Joe Baraban’s Digital Photography Blog

His body language tells it all

Check out my “Autumn in France workshop” under workshops at the top of this blog.

14One of the ways to bring visual interest and tension into your imagery is the use of body language. It’s a way to communicate without the talking, and can disclose a person’s character or attitude without a word being said. this is very important in still photography for obvious reasons.

I teach an online class with the BPSOP, and I conduct my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops around the planet. One of the areas we work on is ways to create Visual Tension,  and the use of body language is one of them.  I shoot a lot of environmental portraits, so for me body language is an important part of the overall composition. Body language is one of the pieces that make up a good photo, and other pieces of the same puzzle will influence how we interpret non-verbal information by the subject.

The use of hands is so important in expressing thought and conveying the feeling of warmth or strength. If the way people use their hands wasn’t significant, and you doubt that it can help you take your imagery what I refer to as “up a level”, then one only needs to think about sign language and the way the hands are used in a way to send a message to others.

What about the face? A simple expression can send so many different meanings and can portray the range of emotions we all have; don’t we all occasionally carry our disposition, mood, and temperament on our faces.

When taking photos of just one person, the body language can be both compelling and enchanting, but when there’s two or more people, then the outcome can be extremely entertaining and thought-provoking when put in the right situation; especially when light plays a big part…as it always should.

The next time you’re taking pictures of people, try to incorporate some body language and see how much it helps in generating visual tension and interest.

Here’s are a few examples of both one and more than one subject. Can you tell by their body language what’s happening?

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Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on Instagram. Check out my 2023 workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime. My next one will be “Autumn in France” and you can read the description at the top of this blog.

JoeB

Gotta get my girls

I want to announce my next workshop “Autumn in France” to be next October 2nd. It will be in Bordeaux, Dordogne, and Toulouse. If you go to the top of my blog and click on the link, you can read the description. Join me for a great visual experience, seeing places that few people won’t ever be able to.

After fifty-three years of shooting editorial, corporate, and advertising photography, one acquires stories and anecdotes along the way. Some funny, some not so funny, and some you wish didn’t happen quite the way it did. That said, I always told my four kids (the youngest being twenty-seven) that bad decisions usually make the best stories.

However, one of the funnier moments happened years ago while shooting an annual report for an agricultural company. We had gone to a farm to take a portrait of the owner, reported to be one of the largest landowners in the county. After meeting him, you could have knocked me over with a feather when we were told that he held an MBA from the University of Wisconsin.

He was a very slow talking quiet man who was not accustomed to having his picture taken. He was shy and had to be talked into it. I told him that I wanted to shoot him out in one of his fields, and he said that was fine, but he didn’t want to be photographed by himself.

He took us out to a field, dropped us off and said he would be back in fifteen minutes with his girls. I though he wanted to have his picture taken with his wife and daughters. Since the light was bad and the skies were gray, I figured the more the merrier, and what difference could it make…especially if that was the only way he would have his picture taken.

After nearly thirty minutes, he should up with his girls…two of them. He said that they were his favorites and they followed him everywhere he went on his farm. I could hardly show my excitement, and as I tell my online students with the BPSOP, and also my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, the one thing that can replace good light is humor.

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on Instagram. Be sure to check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

I want to announce my next workshop “Autumn in France” to be next October 2nd. It will be in Bordeaux, Dordogne, and Toulouse. If you go to the top of my blog and click on the link, you can read the description. Join me for a great visual experience, seeing places that few people won’t ever be able to.

I have a six month mentoring program, and I recently finished one with a woman living in Spain.

First of all, over the course of the six-months she has become an excellent photographer. Not only can she “make pictures” but she can now see with the right side of her brain, the creative side.

The last area we worked on and had just finished was portraits…environmental portraiture to be exact.

The one area where she was having the biggest difficulty was in making sure the background matched the exposure with the person. She just didn’t remember to do it.

