This is a Rosh Hashana card I made for Chabad of West Orange County during the construction of the shul (which has since been completed, and is gorgeous). The grungy theme was to reflect the building (verb) aspect, dirt and all. The picture is a stitched panorama with my trusty (actually, not very) point and shoot (which has not been turned on in well over four months now).
And the back of the card:
Anyone guess where the text of the blessing is from?
A few months ago I went up to Northern California (real Northern Cali, not San Francisco or the like), to do some do some Rabbi/Kosher work up there supervising cheese production at a place called Rumiano's. It's a cte little family owned operation that makes some great looking and smelling cheese, but as it wasn't Chalav Yisroel I can't confirm the taste (officially (JK)). The plane landed in Eureka, I rented a cute little Kia Rio and drove up to Crescent City. Being as I landed a bit before noon and I didn't have to check in to the cheese plant until 1 AM, I took the time to do some driving and hiking around. I discovered a whole part of California I did not know existed. I mean, I knew that there were redwoods and they were on the larger side. And I knew that it rained more up north that it did down south. Did you know that it rains over 100 inches a year in what's called "the redwood coast"? 100 inches! Most of that is in the winter, then when the snow starts melting and those cold waters run into te ocean it creates this ridiculously cold and foggy sub-climate that provides these massive trees with over one half of their needed water intake. That mean these trees get the equivilant of over 200 inches of rain a year. Amazing. And I know this because I was bored enough to stop by one of these nifty visitor centers thy have set up and actually watched the 12 minute feature film about the redwoods (I actually left slightly after the six minute mark once the "climate change" angle was brought in. Not my thing.).
I also discovered that these forests are very dark and my camera was having a very difficult time there (especially with the patches of relatively bright sky popping in everywhere).
The beaches up there, besides being very cold (the water doesn't get much above 50 degrees) are very rocky. Or pebbly. I.e. no sand. none. Just a lot of pretty polished pebbles that peps pay big bucks for to stick in their fish tanks.
But the air... mmmmm. I guess it's all that oxygen being produced by those giant trees, it's wonderful. Addictive almost.
On to some pics:
That would be mu Kia Rio. A wide angle lens to a dumpy car is like the liquify filter to a double chin. Magic. The car actually looks a lot dopier in real life. And it doesn't really accelerate. Really. It doesn't. But it had air conditioning and a jack to plug in my ipod, so was happy.
That would be someones shoes on a stump. Who leaves shoes on stumps? (I am viciously holding my self back from writing a some sort of stumps me pun, uchhh, wasn't strong enough.)
Big rock on little rock beach.
The now-famous polished pebbles.
Big trees, big road.
And that's that. I wish I went around the actual city taking pics (wasn't as into it yet back then). It's a real interesting city. Very poor, very happy and friendly. Very small, with some cute homes on the beach (more like bluff).
Next time maybe.
As I was soliloquizing, there should be a reason behind each picture. Something is always being expressed (even if something as simple as "hey look at my 2 year old daughter, aren't her arms edible?"), and our job is to realize what we want to express and then compose the picture in a way that best expresses the desired expression (I could use an expresso right now).
As an example here are two and a half sunrises (the second two are from the same morning).
These pics are all from the same spot at around the same time with the same lens at the same aperture (probably) and at the same focal length (around 200mm). Yet each one would elicit a different response in the viewer.
Disclaimer: When actually photographing these I did not think of all of this, these were all taken pre-epiphany.
The first is powerful, makes you want to get up and do something, go on a hike, explore. The colors explode, expressing all the wonderful potential in a new day.
The second is mellow.It's actually a bit before sunrise and expresses calm. Maybe a bit of thoughtfulness. The colors are very low contrast and on the cooler side expressing maybe a relaxed eagerness for the coming day.
The third? I'm not so sure about. It's still low contrast but very warm. the new day is here (the suns out), but I'll take it slowly, firmly (maybe).
I'm not sure exactly how this fits in to every type of picture, but I do think it applies everywhere. So next time, before you press the shutter, stop and think for a minute (if you could), try to express to yourself what draws you into this scene and how to best express what you are feeling or want to express with this picture. See what happens.
Back to the book.
