In Pursuit Of Beauty

(c) Fred Zafran

What do beauty, art, Alfred Stieglitz, and MEG have to do with each other? Tom Beck, chief curator at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the juror of MEG's current exhibit, explains:

Many think that the beauty of a photograph is a result of having a camera with an exceptionally fine lens or special powers over subject matter.   In his 1923 essay (“How I Came to Photograph Clouds”) Alfred Stieglitz said: “I wanted to photograph clouds to find out what I had learned in 40 years…Through clouds to put down my philosophy of life—to show that my photographs were not due to subject matter—not special trees, or faces, or
interiors, to special privileges—clouds were there for everyone.”  He wanted people to be excited by his creations, not the technique or technology that made them.  The photographs that I judged for the exhibition, indeed call attention to the artfulness of the imagery and not the mechanics, a virtue in our technology dominated era.   

The success of the imagery selected for this exhibition reveals that beauty is necessary to the photographers.  The pursuit of beauty is their way of making images that are true to themselves as artists.  “Beauty is the universal seen,” said Alfred Stieglitz.  He was defining his approach to making, understanding, and appreciating photographs, and, in a sense, setting a standard for making art photography in the future.  The images in this exhibition compare favorably to Stieglitz’s standard.  It has been my pleasure to judge this exhibition and discover the beauty in these photographs.

(c) Five Cherries

An opening reception will be held Thursday, November 14th, from 6pm-8pm, in Studio 312 at the Torpedo Factory Art Center. Exhibit end date: November 24, 2013.

A Movie Is Worth A Thousand Words...DC Fine Art Photography Fair

A friend of MEG captured some footage from our experience at the DC Fine Art Photography Fair earlier this month. It was an excellent event and we look forward to its return next year.

Taking It To The Streets

Karen Keating's latest work, STREET PORTRAITS, features images from two Easters -- one in Sicily and the other in Key West. Below Karen shares some thoughts on why street photography is so compelling and what it takes to practice it well.

(c) Karen Keating

Why is the street such an alluring subject? Most photographers begin their photo interest on the street – practicing camera basics, responding to the scene, and making order out of chaos.  The question is what makes some of us stay on the street – gravitating to the unknown? 

My street shooting is focused primarily on street portraits.  My continuing interest and curiosity is people – their ordinary lives and daily rituals.  I am not interested in staging shots, nor do I want to work in a studio environment.  I want to watch, observe, and spontaneously react to the mixture of light, structure and people as they live their lives. I like to watch, observe, and wait.  I do not hide, or use a long lens, often having a short conversation, some times not.  The street offers abundant opportunities and challenges.  I need to be prepared, to be the perpetual student, and trust that there will be images. I am always richer for the experience of working on the street.

Have portraits always been an interest of yours? My graduate school fine art photo thesis was A Colloquy: Mothers and Daughters, which focused on adolescent daughters and their mothers, middle-age daughters with their elderly mothers, and three generations of mothers and daughters.  This extensive portfolio focused on capturing moments of the complex mother-daughter relationship.  Often my focus is on the relationships, but equally I am interested in the person enjoying solitude.

When I am in my city, my environment and I am busy teaching or organizing the program and instructors at Photoworks, my shooting mornings or evenings are in the woods or near the creek in the neighborhood.  I seem to need time away from people, finding the light and reacting to the mood of the moment.  However, when traveling I almost never take landscape images, but concentrate on watching people and waiting for moments that reveal a sliver of their life or interests or daily ritual.

The images in your current show at Multiple Exposures Gallery come from Sicily and Key West, two very different locations and cultures.  How do the locations you chose to shoot in influence the images you capture? The Sicilians, in preparation for Easter, presented my first look at a religious event and the elaborate preparations and seriousness

(c) Karen Keating

of the weeklong affair.  Photographers from many European countries and the U.S. flock to several small towns in Sicily to capture the complexity and importance of Easter Week.  It is truly photographing a five-day event with Good Friday being a 24-hour non-stop parade of altars throughout Marsala.  The enactment and emotions are intense.  I am not sure that I knew what to expect and I found the ten days a profound challenge.

