End of Summer/Encore Academy of Dance

Its been a while since I last posted here, but I've had a lot going on in my life, between moving (although it was across town) and starting classes as a post-baccealarate student (which is somewhat of a nightmare).  I've also been working on a couple of different projects, one that I've been working on most of the summer and hope to have done and posted here soon.

In the meantime, I've taken on a couple of other projects.  My most recent got me involved with the Encore Academy of Dance.  My girlfriend Ashley used to dance there, and she got me the opportunity to take headshots for their competition team, as well as headshots for the staff.  This was definitely a brand new experience for me, because I was working with much younger children.  I've always believed that people are some of the most interesting subjects to shoot, but they can also be the most difficult.  You can capture that one expression in a person that can tell you a wonderful story about them. Working with kids poses a new challenge though, especially when you have kids that aren't as cooperative.  You really have to get on their level and get them to trust  you in order for them to open up and let you capture their true self.

I've also recently gotten a new computer (the Thinkpad finally died), and with that I lost my photoshop program I had.  I've downloaded a trial of CS5, and I plan to buy the full version, its great.  Shooting for Encore gave me an opportunity to really test out what CS5 can do.  I got some great results.  The headshots being used were all in black and white, but here are a couple I just played with to sorta get the hang of what I was doing.  I still got some pretty good results with these.

 

During all this, and a couple of times before, I let Ashley borrow my old Nikon d60 to mess with, and start to learn some techniques.  She's showing interest in photography, and I'm definitely going to everything I can to help that along.  She actually was able to capture some candids of different classes with the studio, and here are a couple of her best shots.

This is all for now on Encore, but look for another possible post about Encore if I work with them again!

Leading Lines

Now that I've explained the basics behind the compositional technique of the Rule of Thirds, I'm going to introduce another technique that is a little more subtle and that I consider to be a little bit more difficult to consciously master.

Put simply, leading lines are lines found in a picture that help direct the viewer through the picture, basically giving them paths to explore through the scene you present to them.  Leading lines can be very obvious and purposeful, or more subtle and natural.  Either way, using these properly can help you take photographs that are alive and interesting.  Learning how to incorporate these can highlight, and in some cases even directly point to your subject.

The railroad tracks are a great example of leading lines.

In the above picture, the railroad tracks lead you in different directions around the picture.  The main focus point is close, in the foreground, but the lines of the rails lead your eye into the background, where you see that not only do the tracks split, but they lead somewhere close by, which can leave the viewer wondering what is farther down the tracks.  The ties allow you to explore horizontally, but eventually guide you back to the rails.

Pointing you toward the light.

The leading lines in this example are a bit simpler than in the previous one, in that they really only lead to one central direction and they all converge.  The many lines of the grooves in the pillar guide you into, as well as away from, the light fixture.

Following the branches of a cherry tree.

In this case, your leading lines are much more subtle than the very well defined, straight lines found in the previous examples.  The main branch guides you from the top of the photo down to the bottom, with the secondary branches coming off guiding you toward the cherry blossoms.  For me, the main branch works in the opposite way as well, by guiding you back toward the rest of the tree that you can't actually see, but you know is there.  This should be one of the goals of any photographer, to start the viewer's imagination by giving clues to the rest of the scene and allowing them to work it out for themselves.  Leading lines can be a useful tool in doing this.

The Pinxter Flower

This photo again shows how you can use the lines that nature provides to direct attention to your subject.  The anthers and stamens draw your initial attention, and lead you toward the center of the inflorescence, by continuing along the tube of the flowers.  There are other lines present in the photo, such as those found on the inflorescence in the background, but the ones in the foreground are dominant, and command the attention of the viewer to the main inflorescence, but they still allow you explore every aspect of this particular inflorescence.  Additionally, this picture combines this technique of leading lines with using the rule of thirds.  In fact, the center of the inflorescence is almost exactly at one of the four imaginary intersections I described in my post on The Rule of Thirds, which keeps the photo from being static, in spite of what I said about the leading lines trying to keep you focused on that particular inflorescence. 

You may have noticed that in my first and third photos, the main lines are very centered, at least on the vertical axis, and don't seem to follow the rule of thirds.  These are great examples of when you don't necessarily need to follow the rule of thirds all the time.  When you use a technique such as leading lines to keep the viewer engaged in the photos, you can bend another compositional rule to your liking.  In those cases, I wanted to be a little more dramatic by boldly placing the subject in the center, but still keeping the viewer interested.

For me, leading lines are more of an analytical tool when I am looking at a photo after I have taken it.  I can see why a photograph is a good one by identifying leading lines in some cases.  A good exercise to strengthen your ability to naturally capture leading lines is to go on photography expeditions where you focus solely on lines, and you are consciously aware of what purpose the lines serve in each of your photographs.  Practicing this technique enough will make it come to you naturally.

