Protecting Your Images in the Digital Age

This is a scan of the original 35mm negative of the scene in question, shot in the summer of 1997.This is a scan of the original 35mm negative of the scene in question, shot in the summer of 1997.
This is a scan of the original 35mm negative of the scene in question, shot in the summer of 1997.

How do you protect your images, which are your intellectual property, in the age of the internet? The short answer is that the only way to keep your images from being used without your permission is to keep them off the internet. A good rule of thumb for would-be image grabbers is that if you can see it, you can steal it.

There are various schemes for protecting your images, but none of them are very effective. They include:

  • Using text in the image area that says ©Copyright 2011 John Jacob Jingleheimer, All Rights Reserved. This has the decided disadvantage of ruining the look of images on your web site. It’s also not as hard as you think to use the rubber stamp tool in Photoshop to remove it.

    Some years later I decided to play around with its colors in Photoshop. I don't recall which filter or gradient created this effect, but it doesn't change the story.
    Some years later I decided to play around with its colors in Photoshop. I don’t recall which filter or gradient created this effect, but it doesn’t change the story.
  • Embedding a watermark in Photoshop. These too are fairly easy to work around, using filters for example.
  • Including html code that causes the image to be blocked or covered by a message (like “Click here to buy this image”). All you have to do is take a screen shot and open it in an image editor to steal those.
  • Making your images so small or so compressed that no one could use them. The trouble with this is that if they look bad to would-be image thieves, they look bad to everyone, and no one wants to show off bad-looking images.
This is the page where I found this image tonight. The text indicates she found the image on someone else's blog.
This is the page where I found this image tonight. The text indicates she found the image on someone else’s blog.

I meant to talk about this sooner, and I always explain the situation to my students because they always ask. The reason I am addressing it now is that I ran across an amusing example of one of my photos migrating through the web. Shot in 1997 in downtown Norman, Oklahoma, this black-and-white image was made with an Olympus rangefinder pocket camera, and depicts one of the funniest pieces of graffiti I have ever scene: “Your Plan is Puny” on a wall in spray paint.

I was thinking about it today for some reason, so I entered “You Plan is Puny” into a search engine. I found that I wasn’t the only one who had photographed it, and I also found that my image of the puny sign, one which I had colorized in Photoshop, appeared in the search. The first hit was a blog entry (it has since disappeared) explaining she found the image from another blogger. The other blogger didn’t say where they found it, but both were members of Blogspot.com, which is what I used years ago before migrating to WordPress, and she might have found it there.

In any case, this example points out that anything you produce and share on the web becomes vulnerable to intellectual property theft the moment you upload it. The real trick is not minding that it gets pinched. In fact, unless the perpetrator is claiming to have created it or is making money from it, it’s almost a weird form of flattery.

Also consider this and let it blow your mind: what if taking this picture in the first place constituted theft of the intellectual property of the graffiti artist?

On one occasion just a week or two later, I observed that the graffiti had been modified to say, "Your planet is puny," followed a week after that with "Your planetarium is puny."
On one occasion just a week or two later, I observed that the graffiti had been modified to say, “Your planet is puny,” followed a week after that with “Your planetarium is puny.”

Bright Lights, Big Photos

Abby watches a performance of the famous Bellagio Fountains.
Abby watches a performance of the famous Bellagio Fountains.

My wife Abby and I have just returned from our annual anniversary vacation, our seventh. We usually head west, often to Moab, Utah, where we married. This year, however, we decided to try something different and sample the photographic fruits offered by Las Vegas, Nevada.

Neither Abby nor I gamble, but we both love to take pictures and it had been many years since either of us had been to Vegas.

Photographing the desert City of Lights, or any big city like New York or Chicago or Dallas, is harder than one might realize. It seems like you could just point and shoot your point-and-shoot camera in any direction and get instant results. The trouble is a place as complex and visually stimulating as Las Vegas has a tendency to overwhelm the senses and cloud the photographic eye.

The same rules apply to shooting a big city as apply to most situations.

