Joe Baraban’s Digital Photography Blog

It was light and it was available

When I first started out in photography some forty-four years ago, I shot primarily Black and White. I worked for AP, UPI, and I was a Black Star photographer, a national photo syndicate. It was several years before I started working in color, and in that beginning period of time, all my favorite photographers shot black and white.

Among them were:Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorthea Lange, Walker Evans, Ernst Haas, most of the photographers in my favorite photo book called The Family of Man” to name a few. Having said that, my all-time favorite photographer is W. Eugene Smith. His images speak to me like no others living or dead. As it happens, one of my all-time favorite quotes was said by him. He said, “Available light is any damn light that’s available.”

As I tell my online students with the BPSOP, and also in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, light is everything. You find the light and you’ll find the shot. I’ll often have a discussion with one of my fellow photographers (who insist that an on-camera flash is the way to go), that in my long career I’ve never, and I mean not once ever felt that I needed this kind of contrasty harsh, bluish, hot ancillary light to make good photos.

To digress a moment, don’t you just love it when someone a couple of rows down from you uses a flash to record what’s way down on the stage…and all he’s lighting up is the back of a few heads a couple of rows in front of him. I get a better shot with just the available light.

I’m mostly an available light photographer. I’ve always found a way to use whatever available light is around me when I thought it was needed. The problem is that photographers these days just don’t take the time to look around them for help that may very well be hitting them right in the face. Remember that if you can see it, you can take a picture of it…especially now in the digital age where cameras can record images in very low light.

Any damn light that’s available.

Even in situations where there just isn’t any actual sunlight, look for man-made light like a flashlight over on a table, or a desk lamp, or as in the photo above, a welding torch laying over against the bags of cement. I had him pick it up and make it the brightest flame he could. As I say, you just have to open your eyes and look around…somewhere lurking in the shadows is the answer to your problem.

You just gotta…Stretch Your Frame of Mind!!!

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

light coming from 3:00 O’clock.

One of the most important areas I cover in my online class with the PPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshop I conduct around the planet is knowing where the light is coming from before raising the camera up to your eyes.

I give my fellow photographers a clock to install in the back of their minds. To me, light is EVERYTHING!!!!. If you look up the definition of Photography, you’ll see that it means “painting with light”. Unless you’re street shooting where ‘the moment’ is critical, and more important than the direction of the light, knowing where to put your subject is the key in taking your photos what I refer to as “up a notch”.

Ok, imagine a clock in your viewfinder, but if it’s easier, imagine the clock on the ground with your subject standing in the center…imagine your camera and a subject set up just like it is in this drawing. Now, imagine the sun (or light source) coming from behind the 11,12, and 1. This is ‘backlight’. It’s probably the way I light almost all the time…why?

Because backlight makes everything glow: water, grass, hair, or anything translucent. It adds so much energy and can be effective even if your subject is a touch on the boring side.

Now, imagine the light source behind the ’10’ and the ‘2’. This is what is called “the Law of the Light”…light from the “Angle of Reflection”. When the sun casts light on a subject it comes at a specific angle, and that angle is called the “Angle of Incidence”. It’s the light falling on the subject.

When that same light bounces (reflects) off the subject and hits the lens, it also bounces off at an angle to the camera. When those two angles are the same, it’s called the “Law of the Light”…also known as “The Angle of Reflection”.

Now, imagine the sun at either ‘3’ or ‘9’. This is sidelight. If I can’t backlight or put my subject in the Angle of reflection, this is the light I go for. When the sun is at ‘4’ or ‘8’ it’s ok, still somewhat side-lit, but bordering on front light…to me, this is the worst way to light…5,6, and 7 is front light and I avoid it like the plague…why? Because there aren’t any shadows or shading.

Form is an important ‘element of visual design’. Form refers to the three-dimensional quality of an object. When light hits an object from the side, part of the object is in shadow. The light and dark areas provide contrast that can suggest volume. Without shadows, the subject will be recorded without Form…appearing flat. Without shading/shadows Form exists in just two dimensions, height and width.

This is what happens when you front light. now, I’m not saying that you can’t take pictures that are front-lit…I’m saying that those times for me are rare, and the sun should be low on the horizon.

So as I said, THE VERY FIRST THING I EVER DO when I get to a location…before I ever raise my camera up to my eyes…is to determine where the light source is coming from. Then I position myself to get the right/best light.

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

For those of you that follow this blog, you’ll know that I put a lot of time into writing about the Light. You’ll also know that I always will say that Light is everything unless you’re out street shooting and capturing the moment which can possibly be more important. Humor is one other genre that can be as effective as beautiful light.

