Photography as a patrician occupation

Read any number of photography related blogs and chances are you're going to come across some rant about how photographers can't survive today, that there has been a cheapening of the end product of the photographer's labor fruit, and that as a profession, photography is one of the worst careers you can embark on.

There are other occupations in the same situation - namely sunken pyramid (or iceberg) style endeavors - e.g. where just the top of the top is above water. For example - music, arts (all kinds), professional sports, etc. Engaging in any of those endeavors as a means to earn money is a bit like playing the lottery. The odds are stacked against you, overwhelmingly, but the promise of immeasurable sums of money and/or fame is enough to keep hordes interested. Photography is kind of like that - except worse: you don't get to be a rock star even if you are at the top. 

This post is not meant to add to the growing number of lamentations. To the contrary. Something that is lost in all this is an assumption that photographers need to make money or somehow live off their skill, either by licensing images (end products) or just by selling off their time. To that I contend that if you want to be a photographer so you can have a job, then you have your priorities wrong. There are other ways of making money more easily. While making money and creating something good (by whatever definition of good) are often correlated, there is no causal connection between the two. Yes - having someone pay for your experimentation can lead to good things, and so can learning working discipline from having externally imposed constraints and deadlines. But there is no reason why self direction should not accomplish the same thing. There is also no reason why doing something completely unrelated to make money to support your photography isn't just as good or even better for the overall quality of your work as toiling for brides or magazine photo editors. 

My contention is that the photographer's most important work today is the self directed project or the so called 'personal work', and all the work for hire (or work with the intention of getting paid for the eventual images) is ancillary to that. You don't shoot projects so that you can get paying jobs, you should shoot projects for the sake of it, and if paying jobs result from that, well - that's the cherry on top. If you want to escape the wretched feeling of being part of a declining industry, then stop trying to make money off your talents. Become amateur - in the original sense of the word. Philosophers and artist of the ancient Greece and Rome were doing it. If you can find a Maecena - even better, but don't work for the money, work for yourself. All the advantages of being part of an industry (peer review, consistent definition of quality, professional network) can be realized by interacting with the people in your position - true amateurs, that are united by a kindred aesthetic ideal. 

Be a patrician - shun work, do your thing for the passion of it. But just as important, don't let it slide into a hobby - don't just do it for the pleasure of it. Get better, keep at it, work hard. Do it for the love of the art, not for the love of the money or for the love of your self being. 

Cars as a public space

Driving a car is surprisingly private. Because you concentrate on the road, and because you're insulated from both the road and the inhabitants of other cars, you're letting yourself go a little bit more than, say, if you're taking the metro back from work. Really good way to peek into someone's life - legally. Assumptions of privacy are out the window - you're still on the street, so photography is fair game (plus, getting a dude in another car snapping your mug shot is probably a lot less unpleasant than a red light camera doing it). However, people do tend to be a lot more private in their cars, and thus, a lot more interesting.

Anatomy of a Shot - Fresh Eggs and Bourbon

The concept. I shot this for Utata's Iron Photographer 107. These little challenges often put together unlikely elements - and I have fun trying to make a picture using them. For IP107, the elements were lens flare, eggs and alcohol. Right. I have a long term project on unorthodox still life images, so I figured, something with these elements will fit right in.
The process. I didn't previsualize this - just started with the lighting. I wanted to get a nice wrap around light for both the egg and the alcohol (found a neat shot glass lying around). So I placed a studio strobe behind a white sheet for some backlighting. A piece of black cardboard in front of that was my background. The subjects were to be placed on a glass top coffee table. I fired a few test shots with the egg, and then with the shot of bourbon. I figured the backlight plus some fill light from the front will be all I need.
 So far so good. The challenge now was to come up with some sort of lens flare that did not ruin the shot, and furthermore, added to it. Direct lens flare was out of the question - since the premise of this shot was a high contrast scene against a black background. So I looked through a set of filters I got wholesale at a garage sale. Among other useless stuff (red and blue filters, 'soft' filters) I also got this cheesy star-burst filter. I figured this can give me just the right amount of flare off the highlights. After firing a few shots - the problem became apparent - I just didn't have enough highlights to get my flare. I needed to get another source of light. The best solution would be a concentrated source of light (so I don't interfere with the existing lighting). Out came an SB-28 with a home made snout / grid combo. I sat it on the floor under the glass table, pointed up straight under the shot glass. Now there's flare, and as a nice bonus, the bottom of the egg sitting on top of the glass got a nice, amber color.
After getting the composition done (tried with one egg, two and then three), I placed my fill light behind me and fired another couple of shots. One additional problem arose: since the eggs were fresh off the fridge, they started to form condensation. While I liked the fresh 'look', I did not like the unsightly reflection from my fill light. To fix this, I moved the fill off the camera left, and put a reflector camera right. Making my best contortionist impression - holding the reflector in place with my left hand on the right hand side and bending to the ensemble's level, holding the camera with my right hand, I took the shot.

Lightwelder.com launched

Over the last few weeks, I've been working at getting my photography site together. I'm still adding representative samples of my work as well as trying to keep up with new assignments and events, so it's still work in progress. However, I'm pretty satisfied with how it looks for now.

