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DAVID WASSERMAN

PHOTOGRAPHY

Gone fishin'. See you in early July.

6.5.17

As you have no doubt noted by now, much of my work, independent of subject matter, reads as relatively FLAT. Things are shot from an aerial perspective, planes are missing, or pop up in the "wrong" place, and a strong preference for objects in isolation, or wall to wall detail. This is not accidental by any means.

Accordingly, a couple of questions arise concerning this persistence of plane simplification, plane removal, and its relationship to genre in the work:

1- Where does this preference come from?

2- What are the visual goals of this approach?

3- How does this potentially open up the work conceptually?

The answer to the first question is pre-photographic, but also scientific. The pre-photographic part of this relates to growing up in New York and going on school trips to the museums. Somewhere in there, I started liking work that was abstract, but also graphically simplified like Matisse, Mondrian and the Abstract Expressionists. From the first time I saw the Matisse paper cuts, they just knocked me out. I also feel that way about Broadway Boogie Woogie by Mondrian.

The other issue relating to this preference for flatness, and a high level of detail, is a very strong interest in the natural sciences dating back to my earliest memories, that persists to this very moment. Scientific photography is all about classification, clarification, detail and/or specimen. This is photography masquerading as a data point. The goal here is answering a question, and clarification, not aestheticizing your subject in any way. For those who want a good visual reference, the botanical photos of Karl Blossfeldt make strong use of this approach, as do almost any microscopic slide.

Between these two early influences, long before I even picked up a camera in my late teens, the flatness was almost preordained in my photography. By the time I saw the graphically minimal work of Weston, and Man Ray's conceptual still lifes, the flatness not only defined the graphics of my work, but also became a primary tool in working symbolically and conceptually. It allowed for the removal, distortion, or modification of space, confusion concerning scale, and the removal of common items from their usual or expected function or situation.

CYCLOPS

HEAT DEATH #3

THE BOLTS

The three photos above clearly demonstrate how this graphically simplified approach can be applied across genre lines relatively easily. However, another concern here is the ability to illustrate a concept within seconds. The Cyclops photo immediately above does this, using two old rubber bands, one piece of safety glass and a pale green background. The graphic simplification really allows for the ability to produce symbols on demand, with the only limits being, having the appropriate props, and my given free association skills on a given Wednesday or Friday. This simplified system essentially allows for a sort of modularity in the work once genre and concept have been identified.

However, the issues around genre have barely been addressed yet. Both the Cyclops, and the Bolts above stay inside their expected genre structure; a still life and a detail photo. Not so for Heat Death #3 or the triptych which opens this blogpost. This gross simplification generates two interesting avenues into concept:

1- Confusion concerning scale

2- Genre language

HEAT DEATH #3

The issue of not being able to scale something is immediately apparent when photographed or dropped into nothing, but negative space. Short of having an actual ruler in an image, we have no idea of the actual dimensions of an object in such an image. Our sense of scale is just so tethered to the actual world, or having an item interact with something it is usually associated with. The triptych above strongly makes use of this approach. The three photos appear to be actual landscapes when in fact they are each about three inches across. Hence we have created a landscape that is not a landscape. The mere presence of a horizon line is enough to begin to convince the viewer they are looking at a hillside covered in snow against a stormy sky. Conversely, in Heat Death #3, we have a landscape photo depicted inside the language of macrophotography. There is no sense of depth, everything is sharp, and the usual horizon line so commonly found in landscape photos is nowhere to be seen. We are looking at a wall of trees with no sense of just how extensive this fire damage is. The image more or less poses a question rather than answering one. Merely by switching genre structure we have moved from the representational to the conceptual.

© 2016 David Wasserman PHOTOGRAPHY

5.1.2017

About two years ago, I decided it was time to completely overhaul my website. A number of clients had either retired or taken ill, and my assignments were way off. The website redesign was embedded in a broader marketing plan that has slowly been rolling out over the last eight months, and will continue into the future. Key to the marketing plan has been posting on a daily basis since late August 2016 on both Instagram and Facebook. From the outset, the primary daily visual vehicle has been Instagram, while the Facebook postings are a mix of imagery, all sorts of posts that might be of interest to my students or other faculty, and policy matters pertinent to photographers and other artists. Commonly images may get posted on Instagram that do not get posted on the other platform.

