Differences Between Ann and Dan

It must have looked hilarious, Ann and me on the Beach that morning in Bandon.  Well, that is if someone had been watching from a distance.  Fortunately, it was about 6:30 in the morning, and in winter, that means it was still a half-hour before sunrise.  So it was still dark.  I doubt anyone was watching.  We knew we wanted to photograph one of Bandon’s well known rock formations and had tromped directly from the parking area the quarter mile or so to the spires.  We had stayed on the upland side of the shore, not wanting to make footprints in the sand, smooth from the receding tide.  As we approached the rocks, we both stopped to give a good look around, and then the comedy began.  

I moved first, stepping forward and further away from the shoreline a few feet, walking southward.  Ann quickly followed, moving closer to shore.  I paused in my walking to see if I was in the right spot, and Ann moved right in front of me.  I continued walking with Ann about 5 feet in front of me.  We both took about 10 steps then, at the exact same moment, we both stopped and reversed course back in the direction we came from.  It was a perfectly choreographed transition.  I stepped back about 3 steps, Ann about 7.  It must have looked like we were dancing.  Or part of a Marx Brothers skit.  It dawned on me at the time that it must have looked hilarious from a distance.

The purpose of our movements was to find a photograph, and I think our dance goes to show the similarities in our photographic predispositions.  

I quickly set up my image, framing as best I could in the dark (knowing that a long exposure should give me enough light to make an image) as did Ann.  I immediately had no problem knowing where to place the left hand edge of the frame.  And I focused on including the entire foreground rock in the frame as well.  I was less satisfied with what was behind it, but I couldn’t figure out a way around that dilemma.

I made my first few exposures to work out exposure (way under exposed initially) and composition.  The light was less than ideal, so I decided to wait a bit given the eastern skies seemed to be clear at this point and hopefully some interesting color would come to the image.

Knowing I had what I could get for at least the next few minutes, I took a few steps over to see how Ann was doing.  

To be honest, I was a bit disheartened (ok, to be really honest, I was a bit jealous!).  Ann’s few extra steps had made all the difference in the world.  Her image had a flow and openness to it that mine hadn’t.  I paused a bit to think why, and then told her that she should stay there until the light got right - she had a stunning composition that was worth waiting for. 

There are two things that make her composition work much better than mine.  First, she successfully resolved one main aspect of my image I had a problem with - the right hand edge.  My composition awkwardly cuts through a rock in a way that detracts from the balance of the whole.  Ann’s doesn’t.  Second, by moving a bit north of my position, Ann was able to place the foreground rocks on the left to extended to and just beyond the spire on the left, while not protruding past the age of the frame.  This exaggerates the curve that establishes a visual flow, created by the water pattern and rocks, that sweeps from the large foreground rock on the right, to the left and back inwards towards the spires.   

I knew that her photograph was the one to keep, so I gave up on my particular image and grabbed my tripod to scout out a new image while Ann waited for the light to change.  It didn’t take me long to find one.    

Now, I might have had a tinge of jealousy in me, but I’m not dumb enough to not learn from my student.  I told myself to simplify my image and, after swapping lenses for a longer focal length and then reconfiguring my camera to photograph in a square format, I concentrated on the rocks near the more shapely of the spires.  And I paid attention to the right hand edge to ensure it was clean!

So while our humorous sand dance didn’t immediately yield a successful image for me, I was able to learn from Ann and to subsequently make one that wasn’t too bad.

But this post isn’t really about our silly movements while on the beach.  Those photographs, and the ones below have led me to thinking once again about the differences in the photographs that Ann and I make, even when we’re in close proximity to one another and basically pointing our cameras at the same thing.  What I find so interesting is that, with respect to our processes - the way we work - and the environments we like to photograph, we’re nearly identical.  I think that’s what makes Ann such a good photography partner for me.  Usually, when Ann says, “That looks like an interesting place to photograph . . . .”, it is.  And when I stop to make a photograph because something grabs my attention, by the time I’m done Ann has usually pulled out her camera to photograph something she finds interesting.  However, the images we produce, even when they are very, very similar, are often very, very different - as you can tell from the above.  It’s probably impossible to determine why (though maybe not), but it is very interesting to study how they are different.  

So let’s look at another set of images that were made nearly an hour apart that same morning (Ann’s was made at 7:44, mine at 8:36).  Understand that by this point, we were working several hundred feet apart, each of us intent on our own image-making.  It wasn’t until we were home and Ann was looking at her image several days later that I realized that we’d essentially made the same, but very different, photograph(s).  

