Be a Part of Art: In Memory of Jeanne-Claude

One of the most important ways to develop as an artist, whether art is your hobby, your passion or your profession, is to look at what other artists have done. It's impossible, I think, to be successful in any artistic medium (photography included), unless you know where other artists have taken it in the past. All art has a history and a progression and it's important to immerse yourself in that history whenever you get the chance. Most works of art are created to have a more or less permanent existence and there's hardly a town or a city where you won't find at least one museum to go visit and study and be near great art. But there are also artists who believe that art is best experienced as just that--an experience--and they create artworks that are more temporary in nature.

In 2005 a project called the Gates, created by artists Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude, was put on display in Central Park in New York. It was one of the most ambitious and important art installations in history and millions of people experienced the fun and excitement of walking through endless miles of brilliant orange metal and fabric gates. I was fortunate enough to see the Gates on one of the last days of the installation and it was one of the most inspiring and enthralling art experiences of my life. It was also one of the most fun days I've ever had in New York City. Walking under the flapping bright-orange fabric flags, along with thousands of other art lovers, was a far more emotional and spiritually-exuberant experience than I had expected. Some kind of magic descended on Central Park that I think was shared by almost everyone who went to see the Gates and that magic changed the way we all thought about the park, art and one another.

It took nearly 25 years for Christo and Jeanne-Claude to plan, create and get permission for their incredibly ambitious project and it cost a fortune to produce. They believed in their art though and they had faith in the project that they had devoted so much of their lives to making a reality. And while some critics criticized and made fun of the installation, those people who visited walked around with frozen grins and excited expressions. I'm sure none of them will ever forget the experience of being there.

Sadly, Jeanne-Claude passed away in New York on November 18, 2009. In her life though, she and Christo changed the way the world looks at art and brought smiles and looks of wonder to millions of faces. Jeanne-Claude knew that art, whether "permanent" or temporary, is made to be experienced and to uplift the human spirit and that's why she spent her entire life creating it.

Whether you go to a museum to look at a paintings that are centuries old or take part in a live art happening, seeing art in person is a great way to awaken your imagination and to witness the power of creativity.

Go be a part of art and I guarantee the inspiration will show in your own photos.

Need a Challenge? Illustrate a Concept

Sometimes the best way to push yourself to be more creative is to give yourself a challenge. One way that many art teachers do that is to have you illustrate a single word or concept, or a particular emotion. The word "quiet," for example, might be illustrated nicely by a person studying in the library, but it could also be illustrated by a harbor scene at sunrise. And while you can't see the wind, you can certainly illustrate the concept of wind--leaves blowing down the street, salt spray blowing off the tops of waves, etc.

Emotions are a great source of photo ideas. Think of the range of emotions that most of us go through in a typical day: happy, sad, pensive, blue, exuberant, excited, victorious, defeated, loved, lonely, etc. If you have young kids around the house you're likely to see this spectrum of emotions on an almost hourly basis and taking pictures of those emotions and moods is a great way to add depth to your family album.

Even if you don't know your subject though, you can often try to imagine the emotions they're feeling and then accent them using the tools of composition, exposure, color palette, etc. To me the photo above perfectly illustrates the concept of the word "alone" or "lonely;" though that is just my interpretation of the scene--there's every possibility that the person in the photo isn't feeling lonely at all. In composing the shot I used a normal lens and a very open framing so that the person standing on the jetty was engulfed in a huge area of sky and sea. I also shot on a somewhat overcast day and late in the afternoon so that the palette of the scene emphasized the solitary nature of the moment.

Interestingly, as I was composing this shot, I heard the lines of John Masefield's poem "Sea "Fever" (my mother's favorite poem) running through my head: "I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky..." I'm not sure if I was thinking of the poem first or saw the potential image and that made me think of it, but either way, the word "lonely" was in my head.

What concepts does the photo conjure for you? Peacefulness? Serenity? Loneliness? Memories of summer? Wanderlust?

Challenges push you forward as an artist both visually and emotionally and finding ways to illustrate ideas and concepts is a great way to hone in on your personal vision. And if you have ambitions to sell your photos or become a professional, you'll find that most photographs are assigned, or purchased through stock sources, based on your being able to illustrate concepts rather than come back with photos of specific subjects. The photo here, for instance, could be used to illustrate a financial ad ("When it comes to investing decisions, you're on your own.") or a Hallmark card ("When you're away, the world seems empty."). Merging visuals and emotional concepts is precisely what the advertising world is all about.

Have Some Fun with Off-Beat Travel Portraits

It's fun to make travel photos more personal by including photos of the people you're traveling with in front of some of the landmarks that you're visiting together. Even if (like me) you prefer to rarely make an appearance in the photos yourself, you'll always be a part of the photos because you shot them. Taking pictures of your travel companions just standing there staring back at the camera can get old pretty fast, however, if you don't find some way to make the experience a bit more interesting for them and you.

