Photography – A Photo A Day (Squarespace)

11-05-16 Another World

Can you feel your shirt touching your shoulder right now? (read and see more)

By Scott Shephard

If you drove by these plumeria flowers every day as you entered your driveway, you probably wouldn’t see them. Like so many things that we see, feel, hear or smell all of the time, even beautiful flowers become white noise. To get you to consider white noise, here are two tests:

1) List 5 features of the street side of your neighbor-to-the-left’s house. If you’ve lived in your neighborhood for a year or for decades, you’ve probably seen your neighbor’s house hundreds or even thousands of times. My guess is that while you’ve seen your neighbors house, you’ve never really looked at it. The features of the house are likely examples of white noise to you.

2)If you are wearing a shirt right now, what does it feel like? The skin is a profoundly sensitive organ but because it is in constant contact with something all of the time, the sensations become white noise.

So here’s my point: if you take your camera outside and, with your neighbor’s permission, take 10 photos of various features of the front of their house, those features cease to be white noise. They might even become essential and even fascinating. They might also become something you notice every time you drive by the house. The same could be said for your shirt. Can you feel it touching your shoulders and back? What does it feel like?

So back to these beautiful plumeria . . . Because I had my camera in hand when I walked by them, because I had only been in this neighborhood for a day and because they were new and foreign to my experience, I couldn’t help but notice them. And now you see them too.

Such is the power of photography. As for feeling your shirt, I hope the sensations they cause generally remain as white noise. Otherwise, it will drive you crazy . . . .

How about a view of the neighborhood and a couple other takes on these flowers?:

Canon 5DIII 1/750s f/2.8 ISO400 100mm

04-14-16 Photographer At Work (Andy O)

Have you seen Andy’s brilliant early morning photo in the LATI photo gallery? (read more)

By Scott Shephard

If you live in Watertown, SD, and haven’t had a chance to see the student photo gallery at Lake Area Technical Institute, you should try to do so. There are some great photos there but one of my favorites is a photo of Lakota Lake in the Black HIlls taken by Andy Olson last summer during the Black Hills Photo Adventure I hosted.

I’ve taken many photos of this lake but I’ve never captured it the way Andy did. But I did manage to get a decent photo of Andy taking the photo. That’s got to count for something doesn’t it?

Canon 5DIII 1/350s f/2.8 ISO400 145mm

04-04-16 Mike & Scott

Simon, set the Wayback Machine to 1955″ . . . (read more)

By Scott Shephard

In 1955 I was 2 years old and my brother, Mike, was about 5. My mom was a stay-at-home mom (as most were back then) and my dad, who was 37, was working at L.A. McKean Auto Company in Sioux Falls. Money was tight for the Shephard family back then. And yet, here my brother and I are in the brand new clothes our mom got us. We are getting our portraits taken at a high-end portrait studio – Harold’s Photography of Sioux Falls.

Our family wasn’t unique. Getting good portraits at good studios was very much part of the American culture back then. And, for the most part, it still is – many parents get professional portraits made of their young children. After a few years, though, for most it becomes a “do-it-yourself” enterprise. It certainly did for the Shephards in the 1950s and beyond.

In fact, as far as I know, this was the last professional portrait done of my brother and me together. I don’t feel sad but I can’t help but imagining a series of high quality portraits of me, my brother and my sister, Barb, as we got older. Instead we have a scattering of average quality pictures taken by the amateur photographer we loved the most – my mother.

Photos are very much a part of our personal and shared history. I have no recollection of the moment this photo was taken. In fact I have have no recollection of most of the moments of my life. So a photo like this brings at least 1/60th of second of my life into sharp focus: on this day we got dressed up, my brother put his arm around me and we smiled. I’d like to think we are looking at our mother, who is very much part of this photo, even if you can’t see her.

(Add 51 years to our lives, dress us much more casually, put us in a beer garden in Berlin and here’s what you get:)

03-26-16 A Different Point of View

There are, of course, many ways to see the same thing. (read more)

By Scott Shephard

I showed you three views of the same plant yesterday and today I am showing a a much more literal way to see it. This plant (name???) is the same variety as the one pictured yesterday, though in a different state of bloom.

Except for my photography, I am not a control freak. But I do enjoy exercising the ability to get my viewers to see what I want them to see it as I want them to see it. Sorry if you feel manipulated. 🙁

Canon 5DIII 1/1000s f/2.8 ISO400 100mm

03-25-16 Real Abstract

Can an object be real and abstract at the same time?

By Scott Shephard

To be “real” and “abstract” at the same time seems like a contradiction. But I think you are looking at an example. This flowering plant, which I photographed at Indian Canyons in southern California, is certainly real. What creates the abstraction has something to do with my use of focus and point of view and much to do with the fact that I’ve turned the photo into black and white.

