Going Back to School

Friday, October 21, 2022

Yep, you read that right.  I’m headed back to school once again.  It’s been a while, so I hope that I remember how this school thing goes.  Having gone to art school in 2020, it only makes sense that I step up my game for higher education here at Wilkes Community College.

Well, I might not actually be attending or enrolled there.  It was just a couple of hours spent behind a camera getting the need to photograph angles out of my system.  I don’t do a lot of architecture photography, but I do have fun with it occasionally.  The last time I set out to do it on purpose was last winter when I went into North Wilkesboro and spent a few hours walking around town.  That turned out pretty well considering I was just playing around with light and angles more than anything else.  More recently, I accidentally stumbled upon another opportunity to capture some hard lines of a building which was really quite fun. It did get me itching to do this type of photography once more.

The problem is that around here, there are just not that many locations which have the architecture for this type of photography.  What is here is not your polished surfaces and glass walls that offer a lot in terms of reflections.  Nope, around here, there is a lot of cement, brick, and wood.  I’ve spent some time going around looking for interesting buildings to photograph but haven’t really found anything that got my juices flowing.  With a want to go out and do some photography, I tried to come up with something that would work with the bright sun of a clear day.

The inspiration for this trek came from a suggestion that Toni has made a couple of times.  Since she is enrolled in Wilkes Community College where she is working through her nursing degree, she has spent some time on the different campuses and has had a chance to really get to know what they have to offer visually.  She has sent me photos of things that she has found interesting several times, but I just haven’t been inspired to go out there and shoot it.  The location isn’t really my type of subject matter in general, but I did file it away for a time when it might work out.  With the sky clear of clouds for the foreseeable future, I was looking for something that I could photograph in full sunlight where I could take advantage of the shadows.  This seemed like the right time to get it done.

The nice thing about doing photography around shadows is that you don’t really have to time the shoot around the typical golden hour times.  This type of photography works just as well during mid-day, and in many cases, that is the best light to shoot in because you get very strong shadows.  That gave me time to get up early this morning and put together a handout for different focusing techniques for one of my advanced mentorship clients.  I was actually surprised that I didn’t have one of these in my collection of handouts, so it really filled a void that I hadn’t noticed before.  This is how I like to teach.  Not only do I talk through things, I like to give visual aids, and then do practical work when applicable.  Now I have one more visual aid to help folks as they learn the different skills of photography.

When I got done with that handout, I was ready to load up the truck and head out to the campus.  I probably should have waited until Saturday, but since I was motivated to shoot, I figured it was probably a good idea to get on it.  On the way out there, I thought about one of my unwritten rules of photography.  If I have to wear my sunglasses to the location, I probably shouldn’t be working the camera.  Well, it was bright, and the sunglasses were on all the way to the school.  I had done a little research before heading out so I kind of knew what building I was looking for but wasn’t completely sure that it was going to be on this campus.  Before I got parked, I drove around the main portion of campus to see if I could find anything that looked like what I had seen in photos before.  I didn’t see that particular building during my drive through, but I saw some potential that I wanted to work with.

That was enough to get me parked and out on foot.  I just took my time and meandered around seeing how the light was acting on the different buildings.  During my explorations, I ended up in what I would call the main gathering spot between all of the buildings.  It was here that I found the building that I had seen in my research that had caught my eye.  The sun wasn’t hitting it, and I didn’t think that the sun would ever get a hold of it because of the tall buildings all around.  There was enough contrast there with the windows against the bricks that I still liked the different shapes that were created.  I pondered my options and thought about how to frame the shot for a few minutes as students walked around me.  I was well aware that I was standing there holding a tripod with a large backpack on my back.  I was prepared to have SWAT surround me and have my face buried in the concrete, but fortunately that didn’t happen.

I had already figured that the lens of choice was going to be my telephoto because I was going to be capturing small sections of buildings from a distance that was great enough to keep the perspective distortion to a minimum.  I went ahead and fitted the 70-200mm lens and a polarizer because of the windows.  I started to frame the shot up and quickly realized that I was at the end of the zoom right at 200mm.  I could have taken the shot like this, but I got to thinking about the soft focus of this lens at the end of the zoom range.  I knew that it was much sharper from 70-135mm, and that was where I wanted to be.  In order to get the most out of this lens at the distance that I was working, I decided to do something that I had never heard of anyone else doing before.  I had stumbled upon this by accident and had seen great success with it in the past.  I added the 2.0X extender that turned my lens into a 140-400mm lens with only a little light loss.  Since I wasn’t concerned with shutter speed, or a narrow depth of field, I had no problem with this addition between the lens and the camera.

