This weekend is the Champions League final between Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspurs (yeah, 2 English teams).  I read an article the other day about Jurgen Klopp, Liverpool’s manager, who has managed to not win the last 6 finals he’s been in.  When asked if he thought he was unlucky and hoped number 7 would be lucky for him, his response was, if you look at it not as having lost 6 finals, but of being the best coach over the last decade to win semifinals to get to the finals, things look very different.  Well, this week I can’t figure out whether I’m lucky or unlucky.

Last weekend Ann and I had to make a trip up to Portland.  Of course, whenever we do, we try our best to get up early so we can swing by the Portland Japanese Garden during members hours for a bit of photography.  Spring is certainly in the air and not only was everything in bloom, the sun was up and out even before the gates opened!

I guess I didn’t fully cover the “Working the Subject” topic discussed in my last post.  After writing the story, I thought a bit more about the images and decided to take a bit of time to see how a couple of the images looked in black and white.  Thus, working the subject even more.  I think it was time well spent.

I’ve posted before about working an image - how one often has to struggle with different ways of photographing a subject before you’re able to get an image that really stands out.  There’s a somewhat similar but quite different aspect to our photography that comes in to play for Ann and me, and that’s working an subject.  If you’ve been reading the blog for some time, you’ll realize that we often return to the same locations and therefore the same subject - you’ll recognize the same rock or tree from our Japanese garden trips, or the same formations from our Yosemite trips.  There’s a learning process, an understanding that comes from returning to the same place and subject again and again that can’t be obtained in a single visit.  In part, that comes from photographing the same subject under a variety of conditions.  During our trip to Bandon, that idea was front and center for me.

On that first morning during our trip to Bandon it took Ann a long while to finally see a composition that really excited her.  Compositionally, it wasn’t easy and she had to really work the image - finding the right framing, what to include, what to exclude.  As it often does, it means moving forwards or, as in this case backwards, until everything is just right.  It takes time, focus, and decision making skills.  And sometimes, as you’ve finally figured out the right composition, a Jackass comes walking into your field of view! 

It’s been way too long since Ann and I have printed.  Fortunately, we didn’t have any issues such as clogged printer heads and were able to get right to printing after the printer took an unusually long period to warm up and go through its cleaning/maintenance cycle.  Ann decided to go with one of her recent Bandon images; me, I went with two - one from our recent Painted Hills trip, and an oldies composition that turned out splendidly!