Tag Archives: photographers

Breakin’ The Rules

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Breaking the rules. Breaking all of them. Photographically that is. That’s what I do anyway. Break ’em, worry about them later. This image breaks almost every rule of photography there is, yet it is one of my most favorite images that I have ever taken. I say almost every rule only because I know there’s a rule somewhere I’ve forgotten but I know I broke it anyway. This was not a premeditated decision on my part. I didn’t decide to fly in the face of convention just to be a rebel it was more along the lines of, I want this picture and I’m going to get it even if it means breaking the rules.

If you Google ‘Photography Rules’ you will come up with about 105,000,000 hits for rules. That’s a lot of damn rules. Granted not all 105,000,000 hits are different but even so, Geezum Plutz that’s a lot of rules. That’s one thing we do pretty good as a species, making rules. Here are just a few examples of collections of rules.

10 Top Photography Composition Rules

5 Easy Composition Guidelines

18 Composition Rules For Photos

The 10 Rules of Photo Composition (and why they work)

9 Top Photography Composition Rules You Need To Know

And there are folks out there that will tell you “Don’t you go breaking any of those rules.” if you want to be a photographer. You can’t be in our photo show if you don’t follow these rules. “Hey Bozo, I saw your work. You need to follow the rules, man.” Seems like everyone is an expert when it comes to rules, especially the guys that make them.

There are real photographers out there looking at this image right now that are gnashing their teeth and raining curses down on my head for deliberately showing this bollixed up, rule breaking image as if I had a right to. Which I do by the way. I’m one of those artist types that believe once an image is completed it exists. It doesn’t matter how it was made, or what was done to it afterwards, or whether it was Photoshopped or not, an image is an image and it stands on its own for better or worse. You can shoot it holding the camera behind your back and jumping up and down, or put little red hearts all over it, or draw, paint or step on it with muddy boots then sign your name. It doesn’t matter, an image once it’s finalized and put on display is there and it’s up to the viewer to figure out whether they like it or not. Or even consider whether it is art or not.

Look in the back of any photography magazine on the newsstand and you will find dozens of highly trained, apparently successful photographers willing to take you on workshops and teach you how to make beautiful pictures by sticking to all the many rules in force that will make you a successful photographer too. Unfortunately I’ve always had a certain degree of difficulty in following rules. Some of them anyway, but especially those that say you need to create in a certain way. I guess it’s because that I, like Mick Jagger, don’t keep regular hours, so my outlook is different from most.

So getting back to the picture, “What’s wrong with it?” you ask. It’s an image of a wolf swimming across the Yellowstone river late in the evening in mid-may back in 2006. The sky was overcast, it had been raining just moments ago and this wolf was one of the dominant members of a pack in the Hayden valley. They had killed an elk on a small tributary called Alum creek which feeds into the Yellowstone and were gorging themselves until they could barely move. She, this was a female, was the first to leave because being the alpha she had fed first and was ready to return to the den which was located on the other side of the river. The problem and the first of many rules that were broken to get this image, was that she was way too far away for this to be any kind of decent shot. The rule says you have to be close and fill the frame with as much wolf as will fit in it to make this any kind of acceptable picture. The wolf of course didn’t know she was breaking the rule and I couldn’t get any closer before she jumped in the river and began her swim across it. I said the hell with it and took the picture anyway.

My equipment then was somewhat limited. The camera was a 6mp Nikon D70, a woefully under-powered camera by todays standards, and my lens was an inexpensive telephoto which was all I could afford at that time. There’s another rule shot to hell so to speak. Good photographers always use the best most expensive equipment available.  NO exceptions. The limits of the equipment I had, because of its measly megapixel count, meant that when it was time to print this image it wouldn’t be adequate to be enlarged so that you could see the wolf in all it’s perfectly focused clarity. They are absolutely right, those rule makers. It is kind of blurry and out of focus looking because I did stretch the limits of the image and now it has a kind of painterly pastel looking feel to it, not at all what a good photo should be, but I like it. Maybe you do too, or not.

 I remember exactly how things were the day I took this image. How cold it was, how the air smelled like damp grass, the sounds of the river flowing by and the huffing of the wolf as she swam across the widest part of the river she could have chosen to take. However there is a characteristic that rule makers leave out and that is that intangible feeling one gets when you see an image that you like regardless of whether or not it fits into the Follow the rules category. There have been an awful lot of pretty good painters that didn’t follow the rules, and people tend  to think very highly of them, myself being one of them.That’s what makes breaking the rules work for me. Had I followed them I wouldn’t have taken this picture and I wouldn’t have this image to remember the experience or to share with you, my friends. If you ask me I’m going to tell you to break the rules, break ’em all. It’s worth it.

So as far as rules go I’ll probably continue to break them, as the image is more important to me than various opinions. In case you’re wondering I do take technically good images where many of the rules are followed but I am never one to shy away from gathering what I see and putting it into a viewfinder regardless of what the rules say, after all art and the image are what I most care about.

