chasing the look ebook

8/8/2019 Chasing the Look eBook

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10 WAYS TO IMPROVE THE AESTHETICS OF YOUR PHOTOGRAPHSCHASING THE LOOK

DAVID DUCHEMINAuthor ofWithin The Frame


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Introduction

I was 14 years old when I began

making photographs; I bought aVoigtlander rangender at a neigh-bors yard sale and fell in love. Imstill falling in love with images andthe process of making them. Imstill learning to discover my ownvision and evolving in the ways inwhich I use the camera to expressit. More and more I see this as ajourney, hence the subtitle of myrst book, Within Te Frame, TeJourney o Photographic Vision. Isuspect its a journey for all of us

because if photography is a meansby which we express ourselves,and we ourselves are always grow-ing, learning, journeying, then ourphotography can do nothing butmove with us, grow with us, and

change as our vision & experienceof the world changes.

I mention all that because its whatbrought me to start writing thebooks, articles, and ebooks Ivebeen so furiously writing over these

last two years. I began a cra that I

knew to be about expression but Ilearned it from a purely technicalmeans. It has taken me over twentyyears to come to the place whereI recognize the primacy of visionover technique, of principles in-stead of rules; those simple discov-

eries have brought me to re-learneverything about my cra.

If I could go back in time and havea conversation with the teenager Ionce was, Id perch on the edge ofthe bathtub in the red glow of thead hoc darkroom and beg him tostop chasing technical perfectionand start chasing an aesthetic thatreally says something. I wouldnteven try convincing him not to buythat monstrous Soligor 400mm

lens with a mind-numbing maxi-mum aperture of f/8, because Iknow he wouldnt listen. But Iwould encourage him to pursue adierent goal; one that considerstwo important questions, What


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are you trying to say? and How can that cam-era and lens help you say it? In that order.

Id stay in that darkroom until he understood

that all of this learning was leading somewherebut it would go faster if he simply grasped thisone truth: Every setting on your camera willchange the look of the photograph. Every deci-sion you make, from the lens you use, to the ex-posure you choose, and the position from which

you shoot, aects the look, the aesthetic of theimage. And then Id warn him about a coupleof future romantic interests that should prob-ably be avoided. Ten Id vanish while he stillthought it was the heady mix of developer andxer fumes causing the hallucinations.

Back then what mattered to me was getting theexposure right and the focus right. Problemis, no one ever talked me out of this nonsense ofright and wrong exposure or focus. In facteverything I read encouraged me in the pursuitof perfection, not the pursuit of expression. And

it was years before I considered issues like thequality of light versus the quantity of light, orthe optical eect of compression caused by lon-ger lenses. It was years before I began to give se-rious study to a question I hear now as a teachertime and time again. Tat question comes when


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Perfection is oer-

rated, and technique

without passion islike ision without a

voice - it rarely moves

the heart.


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we should be heading - a placewhere we learn that every deci-sion we make - EVERY decision- changes the look of the photo-graph. Cameras and lenses are nomore than machines that do ourbidding. What every photographeryou admire has done, in terms ofthe look of the image, you can dotoo.

Tats not to say you should. Youshould be learning to express your-self in ways that are unique to youand consistent with your own vi-sion. But much in the creativeworld begins with emulation and ifthats the door to discovering and

mastering technique before you seto to use those techniques to ex-press yourself, then more power toyou. But know that we all fall intoruts when were looking for ourgroove and if you spend too much

time emulating the voice of AnselAdams, youve got less time to ndyour own voice.

Tis short book is about the aes-thetic, the look, the meetingplace of the Artist and the Geek,

a younger photographer, and bythat I mean younger in the cra,is looking at work he admires andsays, How come my photographsdont look like that?

Te usual assumption, even if itsmerely unspoken, is that thosephotographs look like that be-cause the photographer is

(a) a genius

(b) has access to better gear

(c) heavily involved in VooDooand says gibberish incantationsbefore pressing the button.

We assume they have a secret sauce,

or magic technique that we do not.And this leads us to all kinds ofdark places creatively. It leads us tobuy more gear without changinghow we use it. It leads us to doubtand discouragement instead of a

new path of learning, creativity,and experimentation. It leads usto spend hours and hours learn-ing new Photoshop techniques, orhundreds of dollars on plug-ins. Itdoes not lead us to the one place


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a concept I began eshing out in WithinTe Frame. Tis is where those two sides ofa photographers personality nd common

ground. Te aesthetic of the image is the art-ists HOW? and the geeks WHY?

