The goal of your photography?

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jdemott
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Re: The goal of your photography?

Post by jdemott » May 11th, 2015, 7:33 am

I think about the amount of time on a trip was just walking through miles forested land with a same-ness to it all, even though each spot is unique. I think about how I don't have many pictures of those Douglas Firs, but might have 20 photos from lunch that day where there was a creek of unspeakable beauty. But the firs were so much of that trip and the creek was a brief amount of time. The firs were walked under with a certain mental drift; the creek with the eye of camera, composition in the forefront of my mind,posterity on a screen a big thought.
I think we all do that. My collection of photos from a hike always has photos shot in bunches with big gaps of time and place in between the places where I stopped to shoot. If I tried to shoot everywhere, I probably wouldn't ever get anywhere. (Not sure if that would be a bad thing--it does tell you that there is a lot to see wherever you are.) Sometimes I make myself shoot a few photos of hiking along the trail through the woods to capture the experience of hiking.
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It would be useful to, in a high contrast situation with a sunny area and a shady area, to take two pictures with different exposures, and digitally darkroom combine them.

Easy to take with point and shoot - point at shady area, push button half way to set exposure, then center on the picture you want and take picture, repeat for sunny area.
Many cameras, including many point and shoot cameras, will do this for you automatically. Look in the menu options for something called exposure bracketing. Your chances of successfully combining them in the digital darkroom are much better if the camera snaps the two exposures quickly before anything can move. Some cameras will blend the two exposures automatically. The iPhone does this with the "HDR" setting.

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kepPNW
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Re: The goal of your photography?

Post by kepPNW » May 11th, 2015, 9:03 am

jdemott wrote:
It would be useful to, in a high contrast situation with a sunny area and a shady area, to take two pictures with different exposures, and digitally darkroom combine them.

Easy to take with point and shoot - point at shady area, push button half way to set exposure, then center on the picture you want and take picture, repeat for sunny area.
Many cameras, including many point and shoot cameras, will do this for you automatically. Look in the menu options for something called exposure bracketing. Your chances of successfully combining them in the digital darkroom are much better if the camera snaps the two exposures quickly before anything can move. Some cameras will blend the two exposures automatically. The iPhone does this with the "HDR" setting.
Bracketing can also be fun to play with adding "motion" to things. Here's a set of three shots, bracketed 1/3 stop, with the outliers adjusted to approximately the same exposure as the middle...
  • Image
Karl
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Charley
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Re: The goal of your photography?

Post by Charley » May 11th, 2015, 12:37 pm

That's an excellent question, and one that I've pondered for years. I'll try to answer with photos and text.
Crater Lake, Morning Clouds.jpg
I've written several different Artist's Statements over the years, and have always found the process difficult. The most simple statement is that I travel to beautiful places and want to share and remember how those places looked when I visited them. Sure, that's true, but doesn't explain the thousands of dollars I've spent on film and cameras over the years. I need a deeper explanation.
Pumice Plain.jpg
Part of the difficulty, for me and many of us here on this forum, is that our photographs are just the latest in a long, very well-developed lineage of landscape photographers. Ansel Adams really created a new visual language. His eye and technique allowed him to create works that were new and unique. I'd argue the same of Galen Rowell (my saint), as well.
Rock in Stream.jpg
What's left for me? How can I possibly create anything unique or impressive in a marketplace of excellent images created by excellent photographers, some of whom use a truly impressive arsenal of state-of-the-art technology that I just can't afford? How can I possibly avoid simply copying my artistic influences?

My background in the arts is that of a professional musician, so I have a little training in this regard: following ones influences is not at all a bad way to get started. As Maurice Ravel said:"If you have nothing to say, you can not do better, until you decide to give up composing for good, than say again what has already been said. If you have something to say, that something will never emerge more distinctly than when you are being unwittingly unfaithful to your model."
Earth Shadow, MT Hood Shadow.jpg
So, that's exactly how I started out. I enjoyed hiking in mountains, and tried to emulate Rowell's style as best I could. I gave myself some limitations: I'd shoot with 35mm Velvia exclusively, and take the slide itself to be the work of art. In other words, I'm no digital processing master- if the shot doesn't work on one slide, it doesn't work. I scan the slides using a home-level scanner, process the slides using Aperture, and aim for a digital file (which I can share on the web) to match the slide, as I see it on my light table.