After the epiphanous part. It goes through the visual weight and meaning of different lines, shapes, shades, colors etc. to try to hone your expression skills. Many times we instinctively respond a certain way to powerful pictures but we don't understand why. This book is a short primer on understanding the visual language involved in how we see and perceive (and react) the world around us.
5 stars, Two thumbs up and a packet of mustard to "Photography Composition" by Tom Grill and Mark Scanlon.
Good luck finding it though.
I admit, I read way too much. As a kid I used to read everything I could find. I knew the backs of every kleenex box and furniture polish by heart. Nothing escaped my semantically inclined gray matter.
Naturally, as I was getting into photography I emptied the library and even (gasp) bought a few books from amazon (my BFF). After reading, flipping, delving, studying and eventually chucking many a book, here are my hard earned book reviews and rating:
Actually before we go there, a quick overview. There are generally four types of photography books:
The first two are very often clumped together and are found in abundance at the beginner level. By far my favorite is "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson (and as evidenced by the over 700 reviews on Amazon, many agree). Short, to the point, very explanatory and beautiful examples, he basically explains what he calls the "photography triangle" (or something to that effect). It's composed of Aperture (amount of light coming in), ISO (sensitivity of the "film" or sensor), and Shutter Speed (how long you let light hit the sensor). And in the heart is the camera's built in light meter which tells you (with some prompting sometimes) which combinations work. He then goes on to explain why you would want different Aperture sizes or Shutter speeds based on what you want out of the picture. Good stuff, highly recommended. Two thumbs up, five stars.
In the second category there are a bunch of books I don't remember because they all explained more or less the different aspects of a photograph. Namely (this is from memory)
And they probably all wrote about the rule of thirds and the golden proportion (aka the golden rectangle, ask Dan Brown about it). Yipee. None of the books I read pop out as anything special.
In the third category there are a whole bunch that are okay (how to photograph kids, adults, wedding, portraits, etc.) though there are two that really stood out:
Photography and the Art of Seeing is more of a workshop type book, which you really have to get into to get anything out of it (which I have not done too much of yet). As of now it gets four stars until it gets a bit more use and then I'll re-evaluate.
Photography Composition is more of an epiphanous (is that a word?) for me. It doesn't go in depth into much but it brings an outlook in to photography that I have not seen anywhere else and I find it quite intriguing (and, in fact, epiphanous).
The authors come with the premise (which makes sense so far in most cases, though I am working at applying it to all) that every photograph is telling a story or expressing (or attempting to elicit) an emotion (or mood). It's the job of a photographer to first of all figure out what story he is trying to tell, and then how to tell it best by choosing the right combination of lens, aperture , shutter speed, composition, placement, timing, and what to include or exclude in the frame.
So, now it's not "wow, that's cool, let me take a picture" it's "wow, that's cool, let me figure out why it's cool, what emotion or mood or idea does it tell, and how could I best express that feeling I got when I first saw it (or maybe I could elicit a different feeling by shooting it in a different way)".
This is getting a bit long, I'll continue it in a bit with some examples and some more thoughts (as if anyone cares. nunu.).
This is a yearbook cover I did for the Hebrew Academy. The idea and the tree (well mot of the tree) was drawn by the high school students and the texture, background grass and text was done by the berk-meister (me). The background is actually a few layers of some out of focus lights from some lights hanging in a tree at the good old cow farm (what were light doing on a tree? Dunno, some Chanukah thing I guess.).
Recently I had the privilege of taking pics for a wonderful family here that is leaving town (on to greener pastures in Cleveland).
Heritage Park is this awesome park in Cerritos with an island, some gnarly old looking facades and a fun playground or two (I can't believe that I a just discovering this place after almost living here for four years).
I scouted out the place in advance and made sure the sun wouldn't be peeking out for a while (miscalculated a bit).
Turns out the island park doesn't open until 10:00 and I had set this up to start at 9:00. So I called and pushed off the shooting until 9:30.
Turns out the sun came up earlier than expected (around 10:15) and most of the pics after that were shot (pun intended).
Moral of the story: Lighting is better than location.
Also I have to remember to change my setting when shooting kids running around (i.e. tell my camera to try to track the kids running around).
Other than that the pics came out great and the kids were loads of fun (my kids on the other hand came cranky as DMV workers).
(should have shot this one with a longer lens)
I love brick walls.
