The Inner Core Project - The Shooting with Gabriella

Gabriella is a dancer with Osnabrück Theater Dance Company. I was really lucky that during my stay in Osnabrück three members of this company were willing to work with me.

Before we met for the shooting, Gabriella and I had a preliminary meeting where we discussed the idea of the “Inner Core Project” and how Gabriella might imagine approaching this. She told me that she would like to dance and find access to her inner core in motion.

During the conversation it became obvious that she was not entirely comfortable with the idea of trying this out. I felt some resistance and maybe even the wish to withdraw from the project. But she still agreed and we made an appointment for a shooting.

The shooting took place at a photo studio that was available for rent. Regrettably the place had not a nice atmosphere and was certainly not the right location for searching for the inner core of one’s personality. It was optically quite cold and did not feel very inviting.

The shooting happened on a drab and dim late autumn day and the natural light in the room was insufficient. I had to use my LED lights that I put on stands. The combination of dim natural light and small LED lights contributed to an unpleasant cold atmosphere in the room.

And then something amazing happened. Gabriella had brought her own music that she started playing during the session. It was slow and moody piano music. I was very surprised to hear that because I had somehow expected to hear loud, intense music with strong percussive rhythm.

Gabriella started moving to the music and within a few minutes she immersed herself completely into this music and dived deeply into herself. It was perceivable that she found herself in a completely different world, her own world, I guess her inner core. Her movements became completely spontaneous, it was obviously that she was not planning them in order to express anything. They just happened and so did the expression on her face.

After the shooting Gabriella told me that she had lost herself completely in her feelings and that those were so strong that for some moments she had the notion that she had tears on her face.

The shooting lasted for an hour and a half and for both, the “model” and the photographer this was a wonderful and very deep experience.

You are wondering about the results? Well, I made a huge mistake. I decided to try out the burst mode of my camera and to follow all of Gabriella’s movements with this technique. So I shot hundreds, even thousands of pictures, sequences of movements on end. And regrettably most of my pictures show that I relied on a technical gimmick rather than immersing myself into the movements and shooting one single picture at a time. Due to the difficult light (and my lack of experience with this kind of shooting conditions) and my reliance on a technical feature most of the pictures felt empty and did in no way reflect the magic of the moment. I still have some pictures that I am sharing on my website and also on Flickr and Instagram.

This project continuously fights with technical difficulties. They are inherent in a completely experimental setup. But of course the photographer is disappointed if his pictures don’t show the beauty of the moment.

However, at least both, Gabriella and I share this beautiful experience as a memory, something that this project is able to provide again and again. I am really grateful for that. Thank you Gabriella, for allowing me to be there.

About Visual Satisfaction

There are sometimes pictures where you feel that, although they are technically not bad, they are not completely satisfying your visual needs. I am writing about an image where exactly that happened to me.

I had taken this pictures at Oreti Beach in Invercargill New Zealand. It was a picture in a series of ICM (intentional camera movement) pictures of a sunset at the sea. When using ICM in sunsets you can create pictures with quite sharp and prominent lines in the sky that blend with the light and colour of the sunset which gives overall a nice visual effect.

In this picture I happened to feel during the editing process that something was “wrong”. Although colours and light were nice and although the contrasts were good too, I had the feeling that something is missing or, as I sad before, “wrong”.

If we take a closer look we see that the upper line of light does not converge in a visually satisfying way. I tried to help that by cropping the picture in many different ways. Eventually I settled with a crop that cuts off the very abrupt end of this line in the dark sky. However I still have the feeling that my eye does not find the satisfaction of a completely pleasing composition. There is some tension left at the end of that line. You don’t lean back in your chair with this sigh of aesthetical satisfaction that you have in an overall pleasing composition.

I have posted this picture to my Flickr gallery because on the one hand I like the colours and tones and on the other hand because I find it a good example of a “not satisfying” nature shot. Particularly shooting the sky means that we need to handle what we got. When curating our pictures we should just be aware of the limitations of our work that sometimes don’t have to do anything with our photographic abilities. Nature just throws them at us. :-)

Depth and Latitude in Photography or Does it get boring after a while?

For many years I was a multi-shooter in photography. I did not focus on any particular theme, technique or project. I was trying to develop my own photographic language but I did not know where exactly I was heading.

Over the past two years this has changed and I can now define certain areas of interest. I really like shooting pictures with intentional camera movement. The blur effect is something that I find aesthetically very attractive. Consequently I have reduced my photographic endeavours and I focussed on creating pictures with this particular technique.

Content-wise I developed some topics that I am particularly attracted to. I am interested in what we may call human nature but also landscape and cityscapes that I shoot with long exposure and motion blur.

Consequently my photographic output has changed over the past two years. You see much more ‘blurry’ pictures, pictures of people and also many landscape pictures with trees in multiple shapes and forms. A certain interest leads to certain outcome and in my case it is this triangle of humans, landscapes and cityscapes in blurred pictures.

Teufelsmoor Northern Germany Picture shot with Intentional Camera Movement

As the topics were narrowing down and the technique specifies into one direction I started wondering how this impacts on the diversity of the output. In other words, does it get boring after some time when you use a certain technique again and again and narrow down your topics a lot?

This question was recently brought up by my Flickr friend Stefan Speidel who lives in Japan and who spent the last 3 months in a mountainous region of the country. So he has been shooting Japanese landscape with hills and mountains and trees in autumn again and again. If you are interested please click the link to his beautiful black and white photography on Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/rifugio_bobo/

Stefan Speidel Mt Fuji Autumn Mood

I have also another photographer on my mind who has “specialised” in one particular photographic style. Anne McGrath shoots nature themes with long exposure and intentional camera movement. She creates beautiful and poetic images of seagulls in flight but she also covers other topics like seascapes, sailing boats, pictures of swimmers. Please find her pictures in Flickr under https://www.flickr.com/photos/annemcgr
She also has a website
https://annemcgrathphotographs.com/index.html

Anne McGrath Seagulls in flight Picture shot with Intentional Camera Movement

So I was wondering if with this specialization the lack of diversity eventually leads to repetition and a boring impression. This was a worry that I had previously and that supported me in my assumption that I should keep my photography open and as diverse as possible.

Today I disagree. By using a certain technique repeatedly you gain experience that you can use to create your pictures more purposefully which increases your ability to create expression.

I think that repeating the same subject again and again eventually might lead to a boring outcome, but Anne McGrath’s pictures are a very good example for the contrary. She repeats flying seagulls very frequently but if you take a closer look at the images you realize that she finds a new side of aesthetics in each single picture. This way repetition leads to depth.

I now believe that by reducing latitude and gaining depth in our work we are able to create more meaningful work. I am still against a “reflectory” repetition of the same themes and techniques, just because previously this type of picture turned out to be successful. Art should be genuine and fresh and each piece should have a unique meaning. Going into depth can be part of the creation of meaningful art.

I thank both artists for allowing me to use their pictures in this blog.

