In Good Voice

A friend of mine who is a fine actress and singer was telling me about a theatrical production she was in. Describing how it went, she told me she was “in good voice”. This phrase struck me because it tells me that talent alone is not enough, you have to be able to perform at the top of your ability. If you are in good voice, then you will have a good show.

In photography, I often think the ability to perform in the field is overlooked. I’ve been photographing for 30 years, but my success in the field varies. Success for me is not a matter of luck, or how good my equipment is, or even how great the situation is, it really comes down to whether I’m ”in good voice”. Am I visualizing images well? Am I working the camera controls smoothly? Am I feeling the emotion of the creative process? And most importantly, am I being creative in my image making? Is my visual voice in good form?

I don’t always feel that I’m in good form while photographing. When I am, I can often sense it. I become totally absorbed, the equipment seems to be responding to my thoughts, and the subject seems to be taking direction from me. It’s a rare, but really good feeling. I am making images that I can tell I’m going to be happy with.

Great light, good equipment, and an inspiring subject are all important elements to success, but if my images are really going to sing, I’m going to have to be in good voice.

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On the Rocks

I never seem to get enough of cardinals during the winter. After an ice storm in late December last, I was out early to a place I know will be visited by these red-hot beauties. There was great texture and pattern from the ice covered branches and the overcast made for shadowless, low-contrast, cool light. So this flaming male cardinal was all I needed to make the image complete. I placed him well off center as I knew wherever he was, he would be an attention getter. 

In this composition I designed the image so that the cardinal does not dominate to the point of preventing the viewer from exploring the intricacy of the ice and tree. I also thought that this showy male would work well looking out of the frame as there is plenty of weight in the rest of the image to draw the eye back in.

I was working with a Canon 1D Mark III and Canon 500mm f4 L IS with a 1.4x teleconverter. A tripod is a must, along with a Wimberley Sidekick on the ballhead. I set the ISO to 800 for an aperture of f7.0 at 1/400.

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Thinking of Spring

Yea we’re still in the dead of winter, but some mild temps here got me thinking of spring. Plus, we have already booked our spring excursion to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. This is a regular event for us and really helps put us into the spring mood. I’m fascinated by the colonial period and enjoy the simple English style gardens; the tavern dining is a must too. I have several images that I offer at shows and find that I am not alone in my fondness for the restored city.

A new image that will be with me this year at shows is of a wisteria plant clinging to a traditional white picket fence. I wanted to emphasize the form of the plant while providing a sense of the landscape behind it (looking toward Duke of Gloucester St.). The large, old tree evident on the right side serves as a framing device and balances the composition I believe. It’s a painterly image achieved with a wide-open aperture on a Canon 50mm f1.4 lens and focusing close to the flowers.

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The Zen of Seeing

The entire title of the book by Frederick Franck is The Zen of Seeing, Seeing/Drawing as Meditation. Franck suggests that seeing/drawing takes one close to Zen, if you do it correctly. By correctly,  he means that one should draw without judgement, without ego, and without labels for what is being drawn. It is not the result that matters as much as how drawing aids in seeing. But at the same time, seeing aids in drawing.

Interestingly, Franck informs that he gave up photography (painting as well), because it was too much about looking and not about seeing. He had a complaint about the speed of the process. I would suggest that he was not doing photography in a way that he would call Zen. Ironically, the very process he describes as seeing/drawing could become seeing/photographing. Maybe he allowed the camera to get in his way.

From a process standpoint, I have often thought photography is more like drawing than it is like painting. In both processes (drawing and photography), it is possible to create while not taking your eyes off the subject. Franck says that drawing is a means to an end, the result should be forgotten. I have often felt that way after photographing in the field where I became so absorbed in the process and the way that it heightened my perception, that the result became less important. When I worked with film, it was very easy to get wrapped up in the process as there was no way to see the results. With a digital sensor and LCD screen to review my work, I am occasionally pulled away and become more results oriented.

Photography though is done on a different time scale than drawing and it is that attribute that I often enjoy. That split second rendering to stop time in a way that the eye would not appreciate otherwise. Is there a Zen to photography? I think there is and I think I have experienced it. Usually once I become consciouse of it though, it’s gone.

I don’t know if my state of mind would have been called Zen when I made this image of three cardinals in a snow storm, but I remember an increased sensation of visual awareness with regards to how each bird was posturing, and their geometric relationship to each other. I do not remember the squeezing of the shutter release, or any of the technical decisions that I must have been making almost subconsciously. I will admit that any Zen was disrupted by a concern about what all that snow was doing to my lens.

This image is now available for $79. as a print approx. 11×14″ matted to 16×20″. I doubt that’s very Zen either.

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Multi-tasking

Anyone who is self-employed knows how many things have to be attended to at one time. This time of year seems worse than most as I’m trying to get ready for a new show year, taking care of  producing prints and then matting, mounting and framing. But also, I need to deal with taxes, ordering supplies, entering competitions, editing imagery made last year, learning some new equipment (already needing firmware updates!), and working on a presentation on blogging (really). I’m under control, but barely.

Every once in a while I get to go out and create some new images too. The piece below is one I made here in Bucks County, PA on a lake mostly frozen and where Canada geese roost. I really wanted to play up the interesting geometry of where the frozen sections were coated with new snow. Much of the imagery I made that morning was without the geese, but the geese add both an animal element and a straight line element which contrast with the otherwise amorphous shapes.

It was cold and snowing lightly so I worked away from the wind. I worked with a Canon 28-300 L IS lens on a tripod to lock in the composition and dial in a small aperture for depth of field. The zoom lens allowed me to compose precisely right in the camera, which I prefer to do. Since the image consists of areas of both white and gray, I checked the histogram for my tonal range and bracketed exposures on both sides. It was made as a color image, but there is no real color in the scene.

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