One way to change things up a bit and get some interesting photos in the bargain is to use lenses, like ultra-wide-angle lenses, that were never really meant for portrait photography. To take this shot on the steps of Assateague Light in Virginia, for example, I used a Sigma 10-20mm ultra-wide-angle zoom (equivalent to 15 to 30mm on my Nikon D90 camera body) and a very low angle to stretch out both the doorway and my friend and make them both seem much taller than they are in reality. In order to get his very low angle, I had to literally lay down in the sand at the foot of the stairs and shoot nearly straight up. I also used the "live view" feature on the D90 that lets you compose on the LCD--a feature that I rarely use--to make composing the shot easier on my neck.

You can also get some interesting portraits by going the opposite way optically and using a very long telephoto lens to photograph someone in front of an unexpected background. You'll have to shoot from farther away, of course, but the compressed feeling that a long telephotos lens (any lens that is say, the 35mm equivalent of 300mm or longer) creates can be very eye catching. If you were to photograph someone standing on a street corner in Manhattan with a very long lens, for example, the compression would compact the spaces and press your subject into the traffic and crowds behind them. Your subjects will probably find the idea of posing a half block away more interesting too and they will no doubt feel more relaxed by not having to smile into a camera three feet away. (Just don't let them get so far away that they can escape on you.)

Whether you're shooting with a super-wide or super-long lens, take time to pause for a moment and show them the first few frames on the LCD. Once they see how off-beat the photos look they'll be more willing (hopefully) to pose a bit longer and be open to trying some of your extreme portrait ideas later in the trip.

Inspire Someone You Love, Give Them a Book!

Well, OK, since it's "Black Friday" and everyone is talking about holiday shopping , I'll join the chorus and talk about book shopping or, more importantly, book giving (and that includes giving them to yourself). Since I was a kid I've always loved getting books as gifts and since I got seriously interested in photography in my teens, I've loved getting photo books. Fortunately my father was a photographer and my mother loved art and books. My mother also knew how much a single book could change someone's life and bring them the inspiration they needed. She was very good at finding just the right book for me at the right time in my life.

When I was about 15 and going through that typical teenage angst about what my life meant and what I might do for a living someday, my mother gave me Edward Steichen's autobiography A Life in Photography. It literally changed my life. I practically slept with that book (in fact, I probably did fall alseep with it in my bed) and found it enormously comforting and inspiring to read about Steichen's career told in his own words. It was probably no small coincidence that she chose Steichen's book as the first big monograph she bought me because I'd met him as a kid (though I didn't have a clue how important he was at the time). The next year, based on Steichen writing so much about how important Alfred Stieglitz was to him, I asked for (and got) Dorothy Norman's biography of Alfred Stieglitz, An American Seer. Reading that book was such an exhilarating experience for me that I could barely sit still while I read it. Stieglitz was responsible for giving many of the great photographers their first public exposure in his famous "291" gallery and he forever changed the course of photography and art (he was also married to Georgia O'Keeffe, who has always been my favorite artist). Around that same time my mother met Ansel Adams by chance (and talked his ear off, I'm sure) in Yosemite Valley and the next year my parents gave me his amazing book The Camera. It's the best book on camera technique ever written--and it always will be.

It was in reading those books (and many others that I got as gifts) that I discovered that photography was more than a hobby, it was a passion, a way of seeing the world, a way of living--and that photography was as high a form of art as any other. My head was nearly exploding with photographic inspiration in those days and my poor parents probably realized that giving me all of those books wasn't helping their cause in getting me to take up more financially-stable career like being a lawyer or a carpenter or flipping McDonald's burgers, for that matter.

I guess the point is that books can change people's lives. Books still change my life everyday. I love the idea of these new electronic readers like Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes and Noble), but there is no thrill equal to opening the covers of a brand new book and discovering the worlds within. I will always be grateful to my parents for having a houseful of books and for turning me on to the treasures of knowledge, inspiration and adventure that they offered.

If you know someone who has an interest in photography (or any other subject, come to think of it), consider giving them something that will last them a lifetime and might change the way they look at the world (and themselves): a great book. Whether it's a monograph that shares a photographer's life work or a how-to book that helps them develop their own talents, books are an amazing bargain. I've always felt (and this isn't just because I write books for a living--because I buy a lot of books) that if you pay $25 or $50 for a book and get one great life-changing idea from it, you've just got the bargain of a lifetime. I've put a page of Amazon links to photo books on my main site and maybe they'll give you some ideas. But if you really want really want to experience the fun of giving someone a book, spend a few hours in a local bookstore and touch and explore the books yourself--and while you're buying books for other people, maybe you'll buy one for yourself. You deserve it!