Anne McGrath Seagulls in Flight Picture with Intentional Camera Movement

Leica Q2 - a huge disappointment (but then....)

It’s good that I didn’t write my article about the Leica Q2 right after my first experience with it. Content and verdict would have been very different from what I am writing now. And it would not have been very flattering.

I bought a new Leica Q2 three months ago. I had been salivating for this camera for years. First I wanted the original Q, then after the release of the Q2 I desired the camera even more due to all the improvements that had been implemented. The price is steep, and that was the reason why I hesitated for so many years. But eventually I could not resist.

The timing of my purchase was a little unlucky. I bought the camera right before I started my first shootings for the “Inner Core Project”. This project requires me to be extremely swift and flexible with my camera because I leave it completely up to my “models” how they move and what they do during the shooting.

My little Ricoh GR III camera fulfills all requirements for this type of photo shoot. It is light, easy to use, I can handle it with just one hand and the menus and buttons are very intuitive. It’s the perfect camera for that purpose.

I then tried out the Q2 in this shooting environment. It was a disaster. The camera was too heavy (800 g in comparison to 420 g of the GR III), it felt clumsy and I was far too slow because I didn’t know the camera and it’s functions well enough. So I used the GR III as my main camera during the shootings and only used the Q2 for some top up pictures just to try it out.

I was pretty disappointed. I bought my dream camera and I couldn’t handle it. I found that all the raving reviews had hopelessly overrated the camera.

Then I used it for some street shots. Still I wasn’t happy, exactly for the same reasons. Too heavy, too slow, too cumbersome. Yes, nice pictures and versatile files in pp but after all a huge waste of money.

And then I took the Q2 for a whole day outdoors into nature where I used it for long exposure work with intentional camera movement (ICM) to take landscape pictures. I visited the Emsland region in Northern Germany and there particularly some moors. I had a whole day, could do things at a slow pace, could expose pictures to my liking and play with the functions of the camera. And for the first time it felt as if this camera belonged into my hands. I learned how to move it intentionally according to my needs for blur effects. I changed exposure times, used the pop up menus on the screen and found that I could create a well working workflow.

And when I started processing the files some days later it was a revelation. It’s the best ICM pictures I have ever taken. The colors that I found in the RAW files are amazing. I only need to process them slightly in Lightroom and maybe give them some touch ups in Photoshop. I am a black and white photographer and in the past I found colour files difficult to handle. But that’s not the case with these Leica files. They shine and the colors pop in a beautiful way. It’s actually a joy to work with them.

ICM landscape picture shot with Leica Q2

The details in these pictures are absolutely amazing. I can create effects that I was not able to bring about with any other camera. I would call these pictures “dense”. There is so much information in them that they have an amazing expression.

So I was able to create a series that is to my full satisfaction. I love the ICM aspect, I love the colors and I was able to create a consistent series.

ICM landscape picture taken with Leica Q2

After that weekend I have changed my mind. This camera does live up to its expectations. You only need to be able to define the best use for it. And as with all tools you need to be able to handle it. Any camera is only as good as the person that uses it. I will certainly try again to use it for shooting people. Maybe with a little more experience with my new tool the results will be more satisfying.

My first disappointment has disappeared. I am keen on using the Q2 again. Next weekend I will be going to the Teufelsmoor (devil’s moore) and shoot like hell....

Photographer and "Model" Interaction - some insights from the Inner Core Project

Inner Core Project

The “Inner Core Project” is the attempt of showing the deeper inner layer of a person’s personality in photographs. I think this is a very ambitious idea and I am still not really certain if this is possible at all.

During the photoshoots of the past four weeks with five different collaborators I have made some discoveries that I would like to share with you. And maybe some of these discoveries can be transferred to “normal” portrait photography.

Connecting to the “Inner Core”

The starting point of every photo shoot is that I ask my “model”/collaborator how they think they are able to connect the best way to their inner core, to themselves, to the deepest part of their personality. And depending on their character, the professional work that they do and their temperament they have chosen different ways of of approaching their inner core.

I worked with two dancers. Marine wanted to find herself by moving her body in a spontaneous way on the ground and by dancing. Neven chose a natural environment outside where he just rested and let himself fall into the feeling of connecting to nature. Surya, who is a Yoga teacher did not (as expected by me) want to meditate to focus on her inner being but decided to dance wildly and use her body intensely to get the connection to herself. Bettina decided to use a pose where she laid down on the floor in a comfortable position on her side. She rested and tried to feel herself. And Tania just sat down on the ground and tried to look inside without doing anything specific. So everyone had a different way of connecting to their “inner core”, to themselves.

I also asked my collaborators to choose the place where they wanted to have the photo shoot. The assumption is that the more comfortable a person is with her or his environment the easier it is to connect to themselves.

Asking my “models” not to wear cloths during the photo shooting was another aspect of the project. My assumption is that cloths are another outside layer that prevent seeing deeper into a person’s inner core. So I asked if they could not wear any cloths apart from a slip. The purpose of the slip is to avoid any sexualization of the photo shoot or even more importantly not to distract viewers from the statement of the pictures by drawing their glances to the genitalia of my “models”. Three participants could agree to this request, two chose to wear underwear or a T-shirt on the upper body.

Technical Aspects

From a technical perspective I use a small and light camera, mainly my RICOH GR III that I can easily hold in one hand. I also tried using my Leica M Monochrom and a Leica Q2 which is a new camera for me. I will write a separate article about my experience with the Q2 in the near future. The two Leicas are much heavier than the GR III (approx. 800g vs. 260g for the GR III) which clearly limits their usability for this specific purpose.

Choosing long exposure times of approximately 1/6 of a second, sometimes much longer up to 5 or even 10 seconds is another part of the project. With the Leica MM and Q2 I have used 6 stop ND filters to make shooting with long exposure in daylight possible. The GR III can’t attach a ND filter which limits its use in very bright environments. As I have already mentioned in previous articles I am assuming that with longer exposure times it is easier to get a glance into the Inner Core of a person.

I had also decided that I would process the pictures in b&w under the assumption that colour would most likely distract from the purpose of this project.

The idea of the shooting process is that the photographer does nothing but follow his collaborators with his camera. I don’t speak, I am not asking them to pose or to make certain movements. I try to adapt entirely to the wishes and needs of my “models”. Of course this makes taking photos much more difficult from a technical perspective. I cannot influence the angle of light, the way they move, the background that I catch together with the person that I am shooting.

One shooting happened in the evening so that I had to use a handheld LED light. Holding the camera with one hand and taking pictures, holding the light in the other hand and following my “model” and her movements and coordinating all this to get reasonable photos was a very challenging task.

And now I would like to come to the most interesting aspect of this whole project. There are actually two aspects. One is the question if I can really show and document the Inner Core, the inner being of a person in a photograph. And the other aspect is that of the interaction between “model” and photographer.

Showing the “Inner Core”?