To digress a moment, I have similar issues with photographers that not only take my online classes with the BPSOP , but also in my workshops I conduct all over our round planet.

Ok, here’s the analogy I will share with all my fellow photographers. Imagine you’re in the kitchen about to begin a new recipe that you’ve been dying to try. To make the dish, the directions call for several ingredients from different herbs, fresh and dried, spices, kosher salt, ground pepper, flour, eggs, etc., etc.

Now it’s probably ok to leave out maybe one if the store’s don’t carry it…or you have to buy a pound for 1/2 of a teaspoon. But, that said, if you want to taste it the way it’s suppose to taste, then it’s important to follow the recipe.

When taking pictures of people, there’s also a recipe to follow. I don’t mean there’s a certain way to photograph people, not at all. In fact, Ansel Adams once said,” There are no rules for good photographs, there’s just good photographs.

What I do mean is that there’s a checklist (recipe) that I follow and when everything is checked off in my mind (which takes less than a second)I click the shutter.

One of the main ingredients is exposure. On a late afternoon day when the sun has reached the time when I like to shoot, the Golden Hour, it’s important to pay attention to the exposure on the face as well  as the background. If your subject is in shadow and everything else is in sunlight, your not going to get them both lit the same.

If they are indoors and you’re showing part of the outdoors, remember the importance of knowing about the  Dynamic Range.

Another important ingredient is to check to see if there’s anything growing out of their head. Forget about that silly ‘Rule of Thirds’, unless you’re going for a mediocre less remembered photo. Try placing them close to the edge of the frame to create visual tension.

Keep some contrast between what they’re wearing and what’s behind them.

These are some of the most important things to remember. Create your own recipe that fits your comfort level and your approach to portraiture.

Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on Instagram. Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

I’m always checking my four corners, even when I’m out street shooting.

I want to announce my next workshop “Autumn in France” to be next October 2nd. It will be in Bordeaux, Dordogne, and Toulouse. If you go to the top of my blog and click on the link, you can read the description. Join me for a great visual experience, seeing places that few people won’t ever be able to.

I’ve been shooting professionally for almost fifty-five years, and to this day I still go through my three checklist exercises to make sure what I want in my composition is there, and what I don’t want in my composition isn’t. These three practices are what I teach and preach to all my fellow photographers that either take my online classes with the BPSOP or attend one of my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet.

I have written posts on two of them that hopefully, you might have read: My Fifteen Point Protection Plan, and my Border Patrol. My third exercise is called my Four Corner Checkoff, and it’s very simple to use, and worth a couple of seconds it takes to complete….that is if you remember.

Right before I pull the trigger ( that’s Texas talk for clicking the shutter), I glance at all the four corners to make sure all is as expected. Among other things, I’ll look to see if there’s any vignetting from a poorly attached lens shade, or the wrong lens shade on the right lens. Until I bought an ultra-thin Polarizing filter, I would occasionally get dark areas in the corners from combining a lens shade and a filter.

Then, there’s just the common variety of mistakes like including tree branches, parts of un-wanted buildings, fingers and hands being cut off, etc.

I realize that all three of these exercises are tantamount to redundancy, but as far as I’m concerned, being redundant is a good thing; it’s saved me on many an occasion.

Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on instagram. check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

Kissing the Blarney Stone

I want to announce my next workshop “Autumn in France” to be next October 2nd. It will be in Bordeaux, Dordogne, and Toulouse. If you go to the top of my blog and click on the link, you can read the description. Join me for a great visual experience, seeing places that few people won’t ever be able to.

This is my first post under a new category I call Anecdotes. In my online class with the BPSOP and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops, I’m always telling fellow photographers stories of events or just funny things that have happened to me in my fifty-three year career as an advertising and corporate photographer. It’s time to start sharing these same stories with all the people that have been following my blog.

These are all factual incidents, and only the names have been changed to either protect the innocent or the people you can only look at and shake your head and wonder????????????

