The First Winter's Storm by the Long Island Sound

After more than a 35-year absence I reunited with a friend from my youth.  She had done well and was in the process of sending her daughter off to a new marriage replete with all of the distractions of a wedding ceremony, celebration, and out-of-town relatives; however, she still found the time to hook-up with me and three more of our old buddies.

It turns out that she has always been interested in the visual arts and has a cousin that’s a professional photographer.  Who knew?  Anyway I took the opportunity to forward a few of my recent photos.  A comment she made helped crystallize thoughts I’ve had about my own photography.  She said, “How amazing that the camera sees what the eye can’t.”

This simple statement brought a lot into focus.  So typical of her to be able to pass the clutter and go to the core.  A camera can only hope at it’s very best to approach the abilities of the human eye but never fully achieve it, so why spend countless hours trying to simulate what we can’t.  Instead look for what isn’t there and use the camera to portray the world in a way the eye can’t see but the viewer of a photo enjoys.  That’s the power of the camera and all of the digital post processing that’s available to us today.  Anyone can take a snapshot of a face, a mountain, a road, and a flower in hopes that capturing it will preserve the subject for posterity, but we fool ourselves if we think it was exactly as we saw it when we tripped the shutter. There’s always a “translation” when we attempt to convert reality into a two-dimensional plane, the camera being one of several mediums that can achieve that artistic end.

Two nights ago I made my last entries at my camera club’s final competition before the summer hiatus.  One of my images won first place in the Triple A General category and after scoring the photo the judge’s comment was, “Calf Pasture Pier never looked so good.”  It further confirmed my friend’s comment that when a photographer creates art we could do so in an aesthetic fashion that reality never shows.  Painters, sculptors, and other visualartists have been doing so for millennium.

A Catskill meadow in early morning fog

Struggling to replicate what we saw in the viewfinder is a frustrating and often fruitless exercise, so our interpretation of reality rather than its duplication will give us something more pleasing.  Calf Pasture Pier is a long boardwalk that extends from Calf Pasture Beach in Norwalk, CT out onto Long Island Sound.  People go on it for an Oceanside stroll or fishermen take advantage of the high tides that bring the game fish into the supporting pylons as larger predators look for prey.  As you walk along the walkway the eye is drawn to the expansive sweep of the ocean and beyond to Long Island, NY on the other side of the Sound.  Commercial fishing boats, sailboats, and cabin cruisers frequent the waters distracting the viewer’s eye to follow them as they course across the open waters.  Few would bother to look at the view at their feet since the human’s periphery reduces the boardwalk to a tiny sliver of what’s before them. Sure you can throw on a fisheye lens or bracket a series of photos into a panorama, but in either case you have to sacrifice some aspect of reality, which in this case is distorting the horizontal plane.  However, both can render beautiful interpretations of what actually lies before us.  Additionally when you perceive the wooden planks during the early morning hours the tones are muted making them seem dingy and bland.  A shot taken without capitalizing on the abilities of a camera and post processing would leave the image flat and boring.

There is one ingredient that is missing, one that is the critical success factor of any image taken by the photographer; that is their VISION.

As photographers before we snap the shutter we should ask, “How do I see this?  What is it that I need to do in order to make a mediocre photo into art?  Does this scene have the potential for interest, and if so, what way do I bring out its full potential?”  This coupled with our technical knowledge in using the camera we bring out the image’s best.  Look for what-isn’t-there or something that is easily overlooked.  Otherwise, concentrate on the hole and not the donut and wonder how you can make what’s hidden come alive.  This VISION differentiates the artist from the snap shooter.

I was fortunate to have taken first place in my club’s contest with this shot as well as selling a print to a buyer who had spent many hours along this pier.  He recounted the times his grandfather took him fishing at this very place and it brought back fond memories of his youth.  “Look how it makes you feel as though you’re walking into the picture drawing you out to the horizon,” he said.  It was a happy coincidence that I set my tripod lower than my own line of sight and more level with that of a young boy’s in order to bring the diagonal lines of the fence into a longer leading line. He saw the image at an angle he hadn’t seen since he was only 4 and a half feet tall, lugging along his rod and tackle box as he followed his grandfather to their best fishing spot.

Catching the early sun as I made my way to the pier

So how did I set up this shot?  First I did what most photographers hate to do, I got up before sunrise on a cold autumn morning to catch the best light.  For those of you who don’t know, the light for best contrast and colors is at sunrise and sunset because the sun’s rays pass through more of earth’s atmosphere exaggerating the sky’s ambient colors when it is low on the horizon subduing the intensity of its light.  When I got there just before sunrise I attached my kneepads and shop apron before venturing out.  Since many of our best shots are taken from unusual angles, the pads and apron make it a bit easier on body parts and cloths when the best angle is down low.

