I looked out the window the other evening and the whole world had a Tang orange glow.  Nothing looked right and as I went outside with my boys to investigate, I walked into another world.  The clouds were thick and full of rain, so very little light came through them, but instead spilled over them from the sunset below.  The dust was so thick that we were not looking at the sunset, we were in the sunset.  It was a magnificent sight.  There was, of course no time to go anywhere other than stay right outside my home and watch this spectacle change as the sun dropped to the unseen horizon.  And when this kind of thing happens, you stay outside with your camera until the sun goes down completely.  I couldn’t have asked for a better evening with my boys, watching such an incredible display of light and clouds.

As I photographed the clouds, I thought of a conversation I had with John Craig from Pittsburgh about photographic composition and the critical nature of the frame.  I asked him, “if you could pass on to your daughter, only one thing about photography, only one quick lesson, what would that be?”  It is an interesting question and one I think everyone should ask themselves.  What would you pass on to the next generation if  you had only one concept to pass along?  Think about it before you answer.  Some will say something like “follow your passion” or some such platitudinous drivel, which has nothing to do with better photography.  What I am asking for is serious conceptual advice on making better photographs, compositional strategies and theories that will, if learned and practices, make any image (no matter the content) into a better photograph.

My answer to my own questions is this: I would teach my child how to see and use the frame well.  There are so many theories and strategies that go into using the frame of the image, which is a lesson for another time, but there is no question in my mind that it is the most important aspect of photographic composition.  Yes, of course there are others, but the frame is where it all starts and ends.  It is the great unifier of photography (we all have four edges to our frame).  And yet there is nothing that damns so many photographers to second rate status because they do not use the frame well (mostly, they don’t pay attention to it).

So I offer the following as a method for training your eye to use the frame wisely:

Alfred Stieglitz made a series of photographs of clouds, which he called “Equivalence“, in which, he was attempting to photograph object, which in and of themselves held no loaded messages, and simply explored controlling random compositions as pure abstraction.  The theory being that without the loaded imagery, one could focus more on communicating the expressions of the inner soul directly to the soul of the viewer.  All a bit too artsy for me, but there was still a brilliance in his selection of clouds as a subject.

The experience of photographing clouds is a fantastic lesson in framing which is the cornerstone of composition.  The organizational structures of the clouds keep changing, morphing into something new every minute, so that there are an infinite number of frames before your camera, with constantly changing elements.  But there are no intellectually loaded symbols to distract the photographer, so the act of including or excluding something is not to avoid a particular statement or to make a point, but rather it is simply to create a stronger composition.

The greatest failure of inexperienced photographers is their inability to emotionally and intellectually distance themselves from the subject matter and watch for composition.  But, with clouds, a photographer has the freedom to practice composition by disregarding the content and dealing only with the composition.

So, with such a perfect opportunity, I took a few moments to practice my framing and enjoy the experience of pure compositional shooting.  Here is my favorite image.

And when I say, Tang Orange, I mean it.  This is perfectly accurate color.  What you see here was exactly what we were seeing.  We were literally inside the sunset.

I have the greatest respect for multiple birth parents.  One baby is life altering.  Two must rock your world.

Like parenting twins, photographing them is also exponentially challenging.   Fortunately, I think my photographic style gives me an advantage in the challange.  Because I am interested in real life, I love a photograph of a crying baby as much as I do a smiling baby, and I am not consumed with getting a pre-determined shot that may not come, I am liberated to simply create and enjoy the challenge.

Of course, parents, will generaly stress out about the photoshoot because they have paid for my time and have certain pre-conceved notions about what a baby portrait should look like and what kind of shot they want to get.  But, my advice to every parent, weather they are hiring me, or just trying to photograph their own children, is to simply go with the flow.  Never force the photograph, and let it become what it will.

A twins infant portrait is the perfect laboratory to prove this hypothesis.  In this case, I arrived at the home in the late evening and the mother and father know me and trusted what I was doing, so there wasn’t a lot of stress over the photos.  Of course, this is crucial to the success of the shoot.  If mom is stressed, baby will be stressed.

The first thing I tell parents is that we are going to keep shooting and get lots of great images and that babies are cute, no matter what they are doing, so relax and let’s just have fun, even if the children are crying.  The other thing that I do to maintain the relaxed atmosphere is to plan enough time for the photo shoot.  If the baby needs to eat, then we need to take a little break and I can take photos of the babies toys or talk with dad.  Rushing the parents or the baby, will only end in failure.

With plenty of time and a relaxed mom and dad, the stage is set for a successful photo-shoot, but the most important element is the understanding that I am there to photograph children as they really are, smiling or crying, and that gives me the freedom to concentrate on the photographs that I am making.