People sometimes ask me about the Instagram postings and the website, and how they are designed to interact, or why they diverge in places. The decision to post daily on Instagram was driven by the fact that we wanted to increase visits to the new website quickly by building up a digital presence. However, the visual and conceptual goals of the website and the Instagram feed, in fact, do not totally map onto each other. Accordingly, I would like to address why the visual goals diverge a bit here. The reasons underlying these decisions have to do with a number of visual, practical, business and legal areas as they relate to digital media.

Firstly, the website is commercially oriented, and the emphasis is on potential still life, product on location, and macro assignments. Accordingly, the key messages on the front end of the site are that, I prefer to work conceptually in color, in a minimalistic design style with a preference for flat lighting, under lighting or open side lighting shooting things. There are a number of personal still life and landscape projects also found on the site right now, all color, but unless you click into the Projects area you would not even be aware they even exist. I may love shooting conceptual and traditional landscape, but a quick spin through the website would not leave you with that impression.

From the outset of my career, my underpinnings have been in the areas where formalism and conceptualism overlap. On the website, both of these impulses are operating simultaneously in balance, but with the Instagram feed, I intentionally decided early on to accentuate the formalism with an occasional conceptual image. To a large degree this decision was both technologically and time driven. Well over 95% of the Instagram images are all photos taken with an I Pad or I Phone. There is no way I could be posting this much, doing real Photoshop, and also sleeping much. Accordingly, I have opted for simple graphic images in relatively soft light in the Instagram images. From the outset the goal was for people to jump directly from Instagram to my website to actually view the more refined and conceptually driven work. There are issues floating around about copyright and file size here also, but that is another blog post, some time down the road.

Instagram is the teaser here. No more, no less. While many people on Instagram key in on what content area they specialize in, my message is graphically minimal style that is very line and texture driven with flattening, or expansion of space. Occasionally a concept gets thrown in. This in part explains the breadth of content across the Instagram feed.

However, over the months we have done this, a certain drift has taken place that has really been helpful to myself, clients and my students. Instagram has become a casual sketchpad for me. At some point, my full content range, found on and off the website, have made its way into daylight, along with my great love for black and white, dating back to when I first started doing photography as a teenager. The general rule I am operating under now is that if the graphics resolve with the general graphics of the website, the content can very widely. Ironically, this approach has led to a substantial amount of landscape photos being purchased over the last few months directly off the Instagram feed. The four images opening up this blogpost give a general sense of the range of imagery that has gone up on Instagram since August.

STILL-LIFE

MACRO

CONCEPT

While the four Instagram images are all over the map except for graphic similarities, we immediately see how targeted the three website chapters are above. While all the images have similar sort of graphic strategies, the lighting varies from image to image, there is a substantial amount of Photoshop is used readily in places, and few if any of the photos are purely representational. The idea is Instagram identifies the style, and the website emphasizes the stylistic refinements, conceptualism and content areas.

4.12.2017

Last blog we primarily discussed how a wide angle lens can be used to accentuate foreground geometry and texture while stretching the general spatial sense from the foreground extending deep into the background. I noted towards the end of the blog, that the other way I commonly use wide angle lenses is to accentuate foreground texture in a disconnected fashion, where the relationship to the other planes of the image lack the traditional sense of perspective commonly associated with landscape imagery. The goal in such situations is to create a globally sharp image where each plane of the photo is independent from each other, where composition can either follow the classical rule of thirds or follow a more modernist symmetric positioning. Commonly, though not always, this may also include a substantial crop into the foreground subject. I referred to this as being similar to the way scenery is wheeled in and out of a stage set during a theatrical performance. I suspect it also may be more akin to how we actually scan our surroundings as we walk through them as civilians, and not artists.

