You Screwed Up. Congratulations!
National Geographic photographer Bill Allard famously said that in photography, interesting failures are more valuable than boring successes. That's a thought that has been sticking in my mind recently as I try to find ways to give more of an edge to my lighting.
It is easy to hang out in a comfort zone, because you have the security blanket of knowing that your go-to tricks will always work. But they also lead to a sameness and safeness that is antithetical to growing as a photographer.
For a good example, I offer a pair of photos by Strobist reader Tom Miles, after the jump.
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I was cruising through the Strobist Flickr pool recently, and saw two photos by London-based reader Tom Miles, of ice skater John Hamer. John was shooting Hamer for Men's Fitness Magazine, which focuses on alternative sports.
Miles posted two photos of Hamer performing a move called a "death drop." In the first, above, Miles' lights fired as he intended them to.
The next photo was a mistake, in which Miles' front light did not fire.
Said Miles of the photo:
"... Obviously, it'd look loads better if the front light had fired. Bugger. ..."
Call me crazy, but I find the mistake photo more interesting than the success.
Is is ideal? No. But it would get me thinking along a more interesting path that might involve creating the scene for a photo through backlighting, then adding just a little hard, directional light, maybe from hard camera left, to crosslight just a little detail.
Does that mean you go out and shoot just the edgy photo and come back with only that? No, not if you want to get called back to shoot another assingment. But if you can adjust your workflow so as to not waste much time and energy getting the safer stuff, you can move on to photos that take more of a chance -- and offer a bigger payoff if they connect.
And between these two photos, IMO, the sweet spot if somewhere in the middle. Build the lighting around edgy backlight, then light just enough from the front to reveal sufficient to satisfy the literal content needs of the magazine. Maybe a 1/2 CTB on the background and a 1/2 CTO on the hard-left skater light, too. Not much color, just a little cool/warm contrast.
In my experience, happy accidents such as Tom's have been the most frequent way in which I have gotten those little visual kicks-in-the-butt that make me think very differently about lighting. My default is to get something safe, early, and then see what I can do to stretch myself a little. Or a lot.
It's unintended consequences like the almost-silhouette above that get me thinking about planning a shot like this from the get-go next time. Not that I am not still gonna play it safe -- I want to come back with a useable image. But if I can get that quickly, I would always be looking to be going for something more interesting and risky.
And the more often you pull off an interesting, risky success, the more you start to realize that when it comes to designing lighting, safe is the enemy of interesting.
(Click the pix for 500-pixel versions. Especially the "screwed-up" one.)
It is easy to hang out in a comfort zone, because you have the security blanket of knowing that your go-to tricks will always work. But they also lead to a sameness and safeness that is antithetical to growing as a photographer.
For a good example, I offer a pair of photos by Strobist reader Tom Miles, after the jump.
____________________
I was cruising through the Strobist Flickr pool recently, and saw two photos by London-based reader Tom Miles, of ice skater John Hamer. John was shooting Hamer for Men's Fitness Magazine, which focuses on alternative sports. Miles posted two photos of Hamer performing a move called a "death drop." In the first, above, Miles' lights fired as he intended them to.
The next photo was a mistake, in which Miles' front light did not fire. Said Miles of the photo:
"... Obviously, it'd look loads better if the front light had fired. Bugger. ..."
Call me crazy, but I find the mistake photo more interesting than the success.
Is is ideal? No. But it would get me thinking along a more interesting path that might involve creating the scene for a photo through backlighting, then adding just a little hard, directional light, maybe from hard camera left, to crosslight just a little detail.
Does that mean you go out and shoot just the edgy photo and come back with only that? No, not if you want to get called back to shoot another assingment. But if you can adjust your workflow so as to not waste much time and energy getting the safer stuff, you can move on to photos that take more of a chance -- and offer a bigger payoff if they connect.
And between these two photos, IMO, the sweet spot if somewhere in the middle. Build the lighting around edgy backlight, then light just enough from the front to reveal sufficient to satisfy the literal content needs of the magazine. Maybe a 1/2 CTB on the background and a 1/2 CTO on the hard-left skater light, too. Not much color, just a little cool/warm contrast.
