Photography 3 Project

© John Hughes 2003

DIGTAL PHOTOGRAPHY
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Many of the most important photographs made in the history of photography were made with simple cameras without sophisticated technical controls.  Edward Weston’s important photograph, Pepper #30, was made under a skylight with natural light – a manual view camera – slow speed film available at the time [1930’s] – and with an exposure of over 30 minutes.  The print of the 8x10 negative was made with a bare light bulb – no enlarger was involved.  It was very simply made, but remains one of the most important photographs ever made and it was critical in the invention of modernism in photography.

Henri Cartier-Bresson changed the history of photography again in the 1940’s with his “Decisive Moment” approach.  In an essay by the name for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1944, he wrote about his candid approach to photography, where the perfect moment to press the shutter button was when everything was correctly arranged in the frame and those moving in the scene were in exactly the right place with the correct gesture. 

Every great photographer has become familiar with their camera to the point where it became an extension of their body and mind.  A photographer wants to become familiar and comfortable with their own camera to the point that it is an extension of themselves to express their ideas and point of view, not a technical problem to overcome every time they make a photograph.  This is your goal in order to make fluid and lucid expressions of what you see and experience and want to share with others.

Personal style can emerge quickly in photography.  Many great photographers make pictures in very natural ways, where you do not feel the presence of the photographer in their making or your viewing the photographs.  Many great photographs come easily and seem like no special effort was made, but this is a trick by great photographers.  They often have so much practice or intuitive and instinctive skills that their pictures look simple in the making.  Are there “lucky photographs?”  Occasionally this may be true, but the good photographers always make most of the “lucky photographs.”   Luck is when skill and opportunity come together.

Where and when to make photographs

When you find a good place to take photographs, return to it again and again to shoot!
Your photographs will get better each time as you learn about the place/space and learn what time is best to make photographs [based on light and activities].

Some of the best photo opportunities are right in front of you – where you live or where you walk everyday.  Always have your camera and be ready to use it – the special moments you encounter are random, so have your camera ready to shoot.  Do not take the approach of “Oh, I will see that again” or “I will come back here” because it will never be the same the next time.  It might be better or it might not be better next time, but it will not be the same.  Each moment is an instant.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

You need to shoot often – that is, put time aside regularly to be concentrating on making photographs.  It is not often that you make a great photograph.  As French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson said, “You must milk the cow a lot to get much milk to make a little cheese from.  But you mustn’t overshoot.  It is like overeating.  If you keeping pressing the shutter, and arming the camera and you make too many frames, well – the good photograph may have been somewhere in between there.  It’s a moment.  It’s an instinct.  And it is a question of millimeters, any good photograph.  You take it from there and it is all right, but you move the camera a fraction of an inch and it is just right.  It is often very small moves you need to make.  Photography takes patience, to go on, and on, and on.”  Bresson had a life-long career of making “lucky photographs” until he died in August 2004 at age 95

EVERYONE CAN LEARN TO MAKE
GOOD PHOTOGRAPHS WITH
PATIENCE, PRACTICE AND EFFORT

Photography is art – if made in a considered, expressive and artful way.  As is true with all art, the creation of fine art requires patience, practice and effort.  Many beginning photographers [or non-photographers] think that photography is easy, that the machine does the work.  After taking several hundred photographs without success, many beginning photographers give up.  To prevent this from happening to you use patience and a good work ethic to shoot lots of photographs different ways, until your efforts pay off.  The time spent shooting and patience to wait for the best moment and shooting conditions significantly will affect your success.

With a digital camera and digital storage media, making photographs does not cost anything.  Shoot often, try different compositions, get closer and shoot plenty of shots of good situations so that you have a choice between several good ones later.  Spend considerable time looking through the camera as you move it around to discover interesting views and compositions.  Do not just point and shoot, although occasionally that is a technique to utilize, but most often it results in an unconsidered ordinary snapshot view.

Many professional photographers that shoot with a film camera shoot many rolls of film a day.  They may shoot the same thing at different exposures, many different angles, different distances, and different compositions.  They review the contact sheets or slides later and do a final edit of the best frames.  With digital you can instantly view the photo, but do not let that stop you from trying different exposures, angles, distances and compositions.  Keep pushing each particular photo idea to get the most dynamic and unusual view.  DO NOT JUST TAKE SNAPSHOTS.

