Learn to Recognize Great Light

Tailor making school uniforms in Totonicopan, Guatemala

A repost from August 16, 2011.

Photography is about light. In fact, the word "photograph" comes from two Greek words: photos, which means "light," and grapho, which means "to write." So to photograph really means to write with light.

Learning to see light and use it well is the most basic, but also the most important skill in photography. For me, it has also been the most difficult to acquire and I'm still working at it. A true master of photography can find ways to use almost any kind of light, even the harsh glare and black shadows of mid-day. Most of us, though, will find serendipity favors the slanting, directional rays of morning and evening, the softness of open shade, and the warm glow of windowlight, as in this picture of a Guatemalan tailor making uniforms for students at an evangelical mission school in the mountain town of Totonicopan. A large window to his right was the sole and beautifully sufficient source of illumination.  

 

(Olympus OM, 85mm Zuiko, Fujichrome 100)

 

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

When You Find Something Good, Keep Working It

Clarence Spindler and his "See Rock City" barn 

 

Blog Note: A repost from August 17, 2011.

It was early morning when I pulled up to Clarence Spindler's farmhouse on U.S. Highway 41 just north of Evansville, Indiana. Clarence and I had never met; in fact I was not even sure he was still living. All I had to go on was an old file card from the 1960s which had been used by the sign painters who traveled the countryside back then painting "See Rock City" on every barn whose owner would permit it. Thirty-some years later, I was there in pursuit of my quest to make a photograph (and a book) of every Rock City barn still in existence.

Several knocks having produced no answer, I went on around to the barn and began making photographs: first, a series in half-stop brackets, then the same with a Cokin #85 filter to emphasize the warm feel of the rising sun. Clarence himself arrived on the scene just then, and after a few minutes of introduction and pleasant reminiscing I asked if he would mind being in my picture. He allowed that it would be all right and stood where I asked as I made another set of bracketed exposures. "Better and better," I thought. I had a good photo of the barn alone, and an even better photo of Clarence and his barn.

Then serendipity sent a kitten to wrap itself around Clarence's legs and look up at me with eyes gleaming in the morning light.  (Canon EOS A2, 24mm Canon EF lens, Fujichrome Sensia film, Cokin #85  pro-series filter.)

 

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Always Carry Your Camera (Repost)

 

New England Rednecks

I have never, ever, taken a picture I like on an occasion when I did not have a camera with me.

Louise accompanied me on an assignment one summer which took us to Massachusetts, Maine, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. We traveled by car and were able to take some time off for ourselves, including a pleasant weekend with friends in southwestern New Hampshire. We all went out for a Sunday afternoon ramble, and even though it was an off-day for me I followed my rule of always carrying a camera. I took only an 85mm lens, but the combination proved to be just right when we stopped at the ol' village swimmin' hole. I photographed casually in automatic exposure mode as the golden retriever made dive after dive. This is the one I like best.

Please note that, contrary to popular opinion, rednecks are everywhere, not just in the South.  (Olympus OM2n, 85mm Olympus Zuiko, Fujichrome 100 film)

 

Blog note: I actually began this blog in 2011, wrote six posts, and gave it up. This is one of those posts. I should have stuck with it. 

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

The Economics of Film (Repost)

Rock City barn on U.S. 41A, Webster County, Kentucky

Blog note: As I mentioned in a previous post, we are buying a condo in Knoxville. Closing is set for January 31. I'm going to be really busy for a few weeks, moving out of our RV and into the condo, then getting the RV and truck ready to sell, so I will be reposting some blogs from the early days -- 2019 and 2020, maybe even from 2011. Many of you have never seen these posts, and if you have, I hope you will enjoy reading them again.

If you pay attention to such things, you may have noticed that many of the photographs I show were shot on film. There's a reason for that: I photographed on film for the first 35 years of my career before making the transition to digital photography in 2003. 

In my work as a documentary and commercial photographer, transparency (slide) film was always my preferred medium and was also usually required by my clients. I have shot many thousands of rolls. Fujichrome Professional 100D, is my all-time favorite film.

