05-SEP-2004
Walking the Alfama, Lisbon, Portugal, 2004
The Alfama was once the entire Moorish city of Lisbon -- a warren of tiny, twisting streets wrapped around a hillside below the Citadel of St. George. Today's Alfama is one of Lisbon's most picturesque neighborhoods. No Moorish houses remain, but the quarter retains its Kasbah-like layout. Compact houses such as these line its steep cobblestone streets –walking the Alfama is like walking through time. And that is what I am trying to imply with this image. I want you to walk with me, explore with me, acquiring a sense of place as you walk those cobblestones. Every picture should a focal point – an area that draws the eye. As soon as I saw the warm, nostalgic color of that house on the corner, I knew I had found the focal point for this image. I organized this picture around the contrast between the light and shadow, as well as between the brown cobblestones and the reddish house on the corner. I back away, framing the picture to follow the flow of the four posts lining the sidewalk on the right side of the picture. They lead us from the shadows into the light, and then into the shadows again. The tops of the last two posts reach up and point to the house itself, inviting us to walk through that door and into history. The house offers more than just lovely color. It glows softly. The sun has bounced off the windows of a house across the street from it, casting their reflections upon the wall of the reddish house. These reflections are important. Just as those posts pull our eyes towards that reddish house, the reflections of those windows continue the flow of light through this picture. Our eyes move from the bright cobblestones into the dark shadows, and then up to the glowing window reflections on the wall of the reddish house. Another factor at work in my composition is the curve of the curb. It plays a pivotal role in leading the eye through the picture and to the red house. Meanwhile, the repeating patterns of the cobblestone street create a matrix of geometric shapes that are echoed by the tiles on the roof of the house. I was fully conscious of all of these factors as I composed this image. I took about five or six versions of it, each from a different vantage point. This is the one that worked the best.
30-AUG-2004
Ebb tide, St. Malo, France, 2004
St. Malo is a maritime city. It has always made its reputation and living from the sea. It is remembered in history as the City of Corsairs, sending its famous mariners out to make discoveries, fight wars, and seize foreign ships as prizes. Yet these St. Malo boats are not going anywhere until the tide returns. I made this image from high on the ramparts surrounding the city, fascinated by the sight of six boats in various stages of distress. It is an incongruous concept – we are used to seeing boats riding at anchor in the water, not uselessly anchored while on land. I organized my picture around the “s-curve” or “zigzag” principle. I want to pull your eye back and forth across the frame as you move back into the picture. I anchor my image (pun intended) at the bottom of the frame. The dark mass of kelp surrounding the helpless boat in the lower right foreground is the focal point of the picture. I hope you will then move back to the left, comparing the only ship that seems to be actually floating at anchor to its beached companions. Our eyes move up its mast to the boat just behind it, and then sweep right along a string of muck to another boat, just inland, before returning left again, back to the shoreline. While we are busily moving back and forth, we are also moving into the depths of this picture. As we arrive at the most distant boats, we come to dry sand and a curving beach, and then the sea finally carries us out of the picture at upper right. This kind of composition is the equivalent of a journey, and works best when that journey is the point of the picture itself. In this case, it most certainly is.
02-SEP-2004
Façade, Fonseca College, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 2004
This structure, the original building of Fonseca College, dates back to the 16th century. It is used today to house the University's library. My point in making this picture was to express its extreme age, and by implication, its value to the community. After 500 years, this religious statue and its surrounding columns – a study in weathered texture -- still stand alongside of a busy street. The soft light and worn texture speak volumes about age, yet this image is still basically flat, without much depth perspective or dimensionality. To add such perspective, I first shifted the statue from the middle of frame to the left hand side, so that it looks into the picture. Off center subject placement usually adds a bit of tension and appears less static and predictable, but it did not solve this flat perspective issue. Then I realized that the shadow under the canopy over the statue seems to make it emerge from the past, and peer out on the present and future. But we still have an essentially a flat image. So I stepped back further to bring a low hanging tree branch into the frame, moving the camera so that the branch seems to reach out the statue, as if to grasp it. We now must look through these branches into the picture, which most definitely implies depth, and adds a sense of perspective to a picture that had very little before I included that branch in the frame. This bit of depth perspective, coupled with the mellow color, soft light, worn textures and the canopy shadows, carries us back into time – and that is how I made this image speak. Do you agree or disagree with my approach here? Please leave your comments, questions, and criticisms. I will respond, and our dialogue can help everyone who comes here can then learn more about expressing ideas photographically.
