It could be argued that there are two types of photographers in the world: professionals and amateurs. Well, it could also be argued that this is a two-dimentional continuum with the second axis being good and bad photographers, but that's not the point of my story. Since I'm a good photographer, I'll try to keep my focus narrow.

When it comes to photography, I am first and foremost an amateur. While the word has been co-opted and bastardized by the professionals who spit it at photographers who aren't very good, the soul of the word really defines one who does something for the love of it. Unfortunately, there's not usually a lot of money in being an amateur. Almost by definition, an amateur is not often paid for what he does. That makes exercising a love of one's art more difficult and brings more venom from the professionals who lose money to those who will do their jobs for free.

I am also a professional. This is another word that has been used in many ways and I consider most of them to apply to me. I am professional in that I respect my subjects and my peers and in that I get paid to make photographs. I don't do enough work-for-pay to completely support a life of photography and I'm not even sure I'd want to. As a result, I find myself straddling the definitions and trying to carve out a meaningful place for me to stand.

This line between occupation and avocation is a hard one to walk and I don't think I want to do it forever. The more I want to put into my avocation, the more I have to put into my occupation to fund it. And the more my avocation is self-funding, the more it can feel like work.

A good friend of mine got married last month. I didn't offer her my services as a photographer, though maybe I should have. I'm not all that interested in weddings because there's a lot of pressure and you only get one shot to get it right. On the other hand, weddings pay well and I've done enough of them to know I'm more than capable. If I were to make a living from wedding photography, I'd need to shoot an average of one wedding every week of every year. That means advertising, customer coordination, billing, and more retouching than I'd like to think about right now. If I hired someone to deal with the business aspect, I'd have to shoot twice as often. If I wanted a studio; half again as often.

Anyway, another friend of mine, who was the bride's cinematographer, got into a conversation with the wedding photographer about seating and dining arrangements while they were grabbing their place cards. The photographer saw my name on the board and was mentioned that he had heard of me. "You want to sit next to him? I can make that happen." the cinematographer asked. Later, at dinner, she waved to the photographer, who was standing next to me, and said "Hey! This is Ben Zvan!" by way of introduction. He turned to us and said, "Yes, I know. I'm working up to it. It's kind of like meeting Jesus."

Obviously, I didn't have a ready response to that one. I guess it means I have something of a reputation among at least some photographers. The real question is whether or not a reputation is all I want or if I need to work toward a profession. Many artists are most recognized posthumously and, while that would be great, I don't think I'd enjoy it as much as being recognized now.

Facebook | Twitter | Reddit | Stumble

As an assignment for my art history class, I wrote some comments about this photograph hanging at the MIA.

At first glance the familiar, approximately 8 x 10, size of this photograph is quite disarming. Aside from the sepia coloring of the black and white image, there is little to indicate that this is not a modern photograph of the American west. However, upon closer inspection, the smooth, glass-like, almost foggy quality of the water gives away the length of time necessary to expose a negative in 1871. While it is likely that O’Sullivan used a very large aperture during this long exposure, the depth of field reaches from the extremely close foreground nearly to infinity, enhancing the modern appearance of the image.

The mountainous walls of the canyon are impressively rendered as the high angle of sunlight on the stone brings out the ruggedness of the landscape. Even though the image is a classic example of landscape photography, that high angle of light brings out a definition of shape that gives the image the appearance of an intentionally lit portrait. The impression is great enough that the eye searches the walls of rocks for faces, like scanning a crowd.

The inclusion of the boat and figure near the center of the photograph gives the image a portrait-like quality as well. If the viewer didn’t already know that the picture is part of a documentary project commissioned by the war department, he could easily believe it to be a travel photograph taken to commemorate a family expedition. The inclusion of the bow of the photographer’s own boat and footprints reinforce the impression that this is not staged, but a recording of an event as it takes place.

The searching for faces also leads the viewer to an object that continually draws my attention. In the lower-left corner is a shape, like a lower-case “e” made by something unidentifiable. Possibly, this is something that a veteran wilderness explorer would recognize instantly. Possibly, it is an artifact of this particular technician’s albumen printing process. It leaves a question in the viewer’s mind about the reasoning or lack thereof behind including this shape in the final print.

