None the less, I love getting comments. It's a pity that responding to the comments and getting a conversation going is quite difficult given the Blogger software. I had thought that it always ate comments from a mobile device, but the other day I managed to get a comment from my phone to show up on the blog. The secret appears (or so it seems) to be logging into your Google account on the device. This is a pain in the butt procedure, and lots of people don't have Google accounts. Research is ongoing.
So today, I think I will go back through recent-ish comments, and respond. Firstly a big shout out to my two main commenters Sean and Janice! Take a bow. I also get periodic comments from my friends Michelle, Amy, and James, plus some from other photographer buddies to numerous to name. A bit of cut and paste is a small price to pay. There are some comments from a few other people, again, all loved and appreciated.
From flowers to offset the murk, a note that #3 was a break from my normal structure. This is interesting, since I hadn't realized I had a normal structure. When you shoot flowers there is normally little choice. Oh sure, theoretically there is a whole hemisphere of angles, but in practice many of them are not available due to constraints like fencing, garden bed access, or other plants. The direction of sunlight is a huge consideration. In many cases, I'm taking what I can get and living with it.
This leads into a discussion of a photographer's style. Some have it. There are several photographers where I can recognize their work. I'm not sure I have a style yet. I'm not sure if such a thing is good or not. I can see where having a style might constrain one from getting the best shot in some circumstances because you approach it from your style.
From Cypress followup, that their warmth and colour cheered someone up. Yay! Exactly. Sean discussed how the variation in colour and texture hold the eye. It's nice to know that I succeed in finding interest in something that normally isn't seen. I've frequently been amazed at the detail visible in a photo of a flower, that isn't particularly apparent to the naked eye.
From the Cypress Adventure, notes on a few of the many photos. Amy liked the pelican. Even though I have a connection to pelicans (of my readers, I think only James will get it right away) I wasn't especially interested in this bit of shooting. I considered it practice. As I looked at the photo for editing, I was more interested in the water ripples than the bird. Most people would have cropped the photo to have more space in the front of the bird.
Sean commented on the round hay bales, imagining a conversation between them. During road trips Linda and I have often discussed the secret life of muffets, as we call such bales. He also mentioned diagonal lines. Many photographers are big on diagonal lines, since they are said to bring a sense of energy and vitality to an image. A more private comment from someone else liked the bridge. They can be fun, the stark girders against the sky can give interesting patterns. Even macro shots, if you're into nuts and bolts, or rust.
From Damp orangey purple, notes on the Driftwood of the Day. Which will be continuing, BTW. This is one of the few time I had some choice to think about where the driftwood was in relation to the horizon. Often there is no choice, short of excavating a hole in the beach in just the right spot. Here I could have placed the hump of the log below the horizon, at it like I did, or humping up into the sky. I actually did think about it. Often photos are taken from normal human eye level, and the result is often a ho-hum more of the same photo. I'm trying to get away from taking such photos, except for the explicit documentary purpose of saying, this is what you see from this lookout.
It was also easily possible to take a photo of it that did not include the horizon at all, but that seemed kind of dull, given the shape and texture of the log. I wanted to see the whole curve and it disappearing into the gravel like some surfacing sea serpent. So, where to put the horizon? I do know that I thought about it for no longer than 5 minutes and 19 seconds. and there are no other photos of this log. Putting any part of it into the sky seemed so intrusive, and besides, I was already right down on the gravel. Lens width and desired framing and something behind me limited my choices a bit. Since it was already so close to the horizon, I decided to put both the curve and the bump right on the horizon. Otherwise people might assume that I didn't think about it, sort of like a horizon that is just slightly not level. That looks like a mistake on the photographer's part, as opposed to a wild angle, where the assumption is the photographer planned it.
From Wet pink, a discussion of the placement of the Muckle plum blossom in relation to the bottom of the photo. This is still a learning experience for me, deciding how much space to put around the subject. My intention here was to put the branch and blossoms along the bottom third line, and have some space above it. I hadn't realized quite how far down some of the petals went, and had no space below it at all. Cropping to 16x9 made it a bit more balanced and got the branch where I wanted it. I wanted sharp petals awash in a sea of pink. Pulling back to put more space around the branch would have introduced other elements into the photo.
Referencing several of the photos taken with water drops on blossoms, that it makes for lovely photos. Some people (me too on some occasions) carry a spray bottle to mist the blossoms just before the shot. I have been less than satisfied with the results of that. I think because the mist drops are too small, and what's visible in the background doesn't match. Something about the actual rain, not just on the blossoms but also on everything in the rest of the photo is magical.
Back in the day, when cameras were bulky and glacially slow by today's standards, a photographer had no choice but to think carefully about their shot. You would likely have only one chance, so they must have been in agony, waiting for the light, wondering if it would get better, or if now was the time.
A modern camera now can take several photos a second and do so until the battery runs out or the memory card is full. It becomes trivially easy to take many photos, indeed the difficulty is NOT taking many photos. This leads to having to look at those many photos, and narrow down to editing just a few of them. I've been working on taking fewer, more thoughtful photos, rather than more photos hoping to get good ones.
In much of my work, there are usually several photos to choose from as I stalk the subject. If I get the chance I usually do some trial shots to verify the settings and composition. It's often easy to determine which is the best of the bunch. Sometimes, such as when shooting bees, there might be hundreds of failed photos for one good one. For most of the driftwood I was trying to look for composition, and take one shot. The settings didn't change much during any one shoot. Blazing sun meant a low ISO. Desiring to get a reasonable depth of field and fast-ish shutter bumped me up to f8 or so. From there dialing in on focus length and composition was the only real thinking that had to be done.
The rule for writers and photographers is usually, show only your best work. I'm not quite that selective, mainly because defining 'best' is a moving target, worthy of much discussion over beer. As well, there wouldn't be many photos on the blog. I'm willing to show photos that might be considered less than best because they are still interesting and show some of the path I'm on. Plus, I know some experienced photographers look at my blog, and I learn from their comments.
So to match a contemplative blog post, you get a contemplative photo done just as the morning light was starting to fall on the bloom. Yes, I could brighten it up, and I even have another taken a few seconds later with a much longer shutter speed, but I love the light and shadows and bit of yellow on this.
Driftwood of the Day
My buddy James via Facebook, "The Cypress Hills photos that first caught my eye were "R3, more of the view" and the hay bales. Yes about the pelican. And I agree that the morning bloom looks wonderful as is."
ReplyDelete~ You're welcome and it is a 2 way street as you provide the material, and for that I am grateful. Visiting and commenting your site has become an enjoyable tune in the weekly rhythm of my week. Now to be perfectly honest that is slightly pretentious as I can't keep a beat.
ReplyDelete~ David Duchemin would say to not fall into the abyss of "style" but do cultivate your own vision.
~ The light on today's flower is absolutely gorgeous - nicely done! The fragment of the white stone in today's driftwood successfully contributes additional interest and contrast to the image. Cheers, Sean