The best camera

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Rachael

“The best camera is the one that’s with you.” It’s such a well-known phrase that I couldn’t find anyone to attribute it to, although I did discover that Chase Jarvis has used it as the title of a book (and an app!) about iPhone photography. I didn’t know about that before I conceived the idea for today’s post! Undaunted by the discovery that I am following an already well-trodden path, I will carry on regardless (and then I will go and read Jarvis’s book!).
So, I was thinking yesterday about the first camera I ever owned, a little 110-cartridge film camera. Those of you of my age may remember the little cameras where the case folded back to become a handle? Several years later I moved on to a Minolta compact 35mm camera. I remember still how luxurious it felt by comparison. That little camera saw me through my backpacking years, surviving Egyptian sand, Chinese rain (boy did it rain!) and then every other tricky condition nature could throw at it during my round-the-world tramp. Then I got a proper job, ironically finally earning enough to be able to buy my first SLR just as my travels became limited to four weeks a year. I was seduced to the dark side, aka Canon, by the advert at Balham tube station for their new EOS 1000. A fairly nasty bit of plastic but what did I know? Luckily, the chap in the camera shop, a family-owned local store (remember them?), did know and he persuaded me to get the 600D. I still have it. It’s a great camera and did sterling work for many years. It is still in perfect working order, with a half-exposed film inside (must finish that!).
I was not convinced by digital. Didn’t want to try it. Not proper photography, I thought. Then my husband bought me a 400D for Christmas 2007 and I was hooked! I now use a 5Dii with assorted very nice lenses. But a recent injury has meant I can’t handle a heavy camera very much or often. Luckily, the iPhone 4 has a nifty little camera and it is always with me. So, at the moment, it is my best camera. I do firmly believe that photography is, or should be, composition, composition, composition. Having 21 megapixels at my disposal had made me lazy, able to rely on cropping to improve average composition. Now I will have to think a little more before I shoot and that can only be a good thing.
All of the pictures in today’s post were taken with my iPhone.

A challenge of distinction

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Rachael

One year ago today, my heart was pounding and I was gripping the hand of my ever-supportive husband rather too hard for his comfort! What momentous event could have prompted this anguish, I hear you cry? Merely the awarding of a Royal Photographic Society (RPS) distinction! I know, perhaps a bit of an overreaction, but it was the culmination of nearly a year’s planning and I didn’t want anything to go wrong. Besides, watching a panel of ten of your favourite images being assessed by five distinguished photographers in front of a roomful of other photographers would be nerve-wracking for anyone!
The Royal Photographic Society offers three levels of distinction. I was being assessed for the entry level, success at which would make me a Licentiate of the RPS, known for short as LRPS. This is my panel. Each image and the panel as a whole have to satisfy a list of technical and visual criteria. First the five judges look at the whole panel as hung and then approach more closely to examine the images individually. Fortunately, they were quite quick in their deliberations on my panel so I wasn’t kept on the rack too long! It’s a great feeling when they announce your name and everyone claps. My husband commented on what a supportive bunch he found the other photographers to be.
Afterwards, many people asked me if I was going to move on to the next level, or Associateship. But I was happy with my LRPS and just wanted to bask in that feeling for a while. A year on and I am starting to think about the next step. I have some ideas brewing at the back of my mind…
If you fancy a new challenge, then a RPS distinction might be for you. If you want to know more, the RPS website has lots of information. Also, if you put them in a comment to this post, I will happily answer any questions.

Storytelling (again)

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Rachael

Yesterday’s post was about storytelling in a sequence of images. Today’s is about a one-image story. I call this picture ‘Escape’. To the viewer, it tells of a whale that escapes the whaler’s harpoon. It suggests a backstory, the hunt that has failed, and a future story: where is the whaler going, will it be back, and will the whale escape next time?
The original exposure is below. It tells its own tale to me, of a whale watching trip out of Monterey in summer 2008. It was hardy whale watching. By the time the whales appeared, I was one of only a few left on deck. The heavy grey mist never lifted but, when a tall ship ghosted past in the distance, I had my shot. However, it needed some work back at home to ‘age’ the shot in keeping with the historical fiction I wanted to tell. First, I moved the ship further along the horizon to make a more balanced composition and to make it clearer that the ship was disappearing into the distance. I converted the image to black and white and added a sepia tint. Then I added a texture and, finally, did some selective dodging and burning. The original was an unremarkable shot but a little editing turned it into an storytelling image worth keeping.

