MANUAL MODE AND THE ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Are you an artist if you don’t use the “M” mode on your digital camera?

Well, I guess the first question I should ask is do you aspire to be an artist?  Then, what are the defining characteristics of an artist?  And, what is art? OK, Let’s not go down that rabbit hole! (Maybe later)

If you just want to be a competent photographer I would still suggest that you stay in”M”. If you want to be the author of your images, like an artist, you should be in control of all the variables that go into creating your images. Going back to that second question….the defining characteristics of an artist; say a painter….

THE PAINTER:

1. Has an idea for a painting (In the art of Photography Ansel Adams called this “Pre-visualization”.) This is truly the beginning of the creation of Art.
2. The painter selects his canvas;
• Cotton or linen stretch canvas
• maybe cotton rag paper
• or classically on a plaster wall
3. The painter selects his paint:
• Acrylic, oil, casein, egg tempura or maybe pastels or watercolors
4. Then he uses his favorite brushes (sable, synthetic, bristle, badger, squirrel, etc.,) in the many shapes made to realize his artistic vision.
5. And finally the painter’s biggest advantage in art, over the photographer, is his control of light. In this he has god-like power to place light, in just the right amount and anywhere he wants it.

This is what an ARTIST does; he is in the control of every element and tool in his creation of art. So, having started my journey as a fine-art photographer over 45 years ago (35 of those year to date as a full time professional) my only choice was using fully manual cameras. The manual mode became the most natural way for me to do photography.  I had to pick each of my variables and have a reason for each choice.

Here’s an example from my early days…

Ektachrome H.S. Daylight
 file @ 1000 ASA Exposure: 30 seconds Title: Cement Henge

This image was completely planned—I already had a vision of the end result in my head; I just had to realize it on film.  The subject was the famous unfinished interchange for the 101-280 freeways in San Jose, California. I had been photographing it a lot in the late 1970’s and decided to try a more ambitious night version. 

This was my thought process in its creation.

1. Starting with film choice (In the film days this was always my first decision in any session) I picked EKT. H.S. Daylight (pushing it to 1000 ASA) film to match the artificial lights along the freeway (this was back before they started using sodium vapor lights).
2. I wanted to use a shutter speed of at least 30 seconds so the traffic on the ramp in front of me would blur and most importantly I wanted to capture the flashing warning light on any planes that entered and crossed my frame. I chose this view so the flight path of small planes landing at the nearby San Jose Airport would be visible.
3. Focal length; I didn’t want to distort the shape of the structures, but I did want to compress the scene (back-off and set good depth-of-field) so, I chose a focal length of 200mm. I shot ONE roll of film (36 exposures) and got exactly what I wanted! The only culls were when too many cars coming towards me (headlights!) over exposed the foreground.

As you can see thoughtfully controlling your variables, just like the painter does, combined with a Creative Idea, will enable you to produce more images that will be elevated from mere pictures to, dare we say, ART! 

This is just the beginning of a multi-part series on going fully Manual and creating ART.  I will be breaking down artistic control of photography into these parts: ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed.  So get ready for a Jerry brain dump in small chunks to make it easier to absorb and put into practice…

Author:  Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman

Training site:  http://www.LightAtTheEdge.com

Client site: http://www.TheStorytellersUsa.com

WINDOW LIGHT – THE BEST LIGHT FOR WEDDINGS

Whenever possible I use window light at most weddings.  Why? It’s simply the best soft, directional (when used properly), natural looking, light we have at our disposal.  It’s infinitely preferable to flash (especially those evil speed lights) in ANY modifier.

It’s no mystery when the great classical painters like Vermeer and Caraviggio used it so much. It’s as thought the glass has some magical property that gives it’s light a soft yet directional quality that delicately wraps my subjects and still reveals details that make the portraits rich and three dimensional. That’s why I’ve sought out any window I could find on most of the weddings I’ve done these past 25 years.

The key to using window light wether your subject is a person or a product, like food or a wedding dress, is proper placement of the subject at the window. Unlike the studio, you can’t move the light source, so the lighting pattern is determined by the subject’s POSE or the angle of view as seen at the camera.

f4.0 @ 1/125th sec., ISO 400

n the image above I placed my bride close to the window (about 3-feet away) and turned her so that I got light in BOTH her eyes. I also used a soft white reflector, on camera right, just out of frame.

WINDOW LIGHT PORTRAIT GUIDELINES:

1. Look for windows with NO direct sunlight in them. North or South facing windows are the safest.
2. For Portraits, the window is your Light Source NOT a background! You would NEVER show the soft box in a studio portrait.  I show no physical evidence of the window—not even drapes or shears. The shears usually over expose and blow-out anyway.
3. Keep your subject close to the window for the softest light (usually two or three feet); as you move your subject away from the window the light becomes harder and the level falls dramatically.
4. Because window light is so soft I usually use a white reflector, for a soft fill, on the subject’s shadow side—especially if the subject if looking toward the camera.  This is to avoid split giving the face.  If I have my subject look out toward the window, creating short lighting, then I use NO reflector.