Originally taken as documentation of The United States’ western expansion in the late 1800s, the photograph may have been intended to show the rough, untamed nature of the landscape that Americans had yet to conquer. In this regard, it is successful as the figure and boat give a sense of the sheer volume of stone above the river and indicates that the location would be impossible to access by any other means. The image is successful in other ways as well. The landscape was not only untamed wilderness, but a majestic scene that would be visited by millions of people in the century to come.

At the same time, the image seems devoid of opinion of its purpose. Is it intended to show the nation that there are lands out west available for the taking? That it was the manifest destiny of the nation to expand into these lands? Or is it intended to warn Americans of what dangers lay in the years and lands ahead? Without the context of caption and American history, the viewer would see this as a dynamic, technically-well-executed landscape photograph. We have seen so many thousands of photographs similar to this one that we no longer think immediately of the relationship of man to nature. We no longer consider the power inherent in ownership of this land or the power the land might bestow upon us.

The wide angle of the image, including nearly the feet of the photographer and reaching into the sky above the far bluff, still can’t include the peaks of the near cliff faces. The stone itself forms the edge of the image through its interaction with the sides and top of the print and the path of the river defines the bottom boundary of the photograph. That simple fact gives the viewer a feeling of smallness, even when the valley is represented on such a small scale.

While the primary subjects of the image, the stone walls of the canyon and the figure standing near the center are motionless by necessity of the technology of the era, the composition and framing produced many diagonal lines, many of which appear to converge off the left edge of the frame, giving the impression of motion and a feeling of more to be seen farther down the river bend. Invoking a feeling of peace in an environment of danger, the wide beach and the flowing water contrast with the apparent heat of the desert canyon, inviting the viewer, or perhaps the photographer, to stop and rest for a while.

Facebook | Twitter | Reddit | Stumble

This is the final update on my drawing class, since it's over. Though I'll probably upload some more pictures.

I learned many things in that class. One is that 18 to 25 year old girls are inherently attractive. Okay, I kind of knew that already. The most important things I learned were techniques for mark-making. With that, I'm now more able to translate what I want to draw into what I have drawn. I also learned that I can draw reasonably well and that the reason I could never draw people is that I've never had on sit in front of me for long enough. Maybe my drawings aren't as realistic as my photos, but that's okay and I can live with it.

For the last couple projects, I wanted to break with my pattern of trying for photo-realistic drawings. This one was an assignment to create a drawing inspired by song lyrics or a poem we printed out for class. Once I heard the details of the assignment and how they related to content and subject, I thought maybe Soul Coughing wasn't the best choice of bands. At one point, M. Doughty, the lead vocalist, said "Don't listen to our lyrics, they're just there because they sound good."[citation needed] Their lyrics are mostly stream-of-consciousness poetry with meaning mostly imparted by the listener.

The lyrics I brought in were from one of my favorite Soul Coughing tracks, Screenwriter's Blues. Here are some excerpts from the song that were instrumental in creating my drawing.

Exits to freeways
twisted like knots on
the fingers
jewels cleaving
skin between
breasts.

Your Cadillac breathes
four hundred horses
over blue lines
you are going
to Reseda
to make love
to a model
from Ohio
whose real name
you don't
know

...

And the radioman says
it is a beautiful night out there!
And the radioman says
Rock and Roll lives!
And the radioman says
it is a beautiful night out there
in Los Angeles
you live
in Los Angeles
and you are going to
Reseda; we are all
in some way or
another going to
Reseda someday
to die
and the radioman
laughs because
the radioman fucks
a model too

...

as the radioman says
it is 5 am
and the sun has charred
the other side of
the world and come
back to us
and painted the smoke
over our heads
an imperial violet

it is 5 am
and you are listening
to Los Angeles.

