A Journey of Transition

MEG member Blake Stenning shares the story behind a signature image and his transition from film to digital photography. 

(c) Blake Stenning

In the summer of 2009, my wife and I had the opportunity to travel to Malaysia to visit friends living in Kuala Lumpur. During the several weeks that followed, we explored the country’s diverse cities, lush jungles, and exotic islands, and discovered a land rich in history and culture. It was a truly inspiring journey for me, both personally and as a photographer.

At the time, my primary camera was a tripod-mounted, medium format Mamaya 645 film camera. While the picture quality was vastly superior to 35mm film, it required a deliberative process of manually adjusting focus, aperture, and shutter speed, based on exposure readings I made using a hand-held spot meter. The equipment was bulky and heavy, and I was concerned that it would be too cumbersome for overseas travel. However, I had recently purchased a digital SLR camera and began to consider whether I should take that instead. While the image resolution could not compare to my Mamaya, it did seem to be an ideal travel camera as it was both smaller and lighter, and could be used sans tripod. It also featured programmable exposure settings that would allow me to react to situations far more quickly and intuitively. In addition, a single pocket-sized CF card could hold the equivalent of 20 rolls of 120 film. The decision was made, I would go digital.

Over the next 17 days we encountered a vast array of unique and unusual landscapes, cityscapes, people, and cultures – and I photographed them all! While it would be impossible to capture my entire experience of Malaysia in a single image, there is one I made that came close. The scene unfolded outside a small Buddhist temple in the ancient port town of Malacca. I was drawn to the large carved circular portal on the exterior wall and began to compose my shot. As I raised the camera to my eye, a small woman hurried past down the darkened corridor that led to an interior courtyard. As I watched her, it occurred to me that when she reached the end of the passageway her figure would become a stark silhouette framed against the brightly lit background. The result would make a far more interesting photograph, so I paused and waited for the precise moment when all the elements within the viewfinder would align, and made this photograph.

“Passageway” became the signature image for my exhibition, Malaysia Journeys, which hung at Multiple Exposures Gallery in February 2011. To me, it captures the duality of this magnificent land; ancient and modern, foreign and familiar, religious and secular. But it also represents a transition of sorts: from darkness to light, and from film to digital.

A selection from this series will be on display this fall at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, MD. For more information, please contact Blake Stenning at: blakestenning@yahoo.com.
 

Five Tips For A Better Website

If you have your own website, you know how challenging it can be to make it pleasing to the eye, informative and accurately reflect you and your work. At MEG, we're incredibly lucky to have design guru Blake Stenning as part of our membership. Co-founder of Pittny Creative, a full-service design and branding firm, Blake brought his many talents to bear on MEG's recently revamped website. He shares some wisdom on web design below: 

 
1. Start with a cohesive identity. The look & feel of MEG's new website grew out of the visual identity we established in 2010 as part of MEG's new branding efforts. Multiple Exposures Gallery has been a fixture in the DC region for years, but until recently, its communications and marketing efforts had little cohesiveness. While some individual pieces were well designed, MEG itself had no real recognizable identity and we needed to establish a graphic language unique to MEG. In fact, one of the first things my firm did was to streamline the name. Since many people were already referring to Multiple Exposures Gallery by its acronym, it seemed natural to formalize the MEG abbreviation as part of a bold, yet elegant logo. The mark's simple, classic styling serves as the foundation for all of MEG's communications components, from business cards to the new website.

2. Articulate your goals.  From a practical standpoint, our goal for the MEG site was to make it simple and flexible enough to be updated on a regular basis -- without huge time investments or programming expertise – to ensure content remains current. For the viewer, we wanted the site to be simple and intuitive to navigate. And from a technical standpoint, our goal was to incorporate best practices for HTML markup and coding.

3. Help your content shine. The biggest challenge for the MEG website was presenting the work of 15 photographers and not favoring one format over another, such as portraits over landscapes or color over black-and-white. And because each MEG photographer has a unique vision, it was crucial that the website's design did not compete with their work. Ultimately, we decided on a JavaScript image viewer that allowed us to design a uniform thumbnail gallery for all members. When you click on an individual thumbnail image, the entire background goes dark and the photo is enlarged to allow for an unencumbered viewing environment.

4. Think through the navigation. The other important consideration was that access to any MEG member's thumbnail gallery has to be easy from anywhere within the website. We achieved this by featuring a right column sidebar listing that is a duplicate of the Artists' pulldown menu in the top navigation. The only time the sidebar is unavailable is from within an individual member's gallery, where the listing is replaced with the artist's bio.

5. Keep it simple. My advice to any photographer who wants to create their own photo website is to keep it simple and think through how you want a visitor to experience your work. It's much easier to make changes before you've invested hours in HTML coding. For those opting to use blogging templates, the principles are basically the same – plan ahead. Know what you want to say and then try and find a template that's flexible enough to accommodate your content, but keep in mind that it may sometimes be necessary to adapt your content to fit within the constraints of the template.

New Exhibit - Blake Stenning

Blake Stenning's black & white images taken in Malaysia will be on exhibit at MEG from February 8 - March 6. Come by the gallery on Thursday, Feb. 10 at 7:30pm to hear Blake talk about his work, and come back on Saturday, Feb. 12 from 2-4pm and join Blake for conversation and light refreshments at the exhibit reception.

Coming next month: