The mentored sketchbook.

A Night Out

In the middle of May this year, there was supposedly one of the biggest full moons ever! All the photographer's I know (which is not many, but I'm sure there were plenty more) were out photographing it. 

I happened to be at some friends' wedding at prime time to photograph. My girlfriend and I quickly exited, she graciously took me home to grab my camera, and we rocketed to Queen Elizabeth park. There were plenty of moongazers, and most of them had one thing that I didn't: a tripod. Until resently I have not had one of my own, and I have to say I have made some great images without one. Not because I have steady hands, but because I learned to play with this limitation instead of fight it. I have never let it stop me from at least getting out there and trying stuff. Here's an image that I took that night:

Photographer's notes: 5.0 sec     f/3.5   ISO 250

You may notice the moon istn't even in it, but the street light makes a good replacement. This is C, she's a ninja. She was in a great all-black gettup, so I took my eyes off the moon for a second-or more like 5 seconds- and put my lens on her. I'm happy with the mood in this image, and it wouldn't have happened if I had just said "I don't have a tripod! oh well, let's stay for more cake". 

I love a challenge, and often my limitations are actually great opportunities for creativity. Another opportunity struck me when I stopped at a yard sale on my way home for work, and there was a nice light weight tripod for a great bargain. From now on, I will only have to take images of the moon that look like this-

Hilo, Hawaii Oct. 2011

Vancouver, Canada May 2012

 

-for nostalgic purposes. 

It was fun to get out into the night with my fellow photographer's, and it wouldn't have happened without my date, ride, and body guard.

Thanks C   :)

Cheers,

T

One little girl doing her first show

My job at my favourite little Italian coffee shop in the world, with my very petite Italian boss, has been a huge help in making my home in the city. As well as a great boss, great coffee, a great clientelle, and at least one free meal a day, that job introduced me to my first art show. 

One of the regulars at the caffe was doing a little project with us: having her company's in-house photographer taking photos of the caffe menu items for promotion. So, we got to talking, and my zealous boss enthusiasticly proclaimed me a photographer as well. Miss Claudine Santos (great lady, unfortunately we are losing her to the city of Ottawa) said, "would you ever be interested in showcasing that?"

I looked at Mario-my boss-shyly, he said "Vai, go for it! " the best reassurance I could have got. 

So I said "absolutely! how do you mean?"

She explained to me this show series tittled "Spring Artists Series" with the theme synesthesia: condition whereby “a sensation produced in one modality is applied to another modality” (Dictionary.com) meaning that hearing something can cause someone to see a colour and so forth. The series (one on every thursday in April) would be held in a cozy room in the back of a local resturant, with the photographers work hanging on the wall and a dj playing music fitting to the work.

I pitched my series of abstract flowers from hawaii and my home in the Cariboo for the show and Claudine agreed! 

Photographer's notes: 1/6th of a sec f/22 ISO 320

This was the most popular at the show, turns out many of us have certain feelings about a still center with moving seroundings, or maybe it was just the familiarity of a dandelion/ salsify blowing in the wind. To me this image just says home, the home I know with warm afternoon light, a wide sky and well, weeds....

Here are a few things I learned from my first show:

1.) You can go from amateur to professional (or, as I like to think of myself, semi-professional)overnight.

I had nothing, and I mean nothing to start with when I agreed to do this show. I still don't have a facebook page or a website. If you have any feedback on what is useful and what isn't with an online presence I would love to hear it! Is it worth it to have a page? Is there a good free website that I can manage myself? Any tips would be useful!

I decided that I could only do what I could manage, and no more. I couldn't get 10 000 business cards, I couldn't make a huge inventory, I couldn't buy a suit and be a publicly traded company, I was just one little girl doing her first show. I sugared it down to the minimum, which was a little card with my bio and a descripton of the series on nice paper, 7 smallish prints on the most inexpensive paper and mounting, a foolproof wall covering, a simple nice dress and a smile. I was scared, but I decided that that would have to be enough. Thank god it was! I was surprised when I sold 2 prints off the wall, another was ordered later, and I booked a job. I actually made a profit!

2.) I need a lot of help and I have to ask for it, I really could not have done it otherwise. I had everything from printing my bios off my girlfriends printer, to Chris sizing my files and sending them to the colour lab, to my mom driving 6 hours to help me set up and tell me I looked great. Not to mention teary phone calls and stress releif that I could not have gone through without support. Without those things I would have been totally screwed, so thank you thank you thank you!

