I was hanging out on Abbie and Denis’s back porch when I spotted this somewhat collapsed mobile in the late afternoon light. After the annoyance with the airplane photo, I wanted to make sure I at least documented it for myself, so I whipped out the iPhone and made the photo above, which I think…
Tag Archive: technique
Color Choice
One of the best ways to learn from your own photography is to look at most of your images in both color and black-and-white. Even pictures that you took explicitly because of their color content can teach you something useful about relative light and dark values and abstract elements of composition when viewed in black-and-white….
Incidental Geometry
There was a significant amount of swearing involved in the creation of this image. I was walking along with Crystal on the pedestrian mall at Silver Spring, marveling at the blue sky and 80º weather. I spot a plane leaving a narrow white chalk-mark across the pristine sky in pleasing juxtaposition with the nearby architecture….
Boot Hill
It was 80ºF this afternoon, more than enough impetus to get me out and taking photographs. It was partly cloudy and the afternoon sun (yay, Daylight Savings Time!) was dodging in and out in an especially attractive fashion. My eye was caught once again by the elevated graveyard and raking light. I shot photos with…
Alterations
Most of the time I want to say to you: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! (Except, okay, WOMAN behind the curtain. And it’s not a curtain, it’s a computer screen. Whatever.) But sometimes I feel like pulling aside the veil and showing you how the sausage gets made (ooo, block that…
Thanksgiving Bonus: RAW
Sometimes people wonder why I bother to shoot and keep RAW files, when high-quality JPEGs are fine for most reproduction uses and more than good enough for the web. This is why. Fine fella, this rooster. But this is how he came out of the oven (so to speak): Once upon a time, this shot…
Sound Sunset
Let’s break some rules, shall we? It’s a sunset. Sunsets are big honkin’ clichés. But you know what? I don’t care! Sunsets are about the sun and the sky. OR NOT. This one is more about the water and the dark weeds in the foreground. Don’t cut your image in half by putting the horizon…
Finding Perspective
It’s not unusual for people to ask me about my aesthetic choices. It’s often in the form of a question like: “How did you know that would make a good picture? Why did you photograph it that way?” Sometimes they’ll say something like “I wish I had your eye” or “My point-and-shoot can’t take that…
On the Edge
Usually, when I crop a photograph, it’s strictly for compositional reasons: the camera’s frame has included something I wish to exclude. But sometimes I feel that a particular format carries an emotional value with it as well. I think, for example, that the square format carries with it both a sense of stability and nostalgia…
The Fallow Field
These days, more so than ever, you have to choose to go monochrome with an image. It’s not—as it once was, of course—the default. I kept returning to this image of the vineyard and garden at Monticello, and for some time I wasn’t clear why. As you can see here, the original version faithfully shows…