The lights and traffic on the Las Vegas Strip fill the night with luminosity. It's easy for a camera to underexpose an image like this, yielding nothing but bright lights on a black background, but that misses out on the feel of cities like Las Vegas.
The lights and traffic on the Las Vegas Strip fill the night with luminosity. It’s easy for a camera to underexpose an image like this, yielding nothing but bright lights on a black background, but that misses out on the feel of cities like Las Vegas.
  • Wide overview shots tend to bore viewers. If you shoot with a wide angle, try to explore near-far relationships, which will engage the eye and draw the viewer into the image.
  • Get high and low. We all know what a city street looks like from eye level. Show us how it looks from a glass elevator 55 stories up, or from the bottom of a subway station stairs. Keep us interested in your images.
  • Try to shoot when the light is nice. There are some shots you can make in the middle of the day, but for the most part, the best time to shoot a brightly-lit city is at dawn or dusk, when the lights from buildings and signs combine with amber hues of sunrises and sunsets or blue hughes before sunrise and after sunset.
  • If you are photographing your friends or relatives in a place like Las Vegas, try to photograph them engaged in some activity, even one as simple as walking down the street, rather than stopping them and making them pose. Some of my best, most natural images of Abby from last week were of her taking pictures on the street or watching the Bellagio Fountains.

    The angles on the walkways in this image bring the viewer's eye to the center of the image.
    The angles on the walkways in this image bring the viewer’s eye to the center of the image.
  • You can do the “Party Pic” group pose if you must, but it shares little about the place you are visiting and the activities you are doing, so consider saving them for the living room when you get home.
  • Use the light from the city itself instead of the flash on your camera. This is especially effective if you have a lens with a large maximum aperture, like the venerable 50mm f/1.8. The flash on your camera will tend to overwhelm objects close by and leave the lights in the distance darker than your eye perceives them, robbing your images of the very “City of Lights” look you are attempting to capture.
  • Don’t let anyone bully you out of taking pictures in a public place (unless it puts you in danger). Public streets and the things that happen on them in plain view are not generally protected by privacy laws (the so-called “reasonable expectation of privacy’). If a security guard tells you you can’t photograph his building from a public street, he’s not only wrong, he’s interfering with your rights as a citizen. (If you are on private property, however, it is a very different matter.)
  • Abby and I saw a lot of people taking pictures and videos with their smart phones, but considering their limitations, I would recommend something more capable. A consumer-priced digital SLR is enough to photograph the bright lights and big city, in the right hands.
  • Don’t take any of this advice too seriously. They’re just tips after all. Go have fun.
I spotted this elegant stainless steel planter along a sidewalk at City Center in Las Vegas. Note how the lines from the glass rail on the left side guide to eye to the casino lights in the distance.
I spotted this elegant stainless steel planter along a sidewalk at City Center in Las Vegas. Note how the lines from the glass rail on the left side guide to eye to the casino lights in the distance.

The Way We Shoot Weddings

Wedding photography should evoke memories of the emotions in play at the event, like this playful moment from Abby's daughter's wedding in 2009.
Wedding photography should evoke memories of the emotions in play at the event, like this playful moment from Abby’s daughter’s wedding in 2009.

I am not a wedding photographer by trade, nor is my wife. Once in a while, though, when the occasion calls, she and I will join together and shoot a wedding, like when Abby’s daughter got married in 2009, or last night when two friends of ours wed in Ada’s Wintersmith Park. On other occasions, I have teamed up with other photographers, like the time Michael Zeiler and I shot a traditional Jewish wedding (my first) for a friend of his, or Robert Stinson. Michael and Robert were, by the way, among the many photographers who shot our wedding in 2004.

Regardless of the combination of photographers, the way we shoot weddings is essentially the same way I shoot everything else: photojournalistically. Not only is my strength in photojournalism, I feel that it represents the events and emotions in play at weddings. Other photographers might not agree, and certainly there are other styles, many more formal, for shooting weddings. But when I am at these events, in my head I am “covering” the wedding.

In this image of Abby's from last night's beautiful ceremony in Wintersmith Park, you can see me in the background; shooting from two very different perspectives in one of the strengths Abby and I bring to event photography.
In this image of Abby’s from last night’s beautiful ceremony in Wintersmith Park, you can see me in the background; shooting from two very different perspectives in one of the strengths Abby and I bring to event photography.