This approach to the various planes in an image goes back almost thirty plus years, when I began to wonder how to formally integrate the highly detailed macro approach of Edward Weston in his conceptual still lifes, with the highly detailed landscapes normally associated with the American West. The initial work was done casually, and on a whim, while doing a winter hiking trip in Saguaro National Park with a friend. When I got the initial film back, the work struck me as "interesting but..." and I put it in my Failures With Intent loose leaf binder. A few years later, a designer who I was working with on a calendar asked me if I had any desert work with either a non classical approach to composition, or human elements in landscape. When I sheepishly showed her these photos, her reaction really took me by surprise. She immediately selected the FAT CACTUS for the calendar, and told me to "never classically compose another landscape". Needless to say, designers and art directors commonly see things in our work we are blind to.

Since that time, whenever I find a highly textured or patterned subject in a unique environment, this has become my primary approach for resolving the tension between primary subject detail, and placing the subject in its surroundings. This earlier work generally had the primary subject in the picture plane, with the middle ground and background clearly in focus like the Fat Cactus above.

Over the last decade or so, I also commonly work with just the picture plane detail and a background, foregoing any middle ground whatsoever. This kind of approach sets up a dialogue between the elements that comprise an environment, and the actual environment itself.

Probably my favorite example of this two planar approach is the Whiteout image at the opening of this blog post. What really sets this photo apart from others that make use of this graphic system, is the weather and its influence on tonality and detail. While I was close enough to the lichen growing on the foreground tree to get excellent detail and saturation, the background lacks any real color or smaller detail in the actual trees, even though this same lichen is growing on them. Though the distance between the foreground and background is maybe fifty or sixty feet, it is visually difficult to actually imagine the two planes are in such close proximity. Between the saturated foreground and the white/gray background a tonal duality is simultaneously overlaid on top of the reduction in overall visibility.

You can only get these kind of results by venturing out into conditions most other photographers would avoid like the plague. At some point you begin to create your own luck. This photo was never meant to identify the place where it was taken, it was meant to describe the snowstorm and how it distorts our sense of place.

3.24.2017

As I alluded to in the last blog, the next couple of blogs will be dealing with how space is modified using longer or shorter lenses. The last time, we discussed the spatial compression associated with telephoto lenses, and in this blog we will discuss how space is visually expanded by wider angle lenses. There are number of properties that wider lenses, 28mm and down, allow for, but for the moment I want to discuss spatial expansion specifically. Generally, wide angle lenses are used when one wants to expand on the angle of view when taking a photo. They are also a great help in shooting smaller interior spaces when doing architectural photography. They easily allow for that, but there is a price to pay; over enlarged foreground content, parallex issues, and size of background items looking smaller than in actuality. All three of these "problems" are manageable if they bother you, but for now I want to discuss the benefits.

These types of lenses have two visually interesting features though; very short focal lengths, and the ability to expand visual space so that middle grounds/backgrounds feel far more distant than the actual spatial realities. The reason the short focal length is so critical is that in low light situations, where you want to have no motion, you can actually shoot around f8 and still have a reasonably sharp picture. As you are losing sunlight at the end of the day or gaining it at dawn, this allows you to shoot pretty quickly. This allows for hand holding the camera if you are not really clear about composition, and a tripod runs counter to how quickly you may need to work. Needless to say, at a higher depth of field everything comes into complete focus with these types of lenses as infinity is mere feet away from the lens. This is immediately apparent in the photo of the desert roadway above which was taken northeast of Reno, Nevada.

The feature that I really like with wide angle lenses though is the ability to stretch space while simultaneously using the foreground loom. Many people use wide angle lenses to just expand their angle of view, but I strongly prefer to actually have my photos begin close to where my eyes are, rather than a hundred feet away from me. These types of lenses make what is close appear larger than it actually is, while quickly accelerating the rate at which middle ground and background details get smaller than if you used a normal or shorter telephoto lens. This really emphasizes both distance, but also the sense of three dimensions in an image. The photo above of the desert roadway demonstrates these two features simultaneously. Critical to the image though is the extremely low point of view where there is also an elevated sense of the actual roadway material composition and texture. The lens is not just exaggerating the width of the yellow line, but also making the clumps of composite in the asphalt appear larger in the foreground.

