Adventures thru the Lens - Sharing Ideas through Images

Getting The Details Through Cropping

Photography is not only cropping, cleaning and auto balancing your image to make that great shot.  However, I understand that in commercial, portrait, and creative photography, cropping, resetting, and altering the images is the norm.  Who wants to look at an advertisement for beauty cream with the face all blotchy and full of pimples? Have you ever seen a real live person that looks a perfect as they do in the magazine?

The secret for taking beautiful images lies in your aspiration, passion and admiration of the subject, if it be landscape, people, buildings or food.  For some reason, when you are attracted to the subject it shows in your images and they reflect your passion. Using techniques such as composition, angles, and light can help you to create a wonderful image that can only be tools to help enhance your images.  Using light can draw your focus onto your subject; the angle use can change the representation of your subject from short to tall for example.  Perspective is important while deciding on what angle to use, what light is best to set up your shot.  Rule of thumb, take your time and never be in a hurry before taking a shot.  Imagine in your mind that instead of using your digital camera that allows you to trash the images you do not like, you are using film.  That precious film that costs so much to develop each roll and each shot depends on your angles, perspective, and lighting.  This way, you can learn to be careful and think before snapping and shooting your image.

Perspective

Don’t just walk up to something that you want to take a picture of and snap a shot!  Don’t only look at the subject from eye level!  Walk around your subject, if you can, or take a one -meter step to your left, to your right, up and down while looking through your viewer.  Do you see anything that stands out to you?  Which position reflects what you want to show in your image?  Take a series of shots from different angles.  I saw a new stature in front of the Pitti Palace in Florence, Italy and walked around it. Like This!

 

    
 
You can see the difference with the various perspectives, just by walking around the statue and taking my time to look at what I am seeing.! Which one do you like best?

 

Susan Robens – Adventures Thru The Lens Florence Photographer, Guide, and Muse

Shooting Rain or Shine!

Rome was founded over 2,700 years ago, so it’s got a lot of history.  I encourage people to get away from the run of the mill, “standard” photos of monuments and look for the interesting angle, capturing Rome’s history as part of its present day fabric: looking out for the small details that many would overlook.

I want the people who come on the tours to take a little time think about their photos.  Try to let the photo tell a story, it doesn’t have to be War and Peace, or Charles Dickens, but a slice of an emotion that you felt which made you want to take the picture in the first place.  Most of all take time over composition. What are the elements that make you want to take it?

 And how can you bring them all together in a harmonious way so it all clicks into place?

And I underline how important it is to make a decision when composing, should the photo be horizontal or vertical, and to study the relationship and positioning of the various elements to the edge of the frame.  Rather than shooting casually, look around you, just a few centimetres right or left, backwards or forwards, up or down, can make a lot of difference.

One one July  day my client John and I not only photographed Coliseum and the Pantheon and other famous landmarks, we also photographed the violin maker; the antiques restorers workshop; the colourful market in Campo de Fiori; the Jewish Ghetto (a unique neighbourhood that feels like you have been invited into some one’s living room) two small but beautiful churches, one lavishly decorated, the other one with an interesting surprise in store. We also photographed inside the world’s oldest public library and we met a Roman artist whose studio door is itself a painting, and went inside to photograph. 

The day began with one of Rome's famous downpours; I was afraid John wouldn't show up, but he did - with his wife and son.   Photographing Rome (or any city) in the rain is a photographer's delight as there are many interesting (and sometimes funny) incidents with tourists running for cover.  Rain also provides wonderful relflections on the cobblestones.  As you can see, the rain didn't deter John from "telling his story" in photos.

I like to show my clients the Rome that I find most vibrant – the out of the way streets and alleys which are full of history and still full of life.

-Steve Bisgrove (right) with John H. -  Adventures Thru The Lens Photographer and Guide in Rome, Italy

 

Travels with Tony

“It’s not the horse, it’s the rider!”

What if I told you that the best camera on the market today is readily available and that it had every bell and whistle you can imagine, complete with easy-to-use controls and menus and a variety of creative shooting modes?  What would you say if I told you it was available right now and that you can get it for nothing - zero, zip - it's free?  Wouldn't you want one?

Well it's true, the camera is available and it has a name: your eyes!