Editing in Photoshop CS4. Texture courtesy of skeletalmess.

The shepherds and the wolf

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Rachael

A story in photographs.
(If you don’t like bugs you may want to look away now!)

I took this image in my garden last summer. It is part of a story I told with my camera on Flickr over a few days. Here’s the whole thing:

Some species of ant ‘milk’ aphids by stroking them with their antennae. This encourages the aphids to secrete a sticky substance known as honeydew which the ants eat. Here an ant is caught in the act of doing just that. The ants tend their aphid herds like shepherds, protecting them from predators.

The next day a visitor has appeared. A hungry ladybird (ladybug to my American friends) can think of nothing better than this ready-prepared banquet of its favourite food, aphids. An angry ant-shepherd glares at this wolf in the fold.

A day later and the voracious ladybird is still laying siege to aphid city. The ant shepherd has brought in reinforcements but to no avail. The ladybird is like a Sherman tank and angry looks just aren’t going to work. If you look closely you can see an aphid’s legs sticking out of the ladybird’s mouth.

Another day later and the shepherds appear to have given up and left their flock to their fate. However, that is not the end of the story. The next day, there was no sign of the ladybird and the ants were back tending their flock as if nothing had ever happened.

Of course, really one should not anthropomorphise animals, but sometimes it is just too tempting.

The art of kindly vacancies

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Rachael

This photograph, taken in my garden, demonstrates a style of composition that I often adopt. Particularly when shooting insects, I strive to create simple images, with a bold use of negative space, to show that the subject is small but its world is big. As a viewer of images, I enjoy compositions that are pared down to the minimal, devoid of distracting elements. They are such a direct communication between the photographer and the viewer. At the same tme, they give space for the imagination to become involved.
Once again I find myself calling on John Ruskin as authority:
“It is a great advantage to the picture that it need not present too much at once, and that what it does present may be so chosen and ordered as not only to be more easily seized, but to give the imagination rest, and, as it were, places to lie down and stretch its limbs in; kindly vacancies, beguiling it back into action, with pleasant and cautious sequence of incident; all jarring thoughts being excluded, all vain redundance denied, and all just and sweet transition permitted.” (Modern Painters, Vol III, Part IV, Ch. X)

I have put together a small gallery of images by other photographers, in many different genres, that all display this approach to composition, masters of the art of kindly vacancies. Click here if you’d like to see.

The pleasure in making do

Posted on April 15, 2012 by Rachael

Photographers can spend a great deal of money on equipment, especially if they want to shoot indoors, studio-style. This image is one of my most successful. It has won me several awards and has been accepted into juried exhibitions. Recently it was one of only seven images from Surrey accepted into the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain’s annual projected digital image exhibition. Judges often comment favourably on the fine control of lighting in this photograph. Yet this shot was taken in natural daylight in front of a black lever arch file with a piece of white paper as a reflector. I used my canon 400D and its kit lens, now considered by most to be outdated and barely adequate equipment. The tripod is more than fifty years old and was passed on to me by my father. A picture of my totally Heath Robinson setup (and very messy kitchen) is below. Who needs a posh studio? There is pleasure in making do.

Holt’s Orchard

Posted on April 14, 2012 by Rachael

On this day in 2009 we were travelling through Utah, on our way from Moab to Bryce Canyon. On the way, we drove through Capitol Reef National Park. We only had time for one stop, but as we drove through the stunning scenery of burnt orange canyon walls and rippling yellow grasses, we resolved to return. We stopped in the rather prosaically named Fruita, where the principal industry used to be the growing of, you guessed it, fruit. The top picture is Holt’s Orchard, in Fruita. In 1878, a small group of Mormons settled this land by the Fremont River. They found the climate suitable for growing fruit and, now run by the National Parks Service, the orchards continue to flourish today, the Spring blossom making a striking contrast with the imposing red walls of the canyon. Life was hard for those early settlers. This orchard was planted by the Holt family and a little plaque tells their moving story, from the death of their daughter at 3 months from a scorpion sting to the loss of their farm a few years later in one of the many devastating flash floods to which the area was prone.
The Mormons were not, however, the first settlers of this area. Ancestral Puebloans farmed this land from 700 to 1300AD and, just over the road from the Holt Orchard, a boardwalk now runs along the canyon walls to make viewing possible of the many intriguing and beautiful petroglyphs that remain as evidence of their presence (see picture below).