So returning to my imagined travel back tosee my younger self at the beginning of thisjourney, I wouldnt for a moment suggest hechange his course, only his focus. Id let him

learn this stu by trial and error, let him dis-cover his voice and his vision with time as weall do. Id just remind him that every decisionhe makes aects the look, and that expressionwas the end goal, not perfection. Perfectionis over-rated, and technique without passionis like vision without a voice - it rarely moves

the heart.

And then Id appear to my old high schoolphotography teacher and beg him to teachyounger-me the ten things in this book. If thelessons here seem like familiar sermons, itsbecause in some form they appear in much ofmy other teaching. Tere just isnt that muchinnovation in basic photographic technique.We dont need new techniques, we need tomaster the foundational techniques we al-ready have.


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Te question is not really,

How can I make my

photographs like that?

Te question is, How can I

use that look to express my-

self in my own way?


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PART ONE - SPREAD FOUR


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Ive broken this down into ten easy pieces,some with a creative exercise. Some ofthem youll have heard before, even fromme. Consider this a reminder of thingsyou already know. If the concepts are new,consider them an introduction and an in-vitation to further study. Whats importantis that you understand this stu; but then,more important still, that you go out andtry it.

o camp out on the visual language meta-phor I use frequently, these are like newadditions to your visual dictionary - piecesof language you will use to better expressyourself the more familiar you become withthem. Above all, remember this is about art

and creativity; there are no rules. Words, inlanguage, can be strung together into tech-nical manuals, poems, haiku, epic stories,country songs, and unintelligible spoken-word pieces. So too with the techniquesused to create photographs. Te question,

really, is not, How can I make my photo-graphs like that? Te question is Howcan I use that look to express myself in myown way? And then we go out and prac-tice, mindfully, to use those techniques tomake images that say something; images


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where every setting is intentionally chosen becausethe resulting look is intentionally chosen.

Let me be uncharacteristically direct with you - toget good, truly good, at a cra means you immerse

yourself in it. You will not read this book and sud-denly create images with the kind of look youvebeen pursuing, as though the information itself wereall you were missing. Immersion means you stew inthis stu so much you are saturated by it, that yougo for a walk and mentally look at things through

dierent lenses, framing scenes in your mind andchoosing apertures. It means you begin to drive yourspouse nuts because youre always pointing out thelight and marvelling at it. It means you interact withyour work, and the work of others, on an intentionallevel so that you become intuitively aware of thisstu.

Tere is no shortage of educational stu out there,and much of it is kindly encouraging; we all needthat at times. We also need someone to be bluntand direct with us, someone who tells us that all theknow-how in the world doesnt amount to a hill ofbeans until we pry our ass out of bed or o the sofa

and work hard and intelligently at this stu. I saidthat you too can accomplish the aesthetic (if not thevision) of any photographer you admire, and I meanit. But they didnt get there without working their asso and we wont either. Lets get to it.

Its all about the look.


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We assume they hae a secret sauce,

or magic technique that we do not.

And this leads us to all kinds of dark

places creatiely. It leads us to doubtand discouragement instead of a new

path of learning, creatiity, and

experimentation.


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GET THE bEsTAmounT of LiGHT

bUT IN THEbEST WAyTe technical side of photography gets dis-couragingly complicated at times. And un-necessarily so, I think. Te issue of exposuretakes up whole books, and given the fact that

the technology still hasnt really caught upwith our eyes ability to perceive such a broadrange from light to dark, its important thatwe make good choices about how much lightwe let into our camera. But if youre shootingdigitally, and if youre shooting RAW and

using a post-production soware like Light-room or Aperture, then exposure is a rela-tively simple matter.

First, you need to understand that the goalin exposing a digital image - assuming theabove assumptions - is not to get a digital

negative that looks right on the LCD. Its toget a digital negative that contains the mostamount of digital information, which in turngives you a negative with the most amount ofquality, and exibility in the renement pro-cess.


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Kairouan, unisia

3.2 sec @ f/22, iso 200

Seeral combinations

would hae gien me the

right exposure but only

the tighter f/stop would

hae gien me the star-

burst on the points of

light without resorting to

an actual starburst lter.

You could only use thosewith a straight face back

in the Eighties. In fact,

back in the Eighties you

had to use them. I think

there were laws about it.


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You do this by looking not at yourpreview image on the LCD butat the histogram. Heres what youneed to know, and Ill be brief be-cause this isnt actually the point ofthe lesson. A histogram representsthe light youve captured, in tonalvalues, in this one image. If the

graph is too far le youve recordeda very dark scene, if too far right, avery light scene.