Check it out:

http://www.lightwelder.com

Do not record, create

One can contrast conceptual work with recording type of photography - where as long as one records the right moment in a technically proficient way, the common idea of beauty takes care of the rest (well, not quite). Why? Because the underlying subject is beautiful (or aesthetically different), and the photographer's job is to capture that beauty optimally.
In my opinion - conceptual work requires a paradigm shift. You don't record inherent beauty, because there is none. There is no beauty at all. The aesthetic qualities of conceptual images come from them conveying the idea effectively. And you do so by looking at what would shock your audience into thinking rather than emoting (which is the natural response to a two dimensional image). Conceptual images have to be either weird or ugly or visually banal (by conventional, recording photography standards) to make the viewer think. How much 'steering' towards a certain idea the photographer should do is a matter of creative decision. Countless abstract images (not necessarily photographs) will give you no steering. Others will be very heavy handed and border on commercial obviousness. Yet others will be devilishly normal at first, with a delayed penchant for the absurd. Yet others will fake technical or aesthetical ineptitude to get you to look beyond the descriptive or ‘transparent’ qualities of the image.
Is it worth it? I don't know. The creative process is just as rewarding as with 'recording' types of photography, if not more. The recognition part - not so much, because you don't borrow from the beauty of what you're photographing.

Anatomy of a Shot: Soap Bubbles, Pebble and a Square

This is the anatomy of the process of creating an image for Utata's Iron Photographer 91 project. The elements to be included were:
1 - soap
2 - stone(s)
3 - square format
I tried to challenge myself to create something that would be outside the realm of obvious compositions - e.g. using pebbles and round bars of soap in some visually appealing composition with soft light. I first decided to get away with the soap bar entirely - and instead to use soap bubbles. No particular reason other than the fact that I had one of those soap bubble producing gizmos around my house. Still fits the theme and it allows me to do something weightless. From weightless, the concept evolved to suspended - I'm going to suspend a pebble (also laying around my house from a previous trip to the beach)- kind of like a stony fish in an aetherial square of bubbles.
Having the concept nailed, I started thinking about the execution. First - I needed the appropriate background. Black was the obvious choice - I wanted the pebble to stand out. So I set up my black muslin background, lit the suspended pebble from both sides with SB-28s and produced a few test shots. The strobes were snooted to prevent spill on the background and lens flare. The pebble had a nice translucence to it - so I wanted the expose it to make that visible. With my D700 on a tripod and outfitted with a cable release, I started blowing the bubbles. The first few shots revealed a disturbing fact: while the pebble was properly exposed, the bubbles were just not showing very well against the black background. They were just catching the reflections from the two strobes - and they looked like eyes of creatures lurking in the dark.
To solve the bubbles problem - I needed some white to be reflected off their edges for definition. So I needed some white just outside the frame - easily accomplished by changing the background muslin from black to white. I still needed the background for the shot to be black, so I placed a sliver of black fabric on top of the white, just for the portion visible through the viewfinder. With the new background arrangement in place, I also needed to change the lighting scheme. To get even edge illumination - I decided to place one of the strobes behind the background - to create that wraparound effect often used to illuminate wine glasses and the like.
After some fine-tuning, the remaining work was to fire enough frames to get a composition I was happy with. I could not control the flight path of the bubbles - although after enough trials I became quite proficient at shooting most of them in focus and close to the pebble.
The post production involved just minor retouching (sharpening, increasing contrast) and of course, the square crop.

High ISO - who needs it

With the release of the Leica M9, I came across some discussion threads debating the performace of the said camera and its nominal weakness in maintaining good image quality when shooting in low light (at least as compared to the Nikon D3/D700 sensor). Someone was making the point that the benefit of low light high IQ is not for everybody. After all, people went a long time shooting comparatively slow film for all these years and still created good images.

My take on this is that everybody needs a camera with the highest low light performance they can afford. Sensor light sensitivity (also know as ISO, after the organization that used to rate film 'speed') is just another lever to pull for a photographer. Everybody will encounter some low light at some point or another. Why? Because that's just the nature of available light. Having good low light performance equipment will make you pull the camera and shoot in situations that you would not have considered suitable for capturing before. Even in 'good' light, long telephoto focal lengths and optimal lens apertures usually require longer exposures, so having the ability to change the ISO to shorten the exposure time with no significant hit to image quality is very desirable.

Digital photography is all about controlling the way the light hits the sensor. The more levers we have at our disposal to accomplish that control, the more artistic freedom we have to do more with our equipment. There are tradeoffs with good low light performance - usually camera bulk, which in itself is a compelling argument for giving up some low light ability. However, with today's technology, a take everywhere, shoot in every light condition camera is not available (pocket cameras just can't gather enough light in less than perfect light). Which side of the tradeoff one takes is a matter of personal preference and shooting habit.

The image attached to this post was shot at ISO 3200 with a Nikon D700 camera. The choice of ISO was part of a decision making process that allowed me to handhold the shot (ultra wide angle of view helped as well). The quality of the image is not perfect (there's some noise, especially in the darker areas), but it is much better than what could have been accomplished by pushing film.