{"id":2175,"date":"2011-09-10T13:23:15","date_gmt":"2011-09-10T21:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/?p=2175"},"modified":"2018-09-10T06:30:39","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T14:30:39","slug":"surprises-camera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2011\/09\/10\/surprises-camera\/","title":{"rendered":"The Surprises in the Camera"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cNo tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.\u00a0 No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.\u201d\u00a0 Robert Frost<\/p>\n

In my workshops I talk about feeling a place before you photograph it.\u00a0 In fact we do an exercise.\u00a0 When we arrive at the location I ask the participants to leave their cameras in the car for at least fifteen minutes and just quietly wander around the area until it speaks to them.\u00a0 Only then can they get their cameras and try to capture what they are feeling.<\/p>\n

This is a wonderful way of slowing down and getting in touch with the essence of a place.<\/p>\n

But I must confess it doesn\u2019t always work that way for me.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"sierra_storm_2_yosemite_2010\"<\/a>While I prefer to take the slow, meaningful approach all too often I get caught up in the urgency of the moment.\u00a0 After all, for we landscape photographers often the light lasts mere seconds.\u00a0 So I sorta go on auto pilot and snap away.\u00a0 I\u2019ll try different compositions, one after the other, with the plan of sorting it all out when I get home.\u00a0 It\u2019s a concept I call \u201cbracketing the composition.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the other thing about this whole deal is I often think of the digital darkroom process as being like a sculptor who releases the statue from within the block of marble.\u00a0 Or the author who has the novel take over and doesn\u2019t know where it will take her.<\/p>\n

Often I feel I too discover the photograph in the image.\u00a0 People ask me if I have a pretty good idea of what I want when I press the shutter.\u00a0 And occasionally I do and am fortunate enough to get it.\u00a0 But so often the shooting becomes, well, I don\u2019t want to call it mechanical because I don\u2019t think it is, but it\u2019s not as thoughtful\u00a0 of a process as I might like.<\/p>\n

\"upper_antelope_canyon_2_2006\"<\/a>But often as I work on the image something unexpected starts to emerge.\u00a0 And the potential becomes more and more apparent.\u00a0 At times I feel the image tells me what it wants to say.\u00a0 In fact, some times we\u2019ve had a bit of a tug of war, the image and me.\u00a0 And it wasn\u2019t until I stopped fighting it and listened to what it wanted that we ended up with a successful photograph.<\/p>\n

Say what you will about pre-visualization, the\u00a0 making of a photograph often is a process of exciting discovery.\u00a0 Hence the quote by Robert Frost.\u00a0 If it doesn\u2019t move me it won\u2019t move you.\u00a0 And if it doesn\u2019t surprise me it wont surprise you.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s one of the truly wonderful things about landscape photography.\u00a0 There are so many amazing surprises in your camera just waiting to be released.\u00a0 And it\u2019s such a thrill to discover them and help set them free.<\/p>\n

\"big_sur_headlands_summer_2011\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Join me on an upcoming workshop.\u00a0 Click here for more details.<\/a><\/p>\n

To see more of my photographs click here.<\/a><\/p>\n

(696)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do we always know what we’re going to get when we press the shutter or are we sometimes in for a pleasant surprise?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[101,334,57,13,93],"class_list":["post-2175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-creativity","tag-discovedry","tag-landscape","tag-photography","tag-workshop"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Nl7-z5","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2175"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4051,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2175\/revisions\/4051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}