A reflection on spontaneous photography moments that yield surprising results.
Sometimes I find myself taking a shot with my camera more on a whim than completely planned or thought out. I have no idea what triggers these moments, but if I could figured it out, I’ll want to have more of them. These occurrences feel more instinctive and playful and can sometimes lead to surprising results.
Here’s a shot from one such instance…
Grand Entrance into a Ballroom
This image came about as I was attending a Brooke Shaden workshop. Brooke was explaining some of the concepts that we might want to bring to our photography.
As our wonderful model showed some of the sticks that went well with the darkish brown dress, I instinctively took this shot with a zoom blur. I had this sense of the surreal coming through with a sylvan apparition into the grand ballroom where we were standing.
If you ever get a chance to hear Brooke speak or attend one of her classes or workshops, please do so. She’s a wonderful artist with a true passion for sharing and bring out the creative spark in other photographers.
For me, photography is about more than capturing the scene that we find in front of ourselves. Granted that there is a lot to be said for great photography technique, so that the capture truly represents said scene and highlights the subject(s) in the best way possible. I enjoy that part of photography and particularly like a good lighting challenge. The aspect of photography that keeps me challenged mentally is the creative process. In this series of blog posts, I’ll try to share a bit of this process.
In this first post, let’s take a look at an image that I captured yesterday while exploring a beach in southern Connecticut with great friends of mine.
Meigs Point Beach Scene
As we came upon this section of beach by Meigs Point, I thought that the piece of driftwood across the seashells made for a great bit of counterpoint to the rocks in front of the sky. Overall, I was happy with this view of a bit of beach life, but there was something more that could be done with this.
17th Century Beachscape
A bit of creative exploration brought the idea of taking this image back to the golden age of Dutch seascape masters. As part of their Seaside Artistic Collection for Luminar AI, Skylum provides the sensibility of various seascape painters in a series of templates. Testing some of the treatments, I selected the Rotterdam template, setting it to approximately 1/3 opacity to allow for a blend of captured scene and Dutch seascape that my mind’s eye perceived.
Next steps were very much about bring the age of seascapes in with subtle adjustments, such as film grain, details, contrast aiming to get a sense of the present of the driftwood reaching back to the 17th century of the sky. Taking a bit of a meandering walk through creative options enables me to connect to the points that resonate with what I’m feeling about the scene.
I love to hear what creative approaches you take to your photography. Please let me know in your comments.