 3.) If you don't get adaquate answers to your questions, you have to find out yourself. It doesn't matter how many phone calls you make or emails you send, if you don't get the basic infor mation you need, you're screwed. There's only so much winging it you can do. A lot can be said for showing up. If you need to know something, nothing beats going down there and talking to someone face to face, and doing it early so you know what to expect. 

4.) Tell everyone, absolutely everyone you know or have talked to for at least five minutes, and someone you don't expect might show up. The reason I call my first show a success is because people came! I was wonderful to have my friends and family around me.

Feel free to comment!

Cheers,

T

2.) The engagement photo shoot <3

When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I'd like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph.

-Annie Leibovitz

 

This is one of my favourtie quotes by Annie Leibovitz, a very prominent American photographer most well known for her work at "Rolling Stone" and "Vanity Fair" magazines, and one of my personal idols.

This quote  speaks to my love of photographing the people I love, and it makes me think about the fragility of exposing those people in photographs. When I read this quote I think of what it means to know someone, for them to let you in, for their spirit to be revealed, and this can happen in a very unique way when someone is photographed. This happens not only between the photographer and the subject, but also the viewer. The distance between the viewer and the subject puts them on different plains, giving the viewer a different perspective. 

Photographer's notes: 1/1250 of a sec f/5.6 ISO 200

As an engagment present to them, I did an engagement photoshoot for my sis and her fiance. 4 hours and 2 locations, we were pretty tired, but we got some great shots! 

By the way, this is February and this amazing model is in bare feet!!

How do you see them when you look at this photo? 

It was pretty important, we were documenting history. These photos will be seen on the web, in wedding invitations and save-the-date cards, countless facebook profile pictures, not to mention their 50th wedding anniversary!  The above image I am so proud of I feel like it could be sold as stock! This next one is more personal, I just found them like this: 

Photographer's notes: 1\250th of a sec f/5.6 ISO 200

I'm so happy for them! Best couple I have ever known! :)

Near the end of the shoot we got even more candid: 

Photographer's notes: 1/40th of a sec    f/4.5    ISO640

How much has your perspective changed since the first photo? How well do you know them? no right or wrong answer, just putting the question out there. 

 

Thanks for reading.

Cheers,

Teresa

Space for Expression

I have reached a great level of comfort, routine even, after 5 months living on my own in the rainy city of Vancouver! Even with two moves, a full time job, and quite a number of drunken dancing parties under my belt, my photography has taken a few small leaps forward. 

Amazingly, I am still getting pageviews on this blog, so I will tell you catch you up on recent experiences with several posts, ending with the most recent development.

 

My sister approached me to take a series of portraits of her to use in a couple of multimedia assignments themed in "touchablility/untouchability" for two classes in her masters program in women's and gender studies at UBC. the results of which were: both assignments were very well recieved, got exceptional marks,were presented in two conferences, and published in "Margins" a zine, to be released at the end of this month!

 

These portraits are of a sensitive, personal nature to my dear sis, so it's a huge previledge to be allowed to blog about them, even in a professional manner. I've chosen a less sensitive sample to discuss. 

Photographer's notes: 1/80th of a sec, f/5.0 ISO 800

 

To give it some context, the paper that the images (including the above image)accompany is a narrative on the expression of stone butch sexuality, the basis of which is that a stone butch does not recieve sexual touch from their partner. 

 

The space we were working in for the shoot was the apartment of my sister's soon-to-be-fiance (more on that later) that had a white wall we could use as a background with lighting above it, a movable full spectrum light, and my stand by Canon EOS 40D and my one and only lens: 28-135mm.

I wasn't really sure how to approach the project, but what I did know was that for some reason a visual aid was needed, so there was something that needed to be shown that couldn't really be explained. Basically I was the vehicle for her expression, so I could only do my best to allow space for that while providing a little direction and technical experties.

To get the ball rolling I just suggested a few poses, and after seeing the results and asking what was good, not good,  what was almost there, things began to flow and ideas and movements came faster. Always helps to not be too serious when things don't work out as you plan. We were laughing and joking the whole time!

