Tag: fine art

I absolutely love dramatic clouds in the sky when I’m doing landscape photography. So much more dramatic. And, with a bit of development in the digital darkroom, we can really accentuate the dramatic sky.

The scene above is actually much closer to what the scene really looked like when I took the photograph. To me, it’s somewhat mundane, a little drama but not nearly what I envisioned.

If you have followed me for a bit you know that I have absolutely no problem changing reality.

The photograph above I may have had to wait years to get, if not decades. Yes, I could probably get a thunderstorm over the grain elevator. This has much more drama than the original

In the fairly near future, I will have more time to spend getting the photographs I envision however, may still not be enough to really get what I’m looking for. I don’t try to say my photographs are documentaries when I have developed them in my digital darkroom but I do want to give them the look of reality.

There are also times when nature provides almost exactly what I’m looking for.

For me, it is more about drama.

It doesn’t always have to be a storm either.

I just don’t like the plain blue sky unless it fit my vision.

Have a vision of what you want to convey in your landscape photography. Don’t let yourself be limited by what nature provided at the time. Push the boundaries, gather assets that can be used later to create your vision.

Being creative can be exhausting. Unlike a light switch, you can’t turn it on or off, it just happens. Many times creative ideas come in waves, one right after another. Other times, it is like a proverbial desert, a wasteland. It is just for those occasions that I began writing my ideas down. I keep an electronic notebook that I can access on my smartphone, my iPad, or my computer since I always have, at least, one of them with me. I also keep a list of projects that I want to work on in the same electronic notebook. I just use a different tab for projects.

This practice works well for me and I was able to share some of those concepts in talking to another creative last night when we were talking about future projects. The one thing I do need to get a bit better at though is to write them down when I think of them. On too many occasions I get an idea and may not write it down until sometime later. It’s like trying to remember the details of a dream the next morning. You get the basic concept of the dream but you may have forgotten some of the more complex things.

Here is the exhausting part. I have so many ideas, concepts, and projects in mind and on my list that the challenge is getting them completed. As time goes by I end up getting involved in another project or concept. Whew! I run out of time and steam. This doesn’t even count my so-called 9-5 gig. I’m not complaining. I truly enjoy the creative challenge. In fact, I enjoy the creative challenge so much that I took on another project which is writing this blog daily at 4 AM.

Join me in the creative mindset, and start your own form of the creative log book. As you work on completing the concepts or creating the content don’t forget to catalog the resulting works of art.

Photography friends, mentors, and clubs are three ways to stay motivated and inspired with your photography. Of those, I have found that photography friends are especially important. Photography friends may call and say, “Hey let’s go shoot!”. They can also call up and just want to hang out, have dinner, or have a cold beer. Photography clubs are wonderful places to meet like-minded people but unless you make friends there the club usually only meets once a month or so. Photography mentors, I wish I knew. I’ve never really had a photography mentor outside of my photography course. Of the two mentors I had during my photography school one I liked the other was a bit gruff, but he gave me one of the most brutal critiques ever, one I still remember to this day.

I’ve been a part of two photography clubs and while I enjoyed them, I don’t really miss them with the exception of a couple of people. I did recently join another club, of sorts. I recently joined a group called the Kansas City Society of Contemporary Photography. It’s a bit more than a club. the Kansas City Society of Contemporary Photography runs art shows in their gallery. They sponsor other shows and like galleries display work for sale. I have yet to attend a function since I only joined a couple of weeks ago but I am attending a coffee and chat session at the gallery tomorrow morning. I was introduced to this society by a photography friend. This is a double win for me since I will be part of a club, so to speak, and I already have a friend there.

If you don’t have photography friends check out the local clubs nearby. You may find there are more people who are interested in photography in your area than you may think, yes even in small areas. Being a part of a group, even if it is just two, can be a great boost to your photographic creativity.

