ESTABLISHED 2010 - Beyond The Campfire was created to encourage readers to explore the great outdoors and to observe it close up. Get out and take a hike, go fishing or canoeing, or simply stretch out on a blanket under a summer sky...and take your camera along. We'll talk about combining outdoor activities with photography. We'll look at everything from improving your understanding of the basics of photography to more advanced techniques including things likehow to see photographically and capturing the light. We'll explore the night sky, location shoots, using off camera speedlights along with nature and landscape. Grab your camera...strap on your hiking boots...and join me. I think you will enjoy the adventure.
Photography and writing are so similar sometimes it is difficult to separate the two conceptually. Just like brevity in writing, simplicity in a photograph is preferable. I struggle with both at times....I tend to use way more words than is necessary to get the point across, and just as often, I fail to remove all the clutter from my photographs. Both will reduce the effectiveness of each.
Let me give you an example how clutter can ruin an image, and how removing that clutter can improve the composition.
This first image is not a bad image...some might even suggest it's a decent image. When I took this shot, I asked myself...what else is here...what is it that is really catching my attention? When I looked more closely, I realized that what was actually capturing my eye was how the tree limb was angling across the slanted edge of the barn's roof. Everything else was just clutter and really didn't add anything to the photograph.
When I allowed myself to let the rest of the image go and focused in on what was really important, the composition and the image became much simpler and stronger. Sometimes we want to hold on to something because its there...that's what we see across our field of view when in reality, we need to learn how to eliminate what is not important, and look for those patterns and compositions that truly capture what we're feeling.
Here's another example of the same thing...just a different look at the same problem.
Composition in photography is such a subjective concept it is difficult to compare one person's capture against another persons capture even of the same subject. What one person sees, another may see it in an entirely different way. That problem is more than likely based on personal experience and how each of us view the world. What we must do is to develop a willingness to let go of stuff simply because it is there and look for those combinations of things that truly define what we're trying to accomplish.
One area of photography that I have been trying to explore in more depth is portrait photography. Not so much the studio style, but more the location kind. Our local club will from time to time sponsor a location portrait shoot which allows the members to get some experience and offer prospective models a chance to build upon their portfolio. They can be quite fun to do as the young ladies are very delightful to work with and to learn from someone with a lot of experience can be quite rewarding. But, there are other kinds of portraits that can be just as rewarding and possibly more revealing...I call them Faceless Portraits.
Over the past three or four years my wife Kris and I along with some other friends have worked with homeless individuals in our community primarily through her Blankets for the Homeless ministry. It has been quite a journey opening our eyes to another world most of us never realize even exists the way it does. As part of this ministry, opportunities to photograph these people have presented itself, but that can be a sensitive subject. Many of them, probably even most of them, do not want their photo taken for various reasons, and we've learned to honor that . . . always asking permission to do so. In some cases they don't want their faces photographed but are open to have their hands or feet . . . or maybe a tattoo photographed.
This kind of portrait can be extremely powerful if done correctly and with some sensitive thought. One of the more interesting homeless people we befriended was a woman named Melonnie. Always friendly, always willing to talk with us, but never allowed us to photograph her face. One of the most powerful images I've ever taken of homelessness is her hand portrait.
What makes it so powerful is the story behind the photo. You see, all of her fingers had been broken by her father when she was younger, and over the years of abuse and living off the streets, her hands had suffered greatly. The day I took this photo was a cold and wet winter day, and she was huddled under a bridge with tarps draped around to create an enclosure of sort to keep the wind out. Inside that confined enclosure was a small fire she kept burning for warmth. Her hands, and face were covered in soot, and her clothes were dirty and grungy. Even so, she invited us into her . . . home, offered to share what little food she had, even started to pour us a cup of coffee from the coffee pot we had given to her a few months before.
It was dark inside that enclosure with very little light except a small amount of ambient light from the flames of the fire and a little filtering in through a small opening near the top of the enclosing tarp. As she sat stirring the fire, I noticed her weathered and worn hands and asked if I could take a photo of them. She seemed somewhat amazed why I would want to do such a thing, they were after all rather dirty and her nails were broken and cracked. I said that would do just fine, so she sat the fire stir stick down and crossed them into an area where just a small amount of light reflected off the back.
The low light required a long exposure value and I had no tripod . . . there was no room for one anyway. So I bumped the ISO as high as I could realizing that there would be a lot of grain to the image, but that is what I wanted. I held the camera as firmly as I could and fired off several shots. This one was the best.
