telling stories through photography (learning from Penny De Los Santos)

In this final post recapping last weekend’s CreativeLIVE workshop with photographer Penny De Los Santos, I simply want to list some of the points made about photography and artistic endeavors, in general. Because Penny primarily works as a food photographer at present, much of the discussion about making good photos centered around the subject of food, but as I listened and made notes during the 3-day series I realized just how much the principles of food photography apply to other areas of creativity. And Penny said it herself in answer to a question from the Internet chat room about whether she enjoyed the food photography of the present more than the travel photography of her earlier career: “Food photography is travel photography,” she said. “Portrait photography is travel photography. It’s all the same. Food is a connector. It’s what brings us all together. Photography is just an exploration of that connection.” I immediately thought of James Oseland’s statement from the first day that photographers are “anthropologists of the cultures” that they shoot. I was intrigued by the idea that I can use my little camera to document things that interest me and, by doing so, tell stories in a different way than I’m used to doing. It’s just as valid for me, an amateur, to do it as it is for a professional photographer on assignment with a magazine. Honestly, that just thrills me! So I listened closely and snapped screen shots from the video feed of the workshop as Penny walked through her process of documenting food and food culture. Her words were instructive, but watching her work was invaluable. I’ve said this again and again since last weekend but it bears repeating… I will never see things in the same way again. I’ll never look through my camera and just snap a quick image and then walk away. I’ll never be able to look at a magazine without seeing behind the photos to imagine what the shoot must have been like. And I’ll never again overlook the art in seemingly simple or mundane images. I also hope I never miss the art in the everyday. What I’ve learned from Penny De Los Santos is that there is beauty in the small details — even just a bowl of noodles.

Words of wisdom from James Oseland, Editor of Saveur magazine (italics mine)
In order to make great photos (and I’d add, to tell great stories), you have to fall in love with every environment that you’re in. Respect it and fall completely into whatever is around you. Show up ready to love it and be excited about your subject. Show up with enthusiasm. Listen to people. Study what in their lives is worth celebrating.
 
You will never create the photo you want unless you are also experiencing the same emotions you hope to capture.
 
Oftentimes, what you’re not familiar with is the best subject to explore. When you want to know something more about a subject then it’s worth looking for a story.
 

Advice from Larry Nighswander, Photography Director at Saveur
Don’t just make “pretty pictures.” Photos should have a purpose or editorial reference.

Three questions to ask when creating (editing the subjects of) your photographs:
1. Does it have technical excellence?
2. Does it have compositional creativity?
3. Does the photograph have any purpose or any use to me in making a statement?

An excellent photographer will construct a frame that has an effective foreground, a contributing middle ground, and a background that adds an element to the photo.
 

Over the last 2 days of the workshop we were privileged to watch Penny shoot 5 different food setups, the process of food prep inside a Seattle food truck, and a full-on oyster roast (recreated in an alleyway), and I was literally rapt the entire time. Seeing people completely in their element, doing what they love to do and speaking with great passion about it, is simply inspiring to me. I was amazed at the progression of the food scenes as a stylist added small elements and took away others while Penny stood on ladders and got on her knees and shot images from various angles. I was fascinated by the level of attention given to a plate of food, and then seeing the final results was sometimes breathtaking. You could never have told me that I would feel such emotion while watching a photographer shoot static subjects, and yet Penny was able to show me how emotion and movement and energy can actually be added to a still life. In retrospect, I suppose I knew this was possible, having been mesmerized by paintings in museums, but I never dreamed it could be infused into a photograph of food. I think this was one of the greatest gifts of the workshop, in fact: learning to see things as I’d never seen them before. And for Penny to then instruct us in techniques to do it in our own photos? A true gift, indeed. I defy anyone to not be changed (and to not have their art changed) after putting these techniques into practice. As I’ve said before, these are more than just photography tips. They are useful for inspiration in all areas of art… and sometimes even life.

 

Keys to Great Photography (and Storytelling)
Go into a project really open. Maybe have an idea of what you’re looking for but be ready to see it all go away. Don’t preconceive the shoot. Just let it happen.
 
Storytelling can be done really, really well when you do it at various times of the day. Scout your location. Drive around and find great scenes and great settings. EXPLORE. Go back to the same place at different times and capture the variations.
 