Backup accessories

Always have a backup battery ready and charged.  Also a second digital storage media should be carried with you so you can shoot more when your media fills up.  As required, you need to have your instruction book with you to refer to often to understand camera settings, camera functions and camera controls.

LIGHT--Most Important Tip
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Shoot in good light!!!!  Your natural inclination is to focus your attention on the subject in the photograph.  Next you might learn to consider the composition of the frame.  However most important is the quality of the light in the photograph.  You need to concentrate on the light and start to observe light in all situations you encounter.  The light you will observe in Renaissance paintings you view may awaken your senses to how important light is in image making.  By shooting on the better side of the street, or picking your shooting times more carefully, or seeing odd light at odd times you will shoot better looking photographs.  Light early in the day and later in the day is usually what professional photographers will choose to utilize, because the angle of the light is more acute and the light is generally ‘sharper.’  This light adds dimension and depth to your images because of shadows and texture.  The angle of the light at those times result in stronger texture, longer shadows, form rendered more distinctly and the color of the light being more interesting.  If the sun is high in the sky the light is usually less interesting. If the subject is backlit, should you move around to the other side?  Should you ask the subject to turn for you?  The golden hours of light during the last few hours of daylight are special for photography, especially in color.  The crispness of early morning light is also often magical in photographs.  Shooting exclusively in the middle of the day will reveal the least interesting light in your photos.  However light can become magical at any time, depending on reflectivity, atmospheric conditions, or clarity of the day.  Try to observe light quality all the time.  The more you take advantage of good light, the better you photographs will be.  Shooting at sunrise is especially magical.  I may give extra credit to those whose shoot often at sunrise – even though it will be unnecessary because those students will have the better portfolios at the end for having done that.

Window light & “Rembrandt lighting”

Window light can be a great way to photograph a subject or portrait.  It will usually be soft and diffused and brighter near the source than the background of the setting.  Light coming through a sheer translucent drape will be soft and very diffused.   You can easily mimic “Rembrandt lighting” this way with the window at a 45 degree angle to the subject to light one side of the face and letting light spill past the nose to create a triangle of light under the eye farther from the window.  This lighting describes the face and the structure of the bones vividly and can surely be observed in numerous Renaissance paintings you will be looking at as well as many of Rembrandt’s portraits and self-portraits.

The eyes

Most portraits have what is called a ‘catch light’ revealed in the subject’seyes.  This is a reflection of the light source that is illuminating the face – a window, the sky, or an artificial light.  You want to focus on the catch light in the eye closer to you when making a photographic portrait.

Reflectors and reflecting light

You can add natural light to a subject with a reflector.  Many photographers use a reflector often to ‘kick’ light onto the subject to reveal more shadow detail and to ‘open up’ the shadow a bit.  Watch for natural reflectors like windows, a light colored wall that ‘kicks’ interesting light onto the shadow side of the street, or even something as subtle as sun reflecting off a shiny brass doorbell plate and reflecting the golden light onto a face.  You can obtain a piece of white mount board for this purpose or a disk reflector made commercially [and available at Fontani Foto] is ideal.

Light direction

It is often useful to know where east, south, west & north directions are, since north light is always diffused [the sun is never there], east light is sunrise, south light is all through the day and West light is late afternoon and sunset.  Painters and photographers often prefer a studio with windows or skylight facing north, since it never gets hard direct sunlight, but always-soft diffused light reflected off the north sky like a giant reflector.

Great photos often require extraordinary effort

Great photos often require extraordinary effort like getting up before sunrise to shoot “quiet Florence” or waiting for a longer time at a spot you think is good for the right thing to come along into the composition or waiting for the light to change.  Most often it is hard to shoot in a group – you need to go out on your own or with one other photographer to be able to lurk and linger when necessary.

Utilize all light possibilities

When shooting conditions seem poor it is possible to utilize the conditions to your advantage.  A downpour of rain can leave everything glistening when it stops or puddles of rainwater can reveal terrific reflections.  Wind might make it hard to make sharp close-up photos of blowing things, but the blur may be interesting.  Atmospheric conditions like mist and fog can be good photo ops, especially as the sun first break through them.  A passing storm might result in beautiful sunlight emerging with a dark ominous sky still receding in the background near the edge of the storm.  Dark subdued light has a different mood than bright sunlight so try all kinds of light for shooting.