What is perhaps not apparent tomost until you read up on it, isthat the further right you go on

the histogram, the more digitalinformation is stored there. If thebest digital negative is the one withthe most information, then push-ing that histogram as far right aspossible, generally without going

o the far end, will give you that.

I suggest you read this article onmy blog: Pixelatedimage.com/blog/2009/08/exposure-and-me-tering/ for a more detailed look atthis. But as I said, this isnt aboutthat.

Learning to read your histogramis vital for creating a good digitalnegative with the most amount ofdata. Of course, had I taught thisto the 16-year old version of mehed have thought I was crazy. Ishot then with a Pentax Spotmatic,which even when I got it was near-

ing 20 years old, a predecessor ofthe K-1000.

So while the means were dier-ent, the lesson would be the same- the goal is not only to get the bestamount of light into the camera,

but to consider very intentionally


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how it gets there - because eachtwist of the aperture ring or nudgeof the shutter dial did more thancreate an exposure - light or dark -it created a look and feel in otherways.

I was taught to get the right ex-posure and move on. I had to un-learn this lesson. For any exposurethere are an astonishing numberof combinations of settings thatwill get me there. Im lousy at mathbut the formula would involvesome kind of multiplication of the

number of possible f-stops, shut-ter speeds, and ISO values. Mathaside, theres a lot of options. Andeach combination that gives youthe desired exposure will result in adierent aesthetic.

Dont dismiss this. Te choice be-

tween one f/stop and another in aphotograph is akin to the choicebetween one word or another insong. Some dierences are subtle,some change the meaning entirely.

Dont for a minute listen to thevoice that says itll onlymake thepicture look a little diferent, be-cause that is exactly the point ofthis whole thing. Te look. It mat-ters. It denitely matters. Te dif-ference between good and great isthat just a little bit.

Why did my images not look likethat for years when I comparedthem against stronger images?Among other reasons, the photog-rapher who shot those strongerframes was very intentional aboutHOW he got his desired exposure,

and I was not.


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Read your light meter. Set theshutter speed. Select an aperture.

Focus and click. If only it were thateasy. But its not. Teres a danceto be done when you set that shut-ter speed and choose an aperture.And it has nothing to do with howmuch light you get into the cam-era. Well, it does, but the exact set-tings you choose are up to you. Itsthat choice and your ability to saysomething with the resulting aes-thetic that makes this cra capableof producing art. And its for thisreason I choose to shoot most of

the time on Aperture Priority be-cause it is the aperture that has themost direct aect on the aestheticI prefer in my photographs. Myability to limit the attention of theviewer and say, look here, but not

hereor this matters, but this doesnot, is an important part of theway I choose to tell my stories.

What matters is that no one looksat my image and asks Why didyou shoot it at f/16? only to have

DEPTH OF fiELdme shrug my shoulders. I dunno.I must know! I must be conscious

of each element aecting the lookof my image and as there will bea profound dierence in the lookof the image at f/1.2 and f/8.0, Imust be aware that Im choosingone and therefore not choosing theother. o do otherwise is to admityou dont care about the aestheticof the image in that way, and thatsne too; but its a deliberate choiceand you cant paint with red andthen later wonder why your canvasisnt blue. Know what Im saying?

All Im really doing here is advocat-ing for an intentional approach tothe image-making process. Whenyou raise the camera to the eye andare already conscious of which f/stop you want because youve been

thinking about it from the secondthe scene revealed itself, you wontbe looking through the viewnderand wondering how deep to makeyour focus, youll already be there.Te photographer who goes outto create images, raises the camera


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to the eye and then goes through amental checklist - aperture, shut-ter, iso, etc - will nd the momentgone before the shutter is pressed.You need to be so familiar withthis stu that the decisions all butmade by the time you get the cam-era up to the eye.

If youre thinking this is a littlemore Zen than you expected, it

probably is. When youre thinking

CREATIvE ExERCISELook up from this page. Find something to look at thats about 4 feet

away. Now pretend youre looking through a camera and a 50mm lens.

See it? Now imagine youve set the aperture to 2.8. What does it look

like? Move your eyes, what would things look like if you moved yourimagined focus point with your gaze? Now set the lens to f/5.6, f/8.0,

f/22. All Im asking you to do is use your imagination. If you cant do

it theres a good chance it means you dont spend enough time with

your actual camera to your face, or looking at actual photographs. If

you cant do it with your imagination, you wont be able to do it in-

tuitively because your intuition is not yet trained. I dont want to beprescriptive about this, we all learn, work, & create dierently. But

you might want to spend some time playing with each of your lenses;

becoming so familiar with the depth of eld that results from each ap-

erture at varying focus distances, that your imagination has something

with which to work.

about the technology of makingan image, youre not fully present.Being so familiar and comfortablewith it that it gets out of the wayallows you to concentrate on see-ing and creating, not fussing withgear. I hope I havent lost you. Iknow a few of you are thinking youcant get this procient. Nonsense.How? You train your imaginationthrough familiarity.


