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Take a look at these if you want to feel humble.

Meh. Some great shots in there, sure. But they certainly aren't all taken by the person who collected and put them into that slideshow.

Some of those shots are are the results of pure luck, more than anything else. Some of them may be the results of cropping to improve composition. Some may be the results of having ridiculously expensive equipment. Some of them are the result of being able to travel to a locale where the opportunity to take such pictures exists.

Consequently, while I certainly enjoy all of those photos, none of them make me feel humbled in my own efforts -- every now and then, I have a stroke of luck, can crop to improve composition, or am able to travel to somewhere that allows me to get an out-of-the-ordinary shot. I can even rent expensive equipment!

I'm curious to see the photos you submitted...

Cheers,

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Some of those shots are are the results of pure luck, more than anything else. Some of them may be the results of cropping to improve composition. Some may be the results of having ridiculously expensive equipment. Some of them are the result of being able to travel to a locale where the opportunity to take such pictures exists.

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Some may be the results of having ridiculously expensive equipment.

Yeah. And Rembrandt no doubt had really good paint brushes.

There's a great deal more to it than the kind of equipment used, most important being the ability to see something extraordinary in the mundane and then have the vision and technique to extract it.

I guarantee that you could give Ansel Adams a Kodak Instamatic (well, you could if he hadn't died 23 years ago) and turn him loose for a day and he would bring back better pictures than you or I could get in a week even using Dan Wallach's dream SLR.

tanstaafl.

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Some may be the results of having ridiculously expensive equipment.

Yeah. And Rembrandt no doubt had really good paint brushes.

There's a great deal more to it than the kind of equipment used, most important being the ability to see something extraordinary in the mundane and then have the vision and technique to extract it.

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Wow, what a wonderful portfolio! I'd say the photos are very likely all by the same photographer, as they seem to share a unified stylistic touch.

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I guarantee that you could give Ansel Adams a Kodak Instamatic (well, you could if he hadn't died 23 years ago) and turn him loose for a day and he would bring back better pictures than you or I could get in a week even using Dan Wallach's dream SLR.

Thinking about this some more, I'm not convinced. Ansel Adams does have an incredible eye for composition and light -- there is no disputing that. But Ansel Adams was also a master of manipulating his prints in the darkroom (he wrote a book on it). Seeing his prints is not the same as seeing his original photograph. Consequently, we're comparing a bit of apples and oranges, here.

Many of our shots may not be that great on an initial pass, but I'd be willing to bet that there would be others which could be substantially improved via cropping or darkroom-type adjustments.

Where that digital SLR would give us an advantage over Ansel Adams, is in the ability to shoot reams of photographs. That gives two things -- one, a choice in which photos we can actually use, and two, a faster process for honing our skills (provided you take the time to actually study your photographs).

(Note that I'm not attempting to suggest I can be as great as Ansel Adams, of course.)

On an interesting side note, I share my birthday with him.

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I'm curious to see the photos you submitted...

tanstaafl sent me the photos to rescale and post. Here they are, with his descriptions...



I'd like to claim that this was a carefully staged photo, where I waited for the proper lighting and waded out into the water chest deep to get the boat positioned just right, then gave long consideration to just the right aperture to get my depth of field, and carefully selected the ISO to come up with an appropriate shutter speed. In actuality, it was a spur of the moment snapshot on the public dock in Chapala, Mexico over Christmas vacation in 2006. The vivid colors of the boat against the murky green water caught my eye, I had the camera in hand so I took the picture with the camera set to full auto mode. Sometimes you get lucky.



This photograph was taken in Ajijic, Mexico over Christmas vacation in 2006. The B&B where we were staying had a beautiful enclosed garden with fish pond, and this dragonfly would swoop out over the pond, capture some unsuspecting flying insect, then return to his perch awaiting the next one. Each time he came back, he would allow me to get a little closer and work my way into position to backlight his wings. This shot was taken with the front of the lens no more than six inches away from him, aperture probably about f4.0, shutter speed would have been about 1/250 with an ISO of 200.



In contrast to the "Boat" picture, this one was not serendipity at work. The picture was taken from a scenic overlook on Queen Ann hill in Seattle in Mid-July of 2005, after sunset but before full darkness. I had no tripod, so I balanced the camera on a rock wall with pebbles placed under the lens to aim it properly. I waited until the stars were just beginning to come out, then experimented with exposures. I got it on my third try, with a 10 second exposure at f5.6 using the self-timer feature to prevent camera shake.

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I didn't see a single image that made me think "wow" with regards to the talent of the person behind the camera.

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just average "snapshots" - nothing any random person could or would not shoot in the course of a year

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1) Eagle in full stoop

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2) Dragonfly in flight in focus

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3) Grasshopper in flight

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4) Burning match showing heat-generated air vortices

Definitely some studio talent here. One of the few I mentioned that involved some technical talent. Once you know how to work the technique in the studio you'll still need to take a lot of shots to get "the one" - and of course picking "the one" is a big part of the talent here.

