Photo Idea Index

by Jim Krause

  If you are a parent, consider this project idea: During the course of a day spent with your child, snap a series of photos that document his or her entire day — from wake-up to bedtime. The day could be one spent primarily at home, or it could contain a special event such as a hike or a visit to a fun place like a pool, park or zoo. The resulting images will provide a series of photos that detail a specific time in the child's life — pictures that might make an especially meaningful gift for the child once he or she enterss adulthood.

  The thee photos on this page were shot with a 15mm fisheye lens. With its ultra-wide view of the world, a fisheye can be used to capture playfully curvaceous impressions of your subject and her surroundings. The three images on the opposite page were shot with a Lensbaby (a lens with a flexible mount that permits photos to be selectively blurred). A Lensbaby, like a fisheye, makes an appealing choice for potentially ho-hum shots because of the intriguing visual touches it lends to a scene.

  When I'm aiming for photos that are meant to appear natural and un-staged, I make sure to communicate this goal with my subjects. I encourage them not to worry about trying to look any certain way for the photos: no forced smiles, no intentional posing, no nothing. If the model clearly knows that nothing in particular is expected from her, she'll better understand that it's okay to simply go about their daily routine while you handle the picture-taking responsibilities.

  For many photographers, it's as though an internal alarm goes off when they are framing a scene at an off-kilter angle. If this alarm sounds in your head every time you depart from the straight and level, learn to mute it — especially when other parts of your brain sense that you're onto something artistically worthwhile with your skewed point of view.

  The contemporary, high-contrast, low-saturation look of these two images was achieved in Photoshop through the addition of BLACK AND WHITE adjustment layers. The lighter look of the far image was obtained by selecting “screen” from its adjustment layer's pull-down menu. The deeper saturation of the near photo was brought about by selecting “overlay” from that adjustment layer's pull-down menu. CURVES controls were used to fine tune the final appearance of each shot.

  On this spread and the next, a sequential series of photographs document a day in a person's life. Most of the images in this book were taken with a digital SLR using one of several lenses. The photos in this series were not. These were shot with an ordinary pocket digital camera — a model portable enough to be easily carried along wherever our ongoing photoshoot took us.

  Due to the low-light conditions of the indoor scenes in this series, a high ISO setting (between 400 and 800) was selected. An elevated ISO allows for shooting with minimal light, but it also invites a certain amount of graininess (digital noise) into the photo. This series' images of brightly lit outdoor scenes contained no such digital noise. For the sake of achieving a consistent look between all the images, noise was added to the outdoor scenes using Photoshop's FILTERS > NOISE > ADD NOISE treatment.

  Not many of us can easily spare twelve hours to follow a subject as she goes about her day-long routine. If you are short on time, and interested in the idea of capturing a set of this kind of images, consider blocking out a few hours some morning, afternoon or evening and concentrating on that slice of your subject's day. (An in-depth example of this kind of abbreviated “a-day-in-the-life” photoshoot is featured in the next chapter.)

  Ideas: Shoot several a-day-in-the-life sets of images featuring local working celebs (baristas, parking attendants, grocery clerks, garbage collectors, etc.) and create a gallery show of your photos; follow a good friend for a day and create a custom-made flipbook out of your accumulated images; tail a politician, musician or athlete for a day, add short captions to your images, compile the photos and words into an image-oriented essay on your subject and submit it to a local tabloid or newspaper for publishing consideration.

  Your set of a-day-in-the-life images is bound to yield photos that are worthy of stand-alone presentation. When you spot one of these stand-out images, you might choose to simply boost its contrast, fine tune its color and call it good. Or, you might want to consider some options (after all, computers and software have made artistic exploration easier than ever). The eight outcomes seen here were achieved by applying effects from Photoshop's pull-down list of readily available adjustment layers.

  The adjustment layers used on this spread are, top row, left to right: BLACK AND WHITE (set to “green” and with a warm tint added); BLACK AND WHITE (set to “infrared”); THRESHOLD; and HUE/SATURATION (only the “hue” slider has been used here). Bottom row, left to right: CHANNEL MIXER; EXPOSURE; HUE/SATURATION (individual colors have been desaturated using the control's pull-down menu of hues); and INVERT.

  What about creating a storyboard from an afternoon spent with your subject? Here, text has been added to a series of images that follow the subject during a morning at Seattle Children's Theatre. The photos were taken before and after his appearance in a one-man stage production (cameras were not allowed into the auditorium during the performance).

  If you're going to follow a subject around his place of work, it's important to avoiding getting in his way (or in the way of his co-workers). In cases like this, I try to be as invisible as possible while remaining open to friendly conversation with whomever shows an interest in what's going on. The main thing is to be as low-maintenance as possible. That way, your subject will not feel like he has to take care of you — or keep you out of trouble — while he goes about his business.

