Thoughts on Shuttle Launches

I was talking with a friend recently about a number of things when we came to be talking about this picture.

The picture itself comes originally from @Stefmara on Twitpic (you can find it here: http://twitpic.com/4yg6hs).

But Kev, who is a graphic designer by trade, sent me an email about why he liked the picture and why he thought it was so good.

What he said about this picture I thought was something worth reading, so I present it to all of you in case you do to.

Hi Mike, here are my thoughts on why that shuttle image makes a great photograph.

1. LUCK

I'll come back to this but for now let’s just get it out of the way because it's so important.

2. COMPOSITION

A lot of things work in this picture. The harsh colour gradient in the sky, the contrast between the white sky and the white cloud, the gentle shadow arcing off the page giving a little perspective. But the best thing about it is what isn't there. The first of these is the shuttle. It's not there. Like in a spot the ball competition, we know where it is because everything else in this photo is drawing us the apex of the column of gas in the dead centre of the photograph. Suggestion is powerful, like the arrow in the FedEx logo the audience love solving a mystery and filling in for themselves what isn't there.

The second, less obvious thing that isn't there is the plane, or more accurately, any window frame. Now we know this was taken from a plane window partly because its the only way you could have taken it, after all, it wouldn't be too hard to Photoshop this whole scene), but because of the distortion, the slight reflections in the window  from the flash, the sunlight highlighting the imperfections in the glass. A lesser photographer (the sort chasing a so-called perfect photo, one who knows Photoshop but has no idea what they want to actually say, would fix this, get rid of all that flash and distortion so they could have that perfect shot of the shuttle gracefully moving upwards, an impossible shot from a sci-fi wonderland. 

And it'd be shit.

That slight distortion tells us the window is there without actually showing it (and without beating us over the head with it by including the window frame – the power of a good crop). It puts us in the moment, and emphasises the once-in-a-lifetime feel of the whole thing. And this brings me onto 

3. IT MAKES ME FEEL SOMETHING

All the elements in 2, working together, make me feel something about the picture. It might not be what you feel (for me its awe and disbelief, for someone else it might be something else, like fear), the point is this single shot is the starting point for my minds journey. It makes me feel and think a 100 different things at once, and sets me off on a train of thought. That's the gift from the photographer to the viewer.

Ok, so back to 1. Obviously most of what works in this photo, and the things that it makes me feel, are down to luck. Aside from a bit of judicious (and probably unintentional) cropping, it was all down to being in the right place and the right time. And so what? You need luck, everybody does. And it's an important part of your work and to deny that would be arrogant and foolish. I don't know the person who took the photograph so I don't know if she is a professional or not but if she isn't she achieved by accident what for me photographers (and any creative pro) strives for in their work. It communicated and it made me think, and not just by the virtue of being in a window seat on the shuttles flight path. But as professionals we can't rely on luck all the time — but we can increase its chances of it appearing with a thorough understanding of 2 and 3. Master these and luck will follow you. As golfer Arnold Palmer said, "It's a funny thing, the more I practice, the luckier I get". So ignore 1. It'll happen. Concentrate on 2 and 3. Master them. Think about them for every single shot you do.

Thank you to @Stefmara for taking and sharing the picture with the world and to Kev (@Kevdarton) for the insightful thinking.

Mikestockerphoto.com

Stars & Stripes

So, here we are a month from Christmas and its still cold, dark and miserable.
But that's just winter time for you.
However, I have been having fun with the dark times thanks to a bit of kit I was lucky enough to get during the festive season. An intervalometer.

This is really just a fancy title for what actually amounts to a timer. With some other buttons on it.
What it really does it control the camera from a distance helping to reduce any shaking that touching the camera causes but also can be set to trigger the camera automatically. You can set it to open the shutter for a specific length of time and to fire the shutter at specific intervals.
This has given me the chance to try out some photographic techniques that I have had trouble with. Namely extremely long shots and time lapse.
Now, I’m still finding my way with some of this as it, like everything else in this game, is harder than it looks.
I have been fooling around for a while trying different settings out to see what happens, I’ve always found that the best way to learn and sometimes it produces some of the most unexpected shots, like this very first attempt that I took in my back garden over 5 minutes. The street lights give an sickly orange glow that blocks everything, but a little adjustment can bring out the details.

With long exposure photos its easy to get it wrong, if the ISO is too high or the time just a little to long you can blow out the image but you do get some interesting effects.

This was taken about 9:30 at night in a forest near where I am living. With the ISO up to 1000 and a 4 minute exposure there is almost enough light to make it look like day.
I’m lucky enough to have a large forest very close to where I am presently living. This has the advantage of providing some great places to shoot for my other blog, Danger UXB but also some great landscapes. I haven't tapped its full potential by a long way but I thought I should get a little in at least some of the shots I was taking. I like the contrast between the distances of the tree and the stars.

The forest is also quite closed in from the town near by, hopefully being dark. Not always true with the shear amount of light pollution there is these days. When the clouds rolled in and ruined the nights shooting, there was so much reflected light that I could see clearly without a torch. Being as I work in daylight (as most of us do) you never notice how much light there is. That is until you want it to go away.
The last shot I could get that night, after the clouds stole most of the sky was looking into the distance towards the Cat & Fiddle pub, one of the highest in England. There is a wonderful road that leads up to it that is great to drive, if you are carful. It only took 30 seconds to get a shot that showed the darkness of the fields but the huge amount of light generated by the pub, the cars and the town of Buxton in the distance.