A year later, I was in Key West for Easter.  I have photographed in Key West many times and have found Bahama Village to be my preferred neighborhood.  Bahama Village is off

the beaten path of the well-known tourism in Key West.  I always prefer to select a section of a city, a neighborhood to concentrate on observing daily life whether it is Havana, London, and Kampala.

In preparing for this exhibit the contrast in the two Easters seemed distinct – certainly in my emotional reaction to the two Easters.  I do not think that it was the locations alone, but rather the differences in emotions between the solemnity of Marsala and the joy of Bahama Village after Easter services.  With any street shooting, there is a combination of the observed emotions and the photographers.  I am sure that this is true in most genres of photography.

Tell us what you think it takes to be a successful street photographer? I am not certain that being a successful street photographer is any different from being a good studio, landscape or still life photographer.  Often I define myself as a documentary photographer gravitating to street portraits.  I know that I want to be on the street, observing, watching daily life. Most often I stay still or wander slowly believing that an image will emerge.  At all costs, I try to avoid “chasing” images.  Sometimes I engage people in conversation, sometimes not.  But always the people are aware that I am taking photos.

I believe that there needs to be an artistic challenge when shooting – uncertainty, tension, an edge, even butterflies. The anticipation to capture a moment or ever-illusive images is always present.  Often when I am on the street, I doubt that there will be any images during that shoot.

The chaos of form on the street is always a factor and then there is the experience of “just missing” a moment of significance.  In the end, the street photographer must be prepared and react to the moving images and events.  Planning or organizing on the street seems to be a sure method for being on the outside of events.  The planning aspect is before I take the camera out of the bag and before I load the film.  Once on the street, I am eager to find the visual adrenaline while watching the stream of life.  It is a combination of these feelings, which keeps image making enduring, challenging, and rewarding to me.

STREET PORTRAITS can be seen at Multiple Exposures Gallery at the Torpedo Factory Art Center through October 13, 2013.

Daily Contemplative Photography Makes A Difference

(c) Colleen Henderson

MEG member Colleen Henderson's new show, DAILY DIFFERENCES, highlights the powerful creative convergence that results when contemplative photography is combined with daily shooting. She shares the backstory below: 
  
Your new show, DAILY DIFFERENCES, contains images you created over the past five years during periods of deliberate daily shooting. What drove you to begin this project? It was a convergence of two things. A “contemplative photography” class I took on a whim, and my longtime interest in pursuing a “365 Project.”  Contemplative photography is a way of stepping back and looking at everyday things, even those that are mundane, with fresh eyes to find beauty within them. At the time, my photographic roots lay firmly in black & white land and seascapes, and night images of DC.  When I felt daring, I allowed myself some latitude by exploring in color, but otherwise I followed a predictable path when making my art.  My exploration of contemplative photography was meant to push me outside of my comfort zone and continue my creative development.

My first assignment was to spend three hours meandering through Cleveland Park, a Washington, D.C. neighborhood, and bring back 10 photographs for “show & tell”.  For the first few hours, I wandered, wondering what I could possibly see and capture that was worthy of sharing and would not reveal me as a photographer fraud. But then something happened.  Images began to appear before my eyes—faster than I could click the shutter.  Over the course of three days I saw—and photographed—my world in ways I’d never imagined.

(c) Colleen Henderson

Where does the 365 Project come in? About the same time, I’d been toying with the idea of a embarking on a “365 Project,” a concept that can be traced back to Jim Brandenburg, a National Geographic Society photographer. In the late 1990’s, Jim challenged himself to make one photograph each day for 90 days.  The results were published in a 1998 book, Chasing the Light.  The images and concept really struck a chord with me and I imagined embarking on a similar project some day. In addition to making images, I also teach fine art photography, and one day I suggested to the members of a class that they consider undertaking a 365 Project. As fate would have it one student embraced the idea and invited (read: challenged!) me to join her.   The timing was right, and besides, how could I refuse?  The rest is history.

You’ve taken this project much further than 365 days. What’s kept you going? I’ve been shooting daily images and sharing them on Facebook on and off for 5 years now.  The rewards have been manifold. I have many new images that otherwise would not have been made, but I expected that.  What I didn’t foresee was the impact it’s had on my photography.  I see and compose better.  I judge less and reveal more.  I have more clarity of purpose.  I better understand light, and how the camera records it.  I’m more mindful of my immediate surroundings. And I’m more playful, confident and creative.

