Make Pictures that are Larger than the Frame - Michael Davis - Montreal (Thu 25 Aug 2011)

Recently stumbled across a great blog (*) hosted by Michael Davis (*), a Professional Picture Editor (*). Lots of great insights there for any budding photographer.

The following is an extract from a post, that caught my attention:

You can engage people who look at your work more dimensionally if you decide whether to make the picture larger than the frame. [..]

The notion is pretty straightforward but explaining it is not so easy.

The idea is that when people’s minds complete aspects of a photograph that don’t appear within the frame, the experience of looking at the photograph is more dimensional than when everything fits within the frame.

From Make Pictures that are Larger than the Frame (*) by Michael Davis (*) [Tue 29 Nov 2011]

I think the first photo below demonstrates the dimensionality that Michael talks about above. The rear part of the car on the left hand side of the frame and the reflective puddle leading in from the bottom of the frame, being the elements needing completion.

I did spend a bit of time in this car park photographing the surrounding buildings. As I sit here looking back at that time in the car park, I can see that I experimented with different framings, trying to find something that was stronger than the others.

Maybe this is a good way to think about composing a photo - be a bit looser in the framing and make pictures that are larger than the frame (*). Thanks Michael.

Mural (3 of 3) - Sainte-Catherine St / Montreal (Thu 25 Aug 2011)
Mural (2 of 3) - Sainte-Catherine St / Montreal (Thu 25 Aug 2011)
Mural (1 of 3) - Sainte-Catherine St / Montreal (Thu 25 Aug 2011)
PS - If you look at the first two photos close enough you will be rewarded with the tiny detail that caught my eye - it was not the giant mural, but something much smaller that resonated with the mural. Will show this detail in a later post.

The Catch - Johnny Puakea and Danny Ching OC Clinic (16 May 2008)

The Catch - Johnny Puakea and Danny Ching Paddling Clinic OC Clinic - at blip.tv (16 May 2008)
John: What I look for is a forward angle on the catch. 99% of people are going to reach and look exactly like this (Danny on ERG in perfect setup) before they take a stroke. But what they are going to do is come 8, 9 or 10 inches before they hit the water. And another 2 or 3 inches before they sink the blade.

So the idea is to set that blade we you reach it.

I hear all the time that "I hit the front iako" in the canoe. Well if you are hitting the front iako, but your putting in the paddle a foot back. So why not just put the paddle in there?

The idea is to reach the paddle to the point you are going to put in. If you can only put the full blade in at this point. Then start there. Don't reach out here and then come back 5, 6 or 7 inches before you set the blade. It's a wasted motion. If you can get in here at this angle, then eventually over time as you get more comfortable then you start moving a half inch further forward, and then move another half inch farther forward.

So forward angle on the catch is the first thing I look for.

I look for a triangle. The bottom of the blade is here is one point. Your top hand is the second point and the back of your hip is your third.

So if you body has this triangle motion and you set the blade there and then you start to use your larger efficient muscles (???).

I will let Danny do some talking as he is good at this.

Danny: As Johny said, the biggest thing is to get your blade to set in the water. It doesn't count if the tip just touches the water and it does not count if it is up in the air. The entire blade has to be set.

Johnny actually showed me a drill that is really hard to do but is surprisingly sounds really easy. You literally just set up, set you blade in the water at forward angle, don't pull and then take it out. Amazing how many people setup in the air start back to pull and it surprisingly simple. All you do is set up the blade and you just set blade in the water, take it out, set it again. This kind of gets you use to knowing where your catch is.

Some people have really long arms that are great for putting the paddle up here. Some people have little short arms. It's kind whatever you can reach comfortably because if you get this point (over extended). You can't pull from here, You can't be really efficient from here. You need to find that extension where you have a forward angle and you setting the whole blade in the under water (at a positive angle).

99% of paddlers get here, start there stroke and it is buried here and this is where the stroke starts (short).

You have a great picture of you and the paddle in the air and this great reach and everything is perfect. But you are not starting your stroke until here. (short)

Johnny: That's why every likes pictures of them paddling in the air, because it looks great. And you get a six man team and everyone looks awesome and then a lot of times with the video you go stroke by stroke.

If you can get someone to take a video of you and you think about that forward angle on the catch and where you are setting your catch. If you go frame by frame, you see each frame as go come back farther and farther until the blade gets in the water.

A lot of times, by the time you set that blade in, a lot of people have this angle (negative) on the shaft.

You have lost your whole load at the front. The reason you are paddling up front is that you are using leverage instead of muscle and that is how I kind of look at it.

[By example] If you are reaching out really far and setting it in, you are using lats, legs, stomach and core muscles. You know if you are in here and bending your arm, and this is where it feels heavy (during the pull). A lot people think I am doing a lot of work, I am really strong and this is working out. Well that's not it. The reason is that it feels heavy is that you no longer have leverage. Out here feels (extended) easy because you ahve leverage. It should feel like you are out in front and you have set the blade and you literally grab onto mud or concrete.