Window light is great for showing detail in most anything—that’s why commercial food photographers use it so much. So, it’s a natural for those wedding details like the wedding cake, the bride & grooms rings or any unusual details like the brides shoes…

f8.0 @ 160 sec., ISO 400

In this image I did show some of the windows because it was an overcast day limiting any blow-out and besides I HAD to put the shoes in this window box!

We always try to do a bridal dress portrait by window light. My wide is great at “posing” the dress with the brides accessories usually while the bride is having her hair and make-up done.

 f11.0 @ 1/30 sec., ISO 400

This pure window light dress portrait was posed just like I would pose the bride, except I used no reflector on the shadow side, because I wanted VERY dramatic lighting here. This image was a PPA (Professional Photographers of America) National Merit Print from one of our first digital weddings in 2002.  

As always, questions are welcome…Look forward to hearing from you!  ’Tis next week…

Author: Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman

Training site: http://www.LightAtTheEdge.com

Client site: http://www.TheStorytellersUsa.com

PHOTOGRAPHERS! SIMPLIFY YOUR COMPOSITIONS FOR IMPACT

Traditional artists know this and have the advantage of only painting (or drawing, etc.) on their canvas what THEY want us to see.  The painter can easily omit any element in a scene that hurts his composition or weakens his center-of-interest. In addition the painter decides on and creates the quality of light, its intensity, and direction EVERYWHERE in his painting.

From what I see on the internet, looking at countless websites, too any professional photographers either don’t care or don’t know how to take control of these basic aspects of their art.

Many photographers just take a “picture” of what’s in front of them (the whole thing!) regardless of the lighting and walk away.  They LOOK at the subject, but don’t SEE the many parts (often better subjects) within the whole that often tell the audience the REAL story about the subject.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about…

f5.0 @ 1/2000 sec., ISO 125; Lens @ 70mm

Below is the over-all subject that contained the small leaf…

Over-all view 

This large backlit bush caught my attention only because of the lighting. As a whole it had little artistic merit—until I walked up to it and saw those individual ice encrusted leaves.

So, don’t just LOOK at your subjects and just trip the shutter; SEE what you can find by NARROWING YOUR VISION (use a Telephoto or Macro lens) and venture INTO the scene (you may have too get your feet wet or muddy!). And, don’t forget, SEEING is also about the light. Don’t settle for flat light; as an artist you wait for the great light or your create it.

Now go out there and SEE! ’Til next week…

Author: Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman

Training site:  http://www.LightAtTheEdge.com

Client site: http://www.TheStorytellersUsa.com

COMPOSITION MATTERS EVEN IN XMAS LIGHTS PHOTOS!

I walked around my neighborhood last night to do some Christmas lights photography.  What drew me out was the fog that developed because it has started to warm up a little; it was up to 32° F and the snow was starting to melt! Even though it was 32° F it felt really cold in the fog and my hands went numb quickly in my thin gloves.  So, I decided to not take the time to set-up a tripod and just hand hold my camera using ISO 1600. 

It took me a good 15 minutes to settle on a camera position to create the kind of compositional interest I wanted. I can’t help myself—even with something as cliche as Christmas lights—the classic compositional building blocks apply:

FOREGROUND, MID-GROUND, BACKGROUND…

f5.0 @ 1/15sec., ISO 1600, Lens @ 24mm

What immediately attracted me to this view was the street light’s glow in the background (I loved that hazy glow created by the fog.).

As is usual with my style I tend to build my images from the BACKGROUND—FORWARD. 

The fountain, as center of interest, is in the mid-ground. Then I “placed” my foreground object, that tree on the right, to fill the void on the right. 

This kind of composition is all about alignment of the various elements, which I find much easier to do when I’m not using a tripod. Even with my Canon 5D MKII I expected some noise at 1600 ISO, but the RAW files looked remarkably good and after I ran my JPGS through NICK’s DeFine 2 noise reduction they looked really nice.

Now I’m scouting some more really elaborate Christmas light displays to photograph!  

’Til next week…

Author:  Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman

Training site: http://www.LightAtTheEdge.com

Client site: http://www.TheStorytellersUsa.com

CROPPING FOR DRAMATIC IMPACT IN PHOTOGRAPHY

I do most of my portrait sessions with my 70-200mm f2.8 lens. I tend to keep as close to 200mm as I can wether I’m doing a group or an individual. If I’m only photographing an individual portrait session—especially a child—I’ll add my 1.4x extender for a telephoto compression boost.  

You see it’s not just about the telephoto compression effect, knocking the background out of focus or bokeh in the background—Things that I really do Love!—It’s about dramatic impact.  It’s about storytelling (that’s why we renamed our studio The Storytellers seven years ago.) Many times—especially with individuals—the tighter the crop the more dramatic the storytelling. 

Case in point in this session of a high school senior and her horse, I did not have enough lens at the moment of capture….

f5.6 @ 1/1250 sec., ISO 400; lens at 180mm

This marvelous moment came and went in a couple of seconds. Fortunately, I was watching their interaction through my camera’s viewfinder and I was zooming in and caught the moment as I was walking towards them. So, this post capture crop was necessary to create the drama using the composition you see.  In addition, the conversion to B&W (using Silver Efex Pro-2) helped to simplify the scene by eliminating her blue shirt.

