Back to Life

Wow, I can't believe it's been over 3 months since I've posted here. Life has a way of interrupting your progress. Let's start from where I am right now.

This semester I'm taking Photography II once again. This time it's with a different professor and instead of color we are shooting black and white again. This time, however, she wants me printing my work on fiber paper. I'm also being given a cursory introduction to the zone system as well as getting a chance to work with a 4x5 view camera. The view camera is definitely something I am looking forward to using.

At this point we're almost halfway through the semester (I told you it's been a while) and I've turned in the project dealing with the zone system. I won't go into the details of the project itself but I will say I was rather amazed at some of the results I got, especially since the exposures on the different items seemed counterintuitive. I may have to look further into the concept of the zone system, but that will probably wait until after the semester is over.

Currently I am doing a project on documenting, via photographs, a dream I recently had. This is proving to be a fun little exercise since I get to use my lensbaby in giving the images a dream-like feel. The first shots were actually developed today and are being scanned as I type this. I also made 2 paper prints off the roll in class. I'm curious to see what kind of reactions I get from the other students (all the other students are in Photography I and their current project - landscapes - is nowhere near as fun). You'll be able to see some of my work over at mt flickr page with my favorite pieces being cross-posted to Primordial Light.

Well, that's pretty much it for now. I've got some work to do as the scans are almost completed. The first dream roll was shot on the reformulated Tri-X 400 film and I must say I am very impressed with the results so far. To all of you I bid you a good night.

The Ever Expanding Lens Collection

For a long time I've been fascinated by selective focus. In selective focus the photographer is able to seemingly focus on a certain subject in a frame while the rest of the image (even in the same plane) is out of focus. The first photograph where I realized the power of selective focus was the Keith Carter photograph "Broken Leg".

In this photo we can see selective focus and the power it can lend to an image. The only thing in focus is the animal and its immediate surroundings. The childs face is so distorted we cannot see his or her expression. Was the child responsible for the condition of the animal? Did the child happen upon the animal? The black clothing suggests perhaps this is Thanatos taking the form of a child and coming from the great unknown, ready to collect the next body for the afterlife. Or is this a social statement on how man preys upon other species and there is no innocence concerning this, not even in a child?

The use of selective focus is what gives the image its power. Although the child's legs are a not much out of focus, as you go up toward its head, the image is more and more out of focus, even though they are in the same plane.

In a normal camera the film plane and the lens plane are parallel. This in turn gives us a depth of field where the front and rear planes of focus are also parallel (and parallel to the lens and film planes). Because of this you can't achieve this image with an normal SLR camera and lens setup.

Medium and large format photographers have the advantage of being able to use a bellows system. If you look at a 19th century camera and see the accordian type material on the front, you are looking at the bellows. The bellows system allows the photographer to change the plane of the lens, which also changes the plane of focus so it is no longer parallel with the film plane. When used in conjunction with good compositional technique, an image can indeed become very powerful, as evidenced in "Broken Leg". Carter makes extensive use of selective focus in his work.

I have a medium format film camera, but in my research they don't make a bellows system for it. I can't afford a large format camera and even then the bellows systems tend to add another 4 digits to the price of a large format system.

Which brings me to the point of my post. For my birthday this year I got a Lensbaby Composer for my DSLR. This lens allows for selective focus on a normal SLR system, although it does not have the flexibility of a full blown bellows. I've been playing with it as I've had time. I'm still trying to figure out how to manipulate the "sweet spot" to get the image I want, but it's a lot of fun. Here are a couple of images I shot with the Lensbaby:

The first image, of my German Shepherd, was taken the day after I acquired the lens. I still had a lot to learn about using the lens at this point, but as you can see, the area just above her eye gets more muddled even though it's in the same plane as the eye. The second photo is of my wife and my Golden Retriever/German Shepherd mix, taken nearly a month after acquiring the lens. Here I was able to get the human and dog eyes in focus while the rest is out of focus. You can really see it in my wife's shoulder as opposed to her eyes (the shoulder and the eye are both in the same plane) and the dogs eye compared to her face as you move out.

I can tell I'm going to have a lot of fun with this lens. Perhaps I can see if there is a custom bellows kit I can order for my DSLR somewhere out there. But then again, I better start saving my pennies if one exits - those systems aren't cheap by any means.

Rabbit Portrait

It's been a while since I've posted anything here. I got a little busy with other things, but now things seem to have settled down a little bit. I can play catchup in other posts, but right now I want to discuss an image I saw in Color Magazine today.

The picture below is part of a series called "Transcendence" by Kimberly Witham. The picture is entitled "Rabbit Portrait":


This is not the first image that caught my eye in this series, but it was the first image that made me realize something unusual about all of the animals in the series. What challenged me most was the look in the eye of this rabbit. It looks shocked and alert, sensing danger and trying to find the direction from which it is coming. But then I questioned how this was on a pure black background. That's when I realized that this rabbit is dead. All of the animals in the series are dead. I was shocked and more intrigued at same time. Death is a pretty morbid subject for any medium, but the images here actually were quite powerful. Just to make sure I went back and read the artist's words on the series and confirmed that they were indeed dead animals.

The image seems to beg the viewer to question how this life met its end. The shocked and alert look on the rabbit's face makes me wonder if it was frightened when the end came. It certainly doesn't look as if the animal accepted its fate. Perhaps the rabbit did indeed accept the inevitable, but was frightened of what it saw ahead once it crossed over into death. The rabbit's repose suggest that the end was anything but peaceful.

All in all this is a pretty powerful picture, as are all the pictures in the series. I encourage you all to look at the entire series for yourself at http://www.kimberlywitham.com/. I invite your comments on what you think of this image and/or the series.