19-JUN-2004
Morning in the park, Beijing, China, 2004
A man greets the day with exercise along a canal – an image alternating energy with tranquility. I placed the man to the left of the frame, and began the flow of stonework lining the canal precisely in the lower left hand corner. It draws the eye to the man, and then proceeds to diagonally flow to the bridge in the upper right hand corner. I also saw the other man crossing the bridge, and waited until his reflection was visible between the trees to make this picture. This is a complicated image with many different forms – two people, lots of stonework, water, trees, and a bridge. All of which create the two opposing forces in the image – energy and tranquility. The purpose of my composition is to organize everything so that the eye flows easily to the key points of the picture and to intensify contrast between the movement of the man’s arms and the stillness of the rest of the image.
21-JUN-2004
On the march, Emperor Qin’s Tomb, Xian, China, 2004
Twenty-five of the 6,000 life-sized terracotta soldiers guarding the underground tomb of China’s first emperor appear to be on the move in this image. By zooming in with a telephoto lens on just one small part of one rank, and then tilting my camera, I create diagonal flow from upper left to lower right, which gives the soldiers a sense of movement. The most important details in this picture are the faces, no two of which are alike, and the hands, which help bring the bodies to life. The right hands once carried actual spears, and the left hands seem to swing freely in the air. The free left hand of the soldier in the fourth row at far right is the focal point of the picture because it is the only hand with much space around it. The eye goes to that hand, and the picture takes its energy from it, because that is the spot of the most tension. As we compose our images, we must always be aware of where tension is coming from, and do whatever we can to draw the eye to it. In this picture, the line of the trench on the right hand side of the picture and the file of soldiers closet to it, provides the hardest edge in the image. The right hand of that soldier is suspended in the air directly against that edge. That’s why it is the point of maximum tension, and that’s why I organized this picture as I did.
01-JUL-2004
Water flow, Three Gorges Dam, Sandouping, China, 2004
In this image, I try to hone down the world’s largest dam to its essence – sheer energy. It’s a simple idea: one spout of water plays against the curve of the dam itself and the turbulence of surging water at its base. I placed the entry point of the spout at the upper left hand corner, stabilizing it with the strong vertical wall at the left edge of the picture. I adjusted my framing so the curving spout of water strikes the river at lower right, literally creating a strong diagonal flow from corner to corner. I juxtapose this diagonal against a counter-diagonal – the base of the dam itself, which offers a sweeping curve through the picture from upper right to lower left. I use a shutter speed of 1/800th of a second to freeze the droplets of water as they fly through the air, and simultaneously freeze the movement of the river as it lashes the base of the dam as well. I had very little time to compose this image – the flying spray coated my lens and made picture-taking impossible within seconds. I had to envision the composition in my mind first, then lift the camera into position and shoot in one quick, fluid motion. It was not an easy task. Most of my shots showed nothing but a very wet lens. I had to practice the quick shot over and over until I could do it fast enough to succeed.
01-JUL-2004
Energy, Three Gorges Dam, Sandouping, China, 2004
Another view of the worlds largest dam in operation, and another message as well. In this attempt, I compose an image around three elements—linking a larger view of the dam itself, to a blast of water being released at its base, and the power towers that surround the project. I organized this image around a series of horizontal layers. At the base is frothing water and an explosive thrust of pent up energy coming through the dam. The middle layer features the dam’s upper portion, a series of vertical niches that carry the eye across the frame towards the base of the powerlines in the upper right hand corner. The top layer includes a red tower, an echo of the two similar red towers the bottom, as well as the powerline towers themselves. Diffusion caused by spray on my lens gives the image and its colors an overall muted tone, bringing a dream-like aura to the scene.
