The Kanata Civic Art Gallery is owned by the City of Ottawa and run by gallery members.
I applied for membership back in the fall and was informed this week that I had been accepted. I had supplied 10 still-life images to the selection jury. I was told that of the 38 people who applied to join, only eight were selected.
I am a member starting in January 2023 and will be able to exhibit and sell my work there. This is something a lot of photographers hope to do, but most never get there, so I am feeling rather pleased with myself.
The next show opens on January 9, 2023 and I will need to have a number of pieces ready to be hung a few days earlier. While I had artwork ready to go, it still has to be matted and framed. With Christmas coming in just over a week, I had to really scramble to find a framer that could do the work. The framers and their suppliers do shut down between Christmas and New Year, so I found one who had been recommended to me by a gallery member. The order for my materials should have been placed today, for delivery next week. He will be able to work on making the frames and mounting my work during the first week of January 2023, so I will be able to show three pieces from early January through to early March 2023.
That will give me some time to get another set of pieces ready for the March show…
A suprising week! Lots of awards!
It is always wonderful when one is successful in competitions. The week of December 3, 2022 is one I am unlikely to repeat.
On Tuesday December 28, I received the “Best in Show” award (third month in a row) for one of my images. On Thursday December 1, I received an email that my image had taken first place in a national (Canadian Association of Photographic Art - CAPA) award in one of their competitions. CAPA is the Canadian affiliate of Fédération Internationale de l'Art Photographique (FIAP). This is the best I had ever placed in a national level competition.
Then on Saturday December 3, I received an email from the Toronto Salon. This is the oldest, largest and most prestigious photographic competition in Canada. I was competing against 4796 entries from 434 photographers that came from 58 different countries. I received the International Association of Art Photographers (IAAP) Gold Medal as well as the FIAP Blue Ribbon for my images.
Still Life Photography - Bugs from my Toolbox
Early this year I was chatting with my 5-1/2 year old grandson, who at the time was living near Nagoya, Japan. He had taken up an interest in insects and seemed to go everywhere with his butterfly net.
After one of his outings, he asked me about bugs in our backyard. Being winter, I told him that they were still not out. Seeing his disappointment, I told him I had an idea, and I would show him something in a few days.
I went down into my toolbox and started to photograph some of the things I found lying in it and ended up constructing a “bug”. Over the next few months, we collaborated an I ended up constructing some 18 of these metal “bugs”. These 18 works are meant to be turned into two 3 x 3 typologies that I plan to hang on the wall. I plan to print them on Japanese washi paper with some lovely textures from the mulberry bark used to make this paper.
What makes a good picture?
One question that I am asked quite frequently is “what does it take to create a great picture”.?
The answer is not intuitively obvious, and if we are to believe the camera and cell phone manufacturers, all it takes is the latest camera or smart phone. If it was only that easy…
To some extent, they are right. One needs a camera to take a picture, so without one, it is challenging to make a strong image. Not only do we need a camera, but we also need to know how to use it. In general, the user also has to understand how light impacts what they are trying to photograph. With a more complex camera, one also has to understand the relationship between shutter speed, the aperture setting and the sensitivity to light (ISO setting).
That is only the first step because many people have cameras and have at least a rudimentary understanding on how to use it. The second main requirement is to know how to look at a subject and then be able to compose the picture. This means taking the picture in such a way that our subject is arranged in an aesthetically pleasing way. We also have to concern ourselves to ensure that we eliminate or at least reduce distractions in the shot as well as understanding how areas with no specific content (known as “negative space”) impact the final image.
The third and most important part is the ability to craft an image that has an emotional impact on the viewer. Subject matter, the position one shoots the image from, the subject matter, etc. are all elements the photographer needs to concern themselves with to get an image that will capture and hold the viewer’s attention.
The final part to remember is that the image that comes out of the camera is rarely as good as it can be. Great photographers throughout history have always fine tuned their images using “post processing”. In the old days this happened in the “wet darkroom” when prints were made. In the digital world, we use post-processing software to fine tune our images. The best known tool for this work is Photoshop. That being said there are many other tools out there one can use instead.
Event Photography
I have always enjoyed doing event photography, but have never been particularly satisfied with the results have not been as strong as I would have wanted. I’ve spent some time considering what can be done to improve the overall look of the image.
The problem is difficult and in many cases impossible to handle during shooting. Events can be very busy and crowded and the photographer usually cannot move to a better shooting position because there really isn’t any room to move. A better shooting position may exist but there is likely someone else there already or it is in an area that is off limits to members of the general public,
The other main issue is that the background at events is often distracting. Shooting with a wide open aperture can help soften and blur these areas of the image, but areas that are bright or high contrast will still stand out and can be visually distracting. Signs or anything with writing on it will quickly grab the viewer’s attention.
To a great extent, cropping the image and burning down the background works wonders. It the photograph is to be used in photojournalism, that is just about the only thing one can do. Fortunately, I generally work in a genre that is often referred to as “interpretive documentary” a can go a touch further and use more aggressive approaches.
Photocompositing - Two images to make one
I had done some playing around to create photo composites a few years ago, more as a way to improve my Photoshop skills than anything else. These tended to be blends of images I had captured in my travels and I was able to pull enough pieces together to come up with something a bit whimsical with a tiny bit of a dark edge. These were meant to look strange and not realistic, which was a lot easier than creating images that looked more real.
Fast forward a few years and I have become quite comfortable in the studio and can take a background that I captured and merge into something that looks more realistic. This week I decided to try pulling together a shot of the entrance tunnel to the Diefenbunker (a cold war relic meant to protect key government officials in case of a nuclear attack on Ottawa) and a test shot I did in the studio of my daughter with one of her gas masks. The light in the tunnel and the side lighting I used in the shot matched quite nicely, so I was able to create a convincing, dystopian image that says a lot about the current lock-down we are living through because of the COVID-19 virus.
COVID-19 Shutdown - things to do
One of the first things one can do during the COVID-19 shutdown is to tackle some of those photo projects that have been sitting on the back burner for months and even years. This is what I have started to do and my first project was to get this website up and running. I’ve also started to revisit images that I shot years ago. I can now recognize (and edit) those “diamonds in the rough” that are just sitting on my hard drive (like the image shown below).
I’m now tweaking it a bit, like adding this blog and am moving onto other projects. There are certainly photographic projects one can do while hanging around home; there are lots of things to photograph, old images that need to be cleaned up or re-edited, new skills to pick up (from free or pay sites) and then trying out those new skills.
Right now I am looking at sharpening up my skills to make a photo book, working on some new still-lift lighting techniques and working with some tools that I used to be reasonably good at, but have not used over the past few years.