From out of the Clouds…
Sometimes everything works out. Not often, certainly not every day but sometimes, every once in a while, the Gods shine down upon you and the heavens open and…. And so it was in the Berner Oberland in Switzerland a week ago. I had three days in this high Alp paradise to see the mountains, three days to see, in particular, the mountain that as a boy I had read about and been entranced by- the Eiger. For those sane souls who are not familiar with the Eiger it is one of the most well known and most terrifying mountains in the world. It’s 5000 foot north face is both notorious and deadly and as a boy just beginning to experience the joy and wonder of mountains the Eiger filled my head with both nightmares and awe. I read all the books about its climbing history, studied the maps and slowly accumulated gear that might someday take me to the top. That never happened but I knew the names of all who had first conquered her terrible north face and they became my adolescent climbing heroes. The Eiger is a big, big deal to me! So when after the second day of heavy clouds shrouding the mountains I had begun to resolve my fate. And then on the last afternoon, on the flanks of this famous mountain of my dreams, she lifted up her skirts and revealed all! There is was, the north face! I could see the entire original climbing route- the first, second and third ice fields, the famous ramp, the buttress, the site of the death bivouac. And there above them all, the notorious and evil white spider, the crux of the climb and the site of many terrible climbing accidents. I was transfixed. Not so transfixed that I didn’t take more pictures than I would ever possibly need. Verticals, horizontals, landscapes, tight shots of the face- I kept on shooting. I think it was just an excuse to continue to stare at her. Did I get enough? Of course not! I would go back in an instant. And as I sat there all the names of the early climbers came tumbling back to me as did their stories. I can’t remember what day of the week it was but I can tell you vivid stories of Henrich Harrer and Herman Buhl and Gaston Rebuffet, stories that I hadn’t read, names that I hadn’t uttered in 40 years. What a glorious afternoon! What a magnificent mountain! The Eiger! Still the mountain of my dreams.
On a French Canal
A memorizing little video taken from the bow of a barge on a canal near Strasbourg, France. Enjoy
When in France…
When in France I’m on the road again, or more correctly, on a canal in France mostly tolerating the rich food, spectacular wine and ample leisure time. Can’t be in a rush when you are going 4 miles per hour. This morning I visited the weekly market- half farmer’s, half commercial- in Savarne getting there early to take advantage of uncrowded stalls and the even light of dawn. With a clear sky I knew it would shortly be too bright and contrasty for photography. My strategy when photographing public spaces like a farmer’s market is to look for pretty light first then interesting subjects. I suppose I could look for interesting subjects first and then see if they are in nice light but my brain has been trained to look for good light so I start there. In the raising dawn the first thing my eye was attracted to the warm light coming from a butcher’s truck so I walked up, stuck my head inside, pointed to my camera and said questioningly “photo?” The woman inside smiled, nodded, muttered something in French (probably something like “oh brother!”) and posed for me. I took that shot and then I just stood in the doorway and motioned to her to continue doing what she was doing. I was hoping to be so uninteresting that she would ignore me and I could get some more ‘real life’ images. In a minute or two several costumers showed up and she forgot about me and I was able to get the pictures I wanted. I also got several from the customers perspective looking into the truck. I got a couple more people doing their thing by just standing around and becoming invisible in my dullness. This may seem like an odd approach to people photography but I have found that as soon as someone begins to ignore you, you are able to photograph freely and get more relaxed and realistic images. Soon the sun came up and the contrast of the bright and the shadowed killed most of the photography. I then started to work the shadows and found in the colors and patterns of the vegetables a fun subject. No need being uninteresting or invisible for veggies! Just fill the frame and blast away! Below is a gallery of my morning’s efforts. I stopped when the smell of fresh baked breads and warm quiche distracted me. I’ll check back in when the light returns and I’m able to finally push away from the table.
Two New Projects
I have been projectless for long enough now so I have decided to start three new ones to keep me occupied until the big one comes along. The first one is called ‘Stuff’ and I will be photographing great piles and aggregations of, well, stuff. Not junk piles but things, lots of different things in particular that are currently or expect to be currently of use. The second project I’m calling ’28’ and it will be a collection of images taken with my new little Nikon Coolpix A camera (not the one I took to Brazil) that only has a 28mm lens. I’m only taking it along on my next trip so you will see what I can get with a 28mm lens. And the third project is a local project photographing a big property owned by a foundation that has four working farms of various kinds on it. I have been asked to supply images for their new website and for any other uses so I am back to photographing farms again. There are two dairy farms and two small vegetable farms so I will have lots to work with and it is right here in Danby so it couldn’t be closer. I have made a place for each of these projects on my newly tweaked website- look under the projects tab and also at the bottom of the page. Stay tuned- my first pictures will be up soon.