Having said this, that type of light is not the subject of this post. I’m talking about the light that can actually take away from your subject or center of interest. The light that’s not part of your main message but actually competes with it.

Over the past fifty years of teaching my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops and in the fifteen years of teaching my online classes with the BPSOP, I have seen a lot of photos that demonstrate this phenomenon and have often brought it to the attention of all my fellow photographers.

Just like a moth to a flame, the viewer will be attracted to the brightest part of your composition whether it’s your subject or not. Just like a moth to a flame, we are drawn towards the light or in some instances the value of a color; value meaning the lightness or darkness of a color. It’s an unconscious effort because it’s inherent in our DNA.

To know the basic reasons is to take a look at human behavior. As a species, we are Diurnal. In simple terms we are day creatures, spending the majority of our waking hours in daylight. As a result, light is an instrument used for our survival; as in sitting close to the fire so the monsters won’t get to you….a residual belief from the pre-historic times when you could be eaten by a really big predator.

So back to my point about light taking valuable information away from your thought process. If you rely on the meter in your camera to make all your exposure decisions (a big mistake) you will undoubtedly run into this. You might have the right exposure on the subject in your foreground, but what about the exposure in the background?

What if you’re shooting under some trees, or in open shade where your subject just happens to be in the shadow. You might get lucky and have your subject exposed correctly but out where the sun is shining it’s three or more stops brighter…making it way too overexposed. The viewer will not look at your subject, he will be drawn to the overexposed area…the not-so-pretty part of your photo.

Changes in the light levels can be an indication that something has happened in the immediate environment. The viewer will rely on the perception of the environment that surrounds him and that’s why he will re-focus his attention on bright areas of light in our images.

Where does your eye go first?.

As I said, the value of a subject can and will direct the viewer’s attention away from your subject. A good example would be a group of people in a photo and one of them has a very bright colored shirt compared to all the others; that’s where the viewer will look.

It’s so important to remember my pearl of wisdom…the whole enchilada. It can become easy to concentrate so much on the message you’re trying to get across to the viewer that you fail to see other things that can take away from the same message you worked so hard to get.

There are some good things you can do with this scenario. By putting the light in just the right place or places you can get the viewer to interact with you. This is one way to get and keep the visual information that we lay out to the same viewer in the form of a photograph.

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

Look ma, no Photoshop

In the first part of my career, I shot a lot of oil and gas-related photos, and the one that always made me shudder was the oil rig. If I had a dollar for every rig I’ve shot over the course of my fifty-three career, yours truly would be writing this while looking out at the incredible view from my house on my private island somewhere in the Caribbean.

The only thing that kept me sane was the challenge of always shooting a particular subject that I hadn’t shot before.  As I tell my online students with the PPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet is what Marcel Proust once said, “The only true voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes”. This has always been one of my mantras, and I adhere to it every time I go out shooting.

I was asked by the design firm working on Apache’s Annual Report to go to Louisiana and take a picture of an oil rig that was sitting in one of the bayous that inundate the state. My assistant and I packed up the gear, and everything else I could imagine that might be of some creative value: A xenon light and fog machine were put in the back of the Suburban along with various power packs, umbrellas, and softboxes that I hoped and prayed I wouldn’t have to use.

As we approached the company office, we went over a small bridge and I immediately stopped, for there rising out of the swamp was an oil rig sitting on the horizon. Could that possibly be the one, I hoped.

We followed our directions ( way before Google Maps) and pulled up to their office. I went in and was taken back to the small conference room that looked out to a small boat that was moored next to a dock. After meeting our contact, I asked what the boat was for. He said that they used it as a shortcut to go to one of their rigs. I asked him if it could be the one we saw coming over the bridge a couple of miles away. He said let’s find out and we jumped in the boat and headed to the rig.

Sure enough, it was the same rig. We stopped so I could take a reading. I pulled out my Sunpath chart as well as my Morin 2000 Hand Bearing Compass. As luck would have it, the sun would come up directly behind the rig the next morning. I arrange for two boats to head to the small bridge prior to sunrise. One for the worker, and one for me to be in. Right before the sun came up we laid down some fog and waited for it to settle. I had the man take my Zenon light and act like he was looking for something. I wanted to create some visual interest while the subject was actually the oil rig off in the distance, and I knew that the fog would make the beam stand out.

As it turns out, it’s one of my favorite industrial shots, and it was completely done in the camera with absolutely no post-processing done to it.

Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog.

JoeB

I had something to say

Gordon Parks was a well-known African-American photographer who broke the race barrier shooting for magazines such as Life and Vogue; he then went on to directing and screenwriting.

