The Decisive Moment

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First, a quote from Henri Cartier-Bresson: 

““Photography is, for me, a spontaneous impulse coming from an ever attentive eye which captures the moment and its eternity.” ”
In practice.

In practice.

The simple fact of life is that it moves entirely too fast. Before the advent of photography, we relied on more primitive methods of capturing moments, inevitably tainted by our own human perception. While these methods may be beautiful, and realistic, they present the world as the artist sees it, highlighting the beautiful, hiding the ugly, or doing the opposite. Photography enables us to capture truth, in a fraction of a second. Of course, how do you decide what to capture? 

Waiting.

Waiting.

I love street photography. At it's heart, it captures the minutiae of everyday life. A man waiting for the bus. A group of women laughing while walking out of the market. It's finding that common ground, that expression of the feeling that no matter what our differences are, we still all live in the same street, neighborhood, city, planet. To capture these moments is to capture the feeling of connectedness in the world. It's interesting to pore over the details in these images, and find the things that the photographer picked up on, that may have otherwise been lost to entropy.

#whereami

#whereami

The difference between street photography and posed portrait photography is not intention. There is as much intention behind street photography as there is where the subject is working for the camera. A photographer's eye is finely tuned to pick up that which not only others may miss, but the aesthetic quality of the world around them. Photography doesn't just capture things in 2 dimensions, but the perfect moment in time. The decisive moment is a term coined by Henri Cartier-Bresson, and it's the ever unattainable goal of finding the perfect photo in time. Simply put, while a photograph may be beautiful, what makes it truly stand out is capturing it at the exact right second. 

Reading the not-so-local news.

Reading the not-so-local news.

The moment may be when a child is just about to lose the ice cream from his cone. The moment may be when the sun hits the cyclist right as she's passing by, making the chrome on her chain guard shine in the most blinding way. The moment may be at the wedding, when the two grooms have squirreled away a moment to themselves, away from the guests and demanding parents. A little smile from the girl at the fruit stand. A weary traveller glad to be home. It's not just going out and taking pictures, it's being patient. It's being patient and waiting for the picture to happen, to make the photograph with intention. 

Exposure Part One: The Almighty Aperture

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In manual photography, you learn to think about many things. From a technical standpoint, you want to think about achieving perfect exposure. As you may know, exposure is made from three important pillars: Shutter Speed, Aperture, and ISO. Now, the true art of photography is not just learning how to use these in concert, but using them to your advantage to translate the visualization of the image you want into reality. Today, I'll focus on Aperture. 

It's all in the details. 

It's all in the details. 

Using the simplest terms, aperture just means opening. A way for light to travel through the lens. Now, the aperture on the camera isn't so simple, but it has only one mechanic: open and close. Some lenses open wider, some close tighter. This is primarily to let in more or less light, to affect the exposure of the overall image. But, this is not the true purpose of the aperture, only it's relation to exposure. The real purpose, and reason the aperture gives you creative control is much more interesting. 

Color and Rust.

Color and Rust.

When you take photos of still life subjects, be they flowers, trees, buildings, animals, even models, the first thing you want to consider is what your focal point should be. Imagine a table with a lamp on the far edge, a small porcelain figurine of a cat a few inches in front of it, and in front of the cat, a stack of pink erasers almost touching the front edge. You decide that you only want the porcelain cat to be your focal point, and you don't want anything else to be in focus. That last part, not wanting anything else in focus, that means we want a "shallow depth of field". It's an intimidating, technical term, but its very simple to visualize.

Starting with a low aperture value, aka f-stop, say f1.8, you find that if you focus your lens manually, very few things are in focus at a time. As you bring your focus one way, you'll see the erasers are in focus, turn it all the way the other way, the erasers turn into pink blobs, but the lamp shows definition. When you turn it back, the porcelain cat becomes in focus. Now, what do you do when you want everything in focus? Well, this is when you change your f-stop, thus changing the depth of field, or the about of objects in focus at once. As you change the f-stop, the aperture is shrinking to a smaller hole. But as the size of the aperture shrinks, less light comes into the lens, and affects your exposure, but we won't get into that too much right now.

When the light comes into your camera through a narrower hole, it brings things that were once out of focus, into focus. So if you move your f-stop to f8, you will see that now the pink erasers are in focus, along with the porcelain cat. Move it again to f16, and now the lamp is in focus, without even having to move the focus ring one bit. I find it helpful to visualize in my head that my depth of field is a three dimensional slice, almost like a slice of bread. At f1.8 the slice is very thin, and only highlights the porcelain cat. At f8, the slice is bigger now, so it encompasses the porcelain cat, and the erasers. If you were to move your focus ring, you'd be able to move focus from the erasers and porcelain cat to the porcelain cat and lamp. Imagine just moving the slice from one point in space close to you, to a few inches further into space. The slice doesn't change size unless you change the aperture. 

Museum of Non Flying Planes.

Museum of Non Flying Planes.

So, how does this relate to you and your photography? Well, like I mentioned before, if you're taking photos of objects that are relatively still, you will want to think about aperture first. When you first start out with photography, it's tempting to think only about exposure, but the way you find your voice is making decisions based on your vision, what your eye is drawn to, not just what gives you perfect exposure. So if you are taking photos of a row of tulips, you may decide to only focus on one, two, or even the entire row. There's no right way to take the photo, so it's your artistic license to choose. 