CAMERA SETTINGS
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Monitor, viewfinder and technical readouts

It is extremely important that you understand the information read outs revealed on your monitor screen, in your viewfinder [if any], or elsewhere on your digital camera.  There will be icons that correspond to different functions and indicate what the functions are set at presently.  They are usually:
Amount of exposures left and/or taken
The metering mode
The shutter speed
The aperture setting
The image quality setting
The flash setting
Possibly the ISO setting

Words may also be shown that refer to the functions of the buttons off the LCD next to the words, such as monitor, menu, or playback.

It is important that you examine your camera closely, refer to your instruction book and run through all the settings to understand what they are, what they control and how to set them.

At the same time you should come up with your own standard set of settings to always have dialed in for everyday shooting, changing to other settings if you need to adjust for the light intensity, use of flash, image quality, etc.

This can seem complicated on electronic digital cameras, but if you go over it a number of times while practicing it with the camera it will all eventually make sense and enable you to ensure you can set the camera for normal circumstances and eventually start to adjust settings for special circumstances.

Camera Menu

Your camera menu can be equally confusing at first glance.  However if you slowly go through all the menu items and camera functions adjustable through the menu items, you can come to understand what the menu items mean and how you want each of them set.

Standard menu items will be camera setup, date and time, sequence of file numbers, user settings, folders, auto focus, ISO [maybe], auto focus illumination, auto exposure lock, white balance, and other items.  The more sophisticated the camera the more likely it is that your menu has more items to choose from for different functions.

Again, you need to slowly and carefully go through your camera menu and while consulting with your instruction book, start to understand what each menu item means and what functions of the camera they control.

At a minimum, you need to set your date and time accurately and set your sequential numbering at continuous for your picture file numbering system.   File numbering is important, because you should have unique numbers on each photo you take so that they are easily identified uniquely for archiving purposes.  If sequential numbering is not set properly, each time you insert a media storage disk into your camera it will start numbering your pictures over again starting with 0001 or something similar.  This means if you shoot on the same media storage card 20 times you will end up with 20 files numbers of 0001 and 0002 etc.  This can make archiving the pictures difficult and lead to copying over photos you meant to save as you download the card time and time again.  Your camera may number 0001 to 9999 before starting over again, enabling you to have 9,999 unique file numbers to your pictures before it starts over.  You will prefer continuous numbering to make your archiving easier to deal with. 

Setting your camera

The more you alter the settings on your camera, the more the possibility is that you may shoot what could have been a good photograph at the wrong settings.  The most common settings that can ruin photographs if not set appropriately are exposure compensation, white balance, ISO setting and image size.  Learn the settings you need to use most often and check the camera before you start shooting to make sure your settings are correct.

Caution - I recommend you do not let others handle or “play” with your camera, as they will inevitably change crucial settings that you may not know have been altered that will negatively effect your photos or make it difficulty to unset.

ISO setting

You get the best picture quality [sharpness and clarity] by using the lowest ISO setting your camera offers [i.e. IS0 100].  Higher ISO settings are better in lower light so you do not shake the camera, but higher setting such as ISO 400, 800,1600 have considerably more “digital noise.”  Digital noise is similar to excessive grain in film photography.  A photograph made at the lower ISO settings has a higher quality and smoother appearance.

Image resolution

Image resolution is important.  By reducing image res to be able to store more photographs on you storage media, you lose the ability to crop or make a larger print later.  Leave your camera resolution or image quality set to fine for all serious shooting.
You may want to use medium for snapshots that you will never print larger than 4x6 or that you will never be able to crop.

Caution – Many digital cameras let you change the brightness of the LCD viewing screen used to view you pictures.  Changing brightness level or viewing the screen in bright light can cause you to misread your picture exposures.

Focal Length

A normal lens is 50mm focal length.  If you look through a camera lens that is 50mm or a zoom set at 50mm the scale of the subject and scene is the same as when you look at it directly with you eyes.  A wide-angle takes in more angle of vision – a 24mm, 28mm or 35mm are wide-angle lenses. Wide-angle images give the feeling of exaggerated space. Telephoto lens settings magnify the image [move it closer to you] and also flatten the image.  Telephoto lenses are good for isolating subject matter in the frame and for portraits.

Lenses are referred to as “fast” or “slow” depending on what their widest lens opening [aperture] is.  For instance, an f2 or f2.8 lens is a “fast” lens compared to a lens that opens to f5.6 [“slow lens”] at its widest aperture.  Faster lenses are better for low light shooting because they enable you to use a quicker shutter speed so you do not shake the camera.  Fast lenses or digital cameras with faster lenses are more expensive and generally the lenses or cameras are much larger and heavier.

