A Bending of Its Own Kind
Oz Arts hosted FALL in June 2017 for “A Bending of Its Own Kind”, and here are some of my favorite photographs from that performance.
Oz Arts hosted FALL in June 2017 for “A Bending of Its Own Kind”, and here are some of my favorite photographs from that performance.
I was fortunate to be the Sideshow Fringe Festival 2015 photographer, and as always there were many incredible sessions of theater, aerialists, puppets, and music. There are many, many, many tactics one can utilize when photographing performances. Long exposures, high-ISO captures, processed images to highlight the performer — all are good options. Another option on engaging the subject: shoot once, process none. Shoot film, process, and take what develops.
In addition to the actual live performances, I was also invited to check out some rehearsals, including the work of the FALL company. It was pretty incredible to listen in and hear some of their process as they rehearsed through the work, and to try and unobtrusively capture some of the discussions in photos. Below are three of those images next to one of the performers during the rehearsal set.
Giving up some control with the medium lets me work in the available lighting and motion without stressing over the upcoming post-processing. A chance to photograph the mood and ambience in the unpolished environment. A bit of a looser, yet more focused, feeling from the performers seems to come out in rehearsals. When the dancers are continuing the commitment of their work to muscle memory it’s almost like a photo critique. People are looking for input, looking for encouragement, but also anything that helps rise the level of the work is welcome.
Many thanks to FALL for allowing me to shoot the rehearsals!
Movement photography at the 2014 Sideshow Fringe Festival. Beautiful performances with the FALL dance company and Aerial Fabricators.
Thank you to Jessika Malone and the entire Sideshow Fringe team for inviting me to be part of the event this year!
Once back from Rome, we tried to get out and see the leaves and colors as much as possible. Once very successful outing in that respect was a Sunday afternoon walk on the Mountains to Sea Trail just outside of Asheville. The image below is from that excursion.
Slide film is one of the more recent media I’ve come to explore, and really only in the past year have I done any meaningful work with that sort of film. This particular shot was with the Fuji GA645 (same as the camera used here)and Fuji Velvia 100f.
There is a strange feeling working with a large-ish format film and yet working with a small-ish piece of equipment. Compared to the RB67 or even the 645 Pro TL, the GA645 is lightweight and ultra-portable. Taking it for a spin in the woods, when one has to potentially carry plenty of other equipment, is a real pleasure. The glass is immaculate and focusing is dead on (or you can manually focus if you prefer). And the result of the slide film is breathtaking. I wish there was a way to relay the feeling of holding a slide over the internet. Even viewing a print doesn’t quite have the same “WOW” factor for me as a slide does. Maybe the transparency? Maybe the compactness and clarity of the slide. Whatever it is, in the fall with the colors and textures I don’t know if I’ve seen any other photographic medium that measures up to slide.
Regardless of your photographic equipment, there is also the question of HOW to photograph a scene. And photography of striking colors are way up on my list of “Hard Shots.” I think a large amount of the difficulty is that we experience a walk in the woods with seasonal foliage quite vividly, and our recollection is often even greater in saturation than reality. Thus, photographing such scenes in ways that evoke the same emotion is substantially more difficult than other, less “oomph” driven shots. But I do have some basic ideas that can help.
The first is composition. When photographing nature, it is easy for me to get swept up in the “pretty” shots that don’t tell any story. But when I focus on composing an image with a little bit of narrative, my satisfaction down the road is much higher. Especially when shooting film which has such potential for quality reproduction that failures are that much more evident. So be sure to shoot every image, or every series of images, to bring the viewer to the scene and envelop them in the moment.
Secondly, unless you are intentionally taking a photo of something singular, I’d stay away from small depth of field’s. I know my impulse is often shoot wide open and get some rocking bokeh, but I’ve found that the effect can be jarring. Part of what makes color foliage so amazing is that everywhere you can look and focus there is color. Sharp and bright and saturated. When you blur that background (and/or foreground) in the photo, the “being there” effect can be decreased dramatically.
Last, I try as much as possible to cut through the mist. I use a polarizer, haze filter, whatever I’ve got handy to increase clarity through the entire scene. That is, unless it is a long exposure with enough time for the mist or fog or whatever to move about. Otherwise I have found that, like the second point, the reduction in overall clarity can do harm to the entire photograph.
With everything there are exceptions to the above, but those three guidelines above certainly increase my gratification when reviewing the photos after a session out in the woods.