Creative Quotes

For your consideration:
"Creativity is taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary." Chris Orwig in "Visual Poetry." That's what makes great photography an art.

"Doc was at ease with himself and that put him at ease with the world." John Steinbeck in Cannery Row. This evening, with ease, I print.

"What I am saying is that you need to begin to define what inspires you.  Then you need to dedicate time to that endeavor."  Chris Orwig.

As I'm printing some of my latest "Tango" photographs, I'm reading Orwig's "Visual Poetry" and getting inspired to photography, print and share.  And to focus on my creative side in the way I do best - photography.

Tango 2011

One of my favorite photo subjects is of the Tango.  A sensual, stylistic dance, accompanied by amazing music (accordion and all!), the Tango is a visual treat.  And so, one again, I attended the Tango Dance at Northwest Folklife Festival over Memorial Day Weekend.  And, one again, watched some amazing dancing, especially the Tango demonstrations by the "professionals."  The lighting in the Seattle Center House changes by the moment, with sun streaming through the skylights one minute and then blocked by clouds the next.  Shadows on the floor one moment coupled with bright sun on the dancers.  And of course, there are the crowds all around that encroach more and more each year, limiting what I view as the "perfect" shot.  But its all part of festival shooting. 

One of my favorite photos this year was of this couple - her teal dress and shoes played off well against his dark suit, and the dance floor just washed out, creating what I think allows the dances to "pop." I then decided to take it one step further and "wash out" the dancers themselves a bit - it becomes more of a drawing - using "fill flash" and some color saturation adjustment in Adobe Lightroom. Such are the possibilities of "fine art" photography!

Editing Your Photos

I spent yesterday afternoon at the Northwest Folklife Festival, primarily eating, hanging out with a friend, and taking photos at the Tango event in Center House - one of my favorite photo opps of the year.  This morning was spent editing the 380 photosraphs.  I picked up a great editing system from fellow photographers at a recent workshop in Cusco, Peru.  Using Adobe Lightroom's (which is my software of choice in editing and post-processing) starring system, I did an initial edit of shots that showed "some promise."  In this case, I ended up with 146 "**" photos. 

The next round was a more critical examination of the shots and weeding through some near duplicates, ending up with 85 "***" photos.  Still way too many for most purposes, but I was clearly getting down to the better shots.  Now I paid a lot of attention to the edges of the photos and other "extraneous" elements that detract from the subject of the photo.  This edit brought the working total down to 29 "****" images.  These are likely the ones that, over time, I will make color, saturation, and other minor adjustments (even some cropping as needed). 

But there's still one more edit to go - those "best of the best" shots.  Here I did side-by-side comparisons in Lightroom's "Library" mode to narrow the field.  I finally settled on 7 photos, or about 2% of the original photos, for the "*****" rating.  These are the shots I'll start with and will likely print several of these for upcoming exhibitions.  All of this took about an hour and was relatively easy and painless - probably equally divided time-wise since its clearly harder as it goes. Photoshop and other software programs offer similar ways of quickly going through and editing photos in a series of iterations.  Highly recommended! 

By the way, the above photo is one of the "7."  I selected it because its shows both motion and emotion.  (And it's hard to go too wrong with a touch or two of red!)