What struck me when I first read some of his thoughts was a quote he had once said, “If you don’t have anything to say, your photographs aren’t going to say much”.

When I’m critiquing images submitted to me in my online classes with the BPSOP, and during our daily critiques in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around our (round) planet, I can usually tell right off that the photo they took had no meaning. No real meaning because the photographer didn’t have anything to say.

This will usually occur when someone has taken instead of making a picture. I have seen it when a photo has been submitted for a critique in my online class, but more importantly when I’m walking around when one of my workshop participants.

I understand that these photographers want to take as many photos as they can since they’re in places where most people don’t ever get to see. However, I would rather take fewer images that say or mean something, just enjoying the experience, than bringing the cameras up to my eye because that’s what it’s there for.

It boils down to editing my photos before bringing up the camera or deleting them when sitting in front of a computer. For me, taking precious time to stop and ‘take a picture’, is just burning a lot of daylight.  After all, I figure that the best picture I will have ever taken up to then is the one just around the corner enveloped with beautiful late afternoon light.

Having said all this, there is something to making your family slide show last awhile. Describing your feeling at the time of conception in other words when you click the shutter, to the people that you bribed with dinner and wine, can take the place of the photo standing on its own conveying what you were thinking at the time you clicked the shutter.

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

JoeB

A twenty-five cent photo.

I have four grown kids ranging from thirty to thirty-eight and four grandkids ages one month to thirteen and have been taking pictures of them most of their lives. Not so much with my three daughters and one son as they all have “flown the coop”, and leading grown-up lives!!!

There was a time when I took lots of pictures of them, and my fellow photographers that have taken my online course with the BPSOP, and my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshop I conduct around the planet always are amazed when I show them some of mine in response to some of their submission they always have the same disclaimer…”It’s all they would let me take”, or “After one shot they wanted to quit”, or “This is the only pose they would give me”, or finally, “They had a complete meltdown when I asked them to smile”.

“What’s your secret”? They always ask.

It’s easy, pay them!!!!! I’ve always felt that if you were going to take them away from what they were doing, it seemed only fair to pay them for their time; and it has ALWAYS worked.

When my kids were just past the walking for the first time stage in their life, I was taking their pictures for family personal use as well as using them for some of my jobs. At first, they wouldn’t hear of being photographed. Covering their eyes and laying on the ground was their way of saying no. So, I offered to pay them twenty-five cents. It worked like a charm. Then as they got a little older, it went to fifty cents. Around the age of ten, it became a dollar, and that meant they agreed to be photographed for as long as I needed because it was mostly for my work.

By this time, they were as good looking and better all-around models that took direction better than any model their age a client could pick. This held true for all the modeling agencies in Houston.

The dollar became five, then twenty-five, fifty, and finally one hundred dollars by the time they were teenagers to young adults. You ask why? When a client wanted to look at model portfolios, I would always put in whichever of my kids would fit the profile of who they were looking for.  If one of them was picked, I would tell them it was one of my kids and the rate was one-hundred dollars for whatever use they wanted. A price my kids gladly agreed on.

The difference in price between a model registered with an agency and one of my kids could be quite a lot. One of my kids charged a hundred dollars and the modeling agency would easily charge a thousand dollars or considerably more depending on all the different places the photo would be seen. There was never an issue concerning Nepotism with the advertising agencies. It was always about the money.

So, next time you want to photograph your kids, pay them for their time. A quarter can go a long way, which is exactly what my daughter (photo shown at the top) charged to get on the teeter-totter with our dog Lucy.

A fifty cent charge by another daughter.

Visit my website at www.joeBaraban.com and check out my workshop schedule. Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

From Left to right: yours truly, the boss clown, and my assistant.

Texas Monthly Magazine, based in Austin, sent me to do a photo story on the clowns of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus. I spent a week backstage in Houston at what use to be called the …and a week in Buffalo. It was a great, once in a lifetime assignment since I always wanted to be a clown when I was a kid.

I had mounted a 2400WS strobe head in a large softbox and mounted it on a boom. I rolled it around taking portraits of the clowns that were waiting to go on.  Some were resting or changing clothes, some were applying their make-up, and some were just “clowning around” for the camera.

I shot while in costume.

What makes this story funny is that for the week my assistant and I were actually in clown make-up and joined in with the clowns. One of the things we did was to be part of the seventeen clowns that piled out of a tiny car and were met with mallets being swung by dwarfs…what a gas!!!

I shot the clown portraits while in costume, and found it to relax the other clowns by being a member of the tribe!!!

Here are just a few of the portraits.

