Shutter Sisters

Psssst…

By

010708_600.jpg

Pssst. Did I tell ya? Too afraid to fess up for what it implies for the presumed amazingness of future photos, which is no sure thing.

Santa brought mama a new SLR camera, a Canon Rebel XTi, to finally displace my point-and-shoot, the Kodak Pipsqueak 2000.

It’s a revelation, let me tell you. I can take pictures INDOORS! I have a lens that I can open up to 1.8. ONE. POINT. EIGHT. And the best part? It FOCUSES. I am pleased. I am thrilled. I am nose to the manual every night, determined to figure out how to get it to do what I hope it can do. Lots to learn, but learning’s no trouble when you’re lit up.

I know I’m all Story of Stuffed, but do me a favour and grant me one gizmo exemption.

This thing, she is some beaut.

The kidnapping

By

010708_600%5B1%5D.jpg

 

I overstate for dramatic value. Kidnapping wasn’t necessary, nor was Nova Scotian saltwater torture. Jeanette is a willing avalanche of photographic tricksiness, and a good thing too, because I’m fresh out of ski masks.

K: This shot is so evocative, almost like a painting. How much of it came alive in post-processing, and how much was just chance and light and voodoo?

J: This picture is definitely one that came alive in Photoshop. The final shot is representative of what my heart saw when I took the picture, but my camera does not have the ability to capture that.

I probably used additional adjustment layers/layer masks here to intensify the colours beyond my usual, more natural processing. I also used both the burn and sponge tools to bring out the layers of colours that I could see that night but that were not apparent in the original image.

If you look closely at areas of the sky, you would actually see that areas of this image are somewhat degraded by processing. In this case, the artifacts of the burn/sponge tools were not only acceptable to me, but desired, as I wanted this image to have a more surreal, almost painted look. Normally though, I would not take such a heavy hand with these tools, as the final image quality would suffer.

K: In captures like your shot of Evan, subjects’ eyes are watery, reflective pools. How do you capitalize on catchlights?

J: It’s all about the light, and training yourself to make the most of it by how you position both yourself and your subject. Practice. Take an agreeable subject (probably not a two year old!) and position them outside in open shade. Circle around them, watching the shape and position of the light reflecting in their eyes.

As far as post processing goes, if a catchlight isn’t there in your original capture, there’s not much you can do to create one that will look realistic. However, a catchlight can be enhanced and brought out by using the dodge tool in Photoshop. I use a soft brush set to about a third of the size of the eyes, and have the dodge tool set to midtones, and around 9-11%. Then I just lightly sweep the brush across the eyes, brightening the whites of the eyes slightly, bringing out the catchlights. This technique is one that can be easily overdone though—so have a light hand and make sure it still looks natural.

K: Can you share a few of your most admired photostreams, and tell us why they inspire you?

J: I’ll just pick a few quickly, but there are so many more…

My good friend Brenda — her style is fresh, fun and nostalgic. Can’t ever get enough of her work!

Tina Louise — her timeless, evocative portraits have made her one of my most admired photographers from the very beginning.

Jefra — She was the first photographer to teach me to think less and shoot more instinctively and her stream is a testament to this ‘blink’ style of shooting.

LaraJade — It’s hard to believe such edge-pushing, raw portraiture can come from one so young. Her work blows me away.

Stop the presses

By

123107_600.jpg

Ever have this happen?

In the space of five minutes in someone’s backyard another photographer captures the same subject you’ve captured a thousand times and you see the result and you think to yourself

HEY!  How did she… what the… but… but… but… how the heck…

When I saw this picture of my son as captured by the gorgeous and talented Jeanette LeBlanc (who also lives here), I had to recover my jaw off the floor with a paint scraper.

Instant invigoration. Mystified curiosity. The world will stop turning if I do not figure out HOW SHE DID THIS. 

As soon as she tells me, I’ll let you know. Jeanette has an incredible eye, yes, but what gets me is her processing prowess. I’ve got her tied up in my living room, as it happens, and will be employing Nova Scotian saltwater torture to extract her tricks and share them with you here in the coming days.*

(*All 100% true except for the kidnapping bit. But if she keeps taking photos like this one, I may well have to go to Arizona in my ski mask for that very purpose. In the meantime, I’ve dispatched my pretty-pretty-pleases over email, and I’ll keep you posted.)

Mastering the art of the rinky-tink-tink: part two

By

121707_600.jpg

I can’t claim any state of zen with my point-and-shoot camera. Most days, it takes near-herculean restraint to not chuck it off the end of the nearest wharf.

Taught my three-year-old several new curse words this weekend trying to capture him indoors — the NERVE! — where my press-down-halfway-and-hope-for-the-best pipsqueak stubbornly refuses to focus.

But a less-than-SLR camera need not be a creative crutch. Right? Right.

+++++++

I’d like to think that creativity is more than ‘have’ or ‘have-not’. To accept the “you’ve got it, and you don’t” myth would be utterly demoralizing on those days when I’m feeling photographically tapped — those days, I’d rather take a deep breath and say to myself It’s not just me being inherently dull, or hopelessly all-thumbs with a camera. I’m just forgetting something, getting lazy.

