Contact Sheet – Greenland 2013

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In reviewing my Greenland 2013 Contact Sheet it’s become even clearer to me that once you get certain kinds of successful shots the bar is raised for your future efforts. There are many good images here. But are they as good or better than other similar images I have, both from Greenland and from Antarctica? If not, why use them? (How many images do I really need? When do the new images draw attention away from old images – for better or for worse?) The answer to this depends on how I plan to use them. Since I have fewer images from Greenland than Antarctica (I’ve only visited it twice while I’ve visited Antarctica six times.), if I were assembling a body of work on Greenland, many of these would make the cut. Since I’m not currently planning on doing this, they have to work within the context of an Arctic/Antarctic project. That project has been on my mind for many years and is still in development. This set isn’t enough to bring it to fruition. For now, I suspect I’ll put most of them on hold possibly using a few for composites.
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3 Ways To iPhone HDR

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If you’d like to use HDR techniques for your mobile photographs you’ve got choices. Moving from simple and limited to more complex and robust, consider these three: first, the iPhone Camera app’s built in HDR function; second, the app Pro HDR; and third the app TrueHDR. I use all three, moving from one to another as the contrast of the scene increases.
The strength of HDR renderings and the artifacts they tend to produce can be varied to suit individual tastes. Regardless of whether you favor a light touch or a heavy hand, if you photograph, with or without a smart phone, sooner or later you’ll need HDR. It’s an essential technique …
Read more on The Huffington Post.
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Controlling Blur FX With Photoshop

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Photographers use blur (or bokeh) for a variety of reasons: to enhance space through depth of field; to add interesting visual artifacts; to simplify them; to change the quality of their expression. In the past, blur was controlled almost entirely through exposure; now it can also be controlled during post-processing, giving photographers an unprecedented array of options and ways to customize the look and feel of their images. Knowing what you can do, how far you can go, and when you can do it may change the way you shoot, one time, sometimes, or all the time.
There are many blur filters in Photoshop; Field Blur, Iris Blur, Tilt-Shift, Gaussian Blur, Lens Blur, Motion Blur, Radial Blur, Shape Blur, Smart Blur, Surface Blur (in order of appearance in the Filter: Blur drop down menu. The choices are extensive and it pays to familiarize yourself with your options by experimenting with them; you’ll find you have an extraordinary set of options that you can modify and combine creatively. If you only use the filters Gaussian Blur and Lens Blur, you’ll still have game-changing control at your fingertips, once you learn how to extend and modify them.
There are several important non-destructive strategies you can use to gain more control over all filter effects that will enable you to go further in your explorations and generate more sophisticated and compelling results Try one or all of the moves in this classic progression. Apply a filter to a duplicate layer and then modify its Opacity, Blend Mode, Blend If Sliders, and add a layer mask …
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Make A Plan- The Story Behind The Photograph

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Procession II, Cushing, Maine, 1999

It took a clear set of plans to make this image – Procession II. First, I had to know what kinds of images I wanted to make, prioritizing some over others. Second, I had to figure out the elements needed for a general composition. Third, I had to identify the specific final composition I wanted to make. Fourth, I had to identify locations where I could find these subjects in, travel to them, and make exposures at the right time. Fifth, I needed to photograph one stone from multiple angles in a light comparable to the overall scene. Sixth, I needed to plan the location, shape, and quality of the shadows that needed rendering during compositing. It all came together after a lot of planning. Without a plan, it would have involved a lot more trial and error, requiring more time and resources, and even then, it’s quite likely that I may never have arrived here without a clear vision of where I wanted to go and why I wanted to do it.

There are other kinds of planning that are needed to succeed both professionally and personally. Whether you’re engaged in your creative life professionally or simply as a vehicle for personal growth (an important distinction to make), I recommend you make a creative plan. If you do this, you too will find both your productivity and fulfillment will increase in a way that’s meaningful to you.

Set a mission (why you’re doing it), goals (what outcomes you want), projects (the big things you do)(set goals for 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, and end of life) and actions (the small steps you take to getting your projects done)(detail your 1 year next actions list) for your creative life.

Align your creative mission with your life’s mission. Most people need at least two missions: one for their life in general (which includes many things – health, family, finances, etc.) and one for a specific area, like their career or creative life, which may or may not be the same. Make sure that your missions share something in common – something other than yourself. The more you can align them, the more likely you are to achieve them, increase your productivity, and be more fulfilled.

A plan is a work in progress. The best plans are flexible and can be modified. If I don’t learn something new from a process, often something that shifts my perspective significantly enough to start doing something better than before, then I feel I haven’t truly excelled at what I’m doing. I expect to improve my plans. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t waste time making plans. It does mean I can waste time making plans that are too detailed or too speculative. In addition to learning when and how to plan, it’s also important to learn when to stop planning. But do plan. Planning not to plan is planning to fail. If you don’t make plans, life just happens and you may not make the time for the things that matter most. Make that time.