Clearly another issue operating here is the tonality, a sea of relatively neutral tones with that nasty yellow line down the middle of the photo, and a sliver of saturated blue sky miles away in the back of the photo. I take no credit for any of this whatsoever. While most of the photos I discuss in the blog are relatively recent and shot digitally, The Road was taken towards the end of Kodachrome. Though hellishly toxic, I have never ever seen a capture material that was so accurate and vibrant especially when it comes to warmer tonalities. Next blog we will expand on the sharpness and spatial features discussed here, but treat the world as if the planes of an image can be moved in and out of space like a stage set at will.

3.1.2017

In the last blog we were mostly concerned with the idea of when losing the sky may visually enhance the concept or process you want to illustrate. I want to build on those compositional and framing ideas we began to address in the photo of the wildflowers in a burn zone, and explore the importance of lens decisions. This can be especially significant when a photo is more driven by process rather than merely describing a place. Key to this discussion will be the idea of how space is managed, and when wide angle or telephoto lenses may be more appropriate for emphasizing the idea you are trying to explore. Specific to this blog, we will concentrate on telephoto lenses.

The photo above, DESCENDING THE JAWBONE RIDGE, is from a project I have been working on west of Yosemite since October 2013. The area was devastated by a massive forest fire the previous summer, and since the area was reopened to the public that autumn, I have returned to the area every few months to track the recovery from this disaster. The fire consumed the Tuolomne River canyon all the way up to Hetch Hetchy Reservoir which is where the San Francisco water supply originates. The fire was so massive the only accurate photo one could take to scientifically describe the complete burn zone would be a satellite image from outer space.

Accordingly, my goal was to imply the breadth of the disaster in the above photo by visually sampling an area smaller than the actual 34 mile width of the fire, but really emphasize the barren, naked , ghost like slopes the fire created . The actual dimensions of what are seen in the photo are approximately 40 square miles. To this end, I decided upon using a macrophotography approach to the landscape with the two planes of the image, the foreground and background, being razor sharp with the spatial relationship between these two planes compressed to further emphasize how steep, and rugged the Sierra Nevada foothills are in this area. I also wanted a closed in oppressive feeling for the image, so from the outset decided a sky would run counter to this concept.

Initially , I was working with my shorter macro lens, but while it gave me the sharpness overall I desired, the size of the scorched trees in the far ridge felt too far away and toy like, and the ruggedness of the country was left somewhat understated. My goal was for the viewer to really be visually confronted by this landscape and what had taken place there just a few short months ago.

Accordingly, I decided to switch to my 135mm telephoto lens, knowing it would make the far ridge read as physically closer to the foreground road creating a sense of a very steep foreboding canyon, but also the trees and boulders on that hillside would read as larger than with the shorter macro lens. Critical to the outcome here was also shooting the photo at f32, as telephoto lenses can quickly lose sharpness from f16 down, especially when you are shooting an 8 mile deep environment. The sense of dread could only be created here by losing the sky and having the background aggressively almost loom over the foreground. Compressing the space between the planes in the photo could only be attained by using a longer lens to make the planes feel physically closer than they actually are.

2.12.2017

In the last blog, we discussed how lighting decisions can influence conceptual impact. In this blog post, I want to continue on with the idea of the relationship between composition/framing and concept. As you may have noted as you look at my website, there are a lot of landscapes, or human elements in landscape images on the site. Many of these photos have the usual ground/horizon/sky structure usually associated with this genre, but a substantial amount of the work is horizonless, whether the image be of a large expansive area or a smaller more intimate space.

So, the question arises- When Does It Conceptually Make Sense To Lose the Sky in An Image? I am far from the first photographer to compose without horizon line, but I suspect my motivations may be different in certain ways. Commonly, I am more concerned with a specific process going on in an environment, than I am in describing how a place merely looks. Sometimes it is more affective to place the viewer inside the process than view it from the outside in.

