My Sweet Readers!
There is no elegant way to say this other than a great and grand “thank-you all” for all your support, kind comments, prayers and personal insight regarding my heart attack. (Lord, how I hate writing that phrase ‘my heart attack’). I have received so many very wonderful comments that I think my blog site must have gotten confused with someone else’s blog who is actually nice! While I can’t respond to all of them I did post a few as a further way of saying thank you. You know, dark chocolate is easily sent in the mail…just saying. You all are wonderful.
48 hours
Well, it’s been an interesting 48 hours. Last Saturday at 5:30 in the morning I had a major heart attack while doing a workshop on the Oregon coast. By 6am I was in the local hospital, 6:30 in an ambulance to a big hospital and by 7:30 under the knife in the process of having a stent put into one of my coronary arteries. Now, Monday morning, I am flying my way back to Vermont, not feeling physically that much different. Tests show that there is no lingering damage to my heart, no lessening of function, no lasting physical effect to my body. Considering that more than a third of my heart muscle was effected I am blessed to have come out of it so well. I am slowly coming to accept that this was, for all intents and purposes, inevitable. I have a horrific family coronary history that includes death, heart attacks and multiple bypasses. I had spent the last 40 years trying to beat the odds, to draw an inside straight, to defeat the house but in the end the house always wins and the bastard finally caught me. I hate that bastard; hate it with everything I have. I hate what its done to my family; hate what its done to me. And I hate that I now live in its shadow, a shadow I will never, ever be able to shake, a shadow no amount of light will ever be able to fade. I must thank Brenda Berry who was teaching with me at the time for getting me to the hospital and sheparding me through the first scary hours. Then again if you despise me you can blame her for the fact that I am still here. And to Claire who now eases me back to my prickly self and keeps my doors open for me. And thank you to my students who made the best out of a chaotic time. They substituted two of my critiques for two of Brenda’s and had a great sunset to photograph Saturday night because I was nowhere to be found. They made out pretty well in the end. So now I look for my normal, wondering where it might be and if it will still feel like mine. I know a tincture of time will settle my confusion of thoughts and emotions but I am impatient for resolution. Perhaps the bastard still needs to be fought. Perhaps the bastard still needs to be kicked into the dirt. Perhaps a winning hand is still in the cards.
A Bit more on Autofocus
So I was recently asked a follow-up question about my post on autofocus- What about ‘continuous’ vs. ‘servo’ setting in autofocus? This is going to be an easy one for me to answer but probably not very satisfying for any of you. I have always used ‘continuous’ (or C ) when I am using autofocus or manual (or M) when I am manually focusing. ‘Servo’ (or S ) I found to be very frustrating early on so I have never used it since. Here is the difference: Continuous lets you take a picture no matter if the autofocus is locked on to something in your frame or not. Servo only lets you take a picture if the autofocus is locked in. My thinking is that there are times when the camera may think it is not locked but the resulting picture is great. Think about photographing a running animal or racing car or anything speeding past you (your youth, your cognitive abilities, pop culture). With continuous focus I just hold down the shutter and blast away hoping for (and usually getting) a good picture. With servo, the camera prevents me from taking pictures until it is happy. I don’t know about you but I would prefer if I was happy first and not my camera. Besides, there are lots of times when some amount of out-of-focusness actually enhances your image. I am open to the possibility that servo may be useful in some circumstances, I just can’t think of what those circumstances might be.
New Rule!
