Looking back, looking forward
I’ve been working on a couple of projects in LightRoom for the past 2 weeks, organizing my photos and looking back over past work. I have specific reason for doing this, but I also think its good to go back over my older work from time to time with fresh eyes. I see how far I’ve come in the past 7 years, but more importantly I re-discover the excitement of photography that drew me to to the craft in the first place.
It’s hard sometimes to get the same excitement about a recent photo shoot. I usually take a few days before I edit the images from a shoot because it’s all too familiar. I’m excited to see how the shots turned out, but when the shoot is fresh in my mind I tend to see all the weaknesses in the photos. I see the strengths too, but the weaknesses are exaggerated in the beginning. When I look at photos I made a couple of years ago, I can see them the same way I see another photographer’s work. I can see the merits of the photo as it is, instead of comparing it to the idea in my mind about how it should have been.
Project #1, which I work on in my down time, is key-wording all my images and, as a result, building my own little hierarchy of keywords. I was working on building a keyword list based on the International Press Telecommunications Council standards, but it’s a lot of work to edit it down to a form that LightRoom will recognize, so I ended up building my own tree organically. I still plan to finish the IPTC list and I will probably share it with the LR community, but I don’t expect to add it to my old images once it is done.
Project #2 is scanning my catalog for images to include in various collections. One is the “Tao of Seeing” collection; I will be submitting this portfolio to a new magazine that focuses on art and spirituality, so I need to pull enough images together for that. Another is collecting some event coverage work to round out my portfolio so I could submit it to an editor whom I was recently introduced to. And the third is pulling new images for the “Auto Deco” series for possible inclusion in a calendar, which I plan on having ready by the first week of December so it is ready for the holidays.
I’m off for the next few days with family in town for the holidays. Most of you reading this are my American friends, so Happy Thanksgiving!
Critically Rejected
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I love this image. I mean, really I do. It has been the background and startup screen for my laptop for several months. It’s the background for my Creative Zen mp3/video player. It’s the front page for my website. It may be a little soft; that is a combination of the tele-macro lens and the awkward hunched position I was hand-holding the camera in to get the Pearce Arrow hood ornament framed in the brilliant red of the sports car next to it.
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I decided to participate in PhotoLucida’s “Critical Mass” portfolio challenge this year (after realizing that I had reacted to late to even have the choice to register for next year’s PhotoLucida event). My portfolio wasn’t chosen but one of my fellow entrants, Liz Kuball, extended an offer to other unsuccessful entrants to have their work featured in her blog.
My image is about halfway down, and even without describing it to you I would almost bet that you could pick it out while skimming through. My portfolio contents were so far removed from the other work that I see here, it makes me feel like a Realist in an Abstract Expressionist world.
I don’t take this as a failing of mine. Nor do I assume at this time that my work did not fit in with the Critical Mass judges preconceptions (I’ll wait until the list of finalists comes out). No, instead I find it encouraging that the clarity of my images stands out in a field of similarity.
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If I ever hear that 72 dpi is “good enough for the web”, I will always remember this image in this forum… I had to reformat the image to 72 dpi as part of the submission requirements. While the other images I submitted looked fine, I noticed there was a fringe of jpeg artifacts in the red background around the body of the archer. Not extreme, and only really noticeable at full zoom, but annoying. Then I uploaded it to the PhotoLucida site, and their auto-generated thumbnail looked like ass – the fringe had become a dancing twinkle of blue lights around the entire picture. I tried several different ways to export and reformat the image, with a couple of programs I had available, but the result was always the same.
I probably should have removed the image from the contest, and found something else to submit. Instead, I chose to make it the last image instead of the default for my portfolio, and hoped that enough other pictures had similar problems that the reviewers might look at the full image more closely. Perhaps it wasn’t the best choice, but I love this image and I really wanted to make a statement with it.
FotoFusion 2007
Today was a very good day… I’ve enjoyed FotoFusion so far, even ended up with some free filter software from yesterday’s class (because I pay attention! Zone 9 – 247), but today was a really good day. Two photo shoots – one in the morning a spontaneous shoot with some kids in Veterans Park, and one in the evening, a nude shoot with 5 models on the beautiful grounds of a ritzy West Palm home along the Intracoastal – and my first portfolio review, very positive.
The morning shoot was with Colin Finlay, and it was about shooting in natural light. As we were wandering around, this little boy sleeping on a tire swing caught my eye… I approached the mother and her friend to ask if I could take some shots (a big victory for my reserved self, I might add). it ended up with almost the whole group shuffling around him and some other kids. The boy on the swing, Russel, barely stirred the whole time, another little boy with him, Tommy, was the opposite. He was quietly expressive, and very spontaneously draping himself over the playground equipment. I learned that they were both not feeling well, which is why they weren’t in school. Some really great shots. I also made a possible business connection with a passing jogger in the park who was looking for someone to shoot food for her healthy eating business.
The afternoon shoot was with Vince Versace (no relation AFAIK) and Kevin Ames. It was challenging in that the light fairly low, and there is a more than a few shots that I truly regret losing to the blur because my shutter speeds were too slow (I shot aperture mode most of the day). Nevertheless I do have more than enough good shots to not embarrass myself and not feel like I wasted my time and money; regrettably I will not be posting any of them because we signed an agreement that we would not sell or publish the pictures, even to the web – it was a learning experience, and apparently the sponsors have had some legal troubles arising from past shoots.
Looking back on the shoot, it was great experience. I was not at all uncomfortable or awkward as I feared, and I hit a groove that more than once Vince talked about – seeing the form, not the naked. I’d be dead if I didn’t realize that there were naked women right in front of me, but it was only occasional moments where I was aware of nakedness for it’s own sake, and much of the time I was thinking angles and framing and composition. Throughout the shoot there was a former model helping with lighting and making suggestions on poses and angles and working with the models. I need to try to find out her name again, because she was just great and I have an embarrassing memory for names. In fact, I have committed the unforgivable sin of Forgetting the Models Names! Not entirely true, but more true than not. I will find out, tho’, when I send along some of the shots for the models to see.
The portfolio review was with Ed Kashi, and I was very pleased to hear that he didn’t really have an negative comments about my portfolio – in fact he made a point of saying he wasn’t going to really go into the photos because he felt I definitely have an eye for color and composition. I’ve been told this before, but it is very gratifying to hear it from someone in the business rather than friends and family who aren’t up on technique, or who are and may be biased. 
But I love ya!