Remember to tell the full story. Capture a sense of place, portraits, details, scenes, individual moments. To begin, consider starting with details and the sense of place — just to get yourself in the moment — but always watch what’s happening with the primary subject so you can be ready when the action begins.
 
Think about the scene. Are you capturing the scene? Have you waited for the scene? Get the details and intimate moments and the fullness of the scene. Do what it takes to capture the essence and the scope of the scene.
 
Focus on the EXERCISE of taking photos. Don’t worry about the photos themselves. Just focus on the process. Take leaps and exercise your eye.
 
Shoot as if you are using film rather than digital. Shoot as if you can’t see the photos while you make them.
 
Think about your point of entry into the photograph: the spot where your eye lands when you look at the photo. Make sure it’s interesting enough to begin telling the story. Make sure it’s obvious what that story is.

You have to elevate photographs (especially food photographs). You have to transport people to a place. Take them somewhere in the photograph. There has to be an energy.
 
Think about the moment. Why are you taking this photo? What are you trying to tell the viewer?
 
If it’s a shot of someone doing something, find the emotion in the action. If the emotion isn’t there then it’s just a flat shot of someone doing something. You have to elevate it using one of the basic principles (light, composition, framing, etc).
 
If you stop and click then walk away, it’s not the hero shot, not the best shot you could have taken. Listen to your instincts. When you’re moving, STOP and think about why you’re pausing. What are you looking for? What are you waiting for? Wait until it happens. Be contemplative. Don’t just shoot and walk away. It will look posed. Instead, wait… and listen to the questions you’re asking yourself about the subject and about the scene.
 
Get lost in the scene, not in the technical details. Be concerned with the scene.

LOOK as much as you can look. Find mentors. Never stop following the dream.
 
If you’re not doing what you love, why not? Whatever it is you want to do, do it. Whatever it is that you want to be, be it.

on photography :: learning from Penny De Los Santos

For the past couple of years I’ve become more and more interested in taking good photos. My interest began with memory keeping, wanting to document the lives of my niece and nephews with regard to the special relationships that we share, but then it evolved beyond simple scrapbooking. As I perused the blogs of scrap artists I began to find more and more photography tips which led me to websites of amateur photographers which, in turn, led me to professional photographers. What captured me the most is how perfectly the photos were used to tell stories. Beyond the scrapbook journaling of years past, photos were being paired with simple sentences that told a complete story or, better still, sentences that conveyed a single moment in time… an emotion to be remembered. I began to see life differently at this point; I began to look for moments in my life rather than “events.” Instead of waiting to document holidays and birthdays and milestones I began to snap photos of single images that affected me at a particular moment. The last boy’s fascination with the car wash. The girl speaking with her dad after a tough defeat. A sky full of clouds that took my breath away. A vibrant bowl of oranges prepared just for me by the produce man at the grocery store. Each of these images tell their own story — a story that sometimes only I know — and each of these images was another small piece of my daily life. By taking photos of the mundane details of life I began to realize how much I wasn’t seeing in the hours of my days. Photography as a practice helped me see the art that is in every single moment of life. And I desperately wanted to improve those skills so I didn’t miss one little thing in the future.

Last weekend I was able to participate in an online workshop led by professional photographer Penny De Los Santos, and it’s no overstatement to say that I learned more about the process of taking photos than I’ve learned in years of surfing blogs and reading tutorials. For the first time, in fact, I’ve come to actually believe that it really isn’t about the tools but all about the way we look at things. For three days Penny stressed this very thing to us students, and as I watched her work in the studio I came to understand just how true the statement is. The principles of photography are the key to taking great photos, and great photos can be taken just as well with an iPhone or point-and-shoot as with a high-level DSLR. The best camera in the world can still produce the worst photos if the photographer isn’t implementing the basic principles. But the simplest camera in the world can produce outstanding photos if the photographer takes the proper amount of time to “see” before shooting. And Penny demonstrated how to see. And I finally understood.

I took copious notes during the near-24-hour workshop and won’t post them all here, but I feel like the following are the most important to know. And while these do apply to photography, in many ways they also apply to art, in general. If not life itself. I see images much differently now, and I’m looking for photos through entirely different eyes. That’s really the greatest gift of the weekend: just learning a few key techniques to take me beyond the obvious. Watching Penny work was truly a gift. I hope you find something in these few notes to take away for yourself, as well.