Is it possible to show the “inner Core” in a photograph? Photography deals with two-dimensional recordings of shape, light, texture and colour if it is a colour picture. They “see” a person from outside. So a photograph completely depends on what a person shows in their facial expression and body posture. The camera can’t “look inside”. So the question is if my “models” show something outside that could be perceived as the Inner Core.

I can certainly confirm that during these sessions my collaborators were in a state of more or less deep self-immersion which was clearly visible on their faces and also in their postures. Interestingly I found out that later when processing the pictures I could find features in their faces and their postures that I had not seen or discovered during the shooting process. But is that a representation of the “Inner Core”? I really don’t know. I don’t have an answer to the question.

Do we see the Inner Core?

The Interaction

The interaction between photographer and “model” is a crucial aspect in this project and of course in portrait photography in general. An important question is if the presence of the photographer changes the ability of a “model” to connect to herself or himself. My answers are mixed. My feeling during the sessions of my two dancing models was that they were so focussed on their own movements that the presence of the photographer did not faze them. The ones who wehere resting tended more towards getting in contact with me by looking into the camera or even talking to me. If that distracted them is difficult to tell, my feeling was that this was the case.

All five “models” told me that they were able to connect to their deeper inner self and that the presence of a photographer did not really affect this connection very much.

I can clearly say that the nudity of my “models” did not distract me nor did it have an impact on the atmosphere of the shootings.

Another aspect of interaction is my way of shooting my participants. Depending on how much they move I need to follow my “models” with my camera and try to improvise with every picture I take. That leads to a lot of intuitive shooting where I don’t have the time or opportunity to plan or compose a picture purposefully. But even though this aspect is limited I do have an influence on how the pictures eventually look by choosing the frame and roughly composing the picture which leads to the question if my personal approach has an influence on how the Inner Core becomes visible or not. So the outcome does not only depend on what the participant is able or willing to reveal but also on how the photographer chooses to shoot the frame.

Particularly this aspect of “model” and photographer behaviour and interaction has a big impact on the outcome not only in my little project but also on outcomes of portrait photography in general. I believe that both “behaviours” decide as to how the eventual outcome of a picture is like. I have to admit that I loathe pictures where it is obvious that the photographer has urged his model into a pose without realising the comfort zone nor the personality of his model. My project goes into the other extreme by trying to minimise the influence of the photographer on the outcome and to let the person shine from inside. But I would assume that working with what a model brings to the shooting is always an essential part the looks and the success of portrait photographs. (Maybe one day I should write an article about the difference of portrait pictures with and without “posing”).

No posing….

Post-Processing

As we all know a picture is not done by the end of the photo shoot. Post-processing is an essential part of the process of picture creation. And of cause this is the case in my little project.

I have discovered that every photoshoot requires a different workflow because of the different set-ups and characters of the person I shoot. I convert the pictures to black and white, change the lighting, add grain and if necessary crop the pictures. Every picture goes through a workflow in Lightroom, Photoshop and Nik Silver Efex.

Of cause my perception of the picture, my memories of the shooting and my decision as to how to develop the picture has an impact on the final outcome of the picture. Considering the goal of wanting to show the Inner Core of a person you may ask how much this developing process alters or even “falsifies” the picture. At least does my perception of the picture, does my aesthetical decision making have an influence on the final outcome. I take the liberty to enhance the picture according to what I think is visible and needs to be emphasised.

Post-processing as the final step of a photographic workflow has been discussed a million times. And the question if we have “the right” to alter a picture once it has been taken has still not been answered. And I don’t want to go into the depth of this discussion. But what I want to say is that I am aware that my decision making during the development of the pictures on the computer has an impact on how the project is shaped. It is my subjective perception and my awareness that decide how a picture shows the Inner Core of a person in my photographs.

The Journey

I find the it fascinating to deal with something so intimate as the inner being of a person and that I get permission to try to reveal it in photographs. I find it fascinating that the interaction of photographer and “model” influence the process. And I am aware of the limitations of my own judgement with regard to my decision making during the development process of these pictures.

Not only do I get the opportunity of working with human beings so closely, its also gives me the opportunity of thinking about the creation process of photographs and the interaction between the photographer and his models. All this is much more than I had ever expected before I started the first photo shoot. It is a fascinating journey into the discovery of human beings, their behaviour and myself as a photographer.

Will I ever find an answer? Is it possible to show the “Inner Core” in a photograph? Maybe this is completely unimportant. Maybe it is the journey that counts, the journey and the human interaction.

The Inner Core Project - an update

By now, it’s 1 October 2020, I have taken the pictures of five people who were interested in participating in the “Inner Core Project”. And after 3 weeks this “thing” has developed from an idea to a real world project that is really happening. 

I was surprised, how many people have volunteered within a short time. And I am fascinated by the interaction between me as the photographer and the participants. 

As expected, everybody has a different approach to the idea of searching for his or her “Inner Core”. 

Neven, who is a dancer with the Osnabrück Theater Dance Company and who is my first and (until now) only male participant, decided that he wanted to have the photo session outside in the green because he felt that surrounded by nature and water he would be able to feel himself in the most intense way. So we went to a canal at the fringes of the city of Osnabrück and had our shooting session at a spot that was surrounded by bushes and trees and close to the waters of the canal. 

Neven told me that during the session he felt a strong connection to nature that helped him feeling himself. 

For me shooting a man was very different from previous sessions with women. The atmosphere, the vibes felt different. And maybe it was not a gender related feeling but just the expression of Neven’s personality who took a much slower approach than the women that I had shot before. He moved very gently, very slowly and it was apparent that in the slow pace he was trying to sense himself and also the natural environment. 

The pictures that resulted from the session with Neven were much softer and much more poetic than I had expected it from a man. I discovered that during the processing of the pictures. These pictures have indeed a life of their own and what they reveal is different from what I am sensing and seeing during the shooting session. 

For me as the photographer this project is a fascinating way to connect with the participants, to learn about their personality and to learn using photography as a means to get closer to those people and who they are. 

If you feel that you would like to participate, please leave me a message on this website or send me a Flickr mail.

Confessions of a dilettante poet

I am a dilettant. I am not thorough. I don’t haver a plan. I lack depth. I just stumble on.

Some days ago I was reading some Haiku poems. They caught me in a moment of sadness and defeat. And they touched my soul.

Haiku is a Japanese poem tradition that has a very clear structure and form. Original Haiku poems consist of three phrases in three lines with a number of 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second and 5 in the third. The message of a Haiku poem is concise and to the point.

My mind is sometimes a weird guy. And it collects influences from outside in a very unique way and then decides how to process them and how to spit them out in the form of poems. Exactly that happened with the Haiku inspired poems. My mind read them, processed them and all of a sudden I found 4 poems on my iPad that looked slightly like Haiku poems. But they aren’t. Because that guy didn’t even know about the requirements of structure and form. And the mind just did its own thing. Three of them ended up in the “New Poems” section of the website. “Poems of a venomous man.”