As I said, this is just the start. I can spend many more sleepless nights, alone, in the dark forest at night. Astro-photography is basically a whole new discipline for me with new rules and methods. Something I am looking forward to spending my nights exploring.
Its not often that you find a bit of photographic kit that opens up so much to you for a reasonable price, I think the Intervalometer is a must have, it does so much and doubles as a remote release. Canon do have one of their own for a ridiculous amount of money, but if you want to try it out you can find the one I got on Amazon here. It even comes with batteries!

Mikestockerphoto.com

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The joy of the chance moment

“The lost chance is never the last one” - Leonid S. Sukhorukov (2005)

One lesson I have learnt from my time as a photographer is that there is little in the real world that is more useful or more destructive than random chance. I am a little unnerved to say it has been responsible for some of my best images. On occation I have been praised for images that I know I would never have been able to get without divine intervention. 

On the other side of this coin are the times when an apparently perfect shot was ruined for reasons beyond my control. Nothing can be quite as bothering as having set the shot up and taken the time to make sure every little detail is right to then have a bird fly into shot or the sun to come from behind a cloud.

These are two shots that illustrate the effect of random chance,

This shot was taken at the western end of Mono Lake in California, just where the 395 freeway leaves the lake shore to head north into the mountains. It was taken at about 5:30am, I was leaving Mammoth Mountain heading back to San Francisco after a rather difficult shoot. I was tired and drinking Red Bull just to stay awake. As I rounded a corner I looked across the lake for the last time just as the sun rose and it gave me this perfect view. Its good that it was so early in the morning as i slammed on the brakes, grabbed my camera and jumped out to shoot it. If there was anyone following me there would have been an accident.

This next shot was from covering a historic motor race at Brands Hatch a few months ago. I had spent most of the weekend looking for the best places to shoot the track. I found a good spot from just below Paddock Hill Bend. Having followed the progress of several of the cars I was ready to shoot a series as they passed. In this case I had the double trouble of the car moving out of the racing line and closer to the fence just as a spectator stepped into my line and blocked part of the shot in just the right place to not be something that can be cropped out.

The moral of all this I suppose is that in photography and life you get the perfect timing for a landscape on occasion but every now and again someone’s head gets in the way.

The trick is letting go of the ruined shots and being grateful for the perfect chance moments.

The Click of the Safety Catch

Seek the strongest colour effect possible… the content is of no importance.       -Henri Matisse (1869-1954) 

Let’s talk about the reality of modern photography. Anyone who lives off what they do with a camera will always speak of themselves as a photographer but this does rather forget to mention the development of the images that the camera takes.

This obviously leads us to Photoshop, one of the most polarizing subjects I have ever heard discussed between photographers. Some see it a valuable tool, some as tantamount to lying as it creates something that was never there.  Personally, I see it a natural replacement for the old dark room techniques minus the nasty chemicals, a natural progression along with the move from film cameras to digital.

The major difference comes with quantum leap in the power digital development gives us. The pre digital methods were an art in themselves and Photoshop is no different. However, along with dodging, burning and cross processing we can now do so much more.

And here lies the problem, as the saying goes, “Power is nothing without control”.  The power of Photoshop can easily get out of control. The ease with which we can change the contrast or brightness or saturation leads to taking it for granted.

I noticed in my early days of using Photoshop was that it was all too easy to boost something like saturation far too far and ruin a shot. I thought about an addition like a safety catch, something that would make you pause when you are pushing something too far. 

This all came about because of a mistake I made while editing an image for a client. Being colour blind means I have a tendency to slightly over-saturate and I also happen to prefer it, its part of my style.

It wasn’t until after I had finished working on the clients set and was reviewing the shots that I noticed this one.

Being so involved with the processing of the shot meant that I couldn’t see the wood for the trees and clearly pushed the image well beyond a reasonable limit. 

At a time like this, something that made me stop moving the slider and have to click on it again to move it more would have given me the moment’s pause I needed to bring me out of my focus and see I was making a hash of it. This would be the safety catch.

But this is not where the thought ends; you have to push beyond the plainly ridiculous idea of having a piece of software dictate the creative process, even if it’s just as a warning. How does Photoshop know you are making a mistake, how could it ever? It can’t and it won’t and most important of all, it shouldn’t.

The safety catch we have isn’t in Photoshop, it’s within us. Something we develop and grow from our experience and the mistakes we make.

We learn the most when we cock up and realise it. This is where we get our safety catch from. Photoshop is a tool, nothing more. Just like the camera itself. Incredibly powerful but completely subservient to the creative impulse. 

This is how we improve ourselves; this is how we grow our safety catch.

Only by pushing things beyond the acceptable limits and seeing what happens can we see where the edges are and learn and understand the rules.

These experiences feed back into the catch and develops it further, understanding the rule give you ability to break it when you need for creative reasons. This post by is a great example Elizabeth Halford. 

Having seen the mistakes I made, I got the chance to go back and change them, thanks to Photoshop. I could adjust the saturation to a more suitable level. 

Although the shot itself isn’t that good, nothing I would give to the client, I have kept  it. I keep the oversaturated shot on a board near my desk, a proud failure, a horrendous success. A shot that will be in my private portfolio forever now, constantly reminding me to listen for the quite click in the back of my head as the safety catch engages.