Lost in a sea of concrete and sky.

Lost in a sea of concrete and sky.

Now that you've mastered understanding aperture and depth of field, let me give you another nugget of knowledge. The relative distance of the camera of the subject does effect depth of field. The closer you are to the object, the smaller the aforementioned slices become. Imagine you're taking a photo of a face, and you're right up in the subject's grill. At a very low f-stop, say f1.8, your slice becomes razor thin, to the point that you might only be able to focus on the nose, the eyes, or the ears, but not all at once. If the subject takes a few steps back, you'll notice that the subject's face is now completely in focus. This is due to the way light travels through the lens, which is a fairly complicated physics function, but I won't go into that.

The best way to really grasp the above information is to go out and experiment! Set your camera to the lowest f-stop value, be it f1.4, f2.0, whatever is smallest, and switch to manual focus. Take photos of objects on a table, take photos of flowers in your garden, take photos of buildings and experiment with high apertures like f10, f16, even f20! Find what kinds of depth of field you like best, and sound off in the comments!

Meeting the Mermaid.

It was a cloudy day, not too chilly, but not too warm. I got off the bus at Freeway Park, and headed up to the fountain area. Or at least, the former fountain area. The narrative for our shoot was to focus on how a mermaid might live in the city, with access only to local ponds and fountains, unable to find reach the ocean. As we walked around the park, that narrative took a more environmental turn, emphasizing the decay and desolation of what were once beautiful, if brutalist, park fountains. 

Repose in concrete.

Repose in concrete.

One thing to know about mermaid tails is that they come in a couple varieties: silicone and fabric. The former is very realistic looking, wonderful for swimming in, but not very easy for moving on land. The latter is super flexible, and is a lot easier to scoot around in. The silicone also takes quite a bit to shimmy into, whereas the flexible tails just slide on! So this really affects where one can shoot, a silicone tail restricts you to only a few shooting locations in close proximity, but a flexible tail can be slipped on for one location, shot, then slipped off and carried to the next location with ease. 

Sun and shade.

Sun and shade.

Once we made it to the location, Essie (the mermaid) got ready, already set up with makeup by Aiko, one of my favorite collaborators. Essie had brought so many accessories, many of them handmade, all of them nautical themed. We wanted to do two looks, our first look incorporating a gorgeous wig, an intricate shell top, and the aforementioned accessories. The first location we picked was the most brutalist, rough, empty and dystopian empty fountain, with these multi-level ledges, surrounded by grass, ivy, and staircases galore. 

Stumped. 

Stumped. 

After a quick costume change, we started shooting our second location, one of Freeway Park's active fountains. Essie jumped right in, prompting me to follow suit. Of course, I only dipped my feet in, but I was really impressed with the commitment to the shoot, that Essie got all in the fountain. This side of the park was in direct sunlight, which was a little difficult to work with. I've been experimenting more and more using flash with slightly indirect sunlight, trying to get a specific, if almost artificial, lighting look. Flash is interesting to work with, since it really throws the facets of exposure out of balance, but once you mater it, you can really harness it to your advantage. 

Depth of field, depth of fountain.

Depth of field, depth of fountain.

One of the things that really stands out about doing photoshoots in public, is the public's reaction. I've seen models get weird looks, smiles, had guys look a little too longingly, but at this shoot, something different happened. As we were shooting, we were of course in a public park, but we were also right next to the path going through the park, so plenty of people passed by. Most people smiled, although one woman stopped with a few questions for Essie. She passerby left, but came back with two little kids, a boy and a girl, and just had to introduce them to Essie the mermaid. It was too cute, and it must have made the kid's day!

You can find more info about Essie the Mermaid and see more of the lovely photos at her Facebook!

Finding your voice

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It's said that we're all artists, but to truly express ourselves, we must find our voice. Hold on to your hats, I'm getting semi-spiritual with this post. Ethereal? Maybe. 

Our City.

Our City.

My favorite part of teaching is helping students find their voice. Their style. People take up photography for a lot of reasons, to take pictures of their kids, to captures nature's beauty, or to highlight injustice occurring around them. My belief is that voice transcends subject and even style, it goes much deeper than that.

However, it's very easy to stifle this voice, to try and create images that you think other people will like, but not that you like. This comes up a lot as creatives try to earn a living with their art, they find themselves being hired or seeking out jobs doing anything and everything related to their art, but they might not be creating the things they want to, the things they enjoy and turn them on. This is usually fine, but in that situation, it's important to find some kind of outlet. 

Alone in the woods, a creature's voice. 

Alone in the woods, a creature's voice. 

When you're first starting out, your voice might be quiet, it might not be strong. But as you practice and improve your art, it will become deafening. You will start making decisions, consciously at first, but then on pure instinct. These are the little choices that set you apart from everybody else, that you'll notice when you really take a deep look at your own work, and see how different it is. All of your experiences, your feelings, your beliefs, your past, these all come together and influence you, and it's important to not ignore any of these facets of yourself.