I've also processed thousands of rolls of slide film, using Kodak or Unicolor chemistry in a Unicolor Film Drum with a motor base and a home-made water bath with a fish-tank heater to keep the chemicals up to temp. (Although only the first developer is temperature-critical.) Later, we had a King Concepts processor in the studio, which made things a little more efficient.

When working, almost every situation was evaluated with a Minolta incident meter, and exposures were bracketed over a one and a half stop range in half-stops. Most of the time the half-stop under exposure was the selected one. I also used filters extensively, especially warming ones, to render as nearly as possible the feel of each scene on the film.

I was a very precise and careful photographer in those days, even in situations where I had to work quickly. There was no way to "fix it in Photoshop," so if I didn't get the scene on film the way I wanted it, too bad. Digital has made it easy to become sloppy.

Actually, photography was much more satisfying and fun when I shot film. But there are other considerations. For example:

For the first edition of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia (Countryman Press, 2017), I traveled more than 10,000 miles around the state over the course of a year and made more than 4,200 digital exposures, which equates to about 118 rolls of film. (By comparison, I shot about 150 rolls of film for the Rock City Barns book.)

Since my cameras and lenses were already paid for, those 4,200 exposures essentially cost me nothing. If I had been using slide film (Provia, from B&H at $10 per roll), those exposures would have cost me $1,180. A gallon of E6 chemistry from Arista costs $80 and can process about 40 rolls. That's around $240 for processing. Not cheap, but much cheaper than a lab.

So if I had processed the film myself, which I could easily have done, total cost for film and processing would have been about $1400. Probably a good bit more than that, actually, because if I had been shooting film I would have bracketed, which is not usually necessary when shooting digitally in RAW mode.

I received a reasonably generous advance from the publisher, but that also had to cover gas, lodging, and food. Adding in film and processing costs would have stretched it a little too far.

And of course, there's also the time cost. Processing all that film takes time. Fortunately, I can edit slides on the light box, which is certainly as fast as editing on computer, but then there's also scanning time. Lots of scanning time. About 225 photos were used in the book, but I submitted around 350 to give the editor some choices.

 
Do I think the book would have been better if I had shot it on film? Yeah, I really do. With film, I could have used filters to render the ambiance, the feel of the light in a scene much more effectively than I have been able to do with digital photography. Maybe there's a good way to do that, but I haven't mastered it yet.

So, could the book have been better? I think so, but I might be the only one to notice.

(Canon EOS A2, 28-105 f3.5-4.5 Canon EF lens, Fujichrome 100. Cokin #85 filter to capture the warm feel of early light.)

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph copyright the estate of Tony King. Text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

 

An Old Dog Learns New Tricks

Smoky Mountain Homestead

At the Cherokee, North Carolina Entrance

to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Mamiya C220 twin-lens reflex, Kodak Ektachrome film

 

For 35 years I was a film photographer. My skills in using film were carefully developed and polished by many years of practice. I usually worked with slide film, which is the most difficult to expose properly, calculating exposures with a hand-held incident meter, which is more accurate than the meters built into cameras because it reads the light falling on the subject rather than the light reflected from it. To be ultra precise, exposures were bracketed by making additional ones a half-stop brighter and a half darker, then choosing the best one after the film was developed. I had a well-equipped darkroom and enjoyed processing color slides and black and white film myself. To this day I believe the majority of my best photographs were made on film.

In 2003 I made the switch to digital imaging with great reluctance and only because I felt it necessary to remain competitive in professional photography. I soon found that there were some skills common to both film and digital photography, but there were also new skills to learn. At the ripe age of 66 I began to teach myself Photoshop! And not just Photoshop, but numerous other software programs to learn. Learning software is not something I enjoy, but necessary to do digital photography at a high level. Even the film photograph of a Smoky Mountain homestead had to be scanned into a digital file before it could be posted on the internet. 

Sometimes it seems as if all I've done since 2003 is learn software! An old dog may learn new tricks, but that doesn't mean he will enjoy it.

