A.D. Drumm Images, LLC – Landscape, Portrait, and Fine Art Photography in Rochester MN Photography

July 31, 2012

Tutorial Tuesday – Composition 101

Filed under: Tutorials — Tony Drumm @ 6:04 pm

It’s time for another episode of Tutorial Tuesday! This time, I’m aiming my comments mostly toward the casual photographers, those who take lots of snapshots but would like to make those pictures just a bit nicer. There are a some basics to composition that are pretty important, and I could spend a post or two on some of them.

But I want to go right to the beginning, to a couple of hints that will make your shots look more planned, more thoughtful, and easier to view. If you consider yourself a pretty good photographer and – more importantly – if other people do, then you might want to skip the rest of this post (and, maybe, go out and take some photos!).

Okay – so what are these basics? Well, first of all, we need to understand what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to capture the view our eyes see and plop it onto a two-dimensional medium. And we’d like the viewer to see at least a little bit of the view we had. Fundamentally, that’s sort of hard to do. So, number 1 is: Recognize our vision is only a little bit our eyes and tons of our brains.

What’s that supposed to mean? It means when we look, we see exactly what we want to see. Our brains filter out all the junk. We put our subjects in the middle of our view – where our eyes are strongest. We focus on our subjects. We ignore other stuff unless our brains decide it’s important – like that bowling ball hurling toward your face!

But plunk that 3D view down on a screen or a piece of paper, and it all changes.

The first, most important step that will help you take better pictures is to look through your viewfinder (or at your view screen) with this awareness in mind. Look at your subject, but look around the rest of the frame. Is the subject where you want? Is there lots of dead space – we don’t need that (unless it’s a plan). Is there junk like a tree growing out of your child’s head? Is your family a tiny speck within the frame?

It takes just a second or two, but it takes practice. We often just rush, seeing only what we want to see and not what’s really there, or what else is there. Next time, just before you press the shutter, look around the frame.

Number 2 is: placement of the subject. We look right in the middle of our field of view, we focus there. But that’s the worst place for your subject in a photo. When I hand someone a camera to take a picture – say a group shot where I’m in the group – I nearly always know how the group will be composed. All the faces will form a line dead-center across the photo.

For some reason, young children often don’t have this problem, and it seems to be less prevalent among the young who’ve grown up with a camera/phone. But it’s still a common problem. Think of it this way. All the space above the heads is  wasted. Instead of filling the frame with the subjects, we have them resigned to the lower half of the photo.

It’s easy to fix and it relies on the same technique as above. Stop, look, think about the image you’re making before pressing the shutter. Don’t be afraid to reframe the shot, aim the camera below the faces and take a better picture. The beauty of digital is, even if you forget, you can think about it after the shot when you review the image on your LCD. Oh! I need to recompose! Let’s do that shot again!

As I said, these are a couple very basic hints. We can go into the rule-of-thirds and other aspects of composition later. But if you just stop, look, think, and recompose, you’ll be a huge step ahead, and your pictures will look so much better!

July 14, 2012

Summerset’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile

Filed under: General photography — Tony Drumm @ 5:10 pm

This week, Summerset Theatre in Austin presented Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile. It’s a rather esoteric show about a meeting of Picasso and Einstein in a French bistro before either became truly famous. What is genius and can we compare art and science?

I didn’t know the show, so I did a little research first. I like to have some idea what’s coming when I start to shoot. I feel some preparation goes a long way toward producing good photos. Still, I expected a box set with the cafe but didn’t know a lot about the characters and their interactions. There was a lot of movement, a lot of interesting characters, and it made the shoot fun.

The waitress and bar tender are sort of constants. Looking through my photos, I have many with them in the background, watching or working, or working and watching.

Einstein and Picasso

 Between the questions it poses, there’s plenty of humor, and I could hear Steve Martin’s voice throughout the show. I remember some of his first acts on TV years ago. He was incredibly funny, but I had no idea of the intelligence and skills he really possessed back then. It became pretty clear over the years, though.

Elvis stops by from the future

Topping things off, Elvis shows up from the future, and we now have the three important characters to shape the 20th century. I get pretty wrapped up in the photography, so I can’t quite devote enough brain cells to the actual show. I’d like to see it again and take in the dialog more completely.