Some people are not comfortable with this concept and want to control the final outcome, and there are some very good photo factories that are perfect for that.  A parent can go to the mall and choose from the catalog of props and sets and have a photograph of their child in a chefs hat in a cooking pot and they will walk out with the print they saw in the catalog, with their child in the pot rather than the model baby.  It is something akin to keeping buying a frame at the store and pasting your kids faces over the happy people in the stock photo that came with the frame.  It is very predictable and the people who work at these photo factories know the menu and they know the recipe for this shot and that.  It is predicable and safe and there is nothing wrong with that.  But the parents who come to me for portraits are interested in something special and unique to immortalize their child.  They want something real, something that means more than just a cute portrait.

Coming into the home, allows the child to be photographed in a unique environment that is filled with memories and spirit and as I use this natural surrounding, the child is placed at ease and more importantly, nothing is a prop, because everything has meaning.  And by discarding those pre-conceved shots and just taking things as they come, we are all open to letting things happen and enjoying the experience.  And we still end up with some of those cute traditional photographs, but without the stress.  However, I will always maintain that the less planned images are always the best.

It certainly is not a predictable way to photograph a child, but children aren’t predictable anyway and in the end, no one can doubt the outcome.  The images are full of emotion, humor and joy and are extraordinary portraits that will be cherished forever.

Of course, you can judge the results for yourself.

This is a new slideshow of images from a recent infant portrait. I enjoy it when I can get to the hospital to photograph the baby. The mom and dad were married a little over a year ago here in Phoenix, Arizona and then we went to Rome to photograph them there as they had their marriage blessed by the Pope.

It is such a thrill to continue to follow the life of this family, documenting the most important moments. It is an honor, truly.

Saturday morning was a fun morning. We got out early enough to beat the heat and stayed in the shadows of the buildings for the most part, so even the heat of a Phoenix summer didn’t deter us from taking some cool engagement portraits. Then add one very cool dog… It was a fun photo session with some cool results.

The slideshow is below and then my favorite images from the engagement session. Enjoy.

Downtown in any city is a great place to shoot (provided that it is a safe city).  There are obviously interesting backdrops everywhere you look, but one of the great advantages of photographing, in this case, engagement portraits, in the city is that the buildings give you cover from the sun at any point in the day.  No matter where the sun is, you can always find a shady spot.  So we took our engagement portrait shoot downtown in Phoenix, Arizona.  I always enjoy the painted lines and text on streets in a photograph and in this one, the street lines and the lines of the dog’s leash converge quite nicely, making an accelerated sense of perspective.

Cute shoes, cute dog.  No need to photograph anything else.

She is a super small girl, so she almost disappears when she snuggles in, but there seems to be a joyous safety in that and I can see that in her smile.

Again, I am using the converging lines of the parking entrance as the major design element in this shot.  And of course, her leg is perfect.  And the shoe too.

This dog is the coolest dog.  He was a rescued dog and she was his “foster parent”, but fell in love with him.  Can’t blame her for that.  The dog was low key and casual and was super cooperative as a subject.  Hence, lots of photos were taken with the dog.

Everytime I photograph animals at a wedding or engagement portrait, I am reminded of my earlier years in photography when I shot Christmas portraits of peoples’ pets on Santa’s lap at a local PetSmart store.  My favorite was when Santa (an elderly animal shelter worker lady) was handed a very large snake to hold.  She had a tough time with that assignment.  Then later, at a commercial studio, we shot the isle blades and catalog images for PetSmart.  We had dogs, cats, hamsters, snakes, parrots, lizards, fish and everything else you can think of on the set.  It was quite the experience.  Anyway, one animal becomes easy after that and this dog was a real cool customer.  So he was great.

I especially love this shot.  It was taken in an alleyway next to the hotel laundry room, so hot air was blowing on me as I shot in the already increasing temperatures of the Phoenix sumer morning, but the lighting was perfect.  No artificial light was necessary.  The only major light source was coming from the street where the dog is looking and bouncing off the walls as it filtered toward us.  That bounce with a little general fill light from the sliver of sky above gives the shadows just enough light to keep them full of interesting detail.

This next shot is in the same alleyway, so the light is similar, just with a very weak fill flash to soften up the drama.

And the parting shot – one of my favorite buildings in all of phoenix is the Orpheum Theater, which has been fused with the more modern Phoenix City building towering over it.  It was an beautiful way to merge the old and the new together.