Zoom lenses and optical zoom vs. digital zoom settings

Zoom lens cameras have an x-rating for the lenses, like 3x or 8x.  This means the lens operates at a minimum focal length to 3 or 8 times that focal length by using the button that zooms the lens back and forth.  For instance, a Nikon Coolpix 5700 has a 4x zoom, which means the longest focal length is 4 times greater than the shortest focal length.  Digital cameras may have an optical zoom range with an additional digital zoom range.  Optical zoom settings use the glass of the lenses while digital zoom only magnifies the center of the image sensor digitally.  Optical zoom settings should be used exclusively because digital zoom settings result in far inferior image quality pictures.

Establishing Focus

Focusing is critical.  Many digital cameras have selective auto-focus points that allow you to focus on off-center subjects.  Depending on your camera, selectable auto-focus points may not work with all metering modes [spot or center weighted] and may default to average metering.  Check your instruction book to determine this.

Focus lock

Most digital cameras allow you to point to where you want to focus [and even meter] and then point elsewhere while holding the shutter release button down half-way to keep the focus locked.  This is necessary to do to focus and then point the camera for a better composition.  Otherwise, you may instinctively just always leave the subject and focus area in the center of the frame – making an ordinary snapshot rather than a sophisticated composition.

Focus confirmation

Many cameras may have an indication on the LCD screen or elsewhere that confirms when the image is sharply focused.  It is a useful tool if you have it to ensure that your picture will be sharp.

Focus area selection

Select the area in the picture you want to establish the most critical focus on and establish focus on that point.  For close-ups it is even more important.  With a portrait you usually want to focus on the eye closer to the camera.  After selecting the focus point, you simply re-compose and take the picture.

LIGHT METER

Light meters on your cameras can often be set several different ways to make a photograph.  These settings are important.  A spot meter setting will read one particular area of the photo correctly [good for when the significant light is in one particular area].  A center-weighted meter will measure light correctly in a selected larger, but still selective area of the photo [good for a person in strong backlighting – sky background or in front of a window or doorway].  An average meter setting – or matrix metering – is an average of many different spots of the frame for an average reading [this is the best setting for everyday shooting unless the lighting is extreme or unusual].  These options need to understood through reviewing them in your instruction book, as they will vary from camera to camera.

When shooting with a digital camera you usually want to use exposure settings to properly expose for the highlight area of a scene.

Priority Modes for Exposure

You may want to start with the A [automatic setting] until you are comfortable enough in shooting photographs with your camera to switch to other modes like manual.  As you progress, other modes may give you more control over how the photograph will be made to appear, so you are encouraged to learn the different modes of your camera by reading and re-reading your camera instruction book for a complete understanding of all your camera functions and capabilities.

Priority modes for shooting offer easy methods to shoot certain ways.  Shutter-priority lets you select the shutter speed and the camera automatically sets the aperture.  Aperture-priority lets you select the lens opening setting and the camera selects the proper shutter speed.  Manual mode allows you to set both shutter speed and aperture settings manually, using the light meter scale to determine correct exposure.

Exposure compensation

Using an exposure-compensation feature is the easy way to modify the built-in metering system to get the exposure you want. You have a control setting on your camera to compensate for the exposure your meter is giving you.  You can usually go + 1 or +2 to brighten the image or –1 or –2 darken the image.  Be sure to reset the exposure compensation back to 0 when you are done. 

Silhouette

Backlighting is when the light is much stronger in the background than on the subject in the foreground.  You can create a silhouette by metering off the bright background, using exposure lock or manual metering, and then reposition the camera to compose the image.
By exposing the bright background correctly the backlight subject or figure will appear as a silhouette [black cut form] against the normally exposed background.  Getting this situation exposed as you want it can be challenging, so you should bracket using exposure compensation [+/-] to see what different exposures yield as a photograph.  You also need to experiment with or practice this technique considerably to master it.

White Balance

White balance is a convenient way to adjust your camera for accurate color under different lighting situations.  On A [automatic] program your camera may try to figure out the correct white balance – but it will not always get it right.  White balance settings are different selections for sunlight, overcast, incandescent light, tungsten [light bulbs], fluorescent lighting, or flash.

Histogram

A useful feature on some, but not all digital cameras, is the histogram.  It is a graphical chart that shows the brightness levels of an image ranging from pure black on the left to pure white on the right in 256 steps.  The vertical scale shows how many pixels are found in the image at each brightness level.