14-JUN-2004
Summer Rain, Nanjing Road, Shanghai, China, 2004
It rains a lot in China in June. That fact should not keep photographers from making expressive images. It should actually help them. Flat lighting such as this eliminates harsh shadows, intensifies color, and wet surfaces can often reflect our subjects back at us. Such is the case here. For this photograph, I found a useful high vantage point, a children’s playground set into the middle of Shanghai’s most famous pedestrian shopping street. I climbed a small tower built over a series of slides and bars. It even had a roof on it so I could keep my camera dry. This high position allowed me to compose a picture filling half the frame with the paving tiles of the street itself, which created a glistening reflective patterned grid. The top half of the picture was dominated by the ornate entrance to the East Asia Hotel, with its arched doorway, illuminated display panels, and a pair of brilliantly colored advertisements. All I needed was a determined shopper to complete the picture. One eventually obliged, and I photographed him as the curve of his umbrella passed beneath the curve of the hotel’s entrance.
18-APR-2004
Victorian Façade, Villa Montezuma, San Diego, California, 2004
I tried to capture the flavor of the Victorian era through the colors and design in this abstract image of one of San Diego’s well-preserved 19th Century buildings – the Villa Montezuma. In this image, I organize elements of light and shadow, color and form, man made materials and the work of nature, into a coherent whole. The bold black shadows lead the eye into the picture from the top left and then move us down into through middle of the image in rhythmic steps. Notice how the diagonal shadows at the center also echo the slant of the thin diagonal shadow at left, as well as the repeating diagonal grooves on the wallboards at lower right. I also organize this photograph with repeating colors. A green plant sprouts into the picture diagonally from the lower right hand corner, its leaves echoed by the horizontal green bar splitting the right hand side of the picture. Plant shapes also show up on the orange tiles at left. Finally, the orange shingles compliment the color of the tiles. Looked at as a whole, this very small slice of patterned light, shadow, and color takes us back to another era in San Diego’s history.
17-APR-2004
Storm’s End, Point Loma Harbor, San Diego, California, 2004
Seagulls are common subjects in travel photography. To make an uncommon picture of one, I’ve used backlighting to abstract the bird and the roof it is perched upon. When abstracted, the shapes of both roof and bird can speak to us without distraction, and more easily guide the eye through the picture. I included the rooftop rod at left because it is higher than the gull, and leads us down to it. I shot this gull many times, hoping to get its beak in this exact position. The shape of the beak echoes the pointed shape of the roof shingle just to the right of it. Five more tiles gradually lead us down and out of the picture.
The huge cloud behind the gull offers a visual counterpoint to the mass of the roof. Between the cloud and the roof, we see clear sky. This is called “negative space.” Negative space often helps us organize our pictures. In this case, it creates a light gray wedge that points directly to the gull, the subject of the photograph-.
17-APR-2004
Dragon Vane, Villa Montezuma, San Diego, California, 2004
The cupola of this bizarre Victorian mansion is topped by a weathervane featuring a fierce dragon instead of the traditional rooster or directional symbols. Using a telephoto converter lens to enlarge the small weathervane as much as possible, I tilted the camera to move the dragon into the upper left corner. Holding the dragon there, I then gradually pivoted the frame so that its lower right hand corner embraced the seam on the corner of the cupola’s roof. The eye now moves freely on a diagonal axis from corner to corner and the dragon seems to be ready to spin on its vane. The deeply saturated blue sky and orange roof offer an appropriately garish color match for the green dragon with the arrow in its mouth.
07-JAN-2004
Icy Rookery, Paradise Harbor, Antarctica, 2004
It is very difficult to compose large numbers of penguins into a coherent image. There were at least 40 Gentoos nesting and milling about in this part of their rookery, and I was looking for a way to make it all hang together. I noticed the shape of the iceberg that looms behind them -- it seems to have two heads, one going left, and the other right. I watched the behavior of the two penguins standing directly below. Their heads were down, watching the nests. After all, that’s their job. I hoped they would lift their heads up, and my wish was granted. Not only did they raise their heads – one penguin looks left and the other looks right, creating a rhythmic relationship with the iceberg behind them. All the other penguins in the picture now become context for this pair, as the picture organizes itself around this rhythmic repetition.