So I warn you. I am a dilettante. And my mind is weird…..

Thank you very much Herr Schlattner (or - the planning of a photo shoot)

When you want to do a photo shoot with a person, a “model” as we say and as I really don’t like saying, things are slightly different from going out on the street or into nature. As you have a certain goal you also need to plan the shooting. And that means you need to find a “model”, the right time and of course a suitable place.

I don’t own or rent a studio. (It would be completely useless in my case as I am traveling from Greece to New Zealand to Australia and back. Where would I have my studio then?) So I need to find a place where I can shoot. It turned out that I was very lucky in Osnabrück. Marine, my first “model” knew the owner of a Yoga place in town who was willing to let us shoot at his premises.

But I wanted a second session at a different place. And on my mind I had an industrial place, possible abandoned and in it’s original state. Such a place is really hard to find, particularly if you don’t know the city, it’s environment and the options it gives you.

So I started driving around and I came to an old harbour area where they had started refurbishing storage buildings and halls. Regrettably none of those buildings was in the original state anymore and the ones that I found were already refurbished and turned into relatively small office spaces which where not suitable for a photo shoot.

But then I discovered a large storage hall where the refurbishment works were just on their way. With a little bit of chuzpe I drove into the building site and right in front of me a grey haired chap was walking on the street blocking me from continuing. He actually looked like the foreman of this building site.

So I started talking to him asking him if he knew if the place could be used for a photo shoot. And immediately he said that yes, this would be possible and I could take a look at the hall and decide if it was suitable for my purposes. He came across as a very assertive and cooperative foreman indeed.

We walked around on the site where builders were working and creating a lot of dust. The hall was gorgeous. Approximately 60 meters long, 30 meters wide and at least 10 meters high with large windows all around the top of the walls. A huge photo studio!

Our “Photo Studio”

I said “yes!”, that place I would love to use. And he told me that I could use it over the weekend when works were interrupted, he just needed to know when exactly because he would need to open the building site for us. He gave me his cell phone number and told me his name. “Schlattner” he grumbled with a typical Austrian accent.

So I contacted Marine, my dancer and we arranged for our shooting for the following Saturday. And Herr Schlattner told me that he would be in his office on the building site the whole day anyway. “Hm”, I was thinking by myself, “a foreman who works at his office the whole weekend?”

So I googled him as soon as I returned back home. And of course I discovered that my assertive foreman was the owner of the building company that was doing the work at that storage hall. And for whatever reason he had a heart for the arts and for a poor photographer. I was really incredibly lucky.

Herr Schlattner, you were very generous and I thank you very much for the wonderful opportunity that you gave us for our photo shoot!

The Inner Core Project

What if we tried to show the inner core of a person in a photograph? That was the question I was wondering about some time ago. You can read my first thoughts about this here in the article “Destiny (is a very big word)”. http://www.chris-r-photography.net/2019/11/29/s0tfzb1zssh7b7coavrfxtgdrmvv46

The starting point of my considerations was the assumption that we all have a deeper inner core of our person, of our personality. On top of that we develop over the years layers of behaviour that are determined by education, interaction with people, experience, traumata, neuroses and other influences. Our every day behaviour is a mixture of these layers interacting with the core personality deep within.

From there I was wondering if it might be possible to show the “inner core” of a person in a photograph. During my photographic development over the past few years I used long exposure photography, motion blur, intentional camera movements a lot. When watching these blurred pictures I noticed that it felt as if I could see deeper into a person’s characteristics in pictures that I had taken with this long exposure technique. The question is of course if a long exposure picture really represents a person’s characteristics on a deeper level or if a blurred picture gives the viewer more space to imagine certain characteristics because imagination can fill the gaps that the picture leaves. This question I have not answered to myself entirely, you might have your own very personal answer to it too.

In order to find out if my hypothesis works, I decided to start a photographic project around the core idea. The plan is, to shoot people with long exposure and ask them to do things where they feel that they are within themselves to the most. I would assume that every person has a different way of “feeling herself/himself”. So I am asking my “models” to do exactly what brings them “to themselves” in the most intense way.

I was lucky to meet Marine in Osnabrück during my current trip to Europe. Marine is a dancer with the Osnabrück Theater Dance Company. She agreed to participate in this project and we met for a shooting. The owner of YogaOmline in Osnabrück was so kind to allow us shooting in his rooms.

I asked Marine, not to “perform” for me but to find a way of getting deep into herself in her own personal way. She used moving her body for this. During the shooting we both remained completely silent. I did not ask her to strike any poses but only followed her movements with my camera.

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Marine, Inner Core Project

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Marine, Inner Core Project

I found this collaboration amazing. I was allowed to look into the personality of my “model” and to take pictures of what was a very intimate personal experience. Marine has allowed me to share the pictures. I am very grateful and thank her very very much.

What is your way of expressing the core of your personality? How can you reach deep within yourself? Is there a way of showing this outside? If any of you is interested in this project and wants to participate I would ask you to get in touch with me. Leave me a message on this website or write me a Flickr mail (https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisrsouthland). I will continue this project over the coming months. Currently (September 2020) I am still in Osnabrück, Germany.

Using Color (or when a b&w photographer goes astray)

I see black and white. I see shapes. I see textures. I see grey tones. I see shades and light. I don’t see colours.

I really like the dramatic effects of black and white in photographs. And I find it much easier to show a monochrome world in my pictures. I guess this has to do with my visual perception. But it might also have to do with a certain inability to find the right expression in color pictures. I find the processing of color on my computer rather difficult and I usually don’t find what I want to say by using a color palette. Black and white comes more naturally to me.

But there is one exception. When I get myself immersed into the Mediterranean summer mood I cannot express this without using color. The hot, dry air, the charred brown landscapes, the ocker mood of the Mediterranean summer I can only express by using color. This happened to me in Malta the previous year and it now happened again when I took pictures in searing hot Rome.

The city was deserted by its inhabitants. And it was visited by only very few tourists, both due to the Corona pandemic and the fact that visiting a Mediterranean city during the hottest summer can be a harrowing task. So I had the rare opportunity of taking pictures in a city that is nearly devoid of any human beings. Even on Piazza Navona you could easily find space to walk around and the many tourist cafes and restaurants were desperately looking for patrons.

Window shopping in hot summer during Corona times

When I started processing the Rome pictures I realised that I can’t express the mood of this hot summer city in monochrome pictures only. There were certain images that told the story in monochrome. But when it was about the hot and arid Mediterranean feel, it needed to be shown in colours.

So for a change I used color. And I found help by using the Color Efex App by Nik Collection. It somehow gave me the tools that I needed to add color to the summer mood.

And yes, the pictures are no real representation of a city, they are my very personal summer feelings expressed in fleeting ICM pictures.

So take a look and let me know what you think about the use of color in the Mediterranean summer.

Litra Pro LED Light for Photography

A few weeks ago I bought a couple of LED lights for my photography. In this article I will write about the reasoning for my purchase and also about my first experience with this light. 

