You Never Know What You're Going to Get #2

This post is a little different than most of the others, it combines Ann’s photographs and mine (we’re thinking of another blog post that should be very fun - something to do when I’m home in a few weeks).  It builds on the post from a few weeks ago that you very often don’t really know what you’re going to get with photography.  Sometimes you see something you never think can be captured on film, other things come out even more alive than you thought it would, and sometimes you miss the potential in an image that others can see.This post is about that.

In the last post I mentioned that first tree that stopped us in the Japanese Garden.  It led to the first two photographs in that post and it leads to the first two photographs in this post. 

When I saw that tree, I knew it was something special, but a million things ran through my head ranging from whether the light was right to get anything interesting to how do I do it justice with the fixed focal length lens I had - a moderate wide angle lens, but not substantially so.  The first photograph in the last post was intended to explore the complex structures created by its branches.  And while my first photograph of the tree was about that too, it was also about how that structure is subtly hidden by the delicate leaves that obscured, yet hinted about, that structure.  

 What I hadn’t realized when making the image, was how vibrant and varied the colors of the leaves were.  Light and delicate, the subtle coloring was easily missed by the eye, yet in the photograph they leaped out to make the image as much about light and color as it is about the form and structure of the tree.

Ann had her own image of the tree that, while somewhat of the same concept that I had for my first image of the last post, is world’s better than my effort.  I’ve spent a lot of time studying the two images, trying to understand why Ann’s is more powerful than mine and, in the end, even manipulating mine (lightening the tree trunks with the brush tool) to improve it significantly - but manipulations have limits and mine lacks a quality that hers has.

It struck me while I was working on the photograph of Ann making this picture (the second photo from the last blog) why hers was better.  If you look at the picture of Ann and imagine she’s photographing the tree from 7:00 on a clock face, I took my images from around 10:00.  The fact is, Ann positioned herself to capture the faint reflection of light on the underside of the tree in a way that I only captured it on portions of some branches from my positioning.  That reflected light gives her image a glow that mine, no matter how manipulated, will never have.  That delicate light brings her image alive, and she captured it.  

I stand by the proposition that capturing something in camera yields the best results and Ann’s photograph captures a quality of color and light that mine simply does not.  Whether she knew it or not, she saw that light and I didn’t.  As much as Ann will deny it, she has taught me with this image, which is good.  The best teachers also learn from their students!

As we worked our way through the garden, one part of it became fairly dark - not only were the trees surrounding the garden tall enough to block most of the sunlight (we were by the edge of the garden), that portion of the garden wound its way through over story trees.  I came across an image that was stunning in its beauty, striking in its light and color, and I was absolutely convinced would never come out in camera.  Still, digital is cheap (I’ve already paid for the camera and pressing the shutter doesn’t cost me anything), you never know, and I might learn something from the image.  

I’m glad I bothered because, well, words don’t do it justice . . .

The last image is another one of Ann’s and it has a story.  Recall that we ended our Japanese Garden stay at the koi pond.  Later when we were at home, I flipped through Ann’s images to see what she had, comment on ones that I thought were worth developing further and . . . for the hundredth time, told her not to be so ruthless in editing her images, especially now that she’s so early in her development.  I keep telling her that while she has a good eye for working on strong images, there are things she’s probably capturing that she doesn’t “see” that are worth keeping.  The following image was one of them.

It was identified for deletion.  Technically, it was a mess.  An obvious error - too long of a shutter speed (so it was blurred) and way underexposed.  As a recreation of the reality of the situation it was a tosser.  As art - whether you want to think of the Impressionists or of a currently popular style of art photography - it had potential.  Potential I saw, and she didn’t.  So she gave me permission to work on her raw file, to show her what I saw.  In a matter of seconds, this is what was there.

In my opinion - the best of the koi pond shots that day.  For either of us.

You never know what you’re going to get.