  Since most of the photos taken during this kind of photo session are shot spontaneously (and without the opportunity for re-takes), bring a data card with enough capacity to allow you to shoot without restraint. At the end of the day, go through your abundant catch of images and keep your eyes open for photos that look good enough to be pulled aside and given special attention in Photoshop. I particularly liked the sheen of the model's hair in this photo once it was converted to black and white.

  When taking pictures of a single subject over a period of several hours, you're bound to record a large number of outtakes in addition to keepers. Before tossing your outtakes into the digital garbage can, be sure to look through them for shots that could serve other purposes. This photo — with its subject's identity obscured — for instance, has potential as an image that could accompany a magazine article or a piece of poetry or prose. (For more images of this kind, see chapter 18, Anonymity.)

  3

  Along for the Ride

  This section continues the theme introduced in the previous chapter, only on a smaller scale. What if you only have an hour or so, and want to capture the essence of what a friend or client's personal or professional life is all about? My advice: Give your subject a call, grab your camera and go for it.

  One of the best things about shooting an on-the-go set of images of a friend or client is that it leads to photos graced with a down-to-earth look of spontaneity — a believability that promotes a truthful connection between the images and those who view them.

  On the pages ahead, the camera follows one subject as she spends a couple hours navigating an urban landscape in her role as a bicycle messenger.

  The inclusion of the small street sign in this photo lends a couple of visual extras to the scene. For starters, it adds a small compositional accent to the image (cover the sign with your finger and note how the photo suddenly seems notably less interesting). Additionally, the arrow lends a subtle hint of dissent to the image as it counters the movement of the cyclist. Take advantage of compositional gifts such as these — whenever and wherever you find them — and shoot from vantage points that position them effectively within your scene.

  A PHOTO FILTER adjustment layer was added this image. The PHOTO FILTER's controls were set to “sepia.” “Soft light” was selected from the adjustment layer's pull-down menu. This treatment converted the relatively bright colors of the original image into a stark palette of restrained hues — a look that mer
ged well with the minimalist content of the image itself.

  Try framing some shots more tightly than others. How close can you get to the action without excluding details that show what your subject is up to? In the near image, a tiny hint of the subject's bicycle at the lower edge of the photo does the trick. The second photo includes no such visual hint — but the image's proximity to other photos that include the bike seems enough to convey the notion that the subject is cycling her way through town.

  A slow shutter speed was inadvertently selected for the upper photo on this page. The resulting image might have been considered a throwaway by some (since nothing in the picture is in tight focus), but the shot's conveyances of speed and movement appealed to me. I decided to keep it — along with the more technically correct photo at bottom (recorded later in the afternoon using a quicker shutter speed).

  I did a local search for interesting settings and backgrounds before I got together with the model to record this chapter's photos. I decided the locations seen in the two nearest images would offer ideal settings for short breaks during the photoshoot (breaks for the model, anyway — I used the downtime to compose portraits of her against a pair of intriguing and attractive backdrops).

  On this page, the gridded forms of a chain-link fence and a partially framed storefront (seen beneath a translucent layer of plastic sheeting) lend all kinds of interesting visual, textural and compositional notes to the scene. To capture this shot, I positioned myself across the street from this ready-to-go backdrop and waited for my subject to pedal by. To make sure I'd have plenty of images to choose from afterward, I put the camera in rapid-fire mode and held the shutter button down as she rode through the frame.

  Consider your digital options once a picture is recorded. Should you enhance the image's colors? Mute its hues? Convert the photo to black and white? Apply a reality-altering special effect? How about adjusting its values so the image presents itself through a range of mostly lighter tones (as in the case of this spread's near image)? And what about aiming for a darker presentation (opposite)? If possible, try for a look that suits the photo's content, satisfies your personal preferences and is likely to appeal to viewers.

  CURVES and LEVELS controls are not the only tools capable of generating high- and low-key renderings of a photo's original. BLACK AND WHITE adjustment layers were used to create the two versions shown here (in both cases, the adjustment layers' opacity was reduced until hints of the images' original hues showed through). “Maximum white” was selected from within the BLACK AND WHITE control panel to create the lighter of the two images. “Maximum black” was selected to generate the darker photo.

  Candid camera: On this spread, the subject has been caught in unscripted moments that convey hints of her day-to-day routine. In the near image, a panel of artfully rendered graffiti provides a lively backdrop for a cell phone conversation. Opposite, a window display snags the subject's attention as she guides her bike along a row of shop windows. Acquaint yourself well with your camera's functions so you can be quick on the draw when an impromptu photo opportunity presents itself.

  Learn to look beyond the subject. There is no understating the importance of selecting a backdrop that connects well with the actions, attire and expressions of your subject. One excellent way of developing your ability to evaluate backdrops is by examining the works of great photographers — take special note of the relationships that have been established between the people and the settings that appear in their photos.