Over the last two years I got more and more immersed into photography. And as I started shooting portrait I realized that being able to influence the light I am working with became a more and more important wish. 

Natural light is great, but being able to shape the light according to my own needs appeared very tempting to me. And that is the point. By using artificial light you are able to shape light, to mold it, to play with its features and not only to utilize it but to turn it into an essential additional tool of your photography. 

I was dreaming of a light source that was easy to use, not too big or clunky and of course not too expensive. I want to be able to take the light with me, like a torch, but still easier to use and more adjustable. I don’t shoot in studios, so I need something that I can easily take with me. I had the idea of enhancing my street photography with artificial lighting, so the light source should also easily fit into my little street photography bag. 

Here come some general thoughts about the use of artificial light in photography. And I have to admit that I’m talking from the standpoint of someone who does not have a lot of experience with strobes and flashlights.

I actually never understood why photographers accept or even like lighting solutions with flash lights or strobes where they can’t see directly the results of their lighting activity. I don’t have the phantasy nor the patience to wait for the first picture that gives me hints as to how to change the position of my model or how to change the lighting set up in order to get the results that I want. I want to see the effect of my light on my object and then shoot what I see. I also want to be able to move together with my light around my model or object. (I will describe this a little more when I’m talking about the use of my lights.) For that reason I clearly prefer lighting solutions with continuous light. Maybe by dismissing strobes I’m missing something elementary in photography, please let me know in case I do. 

In the past years lighting in photography changed massively. LED lights took over photography because they have indeed many advantages. LED light is cold, you don’t have to struggle with the heat that previous lighting solutions emitted. LED also uses far less power which means that battery driven lights last much longer with one charge. And very recently manufacturers of LED lights reduced the size of the lights a lot so that transportability improved hugely. 

So there we are. It’s available now. I took a look at the internet and compared LED lighting solutions from different manufacturers. Eventually I decided to choose the Litra Pro LED light. They are small enough to fit easily into the pockets of your trousers and they have the advantage that you can change the color of the light from 3000 Calvin to up to 6000 Calvin. Of course you can change the light intensity. That goes in 5% increments. Maximum output is 1200 lumen which is pretty bright. All changes can be done via an app on your iPhone so that you don’t need to walk to and fro your light to make adjustments. Very handy. 

With maximum output the battery should last 45 minutes, with minimum output up to 10 hours. Until now I never needed maximum light. I am usually ok with between 10 ans 25% output which gives me hours of durability. I have not used them yet to brighten up faces or objects against the sun. It will be interesting to see if they are strong enough for that purpose. 

Here is the link to their website in case you are interested. https://litra.com/

And now I’m realizing that this article is becoming quite long. I will stop here and post the second part that describes my way of using the lights and my first experiences a little later in just a few days.

The Scare

I took a picture of me wearing a medical mask when I was spraying some poison in the garden in order to kill some weeds. I was wearing it to protect myself from inhaling the fumes. I am not sure how well that worked because I could sense a quite strong smell right through this mask. 

When I was watching the picture later its meaning turned into a completely different direction. It reminded me of the current Corona Virus pandemic and the facial mask became to me a symbol of this world white scare. I started processing it in Lightroom and Snapseed and added a lot of contrast and also some grain until I found it expressed how I am feeling with this situation. 

I am actually not scared. I know that human kind will not be able to contain this virus and that it will spread world wide. Efforts to contain it won’t work. In the best case it might be possible to delay the spread a little which would reduce the sudden impact of the disease on health systems and reduce the risk of overwhelming hospitals and the whole care system. However complete prevention will not be possible. 

I was wondering if it is ethically ok to post such a picture. I mean, I am not expressing my own feelings because I don’t feel scared. I am visually reflecting on the mood that is being transmitted worldwide via the media. I don’t want to be alarmist. I don’t want to evoke panic. It’s meant as a mere reflection of what I am sensing when I read and watch the media online. 

It rarely happens that I want to explain and justify my own pictures. But in this case I find it necessary

Gallipoli

I was recently at Te Papa in Wellington. Te Papa is the National Museum of New Zealand. It shows both, exhibitions about the history of the country and also art exhibitions. The history section covers the time from the settles until today but it also shows the rich history of the Maori (the population that immigrated over thousands of years from the Pacific Islands).

A very special new exhibition called “Gallipoli The Scale of our War”, covers the history of the Australian and New Zealand troops trying to storm the Turkish bastions at Gallipoli, Turkey during WW I. This operation became a major failure with the loss of high numbers of lives on both sides.

Please find here the link to the Te Papa website that covers the Gallipoli exhibition. https://www.tepapa.govt.nz/visit/exhibitions/gallipoli-scale-our-war

Before I came to New Zealand in 2009 I did not know about Gallipoli and the tragic events there. During my school time both, WW I and WW II were covered extensively during history lessons. However the historical events were looked at from a western European perspective. Neither Gallipoli nor the the Pacific War during WW II were really covered and discussed. For me it was a very moving experience to participate in Anzac Day, the day that commemorates the fight of New Zealand and Australian troops against their enemies during both world wars. Particularly as a German citizen Anzac Day had a huge impact on me.

The pictures that I show here in this blog text and on my Flickr site are part of the brilliant exhibition at Te Papa covering the siege of Gallipoli. The exhibition contains tables, graphs and multimedia documentation that give a very good overview. But first of all it shows larger than life figures that represent soldiers and other people participating in the war.

Black and white converted picture of a figure representing a soldier storming up the hills of Gallipoli. The intensity of the figures is stunning.

These figures have been created by Weta Workshops, a manufacturer of film props and costumes in Wellington. Weta workshops have become renowned for creating all items for the Lord of the Ring saga but also for many other major movies.

Figure of an exhausted and bitter looking military doctor on the fields of Gallipoli.

This link leads to Weta Workshop’s website. You find here all the major projects this studio has been involved in. https://www.wetaworkshop.com/projects/gallery

When I visited the Gallipoli exhibition at Te Papa I took my camera in order to take some pictures of the figures. I was overwhelmed by the expression of these amazingly crafted and designed figures. Together with the lighting they create an eerie and very touching atmosphere with a great sense of realism that give visitor an impression of the hardship that soldiers and personell had to endure.

Weta Workshops in Wellington have crafted all figures that are shown in this exhibition

I have added two pictures here that show the scale and dimension of these figures in comparison to tiny looking visitors at the exhibition.

Compare the size of the figure with that of the visitor.

The previously shown army doctor figure in comparison to a tiny looking visitor.

If you come to Wellington I highly recommend visiting this excellent and emotional historical exhibition. It will be on display until 2022. The admission is free.

Destiny (is a very big word)

I am still marveling about the shooting session with Thekla that happened one month ago. The spirit of this session has lingered on as I have been processing and posting the pictures. And from that moment something amazing has been developing. I have been in touch with people that have helped me finding what I want to do in photography. Really, it is that big!

