Wednesday, October 19, 2022
As I was showing Toni the photos from the day, she said “From where I’m standing, I see a hand holding the gas can.” After looking at the photo for about 30 minutes or so, I hadn’t seen that but the minute she mentioned it, I could see it bright as day. It was my first attempt at a photo like this and I was so focused on other aspects, I didn’t even let my imagination go wild with it. Toni showed me another side to a photo that I was pretty interested in and gave me another reason to like it.
Speaking of hands, I’m crossing my fingers right now, which makes it very hard to type. For those of you who subscribe to the blog, you saw several new blog entries hitting your inbox first thing this morning. I’m sure you are aware by now that I’ve been having some difficulties with the email notifications, and I apologize for that. We have been working on getting that straightened out and I’m crossing my fingers that when I hit “publish” at the end of this one, an email will be sent out today. Currently, it seems that blogs are running about two weeks behind for notifications. We shall see how things go here in a couple of hours. Speaking of email notifications, if you haven’t subscribed to the blog yet, please consider doing so at the bottom of the homepage here at www.gkiserphotography.com. When things are working right, you will be the first to get notified of new photos and new blog entries like my Behind the Camera series. It doesn’t cost a thing, and you don’t have to wait for the photos to be posted on social media to see the new ones.
Let’s get on with today’s trek. You can tell from the title what this one is going to be about. Now that the weather is cooling off, I’m trying to get some mentoring hours in the field with John. We have actually been out quite a bit here lately and have been working a myriad of subjects. We have worked an old, abandoned house near Lenoir, captured Fall colors at Thunder Hill, and worked a terrific sunrise at Doughton Park. This has all taken place in about a month’s time. Of course, these mentoring sessions are not about me getting photographs, and for the most part, I wait until the session is over before I start really getting any of my own photographs. Today was a bit of an exception because this was not a location of my choosing. Had I known about it, I would have definitely suggested it, but this property belongs to a friend of John’s and I had never seen it. Since we had permission to be on the property for the day, I wanted to take advantage of the great location while I was there. It also allowed me to test out some compositions so that I could talk John through them. The end result was that John would get the best experience possible because I would be familiar with some of the compositions.
The session was all going to be based on the clouds which one of my apps was forecasting, while the other was showing full sun all day. As we got to the point during the day when John was free, the clouds were looking good, and we went ahead and set up the session. It was partly cloudy with the sun peeking through as much as it was hidden behind the clouds. It was as good a day as I could see in the near future to get out and try this location which he had mentioned a little over a week before. I was looking forward to seeing the place because I knew that there were two cars from the 60’s there as well as a couple of wooden structures. John had sent me cell phone photos of the location to see if it would be something worth working with. It was a great find, and he did well to see the potential in it.
As it turns out, this location is only about five miles from home, so it is right under my nose. There was no way to see any of this from the street, and no clues at the front of the house to indicate what might be found behind it. It is a very good reminder that no matter how good I am at finding these scenes, there are so many more out there that I will probably never see. When we got there, I did the normal thing and took John for a walk, or rather, he took me for a walk through the property to see what we had to work with. His photos had been very accurate about what was there. It was set up in two locations. Up close to the house was a barn converted to a garage. In the barn portion there was just your typical storage things. There was an old sickle mower by a tree nearby, and a Ford sedan just beyond that. Down the path was a larger barn that contained a 60’s model Cadillac. We talked about the compositional ideas with each scene to get an idea of what we were going to be working with. As we talked, the clouds would move in and out of the way of the sun causing a huge swing in the lighting. That gave us a chance to discuss lighting qualities that we might be faced with.
After a few minutes of seeing what we had to work with, we got our gear, and I had John pick out what he wanted to work with first. He wanted to work with the barn to start with because he really liked the textures of the wood and the way that the siding was starting to separate from the frame. I decided that while he was setting up his composition, I would start working with the car so that I would be out of his way. I started out with my long lens that I have had so much luck with here lately. The compositions began flowing as I got to know the car and where the points of interest were.