Facebook | Twitter | Reddit | Stumble

I started taking an art class this summer. It's Drawing 1101 at the University of Minnesota and it's a prerequisite for many art degrees. Since I've been thinking about getting a BFA in photography, I thought I should start somewhere, especially since most of the classes I took when I was in college were in engineering. I still have an interest in engineering, but I'm already a pretty good photograper, so that was the direction I decided to go.

I've learned a few things at this class that I didn't expect to. One is that I can actually draw. I knew I was okay at drafting and representing mechanical and angular shapes, but I didn't expect to discover that I could draw organic shapes as well. Faces are still tough though. The second thing that I learned came completely out of the blue, during an assignment on perspective. It turns out that many "photoshopped" composite photos don't have a consistent vanising point. One more thing to use for spotting the hacks.

Facebook | Twitter | Reddit | Stumble

I was arranging a photo-shoot with a model the other day. She said that she wanted to do Maxim/FHM/Blender style shots for her portfolio. I've never tried to shoot in that style and, come to think of it, I'm not really sure what that style is.

So I had to do some "research" and I thought I'd share what I discovered.

So far, I've found that Maxim, FHM, Blender, Zoo and others all seem to have pretty badly designed, bandwidth-intensive websites. I'm guessing that they'd rather you bought the magazine at newsstands or just got a subscription. Maxim seemed to have the most obvious but least irritating problem. When paging through the Girls of Maxim, there are links to the right for "previous girl" and "next girl". As I was paging through the photos in one set, the same girl showed up as both the previous and next girl depending on what photo I was on. I don't think it's cookie related because I'm pretty sure I allowed cookies. On the other hand, it's not like I felt I needed to view their galleries in any particular order, so it was pretty easy to get over that one.

Somewhere in the combination of websites, my browser stopped loading some of the images. Not so good for image based content. Zoo was the most obvious there in that their navigation images of previous, current and next image didn't always have thumbnails and there was no alt text to display when the load failed. You could still click the spaces where images should be, so it wasn't a crippling problem. I suspect bad javascript is the culprit and I can't guarantee what site was the source of the problem since I had several tabs open.

Here's what I've found for style and quality of images so far. All the magazines seem based on getting sexy shots of girls and the quality of those shots isn't really the important part.

Maxim seemed to have the best quality photographs overall along with the best sets and props. Some of the more striking ones being taken with a dual-edgelight set up which is kind of an obvious aproach, but very effective. Their lighting, pose and composition were varied and interesting. They seemed to genuinely want to make good photos that happened to be of hot women in lurid positions and settings.

FHM had the least content. The composition seemed reliable and the poses varied in quality depending on the model in question. The lighting tended to be pretty simple and uninspired, usually a basic beauty light setup. One thing that they had plenty of though, was nipples. Lots of nipples. Generally sitting on huge bags of silicon.

Blender had the standard band promo photos from the record label. It's hard to identify a style there since all the photographs were taken by different people. It felt like trying to define what style defines comic books. Since there is no "Blender style" I'll have to move on from that one.

Zoo, was linked from either Maxim or FHM. I forget which. Again, they tended to have a wide variety of photographs where the important part was that there be a bare-breasted woman in them. Art was generally sacrificed to content, but sometimes they had some real stunners. I couldn't really define a style, but I'll keep trying...

Another thing that I noticed about all these magazines is that they were not above phoning it in and using promotional shots instead of taking their own and that they shared quite a bit among them. I was never on Stuff's website, but I saw several Stuff watermarks.

Anyway, I'll post some stuff from that shoot when it happens and we can all decide if I hit it on the head or not.

--Ben

Facebook | Twitter | Reddit | Stumble

Some marriages come with children, ours comes with toys. Hmm, that doesn't sound right. Anyway, I finally picked up my new EOS 5D to be my primary camera. I'll still keep the 10D around for the long telephotos since it has more pixels per inch on its smaller sensor. I'll do some comparison shots at some point.

Those who have actually listened to me on the subject of digital photography know that the magnification factor of the 10D has been bugging me for years. I have a very nice 17mm lens that functions as a 28mm lens on the 10D. When I put it on the 5D however, I was tickled pink to have my 17mm lens back. If you're not familiar with how that works, go look up digital focal length conversion factors. This article is okay, but it doesn't mention the effects perspective like this one does.