I have been looking around and searching for what I want to express in photography for the past six years. It has been a meandering through subjects, techniques, aspirations, disappointments and endeavors. And though I never had the feeling that I was really going wrong it also never felt entirely right, never complete, never as if I was on the path I wanted to be.

The first big step was that last year I started to shoot portraits. It was the first time that I worked with human beings and the first time that I dared exposing myself to them as a photographer. It was a huge step.

There was always the aspiration of working with people, taking their pictures and finding a way to develop my photography into that direction. I just did not have the courage. Accomplished portrait and nude photographers might smile about this impediment (or maybe some might nod as they know this feeling of fear from their own experience).

Whatever, for me it was the first time that I got in touch with people that were willing to work with me and that I felt comfortable to work with. I am really grateful to Io and her fellow musicians for this experience.

From there I shot more portraits and I gained some more experience. But it still felt sometimes clumsy and as if I was not doing quite what I wanted or should do.

And then two things happened. I met Thekla and had this amazing creative experience with her. And I also met Nanni. Nanni is an artistic photographer in Germany who I approached via Flickr because her pictures fascinated me. And via email we started talking about photography, about how our brains work and process information and reality and about what defines the core of us as human beings.

Picture from the photo shooting with Thekla in October. Picture processed with textures.

And all of a sudden it clicked. All this together starts giving me the feeling, I would even say certainty what I want to do and express and depict in photography. It is as if my photographic destiny is gradually opening up. I am not there yet. I will need to try things out. I know it is a path and not a place.

But essentially I want to explore what lies under the surface of us as human beings. What defines us, what makes us behave the way we do, what makes us human and what brings us together as human beings. And I wand to find the expression of this human essence in the faces and (nude) bodies of people that I depict.

Well, that’s kind of big, isn’t it? Very big. Maybe stupid. Maybe preposterous. And maybe hopeless and destined to fail. But it feels right! And I need to go there.

Thank you to all my companions over the past years, thank you to my new friends. Thank you to Thekla, Nanni, Marilena, Io, Tracy, Alistair, Frank, Jay (Vulture Labs) and Ioanna. Thank you for going with me, for your ideas, teachings, readiness and support.

And I will write more about this as it evolves. Who knows how the journey will be. And if it will be a journey at all. But at least I want to take the first few steps now.

A Matter of Taste - About my Processing Workflows

Processing a picture, enhancing features, giving it a certain style is part of a creative process. I use photo editing regularly to give my pictures the feeling, the expression that I want them to exude. 

In the beginning of my photography revival about six years ago I did not process my pictures at all. I took them the way they were and posted them to Flickr. I prided myself of not “manipulating” my pictures. So as if they were speaking a bigger truth by being virgin pictures.

I have to admit that I now believe that I was wrong. First of all you can’t or should not pride yourself of leaving away something that you don’t understand. I did not know how to process pictures. That’s the simple truth. And I thought that editing them, enhancing them would conceal or falsify their “real truth”. Only, the question is what the real truth is in artistic work.

Shooting photos can have many purposes. And if you shoot reportage you want to document what you find. You want to give a true recall of the facts that you encountered. So manipulating your pictures will not be an option. However if you seek artistic expression, if you want to show a truth behind the obvious facts of a picture then the question is why you should not add features and alter the pictures in order to achieve your ultimate goal.

So consequently when changing my attitude I also changed my practice. And now I do enhance my pictures and I use many different ways to do so. And these ways I would like to describe a little.

One way is what I would call the “straight forward way” of processing. You transfer the pictures to Lightroom, do some basic development steps and then pass the picture on to Photoshop where the fine tuning happens.

I do this a lot with my black and white portraits and now also motion blur nudes. In Photoshop I have a good b&w conversion workflow that preserves tonality and gives me many ways of making very fine adjustments. In Silver Efex I can add some grain to my liking (Silver Efex has the nicest grain of all development apps that I know) and then transfer the picture back to Lightroom.

This is my preferred workflow because it gives me full control over the results because I take every single development step “manually”. The processing takes some time but I love the results. And I like the workflow because I am still a black and white photographer at heart, even after discovering and using colour a little more.

Picture edited in Photoshop

A second completely different workflow I discovered some months ago. This is the use of textures. I have already written about this. I use textures on my iPhone and my iPad. Originally I started doing this because I had been (and still am) traveling a lot which deprives me of the opportunity of using my desktop computer for photo editing. In addition my 11 year old MacBook had died a gradual death and became so slow that for the last half a year I could not use it for editing at all. I fixed that problem by buying me a new MacBook now (and gosh!! are these things expensive!!).

Picture edited with Mextures textures in iPhone

So working with textures was born out of the predicament that I could not do any Lightroom and Photoshop processing during my travels and when being in New Zealand. And I discovered that using textures is a nice way of creating emotions in my pictures. Because textures and particularly stacked textures that compile their effects on top of each other have a big impact on how the light in a picture behaves and radiates. I still enjoy using textures and I often combine them with some editing steps I take in Snapseed or the iPhone photo editing software which has improved a lot recently.

The third processing workflow happens in Snapseed only. It’s a quick way of enhancing and altering pictures without the use of any sophisticated textures. Snapseed provides some texture layering too but these options are limited and not as good as the Mextures software that I use for my texture work. I have recently tried to use Snapseed instead of my usual Photoshop processing workflow.The results are not bad but they don’t reach the quality in Photoshop.

Picture edited in Snapseed with additional grain and sepia in Silver Efex

And the last workflow that I use is that of the genuine Apple photo software on iPhones and iPads. As written before it has been improved a lot and I use it mainly to enhance colors and add some structure to pictures that I processed in Mextures or Snapseed. I rarely use this software on its own because it has some clear limitations. It has no local enhancement tool. It has no independently usable textures at all. And in contrast to Snapseed it does not contain any grain. So its options as a mono-application are limited. But with colors it does some nice work.

I still have the whole Nik software palette on my computer that I sometimes use. And of course Lightroom gives you many options for straight forward processing too. No layers are available but particularly the local adjustment tools in LR are very good.

I completely abandoned the use of Capture One. My main reason was the disappointment about the fact that Capture One changed to a subscription model the way Adobe has it for LR and Photoshop. Capture One started with the promise not to choke their customers with subscriptions but now they do it as Adobe does. Then you can as well use Adobe software that has some clear advantages (for example a history tool) but also disadvantages (colors are not as nice as in Capture One). My second reason to abandon Capture One was that they don’t provide any processing options for Leica’s RAW files which is for me a deal breaker as I still use and love my M Monochrom.

I would certainly not pride myself of being an expert in processing and I am miles away from being a Photoshop “wizard”. But I find it interesting to edit and enhance pictures and to give them the flavor that I envisage.

Submission, Devotion and Surrender

This picture is a nude. But it is not only that. It has a story that I would like to share with you.

We had been shooting for a while and Thekla had been trying out some props. Then she decided that she wanted to use a fabric bag that she was pulling over her head. She told me that she likes absurde situations that she wants to explore artistically.