I sometimes forget this concept. Not every site where you can market your work recognizes art. They only market stock images, which have to meet “their” standards, which doesn’t allow for anything artistic. I don’t mean to imply that stock photography can’t be artistic, but you can’t have a soft focus or artistic lighting (must be evenly lit). So if you only light your subject using “advanced” lighting equipment it is often considered by “the expert” to be unevenly lit or poor lighting. If it has a soft focus it is posterized.

I’m not sure when the last time the “reviewers” were deep in the woods but guess what, there is uneven lighting even in nature. With this “rejection” based on the “criteria” given for the rejection I actually had to laugh.

Don’t let the rejection of a submission worry you. They don’t get art. A perfect example is having a photograph of a glass with soda in it that was accepted. Now, I haven’t sold a single license to the soda glass image but it met the “standards”. It’s their loss, not mine as some of the images have already been selected by a local business to promote an event.

Keep producing art. If buyers come, fantastic. If they don’t you’ve still got your art. After all, this is where the term starving artist comes from.

What photography tools are you afraid to learn? Studio lighting? Flash? Editing software? Something else?

I’ve had various cameras since 1982 but until about 2014 I was nearly terrified of off-camera flash. I tried using off-camera flash using my camera’s built-in flash as a commander to control a flash unit as a slave. The system was IR (infrared) and I used the TTL (through the lens metering), so basically, it was automatic. The results were also boring nearly flat lighting.

Then I was, literally, forced to begin to learn proper lighting during my photography school.

I learned to use a dedicated light meter and manual power adjustments on the lights. I learned to use a variety of diffusion devices, umbrellas, softboxes, grids, and reflectors. I learned how to set up lighting outdoors and use it as a fill flash even in the sunlight.

In the session I did this past weekend in the woods, I carried a couple of light stands, a portable softbox with a grid, remote triggers, two lights (speedlights), light meter (to measure flash). During one of the conversations, I had with my fairy model she mentioned that most of the previous photographers she had worked with didn’t use such equipment.

I explained to her that, at one time I too didn’t understand off-camera lighting or the use of lighting during the daylight hours. I also explained, very briefly, that using the lighting I could make the forest much darker while she was well lit.

Each of these images I shot during this past weekend was all shot using a flash with a softbox and grid. A very small amount of adjustment was done in post-processing afterward as far as the lighting was concerned.

Without the use of speed light, the scenes would have looked like the photograph above, which was taken without flash during my scouting mission a few days earlier at nearly the same time of day.

Embrace your fear of learning that thing of which you are afraid. Overcome the fear. It will help your artistic vision come to life.

This is often a difficult challenge, at least for me. Often I use the wrong criteria to measure success. Many of us use the term success as something that has achieved financial success. Even without a photography session having earned a dime it can be a success.

After my session this past Sunday with a fairy theme I have received a hugely popular response in both social media circles and the potential business market. In addition to those responses, I achieved the look and feel I wanted with this project and the model is thrilled with the results. With those things in mind, the session was an absolute success.

Measure your success not only in terms of financial gain but more so in personal gain. Measure success in achieving your personal challenges. Measure success in terms of positive feedback and completion of your vision. Measure success in personal terms, rather than money.

The success of this session serves as a reminder to me, to practice what I preach; Prepare and plan your photography sessions. Even if it is just a casual walkabout.

Yesterday, I wrote about preparing for your photography session. I was able to find a model to portray my fairy, arranged for the costume, scouted the location, fine-tuned my vision, and brought nearly everything I could think I would need. I was also fortunate the model was a fan of this sort of genre although she hadn’t really done much of it in a photography way.

After everyone arrived we wandered off into the forest and set up. During the hour and a half session, we took 120 photographs. In going through images upon returning home I really like 73 of them. Getting prepared pays off.

These are just a few I have developed to match my vision. I have many more to come. The fantastic thing, to me, about this session is that it is a fantasy world with a mythical being, so reality doesn’t exist and can be whatever I make it.