It may not come as a huge surprise that I am not really the outdoorsy type. Sure, I like mountains and trees and water. I do my part to be “green” and eco-friendly. It’s just that most of the stuff that I really enjoy – photography, knitting, baking, reading, yoga, dorking around on the internet – can pretty much be accomplished indoors. That, and even seeing the sun out the car window gives me a mild sunburn. And so its fairly rare that I spend the better part of the day outside. Yesterday was one of these days as Dylan and I accompanied my dad and first mate Bessie (a 15 year-old Bordie Collie mix) on a boating trip at Horsetooth Reservoir.
It was a beautiful day for both boating and photography. The clouds managed to keep the sun from being too intense, but it was still bright and warm. I had to coat myself in sunscreen twice, but really, there was no avoiding that or the light of sunburn I sustained anyhow.
I’m actually not one for landscape photography, but as that’s what I had handy I gave it a shot (or 142 shots, to be precise). And as I shot the afternoon away (and ate hot dogs and chips and brownies and jumped into water that was a bit too cold…I don’t want you to think I was attached to my camera the whole time), I thought a bit about the different reasons that we photograph. There is commercial photography, journalistic photography, artistic photography, as well as keepsake photography. Well, that’s what I call it. Most people take keepsake or souvenir photos of the important moments in their lives. Birthday parties, graduations, vacations, and gathering of family and friends all fall into this category.
Of course, the categories can mix and mingle. Yesterday I shot for both artistic and keepsake reasons. Part of this was because its really hard for me to turn off the part of my brain that is constantly looking for an assessing situations for photographs. What I was really interested in though was remembering the afternoon and journey. While the images may not make it onto this site, there are images of my dad and Bessie and of Dylan because when it comes right down to it, that was the part of the day that mattered, spending time with people (and dogs) that are important.
Right. So, as sometimes happens, things exploded yesterday. I mean, obviously nothing actually exploded, except for maybe my schedule and feeling of calm…those kind of went right out the window. Things should settle down a bit tomorrow (for a couple of days anyhow) so I promise a better, more complete post then. For now, to make up for the lack of text, I’m leaving you with two photos for the day.
And one of them is even of the pestilent little ginger that dominates, well, everything he can pretty much reach. Captured at a rare moment, when ruling the world was not the first item on his agenda.
Raise your hand if you notice the quality of light around you. Man, I hope I am not the only dork raising my hand right now. I am really observant about light: the way it strikes things, the way it falls across a space, the color cast it gives to an area at different times of day, as well as the amount of it in the room with me. I’m not sure if this is a side effect of years with a camera in your hand and in front of your face or if it’s just part of being detail-oriented. Certainly both are true in my case.
Whatever fuels my acute perception of light, it was not happy with the situation yesterday. I prefer, as much as possible, to use natural light in my photographs. An overhead, interior light isn’t going to cut it in most cases and I’m not one to spend a lot of time fussing with a lighting system. It seems my attention to detail stalls and then completely dies in the face of technical things like reading my camera manual or learning to set up studio lights. That stuff cramps my style, and it’s where editing can save the day. I spent more time than usual with this portion of the photo process on this last set of images because I just didn’t have the quality or quantity of light I was looking for. The lack of light also necessitated the use of my flash which I didn’t like at all.
In terms of editing, I’m a big fan of Adobe Photoshop. And trust me, I’m not being paid to say that (although, I wouldn’t mind being paid to say that. It’d still be true and I’d have more money. Win-win). In fact, I technically paid to say that; Photoshop is not an inexpensive program, although discounts are available if you are an educator or student. However, if you have a program on your computer like iPhoto, Picassa or some other editing software that you use and get along well with, I am absolutely in support of this. I still use the edit button on iPhoto sometimes when I’m feeling lazy or pressed for time or even just curious. The main advice I would give about the editing software you use is that you should feel comfortable with it. Photoshop offers an incredibly wide set of options and tools and that can be overwhelming. I’ve taken a Digital Photography class and a Photoshop class just to figure out what I’m doing. Of course, it’s also my job to teach it and I got kind of sick of looking dumb in front of 20 some-odd students everyday. If I was going to be playing the fool in private, I might not have minded remaining self-taught.
