not stopping at the second hurdle

In the pre-digital camera era, purists would rage about never cropping images, somehow believing that the 35mm format was the perfect aspect.  These purists would claim that they had framed the perfect image before they clicked the shutter in order to produce an immaculate print. 

In the digital era, more images are being taken than ever before and many photographers have adopted this purist approach, unconsciously or otherwise. They look at their images and are disappointed by them. Or maybe they are disappointed by themselves, feeling that as amateur photographers they are incapable of taking outstanding images.

A more positive approach is to regard the image as a rough diamond which needs to be cut and polished in such a way as to maximise its potential. Enhancing images is best be done in Adobe Lightroom; its bigger brother Adobe Photoshop is far too complicated to learn for most photographers.

The photos below demonstrate the polishing of one image. All enhancements were done in Adobe Lightroom under ten minutes.

Liferals

I have specialised in funeral photography in the Sydney region for the past three years.(http://www.thefuneralphotographer.com.au) I don't fully comprehend why funeral photography is sometimes regarded with incredulity. Part of me thinks it is because our society does everything we can to avoid dealing with death and the last thing our society wants is permanent evidence that it is a part of life; paradoxically our society is perfectly happy to witness other societies' deaths (usually in the form of natural disasters and civil war).

Last month I photographed beyond the grave - the 80th birthday party of a family matriarch who had had a health scare months earlier. Her extended family decided to pull out all the stops for Ismeme's 80th birthday party by making it a retrospective of her life.

Below is a link to the photos of Ismene's birthday.

liferal photos

Ismeme was far from embarrassed at friends flying in from interstate, her grandchildren playing musical instruments, and being able to declare to her family just how important each and every one of them was to her.

Ismene gave a beautiful impromptu speech which is now included in the book and preserved for posterity. A grandson wrote a limerick which is now in the book. The book also captures her relationship with her friends and family and thus says so much more than could a single portrait of her.

Listening to a grandson's violin recital

Listening to a granddaughter's piano recital

Watching her namesake's theatrical performance

It is often said that funerals are for the survivors - the beauty of photographing the person during the 'retrospective' of their life is that the images may also help the survivors in that they capture photos of the survivors with the loved one in a beautiful setting. This is in contrast with photos of the loved one in their final days where they may be in a pain or in a less than ideal environment such as a nursing home.

Paul Hassing is championing 'liferals' which he defines as an "Organised event to celebrate love, friendship and the joy of living "Opposite of funeral.." and it's worthwhile visiting his website to learn more about them.    http://www.liferal.com

more musings on portraiture

I think I'll struggle with portraiture for as long as I am a photographer. The extraordinary challenge of capturing the essence of a person. At the moment I am mulling over the term subject - as soon as someone is your subject, they are effectively trapped and/or controlled so there is no chance whatsoever that they will be revealed. How can a prisoner ever be themselves? A slightly extreme analogy but very rarely do I see a revealing portrait in circumstances fully controlled by a photographer.

To some recent images and why I think they work.

Males are generally not good at not doing things so if they are engaged in a task of their own making, they'll reveal themselves. The trick for the photographer is to be ready by anticipating the technical requirements of the image.

 The image below, taken at a wedding, succeeded technically  because it has frozen the sitter (1/350th of a second), knocked out the background (200 mm, f8.0). The image succeeded aesthetically because of the beautiful contrast between the foreground and background. The image succeeded as a portrait because it is so vivacious.

The portrait may also have succeeded because I had met and chatted to him the day before at the wedding rehearsal in the church.

And just after the wedding ceremony, I photographed him skylarking and this enabled our rapport to develop, at no stage did I try to control or censure what he did and this may have given him the freedom to play, to be himself.