I have a list of favorite new features in Adobe Lightroom 3.0 but the best feature is the speed.  It is so much faster and more responsive than the prior versions.  They did a great job with it.  I am looking forward to teaching my fall workshops with the new version.  See you all out there on the road.  Check out the tour schedule at www.jaredplattworkshops.com.

Adobe Lightroom 3.0 My Favorite New Features from Jared Platt on Vimeo.

Lightroom 3.0 is faster with lots of new features. This video is a list of my favorite new features in Lightroom 3.0 and how I use them.

Living in the desert is a unique experience.  Forget about the 120 degree summer days and the horribly unfriendly plant life.  To me, the weather is quite fascinating.  I love the monsoon rainstorms and the lightning is fantastic.  Other places in the world have their own challenging weather situations, many much more dangerous.  There are tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards, etc…  and none of these options are very appealing to me, which is why I prefer my native state of Arizona.  But we do have our own unique weather effect: the dust storm.

I was traveling back from a job in Tucson and took a back road route home (rather than the freeway).  I enjoy doing this because everything goes by so quickly on the freeway and there is no inclination to stop and look at anything (and of course, it would be illegal to do so).  So the back roads are much more enjoyable as road trips go.  On my way home, I saw an approaching dust storm and immediately pulled off the road and pulled out the camera and went hiking.  The Arizona dust storm has a beautiful effect on our world.  It creates a ghost of anything in the distance if not, it completely obscures it.  Like a blizzard, it creates a thin sketch of the landscape with little to no contrast.  I am generally haunted by vacancy in an image.  I am not sure why, but of all the photographs I would select to hang in my home, it is those filled with quiet and solitude that appeal most to me.  That doesn’t mean that I choose to photograph this way all the time, but it has the deepest emotional affect on my soul.  I think it is because that is who I am at my core.

If you are drawn to a particular style of photography, or art, and looking at that work brings you home, you can be sure that that attraction says a lot about you as a person.  In fact, weather you like a photograph or don’t, says less about the photographer or the photograph and more about you as a person.  Which is why, I think, that I get along so well with my clients.  They have selected me as their photographer based on their emotional and intellectual response to my work.  Which means that they, in some way, deep down at some root level, are like me.  We agree on what gives us peace and brings us home.

When I got home and started working with this image, I asked my wife about this image.  ”Am I off base, or is this image extremely haunting and beautiful?”

“I can see what you are attracted to in the image,” she replied, “but it’s not all that great!”

No, I wasn’t devastated by her comment.  I just decided she was wrong.  It is great, but perhaps only to me and people like me.  Remember, her reaction to the photograph says more about her, than it does about the photo.  In contrast, I think my friend Isaac Bailey would like it.  But I think we share a common love for solitude (or perhaps it is a sullen longing for sleep).  My wife grew up in the city with all of its distractions and noise, I grew up on the prairies of Northern Arizona where the only noise is the constant wind.  So, my wife’s take on this photo was an instructive reminder to me.  My wife is a good judge of a photograph, which tells me that this image is different, my attraction to it isn’t just about some other brilliantly employed compositional strategy, I didn’t make this picture to sell something or even to make a statement.  I made it because something inside me wanted to go home for a little while and relax there in the shadow of the Zuni Mountains and look over the endless flat land, smell the dust, swap stories with my brothers and wait until dark for a ride back into town.  This was a free ticket back to Bitter Springs after the long climb through The Gap to witness the brilliant view from the tops of the Vermilion Cliffs.  Sometimes photography isn’t about the subject in front of us at all.  The subject is just a catalyst for memory, a sort of psychiatrist’s couch for introspection and self discovery.  And sometimes, a photography session reminds you of who you are.

These introspective moments almost never happen while the camera is in your hands.  They come in the quiet times in the darkroom, or the Lightroom as you study the results.  And while my mantra is always about efficiency in post production. When I feel that prompting, I do my best to slow down, and examine my work closely without distractions or deadlines and find out what it is, I have been trying to say to myself.

A few more images from the series that I think you might enjoy.

Tech Talk: All of the images in this post were completely processed in Lightroom.  They were never opened in Photoshop.  Tones, grain and vignettes were all added in Lightroom without the use of any additional plugins etc.  Below is a video about creating custom vignettes in Lightroom like those you see above.  This video is also on iTunes and on the Pictage Blog.  Check out more of my podcasts at iTunes and more blog posts at Pictage Blog.

Creating Custom Vignettes in Adobe Lightroom 2.6 from Jared Platt on Vimeo.

Just thought you might want to get brushed up on your golf game.

While I was shooting a portrait of Long Ball World Champion Sean Fister, he offered to give me a little golf lesson, which the film crew got on camera, and now it is in the Dixon Golf You-Tube Promo.  Sean Fister is a funny guy.  I had a lot of fun shooting the portraits.  Now I just want one of his Punishers (his driver) .  I hit it, it is a very nice club!  My drive was long!