Just for grins I’m posting the original image below, as it was taken straight out of the camera, to show you how and where the image above came from.

 BreakingRulesOrig7545

High Desert Sunset

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We had a beautiful sunset this evening at The Institute and it got me thinking about other sunsets I’ve seen around the area. Like this one down in Arches National Park. Because we travel so much our schedule gets pretty darn hectic you know, what with having to look at stuff to see if it’s pretty enough to photograph, then get in a good spot so all the photographic bits are in the right places, finding the camera and getting it untangled from under the seat where it got kicked when we made a burger run and the lens hood got all cocked funny and you have to wrench it off so it sits right, then figuring out the settings and making adjustments to the camera, getting all cheesed off because the flash card wasn’t formatted and you have to stop and do that otherwise the sky comes out all maroon color, I mean it’s lucky we get a sunset picture taken at all.

Then of course there’s the timing of the shot. You got to get it just right otherwise it just looks like noon or 3 in the afternoon or 11:30 in the morning. Some photographers make a big hairy deal about getting to the picture site real early and getting all their gear sorted out and acting like they’re all professional and everything, but then by the time sunset hits they’re all whacked out, bored stupid, and taking a nap in the back seat and miss the whole deal. Other’s have been dawdling, stopping to read all the signs on the side of the road, checking their email, making calls, letting the dog out to do its business, watching other photographers to see what they’re shooting, eating the rest of the potato salad from lunch so it doesn’t go bad, and then they realize “Holy Mackerel it’s dark out, I’ve missed sunset”.

We at The Institute are trained professionals and don’t make dorky mistakes like that. We have it together. We instinctively know where the best shots are, exactly what time the sun will be perfect for setting, how to get all the stuff in the picture that makes it one of those that makes you go “Whoa, man, Look here, this is far out”. This is why we’re so freaking famous. If you check out the photo closely you’ll see that everything that is in it is supposed to be there. There’s ground and sky and rocks all over the place, mountains, bushes, everything you need. We pride ourselves on that. We don’t leave good stuff out. The timing in the shot is like super excellent for the right sunset spectacular lollapalooza look, because we got that stuff down cold and we even got the right kind of clouds in there. Have we got this nailed or what.

There’s some kind of rule or fact, or probably somebody just pulled it out of the back of their long johns, that you have to take like 12 billion and eight sunset photos to get one good one. We here at the Institute say BullPucky! our results are better than that. In fact we’ve gone out when the sun was going down and gotten hallway decent shots of sunset activity several nights in a row. We’re just that good. But then that’s just our and half the English-speaking people of the world’s opinion, so what do we know. Tomorrow when the sun goes down we’re going out and photograph it, I bet those shots will be good too.

Feather Count

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This is, as many of you know who watch the Nature channel, a Golden Eagle. They are nature’s answer to the stealth bomber, or Italy’s Ferrari, or TV’s Christina Hendricks. I mention her only because of the similarity of her hair color to the color of the eagle’s feathers while soaring against the bluest of blue skies in the late afternoon sun. This must be how Christina’s hair would look as it caught the sun if she were flying around the cliff face here at the eagle nesting site in one of her tightest-fitting dresses…… but wait, did I just say that out loud, never mind, let’s just acknowledge that this is a Golden eagle and move on.

What many of you don’t know is that feather loss is a common but little known problem for birds of prey, particularly for the larger birds like the Golden eagle. The Eagle Observation Department (EOD) here at The Institute has a serious, but totally unnecessary, project in place where we have taken it upon ourselves to perform a periodic inventory of the overall health of this pair of Golden eagles, which includes a full exact feather count of each bird, if you will. We do this simply as a public service at absolutely no cost to you the taxpayer. Since the Federal government has repeatedly refused to fund our efforts in this endeavor we have had no other choice but to take this on ourselves and self-fund this project. Which is why you occasionally see members of The Institute approaching perfect strangers downtown and asking them for money, or canned goods, or checking the coin slots in public phones for quarters, or even, sadly, standing at corners with our cardboard sign saying “Give me money! I’m counting feathers for the community! Thank you, The Institute.” So far we’re barely making it but as this is a necessary project, we persevere.

Yesterday was one of our inventory days, so we sent a three-man team of scientists, photographers and security to our top-secret Golden eagle nesting site at Watson lake, outside of Bellvue, Colorado, 80512. The eagles were there and seemed eager to get this over with as they had mating to do so they could get the nest up and running for this years hatchlings.

Using our secret collection of eagle controlling hand signs, developed and patented here at The Institute, we were able to get the eagles to fly slowly back and forth as we counted feathers as quickly as we could. This is a much more difficult process than at first appears. As the feathers must be counted manually and in order, such as 8001, 8002, 8004 and so on, for accuracy. It is easy to lose count due to people walking up and asking you what are you doing or shaking your tripod leg. After answering you have to quickly reacquire the bird in your viewfinder and start over before it flies out of range. Add to that having to ask the eagle to fly upside-down so you can count the feathers on its back and you begin to get the picture of how difficult this process is.