I preferred your images to the majority in that slideshow. And remember I said that I considered "60%" of the images "snapshots" - your quote is a bit out of context and also out of order. I have one critique you could have done, or might be able to still do, something about and one you really couldn't. The boat image has definite pop and I love the color combinations, but the composition doesn't do anything for me mainly because the boat is pretty much centered in the frame. I would have much preferred to see the boat diagonally. You can make some interesting compositions with crops of that image though. In the last image it would be nice if the building with the flat wall wasn't in the bottom right. about the only thing that can be done here would be to duplicate some trees in that area replacing the building.

I haven't been doing any creative photography in years, but I hope to scan my collection of negatives and get back into "photography" when I pick up a new camera (I don't own one at all right now and either borrow one from my brother or use my fiancée's little P&S).

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4) Burning match showing heat-generated air vortices

Definitely some studio talent here. One of the few I mentioned that involved some technical talent. Once you know how to work the technique in the studio you'll still need to take a lot of shots to get "the one" - and of course picking "the one" is a big part of the talent here.

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Damn, you guys are tough. I for one thought there were some really cools shots in there.

They're nearly all very cool, and I haven't yet seen anything in the same league posted here by the (other ) armchair photographers here!

If it's so easy to accomplish, let's see some more!

Cheers!

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Damn, you guys are tough. I for one thought there were some really cools shots in there.

They're nearly all very cool, and I haven't yet seen anything in the same league posted here by the (other ) armchair photographers here!

If it's so easy to accomplish, let's see some more!

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Thinking about this some more, I'm not convinced. Ansel Adams does have an incredible eye for composition and light -- there is no disputing that. But Ansel Adams was also a master of manipulating his prints in the darkroom (he wrote a book on it). Seeing his prints is not the same as seeing his original photograph. Consequently, we're comparing a bit of apples and oranges, here.

I think you're making a distinction that Adams himself would not have made. Adams was not "manipulating" during the printing process any more than he was throughout the entire image-making process.

Adams also wrote a book about exposure control, in which he gives extremely detailed instruction for how to use his Zone System, which, among other things, involves deliberately over- or under-developing the film to expand or compress the contrast range. Adams is thinking about adjustments to film developing *and* printing while he is composing the photograph. It is all one long processes to him. It doesn't make any sense to chop it up half way through and call part of it the "original photograph".

The point is, his print *IS* the "original photograph". Adams did not see printing as separate from the photographic process any more than he did his fetish-level exposure control. In fact, collectors consider prints made by other people from Adams' negatives not to be original Adams photographs. Adams himself has written that he considers printing to be the most important part of the photographic process.

The "darkroom-type adjustments" are extremely difficult to do well, and need to be seen as part of the art form. To say that our own shots could be improved by them, thereby diminishing their importance, is to hide the points that 1. it is very difficult to do well, and 2. we don't do it.

I think this false dichotomy arises from thinking that a photograph should be, above all else, an accurate representation of the subject. I know I used to believe this. Adams' books and my own photography mentor totally destroyed this (unspoken) belief I had. The point is to make a physical representation (the *print*) of one's artistic vision. The subject itself is only one input into this process. Adams himself comments in his books how different the final image looks from the original subject; the difference is deliberate and part of the creative process.

I think an important point is that great artists tend to be able to see what they want in their mind, and have the technical mastery to make that vision a reality. The rest of us, well, we take pictures and then try to make them look as good as possible by "manipulation". Its a very different thing, and a very important distinction, IMHO.

You probably also know that Adams shot very, very few negatives, especially in his early work where negatives were glass and very bulky and heavy. In some ways, I think the ability to take more images has *hurt* photography more than it has helped, because few photographers go through the meticulous planning of an image that was necessary in Adams' day. If you haven't read The Negative, check it out to see what I mean.

I heard an interview of a National Geographic photographer years ago on NPR. He said he was pretty embarrassed that he typically shot "over 2500 exposures" to get 1 or 2 that would make it into the magazine. So, I agree with what you're saying in general: we shouldn't compare our own efforts to the 1 in 2500 photos by pros that we actually see. Compare your very best photo ever taken, and it might do pretty well -- especially with some "manipulation".

Edit: When I finished this, a great quote from my favorite book, Robert Persig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" popped into my head:

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Steel can be any shape you want if you are skilled enough, and any shape but the one you want if you are not.

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The tree with the white leaves.

Unless I'm mistaken that was taken with an IR filter.

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The tree with the white leaves.

Unless I'm mistaken that was taken with an IR filter.

IR film, I think. I had the same thought.

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One of my cow-orkers just ruined my life. Well, sort of. Made me want to put all my camera gear on eBay for $50 Buy It Now and maybe pick up an old Kodak Instamatic to do my laughable "photography".

To think that I had the arrogance to submit three of my best (i.e., least amateurish) pictures to a photo exhibition last week...

Take a look at these if you want to feel humble.

tanstaafl.