Dixon Golf makes the Earth Ball.  It is a long hitting ball that also happens to be the worlds first and only completely recyclable golf ball.  Oh, and did I mention that it is a LONG ball?  It’s a long ball.  Put that Punisher together with the Earth Ball and you’ve got a long drive.  (Yes, I golf).

My golf lesson is at 2:20.  Let me know what you think of my form.

I just received my copy of Professional Photographer Magazine where I wrote an article on burning and dodging in Photoshop.  It is a great article with a great photograph.  The reason the photograph is so perfect for the article is that it didn’t need a lot of retouching or manipulation, but still opening it in Photoshop was worthwhile.  There are so many subtle shadows and tones that can be enhanced by the process of burning and dodging, a photograph is just better once it has been burned and dodged.  My philosophy is very simple: I do not burn and dodge to change the photograph, but rather to enhance the natural shades and highlights that are already there.  You can see the final enhanced photograph below and on my portfolio web site at PlattPhotography.com.

Look for the magazine on the racks now.  If you don’t know how to burn and dodge your images in Photoshop, or if you are currently burning the actual image layer, you need to read the article.  If you are not a photographer and don’t know what I am talking about, it might get a little technical, so let’s just say, Jared wrote a cool how-to-article in Professional Photographer Magazine and his photographs are really great!

The photograph I chose to use for the article was one of my favorite images I shot on a wedding in Rome, Italy.  We woke up very early in the morning to get out before all the tourists.  This was the first image of the day, the Spanish Steps.  The Spanish Steps are so crowded with tourists and locals during the day that there is no way to take a great photo.  So we hit the them just as the sun was rising, as the vendors were preparing for the day, and the carriage operators were preparing their horses.  I couldn’t have asked for a better situation to take a beautiful photograph.  And let’s face it, who wouldn’t want a wedding portrait on the Spanish Steps in Rome, Italy?

When looking at this photograph, pay close attention to the incredible detail on the walls and the shutters.  All of these details, the stains and the cracks exist on the buildings naturally, but it was the process of burning and dodging that brought them out and made them so vivid.  This is the kind of detailed attention that every one of my “Art Prints” receives as I prepare them for my clients.  I personal work on every “Art Print” myself and each one is printed under my careful supervision.

I was interviewed recently on the Pat McMohan Show on AZ TV Channel 13. It was a fun interview. Pat is a humorous man. We talked about simple ways to make your photos better. Many times it is the simplest things that make a photograph great, and it is usually not the quality of the camera…

FreeVideoCoding.com

This is my most recent Senior Portrait session in downtown Phoenix, Arizona.  It was a fun morning with Chelsea and her family.  She changed outfits about four or five times and we got a lot of great shots in her different sports outfits as well as the letterman jacket and some cute dress shots and casual wear.  Working in a downtown city setting is perfect for getting a wide variety of backdrops without having to spend the time to travel from place to place.  Every kind of backdrop is available to you just by turning around.  Plus, as an added bonus, the light is beautiful open shade for a much longer time in the canyons of the city walls.  One can shoot well past the “sweet light” deadline in the morning and when things get too bright on one street, there is always another street around the corner with completely different lighting conditions.

Enjoy the slideshow from this senior portrait session below:

Here are a few of my favorite images from the senior portrait session.

There is nothing like an early morning in the city with no traffic, the sun’s indirect glow and beautiful open shade. I would prefer to shoot in the city any day of the week.

Simplicity of design in a photo is very important to me.

The dress is perfect for the color treatment on the photograph.

When Chelsea told me she plays tennis, I immediately saw this in my head. We found a court, paid for an hour and dumped practice balls all over the court. The key to the photo was the angle of attack though. The balls are very important to the image and needed to be grouped together, so I had to get comfortable on the ground. I lay down on the job an awful lot.

Downtown is always a great place for graffiti. I sometimes wonder when I will be contacted by the graffiti artist for copyright infringements. I imagine the artist will want to stay anonymous.

There aren’t any lakes in the city for wake boarding. So, we had to find ourselves a flat spot with lots of blue sky. We tried a spot in the fields south of town, but were kicked of by an awfully rude reservation officer, so we moved up the road a mile to the edge of the reservation and took our shot there. Same sky, and it turns out that the tribe doesn’t own the sky, so it was ok for us to photograph it. What a relief.

The family came along and everyone had a letterman’s jacket, so we took a shot. I thought it turned out great.

For more examples of senior portraits, go to www.plattphotography.com.