“Worth the Faff!”

[The title of this post comes from a comment by a UK-based photographer I know on Instagram, after I’d posted this mini-slideshow there. The caption on that IG post focused on various practical annoyances I’d encountered during setup — not least, all the blessed lint present on the black backdrop, which I didn’t notice until I viewed the photos I’d taken on a large computer monitor.]

Like many people during the pandemic, at least in the so-called “developed world,” photographers have been turning to their hobby to keep their minds occupied, not wanting constantly to sit around watching TV, scrolling through social media, and the like. Idle pursuits, y’know, in idle times.

Not to suggest that such photographers are even remotely the ones suffering the most. In fact, the years 2020-21 may well be remembered as a period of creative-photographic explosion in response to various lockdowns and restrictions. Why? Because all the familiar subjects are out of reach. Public buildings and even outdoor common spaces shuttered. Travel restricted. Social distancing, masking, and other reasonable limits on spending much time with anyone other than the handful of people you’d already chosen to spend time with (only not, perhaps, quite so… exclusively.) But a recurring theme behind much Instagram posting over the last several months, at least among those who seem to take photography “seriously” (whatever that means), everyday if possible, has been — well, to put it simply: What the hell do I have left to take pictures of? And even if I find a new subject, how the hell do I shoot it so I’m not just repeating myself?

I’m lucky: I have experience with taking pictures going back far enough, without much in the way of training — or, to be honest, of practice! — that I feel somewhat renewed by all the time at my disposal. I can also, for now, set aside my guilt and/or embarrassment about photographing human subjects, especially candidly. I’m used to taking photos of the inanimate. (Let’s not speculate too much about what might say regarding my own, er, inanimation.)

Nonetheless, back in the fall I did pick up a sourcebook of ideas for photos and photo projects. It’s called The Photographer’s Playbook, and was edited by two professional photographers: Jason Fulford and Gregory Halpern. Over about 380 pages, they offer ideas — mini-projects, cloud seedings so to speak — from just that many of their colleagues in photography and other arts. Each idea is simply printed, verbatim, from the responses they gathered (one per page).

I’d almost forgotten I even had the book until a couple of weeks ago, when I found myself spinning my wheels — twiddling my thumbs — about what to do next. So I opened the book at random and directed my attention to the first page I saw. There on page 72, I decided, I found my assignment, “Object Lesson,” contributed by Sarah Cwynar. It says (in abridged form):

Look for five to ten objects that are somehow related—it could be by color, type of object, quality of surface, even a theme like “tropical,” or from the same place, like, “stuff from Mom’s basement”… See what your chosen objects look like photographically and how they related when they are placed together in one image. Narratives will develop between the objects.

Shoot a roll of film of your objects placed in different arrangements. Take some out, put new ones in, move them around…

I am of course no longer shooting on film. (For what it’s worth, a standard roll of 35mm film might include 36 frames.) But the intent is plain — to shoot the bejeezus out of this cluster of objects: different lighting perhaps, different “choreography” in each photo, and so on.

I also set myself a mini-challenge: to gain experience using what I think of as a handheld “baby softbox,” which I’d acquired about a week earlier but hadn’t had a chance to use yet. This (photo at right, grabbed from the manufacture’s site) consists of a white diffusion panel about 12″x8″ (20 x 29.5cm), which forms the base of a four-sided pyramid; the sides are coated with reflective material, and the strobe sits at the apex of the pyramid. So with the camera mounted on a tripod, aimed at the subject, and the strobe held in one hand, changing to various angles to (de-)emphasize one feature of the subject or another, you trip the shutter with the other hand.

So, some learnings:

(1) I’d made a good choice of objects for this “object lesson”: lots of different textures and sculptural features. Differing reflectivities, different shapes, all that.

(2) But not shown in the photo above: a soft, stretchy thing — I think they’re called “scrunchies” — used to gather long hair into a knot or ponytail. It added a nice bit of difference, in several ways, to what I’d otherwise assembled. The problem: it’s a kind of pale aqua color (“seafoam green,” maybe?). The material of which it’s made is not at all glossy, but it is so much larger in size and so much more, well, luminous under the light from the strobe that it completely washed out whichever area of the frame it was included in. If I exposed for the “scrunchie” rather than for everything else, the latter was so underexposed that I couldn’t bring it “up” to my satisfaction in post-processing. The closest I came, I think, was this image:

[Selected establishing shot #2]

…but even there, eventually I just got tired of trying to get it “right.” (Note that the black brush on the right, particularly, has almost completely disappeared.)

(3) My makeshift studio is near our apartment, in our (mostly empty) garage; it’s just far enough away that I try to take along with me every single thing I might need for a shoot — once I get going, I don’t want to have to stop just to trudge back for whatever-it-is, which is always something weird and who-would’ve-thought? in nature. But the lint, as I mentioned in the caption at the top of the post, was a godawful problem to clean up. So, note to self: Bring a lint-removal brush to the next still-life session!

(4) In the future, I also need to pay much more attention to just what is happening in the frame, light-wise, and its relationship to the placement of the flash and/or the camera settings (ISO, aperture setting, and so on). Far too often, a gleam of light bounced off a metallic surface, just enough to set up a lens flare or a stab of light. (Quite annoying, really: I know about all this, just get so caught up in the process of varying the shot that I’m just sleepwalking through the technique.)

Finally, although The Missus hasn’t seen these photos just yet, I should probably grant her a (5): if I’m to shoot photos of personal-care objects, I need to deal with the question of aesthetics, for lack of a better word. The brushes, in this case, should have been combed out and at least thoroughly rinsed, if not washed, and they shouldn’t be dropping little bits of matter (dust, scalp flakes, whatever) all over the already lint-y background. Also, among the objects was a little folding brush with an oval mirror in the handle. The mirror would have been a terrific compositional element to add… if only, again, I’d cleaned it beforehand. (Every shot in which it appeared was ruined by the spots and smudges on the surface — cleaning them up basically hid the fact that it was, indeed, a mirror.)

Bottom line: I know the project taught me a lot more than I’d expected it might — unfortunately, I also evidently forgot quite a bit, in order to make room for the new stuff!