Here's a shot from this period, showing classic Rowell style mountain photography: a mountain portrait taken in fine light, exposed to accentuate color saturation, using a graduated neutral density filter (to balance exposure of highlights and shadows).
whiteriver2021-7 (dragged).jpg
I worked on this long enough to start to feel an affinity for certain images I'd made. Notably, the period from sunset to sunrise was more interesting to me. Also, since my old lenses and small film format are not as high-resolving as those of modern DSLRs, if I tried to make a photo of a busy scene with lots of fine detail, it didn't look as sharp the shots I see on websites like 1x.com. As I shot more and more, my photos began to look less like rejects from a "Nature" calendar or Marc Adamus seminar, and more like something darker, and less obvious.
Dollar Lake Fire from McNeil.jpg
Over time, I began following a more restrictive artistic goal: to focus my lens on the mysterious, or enigmatic.
Sand.jpg
Don't get me wrong. When the clouds are awesome, and the light is beautiful, I can't resist shooting whatever is at hand. Generally, though, I let folks with DSLRs and Photoshop make those shots- they don't look as good when I try to do it with my twenty-year old camera.
MirrorPond, Rainier.jpg
As to the question of what I'm trying to "say" with my photographs, here are my two answers. I used to want to say "I was here, and this is what this place looked like." Now, I think I'm saying "We may not actually understand this world we live in. Our wild areas exist apart from our needs and desires. We are just a part of a very old, very powerful web of life." I'm aiming for something a little more intimidating, maybe even humbling. While this world has been very kind to our species, it's quite indifferent to the fate of any individual human. In spite of our grand cultures and outsized environmental impact we're just a medium sized species, outweighed on this planet by the ants who eat our trash. My darker photos are an attempt to convey the feeling of that realization.
BigLake.jpg
Anyway, enough philosophy. If photography weren't fun, I wouldn't do it. That might be the real goal.

You can see more of my photos at reneauphoto.com.
Believe it or not, I barely ever ride a mountain bike.

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sprengers4jc
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Re: The goal of your photography?

Post by sprengers4jc » May 11th, 2015, 12:55 pm

Incredible images, Charley. Thanks for sharing! That Dollar Lake fire one, especially, with the meteor streaking across the sky, is sublime.
'We travel not to escape life but for life to not escape us.'
-Unknown

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Chase
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Re: The goal of your photography?

Post by Chase » May 11th, 2015, 2:11 pm

Image

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Charley
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Re: The goal of your photography?

Post by Charley » May 13th, 2015, 8:31 am

Chase wrote:Image
Thanks. . . I think. :)
Believe it or not, I barely ever ride a mountain bike.

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Chase
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Re: The goal of your photography?

Post by Chase » May 13th, 2015, 9:08 am

Meant it as a genuine compliment. The fact that you've tried to come up with an artist's statement and then explained why this is tricky is sort of what I hoped to see in this thread. Plus, your examples are beautiful images.

I'd kind of also hoped someone had the idea of capturing the Gorge dirty, often lonely, a cycle of growth and death. Most readers will interpret that as negative, but it need not be. You're gonna see pretty waterfalls and easy-on-the-eyes flowers if that's what you look for and you're going to see a whole lot else if that's what you look for.

The point being that we all love looking at images of nature or we probably wouldn't be reading this thread. But what do we hope to see? National Geographic-perfect color and composition? Things that relax us and take us away from emails from the boss for a few minutes? Sean Thomas's image of a cannibalistic amphibian?
For me, I hope to see all these things and more. Way more.

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miah66
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Re: The goal of your photography?

Post by miah66 » May 13th, 2015, 10:31 am

Great thread! A joy to read. I appreciate everyone's thoughtful comments and the OP's inquisitive and expansive question.
"The top...is not the top" - Mile...Mile & a Half

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BurnsideBob
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Re: The goal of your photography?

Post by BurnsideBob » May 13th, 2015, 2:32 pm

Why do I take photos? Photography supports my stories.

I read a professional photographer’s article about his process for taking a photo. To paraphrase his process, he hiked an area until he saw an attractive landscape. He would then spend a great deal of time framing the subject with the camera/lense/filter(s) he planned to use. After getting everything just so, he would leave the tripod set up on-site. The next morning he would return, remount the camera, and wait until the light was right. And his results were extraordinary.

But what was the ‘opportunity’ cost of his process. What other photos could he have taken? Did he miss a miracle behind his back while framing tomorrow’s shot?

