Space Shuttle Endeavour Is Huge
Space Shuttle Endeavour
In 2013 I visited Los Angeles and one of the highlights was seeing the Space Shuttle Endeavour in its temporary home. Endeavour was built as a replacement for the Challenger shuttle.
As I joined all the other guests in the Hall I wanted to try and capture something unique about the shuttle while isolating the huge machine from the people and exhibit. I thought this image of the exhaust did just that. What do you think?
How I go From Snapshots to Storytelling with Three Simple Questions Part 1
Photographic storytelling is what we all aspire to achieve. Our photographic journey seems to begin with snapshots, maybe even a little spray and pray, and then ultimately getting to telling a story. So what exactly is storytelling. Storytelling has been described as the effective use of
"Mood, Emotion, Narrative, Idea and Message"
For me this definition really struck a chord with what I was trying to achieve with my photography.
As I progress down the path towards storytelling, I use three simple, but powerful questions. Using these questions gives me the best chance of increasing my success rate of capturing the feeling and story rather than just a snapshot. I try to always ask these questions:
- How do I feel right now?
- What do I want the viewer to feel?
- How can I capture that emotion?
How do I Feel Right Now?
When I come to a photo shoot, a location or just get ready for a Saturday morning photo excursion I'm feeling something. When I first see or experience a location I have a feeling or at the very least a reaction. Just taking a second to formally ask myself what I'm feeling helps me formalize and identify the feeling.
Once I have the feeling identified I can now focus on how to convey that feeling. Just understanding the feeling and knowing what it is helps me work on expressing that feeling with a two dimensional medium. Does the location, or shoot make me feel excited, down, optimistic, pessimistic? No emotion is right or wrong but rather valid and should be explored. I try not to fight the emotion but rather identify it and immediately ask myself the next empowering question.
What do I want my viewer to feel?
Hopefully the answer to this question mirrors my answer to the first question, but maybe not. If it does then I move right on to Question #3. If not then I have a quick little internal debate to decide what answer is more compelling or important, and why they would be different. If they are different then I tend to lean towards what I am feeling. I find if I shoot for myself I have a better chance of succeeding and producing quality art. If the answer is the same then this just helps reinforce the answer as I go into Question #3.
How can I capture that emotion?
For me, just the exercise of asking, and answering this question, gets me focused and provides a single purpose to pursue with the image. For me limiting the alternatives is always best. With this one thought I then bring the camera to my eye and start capturing. I am able to also decide, will this convey the message better in black and white? Do I need HDR? What do I include or exclude from the frame? This is when the tough, and exciting part begins.
Another quick benefit -
An ancillary benefit I have gotten out of this is when I go back and cull my images down in Lightroom I am able to ask myself the same general questions to see if I was successful, and just as important, what could I have done to be more successful.
Summary
Like any muscle, exercising this thought process with these questions, helps improve the answers I get. For every question you ask yourself you will get an answer, the key is to get good, positive, productive answers.
Do I get it right each time? Absolutely not but I think my success rate has increased since I have started this quick pre-planning processing. To give myself the electronic slap in the face I have these three questions on my IPhone in the Notes app. This is what I try to do and hopefully is helpful for you as well.
In Part 2 I will offer a practical example of how I use this approach on a travel location shoot.
Here is How I combine a Business Trip With Photography
Here is how I combine a business trip with photography. For many of us photography is not our full-time paying gig so we need to be creative to satisfy our photo bug while on business trips. You think it is hard to photograph with your spouse in tow, or harder yet your twelve year old; try doing it with two or three work colleagues with you.
Packing
Just like any photo shoot, planning your packing is key. It is no different on a travel photography outing / trip. I typically plan on what I am going to shoot and either take my Tamron 28-75 and my Tokina 11 -16 or my Nikon 1.4 50. If I am doing something different on the trip then I go to Lens Rental and rent what I need. The guys are great over at Lens Rental and I just let them know where the lens will be traveling with me and they are great about getting it to me.
Bag
Either I pack everything in my briefcase or split items between my briefcase and carry on luggage bag. The inner laptop compartment makes a great soft location for my D300s and lens. As I almost always carry on my luggage, a lens wrapped tightly around a tee-shirt travels well.
Instead of my normal briefcase I sometimes travel with my Tenba Messenger bag. What I like about this bag is that it looks like a brief case and when I arrive at the work location I can leave the padded insert in the room and back what I need for the office in the bag. I take advantage of the in-room safe for my gear. After I have images downloaded I always carry the external drive with me and keep my MacBook Pro and spent SD cards in the safe.
I also travel with 10 – 15 16-gig SD cards and a backup drive.
Workflow on the road
My workflow on the road doesn't differ much from my normal travel workflow. I take enough SD cards to have 2 for each day so I don't have to format and reuse any of the cards. On a nightly basis I copy the images from the cards onto a temporary folder on my MacBook Pro and also copy the files onto my external drive and to Dropbox.
The hotels I stay in typically have an in-room safe which is where I put my SD cards and I always carry the small 500GB hard drive with me to the office or in my suit jacket.
Traveling for business can be difficult so combining photography with the trip makes the trips much more enjoyable.
Please feel free to share your tips and ideas below in the comments se