Questions
How can planning help strengthen your creative efforts?
At what stages and in how many ways can you encourage the evolution of those plans?
When is it better to abandon an old plan for a new one?
What are the positive and negative effects of having no plan at all?

Read more The Stories Behind The Photographs here.

24 Quotes By Photographer Ernst Haas

 
Here’s a selection of my favorite quotes by photographer Ernst Haas.
“With photography a new language has been created. Now for the first time it is possible to express reality by reality. We can look at an impression as long as we wish, we can delve into it and, so to speak, renew past experiences at will.” – Ernst Haas
“We can write the new chapters in a visual language whose prose and poetry will need no translation.” – Ernst Haas
“There are almost too many possibilities. Photography is in direct proportion with our time: multiple, faster, instant. Because it is so easy, it will be more difficult.” – Ernst Haas
“Living in a time of the increasing struggle of the mechanization of man, photography has become another example of this paradoxical problem of how to humanize, how to overcome a machine on which we are thoroughly dependent… the camera…” – Ernst Haas
“A few words about the question of whether photography is art or not: I never understood the question.” – Ernst Haas
“There are two kinds of photographers: those who compose pictures and those who take them. The former work in studios. For the latter, the studio is the world…. For them, the ordinary doesn’t exist: every thing in life is a source of nourishment.” – Ernst Haas
“The best pictures differentiate themselves by nuances…a tiny relationship – either a harmony or a disharmony – that creates a picture.” – Ernst Haas
“Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the ‘ah-ha’.” – Ernst Haas
“The most important lens you have is your legs.” – Ernst Haas
“The camera doesn’t make a bit of difference. All of them can record what you are seeing. But, you have to SEE.” – Ernst Haas
“The camera only facilitates the taking. The photographer must do the giving in order to transform and transcend ordinary reality. The problem is to transform without deforming. He must gain intensity in form and content by bringing a subjective order into an objective chaos.” – Ernst Haas
“You don’t take pictures; the good ones happen to you.” – Ernst Haas
“Learn by doing or even better unlearn by doing.” – Ernst Haas
“Don’t park… Arrival is the death of inspiration.” – Ernst Haas
“I am not interested in shooting new things – I am interested to see things new.” – Ernst Haas
“A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?” – Ernst Haas
“You become things, you become an atmosphere, and if you become it, which means you incorporate it within you, you can also give it back. You can put this feeling into a picture. A painter can do it. And a musician can do it and I think a photographer can do that too and that I would call the dreaming with open eyes.” – Ernst Haas
“There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.” – Ernst Haas
“I want to be remembered much more for a total vision than for a few perfect single pictures.” – Ernst Haas
“I prefer to be noticed some day, first for my ideas and second for my good eye…” – Ernst Haas
“Only a vision – that is what one must have.” – Ernst Haas
“Style has no formula, but it has a secret key. It is the extension of your personality. The summation of this indefinable net of your feeling, knowledge and experience.” – Ernst Haas
“In every artist there is poetry. In every human being there is the poetic element. We know, we feel, we believe.” – Ernst Haas
“Every work of art has its necessity; find out your very own. Ask yourself if you would do it if nobody would ever see it, if you would never be compensated for it, if nobody ever wanted it. If you come to a clear ‘yes’ in spite of it, then go ahead and don’t doubt it anymore.” – Ernst Haas
Read more photographer’s quotes here.
View photographer’s favorite quotes here.

Just Show Up – The Story Behind The Photograph

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Illumination XXVI, Jokulsarlon, Iceland, 2012

Motion picture director Wood Allen famously remarked, “80% of success is just showing up.” One wintry night at Iceland’s glacial lagoon (Jokulsarlon) it seemed like all I had to do was show up. The heavens danced with aurora borealis’ green fire for hours. Cascades of light appeared and disappeared dynamically illuminating the heavens with a light brighter than the stars and moon rising above the dormant volcano, icecap, glaciers, frozen lagoon, icebergs, black sand beaches, and crashing surf. The waves of radiation formed and reformed into shapes suggesting animals, birds, fish, flowers, and more. When there’s fire in the heavens every moment is a magic moment.
You’ll score if you just stay in the game and keep rolling the dice. The more you roll the dice the more likely it is that you’ll score. The longer you stay in the game, the more you get to try your luck. You’re lucky to be playing, and who knows you might just get luckier. Sometimes, all you have to do is be at the right place at the right time. Sometimes, it’s that simple.
Questions
How frequently do you show up?
Are you selective about the places you show up?
Are you selective about the times you show up?
Find out more about this image here.
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Read more The Stories Behind The Images here.