To that end I want to discuss the photo of Wildflowers After Fire above to help us develop these ideas further. However, before we discuss that photo, I want us to take a quick look at a photo named Their First Murder by Weegee. While I rarely photograph people, I like all kinds of photography, and the conceptual strategy Weegee employed in this photo directly relates to the landscape photo above. The obvious thing in this photo is the dead person is nowhere to be seen. He is outside the frame of the photo, and the actual concept being explored in the photo is the reaction of the living to a gruesome event. What is so critical here is that murder is being discussed without the victim even being present in the photo. This photo never tells us WHO DIED?

In the landscape photo above, I had little, if any, desire to create a site specific landscape of a scorched valley in the Sierra Nevada slowly coming back to life. My goal was to illustrate how life arises from death in an almost explosive fashion. To that end, I decided to NOT answer the question of How Extensive the Flower Bloom Was?, nor How Burned Out Was the Valley?, and instead composed the image with wall to wall lupine and a few scorched branches way in the right upper corner of the photo. Much like the Weegee photo which never tells us who was murdered, our wildflower photo never answers the usual landscape questions. The photo is based upon exclusion rather than inclusion. The goal of the photo was to illustrate a specific natural process.

1.12.2017

Commonly in both my assignment and personal work, concept and the traditional sense of beauty come into conflict. The most visually engaging version of an image may completely undercut the concept you want to illustrate. In the next few blogs my goal is to develop the idea of linking creative decision to the concept you want to illustrate. The question always lurking in the shadows with conceptual situations is as follows - IS THIS THE of ? Whether we are discussing lighting, composition, aperture, point of view, propping, etc., every single one of these decisions will influence the visual impact of your image on the concept being illustrated.

Specific to this blog, the goal is to explore how lighting decisions can be linked to conceptual outcomes. In the case of the two clusters of photos in this blog the questions being posed are as follows:

IS THIS THE LIGHTING OF a Common Erosional/Chemical Process?

IS THIS THE LIGHTING OF Death/Deterioration/Desiccation?

The first photo we want to discuss is the small typology above of pitted sandstone, Tafoni, from up on the North Coast near the Russian River by Jenner, CA. While only six photos are in the cluster above, the actual size of this typology is about 100+ images. The whole cluster was photographed in February 2016 over a three day period. The conceptual goal here was to show how varied this erosional process is in visual result. Same rock, but never the same outcome! To this end, I decided to work in a very uniform system where composition, distance from subject, lens type and depth of field were held steady.

I was less clear where to take the lighting, so the first day I did two light tests the last hour of the day; direct end of day warm soft light, and shadow light facing away from the sun. Both the introduction of open shadows and warm lighting made for more affective individual images, however it subtracted from being easy to read when the images were gridded out. Accordingly, the whole project was shot in the shade, on cloudless days, the last hour and a half of the day. In this way, we had consistent lighting that easily lent itself to comparing the geometric variation from image to image.

The second photo cluster I want to discuss is the dried gingko leaf above. The goal here was to illustrate how the drying of the leaf really accentuates the almost skeletal like internal structure, but also the subtle variation in color as the leaf became desiccated. To this end, rather than lighting flat like the Tafoni images, I decided to side light so the individual ribs in the leaf stand out and cast subtle shadows. In doing so, the skeletal aspect of the leaf is emphasized. If lit in a more open way like the first photo above, the tonal shifts would be apparent, but the shift in surface texture, and actual thinning of the leaf would have been downplayed. This is easily seen in the second image above.

Needless to say, if our side lighting had been more contrasty and dramatic, we might have created a graphically more engaging image, but the tonal variations in the leaf would be somewhat disrupted and downplayed as we can see in the third gingko photo in our cluster.

12.19.2016

A big conceptual concern of mine is taking note of things we usually do not see in our daily comings and goings, even though they are staring us in the face. Sometimes my goal is merely to compare them in a census like fashion like the seismically twisted cluster of gneiss from the Mojave Desert above, but more commonly, my goal is to use found or introduced objects to illustrate a concept normally not identified with their usual function.

In using this second approach, it is usually most affective to reposition the object somewhat removed from its usual surroundings. Isolation of the object in the environment introduces an almost cartoon like sense of monumentalism more akin to sculpture than is found in most representational photos. However, the removal of surrounding elements, and the iconization of the subject is just one of a number of strategies that can be employed to build out a concept derived from common objects.

