Context in Photography

Everyone loves a beautiful scenic photograph. Catch the light just right and it can be magical. Sometimes, however, our goal as photographers is to tell a more complete story with our photos. Not every photo we take is destined for a custom frame in the lobby of the local bank. Sometimes we just want to document our lives. We do this by providing our photos with "context."

There are probably as many ways to show context in a photo as there are photographers. Portrait photographers do it by shooting on-location. Wedding photographers don't shoot a portrait of the bride wearing half her makeup; they shoot into the mirror while she's applying the makeup. Context helps to make a photo make sense.

During the summer of 2010 I took a scenic airplane flight around Teton Valley, Idaho. We took off from the Driggs airport and headed southwest toward Pine Creek Pass. As we climbed through 10,000 feet with the Big Hole Mountains on our right, our pilot gradually turned to the east. We continued to climb above the Snake River Range and then made the big sweeping turn back to the north. This took us directly over the western foothills of the Tetons just barely inside the western edge of Wyoming. Grand Teton tops out at 13,770 feet but our flight never got over about 12,500. That means that we were staring at The Grand (and Middle, South, Owen, and Teewinot) straight out the window.

As we approached the big peaks my pilot announced over the intercom that he would be glad to tilt the little plane whichever way I wanted so that I could get some good shots of the mountains. I thanked him and when the time came he pulled the right wing up a little so I could get the unobstructed view he thought I wanted. I snapped a few shots and was generally pleased with them but as he leveled the plane and I backed out on the zoom lens, I noticed how much more I liked the shots that showed the airplane wing and the wingstrut. The photo below is an example of the kind of context that tells a story.



There is no question, when you look at this photo, that I was riding in a small airplane. Immediately upon knowing that fact, the viewer of this photo becomes engaged in a whole new way:

"What kind of plane was it?" (Cessna 172)

"Was it bumpy?" (Not that day.)

"Did you get sick?" (No)

"Had you ever been up in a small plane before?" (Yes, a long time ago.)

"Did you get to open the window to take the photos?" (Yes)

When I look back at the photo above, I think, "Wow, I love those mountains!," and "This airplane thing is cool..... I've got to GET ME ONE!"

Football Season in Full Swing

The 2010 campaign has begun!

Aledo High School won the 4A Division II State Championship in 2009 and is off to a great start in 2010. The opening game was another fantastic battle between Aledo and rival Stephenville. Aledo triumphed 20-3. Game two saw Aledo avenge its only loss of 2009 with a 48-13 romp over the Kangaroos of Weatherford.

And then came Game Three: Aledo traveled to Austin to challenge the 2009 4A Division I State Champ, Lake Travis. Bragging rights were on the line and the home team was heavily favored. Lake Travis opened the scoring and led at the half by a count of 10-7. The second half was an epic defensive struggle. Both teams pounded the ball inside but in the end it was the strong running of Aledo's Jonathan Gray behind the talented Bearcat offensive line that won the day. Aledo made believers of the central Texas crowd with a final score of 14-10.

Here's a shot I took of J-Gray taking the ball on one of those up-the-middle rampages. Shutter speed was 1/1000, ISO was 1600 and the f/stop was 2.8. Enjoy!

OLIVER!

Please, Sir, I want some more!



Check out my galleries from the Aledo High School Theatre presentation of OLIVER!

It was a lot of fun shooting the show and one of the rehearsals. Congratulations, AHS Theatre! Great Job!

Grandma's Middle Name

I remember when I was young my Momma told me that my Grandma's middle name was "Go." It seems that Grandma loved going places. She always had that old grandma-looking purse hanging from her arm and she always had a list of things she needed from town. If someone was headed out, Grandma was a willing partner.

I think I'm a lot like Grandma. I love to go. Last October I went to Idaho and Wyoming with a friend. At Christmas, I took the family to South Carolina to visit Clemson University, where Jill and I graduated back in 1988. Last month I took my daughter to Ruston, Louisiana, to visit Louisiana Tech where I got my undergrad degree.

One of the things I love about traveling is being able to pack a camera along. Travel photography can be almost anything you want it to be. You can shoot all the old places you've seen before. You can go to all the scenic vistas. You can sit on a bench in a town that is not your own and take photos of people you don't know. (For this I recommend a LONG lens!)

In about a week my son and I are taking another roadtrip. We'll head northwest from Fort Worth on the first day with our sights set on Laramie, Wyoming. It's only a 15 hour drive if you limit your fluid intake! Day two will take us across Wyoming to Jackson Hole where we will mount the Tetons at Teton Pass. Our trek will end just past the stateline in Teton Valley, Idaho, where we plan to spend a week. There will be skiing, possibly some snowmobiling, and of course, a lot of photography.

I've made the trip from Texas to Idaho several times over the last few years and I have to admit that in some ways it's a little frustrating. I'll be driving past 1300 miles of beautiful landscape and I'll be completely focused on getting to the final destination. As a photographer, I hate missing great photo opportunities. Perhaps I should make this a three-day trip and spend a little time along the way capturing the magic. If I did, I might have to change my middle name from "Go," to something like "Slow Down," or "Relax a Little." I hope Grandma won't mind.

How Bright is Dallas Cowboy Stadium?