And speaking of editing, you might have noticed that little, old Photodork.org has had some major renovations recently. Dylan is to thank for these changes, as well as for his patience, as I was quite specific about the way I wanted things to look like around here (I know. Me. Being particular about something. It is hard to believe). In any case, I am very happy with the new changes, and I hope you are too.
It might have seemed like Dylan and I’s trip to Eaton Grove was purely for photo purposes, but in actuality we went there with the goal of buying flowers to fill the large (as in 8 feet long and nearly 2 feet wide) planter that we’d built. I know, we think we’re pretty cool too. So far, I’ve refrained from photographing said flower box, just so it doesn’t get old later in the Summer when things really start blooming and I become obsessed with documenting it extensively. I figure that way I’ll have proof that I don’t always kill absolutely everything I plant.
One of the flowers we chose to plant were poppies and so far they’ve been kind of droopy, making me fretful and anxious which I usually save for later on in the growing process when I’ve neglected to water things for several days. Today, however, Dylan came upstairs and presented me with the shell of the poppy flower. One of them has hatched! Or whatever it is that flowers do between the time they shed their pods and bloom. I’m pretty excited about it, if you couldn’t tell by the fact that not only did I photograph said pod, but also devoted an entire post to it. Oh well…it’s not like you visit my site just for the stories, right?
Alright, so today is the last day that I will squeak by with using photos from our recent trip to Eaton Grove. This last set of images was kind of the catch all category: stuff that didn’t necessarily fit in with my flower or animal pictures. I always just shoot whatever catches my attention or interest, so I really never know what I’m going to get (much like a box of chocolates).
This was one of the first things I loved about photography: that element of chance. Of course, its much more pronounced when you can’t just look at a little screen on the back of the camera and see what you got. Not to say that this isn’t convenient and all, especially when you’re photographing a wedding or whatnot, but something magical lies in prying open a developing tank and stretching the film out before you with no idea of what you’ll find. Sigh…please pardon the nostalgic moment.
Aside from the trip down memory lane, I suppose the advice I’d dispense for the day (’cause that’s what keeps you coming back, isn’t it?) is to photograph everything and anything that catches your attention, no matter how odd or unworthy of photographic attention it may seem. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve become distracted with some weird little detail only to emerge from the little world I sometimes go to with my camera and find someone staring at me like I’ve gone round the bend. Usually it’s my dad…we have different ideas about art. Very different. Anyhow, that’s part of being a photographer, or at least the person with the camera in their hand at that very moment, if you don’t fancy yourself an artist. You get to decide what’s important and direct your viewers’ attention to it. Just make sure you use your power for good and not evil and you’ll be all set. Remember: with great power comes great responsibility.
Alright..so not the best title of a blog post. Maybe I should have thrown an excellent or incredible in there somewhere, just to spice things up. But at least its informative, right? True to the name of the post, today we will be continuing to chronicle Friday’s trip to Eaton Grove.
Besides having all the flowers, plants, and trees that you could ever possible need and then some, the nursery also plays host to a small menagerie of animals. These were actually the first thing I took notice of and photographed when we arrived, because I’m kind of a sucker for animals. There was also a very large turkey stalking about, but as he scared me a little, there are no pictures of him (I really need to work on this honesty thing, it’s becoming quite unflattering).