I have a new rule when it comes to anticipating photography on a tourist trip- the better the pictures in a brochure the less likely you are to get them. This struck me when I signed up for a two hour puffin cruise along the coast of Maine this past week. The photos in the brochures were all striking- little puffins posing on rocks, little puffins bobbing in calm blue waters, little puffins doing what little puffins do- so I paid for a late afternoon cruise to go see the cute little puffins. It turns out that most of the pictures in the brochures were not ever going to be possible let alone likely. Puffins live in burrows so when they are on the nesting island they are almost always underground. Those shots of little puffins standing around smoking cigarettes and shooting pool are only possible if you are on the island, not on a boat 200 feet offshore! And the ones in the water are only possible if you are in a much smaller boat- the big tourist boats don’t go very close to swimming puffins so as not to bother them. I did get a shot of the island with gulls and terns overhead, dozens actually but not a puffin to be seen. I need to say that this was not a puffin photography trip but a puffin sight seeing trip. We did see puffins, probably a dozen or so total. We just didn’t see any that lent themselves to good photography. I was just about to give up when a pair of puffins floated reasonably close to the boat, about 100 feet away. Even shooting at 450mm the birds were but specks in my viewfinder. Just about when I was ready to give up, one of them took off heading toward the boat. As it corrected its course I got off a burst of 8 shots- one of which came out well enough to use in my next book. This is not a testament to my skill as a photographer but instead a testament to the incredible quality of the sensor in my Nikon D3s. The image shown here is cropped down severely from the original- I cropped down to about 1/8 of the frame. Thank you Nikon. So I guess the lesson is don’t go on a wildlife sightseeing trip expecting wildlife photography. If you want wildlife photography, go on a trip specifically designed for serious photography. And don’t be fooled by photos on a brochure. I now know better.
Photographic Puzzles
Have you ever been faced with the need to photograph something that you have never, ever photographed before? (and get a good picture!) If you answered “no” then you need to get out of your comfortable little box and go explore with your camera something different and exotic. If you answered “yes” then you understand both the thrill and frustration of trying to shoot something different. For me, trying to photograph well something that I have never ever photographed before is a puzzle to solve and I love puzzles. Part of the joy of working on any photography project is figuring out the photographic puzzles that present themselves through the course of the project. Of course, I could choose to ignore these puzzles and try to photographed around them but then the project would be compromised and the book would not be as good as it could’ve been. Besides, what fun is that? The process of solving these puzzles is much easier in the digital age because you can easily review your results as you take them and make the necessary changes to get a better shot. In fact, the fun and ease of trying something different these days makes it a no brainer not to try! There is no penalty. The only thing you will lose is time spent taking pictures and that doesn’t seem so bad. What you might gain is new insight on how to photograph something you otherwise never would have tried. I was thinking about all this last weekend when I was up in Old Orchard Park on the coast of Maine trying to photograph the amusement park that the area is well known for. I might have decided not to include the amusement park in my book but that would’ve been a very obvious hole in the story I am telling, a hole I wasn’t willing to dig. So around I stumbled both mentally and physically, well out of my element both culturally and generationally, trying to get some book-worthy images. So how did I solve this puzzle? First, I went when the place wasn’t packed so I had room to work and my view wasn’t always blocked by roving herds of idle teenagers. Second, I went in the late afternoon and then again at twilight when the lights and colors of the rides would be most dazzling but the details of the environment would still be visible. In the afternoon I shot handheld with my 28-300mm zoom trying to cut out the distracting background and at twilight I brought my tripod and used my 16-35mm zoom to capture as much light as I could. And third, I shoot a lot of images (close to 300), reviewed them on the spot and kept tweaking my technique to get some useable shots. I know you are curious- I used aperture priority, matrix (evaluative) metering, a middle f-stop, and cranked up my ISO so that I could wander around without my tripod and shoot freely. I used my tripod in the low light because I wanted a very long shutter speed to capture the motion of the rides. For the swirling rides at twilight I used my 16-35mm lens to get a wide view of the scene and shot at about 2 or 3 seconds. For the women at the yellow fun house I used a longer zoom to reach out cut out all the distracting background. for the fun guy with the turkey leg I used my 16-35, got as close as I could and fired a burst of images as he handed me my dinner. In all cases I asked the people in my pictures if they would mind being photographed and always got their permission before I started shooting. Do I expect to look for other amusement parks and carnivals to photograph now? Nope. But I do know now that if I ever need to do this type of photography again I know what to do, what techniques work best and what I can expect to get. Puzzle solved. Next?