I was shooting a project in Ireland with my team that consisted of the Art director, my producer, and my first and second assistant. We had some time to kill and were in Cork. I had heard that the Blarney Stone was right outside the city so we decided to go and kiss it. At that time we really didn’t know what to expect, and truth be told we didn’t know that there was a Blarney Castle.

When we arrived at the castle we went looking for the Blarney Stone, thinking it was some rock nearby and all you had to do was walk up, bend down and kiss it. As the story and ritual goes, kissing the Blarney Stone gives you the gift of eloquence;or gab as some people call it. The kiss, turned out to be much harder than any of us thought. To kiss the stone we had to climb the stairs to the castle’s peak, then lean over backwards on the parapet’s edge. Although the parapet is now fitted with protective crossbars, it’s still very scary!!! Too scary for anyone else to do it but me and one of my assistants.

FYI, before the safeguards were installed, the kiss was performed with real risk to life and limb, as participants were held by the ankles and dangled bodily from the top of the castle.

Later that afternoon we were enjoying some libation at a tavern in downtown Cork. Across the room and in the corner were four really drunk locals that were boasting/laughing about all the times that after a day of consuming several pints of strong beer, they would sneak up to the Blarney Stone and take turns urinating on it. Needless to say that I immediately conjured up a mental picture and I’m here to tell you it was rather disgusting. It took two more pints to wash the taste away. The good news is that I was indeed given the gift of gab, so it’s been worth it…sort of!!!

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com and follow me on Instagram. Check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime. I got a million stories to tell you.

JoeB

I waited for it.

I want to announce my next workshop “Autumn in France” to be next October 2nd. It will be in Bordeaux, Dordogne, and Toulouse. If you go to the top of my blog and click on the link, you can read the description. Join me for a great visual experience, seeing places that few people won’t ever be able to.

Of all the genres in photography, I personally think that street shooting offers the hardest challenge, kids and animals run  a very close second…..why? Because “like a box of chocolates you never know what you’re going to get”….while shooting any of the above.

Landscape, portraiture, food, are three areas that immediately come to mind that gives you time to think ahead of time about your photo. You have the luxury of finding the location, looking for the best light, and as far as food photography you have total control in the studio.

When I’m walking the streets with any of my fellow photographers that are taking my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops, I’m basically looking for light. If I can find the light, chances are pretty good that I will find a shot somewhere in it.

I have had other photographers that take my online class with the BPSOP submit photos that lack visual interest and can’t stand the test of time. For example, a photo that’s showing someone talking on a phone leaning against a corner with a cigarette hanging out one side of the mouth is not going to stand the test of time; unless something extraordinary is happening. How about all those photos that show homeless people eating, begging, or sleeping on the sidewalk?

Having said that, when you do find some light…light that’s worthy of spending some time with, it’s important to find a comfortable spot and wait for some action; just the way Henri Cartier-Bresson did.

When you do see something or someone approaching the light you have settled in on, don’t be in a hurry to bring the camera up to your eye. Too many times I have seen a photographer do just that only to have the subject veer off. Sometimes it’s either because they’re polite and  don’t want to “photobomb” your shot, or they just don’t want to be photographed.

It’s important (and hard to do) to wait for it...wait until the very last minute to bring up your camera.

In the above image I fired off several exposures of the spot I wanted the horse and trainer to be in to get the exposure down, knowing I would probably get off one shot if something happened.

Well, the waiting paid off. Not only did I get the horse in the light, but I was lucky enough to have her rearing up on her hind legs….right in the middle of the fences.

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

Getting the viewer to look into the mirror.

I want to announce my next workshop “Autumn in France” to be next October 2nd. It will be in Bordeaux, Dordogne, and Toulouse. If you go to the top of my blog and click on the link, you can read the description. Join me for a great visual experience, seeing places that few people won’t ever be able to.

