Psssst...

Pssst. Did I tell ya? Too afraid to fess up for what it implies for the presumed amazingness of future photos, which is no sure thing.

Santa brought mama a new SLR camera, a Canon Rebel XTi, to finally displace my point-and-shoot, the Kodak Pipsqueak 2000.

It's a revelation, let me tell you. I can take pictures INDOORS! I have a lens that I can open up to 1.8. ONE. POINT. EIGHT. And the best part? It FOCUSES. I am pleased. I am thrilled. I am nose to the manual every night, determined to figure out how to get it to do what I hope it can do. Lots to learn, but learning's no trouble when you're lit up.

I know I’m all Story of Stuffed, but do me a favour and grant me one gizmo exemption.

This thing, she is some beaut.

The kidnapping

I overstate for dramatic value. Kidnapping wasn’t necessary, nor was Nova Scotian saltwater torture. Jeanette is a willing avalanche of photographic tricksiness, and a good thing too, because I’m fresh out of ski masks.

K: This shot is so evocative, almost like a painting. How much of it came alive in post-processing, and how much was just chance and light and voodoo?

J: This picture is definitely one that came alive in Photoshop. The final shot is representative of what my heart saw when I took the picture, but my camera does not have the ability to capture that.

I probably used additional adjustment layers/layer masks here to intensify the colours beyond my usual, more natural processing. I also used both the burn and sponge tools to bring out the layers of colours that I could see that night but that were not apparent in the original image.

If you look closely at areas of the sky, you would actually see that areas of this image are somewhat degraded by processing. In this case, the artifacts of the burn/sponge tools were not only acceptable to me, but desired, as I wanted this image to have a more surreal, almost painted look. Normally though, I would not take such a heavy hand with these tools, as the final image quality would suffer.

K: In captures like your shot of Evan, subjects' eyes are watery, reflective pools. How do you capitalize on catchlights?

J: It's all about the light, and training yourself to make the most of it by how you position both yourself and your subject. Practice. Take an agreeable subject (probably not a two year old!) and position them outside in open shade. Circle around them, watching the shape and position of the light reflecting in their eyes.

As far as post processing goes, if a catchlight isn't there in your original capture, there’s not much you can do to create one that will look realistic. However, a catchlight can be enhanced and brought out by using the dodge tool in Photoshop. I use a soft brush set to about a third of the size of the eyes, and have the dodge tool set to midtones, and around 9-11%. Then I just lightly sweep the brush across the eyes, brightening the whites of the eyes slightly, bringing out the catchlights. This technique is one that can be easily overdone though—so have a light hand and make sure it still looks natural.

K: Can you share a few of your most admired photostreams, and tell us why they inspire you?

J: I'll just pick a few quickly, but there are so many more...

My good friend Brenda — her style is fresh, fun and nostalgic. Can't ever get enough of her work!

Tina Louise — her timeless, evocative portraits have made her one of my most admired photographers from the very beginning.

Jefra — She was the first photographer to teach me to think less and shoot more instinctively and her stream is a testament to this 'blink' style of shooting.

LaraJade — It's hard to believe such edge-pushing, raw portraiture can come from one so young. Her work blows me away.

Stop the presses

Ever have this happen?

In the space of five minutes in someone's backyard another photographer captures the same subject you've captured a thousand times and you see the result and you think to yourself

HEY!  How did she... what the... but... but... but... how the heck...

When I saw this picture of my son as captured by the gorgeous and talented Jeanette LeBlanc (who also lives here), I had to recover my jaw off the floor with a paint scraper.

Instant invigoration. Mystified curiosity. The world will stop turning if I do not figure out HOW SHE DID THIS. 

As soon as she tells me, I'll let you know. Jeanette has an incredible eye, yes, but what gets me is her processing prowess. I've got her tied up in my living room, as it happens, and will be employing Nova Scotian saltwater torture to extract her tricks and share them with you here in the coming days.*

(*All 100% true except for the kidnapping bit. But if she keeps taking photos like this one, I may well have to go to Arizona in my ski mask for that very purpose. In the meantime, I've dispatched my pretty-pretty-pleases over email, and I'll keep you posted.)

The subject

 

Since he was too young even for outfits I’ve dressed him up, my doll. Propped him, snapped fingers, yodeled—all to preserve him just as he is at that moment, the current version of himself always on the edge of obsolescence, the six-month old giving way for the nine-month old, the younger never to be seen again, and so on.

He hears the click and sighs. “No pictures. I am BUSY.”

I’ve resorted to chocolate chip bribery, but already he is too cool for me.

And as fate would have it, this photographic reluctance is just as his eyes sparkle with the mystery of his own opinion on things, with the wonder of his own senses of humour, injustice, adventure.

Just the very sparkle I’m after.

Dang.

Mastering the art of the rinky-tink-tink: part two

I can’t claim any state of zen with my point-and-shoot camera. Most days, it takes near-herculean restraint to not chuck it off the end of the nearest wharf.

Taught my three-year-old several new curse words this weekend trying to capture him indoors — the NERVE! — where my press-down-halfway-and-hope-for-the-best pipsqueak stubbornly refuses to focus.

But a less-than-SLR camera need not be a creative crutch. Right? Right.

+++++++

I'd like to think that creativity is more than 'have’ or ‘have-not’. To accept the "you've got it, and you don't" myth would be utterly demoralizing on those days when I'm feeling photographically tapped — those days, I'd rather take a deep breath and say to myself It's not just me being inherently dull, or hopelessly all-thumbs with a camera. I'm just forgetting something, getting lazy.

Here's what helps me get my groove back — before pressing the shutter, an ABC of creative checkpoints:

ANGLE. Take risks. Lie on your belly. Crouch. Get up on a chair. Try a few without looking through the viewfinder, if an inventive angle requires it. Before turning away from a scene or subject, take at least two or three more unconventional angles or stances. When I start to get bored, chances are good it's because I've spent too much time with the camera at eye-level.

BACKGROUND. Do a visual inventory of everything around your subject — passerby, traffic, signage, household clutter — and change your stance to minimize visual distractions. Do whatever it takes for a clean frame, because there's some law of photography physics that assures the expression of a lifetime will occur in the one frame of a hundred that includes the potbellied guy standing stage left with the MASTER BAIT & TACKLE t-shirt.

COMPOSITION. At the last moment, look through the lens abstractly to consider the shapes, lines and balance formed by your subject and surroundings. Reduce what you see to blocks of colour and pattern, and respond to that stripped-down vision from the gut. This always leads me towards what often feels counter-intuitive, or quirkier than rule-of-thirds. While it may not always work, it's always worth a try to tilt, shift and crop for more mindful composition — as opposed to everything is inside the frame and no one’s got a finger up the nose: check.

If you’re an enthusiastic enough photographer to be here, you know all this already. But it’s forgetting these basics that gets me stuck in snapshotty ruts — and blaming those ruts on my wharf-bound pipsqueak.

Which, in the absence of something better, doesn’t do any favours for me or the Kodak.