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SHUTTER spEEdEverything I just discussed in regards to Depth of Field applies toshutter speed as well. Imagine yourself in a courtyard as I was lastyear in India. Youre high in the Himalaya visiting an ancient Bud-

dhist monastery. Acolytes, young monks-in-training, are runningback and forth across the courtyard as they fetch tea. You shoot oneof them at 1/1000 of second, holding the camera still as you do. Youshoot one of them at 1/15 of a second, panning the camera withthem as they run. And you shoot another at 1/15 but this time youkeep the camera stationary. Can you picture it? oo exotic? ry it in

your head with your 8-year old playing soccer. What is important isthat you have a familiarity with the brushes and paints of your cra,and thats all aperture and shutter speed really are. Teyre choices,neither right nor wrong, that will have an aect on the look of theimage, and therefore on whether you express yourself through it ornot. One image (1/1000) will freeze the action, the other will blurit. wo totally dierent interpretations of the same scene. How do

you know which one works for you? How do you pick one whileits all happening so fast? Again, the more familiar you are with this,the more your imagination can process this stu without using theactual camera and looking at the resulting images, the better ableyoull be to make those decisions based on experience and trainedintuition, not consciously, in a panic, or through frantic trial and

error.o return to our question about why our photographs dont looklike that; its because were not playing enough, experimentingenough. Were told early on that camera shake is bad (sometimes itis) and that we need a fast shutter speed to prevent a blurred sub-ject. Were told a tripod is our best friend and, barring that, a good


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stable stance while we shoot is desirable. And all that may be so at times,but no more true than had we learned the reverse - that we should shootwith lower shutter speeds to better express motion and capture moreblur, or that we should eschew the tripod & the stable stance in favour

of more limber postures, and the ability to move freely about the scene,to lie down, climb on things, pan the camera or spin it in a circle.

CREATIvE ExERCISEI suggest you loosen your grip on the rules and the ex-pectation of perfection. Go out and shoot for a whole

week and never allow your shutter speed to go above1/15. Spend an hour on a street corner and pan with themoving trac. Heck, pan the opposite way. Go drivingwith a friend and shoot scenes as they go by (you shouldprobably be in the passenger seat.) Now try somethingriskier; go shoot something your brain tells you must be

sharp and frozen, and shoot it otherwise. You are doingthis for a reason, not merely to adopt an anarchists hab-its. Youre doing this foolishness to become uninhibitedabout playing with motion in your photographs, intro-ducing the unpredictable, and most importantly, addinganother set of verbs to your visual language in a way that

subverts the old lessons we once learned about not us-ing them except on special occasions. I think we dontplay with motion and the look of specic shutter speedsbecause were scared. Scared of failure. Scared of im-ages that arent perfectly in focus. (How come were notequally scared of creating boring, safe images?)


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Somewhere along the line I learneda bad lesson about lenses. I dontknow if it was something someonesaid or just that I too easily boughtinto the ads in the photographymagazines I poured over, but along

the way I learned that you wanteddierent lenses based on how nearor far you wanted to be from thesubject. Want to shoot landscapesand get lots in? Wide lens. Want toshoot bears? Big - really big - lens.Not a bad way to learn, and it waseasy for a while. Until I accidental-ly discovered compression and ex-pansion and totally un-learned thelesson. Dont overlook this one, itshuge. One of the most signicantthings you can do to alter the look

of your image is to choose your op-tics very specically based on thelook you are going for.

For a moment Im going to makean assumption that youve notread Within Te Frame. Some of

you will have and so this will be arepeat, and for that I ask your in-dulgence so the rest of the class cancatch up. Make spitballs in the cor-ner for a few minutes, this wonttake long.

OK, heres your remedial lesson inlens behaviour, and like I said atthe beginning, this is just an intro-duction to the subject, and invita-tion to explore it further with oth-er resources or, best of all, on your

own with your camera and a heavysack of lenses.