OK I always say, that if a door is closed shut and it is nailed closed. What you are going to do is put your foot one the wall and you ging to have your arm out and you are going to pull on it this way (at 4:25 sec mark - effectively shows leg drive also).

It's the same thing when you are paddling. You are never going to go up to that door and go half way up to it, and give it good yank, because there is no leverage.

Any questions? That is just the first part.

Danny: You will know when you get out and set the blade on forward angle, because it feels heavier and it is actually harder. Once you get going, that's going to help you out just to keep your speed. (???)

When you get out here. Once you set the blade, it feels a lot heavier, then if you are going to pull back and set here (short).

Johnny: That's where the one man technique comes in so handy in canoe paddling. A lot people just paddle 6 mans and not one mans (??). If you have your own boat, you can get out there and see where you are putting the paddle in. No timing to keep up with, nobody is racing you, you are not in the competiiton mode. You just sit there relax and go. OK:

• can I put that paddle in up front?


• Did I have a forward angle?


• Did I set the whole blade?

If you can get that blade set at a forward angle at the front, then half you battle is over.

Wind in the Willows - Qingpu / China (20 Oct 2004)

Trees are exceptional people - Wind in the Willows - Qingpu / China - 20 Oct 2004 (picasa)
"Trees are exceptional, people [..]
Belonging fully to earth but living also in sky
They have no death but only transformations."

From Future Now by Tessa Ransford

Jenny always loved this photo which I took while Jenny and Joanne participated in the 2004 World Dragon Boat Championships at Qingpu, a lakeside race course, about 50 km to the west of Shanghai. I had it professionally printed in A4 and A3 sizes with a selection of my favourite photos. Jenny always wanted me to frame it and put it up somewhere in the living area so we could remember our trip to Qingpu and Shanghai as well as enjoy the intricate and subtle details of the sunset silhouetted wind blown willow.

Whenever Jenny went into Hospital we always put photos up around her room and it was always a great way to generate a bit of conversation with the many Hospital Satff that were in and out of her room.

When Jenny went into ICU for the final week of her life, I pulled the A4 print of this photo out of the pile of prints I had had made and placed it on a column in front of her bed in the vague hope that she might see and recognise it.

On the day before Jenny died Joanne picked up the photo and moved it across Jenny's face and we were excited to see her eyes follow it - the first sign to us of some improvement in her condition. I went off to an outrigging canoe training session that Monday night happier than I had been in a long time and I arranged to see her on the way home, well after the normal visiting hours.

When I arrived into the ICU about 9.30pm, it was a different place to the busy and noisy place it was during the day. It was very quiet and the lights were dimmed apart from a soft spot light above Jenny's bed. She was asleep and looked very relaxed, the most relaxed I had seen her in the two weeks she had been in hospital. I decided not to wake her and sat quietly at her bed side and watched her steady breathing. I spoke quietly and proudly to Jenny's dedicated nurse about Jenny's life. I left Jenny that night not knowing that it would be the last time I would see her alive.

At 9.16am on Tue 30 Jun 2009 (the next morning), Jenny left us without Joanne or I by her bedside. Yet I know, Jenny was not alone, as the above photo, the one she loved so much, looked over her as she broke free from this world.

Just as the above poem extracts indicates, it might be nice to think that Jenny transformed herself into our memories:

They have no death but only transformations

It is through our memories of Jenny that she lives on.

I will frame both A4 and A3 prints once I find a place for them and myself. For the moment I am happy to have written this post (which i had planned to do for a long time) which was inspired by the above poem extract. Thanks Charlotte.

Thanks to LottieP for allowing me to find the above extract from a poem by Tessa Ransford via her post of a beautiful poem titled The White Stone of Lewis.

(My first post from an iPad while on a weeks holiday at Coolangatta.)

On Photography, Relationships and Identity - Joel Meyerowitz (YouTube)

What you put in the frame determines the photograph - Joel Meyerowitz [YouTube (*)]
If you have been taking photographs for a while, this will really make sense and inspire you to think about what you have been doing and how you might want to view the way you take photographs in the future. Here is part of what he had to say:

[..] when I think about my photographs, I understand that my interest all along has not been in identifying a singular thing, but in photographing the relationship between things.

The unspoken relationship, the tacit relationship, the impending relationship.

All of these variables are there if you chose to see in this, in this way.

But if you chose to only make objects out of singular things you wind shooting the arrow into the bullseye all the time and you get copies of objects in space.

I did not want copies of objects.

I wanted the ephemeral connections between unrelated things to vibrate.

And if my pictures work at all, at their best they are suggesting these tenuous relationships.

And that fragility is what so human about them.