Oregon Coast workshop
I wanted to let everyone know that there are still a few places left on my Oregon Coast workshop coming up July 20 – 24. This is a great workshop with lots to photograph- beautiful lighthouses perched on rocky headlands, great tidepools, piles of colorful fishing gear and an active working harbor with photogenic old boats. Perhaps the my favorite place to photograph during this workshop is the Oregon Coast Aquarium. The class gets to go inside at least a hour before the aquarium opens so we have the run of the place and tons of things to photograph- puffins, moon jellyfish, bizarro underwater creatures, sea lions, sea otters- the list just doesn’t stop! You won’t be disappointed, I promise. [nggallery id=9]
Autofocus Technique
The fourth of July holiday has given me some time to ponder the last few workshops I’ve taught and think about what I have learned. Yes, I learn something on every workshop I teach- sometimes it is a better way to teach something or a better way to demonstrate a technique- but often my students tell me what they need to know and teach me how to get the points across. Case in point: autofocus. Like many things, autofocus is easy to do but hard to master. Everyone who gets a camera quickly figures out that the little box (or oval or bracket) in the viewfinder is the autofocus sensor and wherever the box is the camera will focus on that point. They also figure out that on most higher end cameras that little box can be moved around in the viewfinder (okay, the box doesn’t really move, other boxes in different places can be activated but it looks like the box moves so let it go). For subjects that are stationary like portraits, flowers, landscapes, macro and interiors moving the autofocus box to the appropriate place and getting an image that is in focus is a straight forward process, assuming the depth of field is correct. But with moving subjects such as wildlife, pets, kids, parades and family gatherings this straight forward process seems to break down. I know this from looking at thousands of miss-focused images of moving subjects during critiques. What most people seem to do when photographing something moving is to activate the center autofocus box and then compose the picture with the subject dead center. To get a better composition they then crop the picture in the computer so the subject is off-center. While this technique works it is not good photography technique and it hurts the quality and usefulness of the resulting image. The proper technique is to place the subject compositionally where you want it in your viewfinder and then move the autofocus box to the subject (not the subject to the autofocus box). This is an important point- only your composition should determine where you want the focus to be. The focus should never determine what your composition should be or where you want the subject. In other words, compose first, focus second. The problem many people have is that they have been told they should use the little autofocus activation button on the back of their camera to autofocus and not use the shutter pushed half way down technique. I couldn’t disagree with this more. Think about how you hold your camera with your right hand- your index finger is on the shutter and your thumb is on the back of your camera where the little autofocus button is. But so is the toggle or wheel used to move the autofocus box. If you use the autofocus activation button with a moving subject your thumb has to not only keep popping the button but it also has to move the box around as the composition merits. It can’t do both well so you either sacrifice your composition for focus and put the animal in the center of the frame or you miss focus with the animal where you want it to be. I use the shutter partly depressed to activate the autofocus. This leaves my thumb to only move the autofocus box around. Two fingers, two jobs; pretty easy. So why, do you ask, do I feel the need to be able to move around the autofocus box so much? It is because the action of the subject dictates the composition. Lets say the subject you want to photograph is moving right. I will place it on the left in the viewfinder to give it space to move into compositionally. I will, of course, use the left autofocus box and place it on the subject. But if the subject stops and looks over his shoulder then I will move the subject to the right side of my viewfinder to give his gaze space to fall to the left. I will then move the autofocus box to the right side of my viewfinder on the subject. If he then resumes walking to the right, back he goes to the left side of the composition and back I go to using the left autofocus box. So the movement and the action of the subject determines my composition and thus determines where my autofocus point should be and since the movement and action is forever changing my autofocus point is forever changing. The secret to get compelling images with moving subjects is to allow compositional space for movement and gaze otherwise the animal looks cramped or awkward or uncomfortable. There are times when breaking this rule works very well but a vast majority of the time space for movement and gaze is compositionally essential. With my thumb poised on the toggle that moves the box around in my viewfinder I can quickly capture these often short lived but very compelling compositions. This is why I am always moving my autofocus box around in my viewfinder. To get the best possible composition with an ever changing situation (moving subject means ever different backgrounds and ever different gesture and posture) you have to be ever ready to move your autofocus box. The only way to do this well is to have a finger dedicated to this and nothing else. Two fingers, two jobs; pretty easy!