What is Your Photographic Attitude?

I went out one day recently to photograph whatever I could find…my heart just was not in it…as a result my images reflected that attitude…they had no purpose…no energy…no life.  Over the last few years, as I write about photography in whatever form it takes as a storyline, one thing I’ve come to realize is that photography…inspired photography…relies as much on attitude as it does all the other aspects of the art form.

That opens up a thought…do great photographic moments generate a great photographic attitude…or does a great photographic attitude allow you find those great photographic moments?  When I reflect back on those times when it just wasn’t working for me and evaluate the situation…well, most of those times were generated because my heart just wasn’t in the moment…for whatever reason.

Dewitt Jones, a National Geographic photographer and motivational speaker, once said something to this effect:  Too often we take the wrong approach to finding great moments…we tend to take the ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’ approach…when in reality we should be taking the ‘I see it, because I already believe it’, approach to photography.

What he meant by this is that when we believe that great things will greet us on any given photographic journey, then we will begin to see them…we will find those moments that nature offers up to us no matter how subtle…we can look beyond the obvious and find inspiring beauty in all things.  We simply must believe that they will be there…then...we will find them.  If we approach the art form from a hopeful attitude that something might be worth photographing...we prevent ourselves from opening our minds and our eyes to the subtle things that nature presents to us.

That concept is as important as understanding all the technical and compositional elements of photography.  If we are unable to see, or more importantly fail to look for, the opportunities that are there…then it really doesn’t matter how well versed we are in our technical prowess…we’ll never capture those moments because we are blind to them…our attitudes effectively place shutters over our creative vision and we simply overlook what is there.

So…what is your photographic attitude?  Think about it…believe amazing moments will be there…you’ll be surprised by what you might discover.

Keith

Visual Sounds of Summer

There are country sounds, feelings, and aromas that only summer can generate…farmers working their fields, hay being cut, and that warm breeze that makes the trees shake with life...and experiencing its warm embrace while sitting under a shade…I love sitting on the front porch listening to and feeling the spray from a summer rain shower…oh those summer rain showers that fill the air with their moisture laden aroma.  It’s a great time of year for photographers as well.

In Kentucky, the evening sky can be amazingly bold with subtle differentiations between layers where the lowering sun slowly filters through each and redefines their structure with pastel lights.  Mornings carry their unique flavor as well…often clear and fresh, yet with enough character to fill the landscape with golden light…throw in some fog and you have a great mix of mood and drama.

Capturing these images is as much a process of capturing what you feel as it is a technical application.  Understanding how the camera sees light…how it reacts to light…is key to generating those technically great character and mood images, but expressing the mood of the moment involves understanding yourself and how you react to light as well as understanding what generates an emotional response in someone else.  It’s more than pointing the camera at a scene and letting it make all the decisions...it’s understanding why the camera made the exposure decision it wanted to make, and visualizing how you actually want the image to look…then compensating to achieve that goal.

A mistake many beginning photographers make is, believing they have to capture a scene exactly the way it appears to them visually.  Sometimes that may be exactly what you need or want to do…but, the trick is understanding that you do not have to accept what the camera automatically gives you…which in many cases is not the way we saw the scene visually.  The camera, properly used, is capable of imparting drama and emotion even when photographing an area with subpar light…it is capable of making subtle-light bold…bold-light subtle…and great light amazing.

The visual scene is only part of the image generation process…what separates those great emotionally responsive images from ordinary snap shots is having the ability to look beyond the obvious and photograph from the heart…not the eye.

Summer can be a wonderful time to practice this as the light variations are so wide during the day that opportunities abound for those willing to get up early enough to capture them and willing enough to find those potential locations where the light will flood the senses with its magic….then looking beyond that…not simply accepting the average exposure values the camera gives you…but branching out and seeing the scene not from the eye, but from an emotional point of view…then ask yourself one varied but important question; why do I want to capture this scene…what is here that captures my imagination and why is it important to me at this moment…then photograph the elements that play on those emotions.  How to accomplish the technical aspects of it comes with practice…shooting the visual sounds of summer, or any season, with emotion...comes from the heart.

Turning 60....

A few days ago I had the pleasure of photographing four very delightful and very youthful models during a location shoot.  My self, along with several other photographers, spent the morning framing shot after shot and observing the energetic glow that flowed outwardly from our models...to say they were delightful, I mean that in the nicest possible way I can express, for they were absolutely delightful young ladies...and for a brief few moments, I seemed to regain a measure of my own long lost youthfulness...and felt young again.

The previous day I had turned 60...seems I'm beginning to understand that this age thing is creeping up on me more and more.  Although I've tried to remain active over the years, my tolerance for vigorous activity seems to have faded with time.  Oddly enough, I can still do a lot of the things that I could do twenty...even thirty years ago...just that my ability to recover from it takes longer...and that is where I sometimes tend to over do it.

In my mind I still see that 17 year old 4 minute and 40 second mile runner from high school days...that 20 something who performed search and rescue operations off the Oregon coast...that 27 year old that first fell in love with a wonderful young lady...who has been my soul mate for 31 years now, and who has been my strength ever since.  In my heart I'm still that proud new daddy who held for the first time his first born son...then again a few years later when number two came along...I relished watching them grow up.

When I see the old bicycle hanging in the garage, I remember being that 30 something eager rider who would regularly bike 40...50...even 60 miles....just for fun...and who canoed and hiked his way through wilderness adventures.  When I turned 40...the world did not end like I thought it might...but my positive attitude took a hit and I went through an early...some would say...mild-case, middle-age crisis and jumped into the Triathlon craze that swept the country...back then.

When the 50's arrived...seems the time thing reversed itself...I slowed down, but time sped up and that decade passed far more quickly than the others...yet, somehow I rolled through them relatively unscathed. During that decade, career issues and broken or malfunctioning body parts caused me to slow down and I saw a lot of physical changes...my hair turned white, my waist grew softer and larger, my once better than 20/20 vision got blurrier, my mind's ability to absorb details rebelled and refused to do so at the same pace, aches and pains infiltrated into parts of my body I didn't realize could have aches and pains.  Yet somehow...way back in the recesses of my mind...that young, vibrant, youthful person I once was lingered still and called to me at times.  I tended to ignore those calls most of the time...but occasionally mustered enough energy to swim a few more laps, take another hike, hit the gym circuit for another round...and then spend a few extra days recovering from it.

Well, now I am finally 60...and my mind today says that it's okay...but, when I reflect back across time at all those missed opportunities and too many wasted efforts, my heart says...well...maybe that should be left unsaid...it really wouldn't change anything.  Even so, for a brief few moments that Saturday morning, those four delightful young ladies spurred within me an ability to revisit once again...at least in my mind...what it was like to be young and strong and full of energy.  Yeah...they were delightful alright, in the best way a young person can demonstrate.

Before the morning ended, I told one of the girls as I struggled to rise from sitting on the ground , "Value your youth...for it will quickly fade before you realize its gone"...Yeah, I really enjoyed that morning of experiencing their energy and youthful exuberance...it certainly made turning 60 less of a disappointment...and you know it helped me to place a few things into their correct perspective...turning 60 ain't so bad...when it's all said and done...it's more like an earned accomplishment.

Keith