What makes a good photo?
• light — Find the best natural light, even if that means carrying something to a new location (an open door or window). But also think about the potential in any situation. Even if the power goes out. Even if you’re under a tent. Even if nothing goes according to plan. Find the shot. Capture the moment. That’s STORYTELLING.
• color — If your subject/food is all the same color, add an element of color somewhere else.
• composition — Study other photos to broaden your range of composition.

                                    photo by Penny De Los Santos; read the incredible story of how she obtained this photo

Alleviate the eye so that the subject is not complicated when you look at it.   EDIT.
 
Infuse energy into your photographs, even (and especially) a static image like food.
 
Move past your clichés. If you keep seeing the same shots in your photos, you need to push yourself out of that comfort zone. Look for new angles and new perspectives.
 
Your over-familiarity with a place or a subject comes through in your photos. Boredom comes through. Learn to see with fresh eyes, as if each photo is your first introduction to the scene.
 
Find the frame you want for your shot then stay put and wait for the energy to fill that frame. Take many shots until you capture the emotion you want to see, then take more to get it again. And take even more to get it again.
 
Change your perspective. Shoot from a different angle. Shoot from overhead. Get down to the level of your subject.
 
Get in front of the action.
 
Stay in place a little longer than you think you should. Wait for the action to finish.

Do you want to be great at photography? Never stop looking. Every single day. Look at books, magazines, galleries, the Internet. The only way you’ll get better is to LOOK. When you react to a photo, figure out what it was that made you react that way. What is the first word that comes to mind? Write it down. Light, color, sadness. Write those words down. Then take that list of words and walk around with your camera looking for representations of the individual words. Focus on the first word and take a series of shots. Then focus on the next word and take a new series. Stretch your eyes, focus on one idea, exercise that idea. Think of it as Visual Yoga.

In order to create (anything): first, get grounded. Get quiet, get centered. Then pump yourself up and go! Shoot photos. Write something. Create!
 
Make up your mind before anything happens that whatever it is, you’re going to love it. Wake up every day ready to make something of that day.
 
Look at photography daily. Books, magazines, internet. Pick up something with photos and LOOK.
 
Practice your photography regularly.
 
Keep a visual journal. Make a photo every day, put it in a book, and monitor your progress.
 
Walk around the block for 15 minutes and try to be inspired by ONE idea. Capture that idea with your camera.
 
Remember the basic principles: light, composition, framing, detail, color, movement, energy… If you can put as many of the principles into a single photograph then it’s all happening! You’re DOING IT.
 

A lot was said during this 3-day workshop, but one particular statement by Penny resonated with me more than anything else: You have to self-assign your dream assignment.
 
Penny suggested that we assign ourselves 3 personal projects per year where we have to go somewhere outside our home bases and tell the stories that interests us. She instructed us to find 3 stories that feed the soul and set out to capture them. A powerful idea. I love that it can be applied to more than just photography. Three stories told through art. Three stories that capture me and me alone. Penny made this assignment early on during the first day of the weekend and it’s still haunting me. I can’t help but wonder what my 3 stories are this year! And I’m excited about how they will manifest from my creativity. Will I capture them in photos? Will I put them into words? Will I do something entirely new, like paint or sketch? Perhaps a combination of them all? The possibilities are exciting! And terrifying. And empowering. I can’t wait to see which road will present itself to me.

     Herding Lamb, a photo by Penny De Los Santos (and the one that struck the richest chord in me last weekend)

anthropology and capturing the dream

Monday, 2:15am

This past weekend I participated in an online workshop led by photographer Penny De Los Santos. It’ll take me several days to debrief… longer still to fully internalize all that I’ve learned. I hope to make a few posts this week relaying some of the key concepts that Penny mentioned and sharing some of the principles I’ve learned about photography and storytelling. I hope you’ll take the time to read these posts even if photography is of no interest to you. As I sit still for a moment with the workshop sessions still fresh in my mind I keep returning to a single thought: The ways a photographer approaches her subjects — be it travel photography or food or portraits — are the very ways I want to approach the mundane details of life. James Oseland, editor of Saveur magazine, said it best during the workshop: “You are an anthropologist of the cultures you shoot.” Expanding that, I say, “We are anthropologists of the cultures that surround us, that influence our daily lives and our beliefs and our personal art.” Every day is a chance to explore something new and to take with me another little piece of everyone and everything that surrounds me. I sit here at this morning hour and realize (again) just how many opportunities I simply do not take.