Given the importance of opticsin shaping the light as it comesinto the camera, picking the rightone for the right image is no less

important than a painter pickingthe right brush. Teres no rightor wrong brush, just brushes thatwork better or less well to accom-plish certain eects. Long lensesbenet from an optical eect we

THinKDIFFERENTLyAbouT YouR opTiCs


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o show you where were heading, this is the nal image. I didnt being nessingthis image by moving a bunch of sliders around randomly. I knew where I want-ed to end up, and I knew why. Adding and removing visual pull to from certainelements was the path to that end. I began with assessing the image and came upwith this

call compression. You know howyou look through a 200mm lensand see that the distant duck looksreally close? Well compressionbrings all elements closer to eachother in the image, not just theduck closer to you. Look again.Not only does that duck appearcloser to you, but the forest in thebackground also appears to becloser to the duck. Te distance

between the foreground and back-ground are compressed, hence thename.

Compression works on more thanducks. Used well, it can bring apleasing look to portraits. And in

conjunction with a shallow depthof eld, it can give a very speciclook to the image, one oen usedin catalogues and magazines. Imag-ine this. Youre photographing achild on the beach as she plays in

the surf. Youre close and you havea 50mm lens on. Te shots lovely.Its ne. But you want to changeup the look. Lots of ways youcould do it. One of them is to put a200mm lens on. Whoa! Kids too

close. What the heck am I meantto do with this long lens? Tis isntgoing to work at all! What kind ofsucker do you think I am, duCh-emin? Point taken. I was crazy tosuggest it. But you could try back-ing up. Back up until the child isthe same size she was within theframe before you indulged thiscrazy idea. Logic says its the sameshot, but knowing what you know

about compression you know thatit cant be. Te elements withinthe frame, from front to back, willall be closer to one another, and ifyouve shot this at f/2.8 its boundto be a pretty narrow, and really

pleasing, zone of focus. Sure, youhave to back up a few yards. Walkall the way down the beach for allit matters, our guiding question ishow can I get my images to looklike that? not how can I get thesame aesthetic without working forit?

Te other result of the longer lensis the narrower angle of view; sotheres less background to worryabout. Look at a good deal of the


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work you love and I suspect theyall share a simplicity in their con-ception. Photographers trying tocreate one great image dont try tocram a million things into it. Ofcourse there are exceptions, but theelements in a single image all get tospeak with more power the fewerof them there are. A narrow angleof view will help with this. Since Istarted playing with longer lenses

and taking advantage of their com-pression and narrow angle of view,Ive never done so much backingup, never shot so fearlessly wideopen (wider aperture like /2.8),but Ive also never been so happy

with my images.Wide lenses do the opposite. Teyexpand the perceived relationshipbetween elements, they exagger-ate lines and pull people into thescene. Tey are very dierent from

longer lenses and therefore give atotally dierent aesthetic. It mightbe this reason I tend to shootin the extreme ends of the focallengths. 17-24mm and 85-300mm,both extremes give a very specic

look. I see the world in 50mm ev-eryday, so its not that voice Imlooking to use in my photography,but a dierent one. Im not goingto teach you to use wide lenses, justwant to stir the paint for you. Ifyouve ever found yourself think-ing, well I cant use a 200mm lens,I want to shoot landscapes, thenyou need to undo that thinking.Lenses arent application-specic,

theyre behaviour-specic. Sure a300mm might be thought of moreas a sports lens or a wildlife lens,but why? Why should it not in-stead have a place in our minds asan isolation lens for its ability to

isolate distant elements, or a com-pression lens for its ability to pullforegrounds and backgrounds to-gether? Why shouldnt we thinkof a wide-angle lens as an inclusionlens, one that draws viewers moreinto the scene? Te more we thinkabout our optics in terms of theirbehaviours and the aesthetics theyproduce, and less about pigeon-holing them into applications, themore creative and free we might bewith them.


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Tis was shot on a clear

Vancouer morning with

a 300/2.8 lens. I loved the

Walter Mitty character on

the Seawall daydreaming as

he looked out at the eighter,

but only the compression of

the longer lens brought that

boat close enough to make a

isual connection between

one and the other in the way

I saw it in my minds eye.


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Te moment we take a photographwe engage in the dicult taskof translating the 3 dimensional

world into a 2 dimensional one.Among the diculties of this isthat, while we experience the worldin 3 dimensions, were also alwaysmoving - or its moving around us.Te moment we translate a scene

into two dimensions, the ability toexperience and explore that sceneis signicantly reduced.

What looked and felt one way in a3 dimensional scene, will look andfeel another in only 2 dimensions.

So while the camera will translate 3dimensions into 2, we need to helpit if there is going to be any inter-pretation.

Tat is to say, if we want the imageto say something specic, to look a

certain way, then translation aloneis not sucient. Lens and camera-settings choices are part of this actof interpretation. So is our ownposition in relation to the others,because the position of the camerachanges the relationship of otherelements to each other and foreverlocks in the vantage point of theviewer.