 If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph copyright the estate of Tony King. Text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Image Quality or Quality Image? (Repost)

   The White Dress

(Copyright estate of Tony King)

 

From time immemorial photographic equipment manufacturers have propagated the myth that owning a better camera will make one a better photographer. Consequently, many photographers spend time and money seeking what I call abstract technical quality: full-frame sensors with high pixel counts or even digital medium format, paired with lenses of the highest definition to create photographs of extreme sharpness and clarity.

Sharpness and clarity are certainly desirable qualities, although few people will notice a difference in any size enlargement most of us are likely to make. But those demanding photographers have a right to like what they like, and they help keep the camera manufacturers in business, which helps us all. So blessings on them!

There is, however, more than one way to think about photographic quality. For myself, I believe the most important quality in a photograph is the quality of its content. (Although I once did have someone, a lab owner, no less, inform me that image quality is more important than content.) 

The two are by no means mutually exclusive, of course, and there are many photographers who produce photographs with high-quality content using equipment capable of the highest image quality. 

The whole discussion is a carryover from film days, when some of us used 35mm extensively while others swore by their medium format Hasselblads, RB67s, Rolleis, and the like. This is not to disparage medium and large format cameras, because many great photographs have been made with them. Yet people like Andre Kertesz, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Josef Koudelka, Elliott Erwitt, Tony King, W. Eugene Smith -- the list is almost endless -- turned out volumes of poignant, story-telling photographs with their 35mm cameras.

A case in point is a print which the late Tony King gave me, which is at once one of the simplest and yet one of the most satisfying photographs I have ever seen. It's just a young girl's white party dress hanging on the bare wooden interior wall of a New England beach cottage. That's all. Just a 35mm available light shot, probably on Tri-X. How can it be so good? You have to see it. And yet, it's only about 6x9 inches, printed on 8x10 paper.  

Would it be better if it were larger? I don't think so. The quality of this photograph is the quality of its content. I doubt that it would enlarge well beyond 12x18, but this picture does not need to be large to be  eloquent. The technical quality is sufficient to carry the message of the content. No more is needed. 

It's nice if you can afford the latest and the best. But for those of us who can't afford or don't choose to spend the money, don't want to carry a load, or simply want to keep things simple, remember that reasonably good equipment, reasonably good technique, a reasonably good eye, and a reasonably good idea of what you want to say can add up to very good photographs.

It's what's in your photographs that counts; not what you use to make them. 

 If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph copyright the estate of Tony King. Text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Changes, Changes. . .

 

Louise and David in the Grand Tetons

Fuji X-T1, Fujinon XC 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 OISII lens

 

Two years and a few days ago we sold our home and small farm in the northwest Georgia mountains, moved into a new fifth-wheel trailer, and became full-time RVers. It has been an interesting experience, and we have been extremely comfortable and happy living in our camper. But now we are in the process of buying a home in Knoxville.

"Why?" you may ask.

We love our trailer and many aspects of the full-time RV life, but we are not accomplishing our goals in RVing. We have traveled, but not as we had hoped. Travel has mostly consisted of going to a campground somewhere, staying a month or so, then moving on to another campground for another month or so. It's been interesting to have our tiny home on wheels in a variety of different places, but we had intended to travel much more.

Our plan was to be footloose, as we were when we went west in 2018 in a smaller camper and light truck, covering 7,000 miles in 30 days. (I wrote about the trip in August and September of 2020.) But travel is cumbersome in a big rig. Setting up and breaking camp is a much slower process. And diesel fuel is prohibitively expensive, especially for a heavy-duty truck that gets 10--11 miles  per gallon.

 

The valiant Chevy and our Starcraft travel trailer at Badlands National Park.

So, we are buying a condo in a pleasant section of Knoxville, near the church we attend. We plan to sell our trailer and truck and buy smaller ones that will enable us to resume the more mobile kind of travel we enjoy.

We have a lot of travel left in us, God willing, but we need to change the way we do it. (But maybe not 7,000 miles in 30 days again!)

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photographs and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

The Three Stages of Photography: Stage Three (Repost)

 

 Early Snow. McLemore Cove, Walker County, Georgia

Canon EOS 20D, 70-200 F4L lens

 

The third and ultimate stage of photography is involvement with the subject. 