Do you set out to shoot each day or do you always have a camera with you and just photograph something when it strikes you? It varies, but more often than not, my shots are something I capture as I go about my daily business. Coffee and Cream, one of my favorites from the series, was taken when I noticed the juxtaposition of two coffee cups on my counter. Another well-received image in the show captures cherries on a plate in my kitchen. Others, such as Skeleton Tree and Sentinels were taken out in the field during dedicated photo shoots, the former during a workshop I was running in Charleston, South Carolina, and the latter during a sunrise shoot at the U.S. Capitol.

(c) Colleen Henderson

Do you ever worry about running out of material? Not if I stay true to the teachings of contemplative photography. There is always something to capture if we open our minds and eyes to the beauty around us. We can even capture the same thing multiple times, but in different ways, which fosters our creativity.

Your show includes framed fine art prints and beautiful, limited edition, hand bound, books that showcase your images.  Why did you opt for that format? I’ve been studying the art of bookmaking for 15 years and wanted to combine my passion for photography with my love of creating small, handmade books. There’s something about holding an image in your hand that’s much more intimate than simply viewing it on a wall, behind glass, and I wanted to create that experience for people. The books are made of Italian silk, smooth gray suede, and handmade Bhutanese paper, all of it bound together with a special Coptic stitch that allows the book to lay flat when open.  The books are available in limited editions of five. 



DAILY DIFFERENCES is on view at Multiple Exposures Gallery at the Torpedo Factory Arts Center in Alexandria, VA, through October 13, 2013.
 

A Fascination With Old Cemeteries

(c) Michael Borek

MEG member Michael Borek shares his fascination with old cemeteries and what he found on a recent trip to Buenos Aires. 

I am fascinated by old cemeteries, but I am scared of places that are overrun by tourists.  I am from Prague, Czech Republic, and I used to love to go to the old Jewish cemetery in downtown when it was still behind the Iron Curtain and hardly any visitors set foot there. However, that cemetery changed immensely after the fall of Communism and going there now feels like being at Times Square. Even though the scenery is still nice and pleasantly bizarre, it is impossible to enjoy it quietly with the never-ending stream of tourists.

When I was preparing for my trip to Buenos Aires, many people and guidebooks recommended visiting the Recoleta Cemetery. I usually don’t like to visit “must-see” and touristy places, so I was hesitant. I am glad that my curiosity prevailed. The cemetery covers 14 acres, and, if one steers clear of the tomb of Eva Peron and several other luminaries, the experience can be quite private. The whole necropolis feels like a city within city and there seem to be even little “neighborhoods” with their own atmospheres.  It is a true memento mori with grandiose tombs with beautiful Art Nouveau and Neogothic architecture in various stages of disrepair, interspersed with rotting flowers or always fresh plastic flowers, dust, spider webs, and condensation on the windows, rendering everything even more mysterious. 

(c) Michael Borek

In most of these pictures, I tried to capture the sense of transience I felt there. However, there is one photo that is quite different. I became fascinated by a photograph on a tomb of a woman who died in 2010. Next to her traditional black and white portrait that one would expect on a tomb, there is a color picture of her and what I suppose was her car, a Ford Edsel, taken in 1958. There is no question that the car is the most dominant part of the

(c) Michael Borek

picture. And in case some viewer did not understand what he was viewing, there is a caption under the photograph with the woman’s name and the model of her car. Even though this photograph is visually different than the rest of the pictures I took at this cemetery, it seem to complement the others with its postmodern suggestion that a person should be remembered by her beautiful car.

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.
 

The Impact Of Our Choices

MEG member Alan Sislen illustrates the impact of different choices behind the camera.  

Before and after the photographer presses the shutter release, there are many, many

Alan in the field

choices which impact what photograph will be made.  There are processing and printing choices that can have a critically important impact on the final photograph, and there are other planning decisions, such as deciding on the location, the best time of year, time of day, ideal weather conditions, etc.