Using the histogram you can read the exposure of a photo.  The more pixels to the right, the more bright the image is.  The more to the left, the darker the image will be.

There is no really correct histogram chart you are trying to achieve when making a particular photograph, because some images are made up of predominantly light values and some can be mostly dark values.  You do want to avoid exposures that have too many blown out highlights in the bright areas, as they are impossible to correct even later in PhotoShop image editing software.  If your display images flashes in the bright areas of your image after you take the photo and view it, it usually is indicating areas that are without detail in your highlights.  You may need to try the exposure compensation correction to do another picture with –1 or –2 exposure compensation value added.
REMEMBER TO RETURN YOUR EXPOSURE COMPENSATION SETTING TO ZERO WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED.

The histogram chart cannot be dialed in to make accurate exposures all the time, but it is a good reference to use from time to time.

shooting
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SHUTTER SPEED

Shutter speed is the amount of time the image is exposed for. Using different shutter speed settings can reveal motion or conversely freeze movement depending on the setting.  You need to use a fast enough shutter speed to make a photo without shaking the camera [i.e. 1/60 or 1/125].  Slower speeds [1/15 or 1/30] might be possible if you are really careful and steady].  Much slower speeds [1 second to 1/8] require a tripod or putting the camera on a solid surface and pressing the shutter button carefully or using the self-timer to fire the camera without touching it.

Show motion by using a slow shutter speed.  Choosing too slow a shutter speed might yield too much blur; one that is too fast might eliminate the sense of movement. With a little experimentation, you can learn which shutter speed settings will show what kind of motion.  Using a slow enough shutter speed may be difficult in bright light even you set the camera at the lowest ISO, since brighter light usually requires higher [faster] shutter speeds [i.e. 250 or 500].

Freeze motion by selecting a faster shutter speed [i.e. 250th or 500th of a second].

Panning

Panning is when you use a slow shutter speed and pan the camera at the same speed as the subject and make the exposure as you continue to move the camera.  Getting the right shutter speed for panning requires considerable experimentation.  It depends on the speed of the subject that is moving and how close it is to you.  You need to consider the background.  This requires some skill acquired from practice.

Shutter lag

Most digital cameras have a lag time between when you press the shutter release button and when the exposure is made.  You will need to experiment with firing your camera to get a feeling for the lag time if you want to attempt “decisive moment” or candid type photographs where the subjects are moving through the frame.  For stationary subjects this is not a factor.

Avoid Camera Movement

When shooting in low light your shutter speed will necessarily be longer so often it is easy to shake the camera while pressing the shutter release button.  The same is true for very close-up or macro photos – the camera is focusing so close it is easier to notice camera movement in the image.  Use a tripod, the self-timer or place the camera on a solid surface [and use self-timer] to get sharper photos in these situations.  Practice lightly pressing the shutter release button to minimize vibration and the potential of shaking the camera during the exposure.  Camera movement shows up as blur in a photograph making the picture look less sharp.

APERTURE [lens opening]

Aperture setting [lens opening] controls the amount of light that exposes on the camera sensor.  Aperture setting controls the depth of field in the photo.  Depth of field is the area in the picture from the foreground to the background that is in sharp focus.  Smaller lens openings [f/16 and f/22] keep more of the area in the photo sharply focused.  Larger lens openings [f2.8 and f/4] result in selective focus, with the area that was focused on being perfectly sharp, but the foreground and background looking soft [out of focus].

Depth of Field

Depth of field is the area in your photograph that is in sharp focus.  It is controlled by the aperture setting [lens opening], distance from the subject and the focal length of the lens or focal length lens setting on a zoom lens.  The smaller the aperture the more depth of field you get [f2.8 or f4 gives little depth of field while f16 or f22 yields greater depth of field].  A lens that is a longer focal length telephoto [100mm, 200mm] will yield less depth of field while a wide-angle [28mm] will yield more depth of field.  When you shoot very close [inches to a few feet] to the subject you will get shallow depth of field versus shooting a landscape focused at 30 feet away or more where more of the area in the resulting photo will appear to be sharp.

Because the image sensor in compact digital cameras is so small it is difficult to control depth of field – these ‘point and shoot’ cameras always result in photos with great depth of field.  This is good in most photographs.  Digital single lens reflex cameras with interchangeable lenses utilize depth of field like regular film cameras, where it is easier to make selective focus images.