Gestalt comes from the German/Austrian word meaning shape, form, or the whole by some definitions. It is also stated that Gestalt is the theory that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. When you use the ‘elements’ of visual design in your imagery, you’re basically working with and structuring these ‘parts’ that will eventually make up the whole.

How we perceive and process visual input is a part of our everyday life, and as photographers, it’s our prime objective to present this visual information in a way that takes control of what the viewer sees when they look at our photography. In my online class with the BPSOP, and also my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshop I conduct around the globe, I discuss and demonstrate how the different ‘concepts’ in the theory of Gestalt can help take our imagery “up a notch”.

One of my favorite topics is this famous diagram that shows how we can get the viewer to look where we want him to. When you look at this drawing, where does your eye go? Where do you look first? The large circle or the smaller one that the finger is  pointing to?  Most people will look at the small circle because that’s what we’re conditioned to do.

We look where we’re told to look, and imagine how powerful this ‘concept’ can be when used in our photography. It will definitely help take it “Up a level”.

In our reality, making the mind work harder is not necessarily a good thing, but in photography it is.  By leading the viewer’s eye around our composition they are taking an active role, and when we can accomplish that our images will definitely be stronger. Over the next couple of months, I’ll be discussing the different concepts with you, so stay tuned.

If you’re interested in shooting with me with these concepts in mind, go to my website look at the work at www.joebaraban.com then click on workshop overview. Follow me on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/barabanjoe/

JoeB

In my online class I teach with the BPSOP, and with my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshop I take around the globe, I demonstrate the importance of using the concepts of Gestalt in taking our photography “Up a Notch”, and one of the concepts is called the “Law of Common Fate”.

This is a fairly simple concept, which basically refers to “visual direction” within a photograph.

For example, if you have two or people moving in the same direction, you’ve created a directional line, and this line is known as the “Law of Common Fate”. Together they have a common destiny, and they become the dominant theme in a photograph; they’re also perceived as one unit.

You’re making the viewer become an active participant in your photography because you’re leading his eyes around the frame, having him follow the path of the two people.

It’s a good idea (but not necessary) to put a message at the point of their final destination. If you place these two people in such a way that they’re leaving the frame, you’re generating Tension. You’re implying “content outside of the frame”, and now you’re making the viewer wonder where they are going.

For another example of this, see my post about shooting at the Getty Center.

You can also have similar shapes moving in one direction, and these directional Lines also become dominant in your composition.

Again, the importance here is to take control of what the viewer sees and perceives when looking at our photos. It’s especially important if you have these lines leaving and entering the frame. The more ways you can get the viewer to enter and leave the frame the more time he’ll spend looking at your picture.

Isn’t that a very good thing?

JoeB

Here’s a few examples:

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While waiting to order, I saw this and got excited.

I want to announce my next workshop “Autumn in France” to be next October 2nd. It will be in Bordeaux, Dordogne, and Toulouse. If you go to the top of my blog and click on the link, you can read the description. Join me for a great visual experience, seeing places that few people won’t ever be able to.

One of my favorite photographers that was part of the Group F/64 movement was Edward Weston…the movement that started in San Francisco. The book for those interested in how photography evolved is a must read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20613662-group-f-64

He once said, “Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph”. I often quote him to my online classes with the BPSOP, and also in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct all over the place.

Of course that quote is predicated on the assumption that you have a camera somewhere on your body. If I’m walking around with my class in one of my workshops, I’ll have a Canon 5DMarkIII over my shoulder and my little Panasonic DMC-LX5.

If I’m by myself at home I  Houston, then I always have my Lumix with me…why, you ask?

Because there’s so much that excites me out there, and I’m always seeing and thinking with the right side of my brain…the creative side.

That’s not to say that everything I shoot is a wall hanger. If I’m lucky, one out of fifty would  be worth considering. It’s that one that I’m after, and at this point in my career it’s extremely elusive.

