Share 2 & Critique (3)

The colors of the fall leaves are what bring appeal to my first photograph.  Here, the yellow and orange colors of the leaves along with the light versus dark are the two applicable rules of dominance.

In this photograph, the orange, red, and yellow colors of the squirrel are what draw attention to the squirrel.  Taken near sunset, the light on the squirrel's coat also works to keep attention on the subject.  The diagonal lines of the tree branches draw viewers' eyes up to the squirrel.  Additionally, the squirrel is in focus while the background is fairly blurry.  All of these things work together in this image to highlight the squirrel subject.

Black and White Travel Photography

Since in-class work has lately been focused on travel photography, I thought that an article I came across this week about black and white travel photography would be an appropriate topic to blog about.  As may be evidenced by some of my previous blog posts, I am particularly drawn to the more traditional, even old-fashioned, ways of doing photography while still recognizing the great advantages that modern digital photography can and is bringing to this art form.  Black and white photography is just one aspect of this. 

In her article "Traveling the World in B&W" on Outdoor Photographer's website, Ibarionex Perello discusses how she chose to shoot all of her photographs in black and white during one of her recent travels.  As she explains, shooting in black and white can often be so much more powerful and evocative than color images.  Black and white images have a way of making a scene, a photograph so much more personal whether the scene be the interesting architecture, people, or landscapes that one encounters as one travels the world.

Though I am just beginning my photography experience and lack considerable knowledge of the art, I cannot help but agree with Perello concerning the challenge of black and white photography.  With color photography, so often the colors of the scene are what draw viewers' attention and give the image its value.  I think that sometimes great colors act as a cop out for making a great shot, making what would otherwise be a pretty ordinary or even less than ordinary photo a photo that people want to look at.  Black and white photography does not have this luxury and must rely on such things as shadows, highlights, and strong lines, shapes, and patterns.  Additionally, as Perello points out, one has to be particularly conscious of what to keep in or exclude from the scene to draw attention to the scene and captivate the audience.  A photographer of black and white cannot rely on the reds and yellows of a scene to draw viewers in like a color photographer can.  The black and white photographer must rely so much more on the lighting conditions of early morning and later evening to capture a good image as the flat, even light of any other time of day produces relatively dull black and white images.

Both these challenges associated with making a great black and white photograph and the personal, timeless, classic nature of black and white photography are what I think draw me to this particular realm of photography.  With digital software tools such as Lightroom, turning color images to black and white is not too difficult to do.  However, as Perello seems to suggest, this does not mean that every good color photograph can make a good black and white shot.  Being able to think about a scene not as one sees it with their eyes but as it could look in black and white I think is much more of a challenge.  It is a challenge that I would be interested in pursuing if ever given the opportunity to travel the world and capture my own images for myself.

Link to Ibarionex Perello's article: https://www.outdoorphotographer.com/tips-techniques/travel-photography/traveling-the-world-in-b-and-w/

Share 2 & Critique (2)

For this Share and Critique, I have shared the same pictures as my first Share and Critique with some editing.

Platinum Printing

With digital photography technology being so widespread in our modern society, there is virtually no limitations to who can produce their own photographic work.  If you just consider the fact that everyone who owns a smartphone has the ability to take pictures of whatever whenever, you can see that this is true.  Likewise, the technology required to develop/produce physical photographs is also so easily accessible.  All you need is a decent printer.  With the ubiquity of this technology and the ability to easily transform these images into prints, the question becomes How can I make my work stand out?  How is my work different and creative?  While previous posts have addressed this issue in terms of in-the-field and in-camera techniques, there also also ways to express this creativity in the print-making stage of the photography process.  On Outdoor Photographer’s website, photographer Kerik Kouklis explains how he produces platinum prints of digital images, connecting modern photography technology with a piece of film photography tradition.

Platinum printing was first developed in the 1870s by William Willis and was utilized in film development until the beginning of World War I when platinum and palladium were in scarce supply in the United States.  Platinum printing ultimately ended by 1941 when production of platinum papers ceased.  By the time platinum was again available, film photography was relying on other methods for developing images.  As Kouklis explains, platinum printing of digital photos was not really possible until the late 1990s.  This was because printers could not print a digital negative with enough UV density that would enable prints to be made.  This also meant that negatives could not be enlarged to make larger prints.  Kouklis writes that it wasn’t until about the last ten years that printers could print with enough density to produce an acceptable negative and, ultimately, a platinum print.

Today, the process to produce a platinum print of a digital image is relatively simple.  Most photographers who choose to make platinum prints will most often develop their images themselves.  To produce a platinum print, Kouklis says that a digital image is edited just as any other image would be except that at the end of editing, the image needs to be converted to black and white.  Kouklis uses an app called QTR to make digital negatives of these images and prints them onto transparency film.  The negative is then placed in platinum and palladium chemicals.  To expose the image, only UV light is needed so a dark room is unnecessary.  Kouklis suggests making one’s own UV light source, though commercial UV light sources are also available.  Potassium oxalate is used as the developer fluid which occurs very quickly (less than a minute).  The print is then washed and allowed to dry.