A stranger greets me on my way along the boardwalk

Then I attached my Cokin filter holder and slid a 3 f-stop graduated neutral density filter into its slot.  I ventured out into the rocks that create the foundation for the beginning of the pier exploring positions that might make interesting compositions.  After a few shots from the rocks and shore I ventured onto the boardwalk taking my time shooting as I moved out further.  That’s another critical success factor in landscape photography to take your time, slow down and observe, so long as you aren’t racing to avoid loosing the best light.  Then I saw it before me; the leading lines of the walkway’s fence as they converged out to the islands.  The sun was off to the right of the composition and a bit obscured by a thin line of clouds, which helped control the light’s contrast.  As mentioned I set the tripod at about chest high so that I could capture the lines of the fence at the best angle, slightly above their tops but not at eye level (I’m 6’3”) which would have made the convergence of the triangle too sharp making its sweep stop too short.  Even with the GND filter the histogram told me I still had highlight clipping, so I bracketed the scene with five shots, two underexposed and two overexposed in addition to the right exposure with the intention of processing all five into my High Dynamic Range software, Photomatix.

Calf Pasture Pier at Sunrise

During post processing I tone mapped the image to bring it close to where I wanted it knowing that further work in Photoshop would be required.  Its been my experience that HDR software rarely gets it to where I want it to be and further processing in Photoshop is required to bring out its best.  Knowing the result brought back so many touching memories to its eventual buyer was more pleasing that the thrill I had when I hit the “save” icon on Photoshop.  Winning first place just gilded the lily.

Sono "L" around noon before processing

If there’s any shot I’ve ever taken and processed that looked nothing like it does in real life it is “Sono L.”  The location in South Norwalk, CT, is dark and even on the brightest days allows only a small amount of light through the overhead tracks making contrast so harsh you loose either highlights or shadows depending on how you expose your shot. The street and girders are a dingy mangy grayish hue.  But underneath all of that grime and shadow is a mix of colors that if they were brought out would delight the senses.

Again I bracketed my shot to later put into HDR software, but this time I knew I needed a larger dynamic range to capture detail in both shadows and highlights so took seven shots at different exposure values.  When I moved it from Photomatix to Photoshop I concentrated on improving contrast, color balance, and hue/saturation.  Once that was done I was a bit disappointed that the girder rivets seemed flat so burned in each one individually with a darkened S curve layer.  To retain the feel of the grit under a train overhead, or as us New Yorkers know it as the “L” for elevated, I filtered it further in PS by increasing noise, of the photo’s resolution that is and not the passing trains above ;-).

Clearly the camera sees what the human eye can't

People who are familiar with the area don’t recognize it when first they see the photo but after telling them where it was taken they are shocked to see it in such fine condition.  “It seems so nice I want to go visit the area again,” some say with ironic humor.  In fairness to Sono, they’ve done a great job of restoring the old section of town with many fine restaurants and shops and is well worth the visit if you’re ever in the area.

Another shot I took during a workshop in Tampa, Florida was the Sunshine Skyway Bridge that connects St. Petersburg with Bradenton.  It has become a local icon and our group was out on the end of the Sunshine Skyway Fishing Pier during sunset.  We had hoped to get the reflection of the bridge in the water, but clouds conspired to undermine us.  Most everyone gave up and packed their cameras and tripods away, but I reasoned it was worth hanging in there until dark to see what might happen.  Another lesson in patience when it comes to landscape photography is that however hopeless it seems that the elements are against you, wait and then wait some more to see if the unexpected occurs.  I deliberately underexposed this shot knowing that a RAW file captures more data than the human eye can see even when the histogram looks as though you’ve lost all contrast and resolution.

Sunshine Highway Bridge at dusk

I processed this photo with Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) using the Exposure and Fill Light sliders and then reworked it in Photoshop applying contrast and hue/saturation layers.  The happy surprise was the slight golden reflections in the water that enhanced the super structure’s supports.  My eye couldn’t see that in the darkness, but ACR captured what was there and I was able to intensify it during post processing.  Like my friend said, “…the camera sees what the eye can’t.”

With a bit of imagination and personal vision we can convert the mundane into stunning interpretations of reality requiring forethought before we take the picture.  See what is there, imagine how it can be made better, and then focus on the hole and not the donut.