139. I ♥ Macro

In terms of cost & equipment, photography is the artistic equivalent of sailing as a hobby.  If you don't have a lot of money, or know someone who'll let you use their gear, it's hard to get off the ground.  Anyone can take a lesson or have a basic appreciation for it, but to do it well and really enjoy it, you're gonna need a lot of free time and disposable income.

I didn't know any of this when I got into it.  My parents bought me my first "real" camera when I decided to study photography in college.  It was a 35mm Pentax SLR that I had a lot of fun using and burned through lots of film with.  A couple years later I bought myself an $800 telephoto lens to go with it.  That was it for the next eight years.  As everyone switched to digital I went through two or three pocket cameras and borrowed friends' digital SLRs when I wanted to really shoot something.

Then two years ago I decided to spring for my own fancy new camera.  After an obsessive compulsive amount of research, I sprung for the Nikon D300 with a 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6 lens.  The camera's great and the lens is good for all-around shooting when I'm not trying to do anything special like shoot sports or things in the dark.  The first thing I shot with it was a dance show at my school that I had choreographed for.  Shooting the show was as much fun as working on it.

Now that I've had some time to play with the camera and use it in different situations, I'm getting a feel for lenses and other accessories that would help me get the shots I want.  For instance, a macro lens would let me shoot close-up portraits and still lifes with a nice blurry background that added to the atmosphere but didn't detract from the subject of the picture.  Like this:

I found this picture on Amazon.  Someone who has the lens I want uploaded it as an example.  See how the baby's face is in focus, but the rest of her body blurs in the background?  It makes the most important part of the photograph pop and the rest of it recede.  This is important in lots of situations when you really wanna highlight something.  But it's hard to do close-up.  The lens I have can pull it off if I'm five or more feet from my subject.  Otherwise I have to take what I get or edit the picture in Photoshop to blur the parts I want blurred.  That's not uncommon, but I have a principle objection to that kinda thing.

Unfortunately, a great macro lens is about $1,200.  Fortunately, a really good one is about $400.  I don't presently have that many dollars lying around, but at least it's a conceivable amount of money to save or earn or re-allocate from somewhere.  I definitely see this lens in my future.  It would make my food photography a lot better (not that I'll be doing it for that long), and it would just make me a more well-rounded photographer.

Granted, I've given up on doing photography for money.  So I maybe shouldn't be investing that much money in it.  But the heart wants what it wants.  And I already love it so much.

138. Photo Synthesis

In my third attempt at my newest hobby, I photographed my yummy vegan-y lunch today.  Vegetable relish and hummus on a pita.  Looking at the last pictures, I realized I had way too much stuff in the frame.  So this time I went for just the food.  I tried to pick up a pretty plate from Target, but they actually didn't have any (how is that possible?).  I think a pretty square plate would've looked nicer, but I worked with what I had.

To get some good light, I took the picture on the patio table in the backyard.  I used my dad's cutting board as a "background."  I may use some fabric or scrapbook paper to get some nice color in future pics.  I took 9 or 10 shots and settled on one to edit.  Here it is:

This composition isn't bad.  The picture is a little dark, and the veggies aren't that well balanced... there are too many cucumbers on the right side... But overall, a decent shot.  I wasn't sure what to do with the top piece of bread so I just kinda offset it.  I would've liked to get the hummus more prominently displayed in the shot, too.  You don't know it's there unless I tell you.

Anyway, I edited the shot to get my "official" attempt.  I cropped the picture to get a more flattering composition, with the food filling more of the frame.  And I upped the brightness just a teensy bit so it doesn't look like the food was in a shadow when I took the picture.  I think it came out well:

When it comes to food with multiple pieces plating is really important.  The folks on Top Chef are really good at it.  That's actually one of my favorite parts of the show.  Figuring out what size and shape your plate should be, what color the bowl should be, whether to put something in the center or off to the side, where to put utensils... all of that is up to the plater/photographer.  So I'm playing around with it.

