Shutter Mike Photography

It has been a while since I highlighted one of the artists on Photography Served. But I was going through the site the other day (procrastinating) and I came across the photography of John Valls, a commercial food photographer in Portland, OR who photographs food “…from the ground up.”  John’s featured set on Photography Served is A Visit to a Tobacco Farm in Cuba.  Aside from the spectacular photographs I deemed this set of photographs share-worthy because I the subject.  Cuba has been on my list of must-go-to destinations for a while now.  Part of that is the “forbidden” aspect, part is my perception of it as being frozen in time and the photographic possibilities that presents.  But I will get there one day, hopefully before the rest of the world beats me to it and changes it forever.

John Valls’ work in Cuba focused on a tobacco farm and was shot over the course of six years to reveal “…the slow rhythms and quiet pleasures of daily life on Fidel’s family tobacco farm.”  (I’m not sure if that is the Fidel.)

I started Shutter Mike back in 2009 as an extension of my love of photography and a way to get my photography out there in a way beyond just Flickr and Facebook.  Over 2 years later I am 1000 posts into it.  This blog has opened some new doors and presented opportunities in photography.  But beyond that it has helped me develop my photography skills and style.  And it has put me on the verge of the next big step for me with my photography.  So it has been a great 2+ year journey and I still love managing this blog and creating the material in its posts.

Thanks to all my readers/viewers, I appreciate you taking the time to check out my work and all the comments over the years.  Now if I can just figure out how to grow my readership to crazy numbers!

For anyone not familiar with the Joss Whedon series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, shame on you.  But it is a forgivable offense that you can easily reconcile with a few weekends and a box set of DVDs.  Despite the preconceived notions that the title might drum up, this series was very well done and was so much more than just another teenage vampire genre show.  There is the classic good versus evil, the struggle of being an “outcast,” diversity, teen angst, plus vampires.  But more so than all of that it is well written and well acted making it suitable for most any demographic audience.

So what does this have to do with photography?  Have I gone way off course?  The photography comes in with some recent shots I took for Awesome Toy Blog, an action figure and collectible toy enthusiast’s go to place for news, information and the latest sightings.  Sideshow Toys has a series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer collectible statues and I photographed their most recent addition to the collection, Willow, for Awesome Toy Blog.

This is not a photography post per say.  It is more about pursuing your dreams and going after what you want.  I did not write it and full credit goes to Ricardo Bueno who wrote the Do Epic Shit post on his Marketing and Technology for Real Estate and Small Business blog.

1. Stop waiting for permission to do something awesome
2. Silence the inner critic
3. Don’t ever be afraid to fail
4. When you do fail, get up and try again
5. Remember, your ideas are better than you think they are (see #2)
6. Ignore the haters (they too are critics; see #2)
7. Ignore negative people (they’re energy mongers)
8. Stop waiting for things to be perfect because they never will be
9. Execute (remember #8)

Although these simple statements can be applied to any ambition or dream we have been putting off because it is not the right time or we are too afraid to fail they really speak to me about my pursuit of photography.  My inner critic is very loud sometimes and needs silencing.

In case you are in the Gilbert, AZ area anytime over the next few months stop by Bergie’s Coffee Roast House in downtown Gilbert (just north of Joe’s Real BBQ) to see art from the members of the Gilbert Visual Arts League – including me.

The GVAL’s mission is to

create a venue for local artists to show their work and be recognized for their talents. The league strives to increase artistic awareness and appreciation in their community and surrounding areas.

Part of that mission includes working with local business and venues to secure space for artists to display their work and Bergie’s is one of those spots.  This is the first time one of my photographs has hung in a public place so I am not sure what (if anything) to expect.  But it is still cool.

My photograph is of a green door in the El Presido area of Tucson, AZ.  It is on the north wall of the main room.  The art will be on display through July 31st.

Google has come out with yet another “tool” (or is it s toy?).  This time it is a quick little gadget in You Tube that lets you create 30 second videos called Search Stories.  The idea is to tell a story, about anything you want, through Google searches.  its a great way to just have fun or to potentially do a little promotion of your photography or any business really.  Here is one I created.

The composition rules in photography all serve the general purpose of engaging the image’s viewer with the image.  That may be through getting an image that follows certain standards of beauty or enticing some sort of interaction from the viewer.  The purpose of leading lines in a photograph is to lead the viewer’s eye through (and occasionally right out of) the photograph so that they view the image as the photographer wants them to see it, starting at point A and following a specific path to see the image as the photographer saw the scene.  Leading lines are also used to bring the viewer’s  attention to one particular point in the image, generally the main subject.

How the leading line is achieved and what is used to construct it is completely up to your imagination.  Railroad tracks are probably the most common example of a leading line.  But fences, roads, the edge of a building, or a row of similar objects can all make a leading line.  As mentioned in the Framing the Subject post the “rules” o f composition are not absolute so much as they are guidelines to use and expand upon to produce images that are appealing.  As photographers we have to interpret and often break or reconstruct these rules to get the images we are after.

The image in the upper right is using the yellow lines of the road as the leading line to start the viewer in the lower left corner of the photograph and leading them to the center and the sunset.

The photograph of the tunnel above is simply directing the viewer’s eye to a termination point of the light at the end of the tunnel.

Finally, the image of the path on the right takes the photograph viewer from the shade to the light and finally the museum building at the end of the path.  In this photo one could argue that the path, or the leading line, itself is the subject rather than termination point of the museum.

In photography, composition refers to how the elements in the frame are constructed and arranged to result in the desired final image.  There are many “rules” of composition in photography that are designed to produce an image that is appealing to the human eye.  Of course there is no one thing that is universally beautiful.  So these rules are not absolute so much as they are guidelines to use and expand upon to produce images that are appealing.  As a photographer you have to interpret and often break these rules to get the images you are after.  They do not have to be, nor are they meant to be, set in stone and followed blindly.

A good (and relatively easy) rule of photography composition to start with is framing the subject.  Simply put, framing a subject in an image is a photographic technique similar to physically framing your image in a picture frame.  Only in the case of photography you are using elements in the image to frame the part of the image that you want to draw the viewers attention to.

When you are composing your shot look for natural elements in the scene that could act as a frame for the main subject you want to draw the viewer to.  It does not need to be a solid, four-sided physical frame however.  It can be an implied frame, a hint of a frame on only 2 or 3 sides or anything you feel is appropriate for the image you want to make.  Remember the rules are made to be broken.