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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

Don’t be a button pusher.

One of the great photographers who was a pioneer in photography was Edward Steichen. Besides knowing his early work, I read a lot about him in one of the best books that I always recommend to anyone to read…Group F/64

I’ve mentioned this book both in my online class with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct all over the place.

He once said, “A button-pusher shoots only at things he’s seen other take”. If there was ever a quote that rang true to all my students past and present, this is it.

My name is Joe Baraban for anyone out there that’s new to this blog. I have seen firsthand a student walk up behind another student and shoot an identical photo. Oh, sure there might be some nuances,  but for the most part it’s the same shot.

They’re just not comfortable in their own skin…so to speak. They need to rely on someone else’s idea instead of venturing out on their own in search of their own unique way of looking at things.

There’s an inherent problem with that. What if the person they are trying to look like is not who they should be looking like…if you know what I mean!!!

In other words, what if you’re a stronger photographer but lack the confidence to travel down the road less traveled? What if it’s actually you that should be leading the way? Relying on the person next to you to come up with a visually interesting photo is not going to be in your best interest.

Take matters into your own hands, and don’t be a button-pusher.

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

In the psychology of Gestalt as it applies to photography, and the third class I teach at the BPSOP, the main objective in creating memorable images is to make the viewer an active part of your thought process in producing photos that will stand the test of time. It’s also what I talk about in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct all over the place.

 One of the six concepts that I teach is called Continuance. Part of the definition is that the viewer will have an instinctive tendency to follow a path, river, beach tree line, etc. These compositional elements provide a way to move the viewer across the frame.

The other part of Continuance is in the fact that the viewer will want to know what the subject is looking at or pointing at, especially if that person is looking or pointing out of the frame.

When you do place the person close to the edge of the frame it also creates Visual Tension. In other words, it’s the feeling that the subject will ‘collide’ with the frame.

These are ways to keep the viewer around looking at our photos. I don’t know about you, but that’s exactly what I want him or her to do.

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

In 1888, George Eastman coined the slogan, “You press the button, we do the rest.” Up until then, picture-taking was a laborious undertaking where one had to be able to process and develop their film.

BTW, this slogan made Eastman a wealthy man with the advent of what was basically point-and-shoot cameras; in other words no controls. You didn’t have to set the shutter speed and aperture, or even be aware of the speed of the film…didn’t even have to focus!!

Sound familiar? It’s 2021, and that slogan is still an effective catchphrase with the emergence of the digital era. You still don’t have to do anything except push the button.

In my online class with the BPSOP, I would guess that eighty percent of the students have no idea what shooting in the manual mode is all about. In fact, it scares the pea-waddens (a term my wife says) out of them at the mere mention of doing things for themselves. During my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops, I encourage everyone for the week to shoot on manual…I have also told them that autofocus is a luxury, not a necessity…oh the horror!!

I come from the age of film and manual focus, where the word Adobe was a type of house in the Southwest part of the country. The new generation of cameras has so many buttons and programs that my poor little (old) brain would shut down trying to figure them out. When I’m shooting I carry a Canon 5D Mark 3 with a 17-40 lens and a very small Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX7 with an electronic viewfinder and a 24-90 lens. That affords me everything from 17-90mm, and my photos come out pretty good.

Last, in the fifty-three years I’ve been shooting advertising, corporate, and editorial photography, I have never cropped one of my photos. Although I do work somewhat on my images in post, my goal is to get whatever I want to say before I click the shutter. To each his own, but I would rather spend my time being a good photographer, than a proficient computer artist.

So, my fellow photographers, the next time you go out, try shooting on manual and do your cropping in the camera. It will make you a stronger shooter.

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

To be honest, as some of you just might know, I stole this line from Matthew 7:7, and not being a very religious person I thought this would fit perfectly in the post I had been thinking of writing.

I’m not talking about language that connotates or that involves religion of any kind, I referring to the Light…seeking out and finding the light; photographically speaking.

I just love talking about the light and how it affects our composition. For one thing, we are attracted to it like a moth to a flame. No matter what’s in the final composition, the viewer will immediately look at the brightest object in the frame.

In my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I’m often referring to ways to get students to realize this, as well in my online classes with the BPSOP. Knowing this, it will be easier to seek out the light and use it to your advantage. You don’t need a lot of it to make an impression and it comes in all shapes, colors, and sizes.

When looking at my examples, you’ll get the idea of just how important light plays in our images and how its use will definitely take your photography what I refer to as ‘up a notch’.

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So, when your out shooting, be aware of what’s bright in your peripheral vision and see how you can incorporate it into your thought process.

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