Project Planning

After my last post entitled "Creative Paths.....Creative Accidents", Mike Mundy made a comment wondering about the final output/usage of the images I was making for my flower project (to which I have given the tentative title "Botanical Blends"). I believe Mike intended that to be more than a simple question, and rightly so! In fact, I had been thinking about writing a post regarding planning the project.

As one thinks about a potential photographic project, I think they need to have in mind a number of important questions:

Who is the intended audience (although sometimes the audience grows, there should still be a primary target group who you think would be interested in the images...this target audience can be defined in either a very broad or narrow way)?

How do you primarily intend to reach that audience? This might be through a show (again, broadly or narrowly defined....from a gallery or museum show to hanging images at a local coffee shop or even at work or in your home),a magazine, book, pdf, or even as give away prints.

What other distribution methods might assist in reaching the target audience as well as making it easier for people that might not be in the primary target audience to see the work if they find it interesting. This might include any of the previously mentioned methods.

Answering these questions before delving into a project is important for some very practical reasons. Knowing the answers can help with some very basic issues such as:

Approximately how many images should one's goal for the project be? The number needed for a gallery showing might be different from that needed to author a magazine article.

What size prints are needed? Again, this will differ based on where the images are being displayed and how they are being used.

Are prints even needed at all? Perhaps not, if the final project is a magazine article, pdf, or your website.

Do the prints need to be framed, and, if so, how? The location of a display might well effect whether one chooses classic white matting or not, how ornate or simple the frame should be, or if some type of display without frames might be possible. In addition, this will give some idea as to the cost (and time) one can expect to be associated with framing.

What other non-photographic skills might be needed? These might include the software skills needed for making a pdf, laying out a book, or making promotional items, as well as framing skills, artist bookbinding skills, calligraphy etc.

How might the project be marketed or advertised?

These are just a few of the more prominent questions that immediately come to mind (and I am sure there are more that can be asked), but which I believe are important to contemplate before proceeding with a project.

Having written a bit more than I had expected, I think I will leave for my next post the specific answers to these questions as they relate to my "Botanical Blends" project.

Creative Paths....Creative Accidents

Just when I had been espousing previsualizing what you want an image to look like in Photoshop, I had a creative accident. As I previously posted, I have been playing with the idea of black and white flower photographs combined with various textures that have also been converted to black and white. After having made two such images, I was having trouble creating a third that resonated with me.

In trying to put together a third photo, I had already converted a flower photograph to black and white and was trying out different texture overlays. None seemed to 'work' well and so I was quickly trying out several more that I thought might go with the picture. I hadn't yet converted the texture I was working with to black and white and went to turn off the texture layer in Photoshop, as it didn't look like it would go well with the picture. Instead of clicking the icon to hide the texture layer I accidentally clicked on the icon to hide the black and white conversion layer targeting the flower.

Tulips I
Copyright Howard Grill

Whoa! The image immediately sprang to life in an unusual way (though the texture is a bit difficult to see in this small blog image). An accident, to be sure.....but that doesn't mean it should be ignored. Trying this effect with several different flower photos and various textures, I found it much easier to generate color combinations that worked....and they seemed to work better than the black and white ones.

So now I find myself revisiting my original concept. When I try to clarify in my mind why I want to make images like this, I think it is because most people don't stop and notice the beauty of flowers in images because we are inundated with them. By changing the standard form with which we are presented flower images I wanted to give viewers the impetus to stop and pay attention. I now find myself questioning whether that goal is better achieved with the toned black and white images or with the color images that I discovered by a happy accident.

Deciding which creative path to take at a fork in the road really makes you examine what it is that you are trying to accomplish. And trying to figure that out seems like a wise thing to do.

Robert Capa's "Falling Soldier"

Sure, the issue as to whether Robert Capa's famous photograph "Falling Soldier" was staged or not is an old one. But that doesn't make the controversy any less interesting.

Copyright Robert Capa / MagnumPhotos

Jose' Manuel Susperregui has some new information and theories that suggest the image was staged. We may never know the answer, but it certainly makes for interesting reading.

Here is the latest from the August 18, 2009 New York Times.

Mural

I have always enjoyed taking pictures of wall murals. However, I have typically photographed only isolated small abstract portions of the murals. Usually these images have no hint of what the mural was actually a painting of and consist only of abstract splotches of paint that denote only color, tone, and shape.

When I was in Montreal about a year ago I saw a mural that I found interesting. However, instead of the usual abstract 'blotches' that I typically would take, I found myself drawn to a portion of the mural that was much larger than usual for me. It reminded me of Alice In Wonderland. A year later I still like it, though I am not quite sure why!

"Alice In Wonderland"
Copyright Howard Grill

Flower Images

In my last post, entitled 'Too Many Choices', I mentioned that I was going to post a recent image that was a result of using experimentation to try to achieve a particular result that I already had in mind.

Rudbeckia I
Copyright Howard Grill

I have enjoyed taking flower photographs for quite some time, but have not printed too many of them as it is hard to do original work when it comes to this subject. For some time, I have been struggling to figure out how to portray the simple form and shape that I see in flowers in a way that I find satisfying.

After thinking about it for some time, I realized that I wanted to emphasize the flower's form and so thought about a pure black and white portrayal. But this didn't seem to instill in the images the sense of life that I was looking for. I decided to try toning the monochrome image, and this moved the final photograph closer to what I was looking for, but it still fell short. Ultimately, I tried experimenting with adding textures to the image and this seemed to bring out what I was looking for.

I am curious as to what people think about this appearance, as I am considering embarking on a series using this approach.

Too Many Choices?

Photographs can be post-processed in a multitude of ways. High-key, low-key, highly saturated, black and white, tinted, duotone, combined with underlying textures.....and the list goes on and on. While the multitude of options certainly opens vast creative opportunities, it can also be daunting. It can be easy to become 'frozen' with indecision, in which case having all those choices actually becomes a hindrance.

As I was thinking about this issue, I realized that there is no 'right way' or 'wrong way' for an image to look. A photo can be successfully processed in any of many different ways and still look great within each different style. The trick is to know how you want it to look and, once that is accomplished, to be able to get the image to that endpoint.

I am not at all advocating that one should give up experimenting with different techniques. Such experimentation will build experience in order to help know what the options are when considering how you want an image to look. In fact, in my next post I plan to show an image that I made using just such experimentation. But I used the experimentation to try to figure out how to get to an end result that I already had in mind. Overall, it just seems to me, that, in order to avoid becoming 'lost' when starting on a creative journey, it is helpful to have at least some idea of what the ultimate destination might be.

Shutterbug Image

OK, I know it's not exactly LensWork, but I do have to mention something when I get a photo published. The last few months I picked up a subscription to Shutterbug to read some of the software reviews etc and noticed their "Picture This!" monthly themed feature. So I sent in images for two months in a row since I happen to have had photos that fit the themes. The first theme for which I submitted an image was "Monochrome". I got my issue yesterday and there it was, along with the others they had chosen. Not the worlds biggest deal, but it is nice to see one's image in print!

Reaching Out
Copyright Howard Grill

Sand Dunes

It does seem like it has been a while since I posted any photographs. This image is one I have been working on from my series of rock abstracts. It was taken using cross-polarized strobe lighting with a 180mm macro plus 1.4x TC.

Sand Dunes I
Copyright Howard Grill