Abby works the same way, and like when we hike and shoot together in the wild, we fill in each other’s gaps nicely. The fact that we are roaming around shooting in this style also keeps us out of the trap of being micromanaged by some major player at the wedding, often the mother of the bride, who feels she knows more about photographing her daughter’s wedding than anyone else possibly could. This character, by the way, is a leading reason why many talented photographers don’t like to shoot weddings.

Abby and I had a great time shooting our friends wedding last night. Though we were not the official, paid photographer, I feel that the images we made will stand as some of the best from the evening.

I made this image when working with Michael Zeiler at a traditional Jewish wedding in Oklahoma City; surely this will evoke more vivid memories for everyone than an image of this man posing for the camera.
I made this image when working with Michael Zeiler at a traditional Jewish wedding in Oklahoma City; surely this will evoke more vivid memories for everyone than an image of this man posing for the camera.

Why Fine Art Photography?

Matthew White, a talented news and sports photographer from Houston, and I just spent some of the Labor Day weekend shooting, both cameras and firearms. He is quite skilled with both. One thing we discussed, and not for the first time, is why I am interested in fine art photography. He is not, yet I sense in him a great curiosity about why we who shoot fine art images are interested in it and why we like it.

Animated and energetic, Matt talks about his recent photographic adventures Saturday night.
Animated and energetic, Matt talks about his recent photographic adventures Saturday night.

My answer is, ultimately, I don’t know.

I will say that there is something inside every artist that drives us to explore our craft. I know that’s true for Matthew too, but in a different direction. He shoots a lot of technically challenging subjects, and honing his skills at that is driven by the desire, like all of us who truly believe in our crafts, toward perfection.

Maybe inside the fine art photographer is a desire to shoot an ever-widening cadre of subjects and the way we render those subjects. It’s an exciting moment to see something we’ve seen a hundred times and then see it for the first time, in a way that we can make it into a compelling image. I experienced that this morning as I was making breakfast from the lovely home-grown hen’s eggs Abby’s co-worker sends home for me. I have eaten dozens of these eggs, and while I photographed them on several occasions, it hadn’t occurred to me until this morning as I cracked the first one how beautiful and complex the shells looked after I poured the contents into a mixing bowl. I literally ran into the other room and grabbed a camera with my 100mm macro lens on it, while my onions were sautéing, to shoot these shells. I set them on the windowsill and the light was just right.

In the middle of our conversation Friday night, Matt told me that he and Michelle passed several handsome old barns on their drive here from Houston, but that he just “didn’t get” why anyone would stop to photograph them. I smiled to myself when he said that because earlier in the week I had done exactly that, though with disappointing results (the sky was too bright and wasn’t yielding to my efforts to get some tone in it, so I put it on my “go back” list.)

In the end, the pursuit of any endeavor is, of course, a very personal one, particularly if we are emotionally invested in that endeavor. For me as the years have passed, I have tried to expand my photographic vision and the way I communicate that to my audience, and it has borne results both tangible and intangible.

The fine lines of the cracks in these broken egg shells form a visual puzzle a bit like a map, something that was new in my photographic pantheon.
The fine lines of the cracks in these broken egg shells form a visual puzzle a bit like a map, something that was new in my photographic pantheon.

Mastering the Art of Mastery

Because the photographer discussed in this entry seems to have disappeared from the webscape, I have removed his name and web address from this entry.

I may look like a master fine arts photographer, but really I'm just a guy with a camera. Only history and the adjudication of my peers can make me a master.
I may look like a master fine arts photographer, but really I’m just a guy with a camera. Only history and the adjudication of my peers can make me a master.

I am not normally critical of other photographers. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, I am fairly sensitive to criticism of my own work, and find that it upsets me when I think something of mine is of valuable artistic merit and is openly slammed, particularly if I didn’t ask for it. Secondly, I am neither a professional art critic nor a professional photography critic, so I lack the credentials to give critiques.

But sometimes some work needs to be criticized. I was thinking about this today because a fellow photographer is in the process of hiring additional photographers for the expanding business of event photography, and he is getting all kinds of applicants, many of whom are laughably unqualified; their images are mediocre and they seem to have little knowledge of the tools and demands of real professional photography.

