A Sunday morning meditation

I am sitting in our back patio. Drinking coffee on a beautiful warm morning. Alternating between reading 'Behind the Camera' by Paul Lowe, and reviewing blog comments. My buddy Janice has been busy with other things lately, and is catching up. In between all that, this view.

And yes, I'm trying to ignore construction noises in the background. I'll think about the clank clank clank, and the beep beep beep, and mentally edit them out. There are also cat howls, since they are alone in the house. It's more melodic than the construction, but I'm trying to block it out as well.

So I'm thinking about photographs, and photography, and photographers, and photograph viewers, and photograph subjects. Plus shoes - and ships - and sealing wax - Of cabbages - and kings, but we aren't going there, at least not yet. I'm easily distracted.

It turns out I've done a lot of people photography lately. The Green Fools theatre intensive workshop was a major example, but doing a Family fun day and a Stampede breakfast and a senior's brunch for my local community association were big photo days as well. People are turning out to be more fun to photograph than I thought.

I've narrowed it down to two groups that are the most fun. Kids from about 4 or so up to teenagers, and people older than about 30. Why? Kids are on the move, which makes them a challenge, and things are still new for them and they haven't learned to edit their faces. By the time most people are 30 they've got a bit of experience with the ups and downs of life and it begins to show at least in their eyes, and sometimes on their faces. Seniors can have fascinating faces, and you usually get a sense of their life just from looking at them. The others? Around me babies scream and poop. Pass. Teenagers are mostly pretentious posers with bland boring faces. Pass. 20-somethings are a bit of a mix, some are getting to be interesting, but most are wearing a smug look that does not photograph well.

The workshop was a major revelation for me. Mostly people go about their lives with a neutral expression, trying not to show their inner turmoil. Part of the art of the photographer is to catch such people in a moment where we can see at least a hint of that turmoil.

When I started shooting triathlons I got to see people being focussed on the task at hand, usually preparing their gear, but with time to kill before the start. This leads to an interesting mix of expressions. There are some posed shots, but I don't think these are as successful. (I could digress into the resting bitch face story, but it's been told in other blog posts.)

The theatre people are being trained to project emotion. Not just with their faces, but with their entire being. Let me tell you, this makes for dramatic photographs, even in a bright white space, with the participants wearing workout gear or motley clothes. (Did you see what I did there?)

I wanted to make a first pass editing them fairly quickly so I could pass along a link to the participants. There's already been some activity there. Now, or soon, I want to take a more reflective look through them, all 6,000 of them, to see if I missed any good ones, and to think about what works and why. Clearly this isn't going to happen quickly, but I think it's important for me to grow as a photographer.

If one counted and categorized all my photographs, I suspect you'd find most are of flowers, distressed wood, 'there I was and this is what you'd see', landscapes, and people. There's other things too, of course, but I'm talking of the broad brush picture here. Some very small number of them are at least on the rocky path to artistic, whatever that means in your mind.

In my mind it means something beyond a documentary photo. For me it's easy to take a photograph of something, in focus, in context, with natural colours, such that anyone can clearly say (after yawning) that's a photograph of a rose, or a cat, or a mountain landscape, or whatever.

Now if I take the photograph differently, such that while it still might be obvious what it is, it's also more. The light is better, the composition changes the context, there's something about it that makes the eye linger. Maybe it catches detail not normally seen, like the fine hairs on a flower, or pollen on a bee.

The  technique might change the photograph so dramatically that nobody knows what the actual subject was. It becomes an abstract work of colour and form. There's been a couple of those recently, and they're lots of fun. These are actually quite difficult. One can't really decide to go shoot an abstract. It happens suddenly, when your photographer eye realizes the play of light on a surface could be captured by the camera in a particular way to get a hoped for result, and with any luck you have the camera in hand or at least nearby.

Now the question is becoming, what do I want to take photographs of? The flowers are handy, at least during certain times of the year, but I'm trying to move beyond taking ordinary photographs. I'm aiming for the extraordinary, what with the light, or the water drops, the composition, or whatever.

While I took many beautiful photographs in New Zealand, and I'm looking forward to taking many beautiful photographs in Yukon this fall, I don't believe that one has to travel to the ends of the world to get beautiful photographs. There's beauty everywhere, the trick is to find it and capture it.

For me, the finding part is to slow down and look more carefully. I'm getting better at that. But then I sometimes rush the actual photography part, and when I look at the photographs on the computer I'm disappointed that I didn't quite get the photograph I wanted. Sometimes I didn't nail the focus, but most often there's a subtle (or not) goof on composition. Cropping can fix some things, but not everything. It amazes me sometimes what I see on the computer afterward that I didn't see when it was in front of my face.

The book shows photographs, talks about it and the photographer, and gives technical tips related to either the photograph, or the body of the photographer's work. There's some interesting things to try, to be scheduled into my busy life in retirement. I'm about 99% sure now that I'm not going to take another office job contract. I've started making plans to retire my company next year in an orderly financial way.

As a digression, I've been a bit surprised to find that financial planning at this time of life is even more difficult than while working. Up till just recently, the discussion is quite simple, how much to put into various forms of savings, and once you've accumulated a bit of a nest egg, to review performance. Now I have to decide how much to live on, which is driven by the question none of us knows the answer to, which is, how long will you need money? I have to think about taxes and income brackets and fees. Totally a first world problem.

Now I'm done my coffee, and the burst of writing creativity. Time to brave the cat horde and insert the photographs and publish. Have a fun Sunday!

Peony of the Day (June 29)
Look for the ant. In fact, you should do that for many of the peony photos.

Driftwoood of the Day