As I tell my fellow photographers, my mantra, is “more shots per hour.” For those of you coming from the film days, unless you had a client paying for your film and processing, photography was an expensive hobby.

For those of you that have fallen in love with photography in the digital age, film is cheap, as in those cards you stick in your camera giving you an endless amount of exposures. The more you shoot, the greater the chances in going home with that ‘wall hanger’.

So, that being said, if it excites you in any way, shoot it. You can always delete later if it’s one of those photos that winds up on the “cutting room floor”.

Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on Instagram. Look for upcoming workshops at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

I want to announce my next workshop “Autumn in France” to be next October 2nd. It will be in Bordeaux, Dordogne, and Toulouse. If you go to the top of my blog and click on the link, you can read the description. Join me for a great visual experience, seeing places that few people won’t ever be able to.

For those new to my blog, I have had a post come out on my blog every five days since  2011. For those of you that may or may not know, I conduct an online class with the BPSOP, and I also conduct my “Stretching Your frame of Mind” workshops around our planet.

I can say to all my fellow photographers that have been lucky enough to travel the four corners of the globe that a camera is a passport to all those wonderful places and experiences.

Photography, more specific the camera, is the silent international language for communicating with others. If you’re the kind of photographer that is comfortable with asking strangers if you can take their picture, here’s some advice.

When approaching someone, be as polite and non-threatening as humanly possible, and whatever you do, don’t have your camera in front of you and aiming it at them…it’s intimidating and will get you a lot more people saying no than yes.

Keep the camera over your shoulder and behind you if possible. If time is not a problem, try initiating a conversation. Make him or her feel like you are interested in what they have to say.

If they’re performing, put some money where it’s obvious they would like it i.e., their guitar case. If they’re selling something buy it, even if you are really not interested in whatever it is. Of course these things are predicated on how important the shot is to you.

As I said, if you’re one of my fellow photographers, and enjoy traveling camera in hand, then you know that it’s these kinds of encounters that make you glad that you fell in love with photography. I know I’ve been very fortunate for the past fifty-three years.

Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on instagram. Look for any upcoming workshops in 2023. Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

Look ma, no Photoshop

I want to announce my next workshop “Autumn in France” to be next October 2nd. It will be in Bordeaux, Dordogne, and Toulouse. If you go to the top of my blog and click on the link, you can read the description. Join me for a great visual experience, seeing places that few people won’t ever be able to.

In my never ending quest to show my fellow photographers that take my online classes with the BPSOP, or in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, what it was like way back when when Adobe was a type of house in the Southwest part of the country, and Lightroom referred to a room that was light. I present to you and them another in my series “Life Before Photoshop”.

It was tough times, although no one really knew it. It was just SOP (standard operating procedure) to create photos in the camera. I guess I’m lucky in that respect since I had a pretty good imagination, loved to solve problems, and was extremely savvy as far as the ‘light’ was concerned.

I often wonder what my work would have looked like had Photoshop and Lightroom were around. I can tell you that I’m sooooo glad they weren’t. The reason…because everyone could take really good photos with that kind of help, and as a result I just might have been lost in the shuffle…maybe!!!!!

🙁

That said, I love the fact that it’s around now because I tweak all my photo to a small degree…why not? However, I get as much in the camera as I can since I still after all these forty-four years of shooting still love the challenge. I still love the notion that I’m a good photographer because I use very little to no help after the fact.

In the above photo, I was shooting an ad for Toyota. It was a mentoring program they had going where they used well known athletes to mentor kids that aspired to be like them; in this case high school football players.

The big problem to be solved was to get a good exposure on not only the college quarterback but on each one of the kids; no easy task without post processing since there were so many kids to direct. There were also too many first names to remember so I assigned each of the boys a number starting from left to right. The kid on the far left was number one…and so on. Looking through my viewfinder, I directed each boy separately by calling out his number.