When doing a portrait, use a longer telephoto lens setting to get the face sharp and the background [or others in the background] to be softer.  The telephoto lens yields less depth of field.

COMPOSITION

Your camera either makes an image that is 3x4 or 3x4.5 inches in proportion.
It is a rectangular image and depending on your camera it is one of these formats, the second being a little longer in length and corresponding to 35mm film format. 

Obviously, you photographs can either be made as a horizontal image or a vertical image.  Experiment with both ways of making photographs.

Do not center the subject.  Occasionally centering the subject does make a solidly grounded image that is interesting, but centering the face from too far away is the quintessential snapshot, and we want more from our photographs than casual unconsidered point and shoot pictures.  You should strive to make considered compositions each time you make a photograph.

Consider the rule of thirds as a simple way to start making more sophisticated compositions.  If you divide your viewfinder into thirds, both horizontally and vertically, and you place subjects on those lines [like figures, horizon line, faces] you will be creating a photograph were the viewer will be more engaged in moving their eyes around the picture frame.  It creates more movement in the picture viewing experience.  If you have juxtaposition of 2 or more things at these points your photograph will be a more interesting and engaging visual experience.  This works both in the horizontal and vertical formats.

Go to extremes

Extreme angles or extreme vantage points often yield the most “uncommon” views and picture experiences.  Get TOO CLOSE.  Shooting from ground level [lie on your stomach] or from extremely high up is usually more interesting views because they are unusual.  Standing on something or putting the camera near the ground is an easy way to explore different and uncommon vantage points.

Edges
Experiment with placing subject matter or people on the edge of your composition. Use the focus/exposure lock to lock on the subject and then move the subject to the edge while keeping the focus/exposure locked [holding the button down].

Make photographs with dimension

Make photographs with a strong relationship of foreground, middle ground and background.  To do this, frame the photo with a foreground coming right up to the camera [even if it is out of focus] with a subject in the middle-ground and with a background behind it.  A photo with strong FG/MG/BG has a stronger feeling of dimension – as opposed to a photo of “just the subject.”

Control your background

Very often beginning photographers do not notice the entire frame of the image while they are making photographs.  This might result in unwanted and distracting objects in the background like wires, utility poles, cars, other people, etc.  When you frame a photograph you need to concentrate on observing the entire frame – the edges, the background, how close you are, and what the composition looks like.  Moving slightly side to side might make a much better composition or eliminate unwanted distractions from the background.  Kneeling down is often a good way to see the scene differently, or getting up higher may eliminate unwanted things in the background like wires, too much sky or ceilings.  You need to be actively moving around while looking through the camera for better views or more distinctive angles.  Some photographers have described their approach to making hand held camera pictures as a very physical activity.  Sometimes moving the camera only inches or less yields the better view.  You need to practice by “looking” through the camera a lot while moving it before pressing the shutter release button.

Isolate the subject

Keep the composition simple by isolating a subject against a less complicated background.  Use a telephoto lens to bring the subject forward and blur the background.

Formal elements and abstraction

Shoot abstract images.  An abstract photograph is a picture that relies purely on the formal elements of the image – light & dark [chiaroscuro], line, texture, form, color, and composition.  Photographer Aaron Siskind is one of the most revered abstract photographers whose most important work was made in the1940’s and 50’s in black and white.  Andres Serrano’s images of his own body fluids from the 1990’s rely visually on abstraction for their beauty even though he titles them specifically to inform the viewer about what they are looking at.  With abstract photography, the subject has no intrinsic importance in the visual image, but rather it is the rendition of the pure image that exalts the senses and intellect.  The image is appreciated for the expression through the color and formal issues.  Like distinctions between wines, appreciation of abstraction is usually an acquired taste from experience, study and reflection.

Patterns and shapes

Shoot for patterns and shapes in the photograph.  As a photographer you can use many elements to draw attention to your pictures.  Patterns and shapes are often the strongest elements and you can notice them everywhere after you develop a skill for recognizing them.  Patterns are formed by repetition of objects, lines, shapes or colors.  In our busy and cluttered environments, patterns and shapes can be pulled out of context to make very strong visual statements.  Many photos utilize strong elements that are not recognizable.  Good photographs can utilize elements of abstraction juxtaposed with elements of representation [figures, architecture, recognizable elements].