Imagine the situation. A naked woman, a clothed photographer, firing the camera at her incessantly. Then she pulls the bag over her head. She kneels, sits on the floor. She can’t walk because she cannot see. And the photographer asks her to lie down completely, to stretch out on the floor. She does it. She can’t see the photographer, she just needs to trust, to give in, to surrender. And so she does. She lets the man that she has met only once before in her life take pictures of her in this submissive pose. She then continues the set by moving on the floor, striking other poses, giving him the opportunity to create more pictures.

For me this was a situation where somebody gave me deliberately a huge amount of power without any hesitation. And for a moment I felt this surge of power of making another person do what I want and to surrender to my will. It was only a very brief moment which immediately was replaced by amazement and a slight feeling of guilt on my side.

The room was very hot and after about 10 minutes she stopped, telling me that she was tired and needed to have a break. She removed the bag and at that moment I took the second shot that I am showing here. It shows her exhaustion, how physically and maybe also emotionally worn out she was.

I want to express my admiration and my gratitude to Thekla. Apart from the photographic and artistic experience this was a deeply moving human moment for me.

Nude Motion Blur Photo Shoot / Shooting with Thekla

It was a kind of dream of mine. Creating nude motion blur pictures. I had been thinking about this for years but on the one hand I did not have the courage (really) and on the other hand I did not know a person who would be interested in being my model.

Shooting models for the first time about a year ago was a big step forward. To me it was not only doing some photography. It was exposing myself to the person I was shooting, needing to direct this person, having the “responsibility” of getting it right and delivering an acceptable result. No self-inflicted pressure of course… :-) But as it happened the experience of shooting people turned out to be amazing and gratifying. I liked the interaction, I liked the attempt of capturing the persona, I liked the results.

So why not the next step? Shooting nudes. Well, this was the same issue with the same inhibitions again. But at least I had this previous experience that went indeed quite well.

So now a good friend of mine (thank you, Marilena!!) made me aware of a person who works as an actress and acting coach and who had previous experience with nude photo shootings. And on her website she even said that she was interested in further cooperations. Ok, so let’s get in touch! After writing some messenges we had a preliminary meeting, I showed her some of my motion blur work from the previous months and she said yes. So we met last week and had a photo shoot.

Thekla made it easy for me. She has an education as body actor which means, expressing herself through body language is her professional tool. I explained what I wanted, that I was aiming at creating pictures of her moving. From then on I actually did not need to do anything but following her with my camera. We were shooting for a little more than an hour and she was inventing and creating movements all the time. All in all we had maybe 5 minutes break time. So after the shoot we were both sweating and completely mentally and physically drained. And I had sore leg muscles for the following two days.

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For me it was a huge challenge to follow Thekla’s movements, that were fluent, abrupt, aesthetic, unconventional, bizarre and continuous. She was walking, running, lying and tossing and turning on the ground. With props, with a hat, a scarf, a veil, a fabric bag over her head (!) or without any items. I just had to follow her which per se was already a big task. I started the shoot with my D850 Nikon camera but after some minutes I threw the heavy thing away and continued with the tiny, mobile and versatile GR III. Forget full frame, try to get a picture in the first instance!

Nudity was not an issue. It became part of the expression, part of the process, part of the visual impression. There was absolutely no lewdness from either side. I was so focussed on my photography, on her movements, on the aesthetics, on getting the right shots that I barely was aware of her nudity. Or, I was aware but I was fully focussed on my job and I integrated her naked body into my vision of what I wanted to achieve creatively.

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All in all I shot around 600 frames. The following evening I sat down and reviewed the lot and culled the pictures. I extracted 100 pictures for further consideration for processing. On the following day I was sitting for 11 hours processing my pictures. Eventually I ended up with 30 pictures that I finished.

Having tried textures in the past months I was wondering how I should process the pictures. Eventually I decided to process them in a conventional way in Lightroom, Photoshop and Silver Efex and not to use textures. I wanted to be able to control the results entirely which obviously you cannot do with textures. And if I really want to use textures I can still do that in a second step.

So, thank you very much Thekla!! You made it easy for me and I enjoyed the shooting thoroughly.

If somebody is interested in Thekla’s website, she has allowed me to share it here. Some of her pictures on the website don’t open. She is aware of it and will try to fix this soon. http://theklagaiti.com/en/

I will now certainly continue with this creative process of shooting motion blur pictures, portraits and of course also nudes.

Motion Blur (again)

I have previously written about motion blur and my personal approach to it. You find the article in this blog under 11 May. I want to continue and expand this topic a little yet.

Let’s talk a little about what motion blur conceals - and what it reveals. Of course a picture that is shot out of a movement can’t show all details of a person, that of facial expression, the physiognomy, simply because these details are blurred. But this is not entirely true. If you take a closer look at the faces that are shot in motion blur, you will discover surprising details, facial expression, mood, feelings. I am wondering if this is because the technique is able to reveal another kind of reality, something that is hidden when you shoot with the usual short exposure time. But perhaps the lack of detail induces a search process on the mind of the viewers who try to complete the picture on their mind. Are we filling in the gaps with our personal “mind map” or is this really a different reality that the face shows with longer exposure time and motion blur?

I actually believe that the latter is the case. I believe that in a quite miraculous way a face shows details, shows features, shows experiences and traits of character in a motion blur picture that you can’t discover in an “ordinary” picture. I am not able to explain exactly how this works. Maybe it has to do with the lack of control a person has over the facial expression over a longer time (and we are talking about something of ¼ to ½ a second, maybe up to one second exposure time). Maybe it is the subsequence of facial expressions over the time. Maybe it is the “artificial” distortion that the blur effect creates.

In the past I have only worked in the streets and like recently in Tokyo I have created candid street pictures. My next steps will be to work with models that I will shoot with this technique. I want to create both, portraits and nude pictures.

With regard to portrait I will need to find out, how close I need to get to the face or how distant I need to be. Until now I know that the closer you get either physically or with the lens that you use the more difficult it becomes to catch the shot. It requires a lot of shooting discipline and coordination to shoot a motion blur picture with a focal length of 135mm. I have tried it…. :-) So my first step will be to use a wide lens, 28 or even 21mm (I have this beautiful Zeiss Distagon 21mm lens for my Nikon camera) and to try to get a feeling for the movement and the facial expression that I can create. In a second step I will try to get closer, maybe use my 50mm lens, maybe even a 85mm one.

Playing with exposure time is also interesting. I have already discovered that the longer the exposure time is the more “ghostly” or etherial the facial expression becomes. In that way technical details have a big impact on the outcome.

Trying out the blur technique on a nude body is something that I really want to do. What you find in the face you will also find in the whole nude body. I am keen on finding out the changes of expression in a naked body that is shot with motion blur. I will need to find models for this which might be a little difficult considering how much I currently travel and that I am in certain places only for a limited time.

