The Way We See It

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Compact Camera Fun

I tend to approach photography with a predetermined and deliberate vision. While wildlife photography requires a more serendipitous approach, landscapes and abstractions feed my obsessive - compulsive tendencies.

In general, I will begin to define my vision by pre-framing an image in my head. I will study the area, frame the image with boxed fingers, and look for a suitable spot to place a tripod. Here, “tripod gymnastics” can consume as much as 30 minutes. I will raise the legs, shift the angle, shift the head, and hopefully find that sweet spot. By now, the light is prime and I fix the camera and lens to the rig. After attaching a cable release and applying mirror lock-up, I am ready to compose, shoot, recompose, and shoot again. The light fades fast, and if I’m lucky, I’ll make a few satisfactory images, and call it a day.

Enter the compact camera.

This has been a real tendency breaker for Tamy and I. Instead of working slowly, I will become impetuous and take chances. Holding a point and shoot and framing with the LCD, I’ll shoot pictures that I might otherwise ignore. Compact cameras now equals “grab-bag” photography. I’m not sure what I’ll get, but what’s lost in taking the risk?

In the above images, Tamy was sitting on a rock, watching the waves crash along Lake Superior when she decided to pull out her G9 and make portraits of our pup. With one arm extended and the other holding a leash, she framed Sequoia’s face with the LCD and just pressed the button. Had she taken the time to use her SLR, the moment would have been lost.

While hiking through Gooseberry Falls State Park, I observed that a sheet of ice had formed a cave on the other side of the river. The day’s warm temperature initiated a thaw, and the river ice was beginning to melt. I new that I couldn’t cross the river ice with my heavy pack, so I ditched it in the snow, grabbed my m4/3 body and cautiously traversed the river. After scrambling up a muddy slope, I climbed into the cave, lied on my back, and pointed the camera towards the sky.

Had I followed my typical protocol, I would have deemed the image too risky and considered a lost opportunity. A quality compact now offers us the chance to take new risks, search for different images, and continue to have fun with our photography.

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Transitions

Forty... that’s the number glowing on the dashboard. Something must be wrong,... it’s February, and 40 is the wrong number. I stare at the orange LED’s and read the number again, 40,... forty degrees Fahrenheit (4.4 ℃), it’s a heat wave.

We were driving south from a weekend up north and we could feel the sun’s rays warm our beaten down bodies. Tamy and I peeled off the down and fleece armor that protected our ghost-like skin from the elements. The gloves are off, my hat is gone, and I’m wishing I could pry the boots off my sweltering feet. We spent the weekend trekking throughout the north woods along Lake Superior, and we were prepared for some serious sub-zero weather. But here we are, marveling at blue skies, longer days, and radiant heat. I can taste the future, and it tastes like spring!

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Minnesota - Morning - Light

Cold mornings in Minnesota offer the opportunity to view the world in crisp dramatic light. While I am challenged by the frigid hours, I love the photographic potential.

The light is magic as the sun slowly rises above the horizon. The combination of crisp dry air and low sun angle produces a type of “clean light” that screams winter. As subzero temperatures hug the open water, an eerie mist grows from within. Like clouds touching the surface of the earth, the lake mist is opaque and obscures the view of the other side. It is at that moment that the morning light appears to play.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Trumpeter Swans... A Success Story & a Lesson about Light

When I moved to Minnesota in 1990, every trumpeter swan I saw was sporting a little extra gear. Looking through a pair of 10X binoculars, you might have been able to read the large red and black numbers on a neck band. These birds were a rare siting, and nearly every one bore some kind of tag or band.

By the mid 20th century, the trumpeter swan population crashed as a result of poorly regulated hunting, development, and lead poisoning. Fortunately, the diminishing populations were acknowledged before it was too late. Today, trumpeter swans are a protected species throughout their range, and they are making a comeback in the lower 48.

Relying on the stock of swans that continued to thrive in Alaska and Canada, the trumpeter was reintroduced to the slow moving rivers and lakes of the Midwest. Today, it is even possible to find migrating and non-migrating swans occupying open waters during a Minnesota winter.

