Nikon D200, thank you very much!) it'd be next to impossible to maintain a web presence without going completely broke!

So, no real complaints...just a mild lament. There's no going back. I will, however, continue to on occasion pull out the old Nikon F3 or F100 and have myself a blast shooting away without the crutch of looking at the LCD on the back of the camera (I actually still do that with the film cameras, but nothing's there!). Oh and did I mention that killer sound of the mechanical whirr of the motordrive. Ah...what a joy!

Yep, I really do miss it.

Shadows.

In 'Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors' Carl Sagan describes a tremendous event: "An immense mass of gas and dust is swiftly collapsing under its own weight, spinning ever faster, transforming itself from a turbulent, chaotic cloud into what seems to be a distinct, orderly thin disk. Its exact center smolders a dull, cherry red. Watch from on high, above the disk, for a hundred million years and you will see the central mass grow whiter and more brilliant, until, after a couple abortive and incomplete attempts, it bursts into radiance, a sustained thermonuclear fire. The Sun is born." And roughly 5 billion years later this "sustained thermonuclear fire" shines in through my venetian blinded window and allows me to make a funky photograph!