To that end, let's turn our attention to the photo of the Arrow above. Firstly, this directional sign is found in a suburb south of San Francisco along the ocean. In fact, adjacent to it on both sides are many homes built in the 1960s and 1970s. Nothing unusual about this block at all, except for the fact that when you isolate the Arrow from the street, you are left wondering, "What is that sign doing on a bluff bordering the ocean?" My goal clearly was not to discuss the suburbs.

The Arrow is from a much more extensive body of work, and while it is not the best photo in the group, it allows us to explore many of the strategies we can use to create an icon from the everyday. Besides the already discussed isolation of the subject, this photo also makes use of the size distortions/space expansion associated with using a wide angle lens, along with a very its high depth of field. There was also the decision to photograph it against the dusk sky and illuminate this backlit sign with strobe. These secondary decisions further remove the sign from actually directing traffic, and move it in a direction of discussing flow, directionality, progress, or abrupt change without warning. It is almost like we have stumbled on a forgotten icon in the night, a symbol void of any context.

12.6.2016

Anybody who claims full responsibility for each and every one of their images may be stretching the truth a little. Most photographers have stories about their "happy accidents" and then some. I have at least a dozen stories that fall into this category, but today I want to specifically concentrate on my potato chip story. The reason here is that it exists in the overlap zone between the issue of typologies we discussed in the last blog, natural phenomena, irony/symbolism, and physical properties of objects.

Yes, there is no potato chip in the photo above, but once there was. Without it, we would see nothing but unending blue seamless with one tonal value. So how did the photo above come to pass?

Well the story goes as follows- I had an assignment where we wanted to illustrate INDIVIDUALITY using ironic content, hence the potato chips. First we did a nine potato chip typology, and then individual "portraits" of each potato chip. Initially we did the typology, and the first individual shot, and then went to lunch. After returning from lunch, it was immediately obvious the oil in the potato chips was being absorbed into the seamless, and migrating outward. And it just kept migrating further outward for three days! Accordingly, twice a day for those three days I did top lit photos of the ever-expanding grease. What was initially a quarter inch was the size of a half dollar by day three.

While this top lit time sequence may have won me a prize in a high school science fair, the photos were less than evocative to say the least. Recently though, I had done some work where we backlit some agate, and the results were superb. The saturation and contrast of the stone shifted, and really helped create a compelling image.

So I decided to place the greasy seamless on my light table, thinking we now had had two differing levels of translucence, and the backlighting might give us a similar result to the agate, but with a more monochromatic outcome. The photo of those two spots of grease on paper is the image above. If the potato chips had not bled into the seamless, this photo would not exist. If I had not recently had the geology project, it probably would not have crossed my mind to backlight the paper. Funny how these things work out. I’m not taking any conscious responsibility for the outcome here. Sometimes you just get lucky!

11.20.2016

Very specifically when we designed the website, we did not put any multiple image clusters in the main chapters. This was specifically done as most commercial or editorial clients rarely go beyond an occasional diptych or triptych. Photographic services are expensive to begin with, and it is a rare budget that allows for any truly complex form of comparison.

Ironically, much of my personal work makes use of comparisons whether it be changes over time, space, scale or variation within type. I really like these types of projects because my primary conceptual interest is what is invisible to all of us, even though we walk past it twice a week. For the website, some photos were rearranged into assemblages in a single image, or the most affective photo in a cluster was selected.

The two primary personal projects I have been working on over the last few years make use of this type of strategy constantly. The Rim Fire photos that are up on the site in the PROJECTS area, are the initial photos from autumn 2013 when the public was first let back into the area. Every three months, for the last three years, I have been going back into the area to record the biological recovery, and human activities in the area. It is only by returning to the same areas and taking the same photo over time that we can see the subtle recovery of the scarred landscape. The second group, is a series of spatial transects taken in every major desert of North America, actually subdividing the landscape into a series of intimate landscapes that allow us to begin to unravel these visually chaotic environments, and make sense of them.

