The Photographic Puzzle's 3 Distinct Parts - Sculpting with Light

Light is the chisel, what you are photographing is the marble, composition is the artistic interpretation. The three distinct parts of the photographic puzzle. When blended together create what is known as Fine Art Photography.


What is important about visualizing photography from the perspective of these three elements is they can be applied to any photograph taken by any photographer. Sculpting with light can change the outcome of your final photograph by using light to enhance the characteristics of your subject.

Using Light as the Chisel: Light moves in a straight line, yet it can be bounced, diffused, softened, strengthened, dimmed, and brightened. All of these characteristics can be used to the photographers advantage. Because light moves in a straight line it inherently will create shadows and shadows are good for photographers for they bring definition to your subject, especially people.

When it is bounced off a ceiling or a reflector surface, light will automatically spread out and soften those shadows. The source of light does make a difference. If it is natural, it's characteristics are as varied as the weather conditions. Clouds diffuse it, shade darkens it, used from behind it can highlight and from the front it can be harsh. It is therefore up to the photographer to determine how best to employ natural light.

Your Subject as the Marble: What you photograph is just as important as the chisel you decide to employ against it. Your subject determines what kind of chisel you will use. People can be used against a variety of light. Athletic bodies require shadows for definition, beautiful models need softer light to help define their unique look. Animals are difficult to light because they tend to move around, where nature is often finicky and uncooperative.

Compositional Interpretation: How you want your image to look requires you understand composition. A weak composition is like weak writing. The best written stories are the ones that stay on subject and use strong verbs and descriptive prose. Strong writing helps the reader to visualize the story and carries the story forward with each line. Weak writing bogs it down and the reader loses interest very quickly. The same applies to Compositional Interpretation.

Weak composition in a photograph becomes an ordinary image and the viewer never really connects with the story. Strong compositional elements carry the story forward and the viewer is drawn into the image. Composition relies on the other two parts for without them, the image looks flat and dysfunctional.

The Final Image: When all three of the Photographic Puzzle parts are used to sculpt an image, the photograph comes alive. The viewer instinctively recognizes how this happens without even knowing why...it just works. It is up to the photographer to recognize how to employ these ideas toward what he is photographing. When he/she does, your photographic images become much more than pictures, they become a visual book that is captured and told in a single moment of time.

First Snow of the Year - Birds Outside My Window

Had a few visitors yesterday during the first snow of the season...Kind of fun to video and watch them enjoy the meal we provided.

Project Planning

One of the most satisfying rewards of being a photographer is completing a well planned and executed project. It's not as easy as it sounds and requires a measure of perseverance and determination to pull it off. Just starting a photographic project of any kind can be a daunting undertaking, yet it is one of the best ways to move your photographic skills forward.

Back in the 1940's Ansel Adams, arguably one of America's greatest photographers, was commissioned to photograph the National Parks of North America. Certainly it was an enormous undertaking, but one he was up to. It took him several years to complete the project and was interrupted by WWII, but eventually he was able to follow through with the project and in the process produced some of his most amazing works. As a model to follow on how to accomplish a project, his would be the cornerstone example to follow. For most of us, projects tend to follow a less difficult path. Even so, every photographer can benefit by becoming involved in a personal photographic project.

I've started, floated through, and in some cases completed many projects. Most of them were short term examples focusing more on an event, or time of year, or just a whim of an idea I wanted to try just because I could. One of my more extensive projects was to spend the better part of a year photographing Shanty Hollow Lake here in Kentucky. It is a wonderful conveniently close location where as a photographer one can discover a myriad of opportunities, from waterfalls, wild flowers, dramatic sunrises and sunsets, to large amphitheater rock and cliff formations, along with all the seasonal changes.

Probably the most important thing I have learned by doing that project was how to plan my time afield. Even though the lake was close by, I was not always able to simply take off and start shooting. Sometimes I only had an hour or two, or maybe a morning or an evening in which to shoot. Many times the weather did not co-operate, and sometimes I had to scurry about grabbing my gear to rush over there to catch what I hoped was to be some great lighting. It did not always work out.

