My Summer Project

 

 

The summer months are to me what winter months are to some photographers, time to stay in.  July and August are near my slowest months of the year - only November and March are slower.  A lot of that has to do with the light not being great to work with for any length of time.. Also, the summer months in this region usually mean that streams come to a trickle, the green canopy is drab, wildlife is harder to come by, and wildflowers are very scattered.  So venturing out in the summer often doesn't produce as well as the other seasons.

June was a very busy month.  I was on the road a lot and it was good to be home for a while. So I made it a point to stay home and shoot. 

In my backyard I have several beds of Black Eye Susan's that come into bloom at the end of June and usually make it through the summer.  Instead of trying to find inspiration traveling about, I'd try it in my backyard.  I gave myself a summer project.  For six weeks, I would shoot nothing but Black Eye Susan's. 

 

 

 

ACT I

The Portraits

My first forays into this summer project were variations of portraitures. At first I shot fairly straight, classical style portraitures, like the ones above.  After a couple sessions of getting acquainted with my subject matter, I then began to experiment with exposures while framing portraitures. I wanted to see where I could lose detail and still make a good image.  Generally my exposure philosophy it to let shadows go dark and control the highlights.  In the below images, I did the opposite and let the highlights go so I could reveal the darks.  This technique worked best in mild flat light situations.  But even in flat light, the results could vary tremendously. 

 

 

 

After working over a series of Portraitures that highlighted the flower itself, I decided to explore some compositions that looked at the flower in relation to other flowers.  This was best achieved, for me at least, by manipulating the depth of field to the shallow side.  Images with deep DOF were confusing and gave little to sense of dimension.  A few attempts yielded interesting results but the strongest images tended to be those that had shallower depths of field like the images below.

 

 

 

I was attracted to the subject below because of the coloring of the Black Eye Susan's.  It was a tough subject to work because this area of the flowers were pretty dense.  Though it may be a bit cluttered looking, I included it here because I enjoyed the shape and colors that are displayed.

 

 

Anyone who has been on a workshop of mine or is familiar with my work knows I have a fondness for the diffusion filter.  On several occasions during this shoot I used it.  In the final edit though, I found that most of the work either was sub par or simply didn't excite me enough to include it here.  The images below is an example of a portrait with and without the diffuser.  It also happens to be one of my better executions with the filter in this series.

 

with diffusion

without

 

It did not take long to run the course of portraitures; at least in the more classical sense.  My next step in the process came in the form of shooting shoot thru's.  A shoot thru is when you spot a subject but you try to put other objects close to the lens while shooting at open apertures to create a blurry framing effect.  If you've never done this, it can be quite challenging and fun.  One of the keys to success for this method is to use a longish focal length, 100mm minimum and apertures of f/5 or wider.  I found this style of shooting to be more creatively challenging than shooting the straight portraiture.  But like so many other things about this summer project, every action, every experimentation led to more creative approaches, thought processes and different ways of looking at and executing images from within this limited realm. I could tell with every session, regardless of the output, that I was pushing myself forward in a positive and exciting way.

Below are 6 examples of different kinds of shoot thru's.

 

 

 

 

 

ACT II

ODDS, SODS & STUDIES

The point of my project was to reach into the ol' bag of creativity and look at my subject in new and different ways.  That meant trying different compositional approaches, different looks at parts of the plants, different points of focus..., basically anything that wouldn't fall into a normalish category.  And when they did resemble a more normal image, they were taken because they caught my eye in the way the subject played in its environment.

This next set of images didn't really fit into any of the categories I had already conceived.  They might border on portraiture or abstract but I think in comparison with what fell into those categories, these images deserved their own lot.   

The first two images in this set were shot in the direction of the sun.  One includes a misshapen looking orb and the other is an oddish look at back lighting.  The image of the orb (sun) was to see what kind of silhouette I could pull off that would reveal the shape of the Black Eye Susan.  The backlighting was an attempt at looking underneath the blooms to see what shapes I could explore using backlighting.

 

 

Sometimes while shooting I would see things that sparked an interest.  Whether it was the odd turn of a petal, the symmetry of a shape or the lack of maturation within a plant that would grab my attention.  When I encountered those moments, I tried to express them in a way that would best reflect them.