So with that in mind, I remembered the web site of a photographer who I think is not only not particularly talented, but is also among the most arrogant and pretentious I have seen.

Let me be clear: I do not refer to myself as “master” anything, since I believe a claim of being a master is fraught with peril, particularly the peril of being a master of not being a master.

My example: (Name of Photographer). The home page of his web site claims, “(Name of Photographer) one of the leading master fine arts photographers of our time. (Name of Photographer) is known for his compelling works of the American West…” That’s quite a claim. I suppose if he is making a living through such claims, maybe he has earned the right to say he is a master. However, his work is, to me, uninspired, derivative, and redundant, and his editing in Photoshop is amateurish and immature. If you feel differently, by all means comment.

I don’t know. Maybe (Name of Photographer)’s claims are really just a form of marketing. “Wow, I bought a picture in Santa Fe from a Master Photographer!”

In looking over the shoulder of my photographer friend who is hiring, and talking with him about it, I guess what we decided we really want is less hubris and self-promotion, and more, “Here is my work. Let it speak for itself.”

I don't take pictures like this so I can call myself a fine arts photographer; I take them because I love doing it and I love sharing it.
I don’t take pictures like this so I can call myself a fine arts photographer; I take them because I love doing it and I love sharing it.

Formal vs Pose vs Cheese vs Candid

When photographing people, there are about four different kinds of images an average photographer is likely to attempt. The easiest is the “cheese” picture, since it only requires a cue word such as “cheese” or “smile” or “party pic!”, which is met with obedient posing from the subject. Since most people are trained practically from birth to suspend all activity and grin like apes at a camera when given these cue words, the result is not only easy and predictable, it’s boring and unoriginal. As a rule, you will find very few images like this in my portfolio, although in the newspaper business, I sometimes have no choice but to make images like this due to expectations from readers.

I made this image two Monday nights ago at the Pontotoc Technology Center; it falls mostly into the "pose" category of people pictures, with elements of "cheese" and "candid" thrown in.
I made this image two Monday nights ago at the Pontotoc Technology Center; it falls mostly into the "pose" category of people pictures, with elements of "cheese" and "candid" thrown in.

Another class of people pictures that fill out a very small percentage of my portfolio is the “formal” portrait. This is because I find carefully lit, classically posed studio images of people nearly as boring as party pics. To me, it’s like a photocopy or a legal document. It describes to the viewer how the subject looked at a certain point in history, but fails to express to us anything about their character or life.

There are many more “pose” type photos in my portfolio because I find this type of image shares more about the subject with the reader than the previous two. In the news business, we sometimes call this type of picture an “environmental portrait” because we take pains to place the subject into some kind of relevant setting. We might pose a man who repairs bicycles in the middle of his shop with dozens of bikes, or we might photograph a welder with his torch and mask. It gives the viewer a sense of context with which to begin to understand who the person being photographed might be. 95% of my favorite images of my wife and me fall into this category.

Lastly is the people picture most commonly seen in my portfolio, the “candid.” This kind of picture is capable of conveying an enormous amount of useful information to the viewer, from the setting and character of those being photographed to the emotions at play in the moment. These are achieved by the photographer when he/she remains as invisible as possible, so that the action of the moment goes on before his camera as naturally as possible. This is, of course, the most difficult type of image to make of people because these moments are complex and fleeting, and the presence of the photographer and his/her camera has the potential to interfere with the moment. Still, this type of image can be seen as something of a goal to which to aspire, since in the longest term, very few people will be moved by the formal portrait or the deer-in-the-headlights cheese photo (except possibly those few very close to the subject), but dozens, or hundreds, or occasionally thousands or millions of people could be moved by a candid photo.

Although they were aware they were being photographed, this group of photographers at the vo-tech two weeks ago were relaxed and having fun taking pictures, and were thus ripe for this candid moment.
Although they were aware they were being photographed, this group of photographers at the vo-tech two weeks ago were relaxed and having fun taking pictures, and were thus ripe for this candid moment.

