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| Fall leaves at Storm King |
"If you don't understand light, you shouldn't be a photographer because light is the main reason we take pictures. You can tell a story, but if you don't have the right light you can't draw the viewer in. It's just a flat picture."
-Frank Ockenfel
"Professional Photographer Magazine"
I've never been so happy to see Autumn arrive. Every day I look out the window I'm greeted by the brilliant fall color of leaves turning yellow and red, pink, orange and all the shades in between. I look up all the time and am stopped in my tracks. And the light changes in the Fall. Light in the Fall seems richer, a little melancholy, profound, nostalgic. I spent most of Sunday morning with a couple of trees in Marcus Garvey Park. I took roughly over three hundred pictures and then came home to edit and upload to flickr which is probably one of my favorite things to do. Listen to music, edit eat and compare notes with other photo enthusiasts.
I may have mentioned this before but I prefer to shoot using natural light only. I hate shooting under nasty yellow florescent lights or (UGH!) overhead lights and I rarely use flash unless I'm at an evening event that requires it. If I have to take pictures using interior light, I prefer studio track lights like the kind used to light art exhibitions in museums and galleries.
One of my pet peeves is when people use flash to take pictures in the day time. Just why? Natural light tells a very different story than flash, although flash in many instances when it's not too harsh can be just as effective at capturing a moment or a portrait effectively and with emotion. It's just not my favorite method. Flash makes me think of parties, paparazzi and I don't know...catching someone off guard. And those photos can be great as well. What I hate when using flash is when details are washed out by the harshness of the light. Even sunlight does this which is why there are specific times of day that I prefer to shoot in. It took me a while to discover that direct sunlight does not necessarily, a good picture make. Depending on the subject, the noon can kill details just as dead as General Electric. And even laymen who don't even care about pictures know this without really being conscious of it.
The light that draws the viewer into an image most often is one that reflects the complexity and layers of human emotion and unconscious inner goings on. It's what we feel but often cannot explain when we watch the sun rise and set, watch the seasons change, watch the day come and go. It's what poets write about and why artists paint why music exists. Light is one voice in the many conversations which attempt to communicate so much about the conditions of life. Brilliant studio lighting artists can replicate natural light so closely resemble natural light that the human heart understands the message and responds accordingly. This happens in the best of stage lighting sets for numerous theatrical plays or in studio portraits lit with soft boxes and back drops or processed in Photoshop.
I also like using candle light to light subjects, something which I have only experimented with extensively on one occasion last winter. I never understood how it was done before and I won't bore you here with technical stuff but the effect is just so quietly stunning. I think that as I evolve photographically I am beginning to notice certain definite themes that I am drawn to when I take pictures. I'm a fan of irony and the absurd, romance, haunted isolated feeling places, emptiness, space, fun, childlike themes, sensuality, nakedness, nature, food and color although I love black and white.
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| Kirk at Union Square |
People are my least favorite subjects to photograph for many reasons. People are so complex and self conscious and always there is this fight for control and that control prevents creativity from flowing. But I understand fully why people fight so desperately for this control being a person myself but as a photographer, I do best photograph people when they are unaware and so my favorite shots of people are usually candid. I'm not like my father or my fiancee who both have this innate gift for making people feel at ease. I'm a bit of a thief when it comes to getting good pictures of people. I envy people like
Peter Souza, the White House photographer whose job it is to spend so much time with such an incredible subject that perhaps they are able to tap into something which is not readily apparent within the first few weeks of shooting but which unfolds through time and journey and relationship. I would give anything to disappear into the wall of any room with the President where natural light is diffused by soft transperant curtains in the afternoon and I can just shoot frame after frame. Obama is ridiculously photogenic and clearly very at ease in front of a camera. The relationship between a photographer and a subject is a relationship much like any other. There has to be some give and take in order to produce anything of quality. Souza and Obama seem to have that relationship. You can see that in his
work.
I have yet to find that relationship with anyone besides my fiancee and my collection of
dolls. I had that relationship with a few friends in High School and in College but as the subject, not the photographer. As the daughter of a photographer, basically born in front of a camera, I've no real problem being the subject but I finally grew bored of that in my late twenties as did the rest of my body. I prefer the control that comes with being on the other end of the camera and in the last five years or so, I've preferred to take my own pictures of myself. I know my angles well, where to position my self in the light and stuff like that.In that respect I am comfortable with myself to some extent.
It's hard to find someone else who will let you just peer around in their soul with a camera and not get all fussy and nervous about it. LOL!! And that's what I'd like to do inevitably. I like pretty, beautiful and fun themes clearly. But those are not the themes I like to explore primarily with people.With people, there is so much more going on. I have taken pictures of people in the past that have revealed a lot of vulnerable, awkward and occasionally disturbing things, simply in their facial expressions. And I guess, depending on the goal of the project and the relationship to the subject, one has to be more clear and selective about what they're looking for when photographing people and portraits. At the moment, I'm not all that clear about what I'm looking for when I photograph people. But I like to be able to explore.