I also found this pretty cool food photography portfolio by a guy named Michael Ray.  He gets in really close on some of his shots and composes things in ways that I probably wouldn't.  But he's a professional and I have no idea what I'm doing, so...  He has a nice picture of a basket of strawberries.  Maybe I'll throw some fruit in a bowl and see what I can come up with.

Of course it would help if I had the right equipment.  There's a macro (close-up) lens out there calling my name.  As soon as I figure out how to pull $400 out of thin air...

137. Fotography

I am currently having a fling with food photography.  We're not really cut out for each other, but it's a lot of fun, and who hasn't salivated over a picture of a steak or cupcake?  There's that Domino's commercial out right now about the weird things they do to food to make it look good in photographs.  I'm sure we have no idea.  On a smaller scale there's a handful of tricks of the trade of photographing food to make it look appetizing.

A lot of it is pretty basic.  Use good lighting.  Don't have too much clutter in the picture.  Get in close.  Not too much on the plate.  Have an attractive background/place setting.  It's not something I'm going to spend that much time on, but it's a kinda groovy hobby.  To be able to take a picture of a piece of chocolate cake that makes people say, "Ooooh... I want that."

I first tried my hand at it a couple months ago with a mango in the backyard.  Those pictures weren't really good at all.  Today after I had chopped up a bunch of vegetables to make this "relish" my grandma makes, I decided to try it again.  I left the scraps on the cutting board to add some color to the pictures and make them more interesting.

I think this isn't bad for a second attempt.  If I had it to do over again, I would put the relish in a more interesting bowl.  Or I could leave all the chopped vegetables loose on the cutting board and photograph them in a pile.  I don't like the way the lime came all, with the flesh all blown out and not really detailed at all.  But the pepper looks good.  And there's a lot of color in the bowl, though there's a lot of shadows, too.

I don't normally edit pictures, but I decided to play with this one.  The picture below is what I got after I took the original shot, cropped out the blank space at the top, increased the color saturation, and raised the color temperature a bit.  I suspect this is pretty standard stuff in food photography.  And I suspect they do much more than this.  

Food and fashion photography are actually two places I probably wouldn't mind a lot of editing.  One of the reasons I couldn't be a professional photographer is because I object to editing photographs.  I used to have a real beef about it.  Now I just think "to each their own" and it's not for me.  It's kinda like with film.  Some people write screenplays and hire people to play parts and make movies.  And we all enjoy those movies and the stories they tell us.  Other people prefer to point a camera out at the world and just record what happens, documentary-style.  I'm definitely a documentary photographer.  None of my favorite photographs is posed.  For me, they're the records of this or that great thing that happened, exactly as it was.

136. Into the West

#4 on the list of things I might like to do to earn a living (after writing, photography and teaching) is Painting.  I've painted once in my life.  It was required for an introductory drawing class I took in college.  Still not sure why, but whatever.  I wasn't very good at it.  But I've never stopped wanting to be.

In my head there's a collection of paintings and drawings I'd like to do someday.  Some fully developed, others only concepts or color palettes.  All completely inspiring.  Despite my early failure, I found myself in an art supply store last year spending an indefensible amount of money on paints and brushes.  They're in a bag in the basement now. 

Someday, when there's nothing waiting to be written, I plan to spend even more money on canvas, and get to work making a delirious mess in the middle of my living room.  I'll probably start with self-portraits and augmented photographs.  The ultimate would be painting the horizon over Lake Michigan.  Something about horizons is mesmerizing.

The painting in the picture is called Horizon of Hope and it's by Laura Harris.  This is the kind of painting I stand in front of and stare at for twenty minutes while I forget that there is anyone or anything else in the room.  I marvel at it and wonder how it is that someone has made light and depth and texture out of nothing.  It's incredible.  If art prices weren't incomprehensible to me, the walls of my home would be covered in paintings like this.  Couldn't you just see yourself getting lost in one?