Look at the illustrations on the fac-ing page. Tese illustrate a couplepossible frames of two people.Moving yourself, and the camera,changes the image signicantly.

While its normal to move about to

get everything into the frame, itsmore important - if youre chasingthe look - to move about in orderto place elements exactly whereyou want them. (contd next page.)

MOvE

Right: look at the way theelements, including the back-

ground and horizon, change

as your own position changes.

Its neither right nor wrong,

but itlooksdierent.

THE FRAME

movE THEConTEnTs


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Im all for creativity, so this isnt a rule- shoot from any angle you like - butthe more intentionally you chooseyour angle - up/down, le/right, back/forth - the more control you will haveover the look of the image.

CREATIvE ExERCISEGo spend an hour with some kids andshoot them at their eye level. Or dothe same with your dog. Now con-

sider how your own angle changes thebackground present in the scene. Oneof my suggestions for improving yourimages is to put a great foregroundin front of a great background. Usingthis same exercise, play with your posi-tion and point of view to consciously

choose better backgrounds - to lookmore at a distant forest instead ofdown onto a eld of dying grass, forexample. Or to swing around and inso-doing to eliminate a distracting,burned-out grey sky. In the end, this is

all about making intentional decisionsabout the look you choose for an im-age; beginning to pay attention to theresults of your own physical position-ing will go a long way to making stron-ger decisions and stronger images.


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I shot this almost lying

down, squirming le and

right to get the sun pok-

ing around this Ladakhi

woman while doing my

best not to get stepped

on by the donkey. Posi-

tion has eerything to do

with this image because it

denes the relationships

of the woman to the sun,

the woman to the don-key, and the donkey and

woman to the rest of the

background. Tis image

would look dierent om

any other angle.


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THE LOOk OFLiGHTis EvERYTHinGIn my ebook EN, number 7 wasLook to the Light, a suggestionthat considering the quality oflight would improve your photog-raphy and I think its so importantits worth elaborating on. Its be-

come so important to me becausea couple years ago I committedone year to looking at, thinkingabout, and studying light. I readsome solid books, but mostly it wasa year of intentional observation.I looked at a lot of photographsand studied the light. I played withlights and gels and reectors anddiusers and all kinds of lightingstu. And I kept asking myself, asis my habit - why? Why does thelight look like that? Wheres it

coming from? Whats it bouncingo? What colour and shape is thelight? Wheres the logic? And mostimportantly, how can I photographit?

If theres a theme in this bookthat I hope you pick up on its thetheme of intentionally thinkingabout and practicing this stu.Light isnt some accidental thingyou just stumble upon, some magic

occurrence that moves in inexpli-cable ways. It can be predicted andit can be, oen, manipulated. Itswhat makes Rembrandts paintingsstand out to so many people - hisuse of light. Light shapes subjects,it gives them depth and texture.Light creates mood. Light back-lights dust motes dancing in theharvest air. But if you dont knowto look for it, you could go onshooting a front-lit scene withoutever walking around and seeing

the way the light falls from the sideand from the back. Have you evernoticed the way light plays on wa-ter dierently depending on thetime of day, the weather, and theangle at which you see it? Have


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Te three images on the right were all

taken in dierent light on the same

day in Tailand. Te top image in the

early morning, the middle at sunset

and the last one at dusk, 5 minutes af-

ter the image in the middle. Almost the

same scene, but ery dierent images.

Only the light has changed.

you ever noticed the way the light bounces o that glass apart-ment building at 4pm only to ll areas with gold light for abrief 20 minutes at the beginning of the aernoon commute?

Ive got no secret here. Tatll disappoint some. Im encourag-ing you to engage in that one activity that should be commonamong us - active and keen observation. Look at light, takecopious mental notes. Observe how that sunbeam streaminginto the living room backlights the cat and rims her with light.Imagine yourself shooting it. If you underexpose it your sub-ject might not be the cat at all but the outline of fur and light.

Go out at sunset and leave your camera at home. Instead, justwatch the light as it goes down, watch what the light does as itgoes down, stops lighting the lake but instead lights the cloudsfrom underneath, see how the light under those clouds re-ects back to the lake and colours it. Light is dynamic, always

changing, and the more you observe it, understand it, andmarvel at it, the better your images when your camera comesto your eye.


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I recently heard Jay Maisel say that everything in an image hasgesture. But its not an easy idea to explain. We generally thinkof gesture as a human activity, oen as something done withthe hands or face. But its not humans or even living thingsalone that have gesture. Gesture is as easily found in the leading

lines of a tree branch or the shape of a ock of birds. Gestureis the implication of a path that leads towards the horizon ora ladder leaning against a wall and leading the eye up. Its theswirled shape of a water-worn rock on the shore. Its shape andlines and dimension.