 

 

 

 

 

The Black Eye Susan proved to be an intriguing, interesting and eclectic subject.  Its various shapes, sizes and colorings were both subtle and bizarre in their differences.  Over the course of the month I tried to express these traits in a way that would highlight their uniqueness.  Often times it was a petal or two that caught my eye in the way it twisted or turned.  I would then focus my energy in expressing that shape as best I could.

 

 

 

 

I tried to avoid the ol water droplet on petal shot.  But they were too much to resist and so I shot a handful of them with the notion to stay away from the stereotypical shot.  In some cases I was successful and in others, I just couldn't help myself but to stay to formula.

The 5 images below are my favorites from those images taken.

 

 

 

 

A portion of the plant that I found myself neglecting was the Stem.  Though most stems tend to be uninteresting, I came to see that the Black Eye Susan stem could be shot and revealed in some interesting ways.  Below are a few looks at what I was able see by focusing in on the stem.

 

 

 

 

This last oddity is a shoot thru.  I liked the flow of the petals and the under-parts and the way they balanced each other.

 

 

ACT III

LIFE

As I continued my project, I began to notice so much more going on in this little world.  Spiders, bees, butterflies, beetles and all sorts of bugs abounded in this patch of Black Eye Susan's.  Though shooting critters is not a specialty of mine, I would have been remiss in not taking pictures of all the hanging around as well as scurrying that takes place in the early mornings of life in the Black Eye Susan stand.  By far the most interesting looking creature I encountered was the Ambush Bug.  This tiny prehistoric looking creature lies in wait (much like a crab spider) for an unsuspecting bee, fly, butterfly, beetle, whatever, to come into its path and BAM!, attacks (or should I say ambush) its prey and kills it.

 

I shot a lot of these creatures.  This one perched itself nicely against a background of yellow that I could not pass on.
 

Shooting against clean backgrounds helped make these creatures stand out more.

 

When I bumped the plant while adjusting my composition, it went into a defensive posture.

 

I'll show more Ambush bug shots but first I'd like to display some other encounters I came upon.  Flies, which normally always seem on the move, were very cooperative creatures in the early morning.  Their movements were slower and they didn't seem to be in a hurry.  It didn't look like they were moist and restricted but none-the-less it seemed easier to get shots of them and Hover flies during the morning hours.

 

 

 

The most prominent spider I encountered in this project was the Daddy Long Legs.  Again, like many of the bugs I came across, it was the morning hours that I found the most success.  With slow and careful movements I was able to shoot a few images without disturbing them. 

 

This image was shot using a shoot thru technique.

 

 

 

It was interesting to see the way this spider would bunker down in the curl of petals and also use other flowers as roof tops.  If I kept my movements slow and avoided bumping the plants they were inhabit ting for the moment, they would often make for wonderful subjects to explore. 

 

 

 

Maybe it's a digital anomaly but I have found temp shifts far more drastic in the digital realm than in the film.  Look how the petals differ in color. 

 

The scourge of any garden is the Aphid.  Fortunately my flowers had very few.  I made sure to do some light spraying early and it helped keep their presence to a minimum.  The few that I did run into, I decided to try and photograph.

 

 

The more I paid attention, the more I witnessed.  Sometimes creatures were just too quick or at bad angles to photograph.  Other times I just watched natures movements unfold and was thankful for that.  It was interesting watching small creatures scurry around petals while bigger insects tended to stay in one spot for periods of time before quickly disappearing into the growth.  

 

 

 

On occasion I did come across a dead subject.  I wondered what would kill things and leave them there?  In the case of this Honey Bee, I noticed an Ambush Bug only a few petals away. 
 

 

Just a few petals away lurked this hiding Ambush Bug.

 

Like I had stated before, the Ambush Bug was the most fascinating creature I came across on this project.  Sometimes they would be tucked away in the petals and sometimes they seemed to camp out right on top of the flower awaiting the arrival of some unfortunate prey. In looking at this thing I could easily envision it being a 30 foot dinosaur.   

 

 

Playing Peek-a-Boo?  I doubt it.

 

I'll be honest and say I don't have a great deal of patience for butterflies and such.  The chase doesn't thrill me as I know it does others.  With that said though, I will not hesitate to shoot butterflies, skippers and such if they are willing to stay in one spot for a few moments.  The Skipper below must have stayed around this flower (without flying and coming back) for almost two full minutes, which is like a lifetime for these creatures.  I worked my way in to get this shot and it's as close as I was able to get before it left.