Here’s the full-frame original color version…

Original Full Color Version

I think the crop is a huge improvement over the original, but it’s not without cost.  I believe that the single biggest disadvantage we face today with our professional digital cameras versus our medium format film cameras is our loss of image quality when we do serious cropping.

In the above images my file size went from 28mb in the full-frame version to 5mb in the cropped version! So, by my math, to end up with a file size of 28mb AFTER that much cropping I would need a starting file size of 156mb!

It was much easier in our medium format film days when we could crop and use 1/4 of a negative and still produce a great wall print.

Happy Cropping! ’Til next week…

Author: Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman

Training site:  http://www.LightAtTheEdge.com

Client site: http://www.TheStorytellersUsa.com

FALL PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS FROM A PROFESSIONAL; Part 3

This series has been about creating drama with fall colors in Different Qualities of Light. I started with direct side light using late light. Then shared my uses of backlight and how it could be used even at the “wrong time of day”. In this part I’ll show how and where I use Morning Light.

Morning light has not, in the past, been my favorite light for fall colors—until I moved to Idaho. Now, some of my favorite fall color images are in this light.  This morning light I use tends to be either on an overcast morning or if it’s clear I use the open shade—using sky light; Not Direct Sunlight. Direct morning sunlight is harsh and cool in nature and its specular high lights are too bright when behind a subject in open shade.  

That being said, fall colors using soft morning light, in open shade, can be marvelous.

Caption: f5.6 @ 1/320 sec., IO 400; lens @ 200mm

With this scene I had a morning with some thin overcast, so I still had some soft backlight that did not over power the soft front light, on the leaves, on my side of the tree.  I liked the soft nature of this light so much that in post processing I applied some negative clarity in this image to enhance the softness. 

This next image is similar, but it’s quality is different because now I’m going for crisp, sharp, detail….

 f8.0 @ 1/160 sec., ISO 800; Lens @ 150m

The lighting here is soft open shade—the tree’s canopy was blocking the sky. Because of that loss of light to get to f8.0, for good depth-of-field, I had to bump my ISO to 800.  The image is sharp, but the leaves colors are soft in this light. I really like how those leaves’ colors pop off the black bark.

One of the challenges of photographing fall leaves is that with some varieties of trees the leaves are very glossy creating highlights (when using any direct sunlight) that will blow-out (clipping). So, to avoid this fatal photography error I use only open sky (without direct sun) or overcast lighting for these glossy leaves….

f7.1 @ 1/160 sec., ISO 400; lens @ 190mm

I liked this scene only after I spotted a contrast to the sea of red leaves. That one darker leaf with its green spot became my center-of-interest. 

There you have the three qualities of light that I use for fall colors. If any photographers out there have used a different quality of light on fall colors I’d love to see your results.

‘Till next week…

Author:  Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman

Training site:  http://www.LightAtTheEdge.com

Client site: http://www.TheStorytellersUsa.com

FALL PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS FROM A PROFESSIONAL; Part 2

Last week I talked about using directional (side) lighting on fall subjects.  This week I’ll show and talk about Backlighting of fall leaves. I’ll admit it, I’m a fanatic about backlighting. I use back lighting for my backgrounds on most of my outdoor portrait sessions—regardless of the time of year. In fact if there’s no backlight giving me a nice background glow I’ll move to a different location.

So, when I’m out targeting fall color subjects what I’m stalking is backlighting. I can spot that glow from 100 yards! These leaves caught my eye about 50 years from another subject I was photographing…

f5.0 @ 1/640 sec., ISO 400; lens @ 200mm

During midday, front lighting, these leaves were dull, black, tubes of little interest. However, at the right time of day—an hour before sunset—in warm backlight these leaves became collectors of light—looking like scoops of molten steel! Using a relatively wide aperture of f5.0 to get just enough depth-of-field and my lens at 200mm I made the background fade away so these beauties could really pop.

Now how about some strong backlighting in afternoon (1:20pm) light….

f10.0 @ 1/200 sec., ISO 800 lens @ 200mm

I was pretty much done after doing some morning photography when, standing under this tree, I looked up and saw these great leaves in several colors. Zooming in to 200mm to reduce the amount of bright sky and find a nice composition this was the result.

Don’t forget to look down as well!  I zeroed-in on this detail in noon backlight…

f6.3 @ 1/1000 sec, ISO 400; lens @ 200mm

The ground was covered in leaves creating a challenge to me. What to pick? I looked for a contrast amongst the mass of leaves. What caught my eye was the shadow of the leaf behind this red leaf in the foreground. Then I moved my camera position a little to have those two background leaves backing-up my red leaf.

I Love Backlight! You can use it through-out the day if you’re careful—just don’t forget to look UP, Down—and All Around!

In part 3 I’ll talk to morning light and how I use it. ‘Till next week…

Author:  Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman

Training site: http://www.LightAtTheEdge.com

Client site: http://www.TheStorytellersUsa.com