If it seems like Im grasping to try to dene it, I am. I use a

camera because Im more comfortable with images than wordssometimes. And I think thats the key - we create images to saythings, to express ourselves where words are insucient, andgesture is that part of the communication within an image thatis not light or colour. Tis is the equivalent of body languagewithin an image. Human gesture is body language. Photo-graphic gesture is communication by lines, forms, and impliedshapes.

I list the power of gesture among the ways in which we can af-fect the aesthetic of an image because I think we oen dontintentionally think about gesture enough. We see what we seeand we shoot it, but that reaction can be honed by consider-

THE powER of

GESTURE


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ingthatsome gesture is more powerful than others. We can dothis by choosing the best optics, shutter speed and aperture, butwe can also do it by waiting. Imagine were photographing a per-son engaged in a conversation with a friend over coee. Imaginethat were shooting at 1/100 of a second over a period of 5 min-utes without ever stopping. Tats 30,000 frames. Most of thoseframes will be very dierent from each other, but not every oneof those frames will have captured telling gestures about thosetwo friends and their conversation. Some frames might be bor-ing, some misleading, and some might be incredibly well timed -frames in which the physical gestures of the two friends, the com-

position of the image, and the way you see this scene, all cometogether. Tats what Cartier-Bresson seemed to be talking aboutwhen he coined the term decisive moment.

You have control over the gesture - human, animate, or otherwise- in the image. Where that gesture is created by a moving thing,its up to you to anticipate it, to catch it at its apex. You know

how two frames of a portrait can be so similar but in one thesmile is genuine, and in the other something in the eye changes,it goes dull or looks at the camera instead of through it to theviewer? Tats the time it takes for gesture to change. It requiresanticipating, waiting, and where possible, pursuing.

Why settle for good gesture when you can have great gesture?Something revealing or new or surprising? Where the gesturecomes from something inanimate - the lines of a building, theform of a feather - its up to you to compose the image in such away that the gesture formed on that print is the most intentionalone possible, and only you can say what that is.


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Tree men sitting around in Chandni

Chowk, Old Delhi. Its the gestures ofthese men that makes it an interesting

image. Te stronger the gesture in an

image, the more engaging and interest-

ing it is to us. Otherwise its just three

men passing time.


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CoLouR-bALAnCEFOR MOODTis ones short but itsstill important. Te whitebalance (WB) or colourbalance of an image,whether played with in-camera or in Lightroom,

can have a signicanteect on the mood ofan image. We talk aboutWB so oen in terms ofaccuracy and there arecertainly applications

where thats important,but colour is such a sig-nicant part of the lookof an image, oen playinga crucial role in settingthe mood and feel of animage, that we cant dis-miss being intentionalabout experimentingwith the WB settings inorder to better render ourvision.


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I shot this on Ko Samet in Tailand and

later rendered two ersions with dierent

WB settings in Lightroom. Te same eect

could hae come by setting my WB in the

camera. How is less important than why:

a change in WB is a change to the aesthetic

and therefore the feel of the photograph.


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FILTERS &diGiTAL CApTuREI know that when people switchto digital, if they ever shot lm to

begin with, they begin to drinkthe KoolAid of the supremacy ofdigital, not the least of which isthe fact that where lm photog-raphers required lters to createthe aesthetics of certain images,digital did not. Anything thatcould be done with a lter on thefront of the lens could, it is oenreasoned, be accomplished on theback end in Photoshop or Light-room. Perhaps, and for some aes-thetics thats correct. But to get

rid of your lters entirely, as I did,is to throw the proverbial babyout with the bathwater.

It should be remembered that l-ters change the light entering thecamera. Tey dont merely colour

it. Tey change the light before ithits the sensor and this has rami-

cations in a couple places wherethe aesthetic is aected and theeect can not be reliably or easilyduplicated in the digital darkroom.

