Impromptu Portrait Sesssion

Finally managed to produce some new content of my own! Met with my friend Daxi last week to check out a few new buildering possibilities he'd discovered in Munich. He showed me a load of different projects, ranging from totally relaxed bouldering to get-arrested-and-spend-the-night-in-jail kind of stuff...totally amazing this guy!



After this, I asked him if he'd be up for some monkeying around in front of the camera and he kindly agreed. Had loads of fun, Daxi is simply one of the best people to shoot on this earth.



Tech-Info:
Shot on manual, 200th at f8, ISO 100, flash off-camera (hand-held) manual at 16% power. Nothing fancy, simply worked out a slightly dark exposure for the background and then added flash power to bring the foreground up a step or two above background level.

Big Picture: How to live before you die

Stumbled upon this a few weeks ago. Got me thinking, maybe it gets you thinking, too. Click here for the iTunes link. Here's the beginning:

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories...

Read the rest here.

Composition & The Photographer's Eye

One of the standard pieces of advice beginning photographers keep hearing is that it's not about the camera, it's about your ability to see. Sure, that's true. But it's also not really helpful. It's really an "enough but not too much" kind of advice. Sounds great, but the listener is still on his own in getting it right.

And exactly that's the problem. Many people think they don't have the eye for photography. They think this eye is something you'd have to have been given at birth. Mr Freeman's book "The Photographer's Eye" goes a long way in showing us that the ability to see is a skill that can be learned just like you learn how to operate your camera or ride a bike. There's no magic involved. Being able to see is about knowing and being able to recognize patterns or schemas that work in an image. Just like with poems or songs, humans are looking at images in a certain way. Compositional ideas like the rule of thirds are universal and work in the same way for every shot. It's a simple fact that -for example- our eyes prefer to scan an image from down to up and left to right. It's just the way the human eye works. Knowing exactly how we see is the key to strong images.

In his book "The Photographer's Eye", Mr Freeman focusses completely on composition in photography and if I can say one thing about it, it is that I was a much better photographer already after only browsing through this book for the first time in the store. Once you know a litte bit about the way our eyes and minds work, you'll start recognizing these patterns everywhere around you. A telephone booth will not only be a telephone booth but a possible colour contrast with the brick wall behind it. A fence in the background can be used to lead the viewer's eye towards your subject or left out of the frame in order to keep the viewer's eye from being directed out of the image. You will know instinctively how to frame your image in order to achieve the desired effect.

That doesn't mean that you neccessarily have to deliver what the viewer's eye expects or feels the most comfortable with. You might decide that, for this specific shot, a slightly uncomfortable or unconventional composition is better than a pleasing one. No one says you can't or shouldn't. But you can't make this decision if you don't know which is which. You have to know the rules to break them. And, more importantly, you have to know the consequences of either sticking to them or breaking them. In the end, composition is composing the message you want to send. Having a message is the first step. (If you don't have a message you might want to consider taking the camera away from your eyes until you have one.) Translating that message into an image is the second step. And that's what composition is all about. Take the usual holiday shot as an example. A tight crop of husband & wife says "that's us, where we are isn't important". The same couple, a wider lens and palm trees behind them says "that's us on vacation". Use a slightly wider lens still, catch that oil-rig/construction site/nuclear power plant in the background and the image says "that's us on vacation after being screwed by our travel agency". It's all in the way you frame your shot. That's composition.

Some people may get this right instinctively. My lovely girlfriend Annie doesn't care in the slightest about photographic theory yet her shots are composed perfectly nonetheless. Most people (me included) don't have this gift. We have to learn it. Is that a problem? Absolutely not. Composition is a skill. It can be learned. In his introduction, Mr Freeman quotes artist Johannes Itten: If you, unknowing, are able to create masterpieces in color, then unknowledge is your way. But if you are unable to create masterpieces in color out of your unknowledge, then you ought to look for knowledge. So, if composition comes to you instinctively, great! But if you're looking for knowledge, "The Photographer's Eye" might be the best place to start.

Links:

Mr Freeman's site
Get the book at Amazon US or UK

For more information on the art of composition also check out Ken Rockwell's post here.

For the german readers: Das Buch gibt es bei Amazon.de sowohl in der Originalausgabe als auch in deutscher Übersetzung unter dem Namen "Der Fotografische Blick". Leider ist die deutsche Übersetzung nicht besonders gut gelungen, wer über ausreichende Englischkenntnisse verfügt greift besser zur Originalausgabe. (Die englische Ausgabe ist zur Zeit übrigens um 10€ günstiger als die deutsche!) Dramatisch sind die Übersetzungsfehler allerdings nicht, hin und wieder liest es sich aber ein wenig holprig.