COLOR & THE FORMAL ELEMENTS

A photograph can be about more than just the subject – and should be.  It should be about light, composition, form, texture, surface, line and color.  You can be a colorist photographer where you do a series of photographs ‘about yellow.’  Blue is a cool color and influences how a viewer experiences the image.  Color can be one of the most powerful elements in a picture.  Red is easily noticed, even if it is in only a small part of the picture.  There is a cliché saying in color photography – “If you cannot make it good, make it red.”  Saturated bold colors can be dramatic.  Subdued earth colors or pastels are more subtle and soothing.  Monochromatic color images with almost no color can be interesting.  Different light will change how colors appear.  The late afternoon golden light adds warmth to everything.  Some colors are more appealing than others.  Often color can be distracting in a photograph that might have been successful in black & white.  Colors clashing or loud colors can disturb an otherwise interesting scene making it too busy to the eye.

Color needs to be considered carefully and the time of day to shoot a scene must be considered also.  You may need to go back to something at different times and different days to make the most successful image of it, depending on light, brightness and angle of the light. 

FLASH – ELECTRONIC STROBE
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Built-In Flash

Most digital cameras have a built in flash that can be utilized in low light.  These can be useful for ‘snapshots,’ but rarely work well to make a decent photograph otherwise.  You need to learn immediately how to turn off the flash, so it does not automatically go off unintended in low light condition.  The built-in flash can occasionally work better very close to the subject, but is basically ineffective at medium distances and almost useless at farther conditions.  Photographing the Pope [or Bono] in a stadium with a flash has no potential at all.  The light from the flash simply is not strong enough to travel that distance to illuminate either of them.  Using the built-in flash at medium distances will often make the photo of the person that looks like the “deer in the headlights’ picture. 

Fill-flash mode

Some more sophisticated digital cameras might have a fill-flash mode, and you might experiment with that to see if it has potential.  Fill-flash mode adds light to the foreground or person while also leaving the shutter open long enough to make the available light exposure of the rest of the scene accurately rendered.  Mixing the flash with daylight or available light is a technique many serious photographers utilize to make striking photographs.  Look at your instruction book to see if you have a fill-flash option.  Utilizing fill flash is a great way to reveal more detail in a very sharp way.  It works especially well with backlit situations.

Red eye

The unwanted red eye appears when the flash is used straight on a person’s face.  It is a reflection of the subject’s retina to the camera.  Your camera may have a red eye reduction setting, so learn it if you want to avoid red eye in your pictures of people and animals with a built-in flash. An off camera flash does not create red eye.

Turn the flash off

It is very important that you can learn to turn off your built-in flash manually so it does not interfere with you making ‘available light’ pictures.  You also want to be able to turn it off when photographing in any situations where flash photography is prohibited.  You need to know how to turn off the flash off quickly and without consultation with me to be able to do so in churches or other locations where flash photography is strictly prohibited.

WORKING WITH AN IMAGE EDITING PROGRAM
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Working with JPEG files

Opening and closing a jpeg does not make it deteriorate, but making ANY changes and re-saving the file does.  Always start by copying the file to work on and leave the original unaltered so that you always have the original to go back to if you need it.

Each time you save a jpeg file after working on it, you image degrades.  You should save EVERY image you work on in an editing program [i.e. PhotoShop] as a TIFF image so that it does not degrade.

RAW image files are the best image format to use if you want the best image quality.  However, these files are substantially larger than jpeg files – 5 times larger in file size and you would need to use the special camera manufacturer software or PhotoShop RAW software to open these files.  Photos made in RAW file format have fewer of the camera settings imposed upon them [white balance, exposure compensation, histogram, etc so you can utilize those corrections later.  RAW files are slower to view, require proprietary conversion technology to open, are larger file size and have a slightly wider bit range.

 It is impractical to shoot every photo this way [RAW] because the files are so large, so we will shoot jpeg file format photographs.

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APPROXIMATE IMAGE FILE SIZES – example - Nikon Coolpix 5700:
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If you edit your photographs with an image editing software program such as PhotoShop you get more digital noise [areas with less quality] when you perform steps such as increasing contrast, increasing image size, and sharpening.   These corrections are often necessary, but to go to far with saturation, contrast, brightness/darkness, etc. you risk creating a file that will show flaws when printed.