Te rst case relates to polarizinglters. I know, you can darken a sky

in Lightroon. But thats not all apolarizer is good for and if youveever tried removing reectionsfrom the surface of water in Pho-toshop you know that. Polarizerscan change the look of an image

and can be the dierence betweena good shot and a great one. Orthe dierence between a mediocreshot and a decent one as is the caseof the background image on thispage. It was shot in the Nubra val-ley in Ladakh, India and the eect


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of this Singh Ray Gold-N-Bluepolarizer is not something you can

duplicate in post-production.Te same is true of graduated neu-tral density (ND) lters. Gradu-ated ND lters reduce the dy-namic range between bright skiesand darker foregrounds, allowing

you to balance the exposure andretain detail in both the sky andforeground. Where that dynamicrange is quite high you will get abetter image with a simple NDGrad lter than you will trying

to reclaim burned out highlights.Te case can also be made that see-ing the initial image through thelens as it will eventually be in theprint is a purer visual experienceand encourages photographers toexperiment based on immediate

visual feedback and not what theyimagine they might be able to cre-

ate later with soware.Solid or variable ND lters allowmuch slower shutter speeds in situ-ations when slowing or meltingtime is desirable, again contribut-ing an aesthetic unachievable by

other means.

I encourage you to play with theselters and see if they nd a place inyour workow. I use them now andtheyve changed the way I photo-graph and have made my images

stronger. Im all for a minimum ofgear but encourage you to try atleast these three lter types as youseek to rene your aesthetic.


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MIX iT UPEverything Ive explained so far is leading to thisone point. While each of the preceeding lessons isimportant on its own, it is the creative combina-tion of all of them that is perhaps the most dicultand which leads to an unique aesthetic or style.

Tis is the photographers version of mixing hueson a palette - the choice to combine the spatialcompression of a certain lens, from an angle thatensures - rather than avoids - lens are, and witha combination of shutter and aperture settingsthat brings about a look that would have gone un-seen had any of the other numerous combinations

been chosen. Here is where we play & discover ourvoice. I cant give you better advice than to alertyou to the power of intentionally-chosen combi-nations that create an aesthetic that best says whatyou want it to - a string of well-chosen words fromyour vocabulary that together create the poem that

best expresses whats inside. All you can do is playwith the mix until you nd ones that do it for you,and even then, keep playing with the mix as yourcra grows to keep pace with your vision.


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CREATIvE ExERCISEYou arent likely to add to the basicvisual language a camera & lens are ableto speak; instead, being creative with

the aesthetic of an image lies in yourability to combine existing conventions& looks to suit your imagination. Finda dozen images made by someone elseand pick apart the combination of ele-ments that make it what it is. Dontworry about why your images dont

look like that, insteadgure out whythose images do. Break it down. Writeit out. Reverse engineer the shot. Con-sider it. As you become more thought-ful of others images, youll becomemore thoughtful about your own.

-Shallow depth of eld.F/2.0 or faster?

-Great use of wide anglelens (24mm?) that exagger-ates lines & foreground.

-Cool use of evening light,how did the photographerdo it? Reector?

-Warm tones - nice! WB?

-Shutter speed freezingaction. 1/1000+?


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Conclusion

If there were a secret to creating photographs that looked the wayyou see them in your imagination it would be this: to consciouslybe aware of your vision, to be intuitively aware of every eect ofyour technology & technique upon the look of the image, and toknow how to combine the two. Of course thats not the answermost of us want to hear; it carries with it the implication of a greatdeal of (a) navel-gazing and self-awareness, (b) time and energy

spent intentionally learning to understand the visual language ourtechnology is speaking, and (c) time, eort, and mistakes madealong the journey of guring out how to express our inner visionwith the gear in our hands.

What I wanted to say is that there is no secret. But I think there is.Not in the sense of it being a mystery or some archane knowledge

for which you need to know the secret handshake, but in the senseof it being uncommon knowledge. Or Im wrong and the knowl-edge is actually common enough but too seldom acted upon. Idprefer to think the former than think the latter and have to livewith the implication that were not ignorant of the information,just lazy. Because if theres a common theme in the things I write,

its that this is hard. Tis takes work. It takes experimentation andfailure and a great deal of intentionality in our approach to thiscra. Tats the secret. Pretty disappointing secret, eh?

Te good news is thats all it takes. Sure, some people have a greaternatural disposition towards creativity; its easier for them. Somepeople are blessed with uncommon vision and insight and that


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translates to their work. But most of us travel this photographic journeyone hard-earned frame at a time.

What I said at the beginning I want to also reiterate here at the end.When it comes to the look of an image, there is almost nothing thegreat masters have accomplished that you and I cant also accomplish.It takes study, and thousands upon thousands of frames that we shoot,study, and learn from before moving on to the next thousand. Be inten-tional about this, be passionate, and dont ever merely adoptsomeoneelses specic look or aesthetic instead ofadaptingit to your own vision.

As Joe McNally says, this is a journey without a destination. We keeplearning not to get there but for the joy of being wherever we are, cam-era in hand, chipping away at this hoping to uncover our vision, learnour cra, and nd a place where one is increasingly expressed by theother.

Peace.

David duCheminVancouver, 2009


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