I found out rather quickly that the long lens wasn’t quite right for this car. I kept having to shoot through too many tall weeds which prompted me to want to get closer. For that to work, I needed to switch out to my standard lens which was what I ended up using for the rest of the day. I shot a few overall images of the car as well as getting some isolations of the headlights which were the easiest compositions to figure out. That got me in the creative swing of things and allowed me to start seeing other compositions developing. After a few minutes of getting to know the Ford, I went to check on John to see how his composition was coming.
He had picked out an interesting corner of the barn and had a decent composition put together. He talked me through his thought process of why he made the choices that he did. With his concepts in mind, I made some small adjustments which he approved of. We then started to learn the importance of waiting on the light. One of the things that John really doesn’t like in his photos is shadow and is trying to do everything that he can to avoid it. With the sun going in and out, it was a great chance to demonstrate how the strength of the light source influences shadows, and when to get the photograph captured for the right effect. It is topics like this that are why the mentorships are so beneficial to the learning process. You just can’t read about these things or watch videos on them to learn it. You have to see it, and work with it to understand things like light. I’ve worked with it for many years now and have the insight to be able to explain what is happening with the light and how it affects the scene. I share this knowledge on these mentorship outings with the hopes that the client can fast forward through months or years of learning.
As he got finished with the composition that he was working on with the barn, he decided to go inside for a bit to work on a photo of a scene by the doorway. We had gone in together and looked around to see what he found interesting. He landed on a scene with an old yellow Prestone coolant jug. His instincts are very good because I had already spotted that as being something that stood out from the crowd within the barn. I helped him to get a composition figured out and then assisted with fine tuning it. I was actually pretty happy with how it was turning out even though it wasn’t something that I would typically shoot. John was happy with it and decided that he wanted to move to the sickle mower as his next subject. While he was working on figuring out his composition, I went back to the Ford to see what else I could do.
I had moved over to the passenger side at this point and was trying to get a shot of the rear quarter with the Fall colors in the woods to the rear. I had worked out a composition that avoided the black conduit pipes in the foreground and showed off more of the trees and the sky. For this composition, I could tell that the exposure was going to be very difficult. I went to my bag and grabbed a 2-stop soft edged ND Grad which I slid in to control the exposure above the car. That seemed to do the trick, but I wasn’t really liking the composition at all at this point. It seemed off to me. It was at this point, I started to see the conduit as a sort of foreground interest, possibly a leading line, and certainly something that would fill the negative space leading up to the car should I decide to eliminate the sky from the composition.
I framed up the new concept for a composition and saw that I still had the grad filter on. I was going to take it out but decided against it because the woods in the background were quite a bit brighter than the car. I just adjusted the filter a bit to compensate for the new composition and fired off a new exposure that had a much better histogram as well as visual flow through the image. I started to fine tune the placement of the camera and told John that this was the point where I would start talking to myself as I figured out the composition. I’m not crazy, my Mother had my tested. The witty conversation I was engaged in worked very well because I had landed on a composition that included an oddly shaped tree that framed the shape of the windshield of the car. The conduit performed its job very well as filling the negative space in the foreground and providing some leading lines to the car. Actually, if you look at it long enough it turns into an arrow pointing at the car.
I was pretty satisfied with what I had come up with and went over to check on John. He had that all-too-familiar look on his face that I get when I can’t figure out a composition. Sure enough, he was stuck and was having a hard time. I helped him figure out how to make the composition work, and then he was ready to move to another part of the unit. This was going to be a much more complicated composition as he was focusing on the gears, axle, and bracing. We went through several variations of a composition in an attempt to find something that worked. It was a very difficult task, but we landed on something that looked like it would work. The problem we were facing was that the sun was too bright for the composition. There were clouds moving in and I estimated that there was a minute or so before the light hit. While we were waiting on the light, I ran back over to the Ford and switched sides. I could work the driver’s side in the shade while we were waiting on the light, and the soft light of the clouds would only help the lighting I was using.