I was able to keep my focal length at 260mm, but that was using the lens at 130mm which was insanely sharp.  I just had to dial in a bit more aperture to keep my depth of field in the ballpark at this focal length.  I shot a handful of compositions with this section of the building until I felt like I had everything that I needed and certainly had my first successful shot in the bag.  The next subject that I was interested in photographing was the building to the left of where I was standing.  There was one section of it that stood out from the rest because there was a little inset patio of sorts.  The light was just grazing the wall where the building cut into the porch which gave me the sculpting that I wanted.

I tried to get that shot set up but found that the perspective was too harsh from where I was standing.  To alleviate that, I backed up and found a slight rise to the sidewalk.  The extra altitude helped out tremendously and I was still close enough to be shooting at 192mm.  While that was in the range of the lens natively, I didn’t want to sacrifice sharpness, so I kept the extender on so that I was using the lens at 95mm which again was a beautifully sharp focal length for the lens.

I had actually made the decision on the previous composition that I was going to be shooting these as black and white images since color really didn’t play a part.  To help with the exposures, I had switched the camera over to B&W mode and was shooting accordingly.  I was feeling pretty good about this composition and only had to make a couple of very small adjustments before I had the image that I felt was going to be the one to keep.

While I had been working that section of the building, I had been watching folks move between the buildings and walk up the stairs which were between the two buildings that I had shot.  I really enjoy photographing stairs, and these caught my eye because of the shadow of the railing that was falling on the steps.  I moved over to them and started to see what I had to work with.  My first few exposures were done including parts of the railing, but that was getting confusing to look at.  I decided to eliminate the railing completely and just focus on the steps and shadows.  I was nearly at 300mm which was still in that sharp focal length of the lens so there was no reason to pull the extender out.  I liked the compression of the scene and how the lens was making the stairs appear.

I actually spent some time here and tried different compositions to see what actually worked out the best.  What I ended up deciding on was a tight crop where the left side of the frame cut into the shadow, while the right side came very close to the shadow.  This forced the attention on the shadow as the main subject rather than the steps.  The double shadow had the appearance of a stick figure sitting down and that was what I chose to highlight in the composition.

It was during this particular subject that I could overhear one of the students asking a friend what I was taking a photo of.  I get it, not too many photographers are out in the middle of the day with a very long telephoto lens taking a photograph of stairs which are maybe 10 feet away.  Had there been somebody on those stairs, there would have been no question, but without your typical subject in the frame, I just looked like I might not all be there.  It didn’t bother me that I was starting to attract attention.  After all these years, I was quite used to it.  I was in their domain after all.

When I was finally satisfied that I had what I needed with the steps, I picked up everything and began to continue my search for another subject to photograph.  As I was walking back towards the parking lot, I saw the other side of the building that I had started out photographing.  It was pretty much designed the same way with the exception of a missing window, but the light looked a little different.  I also saw this more of a horizontal composition than the vertical that I had spent the most time on with the other side.  This composition went much faster because I kind of knew what I was doing by this point.  I still focused on framing things in groups of three to keep it visually interesting.  The lack of the big window gave me more options since I wasn’t worried about reflections.  It was all about the tonal values of the scene and how they defined the shapes throughout the frame.

After about three exposures, I finally did move out of the area.  I needed to go to the other side of the building because there was a section of windows that I wanted to photograph after having seen them from the truck.  As I got near the parking lot, I turned around and something caught my eye.  It was the convergence of several buildings which came together in a most pleasing manner.  I shifted from side to side to see how the buildings lined up with each other and decided that this was going to be a good opportunity for some geometrical shapes to come together.

I still had the lens set up the way I had started out and that worked perfectly well for this composition since I needed a reach of nearly 300mm to get the framing that I wanted here.  I was still shooting in black and white on the camera and thought for sure that this was going to be a great candidate for that treatment as well.  It took me a few minutes to get the shot framed up the way that I wanted it, but when I did, it looked great on the LCD.  I shot a couple of frames and then decided to see what it would look like in color.  I changed the picture style to landscape which gave me an idea of what a saturated image would look like.  I was surprised when I really liked what I saw.  I actually liked the color tones that were present and thought that they balanced very well with the sky.  I was torn as to which way I wanted to have this one presented.

