Like many photographers I am often looking for new ways to challenge myself and grow my skills at my craft. I think a fellow photog said it best: “Anyone who claims to love their craft should have the discipline to try to learn it. Period.” There are so many things that I would like to do with my photography, so many things that I would like to explore, and sometimes picking a starting point can be a bit overwhelming. It can also be scary – to learn we have to get outside of our comfort zone, and that is not something we often like to do.
I recently saw a post on the Lighting Essential blog by Don Giannatti offering just such a challenge -“One year – 52 weeks of assignments, critiques, discussions and more. The goal is to prepare the emerging shooter to be a working professional through a comprehensive, synergistic approach”. Whats this project called? 52. You can see more of what we are doing, and even join in this project over at the Project52 website! I thought about it and asked myself the question do I really want to be a pro shooter? No – but I would like to get professional results, and understand the business side of photography so that I might be able to sell some of my images. I have been reading Don’s posts at Lighting Essentials for a while now, and I know that he is a regular contributor on the Strobist Flickr group. I have always admired the way that Don can cut through a lot of BS and really boil an issue down to a basic problem and identify a solution. Not a skill to be ignored in today’s world. Vision statements, taking photos of strangers, billing, bidding a job? The very idea of many of these subjects absolutely TERRIFIES me!!! I decided that I wanted in, and in a bad way!
The first assignment was to identify our vision statement, and then take a photo from in or around our home that was an example of that vision. This vision statement is not necessarily for us to put on a business card, or part of a marketing campaign, but rather a way for me to describe my photography. For me, creating the vision statement was pretty simple – “I strive to show you the ordinary things in life in an extraordinary way that causes you to stop and think”. That is it, pretty simple. The photograph on the other hand, that was a bit harder.
Toothbrush
The idea for this image started at about 5 AM as I brushed my teeth before heading out the door to the gym and a day at work. How often do I really look at my toothbrush? It actually is pretty sharp looking when you think about. Some sweet colors, and great texture and detail in the bristles. The hour ride that morning was pretty long, but very exciting as ideas dance through my head. By the time I got to work, this image had been born. This next bit may sound a little strange (OK, I admit, a LOT strange), but I imagined that the toothbrush was a female model lying on a bed, and even though you could see her whole “body”, I wanted the emphasis to really be on the “head and face” of the model, such that the body was barely a part of the image. To really make the image I wanted, there had to be nothing but the toothbrush, so I shot at my max synch speed to kill all the ambient light. I used a small soft-box (a 28″ Apollo) to really control the light, so that I could paint the light not only where I wanted it, but also to keep the light from reaching the parts of the toothbrush that I wanted in the dark. The light is above, to the camera right, slightly in front of the subject, and angled slightly forward. This setup really feathers the light from the front to back of the scene, so that the toothbrush gently transitions from highlight to shadow. Perfect! A small piece of white foam core to the front and camera left of the subject helps to bounce a little bit of light onto the head of the toothbrush, really helping the bristles to pop. The toothbrush is lying on a piece of black Plexiglas, that in this lighting setup just disappears into the background. Instead of using a macro lens I actually used a 10-20mm wide angle lens so that I could take advantage of that perspective distortion, so that the toothbrush seems much bigger then it really is, again over-emphasizing the head and under-emphasizing the body. At an aperture of f/8.0 the shallow focus also goes a long way in emphasizing the parts of the image that I want. You can check out all of the submissions for this assignment in this thread at the Lighting Essentials group on Flickr.
In the end, I ended up with an image that I am very happy with, one that I think exemplifies what my photography is all about. Not sure what I will get for feedback on this assignment, but I can’t worry about that now, as assignment two is already underway, and in this one I need to take some photographs of a complete stranger! YIKES!
And one more thing! Don is devoting all of his time and resources for this project at no charge to us. I know that I am not alone in sending a tremendous amount of thanks to Don!!!!!