All of the swans pictured here were captured along the Mississippi River during January 2010. A program of regular feeding by citizens living along the river has created an unprecedented opportunity to see and photograph these majestic fliers during bitter winter days.

Trumpeter swans are large white birds and capturing them with a camera might appear to be a simple task. In fact, although their bodies make for a large target, their rapid flight and bright white plumage can even challenge good photographers using sophisticated gear.

In the days when we were all shooting slide film, the professional community learned how to expose for whites, blacks, and contrast. While the digital revolution has had some definite benefits, it has left many photographers with little knowledge about light how a camera “sees” it.

In general, the camera meter attempts to make all exposures neutral. This neutral exposure is standardized to “18% gray.” For a reference, 18% gray is approximated by the color of the following TEXT. As a result, your meter tells your camera to make blacks lighter (gray) and whites darker (gray). When photographing white or black subjects, the thinking photographer needs to take their camera off “autopilot!”

To achieve beautiful whites that preserve detail, “add light.” Specifically, set your camera to manual exposure or use exposure compensation with your “Auto” setting to add light.

Adding light does not mean using a flash! Adding light refers to adjusting your shutter to a slower speed or using a wider (larger) aperture than the camera recommends.

For example: If your camera is set to “evaluative” (Canon) or “matrix” (Nikon) metering and the meter suggests that correct exposure is 1/250 and f/5.6, you can add light by changing your shutter to 1/125 or aperture to f/4. Doing both adds two “stops” of light, while making a single change adds only one stop. Too much light will result in over-exposure and loss of detail while too little light will result in under-exposure and muddy shadows.

For the above image, I looked at my evaluative meter’s suggestion and added one stop of light by adjusting my aperture from f/5.6 to f/4. Doing this allowed me to preserve my fast shutter and reduce the chance of capturing blurred wings.

More on exposure, shutter speeds, apertures, and birds-in-flight in the future. For now remember the following... “A Light to White!”

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Shooting When it's Cold

Ok... I lied.

I cannot “embrace the cold;” prolonged periods of sub-zero temperature bring me down.

I am the antithesis of a Minnesotan. I was not born here, I am not Scandinavian, and I do not take pride in my suffering. I like to complain about the weather, I say what I think, and I detest a passive aggressive attitude. I am a New Yorker, I am a Californian, and I live in a very cold place.

So, what is a New Yorker - Californian Midwest transplant to do when he is burdened by the frigid conditions?

Suck it up!

It was -24 degrees F when I left my home Saturday morning. It took 30 minutes to dress, but it was worth the effort. My survivalist buddy, Brian, collected my sorry ass around 7:00 a.m. and we headed south of the “Cities” to photograph ducks and geese. After a short hike through a foot of snow, we made our way to the efflux of the NSP power plant. Warm water flowed from the turbines into the Mississippi River watershed. The discharge produced pools of water surrounded by heaving shelves of ice, a waterfowl paradise for the non-migrants trapped by the heavy hand of winter.

Photography in these conditions presents unique challenges; even simple tasks, like breathing, require mental energy. In the bitter cold, breathing preoccupies the mind. The cold dry air freezes the moisture at the base of the lungs with each breath. Don’t inhale too much as your cough will be dry, hard and painful. As I approach my camera, I need to take in a deep breath, hold it, and shoot. If I exhale, I fog the viewfinder and ice from my breath crystalizes on the camera body and LCD. It is no trivial task to produce an image when it is 20 below.

The lubricants in my tripod have frozen in the cold. Although I wasted the energy hauling it into the field, it is nothing more than a brick to me now. These legs that I usually carry and call my burden, are now a real burden.

The longer I exposed myself to these inane conditions, the more my muscles cramped. Deep chills caused tremors in my body that felt more like quakes than shivers. To alleviate camera shake induced by my spastic muscles, I knelt into the deep snow. While it may sound counterintuitive, the snow began to insulate my body from the biting breeze that threatened my exposed skin.

To make art under these conditions requires a deliberate focus to the task. Rather than hurrying through the moment, I allowed the cold freeze time. I abhorred the cold that encased my hands, but I exposed them to the elements nonetheless. My paper thin skin gripped the camera and lens in an attempt to achieve critical focus. It is at this moment that I force myself to inhale the bitter cold, trap the breath, and squeeze the shutter.