Faceless Portraits can tell a deeper story than an ordinary portrait. They are faceless only in the sense that they do not capture the features of a person's expression, but, in this case, the face of homelessness could not have been more dramatically exposed.
I read something the other day that really made me think hard about a lot of things. It was written by a woman a few years ago when she was in her 60's about her dad who died of a stroke having never fully realized all the things he dreamed of doing. She summed up his life with these words: Well-dreamt...but actively unfulfilled. It was a moment that spurred her even at 60 years old to begin to realize some of the dreams she had always wanted to do, but seemed to never find the time to let them happen.
Well-dreamt...actively unfulfilled...the power of those words carry way beyond the simplicity of their individual meanings. In many ways those words could sum up a large part of my life. Certainly, I do understand that the events of life are more complicated than simply dreaming about doing something hoping they might come true...circumstances often interfere with or circumvent those dreams.
One of my earliest desires as a young lad was to become a smoke jumper (sometimes spelled smokejumper)...you know...those U.S. Forest Service guys who parachute into the backcountry to fight forest fires. It all stemmed from watching a great classic 1950's movie called 'Red Skies of Montana' starring Richard Widmark and Jeffery Hunter among others. It was a great movie...still is...one of my top 5 favorites of all time. For many years while I was growing up, I dreamed of adventures fighting forest fires with a Hotshot crew and becoming one of the elite as a smoke jumper.
As college grew closer those dreams still influenced my initial attempts at jump starting a college career...In the fall of 1970, I enrolled at Eastern Oklahoma State College with a major in Forestry with the intent to finish the four year degree at Oklahoma State University...and just possibly some time in the future after some experience on one of the Hotshot crews out west, being able to get into the smoke jumper program.
Scene from Red Skies of Montana
Our class consisted of a few more than a dozen kids...mostly guys but there were a couple of young ladies in the program. On the first day of class our adviser and Intro to Forestry instructor said this to us.
"There are about dozen or so of you starting this major. Only about half of you will finish the first two years...and probably only 2 of the 6 or so remaining in the program will finish the 4 year degree...of those two...maybe...maybe...one will actually get a job in the forestry field."
Mike McMillan Spotfire Images
The demeanor of the class changed dramatically after that...by the next class several had already dropped out. I stuck it out for the first semester then, realizing the odds of successfully fulfilling that desire to become a smoke jumper were rather slim, I changed my major to something...well...how else can I say it...less exciting for sure...but safer in the long run....my life long dream having been dashed by discouraging words and circumstances of the times. I never made another attempt at following that path...never spent one day on a Hotshot firefighter crew...
Our adviser must have thought he was doing all of us a favor, apparently there just were not enough jobs with the Forest Service back then to go around . When I think back on it...what really happened was to see my first well-dreamt idea dissolve into my first actively unfulfilled reality. Back then I just didn't have enough information, insight, nor understanding about what all the possible options were (the internet did not exist back then)...nor did I really know what questions to ask to find out. If I ever carry one regret through my life it is that I allowed that circumstantial situation to change the direction of my life.
Over time the disappointment that stemmed from that introduction soften and life events changed and presented other opportunities...some of them proved rather adventurous...most of them rather mundane and pedestrian...none of them fulfilling the desires of my youthful exuberance. Although the events of the last 40 odd years have included a lot of ups and downs...over all I would have to say things worked out pretty well...just rather ordinary in most respects...but even today...when I make time to watch that old movie again those dreams from so long ago tend to resurface and I can only wonder...what if?
Internet photo - Mike McMillan
Spotfire Images
Well-dreamt...actively unfulfilled...I guess those words caused me to think more about all the old dreams that surfaced over the years but never did find an outlet...there are a lot of them actually...In most cases, the fault for them never being fulfilled lies only with myself. Those windows of opportunity stay open for only so long before time, age, finances, in short, life...causes them to close. Even so, it doesn't mean we have to accept defeat...new dreams...new opportunities open up all the time...its only when we dwell too long in the past and never look forward do we allow time and circumstance to catch up with us...and too often pass us by. The idea then, is to keep dreaming...and keep looking for open windows.
If we stop looking for new opportunities and we're not careful, before long, we might discover that we've dreamed away too many years...but never did anything to make them come true...and that is truly sad. Even so, I still would have rather dreamed of grand adventures than never to have dreamed of them at all. Never taking time to do such things...well...just how actively unfulfilled could a life without those dreams really be?
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