Too Much - Part II

In my last post I wrote about the proliferation of software, imaging modalities/techniques, and marketing methods which are now available and the fact that, while they offer innumerable opportunities that we never had before, they also can draw significant amounts of time away from actually working on trying to perfect the art itself.

This has become even more apparent to me as I undertake the project of designing and constructing my own website. I clearly see the large amount of time that is taking. One of my problems has been that I have found that I was interested by and wanted to participate in everything contained in the long laundry list I wrote about in my last post. But, the fact is that you really can't do all these things....at least not well and not if you also have a 'day job'. So it has become apparent to me that one has to pick and choose. I probably am still trying to do too much, but have decided that in order to try to excel at some things others must go.

So how does one approach all this? Well, I am sure there is no universal answer to that question since, as artists, we all have different interests, aptitudes, and abilities. While one photographer might be able to write HTML and use CSS in their sleep, another might find that to be a big yawn and not have the desire to learn it at all. The same goes for learning the other software I mentioned in the list.

I can, however, talk about how I approached the issue and what conclusions I came to. These conclusions, of course, only apply to me....but perhaps the thought process might be useful to others.

I started by asking myself several types of questions:

What do I like doing?
What would I like to learn to do/use?
What items from the list are likely to be most useful in developing an audience?
What have I done already that seems to be generating some success?
What have I done already that does not seem to be generating much interest or success?
When looking at the potential benefits of each item on the list, how much time is going to have to be invested to reap those benefits?
Which items, when I consider them, get me excited and interested? Which don't?

In a perfect world we would learn to excel at all the listed items, but, as we know, the world is far from perfect.

So how did I approach the list? First, just scanning the list, it was easy to pick out two items that I could easily give up. Flickr and Twitter. I know that many people have successfully used these sites to increase their audience, but they have seemed far less fruitful for me. Flickr can be quite time consuming and, frankly, there seems to be far too much back scratching and quid pro quo to get images seen....and the comments tend to be one liners that I do not really find all that helpful. The whole interface with awards etc also seems quite 'unprofessional' to me. I'm not saying there aren't good photographs or photographers there. Just the opposite, there is plenty of fantastic work. It just doesn't seem to me like the forum to accomplish my goals or present my work. I won't delete my account but will not actively use it. Time saved.

Same with Twitter. My 'tweets' seem to attract mostly other photographers and people trying to sell things. I totally enjoy talking to other photographers, but I'm not sure I love talking to them in 140 character bites! It's fun, but I just don't think it is all that worthwhile in that it doesn't seem to be doing for me what I was hoping. Thus, it is not an efficient use of my time. Again, I won't delete my account but simply will not direct new efforts to it.

So, as far as the Social Networking category goes, I will stick with blogging and Facebook. Come this mid January, I will have been writing this blog for 4 years. I enjoy it and it has been a longstanding effort which I want to continue! My Facebook Fan Page is a newer endeaver and is something that is also fun to do. In the few months I have been doing it there are now 119 folks who have 'liked' and follow the page and there also tends to be more comments there than here. So it seems worth the effort to continue!

I am going to continue my effort at coding a new website. Though that requires a heavy time commitment, I also think the 'payoff' of delivering my work to the world in a manner that I want is a big reward that merits the time spent.

Here is a real biggie that I have decided not to undertake....at least not for some time. Video and sound production. I know it's hot, but, frankly, it just isn't something that gets me particularly excited. I am intrigued by the ability of the still image to elicit an emotional response far more than the ability of video to do so. I am also a perfectionist and know that to learn how to do video production in a manner that I would be satisfied with would likely take up a huge amount of time (and ? money). So I am simply not going to pursue it.

One thing I would like to do is to try printing on canvas. It is easy for me to justify putting this off until the spring as it is cold here in the winter and I would want to coat the printed canvas outdoors (because of the chemical smell of the coating).

I would be interested to hear how other people have approached these issues and what conclusions they have come to.

Too Much - Part I

Brooks Jensen, in his podcasts, has frequently mentioned that this is one of the best times in history to be a photographer because of the many ways artists now have to get their work out into the world and because of the various imaging modalities and options that are now available. I agree with him. But, at times, I find myself wondering if the wide variety of options can become too much.....to the point where learning them or spending time with them can actually become a detriment to the art.