The subject is a group of rocks that is usually under water at anything other than low tide.  The low tide revealed not only a pathway between the rocks, where water continued to drain from the occasional wave that would make it this far, but had also exposed some rocks that barely jut out from the sand below.

Both Ann and I were initially attracted by the water pattern that curved its way down to the ocean, the low, jutting rocks and the exposed cut through the large rock.  Ann was also fascinated by the colors of the scene, with the foreground still in shadow and thus blue from reflected light, and the warmer rocks catching the first real rays of sunshine as it topped the clouds that now lined the eastern horizon.  This play of shadow blues and sunlit yellows is something David Ward talks about (thanks Len!) and is something Ann and I have come to enjoy experimenting with when the conditions are right.

The colors, reflections and light in Ann’s image are simply stunning.

Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly), Ann and I also used the same focal-length lens on the photograph (35mm on a crop sensor, 50mm on a 35mm format).  However, Ann decided to use a vertical crop and I stuck with the square I’ve still been working with as a default.  

As with the first image discussed above, Ann found a way to have a strong visual composition that leads you into and through the image.  Granted in this case it’s such a clear visual line and much less subtle than many of Ann’s other images, but it is no less effective.  If there is any way I can describe Ann’s image making, it’s that she’s constantly looking for, and finding, images that bring the viewer into the frame as if they can and should walk into the environment.  Ann’s images have a visual flow to them that mine lack, though not for trying.

As you can see below, there was no opportunity for me to have that blue-yellow play in the color of the light - the sun was well up in the sky, even though filtered somewhat by low hanging clouds (I still had to wait for the clouds to thin a bit to get even this much shadowing).  But if you look at the two images, our framing of the left and bottom edges are almost identical.  Ann was positioned to the right of where I was, as well as a bit forward and a bit lower (she is shorter than me . . .) and had the vertical framing, which increased that sense of flow and allowed her to get more sky than I did.  

While Ann’s photograph is about flow and the play of the color of the light, mine is more about softer light, forms, shadows and textures and the quest to find a balance of those elements that invites exploration of the image.

Thinking about these images these past few days, particularly the latter two, has led me to thinking about the differences between two of the photographers I mentioned in my studies last year - Charlie Waite and Joe Cornish.  They are two master photographers whose work is similar, yet consistently different in ways I think helps me to understand how Ann’s work differs from mine.

Joe Cornish’s work often has that visual flow into the image that Ann consistently has.  Joe is a master of visual flow and rarely are his images so in-your-face obvious about it.  For him, it’s a compositional tool, not a photographic “tip to make your images better!”  Granted, Joe generally photographs with a view camera where he can tilt his lens to maximize his depth of field, but he resists exaggerations of all types (distortion of elements in the image, sharpening, saturation, filtration) so all of his images appear natural.

Charlie Waite’s images are profoundly different.  First off, he generally photographs in a square format and I suspect consistently uses longer focal lengths than Joe Cornish does (longer lenses tend to visually “flatten” a scene, wider lenses tend to make an image look more expansive), but it isn’t just that.  His images appear to be more of a balancing of elements within the frame as well as an intense attention to the colors of those elements.  He also often carries a ladder with him to get some height on his images to separate foreground elements, much like my climbing on top of beast or any near-by rocks whenever possible (or just extending my tripod as high as possible despite the fact I have to try and look up at my LCD screen to compose an image).  

Both of course are very, very attentive to the quality of the light in their images.  

As is often the case, Ann led me to thinking about why their photographs are consistently different.  The other day she asked me about Charlie Waite’s background.  I responded the theater.  Ann already knew that Joe has a fine art background.  Though it took me a couple of days, with Ann’s question festering in the back of my brain (I never said I was the brightest bulb on the block), it dawned on me that Charlie Waite’s images are composed like stage sets and Joe Cornish’s are composed like paintings.  You can check for yourself to see if I’m right or full of it (or if you just want to look at some lovely images).

Here is a link Charlie Waite’s images:  https://www.charliewaite.com/blog/view/trees-by-charlie-waite

And here is a link to some of Joe Cornish’s images:  http://www.joecornishphotographer.com/gallery-category/homeland/#scotland

I’m not quite sure where that gets me to better understanding Ann’s and my images, but hey, I doubt Ann would mind too terribly if I say her images tend towards the direction that Joe Cornish photographs!  I’ll leave it to others to decide whether I have a bit of Charlie Waite’s approach to composition (perhaps with a bit of David Ward and Brett Weston’s love of abstract details thrown into the mix), or whether I’m just nutters.