I ended up doing a fair amount of cropping of each of these images during the editing process. The composition of your photo, what’s actually in the photo and where, is one of the most important aspects of photography. Unlike painters, illustrators, and other designers, however, photographers don’t always have complete control over the arrangement of their subject matter. Animals, for instance, don’t just hold the pose while you worry about composition. The good news: you have two chances at achieving good composition. The first opportunity is really the ideal one, and it comes when you’re taking the picture. I encourage you to get the best composition possible at this point. It just makes everything easier. However, if things don’t come out exactly as planned (which is more often than not) than you have a second chance during the editing process. There is no shame in reinventing your composition in Photoshop. Let me say that again: there is no shame in reinventing your composition in Photoshop. I’ll tell you right now that I sheared off a good deal of the image in all three images that are featured here today. And you know what? They didn’t really start off all that shabby, I just had a different image in mind. It seems like people give up on pictures if they aren’t composed well right out of the chute (or perhaps shoot is a more apt term, hehe…forgive the bad pun). If you like your subject matter and managed to expose and focus properly you’ve got so much to work with, I promise you. So be bold and unafraid of cropping. It’s a useful, and oft overlooked, tool.
After my two-day slump, I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about even getting out of bed on Friday morning. Of course, the day had a few advantages before it even began. No lame phone calls to make first thing in the morning? Check. Not feeling like death warmed-over? Check. Oh…and I’d made a cinnamon chocolate chip sour cream coffee cake the night before from my new favorite website, so I had that to look forward to for breakfast. Seriously people, I’ve made five things from that site in the last week and I haven’t missed yet. If you haven’t checked it out yet and you have even a remote interest in cooking/baking, it’s kind of imperative that you do so. Just saying.
The highlight of the day was a trip to the semi-local plant nursery, where Dylan and I loaded up on flowers for our newly constructed flower bed. I took my camera along and had lots of “Ooooh shiny!” moments, so the trip will actually serve as fodder for my Photo of the Day for the next several installments. I think I took somewhere in the neighborhood of 140 images, so I’ve broken them into categories. Eaton Grove also has a collection of animals (birds mostly) that will be tomorrow’s focus. I mean, is it really fair for flowers to have to compete with a goose/swan (there was some debate over the species)? I thought not, too.
This is not to say that the flowers weren’t spectacular. I was dazzled by the sheer variety and number of lovely little blooms at the nursery and had quite a bit of fun just moving between the plants and photographing them. Maybe one complaint? (Because, you know, I have to be a bit of a pill sometimes.) I find it really difficult to move away from using my macro setting when I’m around flowers. I tried a couple of times to take wider shots and capture the way that the little containers of flowers went on forever, but I always some them coming out differently in my head. And so I stayed pretty firmly in macro mode and felt a little gimmicky. I mean, I guess I wasn’t taking pictures of babies in little flower costumes stuck in oversized terra cotta pots (sorry Anne Geddes, that was kind of offsides), so at least I had that going for me.
I don’t like to think of myself as the pessimistic sort. In fact, I generally see myself as a “half full” kind of gal. Just thought I’d share that with you before I completely contradict myself. At some point, you see, I’m going to disappoint you. I’m here to tell you that with absolute certainty. Of course, that’s assuming that your every happiness depends on my daily posting, which it totally does, right? I’m sure that at this very moment, there’s at least one of you that’s thinking, “Whoa. She’s posted everyday for five days in a row…it’s madness! Utter madness!”. And given my track record, I’m right there with you: surprised, shocked and even a little wary of the whole thing. So, I figured it’d be a good idea to get it over with, rip the band aid off, if you will, and just let you know right now that there will be a day that I don’t photograph at all. And maybe don’t even post at all (gasp!). Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow…but maybe tomorrow. I actually thought it was going to be today.
I didn’t feel so hot yesterday. I was queasy, achy and really a bit of a mess, overall. I wasn’t interested in food, so you know I couldn’t have cared less about photography. I was prepared to just post some old photo and call it new, because really – who would have known? But then, like the trooper I am, I pulled it together and managed to press a button at least once for y’all. I’m not saying it’s my best work, but at least it’s here. And some days, that’s all you can do.
Yesterday was not a good day. It began with a phone call first to my student loan carrier and next to my insurance company and all before 9:00 a.m. And amazingly actually managed to slide a little further downhill after that. I know, it is kind of baffling. I mean, why I would choose to actually contact said companies in the first place, why I would do it first thing in the morning, and lastly, how things could possibly get worse after that portion of my day was over.