  These two images were snapped by aiming the lens of a pocket digital camera through the viewfinder of an old Kodak Instamatic (purchased a thrift store). This is one of my favorite alternative shooting techniques. The resulting images resemble frames from an old film reel. When shooting in this way, investigate the effects that occur when the digital camera's lens is zoomed, and also the different outcomes that can be achieved by varying the distance between the digital camera and the old viewfinder.

  A flash was used to record these images in a dimly lit stairwell. The subtle transparency seen in the model's form, and the faint trails left behind by her movement, are the result of selecting an exposure time that was long enough to allow the shutter to remain open for a split second after the flash had fired. Investigate different combinations of flash and exposure settings using your SLR's manual controls.

  When photographing people, I particularly like taking pictures while having a conversation with the subject. Snapping photos of a person while she is talking or listening often leads to images graced by moments of spontaneous emotion or expression.

  A fair amount of digital noise appeared in certain areas of this window-lit scene since the cafe's interior lights were dim and the sky outside was dark and overcast. If you are forced to shoot in conditions that generate noise in only portions of an image — and you don't want to risk losing detail in the shot's unaffected regions by applying a noise-reduction treatment — consider using Photo-shop's FILTER > NOISE > ADD NOISE effect to generate a consistent level of noise throughout the image.

  End of the road: A castaway couch in a back alley provides a place of repose after a hard afternoon's work. The couch was a happen-stance find, and I was grateful that my model was willing to pose on it since its fabric was still wet from an earlier rain shower. I stood on the couch to take the near photo (hence my foot peeking into the frame). I could have digitally removed my shoe from the image but decided against doing so; I liked the way the shoe added a playful hint of another's presence to the scene.

  All the monochromatic images in this book were originally shot in color. Once shot, the images were desaturated in Photoshop using the highly versatile controls available through BLACK AND WHITE adjustment layers. Use adjustment layers whenever possible (versus applying an effect directly to an image). Adjustment layers offer the great advantage of allowing the user to freely alter or remove effects once they've been applied. Additionally, adjustment layers have pull-down menus that can be used to alter a treatment's effects.

  4

  Parts and Pieces

  People are sums. From the outside, we appear as totals that arise when things like a nose, eyes, ears and a mouth are combined to make faces (faces that are components of larger sums, known as bodies).

  Most of the photos in this book feature sums on the scale of faces, heads, torsos and entire bodies. In this chapter, the focus is significantly narrowed. Here, the camera is zoomed and photos are cropped so only the individual components of who we are appear in each frame.

  You may be surprised to discover how much information about a person — his or her age, gender, personality, mood and the activity he or she is involved in — can be revealed through photographs that feature only a tiny portion of the subject's self.

  It's interesting how the presence of a single sneaker-clad foot in this scene converts this from a photo of a bike to a photo of a person riding a bike. Interesting, too, how the presence of the shoe (and the associated belief that a person is attached) brings with it hints of human-based conveyances like fun, thrill and escape.

  What if you were to capture a series of images where the only evidence of human participation within the scenes was the presence of fingers, toes, hands or feet? The series could be shot using the body parts of one person, several friends or a few total strangers. A collection of images like these could make for an interesting Web gallery. They could also be printed using an ink-jet printer and hand-bound into few-of-a-kind coffee table books.

  The two photos on this page were shot one after the next and looked very similar in their original form. Together, they provide a good demonstration of the range in which raw images can be finalized in Photoshop. The values in the near photo were lightened with a BLACK AND WHITE adjustment layer (set to “red filter”) and selecting “screen” from the layer's pull-down menu. The second image's contrast, and the intensity of its hues, were boosted through a CURVES and a HUE/SATURATION adjustment layer.

  The first image on this pa
ge was overlaid with a PHOTO FILTER adjustment layer (set to “deep red” at 50% strength). “Hard light” was selected from the adjustment layer's pull-down menu and the BRUSH tool was used to paint small holes over the necklace's beads in this layer's mask. The near photo was also given a PHOTO FILTER adjustment layer, only this time the filter was set to “underwater” and was applied at 100% strength. “Multiply” was chosen from this adjustment layer's pull-down menu.

  A series of croppings taken from photos featured elsewhere in this book are displayed here. With the ever-higher resolutions available from modern digital cameras, it's becoming more and more possible to choose smaller and smaller regions of an image for final display. Keep this in mind when you are deciding how to best crop and present your images.

  Photos, like books, tell tales. And just as some books are longer than others, photos too, can tell their tales with different levels of visual verbosity. Try this out the next time you are preparing a photo for presentation: See how tight you can crop the image while still retaining its story and conveyances.

  A trick of the glass. The upper half of the model disappears behind the lens of a magnifying glass as she crosses a gravel road. The photo seems ripe with thematic potential and seems ready for the addition of a title, text or a few lines of poetry. A sidenote: This image was snapped while goofing around between the time the photos were taken. The moral of this sidenote: Keep filling your data card with pixels — before, between and after your planned shots.