Over the next couple months more recent images from both of these projects will go up on the site.

Above we have the one image in the chapter sections of my site that makes use of these typological structures. The Cans at Dawn are actually part of a larger group of images where for fifteen mornings in a row, fifteen minutes prior to sunrise, the exact same photo was taken. There are in fact, fifteen individual photos with the exact same composition. For the photo above, we selected at random four of the cans, and reassembled them in a matrix in one photo using Photoshop. In these photos, the cans were used because they reflected the dawn sky so accurately. My goal was to learn how the light and tones of dawn vary as most autumn mornings in northern CA are cloudless and to the naked eye look close to the same.

Clearly as the photos show, though cloudless most mornings, no two dawns are the same. This variation only becomes apparent when simultaneous viewing occurs. These types of comparisons begin to give us a bit of a sense of how the world around us works and is organized.

11.7.2016

This week I want to continue on with our discussion of physical properties of things, and concentrate on the area where transparency and concept easily can be used to interesting outcome. As a general rule of thumb, the most common items that are transparent are glass or plastic derived, along with certain minerals such as diamonds and selenite, a form of gypsum, which actually looks similar to glass. Transparency usually comes hand in hand with high reflectivity, so serious attention must be paid to how you light your items so as not to have your light sources turn up in the middle of your primary subject. The usual solution here is to light from above, behind, or to the side of the item(s) being photographed. However, the goal in this blog entry is less about the specifics of lighting, but rather how transparent items easily lend themselves to easily illustrating concepts with the use of Photoshop.

Throughout my website, davidthewass.com, I use this approach in the still life and macro sections. Sometimes it is obvious, while other times the manipulation is more nuanced. Today, I want to look at the Migration photo above as it clearly illustrates how we can use transparency as a pathway to concept.

Before we get to how this photo was created, I would like to discuss the pre photographic thinking that underlies this photo. Generally, I like using one genre to discuss another genre, or blending two genres in my images. In this case, I had a piece of selenite around that had both a serrated and iron stained edge. It reminded me of a mountain ridge for a long time, but I just could not find the right sky for quite awhile. Then two winters ago, on an incredibly gray day, I stumbled upon a sky north of Sacramento just choked with darker birds, crows and starlings. It is that overcast sky, and the piece of clear gypsum that comprise migration.

Specific to Migration, the selenite "mountain" was shot on a piece of backlit white lucite with an extensive white area above the stone. Then we removed that white area above the make believe horizon, and dropped in the overcast sky filled with birds. Any birds that were below the horizon line were removed, to complete the image. Although the selenite is totally transparent, I wanted the photo to read as if we were looking at an actual mountain range. Critical to the concept was the removal of any birds that fell below the horizon line.

As I previously mentioned in my last posting, I always like to check out the physical properties of almost everything I am shooting, unless I am in a mad dash. I am always hoping my subject matter has the light passage qualities of a snakeskin or piece of agate. Especially in controlled lighting situations, a translucent object expands our lighting options vastly, and allows for a rethinking of how something actually looks.

However, translucency is not an on/off switch, and from item to item, or even within a given subject, the degree of translucency can vary greatly. As an object drifts closer and closer to transparency, the lighting options narrow as we begin to begin to get concerned about reflections or specular lights turning up from our light sources. Another thing to consider is if we merely want to backlight your subject, or if we want to both backlight and front light it simultaneously. Usually in such circumstances, my preference is for using a white balanced light table as my primary light source, and any front or side lighting is functioning a fill light.

To that end, let's discuss the photo above of Nori. In this photo, my primary goal was to visually rethink the dried seaweed used in making sushi. The last thing I wanted to create here was another food photo. To that end, the subject was laid out on my light table in a simplified graphic in total isolation and simply lit from below. The initial visual outcome was problematic, as substantial blocks of the dried seaweed were close to opaque and some areas were near black. Accordingly, I set up a small soft box and used it as a fill light, to shift the black areas into the dark green. In this way, it was possible to expand the green values across both pieces of Nori, leaving us with an image that feels far closer to late 20th century conceptual painting than editorial food photography.