Let me be clear. I do not think the proliferation of options and modalities themselves are the problem. On the contrary, as Brooks suggests, these options open up opportunities that we have never had before. I think the problem, at least in my case, has become deciding what options to choose. Like a smorgasbord at a regal feast, eating everything can lead to.....well, you get the picture. I have finally reached the point where I think some choices may be in order.

Just to delineate what I am talking about, I would like to enumerate some of the choices that come to mind, and these are only the ones that come to my mind. I am sure there are others that I am missing.

PROCESSING AND PRINTING:

1) Lightroom/ Aperture etc
2) Photoshop or other image editing programs and their techniques
3) Plug Ins
4) HDR processing
5) Printing on paper
6) Printing on canvas, which necessitates learning how to coat and stretch/mount the prints
7) Standard Mounting and Framing

VIDEO
1) Learning To Shoot Video
2) Video Editing
3) Sound Management / Production

NON PRIMARY EDITING SOFTWARE

1) Adobe Acrobat (to make .pdf / e-books)
2) Dreamweaver (to construct your website)
3) Adobe InDesign to produce folios
4) Slideshow Production
5) ? Making Presentations i-Pad / Android Compatible

SOCIAL NETWORKING

1) Blogging
2) Newsletter Generation
3) Facebook Fan Pages
4) Twitter
5) Flickr

The choices can become overwhelming and time consuming. So what to do?

Continued in next post....

Abstract:Pure Light And Form

My recent post about abstract categories got me thinking about the fact that I don't usually make abstracts that fall into the "solely light and shape with no connection to reality" category. So, when I was photographing at Phipps Conservatory this weekend, I was determined to make one.

"Roots"
Copyright Howard Grill

What is it? Well, given the abstract category, it doesn't really matter in terms of viewing the photograph. But, if you are curious....there was a display of plants (I neglected to note what kind) with large and long roots hanging down from the ceiling. The image is of these hanging roots with the camera being moved up and down during the exposure.

Quick Quotes: Henry David Thoreau

"The question is not what you look at, but what you see."

Henry David Thoreau

Can a thought be any more apropos to photography than that?

Abstract Categories

I enjoy abstract photography, but what exactly makes a photograph abstract in nature? I find myself thinking about this from time to time.....like when I am keywording images in Lightroom and deciding whether to apply the abstract tag.

To me, there seems to be several types of abstract images:

1) Images that appear to consist solely of light and shape with no seeming connection to 'reality', so that the viewer has no ability to tell what the image is a 'picture of'. Here is an example I found on Flickr by photographer Stephen Tuck.

2) Images that consist of light and shape but do have a connection to 'reality'. An example of this would be this image I posted a few weeks back which utilized camera motion to make a grove of trees into an abstract. Though the photo clearly seems abstract to me, it is also pretty clear that trees are the subject.

3) Images that consist of concrete shape and form but, because of extreme magnification, the origin of that concrete shape and form remains obscure. An example of this would be a greater than 1x macro photograph of an insect's eye.

4) Finally, there is the type of abstract image that I like best, even if some might quibble with its being characterized as abstract. These are images where the object being photographed is not rendered uncertain by extreme magnification, but the image itself is not 'about' the object being photographed. An example of this would be my photo below entitled 'Buds'. While it is clear that the image is composed of plant buds, the image is really not about the buds at all but, rather, is about the repetitive shapes and forms they make.

"Buds"
Copyright Howard Grill

There are likely other types of abstracts as well, but these are the ones that come to my mind. If you can think of other categories, please feel free to share them in the comments section!

Photography Changes Everything

It has been a while since I posted about interesting photography websites.....and recovering from the Thanksgiving holiday definitely seems a good time for a short post.

So here is a site that is quite interesting and offers photography essays on a wide variety of subjects and is definitely worth a trip through. Part of the Smithsonian's Photography Initiative, it is entitled "click! Photography Changes Everything".

Enjoy!

Website Planning II

I almost gave up. On constructing my own website that is. I mentioned in a prior post that I would intermittently write about my thoughts and progress regarding constructing my own website, as opposed to continuing to use a template type service (albeit with multiple customizable options) with Visual Server at www.howardgrill.com.

Why almost give up? Because I want to do it right.....and if you are not familiar with html, CSS, and Dreamweaver (let alone programming in general) it just isn't that easy. Sure, there isn't much to opening a new html document, naming it index.html and typing away. But if you really want to do it correctly in order that it be durable and easily customizable with functionality into the future, it really needs to be done with templates and CSS. Not easy if you don't know how.