Into the Fire

The first part of our short, intense summer photography session, the “Nuts and Bolts” section, is coming to a close. For four days now I have been up at the front of the classroom, giving my students the tools they need, mostly about how their cameras work, to proceed to the next phase, “Elementary Image Making.” To that end, we spent the last half of today’s class in the studio, talking just a little about light, how to see it, how to command it, and how it makes images. Everyone had fun, and I hope it represented a turning point from lecture to action. I know I am looking forward to the next phase, and I hope my students are too.

Erin Sanders photographs Cameron Gillespie on a seamless paper background in the studio today. Since we were only testing the waters of the studio, we scrounged around for some elementary props, like the tattered cashmere sweater Cameron is wearing, which was about four sizes too small. His lack of inhibition and willingness to improvise was a good sign of things to come.
Erin Sanders photographs Cameron Gillespie on a seamless paper background in the studio today. Since we were only testing the waters of the studio, we scrounged around for some elementary props, like the tattered cashmere sweater Cameron is wearing, which was about four sizes too small. His lack of inhibition and willingness to improvise was a good sign of things to come.

Their Game and My Game

Nate Billings of The Daily Oklahoman.
Nate Billings of The Daily Oklahoman.

When coaches give interviews, whether to the local media like us or to the television networks before the Super Bowl, they sometimes talk about staying in “their game.” They are essentially telling us that their playing strategies have been effective so far, and they don’t want the other team to dictate to them a new tactic.

As a professional photographer in relative isolation, I have developed my own “game,” one that I think has been very successful over the years. Sometimes, though, when I encounter other photographers, usually in big news situations or at sports playoff games, I have to be careful also not to let them and their styles draw me into their game. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I know my “game,” yet when I see other photographers, it can be tempting to shoot something the way they are shooting it. Just like teams and coaches who talk about playing their game their way, I have to shoot my game my way.

Sarah Phipps of The Daily Oklahoman.
Sarah Phipps of The Daily Oklahoman.

It’s not that i think I am better than other shooters, or that I disagree with the way they shoot. It’s simply that I know what I want to shoot, how I want to shoot it, for what products I am shooting, and what kinds of images I will need at the end of the day. One significant example of this is that I have a very different set goals for shooting sports playoff and championship games than when I am shooting regular season games. At some recent baseball games I ran into some of my friends from the Daily Oklahoman, the biggest newspaper in the state. As we worked the games, it became apparent right away that we had very different objectives. For one thing, since it was the first time they had seen these teams play, they were shooting tons of action shots, whereas I already had dozens of action shots of pretty much all the players, and what I really needed more than anything else was the emotional result of the game: celebration, dejection, elation, camaraderie. The other photographers needed it too, but not in as great a quantity as I did. It was likely they would publish one or two images from each game, whereas my newspaper might be able to use a dozen or more as a picture page, particularly if our team won the championship.

My friends from the Oklahoman all had big lenses, 300mm or 400mm, which is a good choice for tight action, but I didn’t even bring mine, since I knew what I needed. I stayed in my game and got what I wanted and needed to shoot, and I’m sure my friends from the Oklahoman did too.

Unable to hold back his emotions, this Roff Tigers baseball player who goes by the nickname "Turtle" waves to the crowd of Tigers' fans at Dolese Youth Park in Oklahoma City May 7, 2011, after Roff won the class B state baseball championship game.
Unable to hold back his emotions, this Roff Tigers baseball player who goes by the nickname “Turtle” waves to the crowd of Tigers’ fans at Dolese Youth Park in Oklahoma City May 7, 2011, after Roff won the class B state baseball championship game.

 

You Can’t Always Reshoot

Alternate title: Shoot First, Ask Questions Later

This entry is about the value of having your camera with you, and not being afraid to use it.

Abby's image of a U. S. flag painted on a boulder at Veteran's Park in Coalgate, Oklahoma, August 2003.
Abby's image of a U. S. flag painted on a boulder at Veteran's Park in Coalgate, Oklahoma, August 2003.

Much of the time we get busy or lazy, and skip photo opportunities because we are tired, in a hurry, or unwilling to make the effort. As I have iterated in talking about The Zone, I believe we should always make time to make pictures. It’s easy to say that we will come back another day when we feel more like taking pictures, but sometimes that day doesn’t come, and sometimes the place or thing might not be there when we return.