I grabbed my camera and went to the back end of the car to focus on the C pillar emblem and possibly the wheel. I shot a few images of the emblem, but the lines didn’t really work together as nicely as they had done for the Fairlane I had shot a while back. I decided to move around and try some different things like focusing on the wheel. This seemed to work much better, and I really liked the blue detail on the hubcap combined with the single yellow leaf. About this time, I noticed that the light was getting softer, so I made sure that John was seeing that shift in light which he was. He was starting to make exposures at this point, and I kept on working my composition as well.
I expanded my idea beyond just the leaf and the wheel to include more of the quarter panel to give another shape to the composition. The curves introduced by the fender arch and the door jamb framed the wheel nicely and started to highlight the repeating circles surrounding the blue emblem. It was a different composition than I normally would have opted for, but I kind of liked the simplicity of it in this situation. With the light going well, I turned my attention back to the pillar for another idea. I flipped the camera on its side and framed up a composition where I used the wheel, emblem, and door handle as subjects. The body lines of the car continued in a diagonal fashion through the image, and this was really coming together.
The light started to get brighter again as the sun began to escape from the clouds once again. I went over to see what John had come up with during that brief period of soft light. He showed me the series of photos that he had taken and the slight adjustments to the composition he had made. I think there were five variations that he showed me, and my favorite out of the bunch was an adjustment that he had made to the original composition that I had suggested. It was stronger than my composition was and worked very well with the light. I was quite proud of him!
He decided that he wanted to work with the Ford at this point before it was time for him to go. I got my gear moved out of the way and we started to look at compositions that he was interested in. He started with a shot of the front of the car concentrating on the FORD letters and a missing piece of trim. There were a few teaching points that came up and he tried a few compositions from the front of the car. We then moved back in an attempt to get an overall shot of the car. The sun was getting bright at this point but seemed to be shining on the car rather evenly. this was another chance to talk about light and what it could do for his photos. In this situation, the deep shadows were putting the background into a darker tone than the car which helped the car jump from the trees.
As we were looking at his composition and making tweaks, I could see the potential here for a better shot than I had done earlier with flatter light. Once I got John situated and dealt with a polarizer issue, I brought my camera over and positioned it slightly to the left so that he still had the better angle. I dialed in the exposure that I wanted and fired off a few shots as the breeze calmed down. I usually don’t like working with the sun in this fashion, but I was liking this image quite a bit more than what I had shot earlier. That held true when I started to do the edits. I processed them both, but the flatter light one just lacked the punch that I wanted. Even without this second version, I probably would have trashed that first one since it really lacked something important. I’m glad I recognized a superior situation when I was pretty much done with photographing the car. I’m also glad that John had the chance to capture the car in this dynamic light.
When he was done capturing the car in the variations of light that were present, it was time to get things packed up as he had other engagements to take care of. We did a quick review of the day and I made sure that there were no more questions. Before he left, I asked if his friend would mind if I stuck around to get a few more photos before I left. I wanted to try a couple of things in the barn that I had seen while he was working in there before. It wasn’t a problem, so I bid him farewell and grabbed my camera to go inside of the barn.
the scene that had caught my eye was one that I really don’t know how to categorize. There were a couple of gas cans sitting next to a rake. I can’t really explain why this drew my eye, but I liked the monochromatic feel of the scene with the pop of red at the cleaner parts of the nearest gas can. It was in a very dark corner of the barn which I wasn’t overly worried with because nothing was moving and I could just do a long exposure as needed. It took a little while to find a pleasing composition by changing the camera position several times. I finally landed on what I thought would work and dialed in an exposure. To my surprise, I was looking at an exposure time of 30 seconds, and even had to bump the ISO slightly to get that. I still had the polarizer on which ate up a lot of light, but I needed it due to the extra saturation in the red it allowed for.