Consumerism would have you believe that if you have the best camera your photography will improve greatly, and in short time you'll be making photos like those guys at National Geographic. There may be some truth to that, but in the long run and it is a false notion. You can make a bad photograph with a cheap camera as easily as you can make a bad photograph with an expensive camera.

 When I began shooting for National Geographic, the two most common questions I head asked were: "How did you get into National Geographic?” And "How do you guys TAKE those great photos?"

At first, my answers were somewhat flippant: "Oh, it's just raw talent" or "It's pure luck (LOL)".   But a good question deserves a good answer, so I began to think about it over time.  Certainly, natural talent can be important but there's more to it than just talent. It's a matter of how we "see the world with intention", how we use our eyes to pre-visualize the image before we pick up the camera. It's not about the camera, it's about the eyes!  

There was a gentleman who said to me "If I had all the money and time that you guys get at Geographic, I too, could make those great photos."  I dared him to prove this to me and invited him to come down National Geographic the next day to see if he was correct.  I gave him the best camera money could buy and told him he and I would go out and take as much time as we needed to make a dozen images.  Instead of taking my Nikon, I bought a Kodak cardboard throw-away camera and we went out shooting.  Afterwards I gave the film rolls to the editors upstairs without telling them anything, and asked them to choose the best 5-7 photos in the shoot.   The bet was $50 and all the beer the winner could drink in one evening! 

Two days later the editor called and said he'd chosen 7 of the best images.  Whose images do you think were chosen?  Mine of course, and I won $50 and drank good beer one evening with this man.  He asked me "How did you do that with such a cheap, nothing, camera?"  My answer was direct and simple: "It's not the horse, it's the rider!"  To put it another way, it's not the camera, it's the eye behind the camera that counts.

I coach my clients and students constantly to "put the camera down", "Don't look through the camera", "Make the image in your mind first, then the camera", and most importantly, "If you can't see it with your eyes, you'll NEVER find it in the viewfinder!"

Good photography depends more on an intricate interplay between the subject, your eyes, and your imagination than it depends on what camera you use.  The camera is the last element to enter the creative process of making a good image. The camera is jsut a tool to give expression to what you have already seen in our "mind's eye".  In a real sense, the photograph should already  be "taken" even before you push the shutter-release on the camera.

 Remember, it's not the horse, it's the rider!

 

 

My Favorite Spooky Churches in Rome

It’s hardly a secret that Rome has some great churches.

In fact, Ernest Bevan thought they had too many, and not enough hospitals, when he visited Rome in the fifties. Well maybe they have a few more hospitals now, but they certainly aren’t as photogenic as the churches.

I have my favourites which I like to pop into to fire off a few photographs.

Santa Maria Maddalena in the eponymous piazza is one of them. The only rococco church in Rome apparently, though it looks pretty baroque to me. Another is Santa Maria delle Morte, (Saint Mary of the Dead) in Via Giulia, which is on one of my Photosleuth Tours’ routes. A pretty spooky church, as the name implies.

The present baroque church was built in 1737 replacing an earlier XVl century one. It was run by a fraternity that collected the dead bodies of unknown people found in the countryside to give them a Christian burial. An essential requisite if you wanted to go to heaven!

 

The blood red cross of the Camillian Fathers, an order that cares for the sick, in the west window is projected onto the wall of one of the side altars by the afternoon sun in the church of Saint Mary Magdalene.   

Skulls and other symbols, such as hour glasses, adorn the façade and the interior, and on either side of the main door two macabre engravings remind passers by of their mortality. The one on the right depicts death sitting comfortably on a bench with an hourglass in hand patiently waiting for a sick man to die.

Death waits patiently for some poor soul to breathe his last. The inscription says “Alms for the poor dead that are found in the country.”  Almost like fallen apples!

 

Rarely open except for Saturday evening and Sunday masses, so I was surprised to find it open one day in the week and nipped inside and took these photos. Inside it’s very dark so I used an ISO rating of 1600, and still had to shoot at 1/15 of a second.

Looking up at the organ in Santa Maria Maddalena.

Although there’s a lot of gold in the ornamentation the atmosphere is pretty sombre so I converted some of the images to black and white. I just love the way the balustrades curve around forming serried layers going right up to the dome. It seems like The Phantom of the Opera could appear at any moment.

Photos copyright Steve Bisgrove - Leader of "Hidden Rome Photosleuth Tours"