This is why we have security on site as we inventory. Our crack security officer can keep the most persistent of onlookers at bay by slapping at their knees repeatedly with his attack dog’s leash. They howl and complain that they don’t have full access to events happening on public land but sacrifices often have to be made in the advance of science.  Besides they always want to look through your viewfinder and talk to you about how they once saw a bird that looked a lot like an eagle, and sometimes about their Aunt who suddenly and for no reason took off all her clothes and jumped laughing into the lake, scaring the Canada geese all to hell. We’re busy here people, we don’t have time for idle chit-chat.

It was a long, long day but we finally finished and everyone was relieved including the eagles that we had gotten through another one of these trying but totally unnecessary procedures. We made plans to meet back here again in a month to repeat our efforts and everyone was good with that, except the female eagle who had taken to pulling some of her tertiary feathers out and was threatening to start on her primaries when we made a joint decision to reschedule in six weeks instead. This seemed to placate her somewhat. Some of us remembered that expecting females were often difficult to manage during this time, so allowances were made.

Our tallies were much closer this time than during previous attempts. Our scientist came in with a count of 114,651 feathers for the male eagle, the photographer counted close to 3000, and our security person had a count of 9, but as he was quite busy with crowd control we understood the discrepancy. So added together and averaged that gave us a count of 39,200 feathers for the male. The females’ numbers were tossed after she started pulling out her primaries during the fourth or fifth hour of counting. We are deciding if we are going to keep her involved as one the test subjects or not, we may not, at least until after the chicks are born. She should be in a much more manageable state by then. And besides due to weight gain before she lays those eggs she’ll probably pop a few feathers anyway, but that’s a subject for another study.

In the meantime we’ll continue monitoring the site and observe whatever behavioral changes we see. If this is a study you can support we encourage you to send donations of many dollars, especially large denominations, if you can, to The Institute so we can continue our valuable work. We’re particularly looking for those supporters that don’t pay much attention to details and results but like to be known for supporting wildlife causes no matter what the reason. Remember, the more you give, the better you look. And looking good is great!

Point Of View

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Point of view. Everyone’s got one. Some are political, some religious, some just opinionated, (you know who you are) and for some it is simply what the words say, a point of view. Where you look. Photographers share all those other points of view too, but sometimes they have an extra point of view. A way of looking that is unique and different and perhaps slightly skewed from the normal way of seeing.

This can be a blessing or a curse. The good part is you see things that are new and different that many others have missed. The bad part is this happens all the time, constantly, everywhere you look. If you go to a new place you can be overwhelmed with new sights  to the point where you don’t know where to look next but you have to shoot it. It’s a situation where no shots can be left behind.

Many of these different views require you to do strange but weird things to get the image. Such as lying flat on your slightly but manly rotund belly on the ground in the middle of the path, kind of like a beached whale, blocking everyone else’s movement while you futz around trying to get the shot just right. Normally most people are understanding of your behavior because they know this is a beautiful place and it’s obvious you’re trying to get the ultimate shot, but others are less caring and more than a little impatient with you. These are the ones who are most likely to step on the back of your head with nary an apology as they hurry to get their sightseeing done. I don’t like those people. They’re also very likely to step on your elbow so they can get into a better position to step on the back of your head. These people probably don’t like puppies either, or Jesus, or John Wayne, or even art, the bastards.

However the results of your efforts, if you persevere, are often marvelous to behold and almost worth the knot on the back of your head. This image of a section of the lower portion of Antelope canyon is the result of lying on the floor to get this angle. The result was it brought out a small amount of detail that was down close to the floor and was missed by almost everyone walking by. Those kind souls who waited patiently and didn’t step on me were rewarded with suddenly seeing a part of the canyon they would have missed. And now you, for whatever it’s worth, get to share it too. Thanks for waiting.

Tough Love

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Being a grizzly cub can sometimes be a tough job. You have to get up in the morning, follow mom all over because she’s hungry, and if she’s hungry then there is a good chance you’re going to be hungry too. And because you are little you want to eat all the time and all you want is some of that nice warm milk that Mom provides. But like all moms she sometimes wants you to try something new, like some freshly caught and just squeezed Yellow-bellied Marmot.

After she has just spent 45 minutes digging one out of it’s den she is pretty determined that you are going to try some. It seems to be  a fairly difficult task to force down marmot this early in the day and it does not help at all that there are at least 50 or more photographers documenting your every move. The whole marmot eating thing turns out to be a game effort but lost cause because you just can’t handle that kind of food.

Expecting the worst everyone watching waited apprehensively as mom approached. It looked like this was going to be handled rather firmly and not by a time out either. Grizzly moms are known for a rather firm application of right front paw when they’re displeased. Instead mom did the right thing (moms usually do, right?) and carefully nuzzled her offspring’s face to show that it was perfectly ok to throw up in front of photographers. There was a chorus of awwww’s throughout the crowd and we were all happy and relieved to have witnessed what turned out to be a Disneyesque moment. There are a million stories in Yellowstone National Park and this has been one of them. There will be more as time goes on.