The things we've learned about equipment and the photographic process in earlier stages are not forgotten or set aside; they are relegated to their proper roles as means to an end.  And that end is the presentation,  the revelation of the subject.

The great photographer Dorothea Lange kept a quotation by the English essayist Francis Bacon on her darkroom door: "The contemplation of things as they are, without error or confusion, without substitution or imposture, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention."

Contrary to what you've probably been taught, photography is not an art of self-expression.  Photography is above all others the art of self-effacement. Photography reaches its highest plane when the photographer has so mastered its tools and processes that he is able to use them to take himself out of the way and allow the subject to speak, to reveal itself through his skill. Paradoxically, it is only then that the photographer fully and truly expresses himself.

Another paradox is the fact that looking at a photograph of something is often the best way to see it. "...the camera's innate honesty...provides the photographer with a means of looking deeply into the nature of things, and presenting his subjects in terms of their basic reality. It enables him to reveal the essence of what lies before his lens with such clear insight that the beholder may find the recreated image more real and comprehensible than the actual object." (Edward Weston, "Seeing Photographically," The Complete Photographer, January, 1943.)

The Watchers. Fayetteville, Indiana

Canon EOS 20D, Canon EF 24-85 f3.5-4.5 lens

 

Our work as photographers is to isolate and clarify so that others may through us see the things that are around them. Our expensive equipment and our skill at using the processes of photography are enjoyable in themselves, but are ultimately pointless unless they become the channels through which we empower our subject to reveal the essence of itself.

What subject?  I can't answer that question for you. Edward Weston found his universe in peppers, shells, and rocks. Steiglitz found his in clouds, Ansel Adams in the forces of nature. Dorothea Lange found hers in the faces of the poor and dispossessed, and Cartier-Bresson found his in the patterns of everyday life. I have found mine in the play of light across a human face, and across the face of the land. Ultimately, your answer will come out of your world view.

I believe that this world was created by a loving and sovereign God, and is filled with both beauty and mystery. I believe he created man in his own image, and although man has fallen and that image has been broken and marred, it still exists. Man is thus both savage and noble, and the world is a place of both darkness and light, of chaos and order. I want my photographs to show a world of beauty and mystery, of light and darkness, of nobility even in the midst of savagery. There is chaos, but underlying it, there is order.

Rooted in the Past

Armuchee Valley, Walker County, Georgia

Olympus OM-D E-M5, Panasonic Lumix 14-140 f3.5-5.6 lens

 

Your way of looking at the world may be different from mine. If it is, your photographs should show that difference. Your photographs must be yours.  They must come from your heart, your way of seeing life and the world.

So what subject?  The whole world is before you.

What are you waiting for?

(This series of posts was originally published in 1999 as an article in Rangefinder Magazine titled The Three Stages: Photography as the Art of Self-Effacement.)

 

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

The Three Stages of Photography: Stage Two (Repost)

 

Chicago Skyline

Olympus OM2n, 35-70mm f3.6 Zuiko lens, Fujichrome 100

 

Blog note: This is the second installment of an article I originally wrote for Rangefinder Magazine more than twenty years ago and posted on this blog in January, 2020

The second stage of progression in photography is involvement with photography itself.  For the more senior among us, it may have been learning to develop film and make prints. More recently, many have come into photography by way of computers and software. Either way, there's a whole new world of things to learn and do. Some people begin at this stage, rather than at the equipment stage, perhaps hooked by the magic of seeing a print come up in the developer for the first time or the gift or impulse buy of a digital camera. They may partially or completely bypass the involvement-with-equipment phase, intuitively understanding that equipment is only a means to a end.

At this level, pictures become more than a by-product.  Good photographs are an earnestly sought goal, and occasional successes whet the appetite for more.  We attend workshops, read books, and find it all endlessly fascinating.  Influenced by photographers we admire or who we have been told are masters of the art, we try to make photographs like theirs. There's a lot of emulation, imitation, and even some outright copying as we seek to master the medium and find our individual place it.

