Visual Poetry by Chris Orwig Book Review

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Clint Eastwood, Yvon Chouinard, J.R.Tolkien, Hemmingway, Picasso, Steinbeck, Henri Cartier-Bresson and many more people than I can recall.

What do these people have in common? They were all quoted in Chris Orwig’s book Visual Poetry. (amazon) In fact, when I fist started reading this book, I was amazed at all the great quotes that came up in the first couple of chapters. For example: “You can do brickwork as a laborer or as an artisan.” Anne Lamott, and “All children are artists. The problem is to remain one when you grow up.” Picasso.

So, I started to write them down (as you can tell). I wrote down more than a dozen as I started combing the pages looking for quotes. Then I realized that I wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying, but was just collecting quotes. Ok, lets leave that for another pass then.

I then really tried to absorb what was being taught in this book. I don’t know if it was because I was reading before I went to bed late at night, or between calls of “Daddy, daddy, daddy, look at me!”, but I had a hard time.

The book was starting to feel “over my head”, which I found really frustrating. I know tons about my camera and how to use it. I know rules of composition and what f-stop and lens to use when, but what Chris was saying was just not getting absorbed. It was starting to get hard to read. Many people loved this book, so I couldn’t give up on it. I had to finish it.

Three quarters of the way through, something connected when he started to talk about shooting portraits, then kids, then weddings. Maybe this was because of what I am shooting right now. I looked back through the previous chapters, and they didn’t seem all that different, so what had clicked? Was I starting to get it? Not quite yet.

What was getting to me at the beginning, was that Chris is a poet. He writes beautifully, takes great pictures, and I sometimes get lost in his words. I have trouble identifying with the artist in me, where he considers himself an artist who happens to use a camera to express his creativity.

Creativity is a scary word to me. I can understand technical things. I know what every button and dial on my camera does. I even read the camera manual. I can skim those things and absorb the material, but art, creativity and vision are works in progress.

I am starting to understand vision, thanks to David duChemin (book reference). At least partly. I am starting to get a handle on what I want a picture to look like before I take it. But then again, it is a lot of the technical aspects that I see in my head.

This idea of creativity flowing through me, generating ideas, and generating art. Bah. That isn’t me. Maybe this book just wasn’t for me. Maybe it is just one of those things that I put up on the shelf and move on. Maybe I’ll eBay it when I am finished. But I had to finish.

I had just finished the Found Objects chapter toward the end of the book, and was flipping back through the book. I was looking for something that I can’t remember now. I saw a section at the back of a chapter with exercises to do, and a flickr group to post to. Then I saw it for another chapter. Guess I skipped those. I looked at some of the suggestions, or assignments. Man, some of those are tough. 10 of them? “Good grief, how would I do that?”

Bam! It hit me like a Nikor 200-400mm lens dropped by Joe McNally from an airplane above me (not that he would do that). This book was a textbook on generating or finding my creativity. How did I miss that? I was being lazy! I was skipping over the most important part of each chapter. As I looked over the exercises that were suggested, I was getting even more ideas, and getting frightened/excited about how I would accomplish some of them.

I have now finished the book, but I haven’t really started. I am not sure what I was looking for when I started this book. Did I want to know how to “see” poetry? If I did, I wasn’t ready to see how much work it would take to get to the next level.

I started to then realize how the book/chapters were structured. There is much more here than use this f-stop and lens. That is not the reason to read this book. Each chapter talks about new ways of seeing. The photographer profiles are about people who see different, who see creatively. The exercises at the back are about learning to see differently. Learning how to see children, flowers, and even road signs, is what this book can teach you.

Some poeple are born with more talents than others. Some people have to put in more effort to get intouch with some aspects of our inner selves, such as our creativity. This is me, but for the first time I think I have found a textbook to get me going in the right direction. This is not a required course. I don’t have credits or loans sitting behind me to prod me to complete the course work. I just have a goal of creating more creative images that connect with the person viewing them.

Who’s with me. Care to go to creative school?

Harry’s Birthday Party

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I took pictures at my little friend Harry’s birthday party on the weekend. It was at the Lariat Lanes (you probably got that part) in south Minneapolis. (Actually in Richfield) I don’t imagine that many bowling lanes would fall into a category of anything but relaxed family atmosphere, but they really have it nailed here. Well, I suppose with two kids parties going on at the same time, it is hard to call it relaxing, but Harry and his friends had a good time.

I think that Harry had been to a bowling alley before, but he was just so pumped up that he could barely take time out from having fun to bowl. After tossing the ball, he would run back to his friends before he had even seen how many pins he knocked down. Pretty funny.

The kid above almost hit me in this shot. I was down beside the gutter right at the edge of the last lane in the building. I had no where to go but take take the pic. Good job the kid rails were there that kept the ball out of the gutter, or I would have taken on to the knee.

Some of the kids wound up and chucked the ball like the big leaguers. I swear he was putting a spin on the ball too.

There are more pictures on an album at Christopher Ward Photography.com here.

Natural Light Portraits

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I have been doing more and more portraits with flash recently, and I often forget just how wonderful natural light can be. While at Kate and Eric’s wedding, I thought that it would be a great opportunity to take some portraits of Annie with her fancy clothes and all.

The first shot I took, with the light directly coming in the window, I didn’t include here. It wasn’t as flattering because the light was still a little harsh. I had Annie standing in front of the walls on both sides of the giant window at the end of the room. The day was overcast, but the light coming in the window was still a little harsh.

The shots you see here are after I pulled the sheer curtains in front of the window. It helped quite a bit. I was surprised at how much softer the curtains made the light. It was like I made a huge softbox. The image still has shadows, and light areas, but the transition is very soft.