Oh, wait, I almost forgot to plug my own new book Winning Digital Photo Contests! Wheww. Glad I remembered. Happy shopping.

Photoshop Tip: Create an Old Fashioned Postcard Look in Just a Few Clicks

I love the look of old travel photos and especially those old sepia postcards that you find at flea markets and yard sales. It's amazing how those images bring back the feeling of another era in time and a more adventurous vision of travel. But you don't have to visit antique sales to find those kinds of images, you can create them in Photoshop from "new" photos with only a few quick clicks. I shot the photo here a few winters ago in Florida and you can see that just adding a slight sepia tint gave it that antique postcard look.

Creating the effect only took a few minutes and here's how I did it:

• First, choose a photo that has a sort of old-fashioned look to it. In this case by selecting a scene of a dirt road and palm trees, the picture really captures the feeling of "old" Florida.
• Next, do a quick curves (or levels) adjustment just to get the exposure right, but keep the contrast somewhat flat. I didn't do any other editing to this image--it's not even cropped. In particular, I didn't sharpen the image because I wanted it to have that soft, aged look.
  
• In either the adjustments menu (Image>Adjustments) or at the bottom of the layers palette (I always choose the latter because you can turn off adjustments made as a layer) select the photo filter option. Then select a warming filter and crank up the warmth and use a high density. In this case I chose a #85 warming filter and ran the density up to 97. The higher the density number, the more filtering you get.
• Finally, I opened the hue/saturation tool (also in the layers palette) and, using the "master" setting, I desaturated the image until the setting was about -67.
  

That's it. There are probably a few dozen other ways to create a good sepia tone from a color image, but this one was really quick and easy. If you know how to use the photo filter and hue/saturation tools, you can make these adjustments in about 20 seconds. If you're new to editing, don't let the instructions make it sound complex, it's really not. Once you get used to poking around the menus a bit and learn to always use the layers palette for editing your images, you'll find adjustments like this are a breeze. If you'd like to see other Photoshop tips, or have questions about this one, just leave a comment or send me an email and I'll post more of them.

Give Your Sunsets a Great Foreground

It's easy to look at a pretty sunset or sunrise and think that nature will do all of the work for you when it comes to photographing it. With all that color and drama, what's not to like? But you can improve any sunset/sunrise by simply finding a good foreground to place in front of it. Because you want the colors and cloud patterns (or sky reflections, if you're near the water) to dominate the shot, you want your foreground subject to be simple, yet interesting. Also, because it's likely that your foreground will end up entirely in silhouette, you also want a subject that's bold enough to be reduced to lines and shapes and still add interest to the photograph.

I took this shot of the rigging in a commercial fishing boat in Galilee, Rhode Island and I really like the way the complex web of stays and ropes creates such interesting patterns. It took me a while to find the shot though--even though I had been scouting around the harbor an hour or so before sunset. I was really hoping to get a shot of a boat pulling into or out of the harbor, but all the boats were tied up for the night. After walking around the marina in a slight state of panic for what seemed like an eternity (it was probably only about 10 minutes), afraid that I might miss this great sunset and not get a good shot, I looked up into the rigging of this boat and knew it would make a great shot. I planted my tripod on the dock and fired off a few dozen shots as the sky grew more intense and then started to fade, shifting my position slightly after each few frames.

Scouting ahead of time is the real key to finding a good sunset foreground. I've always found it's better to sacrifice an hour of late-afternoon shooting to do more scouting if I think there's going to be a great sunset, because I know that the combination of an interesting foreground and a great sunset make really pretty photos. Better yet, scout earlier in the day, at midday perhaps, and just be sure you get back to your sunset location in time to catch the sky show.

Stop & Look at Scenic Overlooks

I'd be the first to admit that I've never taken a very good picture from a scenic overlook and the reason is fairly simple: while overlooks provide a good wide view of the landscape around you, they're too broad and unfocused to become worthwhile landscape photos. But that doesn't mean that I don't stop and look at the view when I come across an overlook. In fact, I go out of my way to find them on maps or to ask locals where the best scenic views are found. Whatever they lack in terms of more intimate subject matter, these wide vistas are great at giving you the lay of the land and showing you just where you are traveling.

I shot this photo on my first road trip between Phoenix and Flagstaff and just seeing this view and the winding dirt road leading off into the mountains gave me a great sense of the scale of the landscape and a beautiful panoramic view of the surrounding mountains. The shot was taken just a few steps from an interstate highway, but it's not the kind of view you get to study at 60 mph (unless you want to end up a part of the view). There were also some nice historical and natural-history markers in the pull-off parking lot and some very detailed state maps on display, so all-in-all, a great place to get better acquainted with where I was and what Arizona looked like.

You may or may not get a good photo from an overlook, but they're certainly worth visiting. In fact, anything that gets you off the interstate for a few minutes is a great thing, photographically and otherwise.