The Rule of Thirds

The rule of thirds is a pretty important and basic guideline to be aware of in photography.  The basic concept behind this idea is that you want to avoid having subjects in photos too centered.  On the surface, this may seem somewhat counter-intuitive.  The reason for this is because a subject that is too centered will cause the photo to be very static.  Essentially, it prevents the viewer from being able to explore what else is happening in the photo.  A dead-center subject will keep the viewer transfixed on the center of the photo.

Thirds come in to play as a general guide of where you want to put a subject in your photo.  Think of any photo you take as being divided up into thirds, like what is shown below.

You can see that the photo is not only divided into thirds horizontally, but also vertically.  What you want to try to do when composing a picture is to align the subject along the lines that divide each third.  This allows you to focus on the subject on one side of the picture, and have other interesting things happening in the background of your photo.

The main subject, the cat's face, is essentially aligned along the left vertical line of thirds.  Your attention is drawn first to the cat's face, but your focus doesn't stay there since there is more happening in the background to the right.

It is a common practice to not only use just one set of the lines that divide your picture into thirds as a guide of where to place your subject, but to combine the two.  The grid created by dividing a photo into thirds horizontally and vertically essentially gives you four "optimum" places to place your subjects, which are at the four intersections of the lines.

At these four intersections, your subject is aligned by thirds vertically and horizontally.  An example of this is below.

Note how the center of the water tower is placed roughly where there would be an intersection of lines on the grid of thirds.

Generally, this is a good guideline to follow.  Of course, as with any rule, there can be exceptions to the rule of thirds. You don't necessarily need to be sure that the subject aligns with the intersections every time.  Sometimes, you will have situations where your photo will be better with the subject dead center.

The best photos will come when you no longer have to consciously think about this rule while composing a photo.  It can be very helpful to do exercises where you take pictures while keeping the rule of thirds in mind and playing around with where to place your subjects.  Once you become comfortable with placing subjects in different parts of the photos, you can then use your discretion about when you do and don't follow the rule of thirds in order to achieve desired effects in your photos.

Look for a follow up post soon about Leading Lines!

Gray Stone Graduation

Recently, I photographed Gray Stone Day School's commencement.  This wasn't the first time I've covered my high school alma mater's graduation, but this was still pretty significant.  This was the first one they had in their new facility.  Having graduated outside on a random grassy patch beside Merner Gym on Pfeiffer's campus, and photographing later graduation ceremonies in Merner, it was great to see them finally graduate from their own place.

This was actually the second year in a row I've been hired by the school to be the graduation photographer.  Even though its a two hour trip home to do this job, I don't mind it one bit.  Its great to get paid for my work, but its even better to go back and see how much things have changed at Gray Stone since I graduated from there four years ago.  One thing is for sure, graduation now is much better than graduating in 90+ degrees outside!

As much as I enjoy doing this photo job, parts of it can be very challenging.  One problem I ran into while trying to fill orders for CDs I had received wasn't a problem with the photos themselves, but a problem with my computer.  I have a Lenovo Thinkpad I got through UNC's CCI program, a laptop that has given me numerous problems through the years.  However, as I was trying to make all the CDs, it decided it just wasn't going to take orders from me anymore and refused to burn any CDs.  Let me tell you, it comes up with these kind of problems at the most convenient times.  I was already enlisting the help of my mom, who had agreed to divide and conquer the CD burning with me.  So as I was frantically trying to get my computer to cooperate, she was making more and more CDs.  Eventually I gave up on my computer, but my mom came through with the rest.  Hopefully I can get my temperamental laptop to cooperate soon.

Congratulations to all the graduates of the Gray Stone Day School class of 2011!

Starting Out

Photography is one of my biggest passions.  I decided to start this blog so I could better share my work with people, and how I'm feeling along with it.  One of the most important aspects to any art form is the emotion or message associated with it.  This can be difficult for some artists to do, including myself, so maybe this is more of an exercise for me more than for the benefit of anyone reading this.  Either way, I think it'll be a fun journey.

I guess I should give a little introduction to myself, especially with how and why I got into photography.  The how is fairly simple I think.  My mom taught a high school art class, which included photography.  Ever since I was very young, she always took lots of pictures.  I remember being most fascinated with an old Nikon SLR she had, which she saved for her really good pictures.  I don't necessarily think it was always my passion or dream to take pictures like her, but I know that when I saw pictures she could take with that camera, I was sort of mesmerized.