When shooting in these conditions, layer up, keep hydrated, be patient, and expect to hurt.

Friday, January 1, 2010

Embrace the Cold

Even the most zealous photographers are challenged by the cold. While the majority of my cognitive effort is devoted to teaching biology, the noise-free parsecs of my thoughts are immersed in photography. As December approaches, I begin to think about my winter break and the winter photographic opportunities. The winter opens the door to unique landscapes and wildlife opportunities that are just not possible during any other time of the year.

However, these same winter conditions are physically and emotionally draining. The cold wind rips through the warmest clothes and leaves you feeling as if you were exposed in a meat locker. The frigid air bears down on your skin and face, and freezes the snot in your nose. A Minnesota winter demands respect and unless it is given, a price of pain will be due.

I am off this week and I hoped for a gentle holiday season, but wishes this time of year rarely come true. With a high of 5 degrees, I am faced to make a critical decision: hibernate or celebrate. My first instinct is to stay in bed, sit by the fire, or drink hot coffee. Unfortunately, the empty parsecs of my thoughts call me to the out of doors. I can hear my sub-conscious scream, “you are a sniveling wimp...” and...“you call yourself a photographer.”

At some point I recognize that only the stupid would crawl out of bed at 5:00 a.m. and humiliate themselves in the face of these frigid conditions. I am the idiot. I stretch expedition weight thermals around my scrawny legs. I layer my body with a t-shirt, fleece, and down. I stretch two pairs of socks over bunioned feet and cram them into Sorrel boots. It takes a half hour to dress and less than three minutes to feel ice crystals hanging from my mustache. I hate the winter but love photography... is it sadomasochism?

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Graphic Elements

I see my photography as being a type of vision quest. I find peace in the quiet of early mornings and use that time to make myself whole after a long work week. As a teacher, some might assume that I am an extravert who thrives on interpersonal interactions, nothing could be farther from the truth. In my head,... I am an introvert.
I live in an overstimulated world, work in a boisterous environment, and instruct within a hive of activity. This working life is a stark contrast with my id. I would rather study a rookery of arctic birds in the solitude of a hide, than be the center of attention. I walk away from crowds, seek a deep dark wood, and sooner spend a quiet night in a tent than flirt with the glitz and glam of the Vegas Strip.

Once a week I must go on my vision quest. I’ll take a long drive to catch first light or hoist my photo-pack on my back and walk. There are many days when the camera stays put, unused and untouched, but, on occasion, I will relax. I will take a break from my work, I will leave the noise, and I will cling to a brief moment of peace.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

On the Origin of Species

One-hundred and fifty years ago, the seminal theory that unified the life sciences was published on this day. The author, Charles Darwin, outlined his basic theory twenty years prior to its formal publication. His deference to the scientific process and the norms of his time stalled the presentation of a remarkable idea that changed the way we now understand life on this planet. While many in history contemplated the connectedness between living organism, nobody but Darwin could provide a mechanism for evolutionary change. It took Darwin two decades to assemble the evidence and refine his original hypothesis. Today, this theory is fundamental to our basic understanding of biology.

What is most remarkable is that Darwin had the forethought to describe an evolutionary mechanism prior to the development of genetic theory and molecular inheritance. To honor this remarkable idea, I offer you a photo essay juxtaposed with the closing paragraph from “On the Origin of Species.”

“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on bushes, with various insects flitting about and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms.

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.” Charles Darwin, November 24, 1859.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Fall is Over

It is November in Minnesota.

With the loss of fall color, I have become a pattern seeker. These are challenging months for my type of photography. Spring and early fall are a cornucopia of color and life; the period between often seems stark and dead.

While I love the rich colors of spring and early fall, November forces me to be a better photographer. I now must focus on the little details, contrasting themes, and directional light.

Whenever possible I search for color in the ambient light with the hope that I can soften the stark pre-wintery landscape. Barren trees are a favorite winter theme especially when I can place them against a pastel sky. November challenges me, but it also offers me the opportunity to see familiar things in novel ways.