Against Cheese!

"Make a face, J!" I called out, camera ready and aimed downwards.  He readily complied with the most ferocious look he could muster.  And so it went, for the next few minutes; every time the lens was fixed on him, he'd strike a fierce pose.  I couldn't have been happier.

If you're like me, you don't ever ask anyone to say "cheeeeeese!" when you are photographing them.  If you're REALLY like me, you try not to let your subject even see your camera as you shoot.  Sometimes, however, you'll want to make contact between your subject's eyes and your lens, and on those occasions, telling them to "Say Cheeeeese!" will probably not result in the authentic image you were hoping for.

By asking J simply to make a face, I gave him the freedom to express himself as he wished instead of trying to manufacture an image based on my own idea of how one should look in a photo.  I think the resulting image was much more satisfying than a big forced toothy grin.

Share with us today your most genuine faces, authenticity of the moment unencumbered by cheese.

Framing Tells Half The Story

I was late to a live acoustic music show at a little coffee shop, and I found a seat somewhat removed from the other patrons and the band.  During the performance, I happened to glance over to my left, and that's when I saw her, absentmindedly playing with her hair, soaking in the music, with the late afternoon light from the window subtly illuminating her from behind.  Instantly smitten, I turned my lens towards her, carefully composed the shot and clicked.

I am a big fan of shooting from the hip, but for this photo, I was very intentional about the way I arranged the visual elements of the image.  I wanted the viewer to know that I was at a distance from the subject, that most likely she was a stranger, and by framing the shot within an actual environmental border (the dark outline of the wall on the left, the top of a chair below, and the gentleman on the right), there is a sense that I, the photographer, am looking in from the outside.

In post-processing, I actually considered cropping out the dark borders to zoom in more on the subject.  Doing so, however, didn't tell the story I wanted to convey--namely, that this was one of those random encounters with beauty that I often observe admiringly from a distance, hesitant to get any closer for fear that detection of my presence would chase the moment away.  I was glad that I composed the shot as intentionally as I did, because in this case, the framing really does tell half the story, at least for me.

How have you used framing to tell your story?  Have you ever framed your subjects in borders already present in the environment?  Please share with us your images and any tips you may have for framing.

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And come back tomorrow when we announce the new word for our One Word Project for August!

sunday school: going slow

There is a time for going slow, and there is a time for moving fast.  And then there is a time for going slow when all around you is moving fast.  I recently realized this when I found myself in a crowd of downtown tourists whizzing by me on all sides from all directions.  I am not a fast walker.  I am a stroller, an ambler, a meanderer, a wanderer, a dilly-dally-er of the highest order.  This is especially true when I have a camera in my hands and music in my ears.

Instead of picking up my pace to keep up with the crowd, I decided to slow it waaaay down, and just stand around as everyone rushed past me.  It was a bright sunny day, and I could have easily snapped sharp images of people as they walked by, but I decided to capture the sense of being surrounded by motion by using a slower shutter speed.  To do this, I decreased my ISO to 100, narrowed my aperture to f/16 and was able to get the shutter down to 1/10 of a second, which was plenty slow to capture all the commotion of the moment. 

Sometimes (or always, in my case) it's a good idea to slow down and let the whirlwind swirl on by.  Your life won't pass you by because it's not in that whirlwind.  It's with you, however long you may dawdle, in this moment, in this place.

Do you like to slow down in the midst of a fast-paced world?  Show us how.  Guide us on a little stroll through your images.

vive la snail mail!

Dear Shutter Sisters,

Shortly after I posted here about wanting to get back into the habit of writing letters and using photography to facilitate that, I got a Facebook message from Mika, a member of the Shutter Sisters community, about something she was participating in called The 100 Postcard Project.  According to the website, it's "a grassroots initiative to revive the art of personalized, material human connection through the writing of postcards and letters. Collaborators on this project aim to write 100 postcards or letters in 100 days, between May 22 and August 29, 2010, artistically rendered or otherwise."  I got excited that other people were interested in snail mail, too!  And then a week or so later, a friend of the family began sending us  postcards.  I started sensing a revolution brewing...

I received my gorgeous photo/postcard from Mika last week, and it was such a lovely feeling to receive something with my name handwritten on it, knowing that it was meant just for me, not a mass message to an email list or a blogpost for an anonymous audience.  It made me wish that more people could experience this for themselves.  Then this week, when I read Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Mission of the week--to pair up her readers as pen-less pals (e.g. the digital version of pen pals), it clicked...Snail Mail Shutter Pals for Shutter Sisters!

So here's how this will work.  If you would like to start exchanging a photo and/or letter/postcard/note with another Shutter Sister, leave a comment below with a functioning email address [in the email field of the comment form, not necessarily in the comment body itself].  Within the next week or so, I will play matchmaker and pair you up via email to exchange mailing addresses.  You will then send your Shutter Pal a photo and a short (or long) note about that photo and what it means to you, what it says about you, or whatever else you want to write about.  Or, if sending a photo is too much pressure, just a note or postcard will be great too.  And to help you along, I am giving away a packet of Photojojo's mailable photo frames to two commentors.  They'll instantly turn any 4x6 photo into a postcard!  Leave a comment by Monday night 10pm CDT to be entered to win.

Isn't this the perfect way to say Hello to each other?  Who's with me now?  Viva la snail mail!

Peace and Love,

Sarah-Ji

P.S. If you're daunted by the idea of letterwriting, start out by simply writing a note on the back of a photo, like a postcard, or sending an actual postcard.  I think of postcards as the Twitter of the epistolary form, and that makes it much less intimidating.

P.P.S. If anyone wants to send me Postcards From Italy, feel free to do so!

Update on Tuesday, June 29, 2010 by Shutter Sisters

Congrats to Debi of Emma Tree and Heather of To Live Inspired--you each won a pack of Photojojo's mailable photo frames! 

What a great start to our Snail Mail Revolution!  Feel free to sign up if you haven't already.

Update on Monday, July 19, 2010 by Shutter Sisters

If you signed up to be a Shutter Pal, you should have received an email by now with the information on who you've been matched up with.  If you haven't received that email, please contact Sarah-Ji directly at sarah [at] sarah-ji[dot]com.  Iif you wish to be added in the future to the Shutter Pals exchange, contact Sarah-Ji (instead of commenting on this post).  Thanks, and happy snail-mailing!

You Or Your Memory

Digging through a multitude of miscellaneous boxes, attempting to separate wheat from chaff, I stumbled upon several photographs from almost a decade ago nestled amongst the chaos of junk mail and official documents.  These weren't just any old snapshots; they held the keys to a bounty of some of my fondest memories that had somehow gotten misplaced with the busyness and clutter of every day life over the years.

Blasting Blink182 all the way down through Santa Cruz to Pebble Beach...finding out Pebble Beach is actually a Golf Course...climbing the big pile of boulders pretending we were on our Big Rock Candy Mountain...pretending we didn't hear the maintenance staff yelling at us...watching the kite surfers soar over the bay as the sun dipped lower in the western horizon...wandering around for hours and hours with no need for either a plan or small talk...These are a few of the memories that come rushing back from one of my favorite vacations ever, visiting my dear friend Josh from high school.  And all it took was glancing at a couple photos...

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Have you ever had a flood of reminiscence wash over you simply by looking at a photo?  Maybe now is a good time to take a stroll down memory lane; go ahead--dig up the old albums and photoboxes, or scroll back to your very first photos posted to Flickr.  And don't forget to share with us your links to images and the memories they conjure up!