Time consuming, that's what it is. And one could strongly argue that it would be much more efficient to stick with what I have and use the time to process images, print, and build portfolios. And that thought really stuck with me to the point where I was about to give up. This led to a side project of looking at the available options for on-line services similar to Visual Server in order to see if any came closer to what I was looking for. As to what is wrong with Visual Server.....well, nothing really....except for the fact that their vision of portfolio presentation doesn't match mine, as well as the lack of ability to upload any type of files other than text or images.

So I looked around. Livebooks really came the closest to what I was after, but the templates (of which there are many nice ones) have limited ability to be more than minimally customized (unless you go with their more expensive custom design team), and if you wish to change something after your site is live there are fees. Thus, once you go live it becomes more expensive to tweak the allowed changes and, even then, the changes allowed without invoking the design team are minimal. Finally, the Livebooks design is totally flash based. They have the search engine 'thing' worked out whereby the site has a pure html 'sister' site that is not visible but available to the search engines for indexing (items inside flash are not indexable). But while I don't personally mind some flash in a site, I am personally not a fan of waiting for the home page to load the flash content.

So I came back to the idea that the best results for me would be had by constructing my own site. But what about the issue of time spent and the other things one could be doing with that time, particularly when time is a limited and very valuable commodity? Well, in the end, I overrided that internal objection by invoking the idea that one's website is truly the presentation of their work to the world. Imagine all the prep time it takes to make an exhibit. Hours of printing, matting, framing, etc. And all that to show one's work to maybe a few hundred people (if you're lucky) for a week or two (if you're lucky). Well, the website presents work to potentially billions (if you can get them there) of people 24/7. So isn't it worth it? I decide it was and re-undertook the project.

So how to get started? Books. Kelby Training videos. Taking Adobe up on the 30 day free trial to Lynda.com for registering CS5. And time. But I have finally reached the point where I feel I have a very basic understanding of how it all goes together and have started the coding process using Dreamweaver. That's not to say it is all smooth sailing....there is still a good bit of trial and error and research into various topics. Plus, even when I think I get it after the video, I still find myself going into Dreamweaver and saying "now how did they do that in the video again?"

And all this doesn't even touch on the non-technical aspect of a site, namely the actual design. I thought that would be easy as well. It isn't. The specifics of where elements should be placed, what color they should be, etc. is also a daunting task once you actually sit down to start making a template.

But I am moving forward. I am also giving myself a deadline, as this is theoretically a project that could go on and on. April. That's when I want to 'go live'. We will see how close I come to meeting that goal and whether I think the final result is attractive enough to have me want to use it to serve my work up to the world.

B&W Magazine Award

I am quite proud to have been awarded a "Bronze Award" in this years B&W Magazine Single Image Issue! I have posted the image before, though the submission to B&W obviously required a conversion to black and white.

"Stairwell"
Copyright Howard Grill

In addition, friend (though we have never actually met....one of the wonders of the internet) and fellow photography blogger Andy Ilachinski had not one, but two images published in that same issue! Check out his thought provoking and exceedingly well written blog here. It is a regular on my reading list.

Murals

I have previously posted about the fact that I like taking photos of interesting wall murals. I recently had the opportunity to make this photo of a terrific mural in Braddock, PA. I love the way the city scene becomes the woman.

City And Woman
Copyright Howard Grill

Quick Quotes: David DuChemin

"Remember that technical perfection rarely moves the soul."

David DuChemin

A quote today from David DuChemin's new Lightroom book (which I have reviewed in a prior post). Not that DuChemin is eschewing technical excellence....in fact just the opposite is true. The quote, when taken in context, refers to the fact that technical excellence alone is not enough to allow an image to elicit a meaningful response.

More Fall Abstracts

Back in October, I wrote about a desire to make some abstract images related to the fall season and posted an example. I did have a chance to pursue this to some extent and scattered throughout the next few weeks thought I would share a few examples. Here is the first of these type of images that I thought was successful.

Fall Impressions II
Copyright Howard Grill

Needless to say, with these abstracts (this one being made by having the camera on a tripod but moving the comera downwards during a long exposure) there is a lot of trial and error until obtaining a photograph that seems 'right' and expresses a feeling that you would like to convey.

Fallen Leaf

This is the first image that I have processed since reading David DuChemin's Lightroom book that I reviewed in my last post. In doing so, I took a lot of his suggestions to heart. For example, in this image I first asked myself what drew my eye to the scene and used that information to help direct me through the image processing.