Say “cheese!”

While the lighting was mostly pretty even through the show, there were a few exceptions, and it’s always fun to see what I can do with the interesting lighting I’m given. I wasn’t sure how much moving around the stage I’d do for this show, but I did plenty. And I took plenty of photos, probably more than I expected. But that’s okay! With a show like this, expressions and gestures can make each shot, even taken in a sequence, different. And it’s good to have choices.

Cast and Crew

 Everyone did a great job. Musicals are always a big draw for audiences, but there’s much more to theatre than that. We’re so fortunate to have so many options here in southeast Minnesota. Remember those big-budget movies will look and sound great on your home flat screen, but live theatre is there only for an instant. Every performance is different. If you haven’t been to our local live theatres, you are missing a great experience. Summerset’s next show, Cash on Delivery, runs at the end of the month.

Tonight, we’re attending the ten-minute plays at The Rep. And Mantorville runs their fun melodramas in the summer. There are plenty of opportunities – hope you have a chance to see some yourself! (And those of you not here in SE Minnesota, check out your own local options!)

July 7, 2012

A New Personal Project

Filed under: General photography — Tony Drumm @ 8:58 am

For me, a personal photography project means stepping out of my normal “routine” and finding something different to shoot and something different to do in post. Last year, I shot my interpretation of the four classic elements, Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. I’m constantly looking for inspiration and other ideas that will stretch my abilities, stretch my vision.

I’ve begun working on my new project entitled I Dance… The concept is a detailed focus on dance and dancers along with a very stylized presentation. It’s fun, in part, because it’s so broad. I expect to be working on it for some time, and I envision creating a series of many images. Well, that’s what I’m thinking now!

I’ve shot a couple sessions so far. I had Chris and Jesse model a few ballroom styles for me. They turned out great providing plenty of raw material. I’ve posted a couple of the resulting images. I asked Morgan to provide some hip-hop moves for me. While I have some ideas going into the shoot, I rely a lot on my dancer subjects to provide ideas. I then shoot some close-ups, trying to show features we don’t normally see as spectators, and some silhouettes.

I’m pleased so far with the results, although I’m not sure how many I’d consider finished, even including those I’m showing here. I sometimes need to spend some time with the images, get to know them, and ask them where they’d like to go. Wherever that is, it’s a fun ride. And I can’t think of a better reason to do a personal project!

July 1, 2012

Four Plays for Coarse Actors

Filed under: Rochester Civic Theatre — Tony Drumm @ 5:07 pm

Rochester Civic Theatre just completed their 60th season with a production of Four Plays for Coarse Actors. Over the course of the show, the actors put on four different plays – two per act – ostensibly as a church fundraising activity. A wide range of problems ensue, including less than remarkable acting or singing, prop problems, set piece problems, and on and on.

The director, Greg, likes to point out how he has witnessed nearly every problem they encounter – for real. I know he has some remarkable stories. Lynne has a few of her own (that Italian play). And I’ve witnessed some myself. Anyway, it was a hoot.

I had quite a range of sets, lighting, and costumes to shoot, pretty much covering the gamut I usually see.

Lots of full stage activity, but I was able to zoom in from time to time for a good close shot.

We had moving, sometimes sparse set pieces as well as box sets. That was handled rather cleverly. Box sets are usually unmoving, there for the duration of the show. But, obviously walls and such had to go away for some of the “plays.”

There were some good compositions that work pretty well in photos.

One of the funnier characters was this table which began losing legs forcing the actors to replace them. This leads to lots of (scripted!) improvisation as the players search for a way out of the scene while dealing with holding up the table. Real problems like this are often the topics for conversation when theatre people get together.

The final play is a Shakespearean knock off, sort of like Midsummer Nights Dream, but not. It had cool lighting, lots of colorful costumes, and a flying actor.

That made for some fun photos including this one from near the end of the show.

Greg had another little idea which I learned on the day of the shoot. He wanted to do the cast and crew photo as a composite containing the “casts” of each of the four shows. Okay…

All the cast for all four plays along with the crew!

I was able to do three of the four pretty easily. It was that danged fourth one with the crew that took a bit more thinking. But I think I managed to pull it off pretty well. I guess I kinda like a Photoshop challenge now and then!

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