Or how about this: when is the last time you said to someone, “Remember that picture we didn’t take?” So be sure you always have a camera, that its battery is charged, that is has a card in it and a lens on it, and that you are ready to make pictures when pictures are there in front of you.

This is the same boulder that Abby photographed in 2003, as it appeared yesterday. Even if it were repainted tomorrow, we could never duplicate Abby's image.
This is the same boulder that Abby photographed in 2003, as it appeared yesterday. Even if it were repainted tomorrow, we could never duplicate Abby's image.

 

Snowstorms and Sunstars

A beautiful snow scene in Dorothy's orchard just west of our house, made with my old Minolta DiMage 7i. This camera has an excellent lens with a seven-blade aperture.
A beautiful snow scene in Dorothy’s orchard just west of our house, made with my old Minolta DiMage 7i. This camera has an excellent lens with a seven-blade aperture.

With a bountiful snowfall in Oklahoma again this winter, I have had more opportunity to photograph beautiful snowfields and snow shapes here in our own pasture, as well as making news images for our newspaper.

Other people have taken advantage of the situation, though with less satisfying results. There have been whole photo albums on Facebook, loaded with blueish-grey blobs that are supposed to be their kids building a snowman or the impressive drift in front of their garage. My photographer friend Wil C. Fry asked me if it might be time to talk about why the “Auto” setting on your camera gives disappointing snow pictures, and I think he’s right.

So here is the deal: snow is white. I know that seems obvious, but it’s not obvious to your camera. When your camera sees a snow scene, it sees a very bright area and adjusts accordingly. If snow makes up the majority of the image, it will look grey. If the white balance is set to automatic, most of the cameras will make the image a little too blue. It’s a mess, and it doesn’t express the beauty of snow.

Exposure compensation: your best friend in the snow.
Exposure compensation: your best friend in the snow.

It’s time to take control of your camera. (Actually, it’s always time for that, but it’s still not happening, so do it, people.) Move the exposure dial off of that green AUTO setting and move it to P (for Program). Next find your exposure compensation control. On DSLRs it will be a button with a plus and a minus, like this: +/-. On your point and shoot it could, quite honestly, be anywhere, but there may be a button on the back or an item in the menu. Camera makers are constantly reinventing the wheel, and they keep moving controls, sometimes just to make the cameras look more interesting to buyers.

I know that amateur and prosumer cameras have a “beach and snow” scene mode, but even these efforts by manufacturers fall short sometimes, often because the mode just isn’t aggressive enough. You need to crank up that exposure compensation, to +1.3 or higher. Then shoot a little and look. Does the snow look nice and white, but still like snow? If it’s still grey and lifeless, crank it up, to +2.0 or more, and look again. On the other hand, if the snow is one big shapeless white area with no details in it at all, back off a little. Try +0.7 or so. Photographing snow requires some fairly delicate finesse. Once you get your exposure fine tuned, your snow images will be much more satisfying, since snow is an exceptionally beautiful phenomenon.

The aperture blades of a 50mm lens.
The aperture blades of a 50mm lens.

One element I use in many of my outdoor images, and in many of my snow images, is the sun. Much of the time a somewhat lifeless image can be improved by adding the sun, which in my view can help the viewer understand character of the light. In winter scenes with snow, the sun shining in part of the frame can make a dreary or dull image appear more optimistic, more inviting, more beautiful.

Typically when including the sun in images made with a wide angle lens, the sun will have lines radiating from it, known as sunstars. This star-like appearance can really work to your advantage, giving the impression of brightness while still preserving the exposure values elsewhere in the scene. The number of lines radiating from the sunstars is governed by the number of aperture blades in your lens. If your lens has an even number of aperture blades, your sunstar will have the same number of lines; for example, a six-bladed aperture produces six-lined sunstars. If your lens has an odd number of aperture blades, it will produce a number of lines equal to twice the number of aperture blades; for example, if your lens has seven blades, it will produce 14 lines in the sunstar. Straight aperture blades tend to produce sharper sunstars, which rounded blades make less-distinct sunstars.

Adding the sun to an images, particularly with beautiful sunstars around it, is a great way to bring the reader into your snow scene.