Leaf And Wooden Door
Copyright Howard Grill

Here, I was drawn to the way the wood of the door as well as the metal of the rusted hinge had an old and deep wrinkled texture that was similar to that of the leaf. In addition, I liked the way the yellow of the old paint on the door echoed the yellow in the leaf and the way the orange of the rusted hinge echoed the red of the leaf. Finally, I was intrigued that the green paint of the door symbolized the color of the leaf before its turning color and that the yellow paint was coming from underneath the green paint. Lots of echoing and symbolism going on here.

So, based on those thoughts, I knew that I wanted to emphasis the texture of the wood, leaf, and rusted metal in post-processing. I also wanted the colors saturated, though not so much that they appeared unnatural and, since the main point for the viewer's eye to be drawn towards was the leaf, I wanted the saturation of the paint to be somewhat less than that of the leaf.

I also used these thoughts to guide my cropping. Given that I wanted to display the leaf in the setting of the old door and for viewers to compare the inanimate to the living, I left enough of the door in the image so that it became a recognizable portion of it and not simply a backdrop onto which the leaf could be displayed.

Going through these thought processes are quite helpful in directing one's self down a specific route or two as opposed to the endless possibilities that exist when first opening a RAW file.

Vision And Voice

There are many books on Lightroom 'out there' and though some are better than others they are, for the most part, pretty similar. This slider is for this, that slider is for that, be careful pushing slider x above 70 etc. Not that such books aren't useful....they surely are for people who are unfamiliar with the software or are beginners in how to develop an image from RAW format.

But recently there appeared on the scene a totally different type of Lightroom book entitled Vision & Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (Voices That Matter) by David DuChemin. DuChemin's purpose in writing the book is not to show the reader how to use Lightroom but, rather, to demonstrate how Lightroom can be used to express one's photographic vision.

The book starts out with a discussion about artistic vision and it's expression, moves on to a discussion about how to use Lightroom as interpretive software to give voice to one's vision, and then uses 20 photographs to demonstrate 'real-life' examples of the prior discussion (the RAW files are also available for download to more carefully follow their development). To be clear, this is not a book of recipes or presets, it is a book that aims at nothing short of starting the reader off on a journey to think more carefully about what they are trying to express with their photography and to enable them to translate that expression into the final print.

This book is quite different from any other Photoshop or Lightroom books that I have read and I highly recommend it as a 'must have'. (Truth in advertising.....as an Amazon associate I get a few cents credited to my account if you click on the above link and end up purchasing the book).

Website Planning

It goes without saying that a photographer needs a website to share his or her work with the world. Many years ago, I had coded a website using a program called Namo Web Editor. It was, in my opinion, a reasonable site for that era but was a bit difficult to update and I found myself not adding to it as much as I would have liked.

Some years later, I purchased a template for an artist's website with plans to build my site based on that template. However, I found that the template contained so many options that I was going into the code to eliminate or change these options and that I was likewise changing code to allow more images to be posted to the galleries. The exercise became frustrating and I abandoned it.

I ended up moving my website over to Visual Server with one of their online artist's templates, forcing my vision into their options. This has served reasonably well, but I still find myself wanting more from a website and have been thinking about building my own, from scratch, by learning how to use Dreamweaver.

I know that, given time limitations, it might take awhile to complete the project and thought that I would, intermittently, write some posts about the process. My initial step is to think carefully about what I want out of a website and what is not being provided by my current host, while trying to incorporate 'best practices' for a new site.

Here are some of the thoughts that I had regarding the 'big picture' planning of the site:

1) First and foremost, I believe it is important to keep it simple and clean looking. Flashy with lots of bells and whistles might be useful for some type of sites, but I believe that for a photo site the images, and not the platter on which they are served up, should be what speak . Additionally, a lot of fancy add-ons don't necessarily function well on all platforms.

2) Easy navigation. I dislike when I get to some sites and I can't figure out what to do next.

3) Set it up so that it will look good on multiple platforms and screen resolutions, to the extent that this is possible.

4) Able to be easily updated.

5) Because of the frequency and consistency of my blog posting, my blog has more visits and has higher Alexa rankings than my website. I would like to be able to integrate my blog into my website. I am not certain if this is still easier to do with WordPress than Blogger, though I know this used to be the case.

6) Have the ability to make PDF files available for download.

7) Have the ability to add on audio and video files should I wish to make these available in the future.