If you are interested in this area of the United States or you are looking for an really rewarding new blog to read, can I recommend Travels with the Blonde Coyote

If the link doesn’t work for you (no idea what I’ve done wrong!), try copying and pasting this into your browser: http://theblondecoyote.com

No such thing as bad weather

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Rachael

“Storm over Nantucket”

While I typed yesterday’s blog post, hailstones the size of marbles were rattling my roof. This April shower made me think of a saying which the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations attributes to John Ruskin: ‘There is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather’. Although it is highly unlikely that Ruskin had us mind, for photographers this saying is entirely apposite. Changeable weather brings interesting skies for landscapes. Cloudy weather brings diffused light that is perfect for macro work or portraits. Rain leaves colours refreshed, foliage sparkling with droplets. Mist highlights structure and outline in the landscape, and snow is the perfect natural reflector for portraits. Probably for the outdoor shooter, clear blue skies and baking sun are just about the worst weather there is. There’s no pleasing some people!

So imagine my delight when, after a ‘perfect’ summer day on holiday in Nantucket last August, the evening brought one of the best storms I have experienced. From the balcony of our pontoon-cottage I watched the show for a full two hours. Today’s photograph is my favourite from the many I took. This was my first experience of shooting lightning. I want more!
The technical bit: To take lightning shots you should use BULB mode with a cable/remote release. That way you can keep the shutter open and close it immediately after an arc. But, if your cable is broken (grrr!) you can try using long exposures and self timer. I used a series of 30 second exposures over two battery-draining hours. Sometimes the shots were over exposed as I couldn’t close the shutter for fear of joggling the camera. Sometimes I got lucky. ;o)
Canon EOS 5Dii, 24-105mm L lens, tripod. 24mm, f/8, 30secs, ISO400, -1EV.

The best outdoor studio ever

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Rachael

Parakeets at sunset

Incoming

On this day ten years ago we moved into our home. The house didn’t need much doing to it but the garden had only a few mature trees and shrubs, a mossy lawn and weeds galore. Over the years we have added interest, planting with wildlife in mind. Now ninety percent of my macro shots are taken in our garden. It is the best studio I could have, and literally on my doorstep. As I type this, a pair of blackbirds with nesting materials clamped in their beaks are flying to and from the climbing rose outside the kitchen window. An early brood of robins has already hatched in the front garden hedge and the coal tits are busy in their usual nesting spot out back. Every evening this week I have heard a hedgehog in the back garden. The borders already buzz with bumble bees and hoverflies and the other day a bee fly briefly hovered over my page, its characteristic long proboscis stretched out like a mini, and furry, concord!
All of the pictures in today’s post were taken in my garden.

Falling

Bee fly (bombylius major)

The secret world of small things

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Rachael

Rose explorer (a tiny bee explores a rose in my garden)

Macro is one of my favourite modes of photography, particularly when the subject is mini-beasts. Perhaps with this subject more than any other, photography has revealed to me a secret world. I try to find points of view that create the impression of seeing the macro landscape as an insect might. My subjects are photographed in natural light, as I find them. I will never move them or otherwise deliberately interfere in their behaviour. I certainly will not immobilise them by putting them in the fridge as many photographers do! If they fly/crawl away before I get my shot, then so be it; it’s part of the challenge. I prefer to show insects interacting with their environment rather than zooming in really close for a ‘scientific’ style of shot.
My family find it strange that I photograph bugs as I used to be afraid of them. Could another benefit of photography be phobia busting? (But I am still afraid of spiders – don’t tell!)

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A professional photographer's life

Monthly Archives: April 2012