Palouse is very popular place among photographers. There are a lot of photographs of fields and rolling hills. What I like is also is how the fields look inside – all the vertical lines, some slightly tilted to different angles. And that’s what I like about this photograph. It has rolling hills and fields but it also has a slice of the field and gives a peek inside the field.
Field Inside
Why are we chasing after making more and more photographs?
A famous Russian artist – Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov – spent 20 years on one painting which turned to be his whole artistic life. The painting is absolutely breathtaking.
We, photographers, on the other hand seem to want to produce more photographs per minute than ever. I’m not sure if industry is encouraging us or industry just meets our demand by producing faster shot per second cameras, faster cards, software to go thru photo-editing faster.
Do we produce something great or just visual noise? Is it time to slow down and think about what we trying to get to by doing this? I used to be inspired by single photographs of the past and I still am. Nowadays I’m subscribed to all kinds of digital photography feeds but for the most part all I get is one stream of noise. It seems that photography has become more about inventing something new rather than about creating something beautiful. Now single photograph is not enough, today it is all about folios. Is a folio just a way to unload more photographs into the market?
I wonder what would be an equivalent of spending twenty years on a single painting in photography? How would one work on one photograph their whole life? And what that photograph would be? Maybe a folio is an equivalent of that painting? And it is all about polishing that set of photographs: substituting some of them with other, reshooting some of them, redoing post-processing, etc. That seems to make sense, just don’t make me look at a folio of a thousand photographs.
Is a photograph of an art an art? Is a photograph of a sculpture an art? Is a photograph of a painting an art?
What is important in a photograph – an image or how it was made? Similarly for paintings: if we have two visually undistinguishable copies would we value the one that is proven to be original thru chemical analysis higher? Does it mean it is more important how something was made than its purpose?
I don’t have answers to either of the questions. It is just something I find interesting to think about.
Since when have we started trusting our equipment to the level when we don’t use our brains anymore?
On my recent trip to Yosemite I was taking photos of a waterfall and saw a man taking a photo of his lovely wife and daughter with the waterfall in background. I was in a very good mood and decided to help him get a better picture. I gave him an advice to use fill flash to lit up their faces, since waterfall in background was bright and the sun was slightly behind. The man turned to me and said that he has a new camera that can detect when background is too bright and will pop the flash automatically.
I did not want to argue with him but found it very interesting that we started trusting equipment more than our common sense. I guess I must resist an urge to help anyone with “smarter than human” camera.
Look at the world around you with your eyes wide-open. Like a child. There are endless possibilities for photography around. While photographing a sunset look at what’s behind it might be even more beautiful.
This is a series of posts with translation of my interview published in Russian at http://landscapists.info/vitaly-prokopenko. The question from the interview: “Give one Very Important Advice to our readers?” This is the last question from the interview.
This is a series of posts with translation of my interview published in Russian at http://landscapists.info/vitaly-prokopenko. The question from the interview: “Is photography your hobby or job? Or maybe both at the same time?”
Photography is a hobby for me. I thought of making it my job but talking with photographers that made it their job I abandoned that idea. There is a lot of work goes into having photography as your job that is not directly related to making photographs like marketing, finances, workshops, etc. I’m not interested at all in that. I might as well to have a job completely unrelated to photography and do photography I like in the remaining time. After all I probably spend as much time doing photography I like as some professional photographers.
As far as money concerned I think the only way to make money in photography is to photograph weddings, portraits or advertisement.
By the way Brooks Jensen wrote it in a funny way in his book Letting Go of the Camera. Though he has built a successful business based on his love of photography.
This is a series of posts with translation of my interview published in Russian at http://landscapists.info/vitaly-prokopenko. The question from the interview: “What’s photography in your life? What do you do besides photography?”
What’s photography in my life? – It is a hard and complex question. A short answer: it is a meaning and passion, a way of self-expression.
Besides photography I have job and family. Before my son’s birth I was also snowboarding a lot. After my son’s birth one of my hobbies had to go. Photography stayed.
This is a series of posts with translation of my interview published in Russian at http://landscapists.info/vitaly-prokopenko. The question from the interview: “What are your most favorite and least favorite moments while photographing?”
Favorite moment #1: I get a photograph just the way I wanted or even better. Or a surprise – did not expect to find such beauty but nature presents a surprise and I am impressed take my camera out and start photographing.