8) I believe that telling 'the story' behind the photograph helps viewers to become involved with an image and would like to have an opportunity to present 'the stories', in brief, along with the images.

This is likely going to be a slow moving and long term undertaking. I would certainly appreciate any comments, tips, ideas etc from those that have already worked through this type of website building project!

Exposure Bracketing With Canon Cameras

This post is going to be a bit on the technical side and specific to Canon cameras, which I am sure will interest some readers but give others a big yawn. Nonetheless, here we go.

In a past post, I reviewed the Promote Control device which can be used for HDR exposure bracketing since Canon cameras are (seemingly purposefully) hindered by the limitation of only being able to do a three exposure auto-bracket. In addition, if one is bracketing by 1 EV then the most you can auto-bracket is up to +/- 3 EV. In order to bracket to +/- 4 EV you must bracket in 2 EV increments. All in all, it makes HDR bracketing inordinately and unnecessarily complex. In my review, I mentioned that the Promote Control simply did not fit very well into my workflow and for that reason I had returned my unit.

Another partial solution for Canon users has been to use 'Custom Settings', of which three are able to be pre-programmed into the camera. When using these, you could, for example, pre-program +/- 4EV bracketing into the camera and save the setting so that by simply turning a knob on top of the camera the +/- 4EV autobracket is set.

By setting one Custom setting like this and another at o,-1, -2 EV one could conceivably take an autobracket at +1, +2, +3 then switch the custom setting knob to do 0, -1, -2, then switch again to do -4, 0, +4 and then take one image at -3.....well, you get the point. If one wants a series of 1 EV bracketed images to +/- 4 it gets far too complicated.

It gets a bit easier if you want to go with 2EV units and shoot -2, 0 +2 and then 0, +4, -4 but even then you have to use at least one Custom Setting or go back into the menu. In experimenting with the Custom Settings, I have found that the white balance, ISO, aperture etc that the Custom Setting installs are the ones that were there when the Custom Setting was saved, as opposed to drawing these values from the otherwise current camera settings. For someone like me, who not infrequently screws up a setting by not being careful, this is a recipe for disaster. I am sure that I would inevitably end up with a useless autobracketed series with different apertures, ISO etc than my original bracket settings.

All in all, despite the fact that I really enjoy using my Canon gear, I feel that Canon has really left those of us that use many of their models with a mess when it comes to HDR imaging. And the mess, I would think, is easily fixable in firmware if Canon did not want to cripple their non-1 series dSLRs in this way. With Nikon making so many gains and competing with Canon so well, I really am surprised that they have not fixed this. Were I currently purchasing a digital system, I would have to seriously consider going with Nikon for this reason alone.

Quick Quotes: Ansel Adams

"There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs"

Ansel Adams

Though it is an 'old' and frequently used quote, this one seems quite timely given my last post about making fall abstract photographs. It can be both enjoyable and productive to break the rules. Of course, first you have to learn the rules so that you know what it is you are breaking. The more you know about what you are breaking the more likely you are to emerge with something interestingly different!

Fall Abstracts

One of the things I would like to try to do this fall season is to make some unusual and abstract fall images along with some of the more straightforward ones. This particular abstract was made by moving the camera back and forth at an angle during the exposure while it was still mounted on the tripod.

"Fall Abstract I"
Copyright Howard Grill

These types of abstracts are really quite easy and fun to make. And with digital you can make tons of images and pick out the one from the many that seems to have come out 'just right'.

Quick Quotes: Bob Dylan

Beauty walks a razor's edge.

Bob Dylan
Lyric From "Shelter From The Storm"

I was listening to Bob Dylan's "Shelter From The Storm" (that happens when you were a kid in the 60's and early 70's) and was drawn to this line from the song. I guess it is open to a bit of interpretation, but I find it very apropos to photography and the the arts in general. It speaks to me regarding one's appreciation of various forms of art. The more I think about, it the more I find different meanings in the words.

Get The Hell Outta' Bed III

I have previously written two posts about dragging one's self out of bed to make early morning sunrise photographs. Those prior two posts can be read here and here. I mentioned I would occasionally post some more images from that one morning.

"Gone Fishing"
Copyright Howard Grill

It is amazing how productive some trips out are (and, of course, how unproductive....but always enjoyable....they can sometimes be in terms of coming away with good images).

15 Composition Tips

A short post today with a link to some inspirational thoughts about composition.

Here are 15 great tips for photographic composition by photographer Alain Briot that are definitely worth reading.