On the editing and processing side of things, it was amazing how warm the full spectrum light made the photos! I had to cool them all down, but I was glad for it because bare skin is much more pleasing to look at in warm light than cold. It's much easier to cool them down than it is to warm it up without it being distractinly coloured. 

Feed back, stories, critisism, correction, praise, and cheekiness are all welcome in the coments! Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

T

Textured brush

My post earlier was so fun I thought I'd post another one! This one looks like (if I were a painter) I took a spiney brush to the image. The tight S curve in the center of this one is why I like it. The red and green are vibrant and soft. Enjoy.

Photographer's notes: 0.5 sec, at f/14, ISO 100.

Anthurium

Anthurium is a very common plant in Hawaii. Some of the more prime (I'm assuming) varieties were chosen for the botanical garden I visited. I did not take a liking to this plant, I find it shiny, falic, and dis-jointed looking. Despite this, the result of my shoot with this plant had me twitching in my seat when I got home. To show you what it actually looks like I took this image:

Photographer's notes: taken at 1/60th of a sec. at f/9, ISO 500, exp. -1 2/3 these settings don't make for a great file, but I just had to do whatever I needed to to get a fast enough shutter speed to hand hold, and I knew it would only be used for the web.

It's a fine plant, really. Nature is beautiful in all forms, but it's just not my favourite. However, something stopped me from just walking away. I think it was the question: how can I photograph this in a way that I like? It's obviously a prominent plant in Hawaii, and I should have a record of it.

So, I switched my thinking. I stopped looking at the flower as "anthurium" and looked at it as red, leaf shapped (which is a pleasing shape), white line, ridged texture etc. Breaking down the meaning of what I was looking at. Then I started thinking of myselft as a painter.

Chris and I were talking about this idea of thinking of yourself as a painter. Painters -these are Chris' words that I'm paraphrasing-have to create a composition completely in their mind, and then bring it onto the canvas. THAT is a challenge. As a photographers, everything we have to work with is out there. It's far easier to work with what's there, and simply arrange it somehow.

For me, "I am a painter" is a quick way to say I am pushing myself past the documentary. Painters, especially impressionistic painters, make decisions about their composition and colour based on what they want to show, or say, or what mood they want to express. I seek to do the same thing, except instead of a brush, paints, and whatever other wonderful things a painter choses to use, I have a camera, it's settings, what's around me, the slider adjustments in the darkroom, my hands, and I won't even begin to list the things contained in my mind that I don't even know the extent of. 

So on that note, here is one of the abstract images of the anthurium that I created. I won't tell you exactly what I did,  I will leave it to you to trace the path and expression of my brush.

Photogrpaher's notes: 0.5 sec, f/25, exp. -1 2/3, ISO 100

Before and After.

Photographer's notes: I rarely shoot on speed priority ( I usually go with aperture priority) but for this shot the speed really was the priority! 1/500th of a sec, at f/8 exp. +1/3, ISO 200.

Outside my house there is this honey suckle bush, and the snow from the roof overhang driped onto the high branches. Water trickled down the entire bush forming icicles all the way down. It's a beautiful sight, but there are two things I struggled with:

1.) the beauty in it's entirety cannot be expressed in the two demensional frame of a photo. I decided it would be a more powerful to focus in on a small, integral part of this sight.

2.) a photo is a still frame, the beauty of this lies in the constant motion and development of it's existance.

The beauty of capturing a moment is that, we have the ability to imagine the before and after. We experience time and again that things are constantly changing, nothing lasts, tomorrow will not be the same as today. We are facinated by the possibility of capturing what we cannot hold onto. Time, a smile, a wave, a rainbow, love, the list goes on. What would life be like if we could bottle these essences of life? 

I decided to photograph this Harold Edgerton style-he's the one that captured the image of a drop of milk that makes a crown, and other high speed photography- in the hopes of taking advantage of the tendency we have to see the before and after. To contrast movement with stillness. Enjoy.

 

Cat's Whiskers

Photographer's notes: this image is purely to show the flower, and what it's called. 1/60th of a sec. (just fast enough to hand hold) f/6.3 ISO 100.

This is one of the first plants I came upon in my walk through the botanical garden in Hawaii. I was totally interested in the aptly named plant, and it's delicate whisker like petals. 