Here’s what helps me get my groove back — before pressing the shutter, an ABC of creative checkpoints:

ANGLE. Take risks. Lie on your belly. Crouch. Get up on a chair. Try a few without looking through the viewfinder, if an inventive angle requires it. Before turning away from a scene or subject, take at least two or three more unconventional angles or stances. When I start to get bored, chances are good it’s because I’ve spent too much time with the camera at eye-level.

BACKGROUND. Do a visual inventory of everything around your subject — passerby, traffic, signage, household clutter — and change your stance to minimize visual distractions. Do whatever it takes for a clean frame, because there’s some law of photography physics that assures the expression of a lifetime will occur in the one frame of a hundred that includes the potbellied guy standing stage left with the MASTER BAIT & TACKLE t-shirt.

COMPOSITION. At the last moment, look through the lens abstractly to consider the shapes, lines and balance formed by your subject and surroundings. Reduce what you see to blocks of colour and pattern, and respond to that stripped-down vision from the gut. This always leads me towards what often feels counter-intuitive, or quirkier than rule-of-thirds. While it may not always work, it’s always worth a try to tilt, shift and crop for more mindful composition — as opposed to everything is inside the frame and no one’s got a finger up the nose: check.

If you’re an enthusiastic enough photographer to be here, you know all this already. But it’s forgetting these basics that gets me stuck in snapshotty ruts — and blaming those ruts on my wharf-bound pipsqueak.

Which, in the absence of something better, doesn’t do any favours for me or the Kodak.

Mastering the art of the rinky-tink-tink: part one

By

121007_600

So, what is it that you do to your shots?  The sisters have asked. They’re kinda unique.

Well, I ahh… I umm… see, I move the clicker wheel to ‘BEACH SCENE’, and then I hold the button down halfway so it may (or may not) focus, and then…

Crap, I think, too late, rinky-tink-tinking on my toy piano in a roomful of Steinways. I’ve just outed myself. Next thing you know I’ll give away my ‘BRIGHT SNOW DAY’ trick.

My camera is a glorified point-and-shoot with an unchangeable junior lens, shot-in-the-dark focusing and a complete inability to operate properly in anything but blazing outdoor light. It’s all I know, photographically — probably like many of you, too — aside from the 25-year-old Pentax K-1000 I learned on.

So to those who have yet to graduate to the school of digital SLR I say:

1) You are not alone in your periodic camera-directed sado-masochistic abandonment fetish.

2) Between now and the receipt of lotto winnings, we may as well make the best of it.

++++++++

It’s frustrating to hit a ceiling — to have a creative drive that exceeds your equipment. I’ve got a baby, a toddler, a recent home renovation and a credit line with indigestion. Canon? Nikon? NTFL (add ‘Not Too F-ing Likely’ to your web-repertoire alongside LOL, SAHM and OMG).

Stretch what you’ve got. If you’ve still got the manual, read it (or go online to find it). Uncover every possible setting, adjustment and feature. Capture the same scene on auto, on preset modes, with flash, without flash, zoomed in, zoomed out. Let no button or switch go unexplored. If your camera offers manual settings, test them vigorously until you can visualize the effects of shutter speed, aperture and ISO.

Learn what works best in your most common shooting scenarios. For instance, when it’s bright out I use the ‘beach scene’ preset mode to overexpose, then tone down within Photoshop after I’ve downloaded the images. Something about that setting, combined with a contrast adjustment after-the-fact, makes blue skies pop.

Such a trick I’d never have learned if I hadn’t moved the clicker off the godforsaken AUTO and taken some risks in the interest of trial by error.

Sure, I flail, and curse, and salivate in front of store windows. Then I turn to my weary, battered Kodak, my pipsqueak, and say Okay kid, it’s just you and me. Let’s see what we can do.

To stalk souls like rare birds

By

120307_600%5B1%5D.jpg

In yoga, at the very beginning, you get centred. You stand still, hands at your sides. A soft voice reminds you to be attuned to your feet pressing onto smooth wood, to gravity, to breathing in and breathing out. This is awareness, that wholesome kind of physical hum that comes from time well spent.

This is the stuff that keeps you young, sane and grateful no matter what maelstrom surrounds you.

Photography generates the same hum, don’t you find?

With a camera in hand you walk softly. A camera demands consciousness, asks that you quiet yourself to note the light, beauty, pain, sorrow or joy in front of your lens in that moment.

For the record, count me among the pointers and shooters. The equipmentally challenged, the chronic cheapskates (by choice or by circumstance) who still want — regardless of technical proficiency — to take not just snapshots but interesting photographs that evoke feeling and memory and scent and wistfulness and hopes and dreams and all the rest.

There it is, how I love him, right there. The curve of his cheek, that smear of peanut butter. The way he looks at the sky, skeptical, when the clouds are fat with grey and weather. His boots, crunching on fresh snow. His hair, scruffing out from under the brim of his hat.

In yoga, at the very end, you return to the centre, lying still. A soft voice reminds you to be attuned to the effort you’ve made. And not to reflect on the perfection of movement, but on the trying of it.