Our bare Rose-of-Sharon bushes lining our driveway, with the sun shining through. This image was made with my 10-17mm fisheye, which has six aperture blades.
The bare Rose-of-Sharon bushes lining our driveway, with the sun shining through. This image was made with my 10-17mm fisheye, which has six aperture blades.

What Are You Really Photographing?

A group photo of some softball players.
A group photo of some softball players.

My job as a newspaper and magazine photographer is to record and express the lives and times of my community. When I am working in the field, I get a lot of requests, and one I get all the time is for group photos.

The group photo is, in some ways, the refuge of the uncreative and unimaginative, since it is, after all, the easiest photograph to make of an event. People are trained like sheep to lock their knees and grin like zombies, and they are trained like that from the time they can walk.

But what does the group photo really show? Simply, a group photo is a photograph of people posing for a photograph. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it is absolutely true. Group photos don’t convey to the viewer anything useful about the situation.

In the news business, we call the opposite of a group photo a “feature” photo, meaning an image that shows what is actually going on. Ideally, we photographers stay in the background and let the action of what’s going on happen without becoming a part of it. Sometimes we get noticed and become part of what’s going on, which does interfere with the candid nature of the event, but we are not invisible or camouflaged, so we are bound to get noticed. Worst of all, of course, is when the action of a spontaneous moment gets ground to a halt by a photographer who deliberately says to the subjects, “Look at the camera!” or “Smile for a picture.” Those pictures don’t give the viewer a picture of the moment.

Yet this phenomenon is worse than ever before, exacerbated by people with cameras (and by that I mean everyone) who are NOT people with talent or training in capturing the moment. If they don’t stop the moment for their own camera, they often insist on doing it on my behalf, at which point is an awkward moment when I really have no choice but to snap the lame, derivative, completely predicable and emotionless group photo.

In the photo at the top  left of this entry, we see a team that just won a trophy. District, regional, conference, whatever. It doesn’t matter, since the district championship group photo looks exactly the same as the national championship group photo. In the photo below, you can easily see that the same softball team has just won the game of their lives.

Moments earlier, those same softball players won a state championship game, as illustrated by this image.
Moments earlier, those same softball players won a state championship game, as illustrated by this image.

The Essence of Action

Latta vs Byng softball today; a longstanding rivalry, these two teams are never lacking conflict.
Latta vs Byng softball today; a longstanding rivalry, these two teams are never lacking conflict.

In sports photography, it’s one thing to talk about shutter speeds, ISO settings and focal lengths, and entirely another to discuss the real heart of sports, what we call the moment of conflict. Sports is mostly competition between humans. Much of the time the best way to visualized it is to capture this moment of conflict, when human meets human. It can be quite intense.

To capture it requires several things, most of which are between the photographer’s ears. One of the best is an at least cursory understanding of the sport you are working. Another would be a little bit of planning based on that knowledge, such as anticipating where the action will be happening the most, and where you need to be to see and photograph it. Timing, as in when to expect that the conflict will peak, is critical as well.

A camera with a fast frame rate can be something of a distraction. It can mess with your sense of timing, and if you lean on it too hard, you end up with boring sequences that seemed entertaining in the camera, but just don’t quite tell the story. It can also make it difficult to make sure that your autofocus, if you are using it, is doing what you want it to do.

I also like to have the ball in my sports photos. I think it adds an element of storytelling that helps draw the reader in without having to do much explaining about that is happening.

I shoot a lot of sports, and my community tells me they like my work. I try not to bore them, and every time I can find a moment of human conflict to show them, I feel I’ve done my job well.

An Ada Lady Cougar softball third baseman leaps over a sliding McLoud Redskins base runner; either of these elements alone is only modestly interesting, but together they bring the viewer into the moment of conflict.
An Ada Lady Cougar softball third baseman leaps over a sliding McLoud Redskins base runner; either of these elements alone is only modestly interesting, but together they bring the viewer into the moment of conflict.

Summer’s Over

A Byng Pirates infielder collides with a Byng outfielder during a matchup against the Ada Lady Cougars in their annual Back to School Classic softball tournament co-hosted by Byng and Konawa. This image was made with my 80-200mm f/2.8 AF-S Nikkor on one of my D2Hs.
A Byng Lady Pirates infielder collides with a Byng outfielder during a matchup against the Ada Lady Cougars in the annual Back to School Classic softball tournament co-hosted by Byng and Konawa. This image was made with my 80-200mm f/2.8 AF-S Nikkor on one of my D2Hs.