In my experience, happy accidents such as Tom's have been the most frequent way in which I have gotten those little visual kicks-in-the-butt that make me think very differently about lighting. My default is to get something safe, early, and then see what I can do to stretch myself a little. Or a lot.
It's unintended consequences like the almost-silhouette above that get me thinking about planning a shot like this from the get-go next time. Not that I am not still gonna play it safe -- I want to come back with a useable image. But if I can get that quickly, I would always be looking to be going for something more interesting and risky.
And the more often you pull off an interesting, risky success, the more you start to realize that when it comes to designing lighting, safe is the enemy of interesting.
(Click the pix for 500-pixel versions. Especially the "screwed-up" one.)
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Posted at 1:30 AM.
14 Comments:
Buy more cactus trigger for better pictures? *lol*
This is so true. I must say myself that I often tend to stick to the safe way of doing it, but when I let loose I almost always get some interesting images.
Here is one of my most successful images made out of a mistake: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7936796@N02/470296121/
I was using a flash for frontlighting them, but in this image the flash didn't fire. Of the twenty or so images I made in this setup, this is the only real keeper. Lucky me, the flash didn't fire:)
This is so true. I must say myself that I often tend to stick to the safe way of doing it, but when I let loose I almost always get some interesting images.
Here is one of my most successful images made out of a mistake: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7936796@N02/470296121/
I was using a flash for frontlighting them, but in this image the flash didn't fire. Of the twenty or so images I made in this setup, this is the only real keeper. Lucky me, the flash didn't fire:)
I've had the same "problem" a while ago.
My poverty slave has a will on his own, and i have got to be lucky i can tell it to go off before he starts doing it on his own.
This time, 1 flash fired too early and was still recharging when i needed him.
I'm not complaining about the effect dough...!
http://kerwin-groot.nl/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/img_2536.jpg
this is so true - and flashes not firing is one of the my biggest annoyances - that said the unreliable flash has landed me with some variations which I wouldn't even have considered trying -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/manjade/1815687122/
Looks like you have to be signed into flicker to view the photos.
Mistakes can be rather interesting. The all-time best portrait I've ever shot had the key light fail to fire (it was still recharging), leading to some absolutely wonderful dramatic light rather than the fairly blase bog-standard lighting I had setup.
Very true. I was shooting a radial chopper (custom motorcycle with an airplane engine) and my front lights didn't fire. Since it had such a dramatic silhouette, the magazine used it as cover.
I had one of those (the key failed to fire due to battery charge). It turned out to be the most interesting by far: here
To me this is a great reason to use Nikon's CLS. The ability to control the light intensity (or turn one or more lights off altogether) from directly on-camera, greatly increases one's creative control, especially in situations where, under pressure, you can't take the time to walk down to your light to change the output level.
I have to say that the prevalence of "happy accidents" is so common to digital, 5 fps photography that I've had to make a conscious effort to avoid relying on them!
I have this one picture I especially like that came out of someone else "intruding" my long exposure with a point&shoot flash....
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21774063@N03/2105779992/in/pool-strobist/
Michael Grecco's famous portrait of Martin Landau resulted from a similar happy accident when an optical slave was blocked. I couldn't find a link to the details of that shot when searching, but I did find the following:
http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0701/grecco.html
Great excerpts and set-ups from his book, if you're still on the fence it should convince you to get it!
Slightly late I know, but it's Tom Miles here - I've been away on assignment in Spain all week (got back late Friday) and have had no internet access the entire time I was there.
Needless to say I've been dealing with piles of stuff since I got back to the office, and although I noticed that the picture on Flickr had attracted quite a bit of attention, I didn't realise Mr Strobist had actually gone and written a whole post about it! Hope nobody thought I was being rude by not saying anything.
I agree wholeheartedly with everything David says, and I've had my fair share of other happy accidents as well! I'd also emphasise the importance of coming back with something in the bag that you know the client will use - shots like this are great, and can often point to a new direction, but clients tend to be a little miffed if that's all they get!
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