By the time lunch rolled around (which I’ll ‘fess up about in a second), I was one grumpy little badger. Nevermind that I’d consumed my ridiculously customized Starbucks beverage (tall, decaf, half the pumps of syrup White Chocolate Mocha heated to the child’s temperature because I’m just too impatient to wait more than a three seconds to drink it), I just wasn’t feeling up to much at all. Which made it worse. Because I have productivity issues something fierce. So….I ate a brownie sundae for lunch and that kind of cleared things up (I told you it was shameful…especially because I just joined a gym like a week ago). I have to give myself at least this: I didn’t eat the whole lot of brownies that was left, which I could have easily done given the way my morning had gone and the way I feel about those brownies. So there’s that right? And I did manage to take a few photos once I’d pulled myself out of my funk.
I still wasn’t feeling super energetic or dedicated though, so I just kind of wandered around the house taking pictures of my everyday surroundings. I will say this: I love our home. We’ve lived here for almost six years now and we’ve spent a lot of time feathering our nest. There isn’t a lot here that doesn’t reflect our sensibilities or tastes and that’s really how it should be, you know? We had to read this ridiculously long and arduous article in my entry level photo class and after spending days deciphering the language and making notes in the margins, what it really boiled down to was advice about photographing what you know. The best pictures, according to this article, came from the subjects you knew best. My students always point out to me (and often in a somewhat whiny voice, I must point out) that they live in the middle of nowhere, where there is nothing to photograph. So I tell them to photograph the middle of nowhere and nothing then. Photograph what’s available to you and what you know best. It’s kind of like loving the one you’re with and there is no rule that says photographs must be of exciting, exotic things to be good. That’s definitely where my work of the day falls, and it was actually one of the better things to come out of my Wednesday.
Have you met Thomas? He is fuzzy and oh-so-charming. So charming in fact, that I could not show his little face here or risk a landslide of fan mail and online following too large for his humble kitty-existence. Well, maybe that’s just if you’re a cat person.
Thomas spends most of his days lolling shamelessly on our bed, or as he sees it, his bed that he graciously shares with us 7-9 hours a day. The soft, filtered sunlight made him a perfect candidate for a late morning photo shoot and I couldn’t resist, even though it breaks one of those rules that was stringently programmed into me in college: Thou Shalt Not Photograph Cute Animals. Or maybe more accurately: Thou Shalt Not Photograph Cute Animals and Call It Art. I even give a brief talk at the beginning of the year in my photo classes about what I call the “Awww Factor”, which is what happens when you take a picture of a little baby duck that is just too freaking adorable for its own good. Of course people are going to love the picture, to do otherwise is the equivalent of saying you hate baby duckies. And really, who could hate a baby duck? Or admit it if they did? Seriously now. This is the problem with the “Awww Factor”; is your photograph really good or are you relying on the subject matter to do all the work?
Here’s what I think, and what I encourage my students to do: take the picture of the fuzzy little creature if you really want to, just be darn certain that you aren’t neglecting the important stuff like composition and, if you can, try to capture something more than the cuteness. Thus, yesterday morning when I discovered Thomas being utterly, ridiculously and undeniably cute I knew just what to do.
If you’re not a cat fan, here are a few others from yesterday that you might like a bit better:
Still here, huh? Well then, you are in for a treat today. What I am about to tell you has to be said, even though it has absolutely nothing to do with photography. It really should have been the headline of the post, because it was that much of deal changer for me, but then, that would have hurt Thomas’ feelings. As a responsible citizen and fellow human-being, however, I feel it is my duty to alert as many people as possible to the absolutely perfect brownie recipe I discovered two days ago. I found it on smittenkitchen.com, which has become like virtual crack to me, and it is essential that you go here and make them. But be prepared to go weak-kneed and involuntarily utter something like “oh my sweet, gooey chocolate goodness” the first time they pass your lips. Brownies from a box will never, ever do again.
