Saturday, March 17, 2012

Snow Day - The Essence of a Place

On the second day of Eddie Soloway's Natural Eye workshop we went on a shoot in an aspen grove outside of Santa Fe and at about 10,000 ft. elevation. As we drove up the the snow and fog increased as did our excitement to be able to try out some of the things we were talking about in the workshop. Specifically, how do you capture photographically the essence of a place? How do you record feelings, impressions, and other esthetics so that they can be understood by the viewer? Snow Day - The Essence of a Place Essence 1 Essence 5 Essence 4 Essence 2 Essence 3 Essence 7 Essence 6

See, Do, Think

Wandering around Santa Fe on the first afternoon of the Natural Eye workshop I decided to focus on Eddies suggestion to play with color, light and shadows. He taught and I would agree that there are images to be made anywhere and anytime if we only have the eyes to see and the mind to perceive. This idea of awareness, I think was a principle teaching point of the workshop and is intimated in the title of Eddie Soloway's website, "See, Do, Think".

One activity that Eddie did during the workshop to help us be more perceptive of especially color was to have us reach in a bag and choose of different color card (he called them rainbow chips) and walk around a field and trying to find the color. It was quite amazing to me that any color, including bright and unexpected ones like purple for instance, could be found in the field of sage brush if one just looks! See, Do, Think Shadow Play 2 Shadow Play 1 Gateway

Working the Frame

One of the suggestions Eddie Soloway gave was to "work the frame." He suggested hanging around a place, change lenses, change perspective, vary your metering, vary you depth of field and focus... well, you get the idea. I have always tried to get different angles on a scene but Eddie's suggestion was to take it a step further by varying techniques and types of images. "Experiment", "have fun", "be creative", and "don't be afraid of failure" were all elements of his approach to "working the frame." Working the Frame Perspective 2 perspective3f perspective4f Perspective #5 perspective6f BaseballField7f

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