You would think the first week or two of August would be part of summer, but for most of the schools around here, the new year is here. This means, among other things, that I am working sports, often in the blazing heat of the afternoon sun, shooting early softball and baseball tournaments and football media day events. As long as I remember to grab a Gatorade (blue is my favorite), I don’t get too worn down by the 102ºF weather.

I’m already happy with the product I am getting.

As far as football goes, late August and early September are the choice months, since there is some daylight remaining at the start of the 7:30 pm games, and I don’t have to rely on the usually very poor stadium lights at the small schools around our area. Our sports editor usually sends me to a small-school game early Friday night, then home to ECU’s Norris Field for the Ada High Cougars as my nightcap, when the schedule allows. When Ada is away, I often will go to two small schools that are near each other.

By the first of October, baseball and softball will be at playoffs, as will I.

Summer is over.

My Summer Job

An image from Saturday's Peach Festival in Stratford, Oklahoma; it was a welcome assignment.
An image from Saturday's Peach Festival in Stratford, Oklahoma; it was a welcome assignment.

My job as chief photographer  for our small-town newspaper involves a lot of “hurry up and wait” situations much of the time. Now, though, summer time, things are different. School is out, so sports assignments are far between. People are out of town on vacation, so there are fewer local structured activities. It’s Oklahoma hot outside, so most of the population is hunkered down in their asphalt igloos, awaiting September.

My photo assignments are fewer as well. I shoot the occasional baseball summer camp and the odd ribbon cutting, plus any spot news that comes up, like fires or crashes. And I can catch up on housekeeping chores like burning CDs and tidying up in the newsroom (those who know me know that my office is always tidy.)

While I am not assigned to go shoot stuff, we still have a daily newspaper to fill and sell, and it always looks nicer and sells better with decent photos in it. That leaves me to go out and find images. In college we called those images “wild art.” At another paper where I worked, we called it “enterprise art.” Here at my newspaper I just say, “I’m going feature hunting.” As many in my line of work know, in the summer it pays to go where the people will be cooling off, and starting this year that place is our new splash park.

It’s possible to go there too often, so I space it out, but when I do go, it’s a gold mine of fun, interesting images that put local faces on the front page and make everybody feel good about summer.

In three weeks, the fall season will begin with baseball and football, and school will be back in session in a month, but in the mean time, you’ll see me out at the shaved ice stand or the front yard with a sprinkler, making the pictures of summer.

Splash park image from today, made with my 180mm at f/4; this lens is super sharp and has great bokeh.
Splash park image from today, made with my 180mm at f/4; this lens is super sharp and has great bokeh. I gave my editor a different image than this one because the little girl is looking straight at me, disturbing the "observer" point of view.

The Golden Moment

Garden of Eden, Arches National Park, 2002; note pleasant but predictable mid-after light
Garden of Eden, Arches National Park, 2002; note pleasant but predictable mid-afternoon light

Photographers who shoot outdoors a lot try to take advantage of what has become known as the “Golden Hour” or “Golden Moment.” In reality, this period of time during the first or last light of day can vary depending on what you are shooting and how you want to use the light. Essentially, this moment is when the sun is low in the sky, and providing desirable illumination, whether on human faces, or the landscape all around. It differs quite dramatically from the harsh glare of midday sun, and also from the soft light of cloudy days.

Light from the Golden Moment is generally warmer, meaning that it is rich in reds and yellows that convey warmth. An additional element of the Golden Moment is that the sky itself is often beautifully lit by the setting sun, though this often happens shortly after the Golden Moment on your subjects subsides.

I look at first and last light every day, and shoot using it when I can. The only thing a photographer can control about this light is where he is when he expects the light to be right.

Garden of Eden, Arches National Park, 2004, just before sunset; note dramtically warmer tones and a more inviting character of the image
Garden of Eden, Arches National Park, 2004, just before sunset; note dramtically warmer tones and a more inviting character of the image