And I think it's what's also in the romantic tradition, because it is a form of humanism that says we are all part of this together.

I am not just a selector of objects.

And there's plenty of photographers here who are great photographers but who only work in the object reality frame of reference.

They collect things and I don't think of myself as a collector.

It's my sense of where I am different from other people and that's not a measure or judgement.

It's just a sense of your own identity.

For me the play is always in the potential - it's like magnetism.

Thanks Joel and congratulations on a fantastic career in your chosen profession.

All you have do is frame and click - Contact Sheets No.1 - William Klein (1988)

Picasa Contact Sheet - eljeiffel - New York (Fri 12 Aug 2011)
Picasa Contact Sheet - eljeiffel - New York (Wed 17 Aug 2011)
Just a couple of screen shots of some virtual contact sheets (*) from recent trip to New York. Will put a few more over the coming days as (the following youtube clip reveals) I think they reveal something about how I see when I travel.


From his film Contacts Vol.1 (*), William Klein (*) reveals some great insights into the working processes of a photographer.

It does not matter if you are great or unknown, if you care when you press the shutter to take a photo, we pretty much all go through the same thoughts and steps.

Some of the more interesting insights from the clip follow:

A sheet of contacts. 36 exposures. 6 strips of 6 photographs, taken one after the other. You read them from left to right like a text. It the diary of a photographer. You see what he sees through the viewfinder. His hesitations. His hits. His misses. His choices. He choses one moment. One angle. Another moment. Another angle. He insists. He stops.

You rarely see the contacts of a photographer. You only see the picture chosen. You don't see the before or the after like you do on proof sheet. [..]

Ok, the contacts. You see the before and after. Why one picture is taken rather than the other. And then why one is chosen rather than another. [..]

A wall in New York 20 years ago. Ciaro. Probably the name of a gang. Torn paper. A ready made photo. A kind of ??. All you have do is frame and click. You can do a hundread on that wall no sweat. It's there for the taking. There are pictures like that all over, you just have to look.

This picture is maybe better than that one. Or this one. Or that one.

Found the Klein clip from a Jonathan Walker (*) post (*). Always lots of good information on photography (*) there. Thanks Jonathan.

On Portrait Photography - Richard Johnstone (Fri 29 May 2015)

Photos - Alexandria (Sun 07 Jun 2015)

Richard Johnstone on Portrait Photography:

One of the great mysteries of portrait photography hinges on whether we can successfully read character and biography into a single image.

via Face time - Photography | Richard Johnstone reviews the finalists in this year’s Head On Portrait Prize by Richard Johnstone.

I think the portrait of Jenny captures her character perfectly. I had an A4 print made of it shortly after I took it on Christmas Day in 2006. Joanne bought a nice frame for it and we placed on her Coffin at her Funeral. What better photo to celebrate and reflect on her life.

On Intention - The Eye, Heart and Mind - StreetShooter (Thu 08 May 2014)

eljeiffel House (*) - Alexandria (Sun 04 May 2014)
StreetShooter (*) writes On Intent (*):

it’s very easy to adapt (*) the frame (*) to make a photo by moving but it’s more important to be where you are supposed to be and be using what you are supposed to be using because you want what your INTENT (*) wants to be as true to the EYE, HEART and MIND (*) as possible.

via May 8th, 2014 … Fuji X-Pro1 and 23mm May Be as Good as it Gets (*) by StreetShooter (*).

There was a rainbow (*) on the wall of the soon to be lounge room. I placed the camera on the wall and captured the photo above. I was interested to see how it came out. Must have placed the camera in the yellow part of the rainbow. Will experiment a bit more later ..

Favourite Photos - Newtown 2007 - King Street - 'Communication'

Communication - King Street, Newtown, Sydney - Wed 14 Mar 2007 (picasa)
Second photo from a collection of favourite photos.

I had been to the Dendy Cinema to see a movie a few days earlier and was struck by the light and this scene when I left around 6pm. The late afternoon light in Sydney is beautiful this time of the year - interestingly enough it is almost 3 years ago to the day this photo was taken. Unfortunately I did not have my camera with me at this time, so I made a mental note to come back at some stage in the near future - which would turn out to be just a few days later.

On the day this photo was captured, I had taken a half day off work, in the afternoon, so that I could attend one of Jenny's medical appointments at St George Hospital. I was in my car on the way to meet Jenny and Joanne for the appointment when Jenny called to say that the appointment had been cancelled due to unforseen circumstances and that we should meet at Dragon Boat training that night back in the City.

I had a few hours to spare, so I thought I would go back to Newtown and have a coffee at Urban Bites (a favourite haunt for me, but the opposite end of King Street to the Dendy) for a coffee. When I was there I remembered the photo I wanted to take and I realised I had my camera. Decided to take the 10 min walk back to the Dendy to take this photo which had similar lighting to what I had seen a few days earlier.