Fundamentally we don’t process the information our senses gather in a linear, intellectual way. We multi-thread, we emote, we project, and only the ‘important’ threads get attention at our top level command-and-control consciousness. How many times have you gotten home and realized your photo captured something different than you anticipated? Did you click that shutter because something below consciousness whispered ‘Now!!’? (Like my Washington-Monument-with-Birds photo above?)

A photograph shows a frozen scene. It is only thru our personal connection to the scene that we enrich the photo with context, flesh out its meaning. So I see photos as supporting narrative, our stories. (I do like trip reports.)

Last summer, a few nights into our Sawtooth trip, we camped on an isthmus in a lake, a peninsula with a rock rib running down its center.

I stirred, uncomfortable in my sleeping bag-under-the-stars. I sat up, and just as I did so, a fox trotted by, passing so close I could have touched him and jolting me with shock and surprise. In the nearly full moon light, I watched the fox stop, turn to face me, and then circle back to our cook area. So much for me surprising him, but he sure surprised me.

Two mornings later, I was up before sunrise—a hiking day so we needed to get on trail early. The fox ran thru our camp, and down to where I had just filtered water. Chris was up and tho I alerted him to the fox, he didn’t see it. Since two of us were stirring, I guessed the fox would pass by on the other side of the rock rib, so I grabbed my camera and made it to the rib’s top. Sure enough, the fox came, spotted me, stopped, and fixed an appraising eye. Deciding I was not a threat, he trotted by. Click!

Image

So there we were, a sort-of-wild human and a sort-of-human-habituated fox, face to face.

For me the fox photo deeply invokes this trip. But for my companions, who didn’t see the fox, the photo doesn’t tie to their experiences. It is only thru narrative that I can convey the feelings of wonder and surprise the fox brought me.

So I keep my camera on my packstrap, at the ready, 'cause you just never know what is going to happen.

Image
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pyles_94
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Re: The goal of your photography?

Post by pyles_94 » August 26th, 2015, 11:00 pm

Photography used to be the vehicle which brought me to nature and to raw experience. Just getting out there with the camera, hiking to far out waterfalls and amazing viewpoints and making photographs became this monster of a passion, at a young age, and the social buzz from sharing good shots and getting feedback supported the making and sharing of those images. An art of refining what I see, moving myself and my camera to the correct vantage point to make a composition that flows; This art came so naturally that I didn't even slow down much to think about what I was doing. All I knew, I needed to get out there, and continually do this, there have been goals and projects and destinations that I've needed to pursue... No end in sight.

Somehow, in these 6 years, the paradigm has shifted. I'm doing it differently now, refining my palette and realizing that there are few photographs that I need to make(so many other photographers will make or take the rest of them... which ones are important that I make?), and that these scenes will come to me if I go about my experience receptive to what nature will say. So I listen...It is of utmost importance for me to truly open my senses and learn... The wilderness compels me to do just this. And I do not any longer need to question my direction. A camera is just a tool in my art bag now... I might use it when I need to express something about what I have experienced. There are some really special things going on out there. When I respond to the beauty with my creativity, I'm generally satisfied with my results. I am on a pretty big hiatus from sharing new images, though, because I'm sure there will be a right time, and that time isn't now. Currently in my walk with creativity, I'm breaking away from the stills and dabbling in a pretty major way into the video side of things. The video and time-lapse photography I'm aiming to produce in the next year or two will hopefully speak volumes about the various intensities and intricacies of the wilderness..... In the meantime my still photography is waiting to be released when the time is right. Some of those experiences have been so personal and special - I'll have to keep some of the good ones for myself.
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Ohm
Special wilderness experiences ... the simplicity of a sunset enjoyed alone in the desert where there is pure silence for 100 miles in all directions.. the snowmelt surging creeks roaring through the deep green canyons... the first sunlight in a gentle forest ... these things have become so important... Nature melts my soul to a puddle of peaceful nothingness, where I can exist outside of pride, with the trees and rocks and water, who do it best. Photography drove me to the wilderness, and the wilderness has become my teacher, my home, and my friend. I guess if there was to be a set theme or goal to all of what I've done with a camera, it would be that I'd like to honor the experience and the place with my images. Point the focus to the landscape for what it is - an entity that deserves our utmost respect.
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A back alley of the Alvord desert
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