Hail Mary

Technical perfection is apparently overrated (says my wife). So against my better judgement, some images get printed....big and hung on a wall in our house. Some would not make it off the "cutting room floor" on a purely technical basis, so it's a good thing my wife practices what I preach about image content over technical considerations.

The image above is heavily cropped, poorly exposed and a bit soft, but it's a household favourite and prints quite well. Taken with a 450D canon and a 35 f1.4L lens wide open at about 1/20th of a second, holding an icecream in one hand, sitting on the freezing steps of a fountain in Rome, in January, it should not really have happened. It happened twice (the image in galleries is slightly different). Looking at the original file is not heart warming. I learned a lot about the limits of Lightroom and the 450D getting something useable out of it, but it's ok and hey, I like the image when I don't think too much about its flaws. 

Tough light, tough crowd.

Some places are beautiful and some photogenic. Sometimes the two are less than harmonious.

The Fushimi-Inari temple in Kyoto is a must see on the tourist calendar. A short, pleasant train ride from the main station and popular with tourists and locals, it is well frequented any day of the year. As with most temples in Japan, it is a working religious site as well as a nice place to be. 

We arrived mid morning in spring to an already solid crowd and it was building. The temple area is spread across the face of a large hill, broken into several circuitous routes, allowing people to see some or all of the pathway as they wish. As we climbed higher the crowds thinned, but it was still nearly impossible to get an image of the hundreds of orange gates without an unwanted element in the frame and the light was at times harsh and too direct. Resorting to compression and tight detail, using a 75-300 at the short end and wide open (f4.8), I compressed the cold stone detail against an almost silk like wall of orange flame. The bokeh of the 75-300 is very nice for a slow zoom lens and it occasionally made/saved images on the trip.

Lemons and the Kremlin

Every image you make draws its inspiration from sources that may go back a long way to your earliest memories. This is what makes us unique.

One of my earliest inspirations is the work of Sam Abell of National Geographic fame. Abell's work had a couple of things that drew me irresistably. The first was sublime balance and harmony, both things that all photographs require at some level. Secondly a "back to front" compositional style that emphasised all of the image elements, not just the main subject. His Montana ranch cow branding image is one of the best examples of his style and the effect colour has on the perception of depth in an image. 

When given an assignment to photograph Russia and specifically the Kremlin, Abell chose to compose the photo through an open, lace adorned window being used to ripen lemons. This had the effect of context for the Kremlin building in the life of the ordinary Russian. Brooding, mysterious, beautiful, but also just "there" as things are in daily life everywhere. I must admit to not getting the image at first, but it grew on me as the better ones do and is now a firm favourite.

Taken spontaneously while chatting with my wife in our tiny hotel room in Tokyo with an OMD EM5 and the Olympus 45 f1.8, the above image meant little during taking, it was just a careless warm up shot to check settings and the battery. When reviewed it reminded both of us of that Kremlin image in tone  and style (Olympus cameras have nice "filmy" colours, a bit Kodachrome like). The aperture used was f2-2.8 (roughly a 90mm at f4 on a full frame) due to the light in the room, but I left it there in response to the soft rendering of the background image. The curtains are razor sharp, but the woman in the background is almost entirely up to you to interpret, giving you the "idea" of her life without the detail that would stifle imagination.