I guess I like the ambiguity of the image. If I’m lucky, the ambiguity requires the viewer to impose meaning based on his or her own perceptions and experience. It’s like life itself.

Canon 5DIII 1/250s f/4.0 ISO250 102mm

(For those who need something less ambiguous, I offer two other views of this plant.)

03-13-16 Self-Absorbed?

Why not try to get your face in most of the things you photograph? (read more)

By Scott Shephard

One of the nice things about people taking selfies in public places is that they are often oblivious that someone is taking a picture of them taking a picture. Am I a creeper? I don’t think so. I’m a photographer. 🙂

And here was the photography challenge on this occasion: How do I get a photo of a massive statue of a sailor kissing a nurse and somehow make it more interesting than all of the millions of other photos that have been taken in this place? (Which is on the San Diego waterfront, by the way.)

One answer is that I could have taken a selfie with the statue in the background. Since I’ve never been to this spot, it would have been truly unique. But I think a better answer to the challenge is what I ended up posting. And are people who take selfies self-absorbed? Maybe. Is it bad to be self-absorbed? I can opaquely answer that with a monumental selfie:

Deb and Scott strike a pose and generally obscure the monuments at Stone Henge. But they get a truly unique image in the process.

01-09-14 Altered States (HDR)

2014 01-09 Altered States by Watertown, South Dakota, photographer Scott Shephard

This photo is demonstrably “unreal.” As I’ve said before, humans don’t see out of focus light as soft, overlapping balls. And we certainly don’t see the world upside down, as it is shown here in a crystal ball I inherited from my grandma Ida.

But wait a minute. . . Our eyes are lenses somewhat similar to a crystal ball. And, in fact, all that we see is upside down, too. But our brains, for some reason, turn it “right side up.” So do I dare ask, “What is reality?”

Canon 5DIII f/5.0 ISO320 100mm

01-01-14 Circle of Light

2014 01-02 Bright Palm by Watertown, South Dakota, photographer Scott Shephard

I had mentioned yesterday that I had another photo that showed a drastic difference between what the human eye sees and what the camera “sees.” Yesterday, the difference had to do with focus, depth of field and bokeh. What today’s photo demonstrates may not be so obvious unless you understand the concept of “dynamic range.”

Dynamic range is the term used by digital photographers to describe a camera’s ability to show the range of shades in a scene from very bright to very dark. And, generally speaking, cameras don’t do such as good job compared to the human eye, which is brilliant.

When I saw this palm leaf, singled out by the relatively bright sky above, I didn’t see what you see in the photo. I saw the highlights as bright green and the shadows as dull green. And when I took the photo and looked at it on the built-in screen, I thought, “Wow! I didn’t see that.” And I liked it.

I’ll admit that I did use a few fancy software processes to boost the dynamic range of the photo a bit. But I didn’t want to kill the highlights you see here. Is is a good photo? I can’t say. But, as I’ve already said, I like it.

Canon 5DIII 1/60s f/4.0 ISO640 102mm

And for detail junkies, Here’s the raw, unprocessed file

01-01-14 What We Never See

2014 01-01 What We Never See by Watertown, SD, photographer Scott Shephard

My title for this post isn’t so much about the fact that we don’t see rain, or rain-drenched leaves in our normal experiences. Though most people rarely stop to study a leaf as closely as I’m asking you to do it here.

What I mean is that the camera “sees” things very differently than humans do, including color, contrast and focus. And for sure the human eye can’t see unfocused areas* as the lens does because when we look at another point in a scene, our eyes automatically focus there.

And discovering the unexpected is one of the reasons I find so much joy in making a photo.

And speaking of joy, welcome to 2014! I will be celebrating five years of “A Photo A Day” soon and I do appreciate you, the viewers, who certainly provide another source of joy for me.

*The unfocused areas are called bokeh. In this photo, the blurred circles in the background are other rain drops hanging on other leaves like the one you see in focus here.

Canon 5DIII 1/100s f/4.0 ISO400 102mm

12-12-13 Countless Unseen Details

2013 12-12 1000 Unseen Details by Watertown, South Dakota, photographer Scott Shephard
Someone once suggested that “Countless unseen details are often the difference between the mediocre and the magnificent.” When I teach photography, this is one of my many mantras: what helps our work rise above all of the billions of photos being taken is our close attention to details and our true understanding of what those details are.

This photo is not presented as an example of the “magnificence” but this detail of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City is. If you look at a broader view (click), you will will find that while the figure of Jesus is the centerpiece of the this facade of the cathedral, it is only one small part.

And I can assure you that the architects and sculptors did not intend for this statue to be seen with a telephoto lens attached to a high resolution camera as you are seeing it.

So why are the edges of the pages of the book so carefully rendered? And why is there so much detail in the face and hands of Christ that would not be seen from a distance?

The answer is simple: these were all done in a quest to create something that was truly magnificent.