Her influence as a photographer really became noticeable though when I entered high school myself.  She had long since stopped full-time teaching, but she still was involved with school, mainly as the yearbook adviser.  Naturally, I was recruited to yearbook staff, partially against my will because I had little to no interest in page layout.  However, it was in yearbook that I was able to discover my role as a photographer.  It was also during my freshman year (Christmas specifically) that I got my first digital camera.  Now I know that a lot of photographers/photography enthusiasts think film is absolutely the best way to go.  And I can agree and understand to an extent; there is something about photos taken on film that give them so much more character than digital pictures (maybe its because you have a limited number of shots, so much more work goes into composing each image since mistakes mean wasted film; I do hope one day to experiment with film and dark rooms, but for now I stick with digital for ease).  Before then, I had only ever owned a film camera.  Having a digital camera, where I was limited to hundreds instead of tens of pictures at a time, it allowed me to take tons of pictures, and during this I discovered how much I enjoyed it.  I wasn't very good at the time, but you have to start somewhere.

Later in my high school career, I started to gain an understanding of what makes a good photo.  I had finally been taking photos acceptable by my standards today.  I didn't really understand why at the time, until my mom taught me two very valuable techniques in understanding what makes a good photo; leading lines and the rule of thirds (I'll probably do a post later explaining these better).  Even to this day, I usually don't consciously think about these two aspects when I'm shooting; by now, they're just naturally in my composition technique.  These are just things my mom often points out when looking at my photos.  Back then, I was discovering these on my own, but not knowing what they were until my mom explained them.

Probably the most important moment in my photography was when I bought my first digital SLR.  The summer after my freshman year at UNC, I took all the money I got from friends and relatives for my high school graduation and invested in a Nikon D60.  I decided to spend a little extra and buy a second lens, a 55-200mm lens, in addition to the 18-55mm lens that came with the camera.  This basically turned everything I knew on my head.  I suddenly had the ability to control the focus, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance, basically everything that point and shoot cameras can't do.  I exploded with creativity; it was much like when I got my first digital camera, except now I had some knowledge of photography.  The biggest challenge was learning to control the camera to make the pictures turn out the way I wanted them to.  I almost wrote "Once I finally learned to do that", but that would be a lie, because I'm still learning, and I feel I will be all my life.  Once I finally learned at least how to efficiently manipulate my camera and produce results I liked, I was able to capture some significantly better photos than I had ever done.

For a while, my photography was limited to objects or just more abstract things.  I didn't have much opportunity to photograph people, and quite frankly, I thought I would be terrible at it.  People can be some of the most interesting and some of the most difficult subjects.  It wasn't until I got involved with UNC Pauper Players (various posts on their blog display some of my work with them) as a photographer that I was able to finally to have a chance to frequently have people as a subject.  I began with them when I took pictures during Broadway Melodies 2009, mainly for a set my sister wrote and directed ("The Dark Knight"), and then for the production of "Children of Eden" she directed.  People she knew in Pauper liked my photos and asked me to continue, which I happily did.  My experience with Pauper Players exposed me to shooting theatre productions, as well as portraits and head shots.  This is still an area of my photography I consider to be less polished, but I'm gaining experience, as I've finally started to do paid portrait sessions (quick aside: I'm more than willing to schedule a photo session with anyone!  I'll write a post later focusing on this)

Well I've thoroughly explained to you how I got involved in photography, probably more than you ever wanted to know.  Now the big question is why.  To be perfectly honest, I probably couldn't have told you why I am involved in photography a couple of years ago, other than the fact that I enjoy it.  But I'm finally starting to gain an understanding of this.  For me, photography is about getting other people to see the world how I see it.  Since I can't get you inside my brain and looking through my eyes, I have to let my pictures do that for me.  It can be difficult at times for me to express to others by just telling them, but photography allows me to do this without words.  Of course, photography isn't about just telling you how I feel, but I think that's an important component in how my photos look.  The "why" aspect of my photography is still shaky, and I'm aiming to improve it.  In the past I've taken lots of photos, and the ones I decide to keep as "good" ones often have little meaning that I can explain, they are just photos that I thought were good enough to keep and share.  I think that being able to apply feeling and meaning to my photos is one of the goals of this blog.  If I can write down and have a tangible representation of why I take the photos that I do, they will probably mean a lot more to me, and hopefully to somebody else as well.

Essentially my experimentation with photography has given me experience in performance, sports, portraits, architecture, nature, wildlife, and abstract photography.  I've also changed equipment, having recently bought a Nikon D7000, which is providing new challenges as I attempt to learn how to use this camera to its highest potential.  As with the D60, I bought a second lens, this time a 70-300mm lens in addition to the 18-105mm lens that comes with the camera.

Sorry to run this post so long, but without this background, nobody reading this can hope to have a true understanding of what I am doing here.  I promise to keep future posts considerably shorter though (and posted at a more reasonable time!).  Look for a post soon about my experience photographing Gray Stone Day School's graduation this past weekend!