So, as you can see, none of the boys are covering up each other, and each boy’s head is positioned in such a way as to get the maximum light on his face…using the white T-shirts to bounce light.

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on Instagram. Be sure to check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

I saw it in my head

I want to announce my next workshop “Autumn in France” to be next October 2nd. It will be in Bordeaux, Dordogne, and Toulouse. If you go to the top of my blog and click on the link, you can read the description. Join me for a great visual experience, seeing places that few people won’t ever be able to.

For those new to my blog, I’ve been posting stuff since 2011. My posts come from what I see, hear, and read, and many from ideas that come specifically from my online classes with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching your frame of mind workshops” I conduct all over the (round) planet.

This posts is about my fellow photographers who have told me in the past that they wished that they had a camera when they saw something that was worth photographing.

It was something that inspired them, a beautiful sight, an observation, or something that triggered their imagination…in other words, a vision.

Those types of visions would forever remain in their heads because they didn’t have a camera close enough to capture it.

Having said that, there is one occasion when I see a beautiful sunset but I rarely photograph it. I have a million of them in the fifty-three years I’ve been shooting, so I just enjoy watching it.

I digress

I realize that you can’t always have a big camera with you which is why I always have my little Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX7 with me. It does everything my big canon does, and if you look at my website, you wouldn’t know which camera I was using.

Remember that it’s not the camera, it’s the ten inches behind it that matters. I have sold it to a whole lot of my students that now carry it ‘close to their heart’.

So, a vision is just that, a vision if you keep it in your head.

Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com and follow me on Instagram. Be sure to check out my next workshop at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

I want to announce my next workshop “Autumn in France” to be next October 2nd. It will be in Bordeaux, Dordogne, and Toulouse. If you go to the top of my blog and click on the link, you can read the description. Join me for a great visual experience, seeing places that few people won’t ever be able to.

One of my favorite categories to write in is ‘My Favorite Quotes’. These are not quotes strictly by well-known photographers. These are quotes I have picked up over the years by artists of any kind.

From photographers, poets, authors, singers, actors, musicians, and yes, even a chemist, at one time or another they have said something that I can immediately relate to and have applied to my teaching people how to see.

Dr. John, one of my favorite musical artists once said in a song, “Right Place, Wrong Time”.  I often talk about this in both my online classes with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct.

What it means and should mean to photographers is that there are so many times that you’re at a location to shoot during the ‘Golden Hour’ where you would get the nice warm light, and for whatever reason…you don’t.

Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, here’s a link that describes it: http://joebaraban.com/blog/food-for-digital-thought-shooting-in-the-golden-hour/

You’re there at sunrise and it’s the first time you’ve been there. What you discover is that there are very tall buildings, or hills that are between you and the sun. By the time the sun comes up over these obstacles, the sun has been up for a long time and that warm luscious light creating long shadows has gone and in it’s place is harsh light with short shadows.

Or, you’re there at sunset and those same buildings or hills has blocked the sun and you have nothing worthwhile to shoot. Since you’re there anyway you go ahead and try to go home with something decent, but you know as well as I do that it just ain’t gonna happen.

So my fellow photographers, what’s the answer?  Well, there actually is one, but you have to have some time on your hand.

If you know you’re going to be at a location for two days, and have the time to look for potential photo ops. Use the internet to find out when sunrise and sunset are. You can find out not only the time, but where it will come up and go down. Take those readings and put them in your phone.

Go to several places that you either know about or have seen when putting the location in a search engine.

Stand where you see a place you would like to shoot and use a compass (you can add to your apps) to determine if you’re going to get early or late light.

All this is going to take more work, but the payoff will be well worth it. The best time for me is when the sun is about 15 to 20 degrees from the horizon either going up or going down…the Golden Hour.

Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on instagram.

You can also sign up for my six-month mentoring program. If you’re interested send me an email to joe@joebaraban.com

Here it is in one of my favorite tunes!

JoeB

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