Favorite moment #2: After hard day of photographing tired and excited at the same time after seeing lots of beautiful places, talk slowly with fellow photographers over dinner about things we’ve seen, impressions we’ve got and photographs we’ve made, relive the day’s experience and get a feeling the this day in my life was worth it.
Least favorite moment #1: When someone comes over and starts asking about my camera, lenses or simply compliment me on my gear. Gear is not why or what I’m interested in photography. It is just a tool, not a goal. Better ask me what I see, what I like about a landscape, how I compose a photograph.
Least favorite moment #2: When someone asks me if I got a good picture. While in a field I don’t know, I’ll know when I get back home. Small preview on a camera screen gives too high level overview of a photograph. I cannot say whether it is good or not.
This is a series of posts with translation of my interview published in Russian at http://landscapists.info/vitaly-prokopenko. The question from the interview: “Could you describe in a few words how you do post-processing of your photographs? What software do you use, what workflow?”
I use Adobe Photoshop for editing and post-processing of photographs. I start with reviewing photographs in Bridge in slideshow mode. I stop slideshow on photographs that catch my attention, open them in Photoshop, touch up slightly (to bring them all to some common denominator) and save them off to a different folder. After that I continue with the slideshow. At the end I may have 10 images selected out of 500 taken.
Then I start rating selected photographs. Rating 5 is given to photographs that I think is some of my best work (not just on that particular trip but in general). Rating 4 is for good photographs, 3 – good quality but static, boring, does not move me. 2 – not good, 1 – can be deleted. (Jumping a bit ahead – in the end I show to others only photos which I rated 4 or 5 stars.)
Then I do accurate post-processing of the photographs with 4 and 5 star rating (and some with 3 stars). This can take a few days. I try not to rush thru this process.
Next step: leave photographs a side for a while – a month or two – to let immediate feelings about the trip to wear off. I always want to show them immediately but every time I do so I regret about it later.
Here is why I regret showing photographs immediately. After a while i go back and look at photographs with a fresh perspective and many of them look differently to me. Rating of some of them may change. Some need more detailed processing. I realize that some might look better in black-and-while others may look better in color. Some might benefit from a slightly different angle and I go back to originals and see if I took that photograph from that different angle.
Only after going thru this strict editing process I, finally, start showing photographs to friends, observe their reaction and listen to their comments. I rarely re-adjust photographs at this point, I do changes a rating though. For example, if I see that a particular photograph does not evoke any emotion, people just pass thru it, I might lower its rating even if I love it.
The last step I started doing only recently. In a set of photographs I look for a common theme. It might be a place where they are taken, common subject, color palette, or something else. When I have enough photographs around common theme, they become a basis for a folio. The idea is to tell a story with a series of photographs.
I do the final pass of adjustments in photographs selected for a folio, to make sure they have saturation, contrast, etc that make them look better together. I add titles, description. And then publish them on my website.
Thank God he copyrighted Nature before we did, otherwise we would not have anything to photograph.
I’ve recently submitted a few of photographs to a juried book. While reading the rules I stumbled on this (copying copyrights and trademarks section in its entirety):
So, what are some of the things that will get your photo rejected?
- Logos and Trademarks– this is a big reason for rejections. It doesn’t have to be a picture of a logo, just the presence of a logo in the image. Some actual examples:
- Photo of a person wearing a baseball cap with an MLB team logo on it.
- A small Nike swoosh on a pair of running shoes. It was pretty small, but still easily seen.
- A Ferrari decal.
- A logo on a building that was discernable as a logo.
- Copyrighted material – So often makes one say “you’re kidding”.
- Art work – things like paintings, public art. Most likely we’ll reject it, but if you know that it’s OK you’ll have time to argue your case.
- Buildings – lots of buildings are copyrighted and the rules are weird.
- Space Needle – a photo of the Space Needle isn’t OK, but if it’s part of the skyline that’s ok.
- Eiffel Tower at Night – a photo of the Eifel Tower is OK, but not of it at night when the lights are on it. The light display is copyrighted.
- Private Property – images of private property are often copyrighted
- Check http://www.istockphoto.com/tutorial_copyright_list.php
- If something is not listed on this site, it is not a guarantee that it’s OK.
That’s right – “are you kidding me?”. Thank God he copyrighted Nature before we did, otherwise we would not have anything to photograph.
vitali prokopenko | fine art 