Beauty #2, Connection

Autumn, Zion National Park

Some of you may remember this post from August.  Since then I’ve been reading and thinking more about beauty and landscape.

In early November, I had the pleasure of meeting and learning from Guy Tal at the Arizona Highways Photo Workshops Annual Symposium.  He’s a rather philosophical guy and talked about, among many other things, beauty.  He characterized beauty as a shortcut in the artistic process; as one that is not worth taking. I’ve chewed on this thought for several weeks now, and couldn’t digest it without help.  Guy was kind enough to respond and explained it (in part) in this way;

I'm actually a big believer in beauty and in the immense power it has to elevate lives and inspire more meaningful living. What I meant by my comment is that beauty can also be an undesirable shortcut if it does not also convey a deeper personal meaning. When beauty is used as a means to an end - as an ingredient carefully and creatively mixed with other expressive ingredients, skill and imagination, the results are much more than just beautiful, they can also be inspiring and motivating.

So, copycat beauty is not so good.  Some call it “earth porn,” striking images which garner lots of attention but ultimately fall flat because we’ve seen them many times before and because, I submit, they have no soul.

Pumpkin Spring, Colorado River Mile 213

In my quest to think more deeply about beauty, I’ve been drawn to read more from John O’Donohue.  

It all started with that NPR serendipity in August, when I heard an interview with Father John on the topic.  I’m working through his book, “The Invisible Embrace; Beauty,” gradually and with a highlighter.  His prose is like poetry.  What a joy it is to think deeply on the subject.

Beauty, he says, is “the soul of the real.”

He writes about reverence in our approach to a place; about our connection, “What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach.”

We photographers can nurture a deep connection with a place that deepens our work.  With ten (or one hundred) visits we become ever more profoundly connected.  With gentle hyperbole, Father John writes, “Is it not possible that a place could have huge affection for those who dwell there?”

The genuine and moving artistic portrayal of beauty is a reflection of the artist’s deep personal connection with the subject.

I’m still reading and thinking about this.  Stay tuned, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

“Do I have to?” Chapter Three; Back Button Focus (and Zion)

What a pleasure it was to meet and learn from Charlie Cramer in Zion National Park last week.  As it turns out, we have at least one thing in common; back button focus.

Charlie is one of those photographers who came up shooting medium and large format film and has made the transition to digital very well.  He’s a master at printing and digital workflow and otherwise quite technically savvy as well.

So, what’s back button focus?  You may have noticed that by default your DSLR camera is focused by using the shutter button.  The problem with this is that metering (determining the amount of light, or exposure) and focusing were accomplished with the same button.  Modern digital cameras can be customized in many ways.  One of these moves the focus function to another button which is, you guessed it, on the BACK of the camera and operated with your right thumb.

Why would you want to make this change?

·          * As I mentioned, it uncouples focus from metering.  You might not want to focus on the same part of your composition as you’d like to meter. There’s no need to maintain the shutter button halfway down when you focus and recompose. 

·         * You can leave autofocus-enabled lenses set to autofocus.  If you’re like me and like to manually focus landscapes, the old system will refocus when you activate the shutter button, if you happen to forget to flip that switch.  That's unnecessary frustration.

·         * You can set the focus mode on your camera to servo/continuous and leave it there.  That’s another setting that I don’t need to remember to fiddle with. Just tap the button for single focus and hold it for continuous.

The only argument I've heard against this is that it’s hard to learn.  Really?  The learning curve on this one is about 6 shots. I've noticed that I can't hand my camera over to just anyone but I'm pretty sure I don't want to do that anyway.

Tutorials on making the change are easy to find.

End of lesson.

Back to the pretty pictures; here are some of my favorite images from the Zion trip.  The Rocky Mountain Maples at higher elevations were resplendent and we had a delightful rainy day.  More are at SkylineImages.net.