The Art of the Vignette

I think my very first digital darkroom infatuation was the ability to vignette my images. You know, the method of manipulating the edges of an image in order to really make your subjects pop? For me, it was darkening the edges and I couldn’t get enough of it. Although I was having fun with it, it got a tad predictable, I will admit. As I continued to experiment with processing techniques I found other fixations. Textures, tones, saturation, or whatever my processing flavor of the day happened to be. Even after a few of years in experiment mode, I still don’t know what all the potentials are in processing and am still having fun trying new things. I do know what I like when I see it and I know that I shoot in waves of my own personal preferences and trends of whim. Maybe we all do. It’s just a part of the creative process I suppose and part of the fun for sure!

Although my love of vignetting still remains, I am beginning to enjoy challenging myself to build those vignettes into the shooting process. Natural vignettes can be just as intoxicating as their fabricated cohorts but I find they can be a lot less predictable which for me is refreshing.

I’ve recently begun toying with using a shallow depth of field in the foreground of my images as opposed to using it only in the background. I am loving the results! I am addicted to using my trusty macro lens and getting down at ground level, right up to my subject makes it easier to get that soft and lovely blur in the foreground. As long as my focus is on my subject (in the case above, the flower) and there is enough information in front of the subject that will be thrown out of focus with a shallow depth of field you can achieve these results. In this case, the edges don’t go dark but the softness of the bottom edge does do the trick of pulling your eye right to the subject almost as if it were framed.

I would love to see your vignette success stories, whatever they may be. Show us an image of when it really worked just as you wanted it to.

Stepping Back

My vision seems to be evolving these days. I find myself stepping back to get a broader view more often than I have in the past. Shooting wide. While so much can be discovered in close range... like delicate lashes, luscious pores, and tiny insects tip-toeing on petals... shooting wide sets the scene and gives you space for stories to unfold. As I consider the potential opportunity Jen and I have to lead our Shutter Sisters Picture Hope Dream Assignment, I'm beginning to think through visual approaches for capturing stories in still image form and I'm convinced that a wide angle lens will play a critical role in the journey.

Can you recommend a wide angle lens you love?

Share an image with a good sense of place and tell us the secret to your still image storytelling.

what's your favourite lens?

This past weekend, I attended a conference with fellow Shutter Sister Tracey Clark.  At one point in the conference, an attendee approached us:

"I have a question:  I'm about to buy a new lens.  What's your favourite lens to shoot with?"

Both Tracey and I both hesitated before answering.  The truth is that my "favourite" tends to move around a lot -- sometimes, when I'm in portrait-taking mode, my 24-85 mm is all I can see.  If I've been tapping in my inner photojournalist, I adore my 70-200mm lens.  And when I'm all about getting in close, my 60mm Nikkor Micro is the only one that gets any air time.

Finally, Tracey spoke:  "You know what?  I'm really enjoying my Lensbaby," she said.

And then I added, "Recently, I've dusted off an ancient, fully manual 50mm f1.4, and I'm loving the images that it can capture (like the shot above)."

What about you?  What's your favourite lens these days?

Stepping Back

If you peek in the small backpack that has become my day-to-day purse, you'll find my Nikon D80, the kit 18-55mm lens and my lens of choice, the 55-200mm. I'm attracted to detail, so I often find myself zooming in close with my 55-200mm lens wide open to inspect natural objects here on our farm – like an artsy scientist of some sort.  I trace the intricate paths of veins on leaves. I stop the car short to shoot thorny thistle. And I don't mind wasting time watching threads of cow tail hair wave in the breeze on a barbed wire fence.  

But this weekend offered a new view and a chance to shift my perspective.  We traveled north with friends we love to a stunning lake site tucked within the Georgia mountains. The cozy home has remained in our friends' family for many years, and my husband has held fond memories of this special place close to his heart since childhood...leaping off the top of the boathouse...exploring the edges of the 20,000-acre lake by boat... and skiing until his legs turned to jelly.  

So when he plopped in the water and squeezed on his ski, I grabbed my camera and realized that I had accidentally left my zoom lens up at the house, leaving me with my ho-hum kit lens. Bummer. How can I get in close from the top of this boathouse? I thought. But when I put the viewfinder up to my eye, it suddenly clicked.  How could I NOT go wide. So I stepped back and gave it a little tilt, then proceeded to give my kit lens a full weekend workout to really capture a sense of space.

What about you? Do you shoot wide? Please share your lens of choice for shooting wide and any tricks that help you capture a sense of place. And naturally, I'd love to see your shots.

macro

A newborn fern reaches, twists to bask in the single beam of sun that penetrates the rainforest canopy, a spotlight.

Dew on leaf and nectar supped by butterfly. Sweat on the glass brim of a summer martini. With the macro lens on my 1970s-era Pentax I was dwarfed by worlds within worlds, transported hands-first into shimmering giantness, enveloped. Wrapped in more life and light and vividness than I’d ever known existed—that which could only be discerned by getting really. close. up.

Happily engulfed by the otherworld inside a macro lens, the big outside mattered less.

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I don’t have so much diversity to offer these days. Not what's botanical and artistic and profound aside from what lives and dances and giggles inside these four walls, this small house on the edge of a seasalty coast, these two boys, this mama’s life.

So week after week it’s the first kid, then the second. Then the first, then the second. And I’m sorry for that and feel entirely humbled by all of you and the gorgeousness in the pool but 1) there is an ice-storm outside, oppressive and bone-chilling and not so welcoming for baby-laden photo excursions; and 2) in the effort of capturing my boys I find the same vividness, the same meditation as before.

These days, I’m macro-less. But camera pointed at these faces, the wonder returns.

Wishing I could crawl in between those eyelashes, turn around and see from his vantage point how the world looks, as he studies it.

You don’t mind, do you?

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This week, I’d love to see your favourite macro shots. Tide me over until light and weather and childcare and disposable income and a good deal on a lens conspire to set me loose among the dewy ferns again.

Gimme a dose, willya?