It was this photograph that we were looking at when Toni said that she could see a hand holding the gas can. The minute she said that, I could see a right hand with the thumb and pointer finger clasped together with two other fingers spread out. The pinky is most certainly under the can. It was a very neat visualization caused by the composition and that might have been what drew me to this on a very subconscious level. I’m glad that I decided to shoot this scene although I am not exactly sure what I am going to do with it at this point. It does pair well with the second image that I shot in the barn.
Since I had a fair amount of time invested in figuring out a composition with the old Prestone jug from earlier, I wanted to go ahead and capture my own version of it before I left. The lighting was much better here, and my exposure was only 3.2 seconds. The chain and spider web really caught my attention when I was helping John set his composition up. That big splash of yellow pulled the eyes in and gave the image a nice bit of pop as well. The bottle of oil was an interesting element because it was nearly covered in webs. Not wanting to make the image concentrate on the text of the oil bottle, I went with a narrow depth of field which forced that into soft focus, but clear enough that you can readily tell what it is. It didn’t take long to get the composition since I had already worked through it about two hours before. I checked the inside of the barn once again and didn’t find anything else that I really wanted to photograph.
Before calling it a day and packing up, I wanted to look at the car one last time. The sun was out in full force at this point, and it was causing some pretty harsh shadows over most of the area. I moved to the back of the car where I would be able to find shadows to work in, and I also realized that I hadn’t really bothered with that side of the car yet. There was no bumper to the car, and no emblems. The only point of interest was the taillight which I’ve shot plenty of taillights here lately. I didn’t want to try the same old thing here, and I was also not seeing much in the way of complimenting elements to go with the light. I decided to do something that I have never done before to see if it worked.
I framed up an image where I cropped the light on two sides and used the starburst trim around the backup light as a cropping point giving equal distance to the center lamp. The red just became a field of color for the starburst. The body lines progressed in a diagonal fashion from that light which added some visual interest. I let the bumper support fall into shadow and had everything go soft beyond the light. It was an odd composition, but even looking at it now, I am forced to look into it deeper because of how it is composed. I think that it is successful although I’m not sure how well it will wear over time. That is something that we will have to look at later on after it has had some time to breathe as a photograph.
That pretty much wrapped up my time here. I didn’t go to the other section of the property because the light was just too strong. I knew that John wanted to come back so there would be another chance to photograph that car. For now, I had 65 images on the memory card which was quite a bit more than I had suspected. When I got home, I brought the photos into Lightroom and ended up processing 10 of the photos. One of them didn’t make the cut and was deleted, leaving nine images that I am actually quite happy with.
It had been a great day in the field with John who is really coming along with his advanced mentorship. Each time we go out he ready for more information and he is taking all of these tips and tricks to heart. If this is a program that you might be interested in, there is a waiting list, so it would be beneficial to get your name in the hat earlier, rather than later. I am booked at least into January at the rate that I’m going with another mentorship which is going to leave an opening. Of course, I can still take on a number of per-session mentorships by the hour if that will work for you. I’m always happy to talk with you about your options and to see what is right for you and how you learn.
Also, keep in mind that I have a Decay Workshop coming up in November that still has a couple of slots left to be filled. There is still time to reserve you spot, so if you are on the fence about attending, go ahead and get signed up. This has historically been a favorite workshop among clients. Don’t miss out on this one!
If any of the images here speak to you, and you would like a print, please let me know, or you can order directly through the website if you are wanting the stock sizes and media. For larger sizes, or to order metal or canvas prints, you just need to contact me and get an order started. There is just no better way to enjoy photography than being able to hold it and hang it on the wall.
Thank you for joining me on this hybrid trek/mentoring session. I do hope that you have enjoyed the story as well as the photographs that resulted. I’m not sure where I will end up next, but stick around and we will find out together. Hopefully there will be an email going out announcing this new entry. If you have missed any previous blog posts, you can always see each one that I publish here. I try to keep these little dear diary entries entertaining and educational so that you can understand parts of the creative process as well as the highs and the lows associated with any creative process. It is always fun for me to refer back to these years later to see what I was thinking at the time and compare it to my current headspace.
Until that next time…
Remember to use the code KISER10 to get 10% off your purchase