10.17.2016

10.5.2016

Over the two previous blog posts, my primary concern has been on basic design and composition. While those two areas are of real importance, the issue always lurking within any image is emotional response. Something can be beautifully photographed, and still leave us feeling cold and disengaged.

Too that end, the next few blogs will deal with differing creative options that can elevate emotional impact. These options will include the physical properties of subject matter, creative decisions related to those physical properties, and introducing a concept into your work. When offered the option, I usually work conceptually.

The thing I really want to concentrate on in the short term is how to create visual surprise based upon the lighting options as they relate to the physical properties of our subject matter. While much of the world that surrounds us is opaque, a whole lot of things out there are either transparent or translucent. While opaque and transparent are immediately obvious, translucent is not so apparent.

When is the last time you looked at a sheet of paper or a tulip petal lit from behind, or for that matter, a page in the dictionary? This is the same mindset that blinds people to the possibility of using your cell phone or tablet as a soft, cool light source during a shoot. Always try to consider what else is possible with your tools and subject matter besides its' usual condition, form or function.

This leads me to the detail photo of the Coca Cola can above. While most opaque items can just be lit at will, reflective items really demonstrate how light really reflects off a mirrored surface. The usual way to light such items is for the subject to "see white", but in a case like this, which is so planar, that lighting would have played down the chaotic geometries in the crushed can. We would lose our Cubism! Accordingly, I used a slightly harsher lighting set up and then selectively toned it down in Photoshop. This allowed me to really be able to show the variation in color of the can, but also add very faint secondary colors in places by using pale tinted pieces of paper as fill.

The goal here was to take an American icon, and present it in a way that we rarely think about it to demonstrate the concept of PRESSURE. Critical to the concept was having the cubist like surface of the can read on an almost instantaneous level.

9.20.2016

In my last blog post, I used an acutely simplified image to clarify how I usually compose. Needless to say, the world is generally more visually complicated than three lines converging, especially when the basic shapes contain differing tones, patterns, lines and textures. When color is added to the mix, the potential for further chaos becomes even more elevated.

So the question arises, does composition get modified by any these factors? My answer is far from definitive; kind of/sort of/it depends. Generally my answer would be to stay with the approach outlined in Blog #1, but in two cases, you might want to consider adjusting your composition to some degree.

The first case, is the situation where the internal geometries inside the basic shapes are very active, and begin to conflict or overwhelm the shape, or the visual flow of your primary subject. If this is the case, you might use the general flow of the interior geometry as the basis of your composition. The rule of thirds is still in effect, but a minor shift left or right or up or down may give the photo more of a sense of visual balance. The photo above of rotting flowers demonstrates this by slightly reducing flower size and showing more of the green stems of the flowers.

The second case, is a little more problematic to adjust for, and in a later blog I will develop this idea further, but I want to at least note it for right now. Saturated warmer tones; reds, oranges and yellows, can really influence/distort perception of actual size, especially in the presence of white, darker gray or black backgrounds.

For now the issue is the world is visually complex, and we need to always keep that in mind when we are taking photos.

9.6.2016

Hi, firstly I would like to welcome you to my blog. I will be writing here a couple of times a month mostly discussing design, concept and creative strategy as they relate to photography. On occasion, I will also be discussing business practices, and the stories behind some of my photos. Independent of if I am working conceptually, or merely trying to make something look visually interesting, the first thing I do is figure out my composition. Generally my primary subject is placed off center, unless I have decided to present my subject as if it is in a scientific or engineering text, then it might be centered instead.

The photo above, of three converging walls in an attic, illustrates my strong concern for line, and the desire for each triangle to have its own unique geometry. This photo was selected because the simplicity of the the shapes allows for easily seeing the compositional decisions here. If the triangles had polka dots in them, or chaotic interior lines running in all directions, the primary driver of my compositional decisions would still be the outer geometry of my primary subject(s). My goal is always to work with the most simplified composition my subject matter will allow. Any questions or comments please feel free to contact me any time. Humorous stories are always appreciated. Thanks for stopping by. David

Gone fishin'. See you in early September.

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