The Pleasing Palette
One of the often overlooked but never not noticed (how’s that for confusing?) aspects of photography is the color palette of your image. The palette is the totality of the colors displayed in your image and it is something that influences the impression of every image we take. We just don’t often consciously pay attention to the colors we photograph even though a bad choice can ruin an image. If you think about some good and bad color combinations- good: blue and gold, blue and white, (actually almost anything with blue or white), red and green; bad- pink and lime, purple and red, brown and black (okay, anything with lime and brown)- you can see how some color combinations are pleasing and some are just grating. Yes, I realize that some of this is personal preference but in general color combinations are important. What usually happens with a bad color palette is that when you look at your pictures you are displeased with it but you can’t identify exactly why. Its not the composition or the focus that’s wrong but something about that picture just strikes you as off. Next time this happens, notice the combination of colors you have captured. I’d bet they are the issue. Of course, this also means that you do get to select the colors you are photographing. The palette is not something that just happens, most of the time you select it. You do this by picking the best background for your subject- best as in least distracting and most pleasing colors. How do you choose? Take a few steps left or right and your background will often change. those few steps can make a big difference in your image. So pay attention to the color palette of your image, with fall colors coming you’ll have lots on which to practice.
What I learned in Brazil
The Top Ten things I learned in Brazil: 10- You can tell who the tourists are by counting the number of pockets on their pants. More than four pockets they are likely to be from out of the country. More than six, they are likely to be Americans. YOu can tell who the birders are by counting the number of books they have stuffed into those pockets. You can tell who the photographers are by counting the number of cords hanging from those pockets. And you can tell who the writers are by their broad smiles. 9- It’s not how big your lens is, its how it is handled. I don’t care how big your lens is if you don’t know what to do with it, it will just get in your way and be a nuisance. And chances are, those of us with small lenses have much better technique so the results are better for everyone. So put those monsters away and step aside while we whip outour smaller ones and show you how it is done! 8- You can’t tell the size of the bird based on the size of the puddle it is fishing in but you can tell the happiness of the fish. 7- Brazilian birds have very odd names. There are treehunters, foliage gleaners, saphires, brilliants and emeralds, xenopses, leaf tossers, bristleheads, woodcreepers, and my favorite- the firewood gatherer. 6- The smaller the camera the fewer things it can do well. 5- No matter how big and expensive your camera is in your room, the small, cheap one you have with you will always take better pictures. 4- Putting an $8000 lens on a $65 tripod is like putting a chicken through Harvard- you’re an IDIOT! 3- The birds of Brazil are way over saturated and their vibrancy is turned up way too high. Thank goodness! 2- No matter how big your lens on a sunny day the light still sucks at noon. 1- Happiness is not knowing #2
Here in Brazil!
Greetings from the Pantanal of Brazil!! The Pantanal is one of the world’s largest seasonally flooded wetlands considerably bigger than Florida’s everglades. This is the dry season in this part of the Pantanal so the landscape is very dry and dusty and ragged looking. Scrubby fields and thick tangled woods are the main features here in the very flat land. So why would a photographer come down to this not so pretty sounding landscape? Well, for this trip I am mostly birding with my brother so how pretty the landscape is doesn’t really matter to us. But I have forgotten to tell you the most important aspect of the Pantanal landscape now- where there is water there are loads and loads of birds! When the water recedes the fish are concentrated in ever tighter groups. Now is about the low water mark so we have seen magnificent, even mind boggling gatherings of birds. In one large pool we saw 10 different kinds of ibis, egrets and herons, storks, limpkins, stilts, jacanas, terns, three kinds of hawks, ducks, roseate spoonbills, rheas (South America’s ostrich-like bird) on the shore and macaws, parrots and parakeets flying overhead! Plus there are a gazillion caimen here- they too get concentrated when the water is low. We have also seen a giant anteater, crab-eating foxes, brocket deer (the size of a Labrador retriever!), Brazilian cavi (a rabbit) and lots of bats! No anaconda yet but we will be looking for them this afternoon! Oh, and the most beautiful, and the world’s largest, parrot I have ever seen and I have seen lots and lots of wild parrots- the hyacinth macaw. I have included a picture I took with my little Nikon. I have also seen some unfortunate things and some same old things. The giant anteater was being harassed by a group of foreign tourists and their guides- stressing it to get closer and better pictures and clueless to the negative impact they were having. We arrived in time to get pictures of their illegal and immoral behavior- I hope those guides are fined and suspended. It is never right to push an animal, to force it to do something it doesn’t want to do, to change it’s behavior dramatically. Doesn’t matter what a guide may say, it is wrong. We have come across a few photography groups down here as well and lots of individual photographers. Photography is very hard here- approaching a subject is often impossible and nice light lasts for about one hour on either end of the day. That doesn’t stop people with big lenses from going out in the mid day sun to photograph a bird that is too far away or standing up on a boardwalk and shooting down on a little bird in the marsh below. Aerial bird photography! Why is it that these mid day, long lens really not much of a clue what’s going on photographers are almost always older men? I am figuring that they don’t really have a clue no matter what they do no matter where they are doing it so their wives are very happy to send them off to far away parts of the world with the sincere hope that they some how forget how to get home. Just a thought but I am guessing I’m on to something here. Okay, off to lunch and then off to our anaconda and giant otter boat trip. Care to join me?