I'll still be using my EOS 3 since I have a lot of film left in my fridge. I just bought a changing bag so I can develop my own film at home. It saves a couple bucks and it's a fun and toxic thing to do in your basement

--Ben

Facebook | Twitter | Reddit | Stumble

Yesterday's Strobist meetup went great! We had 9 of 10 photographers and 5 of 7 models show. We all got some great shots and we learned a lot about working with models. We ran the gammut again with models and photographers experience levels so we all got some new experiences. We also had a wide variety of equipment from Alien Bee ringlights to discontinued speedlights. All in all, it was a great time.

I did get reminded that I should always leave my equipment out until I'm really ready to leave. After about 5 hours of shooting, I decided to pack up and just watch what other folks were doing and I missed a couple of opportunities for behind-the-scenes shots. Oh well, that would have ruined the mystique anyway, right?

Facebook | Twitter | Reddit | Stumble

Well, tomorrow is another strobist meetup. We've got a big group this time and are actually having to turn away both photographers and models. I'm not too happy about that, but it's winter and we have to do what we have to do. Summer time should be a bit better for the big meetups so it's a little odd for me, but that's two reasons I'm looking forward to summer.

I identify myself as a hardcore Minnesotan. I was born here, I've always lived here, and I love the cold and snow we get every year. It's nine degrees below zero outside right now and I'm just starting to think it feels like winter again. On the other hand, with the limited daylight hours and the icy trails, it's not so good for bycicling lately. I've had to hang out in the third floor bedroom where I've set up my bike on a trainer and my iBook on an end table. It's not the same as biking 35 miles from home before walking to work, but I am catching up on The Batman.

Facebook | Twitter | Reddit | Stumble

Last Sunday, we had a Strobist meet-up in Northeast Minneapolis. We got a studio from 08:00 to 18:00 and lined up 8 models from ModelMayhem, four in the morning and four in the evening. All of them canceled due to snow. Fortunately one of our fellow Strobists has a son who is in the theater industry and knew some people who knew some people. We got four new models and had quite a time.

Early in the morning, before any models showed up. I was screwing around in the studio. It's much larger than my home studio and the wall color is much more neutral. They also have a great table for product shots and it was a simple matter to set up some empty Coke cans and fire away. Using my new 100mm macro lens I was able to get some really tight depth of field shots. I also tried this technique with a dirty coffee pot, three plastic-tipped darts and a black-and-red vase that was sitting on top of a cupboard.

Before lunch (from Pizza Lucé!), I worked with two of the other strobists with support from the rest of the group and went over some of the lighting exercises from Lighting 102, including the most important one, balancing flash with ambient light. I only said f/stop when I meant shutter-speed a few times, honest.

Once the models showed up I learned:

1. How tough it is to work in a stairwell.
2. More experienced models are easier to work with.
3. AI-Servo mode doesn't always focus where you think it should.

Anyway, I've got a flickr set dedicated to the event. Check it out if you want to see what I've been up to.

Facebook | Twitter | Reddit | Stumble

Last Saturday, I took some portraits for Steve Mueske. I haven't done much in the way of portraiture, but I'm working on it. Between what I've learned at Strobist and what I already know, I managed to produce some pretty good shots. It was fun experimenting with light and color and Steve was a good sport when I said things like "Let me try this nose-enhancing wide-angle lens for one".

He also showed me to this really cool location at an abandoned munitions plant on the University of Minnesota's Rosemount Research facility. There were rows of these huge concrete structures that must have been either mounts for heavy equipment or blast protection for/from explosives. I'm definitely going to head back there sometime for more pictures and there's a lot more land and ruins to explore.

I heard from a guy at my local coffee shop yesterday that some local groups go down there to do war re-enactment. I suppose all the open land and interesting ruins could be good for that. I think I had my fill of re-enactments in my 11 years at the Rennaissance festival though.

Facebook | Twitter | Reddit | Stumble