Most of the time I had an idea of what I wanted to accomplish on any given trip over there. I knew I wanted to capture some short video clips and so I planned around how I was going to accomplish that by myself. On other occasions I wanted some specific still shots from the lake before or just after sunrise while I sat inside my canoe. Shots like that one required that I get up several hours before sunrise, drive over, offload the canoe and camera gear, paddle all the way to the upper end of the lake to be on site well ahead of when the sun was to rise. It turned out to be a great project and produced some of the best photographs I've ever taken.

Some projects involved shooting a specific portrait or capturing a specific image, the kind of shot where you are wanting to capture a single image using unique and interesting lighting setups. Even though the project may only be for a single shoot, the planning of how to do the shoot took several days of diagramming and making experimental shots to see if the concept was even possible. Even so, once on location I had to work quickly to catch the background light at just the right moment and then setup all the lights, testing the exposures, then making the shot.

I even have one project that has been ongoing for several years. It's an almost never ending project often disrupted by distance and available time, yet a project that is special in many ways. That project is to photograph Oklahoma's Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. I started the project a good number of years ago and often get frustrated by the lack of time I have to get over there. Years have slipped by between shooting opportunities, and even when I do get over there the weather often interferes with my desired shooting opportunities. Even so, it is a project I will continue to pursue as time allows and has evolved over time. My current plans are to shoot a series of videos in the area to combine them with still images and create a documentary style program.

Much is still to do, still to prepare for, but it is a project that will challenge my ability as a photographer and thrust me into another world, the fascinating realm of videography.  Preparing for such an adventure will require more than just taking pictures. It will require physical conditioning, becoming more adept at shooting video, learning about editing and blending of photographic styles and techniques, writing and story telling, and yes capturing images that stir the imagination.

Projects will do that for you, force you to challenge yourself, to improve your technique, and encourage you to try new things. It will force you to accept failure as a learning event, and then propel you forward with a renewed vigor and enthusiasm for the art of photography.

Projects are a great way to employ your photographic skills. There are few if any better ways to lift yourself to a new level of accomplishment.

A Look at Fall in Kentucky

Every year plays out a different yet familiar dialog where the summer seems to linger and hang on well past the time most of us are ready to let go of it. September rolls around and we begin to see hints of what is to come. The evenings begin a progressive change from sultry to a welcoming coolness, wayward breezes search for the tops of trees, and the aroma of fall begins to prevail. Some of those trees develop a promising change of color, very subtle at first but as each day progresses, more and more yellow, a splash of red, a touch of orange infiltrates the landscape. The autumn harvest is in full swing as farmers tend to their fields stirring dust into the cleaner air as the combines do their work. Then October is upon us before we know it, yet the grasp of summer lingers seemingly never to let go until one day, near the end of the month, virtually over night the landscape explodes into a senses engulfing kaleidoscope of color. Fall in Kentucky has arrived and with it begins the photographers delight.

I actually enjoy all four seasons and especially those transitional times between seasons, but perhaps fall is my favorite, for with it comes probably the most dramatic change of the year where the prevailing green of summer explodes into the reds, oranges, and yellows of cooler weather. These color contrasts become a haven for photographers and capturing them becomes an obsession. Photographers become almost neurotic because they know the season is short and within a few days most of the color will be gone. So, we photograph in haste, searching here and far for that special moment of season defining light.

We develop a sixth sense where at a glance we spy unique blend of sky, color, and light across a field or hovering over a small back road stream. We travel the back roads with shifting eyes catching for an instant that one shot...then drive too far only to turn around to find it again.

We look closely into the trees and discover single leaves that speak to us about their last days of glory filled with a final vibrant message of color.

We zoom in close and isolate those moments, and then the next moment we turn around and recognize the contrasts of color against a cobalt blue sky.

We listen, we hear, we see, we sense what is happening around us. We are always concerned about the what if's. What if I had been hear earlier, or what if I was at that other location, or what if rains tonight and knocks down all the leaves before I can capture everything I aspire to capture.

Fall creates a neurosis in photographers like no other time of year. And yes, it is perhaps, or maybe certainly is my favorite time of year. I am a photographer and I live for such moments.