In the end, I opted for the color presentation because of that color balance.  It seemed to be more engaging to my eyes and had just a subtle pop added with the color.  Had it not been for the blue sky, this would have been black and white all day long.  The color also helped tell the story that I started to see with this image.  I kept tracking the buildings from top to the bottom.  They were obviously at different heights which implied some sort of importance.  At the lowest level captured, there was a roof drain of sorts.  Beneath the drain was a long brown stain from the water over time.  The brown staining at the bottom of a collection of buildings would indicate that something was rolling downhill.  That substance had to go somewhere once it hit the bottom and here it is.  Interpret it as you will, but I liked the story with this drain.

After successfully capturing the buildings in the distance, I finally made it over to the other side of the buildings to where the windows were located.  It wasn’t the windows that I was after here though. I wanted to capture the recesses from the windows.  I struggled with this composition much longer than I thought I should have.  I just wasn’t getting the right look to the scene.  I was actually starting to want to go wider than 140mm which meant that it was time to take the extender off of the lens.  That was a real quick process, and I was back to business just in time to realize that my battery was dying.  I swapped the battery for a fresh one and resumed my plight for finding the right composition.  It still wasn’t coming easily though.  The scene just didn’t feel quite right to me.  I shot a handful of frames before I gave up on it.  The shadows weren’t quite strong enough for me to really sculpt out the shapes.  The visual progression seemed wrong as well.

It wasn’t until I got home and started to process the images that I realized what the problem was.  I had gone through and added a bunch of contrast to the scene to deepen the shadows as well as giving the siding a bit more texture.  The tones were looking good to me at this point, but the visual progression was still off.  I tried to flip the image upside down for a truly abstract presentation.  I liked that, but the shapes didn’t make sense to me.  It was this change, however, that gave me the idea that the tracking through the scene was a problem based on the side of the building that the shadow was on.  I needed the light to progress in the opposite direction.  I flipped the image left to right while keeping it right side up.  That immediately helped the image, and my eyes were able to go through the scene correctly.  This one little change made the difference between a keeper image and one that was destined for the trash.

Looking at the time, I was needing to get wrapped up pretty soon because I was wanting to swing by and visit with Toni while she was on lunch break during her lab.  I still had time for another couple of compositions though.  I decided to walk around the back of the building this time to see if there was anything that I might have missed.  I wasn’t really seeing anything at all until I got to the stairs that I had photographed before.  It wasn’t the stairs this time that caught my attention.  It was the planters at the base that held small trees next to the picnic tables.  The trees that they housed were bright yellow with the changing leaves.  These leaves had mostly fallen, and there was one planter where a good pile of fresh yellow leaves had collected at the corner.  The color really stood out in the concrete setting, and I really liked the hard angles that I was seeing of the planter.  As I looked at the surrounding scene, the lines of the walkway struck me as complementary to the planter.  There was a shadow of the picnic table on one side, and the shadowed side of another planter to another side.  I saw a composition developing right before my eyes.

I got the camera right on the edge of the landing of the stairs and started to work the composition out.  I had to elevate the camera well above my head in order to get the pavement line separated from the corner of the planter.  I chose a composition where the colors were just in the lower right corner with the various lines and textures filling most of the frame as negative space.  The shadows at the top and the right framed the image while adding different shapes which wouldn’t have normally been a factor.  This was certainly not a normal composition for me, but I really like how it turned out.  The single splash of color really stood out in the scene for me.

I guess it was a nice departure from my black and white mood that I had been in for pretty much the entire day.  In fact, with the exception of trying the one set of buildings with a full color profile, the camera had been in B&W mode since I had gotten started with the day.  This scene absolutely required color, so I had changed the camera back to my regular color setting.  Now that I had the taste of a full color scene, I think I was more open to including the leaves in the photographs because that was what I started to look for at this point.

I continued to walk along the parking lot, and I looked around for other scenes that interested me.  Nothing was really hitting me as photo worthy though.  The light was still very good for being noon, but for what I was trying to capture it was working perfectly.  I passed the administration building and continued along the sidewalk until I found an edge of a building that looked like a German shore battery from WWII.  It was almost a turret style extension on the building and right behind it was a tree in full Fall color with the clear blue sky right behind it.  The building was interesting, the colors were amazing, and I wanted to try and get a composition put together with this scene.