On November 20, 2009, the Aledo Bearcats took on the Stephenville Yellowjackets for the second time last season. The first time was at Bearcat Stadium where the boys from Aledo pulled out a 20 to 16 win to open the season. The second time was at Dallas Cowboy Stadium in Arlington and it was "loser go home." It was the second round of the 4A state playoffs and Aledo won it in overtime, 26-20. Wow! What a night!

For me it was a treat to get to shoot a football game on the sidelines at Jerry Jones' mega-playland. The new Dallas Cowboy Stadium is every bit as impressive as it looks on television. The GodzillaTron overhead is a technical marvel and getting to see yourself on it is some kind of amazing. I did notice that it was important not to look up at the screen while walking. It's a good way to run into someone else who shouldn't have been walking and looking up.

In this first photo, I tried to give a sense of scale. A wide angle lens and a low shooting angle with cheerleaders in the foreground make it work.



So, just how bright is Dallas Cowboy Stadium?

In the next photo, my aperture was f/5.6, my shutterspeed was 1/640, and my ISO was 3200.



Back at Bearcat Stadium everything would have been the same except the aperture would have been f/2.8. For those of you keeping score, that means that Cowboy stadium is four times brighter than Bearcat stadium. WOW! What does this mean? Well, for me it meant that I could get greater depth of field without sacrificing the ability to stop the action with a fast shutterspeed. For someone with less ISO capability or with a slower lens it means the difference between getting photos of a great Aledo win or getting complete garbage.

By the way, that photo above is Matthew Bishop scoring the winning touchdown in overtime. Right after that shot - bedlam!

Basketball Season

The season is in full swing now and I've already shot a few games for the Ladycats and the Bearcats. My favorite shot so far is of my son (surprise), Aaron. He plays on the Freshman B-team as a guard and is one of the team's leading scorers.



I shoot basketball with my Canon 1D Mark III and a 70-200mm f/2.8L lens. Occasionally I substitute a 24-70mm f/2.8L for wide shots below the goal or a 300mm f/2.8L for a different look from up in the rafters. I use a pair of Alien Bees (800s) located on the top row of the gymnasium that I trigger with a radio control from the hotshoe on my camera. It's a great setup. I use apertures of f/6.3 and f/7.1 with the shutterspeed set to 1/250 and the ISO around 1000. The strength of the flash units and the short duration of the flash event help me ensure the sharpness I want.

One thing about shooting with a flash is that you have to understand and anticipate the action. It's not like football where you can just hold the button down in machine gun mode. You get one chance for a shot and then the flash has to recharge. My Alien Bees are fast but they can't handle the 10 frames per second that the 1DM3 can dish out. Not long ago I got a great shot of a player on the baseline right before he went up for a slamdunk. I hadn't seen this kid play before and I wasn't expecting him to explode to the goal that way. Now, whenever I see him with the ball, I try to hold out for the explosion. Of course, I've already got him on the baseline. I don't need another one of those.

I generally sit along the baseline under the home team goal about halfway in from the corner. This allows me to get good views of the ball as it is advanced across midcourt. The shots I like the most are the wide shots looking up at the players as they approach the opposite side of the goal from my position. I always shoot from as low as possible in order to make the players look taller. Many times I've stood up during a timeout only to discover that my butt was completely asleep, but that's okay. The view from down low is the best one.

I think basketball is my favorite sport to shoot. The action is close and it is fast. Unlike football, you get to see the players eyes and the eyes add a lot of emotion to the photographs.

A Few Thoughts to Begin 2010

I guess if you are reading this and you have ever read any of my posts before then you know that I am not very good at this. Good bloggers post their thoughts every day or at least every week. I don't really think that much. That's the problem. And when I do think, it's not really that interesting outside of my own head - plane geometry, constant acceleration equations, differential calculus - stuff like that.

Last year was a very good year. Jill and I are enjoying life and the kids are doing great. We spent four weeks in Idaho as a family last summer and then I spent three more weeks out west - one in the summer with Jill to Yellowstone, another week in Utah with a friend, and a week in the fall in Idaho with another good friend. We stayed home at Christmas but that's what you do when your kids' high school soccer and basketball take over your life.

I've done a lot of photography in the last year. The travel photography out west was my favorite but I did a lot of other shooting too. I followed the successful run of the Aledo Bearcats all the way to the 4A State Championship in football. Along the way I shot on the sidelines at the new Dallas Cowboy Stadium and at Darrell K. Royal Stadium at the University of Texas. I did a lot of portraits in the spring and and I shot volleyball, soccer, baseball, basketball and church in between.

I'll try to be better about posting in 2010. Think of it as a New Year's Resolution guaranteed to be good for at least a couple of posts anyway. I'll be keeping my posts pretty short this year focusing on a few favorite photos and the stories behind them.

Here's the first one:



This is one of my favorite spots in Grand Teton National Park, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It's the Snake River Overlook and Ansel Adams made it famous back in the 40's in black and white. My version is from June 2009 and was done with multiple exposures. This is an example of High Dyamic Range processing where a range of exposures are combined into one photograph. It's a way of pulling detail out of the shadows without blowing out the highlights. It seems to be more dramatic to me.

The week we spent in Wyoming and Idaho was great but the clouds never quite gave up their hold on the mountaintops. This shot was one of my best from the week. I like the way the clouds pull back to reveal part of the treasure of Grand Teton without completely revealing the tips of the peaks.