In this blog post I’d like to concentrate on just a few of the many choices that are consciously made behind the camera, so that the photographer is in control of the photograph created in the camera.  On a recent trip to the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon, I made photographs of a number of waterfalls, which I will use as examples of just some of the photographer’s choices. 

Camera capabilities 

The choices made depend on the capabilities of your camera.  Cameras with manual controls and multiple lenses or zoom lenses, have the most choices.  Point and shoots have fewer.  However, with a an understanding of the built-in shooting modes of point and shoot cameras (like action, sports, flowers, portraits, landscapes, etc.) you can be in more control than you first might imagine.  For example, in the “sports” mode, the camera will pick a high shutter speed to try to minimize the blur of fast moving figures, whether a sports photo or not.  In the “flower” mode, the camera will choose a large f/stop so background objects will be out of focus.  The ever present cellphone has a camera with fewer shooting control choices, but more immediate processing choices, using “apps.”

For interchangeable lens cameras (SLRs, DSLRs, etc.) with manual controls, before shooting, you need to consider:

•  Which lens to use 
•  The focal length of lens or zoom position 
•  The shutter speed 
•  Which f/stop to choose to help control what’s in focus, and what’s out of focus

Focal length

Below are four photographs of Multnomah Falls.  Notice how different the photographs are, based on the lens and zoom choice.  For those technically oriented, the focal lengths ranged from 22mm to 116mm. 

In addition to the lens and focal length choices, notice how the rock in the last image looks much larger that the image to its left.  The position of the photographer and the camera, plus the choice of lens and focal length can impact the perspective of the elements in the photograph.  Telephoto lenses compress the elements and wide angle lenses make the foreground elements appear larger relative to the rest of the scene.

Click Image To Enlarge

Shutter speed

A related choice was the shutter speed used.  A very high shutter speed would have “stopped” the water, so that you could have seen the individual droplets.  I choose relatively long (slow) shutter speeds (around 1/6th of a second) to provide a more silky look to the water.  This was a conscious choice, but another photographer might have approached it differently.  It should be noted, that using a tripod was necessary to take the longer exposures.  If I had handheld at 1/6^th of a second, everything will have been blurred, ruining the shots.  So, to make these photographs the way I intended, a tripod wasn’t a choice, it was a necessity.

Depth-of-field

In all cases I decided that the more that was in focus, the better.  Understanding the impact of different focal lengths on depth-of-field enabled me to maximize the range of what was in focus.  f/stops of 5.6 (for the most wide angle focal length) to f/11 (for the medium telephoto focal lengths) were used.  Those choices determined what would be in focus.  For the more knowledgeable, you might ask, “Why not use even larger numbered f/stops, like f/16 or f/22 to maximize the range of focus.”  The answer is that diffraction begins to slightly degrade images as the f/stop number gets larger, so you don’t want to use an f/stop larger than you need to accomplish your objective.

In addition to focal length and f/stop, here are just a few of the other choices, regardless of camera:

• Position of the camera (height) 
•  Position of the light source – front-lit, side-lit, back-lit 
•  Composition  - What to include, what to exclude, including foreground, etc. 
•  Aspect ratio/orientation – make a vertical, square, horizontal or panorama photograph?

Camera position

Here are a few examples of Elowah Falls.  The focal lengths were very similar at 28mm, 24mm and 32mm.  But the position of the camera and the distance to the falls made a big difference in the composition and what was included and what was excluded in each composition.  While you might prefer one photograph to the others, it is really the intent of the photographer that determines the photograph you ultimately see.  The photographer’s desire then narrows the choices which are used to get the desired result.

Click Image To Enlarge

 

Take time to experiment

To be in control of the final photograph, the photographer has to make many choices.  Choices before the shot is taken, and choices after.  Knowledge, experience and experimentation make it easier to make those choices.

Maybe in another blog post we’ll discuss post-shooting choices; things like:

• Is the photograph best processed as a color or black and white? 
•  Is further cropping, dodging and burning desired? 
•  Do I want a “straight” photograph or something more “artsy?” 
•  Do I want to modify the colors, the saturation the contrast? 
•  What is the optimum print size for a particular photograph?

Alan Sislen has been a MEG member since 2005. Information about Alan and his photography can be found at www.AlanSislenPhotography.com.