Postcards from the Creative Journey

436 - A Tripod Story

The Front Stairs, Alkabo School

It is, of course, a well-known internet fact (that I just made up) that 99.999% of unsuccessful photographs were made from eye level. I offer the following anecdote as proof of this immutable law of photography.

The first time I photographed the Alkabo School, the photographs didn't seem to look "right." The second time I went back, I happened to sit down in one of those little student chairs and everything looked absolutely perfect from that vantage point. It was one of those “Eureka” moments that in hindsight was so obvious and required experience to remember. I dropped the height of my tripod to approximate height of a child and the remaining photographs of the school looked much, much better.

If you are five years old and coming to school for the first time, these stairs are really intimidating. If you are taller, they look less steep and foreboding. Having your camera in the right place for a photograph also means having it at the right height. In this case, the right height is that of a child.

It's been about twelve or thirteen years since I photographed the Alkabo School, but my tripod has remained at small child height since then. The world seems to look better that way.

435 - Analog Image Stabilization

Yr. Humble Author, photographing with a tripod mounted camera.

Fort Worden, Washington (Photo by Brooks Jensen)

A few weeks ago some of my photo buds and I got into an email exchange on the necessity of tripods If you have image stabilization on lenses and camera bodies with sensors that can record very fine images with an EI of 6,000 and software that can remove “grain,” why do you need something to mechanically support your camera? Good question. I still use a tripod, because it just doesn’t seem like photography without a tripod. I can't seem to get away from thirty years of using a view camera on a tripod. Consideration of the scene and composition before snapping the shutter just seems to be a more complete way to determine a composition and the tripod helps me do just that.

I have a few more reasons to continue using a tripod. It forces me to think more about composition and affords me the luxury of being able to really “work the edges” of a composition. When I was using a view camera I didn't care about exposure time (other than reciprocity), I knew I had a stable platform (my long gone Zone VI standard tripod). My motto was not f/8 and be there, but f/32 and be there an hour early. (That’s a view camera joke. If you used a view camera, you know how funny/true that is.)

My tripod is also a big help with panoramic images, focus stacking and HDR exposures, three techniques I frequently employ. I know photoshop can auto-align layers and such but I like to know I haven’t “lost the edges” by moving the camera between multiple exposures.

We came to the conclusion that technology has made tripods pretty much obsolete, and that may be true for some, but I don’t know if I will ever give up my tripod completely. Technology has made tripods optional, so now rather than being a mandatory for photography it becomes optional. Having more options available is always a very good thing. 

434 - A Visit From Old Friends

Lembert Dome, Yosemite

A few weeks ago some old friends came to Raleigh to visit for a while. I had a really good time seeing them again because they brought a lot of memories with them. These old friends were the “Ansel Adams: Masterworks, 48 photographs by Adams, a selection he made late in his life to serve as a succinct representation of what he deemed the best work of his career,” or at least that's what the advertising says. For those of us that started photography in the 70’s Ansel was the main source of knowledge and inspiration for both the technical and aesthetic approach to photography. It was great to see his photographs hanging on the wall instead of in a book.

There were a couple of immediate observations I made as I went through the show. Contemporary photographers would be shocked at the small size of the images. I did not have my tape measure handy, but I do not think there was a photograph there larger than 16 x 20. The dimensions for those numbers is inches, not feet. Of course, there was not a color photograph in the room; all gelatin silver black and white prints. What a radical change from the current fascination with large color prints.

Here’s the odd thing about it. My vision is now so attuned to seeing digitally printed images that these gorgeous silver gelatin prints were not as wonderful as I remember them. They are great silver gelatin photographs and are beautiful examples of a technically obsolete printing process. (Uh-oh. Where is this going?) As I walked through the exhibit I kept thinking to myself. “Man, I would love to scan those negatives and see how much better these would look as digital prints. I know I could make them sharper, get deeper blacks and better contrast.”

Double Gasp! Apostasy! Heresy! Blasphemy! (Quick; Bring Aunt Pitty Pat her smelling salts.)

I know what good silver gelatin printing looks like and Ansel’s prints will always be the gold standard. But, they are very different than digital prints contemporary photographers make. I was amazed at how quickly my eye for looking at photographs has adapted to the new realities of digital photographic printing. What of the young photographers that never made silver gelatin prints? Will they look at these images and wonder why all us old guys were excited about these prints? 

I do love Ansel's images and continue to inspired by the composition and sheer volume of his life's work, but I couldn't help but feeling that this was an exercise in nostalgia for a past photographic world. This exhibit shows the world the previous generation of photographic technology and it reminds me of how we used to create photographs. Upon leaving I couldn't help but think the silver gelatin print is the newest alternative photographic process. 

433 - Going Off For A Bit Of A Wander

Owl Creek, British Columbia

Nearing the end of our day driving through British Columbia with no particular route or agenda in mind, we came upon a Bed and Breakfast that was the only place around for miles. Happily they had vacancies and we settled in for the evening. The next morning we had a discussion over breakfast with a couple from Great Britain. We were relating our predilection for peripatetic photographic pass times to the enjoyment of our dining companions. Our breakfast companion looked at us and said that our annual photo safaris were “going off for a bit of a wander” in order to make our photographs. That phrase stuck with me because it pretty much described our methodology of photography until we discovered that destination location photography was much more productive.

Later that morning we left the Bed and Breakfast. We wandered past a small town and spied a dirt road that followed a creek. We continued our wander and a few miles up the road we found this nice spot to photograph.