Metacognition
So here is the most difficult thing about mastering a subject- it is very hard to know what you don’t know. This makes it particularly hard to learn more and gain mastery. Without the realization that you need to learn more you won’t have the motivation to do so and you’ll end up really not mastering something but thinking that you have. Middleton’s Rule #1: The more you know the more you don’t know what you know. This isn’t very insightful if you think about it. Anything that you have been actively doing for more than a couple of years you have probably gained a certain level of skill, at least in your own mind. And once you have gained this competency it is natural to assume that there is nothing, or at least very, very little, else to learn. Been there, got that. You know how to drive a car. You’ve been doing it for years. In your own mind there is very little more you could learn about day-to-day driving a car. There is so little that if a local driving school opened up nearby and offered classes it is unlikely you would sign up- you already know how to drive a car. What would be the point? But do you? Might there be more to driving a car that you don’t know about? Might there be refinements of techniques, different ways to think about situations, better ways to approach things than the ways you have always been using? You and I will never know because we would never sign up for a driving class. Why? Because we think we already know how to drive and we don’t know what we don’t know about driving. In our ignorance is our bliss. The same is true in photography. And the same is true for you as it is for me as it is everyone. We get photography. We know how to do what we want to do and like to do. We have been doing it for years. There are, of course, new areas for each of us to explore- indoors flash, night photography, maybe macro- and this will always be the case in a field as large and diverse as photography. But our regular photography, the kinds of pictures we tend to take whenever we are out taking pictures, we know how to do that. Ah, but we don’t! Because we don’t know what we don’t know, we don’t know what we need to know. And because we don’t know what we need to know when someone tries to tell us that we do need to know we don’t think we do so we don’t. This is the conundrum of try to teach anyone other than beginners and certainly the conundrum of teaching adults. As a teacher I can see what a student needs to know- it is usually pretty obvious. The trick to effective teaching is to help the student realize the same thing. For example, let’s take depth of field. Everyone reading this believes that they know and understand depth of field. But I know from my workshops that in fact very few people do. But if I ask in the very beginning of class, “does everyone understand depth of filed?, I would get all positive responses. Photographers, just like everyone else, don’t know what they don’t know. So what’s a person to do? These metacognitive skills (self –learning skills) are hard to acquire and to maintain. We often need some sort of reflector to bounce our inabilities back to us to make us realize that we don’t know something. That reflector can be a picture we see that we don’t know how it was done or a conversation we hear about something we don’t understand or an article we read about something we have never tried. The trick is to follow up and fill the gap in our knowledge once we realize the gap exists A teacher makes a great reflector and on my workshops from now on I am going to be more diligent about finding out just how much my participants know and teaching to their gaps. No sense asking if someone knows something- I am going to demonstrate and see if everyone is following along. And I am going to think about my own metacognitive skills- what don’t I know? Extension tubes, anyone?
Brazil!!
I’m off to Brazil for two weeks! Please try to hold yourself together while I’m gone. This is going to be a birding trip so I won’t be doing any serious photography (at least not much!). I am bringing my little Nikon J3 along and two lenses- the 18-35 and 27-270 (in 35mm equivalency). I’m not bringing my serious gear because birding and photography are two competing disciplines and I can only do one and not both. I will come back with some shots, I hope, and I will share them I promise. I wonder if the Pope left his Popemobile behind? That would make a good ride! I’ll let you know.
Oregon Coast Workshop review
Another Oregon Coast Workshop has come and gone and another 14 people introduced to my curse of bad sunsets. Oh, well- Brenda and I do the best we can and the weather Gods just don’t cooperate. This is not to say that the participants didn’t get some spectacular images. They did! Despite some heavy clouds and cold winds on several of the evening shooting sessions the participants got some very nice long exposure seascapes. The rest of the workshop was our typical combination of classroom critiques and nonsense and wonderful subjects to photograph in and around Newport. We went a couple time to Newport’s working harbor to shoot details of the old boats and to shoot the boats under the cobalt twilight skies. Everyone was surprised how blue the sky became after sunset and what fun it was to play in working harbor. We also visited the parking lot where are the fishing ropes and nets are stored- what a cacophony of color and texture! Perhaps the most fun and the most challenging was going to the famous Oregon Coast Aquarium. The beauty and variety of the subjects- moon jellyfish, octopus, sea otter, anemones and puffins- was balanced by the sometime awkwardness and fleeting moments that each animal showed. Yet despite all this each student got some great shots. I know this because during critiques I tried many a time to steal their shots and add them to my computer! I have included a few shots that I took with my phone and little camera between the cracks. Next year I am determined to go early or stay after to finally take some images of my own. For now I’ll have to be satisfied with these few and the memories of all the images the class captured. Join us next year on the Oregon Coast and you too can frustrate me with your great images!