 

As our skills increase, we may find ourselves making photographs which are considered excellent by others.  They may even win prizes.  Yet, in the deepest sense, they are not really our own.  "Son of Cartier-Bresson," maybe, or perhaps "The Return of Arbus."  Excellent, but not spoken with our own voice, as it were.  Many technically-capable amateurs and not a few professionals arrive at this point and never go any further.

In fact, it could well be argued that professionals are especially susceptible to topping out at this level.  We are involved with photography on a daily basis, most of us are deeply in love with photography,  and some of us find that we can be reasonably successful by producing photographs according to rules and formulas.  In addition, any number of seminars and workshops stand ready to teach us to make photographs just like the hot photographers of the hour.  Imitative photography is actively encouraged by trade associations such as the Professional Photographers of America, with its print judging system which awards merit points to photographs made according to the standards they have established.

 

My Brother Steve

Olympus OM2n, 85mm f2 Zuiko lens, Kodachrome 64

A skillful promoter/salesman with moderate camera skills can have a financially successful career as a professional photographer without ever having an original thought or making an original photograph.

But that's okay.  It's all good fun, and harms no one.  Even if a professional sells hack work, what of it?  Are his customers harmed?  No, they're pleased.  Kathy the new bride is happy because her wedding pictures look just like Jennifer's and Karen's.

Involvement with equipment and with the photographic process itself  are necessary stages in the development of most photographers, but they are not what photography is about.  To learn the true meaning of photography, to come to a place where we can make photographs which are truly our own, we must advance to the third level. (To be continued.)

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

(Repost) The Three Stages of Photography: Stage One

Canoes, Cumberland Mountain State Park, Tennessee

Olympus OM2n camera, Olympus Zuiko 60-200mm f4 lens, Fujichrome 100 film

 

Blog Note: Because of the number of comments on my previous post, I'm reposting in three parts an article from the early days of this blog. It was originally published in Rangefinder Magazine more than 20 years ago.

 

While some undoubtedly take up photography because they are attracted by the possibilities of the medium, I suspect most of us go into photography bass-ackwards: we fall in love with the equipment first.

No question, of course, that photographers have a deeper involvement with their tools than practitioners of most other arts or crafts. It's probably necessary in the nature of the case. Only in music is the art so inseparably linked to the instrument used to produce it.

I'm sure painters talk shop from time to time about brushes and paints, and writers may sometimes compare notes about their word processors. But nobody, except perhaps computer geeks, talks so endlessly about equipment as photographers. We have a love affair with cameras that just won't quit.

And that includes me. I love cameras. I can easily count more than 200 of the critters I've owned in my lifetime, and I'm not even a collector. (Well, maybe a little bit.) I like using cameras, handling them, playing with them, even just thinking about them, imagining what I could do if I had a Fuji GFX100 with a hundred megapixels, or even a 100-400mm zoom for my X-H1. But c'mon, tell the truth. Wasn't it plain old love of gadgets and tinkering that first got a lot of us hooked on photography? I mean, who could resist those miniature mechanical (or electronic, nowadays) marvels with their enticing whirs and clicks? A real grown-up toy for sure.

 

 

Christian woman, Madras, India

Olympus OM2n, 85mm f2 Olympus Zuiko lens, Fujichrome 100

In our equipment-happy stage, we search the internet and visit brick-and-mortar  camera stores, if we're lucky enough to have one nearby, to find the best camera for our money. We eagerly learn which lens does what. We search out blogs, online fora, and books to learn how to use our new cameras and master the technical aspects of photography, including learning to choose and use the necessary software. We believe the camera manufacturer implicitly when he says equipment makes the photographer. And fun...!? A little expensive, maybe, but man, what fun! In fact, it's so much fun that some stop right here and never go on to become photographers. We would never admit it, even to ourselves, but sometimes the pictures are only the by-products of the real fun: playing with our gear. There's a name for this phenomenon: it's called GAS -- Gear Acquisition Syndrome.

And there's nothing wrong with that. The people who make and sell cameras will love you and the money you spend keeps the ball rolling for all of us. To be fair, probably most photographers are at least slightly infected with GAS, and playing with photo equipment is good, clean fun.  But it's not photography. Photography is something else. (To be continued.)

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.