The composition actually came together quicker than I thought it would.  It was a matter of introducing visual tension by placing the point of highest contrast to the edge of the frame to make it a visual anchor.  The rest of the scene was dictated by the lines of the building and how the tree filled the background.  I decided to use the trees that were just below the window as a lower framing element as well as a color contrast to the bright orange tree.  A couple of small shifts, and an extreme elevation of the camera allowed me to fill the background with the orange tree allowing just enough blue to come through for a bit of color cohesiveness with the cooler concrete tones.

I had made a composition that is really unlike me, but it is one that has made the top two or three images from the day.  I love these afterthought images that I make after pretty much deciding I’m done with a location.  I have no pressure to create, but a sight inspires me to make an image.  That was what happened here and having my creative eyes open and receptive allowed the composition to formulate within.  I was certainly done at this point.  It was time to go and see Toni who was going to be going on break in just a few minutes.  I thought about breaking the camera down right here for ease of transport, but something told me to keep it out just a little bit longer.

As I was going back to the truck, I saw the old caboose that was sitting beside the parking lot.  Toni had wanted me to get a photo of that for some time now, but the light was wrong, and I didn’t see enough visual interest there right now to pursue it any further.  I also noticed the clock that was set up by the tennis courts as another subject that Toni had suggested that I work.  There wasn’t much to it at all.  The sky behind it was clear and blue.  The clock had a very ornate design to it that was interesting, and Toni had mentioned just that previously.  The side that was in the sunlight had some gasket materials across the face of the clock that were distracting, although would fit my decay theme quite well.  Looking on the other side, the face of the clock was in full shade but there were no distractions on the face.  The sun was sculpting the shape of the housing quite nicely.  There wasn’t much that I could do with this scene since there was no visual interest in the sky at all.  Since I was here and had the camera out, I decided to see if I could get a composition that I liked.  I tried a couple of different things but didn’t really care for any of them.  They were just too simple and had too much negative space.

As almost a last resort, I went with a vertical composition where I put the clock at an angle.  The side that was visible towards me was the side in full sun which showed off the different layers to the housing.  that actually seemed to work.  It was kind of centered but canted to the side enough to keep it from being stagnant.  I noticed the time as being three till noon.  I could get the photo now, but the hands were so close together that they would be a distraction.  How cool would it be to get the photo at exactly noon?  That would get the hands overlapped for added simplicity to the image, and the viewer could concentrate on the Roman numerals and the shape of the clock itself.  I wanted that extra three minutes and cranked off two exposures just in case a bug flew across the scene.  That was the end of my day, and now I packed the camera up.

I had been here for about an hour and a half now.  During that time, I had shot 36 images which wasn’t that many in comparison to other treks I’ve been on lately.  However, there was a lot of fiddling with compositions that ate up a lot of time between exposures.  I didn’t want to think about how many photos might make it into the keeper stack though.  I was thinking that there were four that I was going to like enough to keep from this.  I was happy with that, and I was ready to go and see Toni.

When I got back from visiting her and a couple of her friends, I got the photos loaded onto the computer and started culling them. My first culling yielded 25 frames that I wanted to look at closer.  I whittled that down to 17 and started doing the edits.  By the end of it all, I had decided on a total of nine images that I liked.  The ones that I liked the most were the ones that I gave the least amount of thought to.  My favorite from the day was that silly clock that Toni had spotted for me months ago…possibly a year ago.  I had chosen to go with a black and white presentation on it because I wanted the attention on the shape and the content rather than the green housing for the clock and the deep blue sky.  I used a number of editing tricks on this one to make it really pop, and I am really excited about how it turned out.  I’m also very fond of the building under the orange tree, and the planter that I shot from the stairs above.  All three of these images were reactive and not planned at all.  I can’t argue with the outcome though.

I do hope that you have enjoyed this trek and the photos.  I know that they are not quite my norm, but occasionally I like to stray a little bit from my landscape and decay roots to try other things and feed my desire to create.  If you are interested in purchasing any of these as prints, you can order directly from this website, or you can talk to me for different options in sizes or media.  No matter what you choose, there is just nothing better than holding a physical print of a photograph and hanging it on the wall.

If you like my style of photography and want me to memorialize you or a loved one in a photograph, I do offer portrait services and have a fully equipped studio that I work out of.  I would love to discuss your portrait needs and come up with a creative plan to capture those moments for you.  The consultation is free, and I’ll work with you through all of the planning stages so that the clothing and style of the set all work together.  Let’s get that collaboration started!

Until next time….