Printing Digital Photo Files
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The largest print size you can make with your digital camera depends on the pixel size of your camera and your tolerance for image degradation depending on if the size exceeds the limits of the file.  Generally, fine print results can be achieved from cameras rated at mega pixel [millions of pixels] sizes as follows:

Print Size that will still be excellent quality
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Thumbnail images

A thumbnail image is a reduced resolution and sized image utilized for archiving and review purposes.  They are similar to contact sheet/proof sheet images in film photography – small representations you can use to edit and look for specific pictures with.  Thumbnails are used for printing out contact sheets, viewing on a computer screen, displaying on web pages, or using in archiving images on CD and DVD media.

Archiving your digital files

You need establish an archive for your digital photographs.  They can be stored on the hard drive of your computer, an external drive, a CD or DVD disk, or on a server if you have storage space and access to one.  Since you have no original negative or slide to put in a box or file, you need to be careful to store your digital files correctly and to back up your archive regularly in case the hard drive of your computer is damaged making it  unable to retrieve your files.  Also, a CD or DVD can be scratched or deteriorate or be defective, so multiple backups of your archive are necessary.

If you are using CDs or DVDs it may even be recommendable to make two copies, with the second copy being a different brand and batch of media, guarding against a defective product.  In our class we will be storing image files on hard drives and making two copies each also on CD or DVD disks. 

Storing your archive

Photographers often store their archive of digital photographs with one set in one location [home, office or studio] and a second set in a different location.  In the case of a catastrophic event [computer hard drive quitting, fire, theft, pipes bursting, etc] you want to have a backup archive to retrieve and utilize.

CAPTURING LIGHT AND IDEAS

Digital photography is all about capturing light on the image sensor in the camera.  The better the light is that you capture, the better the image will be rendered.  Light can change moment to moment.  Making great pictures takes patience.  Very great light moments can be rare in a day, so utilize it when you see it and stay with it until you get the image you want. 

Changing weather conditions often reveal very special light.  Clouds can filter light in special ways to yield interesting light.  Even upper atmosphere moisture that is not reaching the ground as rain can diffuse light in magical ways.  It can happen any time so the serious photographers have their cameras with them all the time and are ready to take it out and shoot at any moment.  This is especially true when a photographer is actively engaged in a current project, such as each of you are with our “Photographing Another Culture: Italy”. 

Consider that you are on call all the time to photograph that special light, special subject or unusual encounter when you come upon it.  You need to be looking all the time and lingering when necessary. You want to observe and capture nuances of the Italian culture, mannerisms, gestures of people, the clothing [fashion] they wear, appearances of things, figures against a background, the light on the wall, the composition of figures in the Piazza, aspects about architecture, the awkwardness of adolescents, the quietness of early morning, to warmth of late day light, and all other things you encounter that are special.

Concentrating your observation and perception in this way leads to experiencing life more richly and deeply and for travel in different places and cultures it leads to a more enriching experience.  Above all, do not disrespect anyone or anything, and don’t disregard or take lightly the special experience and opportunities you have ahead of you on your term in Italy.  Use the opportunity to look outside yourself into the greater world around you.  You should be awestruck at numerous moments during your daily lives.  I especially utilize these “awestruck moments” as my special photo opportunities.  If moments like these comes together with special light and good composition that is when you make the best photographs.

Every photograph is more than just a likeness of the subject.  Photographer Diane Arbus wrote in the 1960’s, “No photograph looks exactly like what it is of.  It is either better or worse, but never the same.” 

Garry Winogrand when asked in 1971 why he made photographs replied, “I photograph to see what things look like photographed.”  

Photographs that ask questions
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Photographs that ask questions can be more interesting and engaging than photographs that give all the answers.  Make photographs that intentionally omit elements that would reveal entirely what is happening – or make a photo of just part of a subject to let the viewer imagine what the rest of the subject might look like.  You might photograph the shadow, not the object. 

This approach continues to be a major thrust in many recent post-modern photographic artist works such as those by Andres Serrano [“Piss Christ”] and Cindy Sherman’s [self-portraits] during the 1980’s and 90’s.  Currently artists such as Gregory Crewdson and Brazilian photographer Vik Muniz are pushing the boundaries of photographic expression to new places by making curious photographic works that challenge the viewer to question what is real and what is not in their work.

The Secret of Photography

Your pictures will be your own and they will be about you and your sensibilities.  It is unavoidable.  As Walker Evans wrote in his journal, “The secret of photography is that the camera takes on the character and personality of the handler.  The mind works on the machine.”

Digital Photography was used as a source
information included here.

 Martin Benjamin v. 28 March 2005