I like street photography that hints at the stories that are hidden inside of everyone. I took this photography in Brussels this past August, in an historic part of town called Central Place. It is an amazing old square with a lot of great historic architecture, but the people who filled it gave it its vibe, and its stories. We only had one night there, but I am longing to go back.
Again this week I’m not going too far back in time. This image is from 2005, on my trip to York, England. It was a cold, rainy day, but it was great for bringing out textures, bathed in a soft silvery light.
People used to say “the camera never lies.” Nonsense. The world is 3-D, cameras for the most part are 2-D. The world (for humans at least) is in colour, and photographs are often in black and white. I would go so far as to say that what makes a photograph special is how it differs from reality, and that the difference directly informs what the photographer is trying to say in an image.
The image below is unrealistic. It is black and white, and deliberately underexposed to bring out the white bicycle and roses, which where in fact a temporary monument to cyclists killed on Toronto streets earlier this year. (The monument has since been removed.) For the subject matter, the non-realism I added to the image for me captures a tragic reality, and that’s as real as it gets.
This week’s time warp doesn’t go back as my other time warps to date. The image below is not even analog film, but a digital image created in late summer, 2004 using my old Canon Digital Rebel. The picture is a portrait of my niece, sitting on the deck of my sister’s cottage.
In Canada, summer is a temporary, uncertain season; we know that the inevitable shadow of winter is lurking beneath the horizon. But for a moment, whether the moment that is summer or the seeming moment that is childhood, time can stand still, allowing us to contemplate the peace, contentment and joy of that fleeting time.
In the six years that have passed, we have known plenty of winter in the relentless passing of time; childhood has been left behind, loved ones have passed away, and summer has often seemed distant. At least a photograph allows us to perceive a visual echo of a perfect, eternal moment.
I am just getting over the flu which waylaid me last week, and in addition to missing work I had to cancel one scheduled photo shoot, plus any random photography. To try to ease the jonesing, I went into the vault to give a second look at images worth working on, and ended up with today’s image.
An old photography trick for making flowing water look more like flowing water is to slow the shutter speed down so the water blurs and retains a sense of movement. Of course, the expectation is that one is a) using a tripod and b) on solid ground when trying to create this shot. In my case, neither applied as this image was made on the PAB 2010 boat cruise on the Ottawa river this past June.
Even with the Vibration Reduction enabled on my Nikon D90, it took shot after shot (at 1/3 second, handheld) to get what I was looking for.
What really made the image for me though, was when I converted it to Black and White with Apple Aperture the other day during my flu-driven incarceration; using a red filter setting with higher structure dialed in, the modified image provided an intensity that was not there for me in the color version.
It is ironic that digital technology both made the image feasible in the first place, and enabled me to make it look analog.
I made this image of the Thames, London, while standing on the Millennium bridge about 2 weeks ago.
Exposure was a 1/4 second, handheld. While I love old film cameras, without the VR technology on my D90, there is no way I could have created this image in a film camera, without a tripod,
My Third Eye 