 

 

ACT IV:

ABSTRACTS

As this project evolved, the most exciting things to occur for me, was being able to see and present these flowers in an abstract form.  Abstract images and their interpretation are in the eye of the beholder but I do believe that most of you will concur that the following images can be considered abstract.  

There were several approaches to this way of shooting but two prevailed as the dominate technique to achieve my goals.  The first was combining a 1.5X tele-converter and 12mm extension tube to my 100mm macro lens.  The other was using a Lensbaby.  For those who do not know what a Lensbaby is, it is a lens that has a bellows like device on it so you change the perspective of the subjects you are shooting.  You can interchange aperture rings to add or subtract depth of field.  Moving the bellows around greatly affects the blurring that occurs when using it.  Shoot with it straight on and you get a straighter shot but it will still have a softness to it that is most appealing.  

The first series of images work as a segue into this section from the Life series because the shots are of a beetle on a petals edge -  But I shot it using the LensBaby.

 

 

This one I used the smudge tool to swirl around the elements and give a bit of a Salvador Dali feel.

 

The Lensbaby is a new tool to the bag.  I've had it less than a year but I can tell the possibilities are mind boggling.  I'm still in the early stages of exploring this tool but it has certainly added an element of fun to shooting.  Below are a few examples of some of the possibilities.  Most of these were shot with either the f/2.8 or f/4 ring attached.

 

 

 

One morning I came across a curl in a petal.  At first glance it seemed like very little.  I happened to be scanning for images through my viewfinder at focus points close to maxing out my macro lens, when I came across the wonderful subtlety of a curve in a flower petal or what I ended up calling the UnderCurve.  The next few images were all labeled UnderCurve because most of the images were shot from below the main focal point or at focus points under the curve of the petal.

 

 

 

 
These next set of images also fell into the UnderCurve label because of similar circumstance and they were only taken about an inch or two from the above shots. The curve of the petal intrigued me greatly and I really wanted to explore different angles to see what I could achieve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

All of the above shots were taken on the flower below.

If you look lower left center you can see the back of the petals I was focusing on for the first shots.

The image below was also taken on this flower.

 

Looking for fine detail or fine subtlety can be very hard and it was a struggle to make these images happen.  In my quest for finding "different", I looked for petals that overlapped nicely.  This proved to be harder than I anticipated and I only found one that worked well as an abstract form.

 

 

While working in these close quarters with my subjects, I challenged myself to see if I could just focus on petal edges in a straight on fashion.  Working and finding the focus points proved to be very difficult.  I worked in wide open apertures because I didn't want to take the focus off the edge.  The more detail revealed the less likely the viewer would pay attention to the edge that I wanted to highlight.

The images below are of the same petal edge.  All I did was slightly shift my positioning and recomposed. 

 

 

 

 

 

For fun I would sometimes put images into Lab Mode and play around with the color.  More times than not I wouldn't come up with anything that overly excited me, but the image below worked for me in a Peter Max sort of way.

 

 

IN CONCLUSION:

This project was by far the most satisfying shooting I've done on my own in a while.  Sessions varied on quality of output but every session was a step in a new direction of pushing myself to capitalize on the the talents I've been given.  Sure, some sessions I fell into old habits but many more were great experimentations on looking at subjects in new ways.  Many of those "ways" proved out to produce less than quality images but they were needed steps in the process to improve upon how I saw images and executed them.  In that regard - all the images were successes.

As the first week of August came and went, so did the Black Eye Susan patch.  Though there are still blooms out there as I write this on the verge of Labor Day Weekend, the quantity of quality subjects has dwindled considerably.  It's too bad to, because last year this same stand of flowers bloomed strong until mid September.  I don't know if the mild temps of this summer had anything to do with it but I was hoping to have a longer run at this project than I did.  I would say that by the second week of August I was finished with this adventure; with the two weeks in August producing only a few useable images. 

There are a number of quality images that I have left out.  As it is, this portfolio showing of this project was quite numerous and will pared down some in the future.  But for now, as of the end of the summer of 2007, I am pleased that My Summer Project was fruitful in both output and in exploring the realm of the photographer that I know I can be. 

The two shots below were from my last session out amongst the Black Eye Susan's.