I guess what I like about this particular photo is the composition. I only took a couple of photos and really did not look at it closely until I downloaded it to my computer. There I could see all the detail - things I really had not noticed when I took it.

I saw all the signs - things telling us what to do (the "No Stopping" and "No Entry" signs [1], "One Way" and parking signs), and the signs that identify things. For instance the Map of Africa and all the countries identified, the graffiti tag and the nice frame around the Map, the number plates that identify the motor bikes and scooters, etc.

A couple of other things I liked were the:

1. Pole Poster where you see the word "Pixels" - the smallest element of each digital photo - you can see it between the "No Entry" Sign and the white pillar (might have to look at the large version to notice).
   
   
2. Person in the centre of the photo - particularly his position and the shadow area of the background he fills as well his position between the foreground shadows. I also love the tattoos on his arms and legs, and the fact that he is communicating with someone using his Mobile Phone. His T-Shirt and bag have some text and logos on them. Also like how the shadow of the Bike Rack just catches his foot - I did get lucky [2] in many ways, as there is no way I could have planned all of this.
   

As you can see, many things can found in a simple photo that is captured in a fraction of a section. It is also interesting how circumstances sometime conspire to allow a photo to be taken.

I entered this photo in the 2007 Sydney Life Competition (unfortunately can't find an archive of the official page though I found a media release here). I always try each year to make an entry to the competition as it is open to all photographers, though it is virtually impossible for non-established photographers to make the final 22-26 images. Will keep trying though :-)

There is another story about this location which will come in another favourite photo at a later date.

[1] I would always say to Jenny a good photo always has a little bit of red in it and this is a theme you will see in many of my photos.

[2] Also would often tell Jenny, there was a lot of luck in taking photos (though like all things involving luck, you often make you own luck) and that if you take enough photos you are bound to end up with a few your like (i.e. keepers).

Remarkable - Jeffrey Ladd on Katy Grannan (Sat 11 Oct 2014)

A New Patchwork Chair - Alexandria (Sun 12 Oct 214)
Jeffrey Ladd (*) writes on Katy Grannan (*) book Katy Grannan: The Ninety Nine and The Nine (*):

What is remarkable to me is less her ability to integrate herself and large camera into that community than what she has transcended. She achieves finding the moments of grace in the unexpected – a trait that photography is rife with and frankly at this stage, not surprising – but she uses the surrounding landscape to punctuate those moments filling the frame with additional visual textures – fences, television antennas, road signs, trees, building sides, and power lines – that feel weighty yet light, beautiful yet ugly, oppressive yet fragile and on the verge of collapse.

via The Nine and The Ninety-Nine by Katy Grannan (*) by Jeffrey Ladd (*).

Jeff's words are just as remarkable as the photos he describes and that is the reason they are here. Inspiration for me. As Seth wrote today (*) on writing, it is:

the ability to work on our words until they succeed in transmitting our ideas and causing action. [..]

you do have precisely the same keyboard as everyone else. It's the most level playing field we've got.

The first step is to say it poorly. And then say it again and again and again until you're able to edit your words into something that works.

But mostly, you need to decide that it matters. [HT: Shawn (*)]

Thanks Jeff and Seth.

Red - Financial District - New York City (Fri 12 Aug 2011)

Red - Financial District - New York City (Fri 12 Aug 2011)
As the following posts will show, I was drawn to the graffiti on the temporary construction barrier fence.

Some times you get lucky.

In this photo I had noticed the fence graffiti and was just starting to move over to photograph it, when I saw the first man in the red shirt emerge from the subway. I quickly noticed the yellow and orange paint and then framed my shot.

Decided to wait just a moment to see if anything would become more obvious to my visual filter. In waiting for this brief moment I got lucky with another man with a red shirt emerging from the subway and a passerby with a red shoulder bag coming into frame. That was the moment to press the shutter. I did not notice the red flavoured drink of the passerby until reviewing the photo.

For me travel photography is not about landmarks but colour, combination and lines. This photo seems to make all the failed efforts worthwhile.

This is all described brilliantly by Henri Cartier-Bresson (*) here

The Met - Mao (1 of 2) - New York (Mon 15 Aug 2011)

The Met - Mao (1 of 2) - New York (Mon 15 Aug 2011)
Just noticed my yellow cardiganed muse is in frame. She again compliments the portrait - this time Mao's yellow face. She also gives a sense of scale to the portrait. As always, I enjoy the late afternoon shadows of the glass topped pavilion projecting onto the scene.

Hands and Gestures (3 of 3) - The Met / New York City (Mon 15 Aug 2011)

Hands and Gestures (3 of 3) - The Full Frame Photo - The Met / New York City (Mon 15 Aug 2011)
Note to self - get a little bit closer in scenes like this.