To accentuate that, I slowed down my shutter speed, and during the exposure I moved my camera in a U shape. This blurred the "whiskers" and made them look even more soft and delicate:

Photographer's notes: 1/4th sec, f/29, ISO 100, exp. -1/3

When I took this image, I didn't plan on making it black and white. What I saw when I got home was a very distracting green background. There was great tonal contrast, but the green totally overtook the picture and pulled away from the soft edges of the flower. It was a bit gutzy for me, because I don't know  very much about black and white photography, but since it's only two tones I figured I could handle it! I feel this image shows the beauty that I saw that day when I came upon this unique flower!

Complimentary

Continuing with the photos I took of the plant life in Hawaii, the below image is of a small patch of asian sword fern. It's a very common fern, although not native to the island.I appologize for the length of this post, feel free to skim over the things that may not enrich your reading....

This fern grows near the ground, and can grow to about knee or waist height. The ferns in the images below are only about five inches tall, so I was actually on my knees when I took this photo. 

Photographer's notes: taken at 1/6th sec, at f/36, ISO 100. Made sure I had a slow enough shutter speed to play with, but also had a decent exposure so that my histogram was pushed to the right. If you're wondering, your histogram is a graph, and it shows you how much information you have captured in your image. The farther left and right it is pushed, the more info you have. I always make sure that it is pushed as far right as posible (toward the light side) so that when I get home I have enough info to play with. Although, I just found a Freeman Patterson quote that read: "if you have 36 perfectly exposed photos when you get home, you haven' t done anything new" I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea. 

In this setting, the ground framed the ferns in two paralel rectangles, in a horizontal type visual. So, to accentuate the verticality of the ferns, I moved my camera up and down during the exposure -here I am using the word exposure to refer to the length of time that my sensor is exposed to the world's light to make the image, not to refer to my histogram.

I was delighted to see that despite the motion, you can still destictly see the horizontal leaves on the blade of the fern. This gives the fern the look of a comb.

This is the original framing of the photo, but later I made a crop:

I made this crop, because I wanted to focus in on one of the most distinct "combs" in the  photo. I was also attracted to the "V" that is formed around the center blade. This forms a pleasing group of three. After I made the crop, I processed this image as it's own image, forgetting it's origins. I think this is important, because the framing IS the image basically. The image would not exist without the method in which it is framed; therefore, when you change the framing, you have a new image. 

So looking at this image now, I realized that I had the opportunity to play with the colours to make a very distict relationship between complimentary colours. I changed the saturation, luminosity, and even the hue to make the green "pop". These two colours are directly opposite each other on the colour wheel, making them complimentary. If you think I got it wrong, please leave your suggestion in the comments. 

I was surprised and delighted with how this image turned out, as I always am with abstracts. The group of three, the "V" and the complimentary colours were unplanned, and it's amazingly inspiring and captivating when I can bring that out in the darkroom.

Go beyond the usual.

Photographer's notes: just a side note, I always use the same camera body, and I only own one lens. They are A Canon EOS 40D slr digital. My lens is a 28-135mm. Not very wide, very versatile. Unless otherwise specified, that is what my photos are taken with. 

Taken at 1/4th of a sec, at f/32 ISO 100. I find 1/4th of a second to be a magic shutter speed. Just slow enough to play with, but fast enough to capture detail.

In my recent trip to Hawaii, I saw many beautiful tropical flowers. I even went to a stunning botanical garden near Hilo, on the big Island. There I did a kind of study of the flowers and plants. But I realized that there are plenty of lovely, but documentary, photos of tropical flowers in existance, and I didn't need to create more that would simply crowd up my hard drive.

So instead, I took the oportunity to seek out a way to take photos of the flowers that exhibited the most prominent and unique features in they're design and beauty. The result, I hoped, would be a collection of impressionistic portraits of the flowers that I found so captivating. This to me is the esense of a portrait.

The above image is of a stem of orchids. There are tons and tons of orchids on the East side of Hawaii, including wild ones. To me the most lovely thing about orchids are they're cute faces that remind me of the Chesire Cat! The roundness of they're petals, and they're special markings. So to accentuate that, I lowered my shutter speed so that I would have time to turn my camera maybe 45 degrees mid exposure.I also made sure to include the soft C curve of the stem, because I thought it made a nice path for the blossoms.

I think it turned out well, my token of the orchids of Hawaii.