If somebody reads this who is interesting to be my model either in Athens or in Wellington, New Zealand (where I will be during November 2019) or Darwin, Australia (during December 2019), please contact me either through this website or my Flickr mail account.

This story will continue and I want to explore the options of motion blur further in the future. If you have any ideas, suggestions, things you would like to contribute, please let me know….

Working with Textures

It seems that commercially available textures for processing photographs have become increasingly popular. I see them a lot in pictures of people that post on Flickr. I have discovered them for my photography in recent months as well and I would like to write a little about my experience. 

Essentially textures are alterations to the appearance of a picture that the photographer can apply as a “blanket” on a picture during the editing process. And with blanket I mean that by applying one texture you change colour, distribution of light, appearance of the “canvas” or background the picture is on and many other details. So by adding one single texture you make a lot of alterations to your picture. You can also create layers of alterations which means that by stacking textures on top of each other you add the respective effects on top of each other.

To me using textures is a way of creating visual emotions. A one step process can change the expression and thus the emotion a picture conveys considerably. It appears to me that applying and combining textures is much more effective for my workflow than using the usual development steps in Lightroom or Photoshop.

So the upside to me is that by taking simple development steps I can make changes that have a very profound effect. But the process has clearly downsides. As you apply textures to the whole of a picture the way of influencing the outcome manually is very limited. In other words, you need to accept what the preset that you apply provides you with. You can make changes to the intensity of a certain texture, you can also vary brightness, structure, colour, warmth and other features. But in a way you are still limited with regard to influencing the outcome. That means we are talking about serendipity. If you are lucky, the texture or combination of textures you apply yield an outcome that you like. If not, you often don’t have an alternative to scrapping the whole outcome and starting from scratch.

Learning to know the effect of textures and their possible outcomes for a variety of pictures is an interesting and challenging experience. Over the past weeks I have developed a workflow where I apply textures in a planned manner and I am kind of able to predict the outcome.

This way of working with pictures is very technology driven. You do not take a brush or a chisel and work manually on a picture or sculpture or whatever piece of art. You let the machine do it. In that way it is not very different from the use of Photoshop. The interesting aspect is the combination of pure coincidence of the outcome with your attempts of planning and gauging the effects the “machine” makes on a picture. It is actually creative. It is a creative process. And the more I work with it and the more I learn to control the zillions of variables in the process the more interesting it becomes.

One limitation that I find sometimes difficult to work with is that textures come as apps for your smartphone. So you are limited to the minute screen that a smartphone provides. And on the small screen you can not fully gauge the effect your textures have on an image. So sometimes you get (positively or negatively) surprised when you see the picture on your bigger computer screen after having processed it in your smartphone. I will try to find out in the future if and how textures can be applied on an iPad or the desktop computer.

I also bought a new camera recently. It is a RICOH GR III. A little camera with an APSC sensor, no full frame and no view finder. You watch the scene on the camara’s screen and compose the picture there.

For post processing I transfer the picture to my iPhone where I apply the textures. For the transfer I have purchased an app that connects the GR III with my iPhone wirelessly. As I am traveling a lot at the moment and as I don’t have my desktop computer available this is a nice and simple way of processing pictures.

By using the same textures again and again I find myself able to learn how to apply them more specifically and to predict outcomes. I have certainly not exhausted the options yet so for the moment I will limit myself to the current tools.

To my surprise (I had clear reservations about the use of textures) I find these tools enrich my photography and I enjoy using them very much. And I am planning to use them on my long exposure motion photography in the future. It will be interesting to see the outcomes.

Working with models

After having worked with portrait models for a little less than a year I would like to write about my approach and my experiences. 

When I shoot portraits I am currently limited to outdoor areas because I don’t have a studio and no lighting equipment. Apart from depending on the weather this does not seem a major disadvantage to me. I can work with natural light and using the streets and parks for shooting certainly works for me.  I would still like to have a place where I can create light and where I can set the atmosphere and have shooting conditions that I can determine myself. Maybe a little later,  currently I travel so much between Greece and New Zealand that it does not make sense to have a studio in one place anyway. 

But I mainly wanted to write about working with models. I currently only work with people that are no professional models. They are people that I either find in the streets or friends or acquaintances of mine. In other words, my models have only limited or no shooting experience which means that I should direct them and tell them what to do and how to pose.  And exactly that I don’t do. Very purposefully I don’t give them directions as to how to move, to strike a pose or to show a certain facial expression.   The reason is that I am interested in finding out who my models are as a person and I am trying to capture this person when I shoot. Poses or directions would only distract and lead us away from my goal. 

I tell my models before the shooting that I am not going to tell them what to do and how to behave. Instead of giving instructions I start having a talk with them. I ask them about their lives, about ideas, attitudes, things that they love or dislike. And I tell my story, tell them who I am, what I do, how I have developed my photography. It often develops into an exchange of experiences, of life stories and opinions. I learn a lot about my models and I love getting to know them a little. 

I do tell my models where I want us to go, where I think the light is good and what kind of backdrop I like and want to shoot them in. But from the moment we find a place it is mainly a situation of interaction and shooting the model during this interaction. A disadvantage is that during talking faces are very difficult to shoot, often features are distorted or eyes half closed. So I need to wait for little breaks between the interaction. This is actually nice because often I find that emotions from the last topic or sentences remain in the faces of my models which enhances their facial expression.  

It often is also interesting to watch with the camera what a person is doing with a certain situation. A few days ago I went with my model Ioanna to a long open air stairs in the neighborhood of Exarchia in Athens. From the stairs you have a look from above over a part of Athens. Ioanna sat down on the stairs spontaneously and watched the city with a kind of far away glance in her eyes. This coincided nicely with the talk we had about her traveling and living in many different places. And the pictures that I could take had a very special and particular mood.

Ioanna with the “far away glance” in her eyes

Keeping the situation open and letting the model develop within this situation is something that I like very much. We create a little human laboratory situation where the interaction between photographer and model and the environment become the basis for visual story telling. 

Is it possible to grasp “the essence” of a person in a single picture? The question is more if we can even talk about “the “ essence of a human being. Every situation, every social interaction evokes a particular atmosphere which influences the mood of a model and his or her facial expression. Yes, there are recurring traits of character that we can try to find and to depict. But reducing a person on one single picture appears to be very difficult and even a bold task to me.  However, maybe that will change if I develop more experience over the time. 

During one photo shoot I take between 200 and 300 pictures of my model in different locations. I take about two hours for this task, a time that my (unpaid) models are usually willing to dedicate to the experience. Later when culling, curating and processing the pictures I reduce the number to 10 to 15 pictures that I process. After the processing I send the final JPEG versions of the images to my models via WeTransfer, together with a big thank you. 

I find the human interaction between myself and my models interesting and fascinating. This allows me to dip into the lives of people that I don’t know and have never met before. And it appears that even sometimes some lasting relationships or friendships can develop. This experience is at least as important as the photographic one and the pictures that we can create together.