For me, the appeal of platinum and palladium printing is that it gives modern digital photographs an old and traditional look and feel.  It bridges the divide between modern digital photography and traditional photography of a long-gone era. In the future if I become really passionate about photography, I think platinum printing would be something that I would be very interested in trying.

Link to Kerik Kouklis' article: https://www.outdoorphotographer.com/tips-techniques/printing-output/platinum-prints-digital-files/

Abstract Nature

This week, I came across an article on Outdoor Photographer by Justin Black that relates to some of my previous posts, particularly last week's post in which I discussed the battle between objectivity and art that has come to characterize photography in the digital age.  In his article, Black discusses abstract landscape/nature photography and how this particular category of photography allows us to see nature in a completely new and unobjective way.

Whereas Stephen Mayes, in his article "The Next Revolution in Photography is Coming," points to the loss of objectivity with the arrival of digital photography as perhaps a detriment to photography and our understanding of visual reality, Black stresses the importance of photography as an art form, as a way of expressing the world in a very subjective manner completely unlike our normal visual experience.  For Black, normal landscape photography, with all of its formulas and rules, is largely lacking in any creativity.  After all, how many shots of the Grand Canyon or of a picturesque mountain with a lake in the foreground or of an ocean shoreline at sunset have we all seen?

Abstract nature photography, on the other hand, requires the photographer to see something in a way that it is not usually seen.  It seeks to strip away characteristics of the subject or scene that are explicitly descriptive and that require no imagination to understand them.  In abstract nature photography, the goal is to completely decontextualize the subject so that a viewer is forced to interpret the subject for themselves.

Black gives some techniques for creating abstract shots.  One particularly common and effective one is to increase exposure times to create a blurring effect.  Another is to take several shots of the subject from different  angles and merge these shots into one final composition.  Black also points out that we often use color in order to identify objects so even when a subject may be completely decontextualized and there is nothing in the photograph to offer explicit clues as to the identity or meaning of the subject, color often allows us to distinguish the subject's identity.  Black suggests that sometimes making such shots black-and-white can help create an abstract shot.

In the end, though I think there is a definite beauty in and place for typical landscape photography, abstract nature photography presents unique artistic possibilities for a photographer.  The most appealing thing about abstract nature work is that you are never short on subjects to photograph.  Finding the perfect landscape and waiting for the perfect moment of light are challenges that do not have to be dealt with.  You don't have to look very far to find a subject, as just about everything you find in nature has the potential to make a compelling piece of art.

Link to Justin Black's article: https://www.outdoorphotographer.com/tips-techniques/nature-landscapes/abstract-landscape-photography/

Share 2 and Critique (1)

In this picture, the sunflower backlit by the sun is more attractive than the darker rest of the picture.  The sharpness and large size of the sunflower also draw attention to the subject.

This picture's main draw is the light of the sun versus the darker landscape.  The reddish-orange to pink color of the sun and sky also draws viewers' attention and makes it the subject of the photograph.  The large size of the sun also makes it stand out from the less significant landscape.

The Reality of Digital Photography

Looking for something to blog about this week, I came across an article in Time magazine by Stephen Mayes that takes a critical, somewhat philosophical look at the future of photography.  With the arrival of digital technology, Mayes argues that much of what photography was and what its intent was is no longer true. 

The original character of photography as an objective record-keeper of the visual world has been replaced with the coming of digital photography and post-exposure editing capabilities like Photoshop.  The capabilities for manipulation of images both in-camera and on a computer that were not possible before the digital era tempt photographers and ultimately diminish the objectivity of photography.  Beyond this, however, Mayes points out that the digital camera itself inherently reduces the objective reality achieved by traditional photography, severing “the optical connection with reality, that physical relationship between the object photographed and the image that differentiated lens-made imagery and defined our understanding of photography for 160 years.”   Mayes explains that only one-third of the photons in an environment are recorded, meaning that two-thirds of an image is interpolated by the camera.  This, in effect, presents reality in a way that we have never really observed.

While I don’t disagree with Mayes on much of what he says, I think his article brings up an important distinction in photography.  As photographers, we must ask ourselves: Are we presenting our photography as a display of art or as a display of reality?  No matter what, the photographs can never be fully objective.  The very act of creating an image means that some amount of objectivity is lost, that some sort of interpretation of a scene has occurred and must occur again when viewing that image.  Yet, this was the case even before digital photography came on the scene.  Every photograph, no matter the manner in which it was obtained, gives a somewhat unreal, subjective view of reality.

Link to Stephen Mayes' "The Next Revolution in Photography is Coming:" http://time.com/4003527/future-of-photography/