The walls of the hotel also provide a nice background, as if I had hung one just for this purpose.

I like the image above. We were trying something with her hair, which wasn’t working out, but it got a great smile out of Annie.

Lastly, I found an image that made a great black and white.

D90 Pop-up flash as Commander

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The above image was taken with a D90, pop-up flash as commander, and a SB-900 held out at camera left. I think that there is something wrong with these photos, but the subjects liked them. My issue? There was too much flash, especially from the front, and there is a shadow at the bottom of the image. But why?

I was certain that I read somewhere, saw a video, or a podcast that said that the D90’s pop up flash, when acting as a commander could not contribute light to the scene. I was wrong.

At home, I had previously been trying to use a two light setup with one light on camera, and another off to the left in an umbrella. Both were SB900’s. I had been playing with the lighting ratios, and what the light looked like. I would leave the umbrella at full power, then decrease the on camera. Then I would lower the umbrella, and increase the light from the on camera flash. This was all done via CLS.

Then I was shooting some informal portraits at a wedding. We were at a country club, on a golf course, and the sun was going down. Twilight blue sky. I set my subjects up with the golf course and the mountains behind them. I held a SB900 with dome difuser on in my left hand at arms length. (I didn’t have other diffusion materials with me.) I popped up my on board flash to use as the commander. It didn’t register that it was set to TTL. I took my picture with a Nikon 17-55 f/2.8 lens on the front, and a shadow shows up in front of their feet! Whoa! Where is the light coming from? I was a little confused and didn’t have time to figure it out, so I just zoomed in a bit more so the shadow wouldn’t be as noticible. I also added some dodging in post to even out the light a little bit.

It wasn’t until I was back home looking at my pictures that I figured it out. The light from the built-in flash was contributing to the exposure. I know that in the past I have sworn at Joe McNally because it seemed like my flash was contributing to the light, when I know that he has said over and over that when using CLS, the commander flash doesn’t contribute light to the exposure. Except when you don’t pay attention.

So, if you do not want your pop up flash to contribute to the exposure, make sure that beside the line labeled Built-In, in the left column it says “–“. If you do want some light from this flash, set it to “TTL”. You will most likely want to lower the light from this flash so it acts as just a bit of fill, by setting the right column to -2 or even -3.

I think my mistake (probably more than once) was when I looked at the menu and saw TTL, and thought, of course that is what I want. But, you probably only want light from the off camera lights set to TTL, and the pop up set to “–” for commander. The most I can hope for is that I have learned my lesson.

Kate and Eric’s Wedding

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This was a wedding that I didn’t go to as the official shooter. I was just a guest with an unusually large camera and flash combo. 😉

I have know Kate for quite awhile now. She doesn’t live in Minneapolis, so we don’t see each other a lot, but she is great friend/cousin, and I wish her all the best.

I bet you can’t tell that Alison is her sister. It was fun to be shooting at an event where you knew the people that you were taking pictures of. I think it helped to get some fun shots.

Sometimes you know that a picture of a brother and sister captures a moment that you might not realize is so appropriate unless you know the people.

I think by paying attention (and taking a lot of pictures) I got a few great looks.

And a picture of the dress detail can’t hurt.

Or the love(ly) cake.

A few opportune shots on the dance floor round out the package.

It was a fun wedding to be a part of. Everyone had a great time. It was an interesting experience to try to stay out of the way of the official photographer, and still get some good shots. I think I did a pretty good job. He didn’t shoot much of the reception or the dance floor, so it wasn’t too difficult.

Congratulations Kate and Eric.

Westlaw Next Ice Sculpture

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Westlaw Next in Ice

I have been sitting on this image that I took with my iPhone for a long time. The official name was announced within Thompson Reuters last month, but we were told not to ‘leak’ the name early. How anyone coming to the Eagan office was going to miss this and not pass it on to the media is beyond me. Actually, I think that was part of the leak strategy.

Well, the product is about to be released, and on the last weekend before launch, I am going to Boise, Idaho for a cousins wedding. I am not shooting it, but I do have my gear packed. I have a new smaller light stand now, and I even packed it and an umbrella. Who knows when an impromptu photo shoot will break out.

Because of taking my camera gear on board (light stand is getting checked) I have another bag with my clothes in it. It could almost fit in an overhead bin I think, but because it is getting checked, it cost me $15. That means that my flight just went up by $30 total. Sheesh.

Jellyka font for my signature

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I have decided that my signature is crap. I tried to make a nice signature, scan it, and use it to sign my photos, but it wasn’t working. Also, when I post images online, I have used different fonts to add my name to the image, usually on the bottom. I haven’t been terribly happy with any of the fonts I have tried so far. Until now.

I think I like Jellyka – Estrya’s Handwritting. Jellyka Nerevan seems to be giving away the font for personal use. I wasn’t sure what exactly other uses would be, but I sent a donation via pay pal for the font. She has other fonts on dafont too, or you can see her website at CuttyFruty.

I have used this font with the last few sets of images I have placed online. I am not sure if I am going to keep the drop shadow or not, but it looks good on plain white!

Full Screen Slideshow in Javascript

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So I now have a full screen slideshow in Javascript, without using flash, and I wanted to tell you how I did it, and how you can do it too. I will talk a bit about Javascript here, but you will be able to download the jQuery plugin I have without needing to know much, if all you want is to implement the gallery.

I got the idea for this plugin after looking at a flash version of Scott Kelby’s portfolio. I just wanted to give it a try in Javascript.

I have created a permanent page for bgStretcher2, so it is easier to find from the side bar, so look here.