One of the final thoughts that Penny shared really does sum up what I always meant to be in my life. This is the person I thought I would become. Or, at least, it’s the place I thought I would be closer to at this stage of my life. I’m grateful that my life has not ended and that every day is a new opportunity. I’m feeling enormous regret as I think about the current state of my life compared to my first teenage dreams of travel and writing and discovering the world. I can’t help but wonder how I derailed in the first place, and I am a little overwhelmed at the thought of trying to make something better out of the future. I know it’s one day at a time, but as I write this I have no idea how to even begin. This week, I’ll be pondering these words from Penny with a prayer that everything will soon become more clear to me.

Be inspired.
Love what you do.
Have insatiable curiosity.
 
As in everything…
Lead with your heart.
Be open.
Follow your instincts.
Listen.
Create.

Penny closed the workshop relaying a conversation she had with her brother when she first set out for college and was feeling all the fear of a new situation. These statements resonate with me more than anything else she said this weekend. She asked him, “What if I’m not good enough?” He responded, “What if you are good enough?” That’s the question I want to grasp tightly going forward. I want to keep telling myself, “Sure, you’re frightened of failing but… what if you are good enough?”

“Capture that dream,” Penny said. “Capture that dream and meditate on it.“

Now I just need to determine what that dream is for me. I think it’s been pushed so far down inside of me that it may take a while to remember, but I’m excited about rediscovering it. I’m excited that I can begin anew, each and every day.

Join me this week as I share more of what I learned from Penny’s workshop, including a vast amount of information about creating great photos (and creating art, in general).

click on the image to visit Penny’s website and view her remarkable photos

this week I love…

1. the artistic style of Jamey Christoph. images are linked to source
 

 

 

 

2. You Are My Fave where each new post is a new favorite thing. I love her ideas, but mostly I love the fact that each new thing that inspires her is a new favorite. I use “fave” all the time, for everything, and I just don’t believe there’s a reason that everything can’t be a favorite. Check out the blog where recent entries include Friday color is my fave, A book of checklists is my fave, and Operation cardigan complete is my fave. I will never again feel ridiculous for calling everything a fave!
 

3. the Love in the Morning series by Emily Freeman at Chatting at the Sky. I’m seriously considering doing this series myself sometime soon. Be sure to check out this post and this one, too. I really love her style!

When it seems the morning forgot to bring your dose of new mercies and instead shows up rude with no more coffee in the bag, love becomes a more difficult choice. It still counts when it’s easy, but it means more when it’s hard. Some mornings are like that. Difficult to see. Weary for the day. Longing for time to slow down or hurry up, depending on the list in front of you. Heat up the water and make some tea. Wrap your small hands around that steamy cup. Close your eyes when they’re not looking, and receive the abundant gift of your own belovedness.
 
You are the object of His affections. Declare His love in the morning.
 
“The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”
— Zephaniah 3:17 (ESV)
 
Love in the Morning | three by Emily Freeman

 

4. the wedding of William and Kate, of course. I’ve heard a lot of comments about how ridiculous it seemed for Americans to find this as exciting as Brits, and yet, for me, it really was a cool, cool event. I’m old enough to remember the wedding of William and Harry’s parents, and I remember vividly the announcements of their individual births. Watching them grow up has been like checking in on distant cousins over the years. And with the death of their mother, their lives have seemed especially poignant through these adult years. So, while the monarchy itself is nothing more than intriguing to me, Prince William’s wedding was truly a special event. The best comment I saw in all the Twitterverse on Friday summed it up perfectly: “We value love and hope.” This wedding just seemed to be more about both those things than about convention or tradition. And that’s truly inspiring!
 

ONE DAY by David Nicholls

Genre: Fiction ISBN: 9780307474711 Acquired: Amazon Reading Period: April 9-10, 2011 Overall Rating: 8.5 out of 10 (simply for some profanity that grated on me at times)

Books entice me in many different ways. Sometimes I’m drawn by a cover alone, and other times I am compelled to read something based on a critical review or word of mouth. Most of the time it’s a combination of appealing cover art plus a quick read of the book’s premise. But I’m always a choosy reader. Especially in the past few years when books were not even on the back burner but housed somewhere in the dark recesses of my entertainment pantry, I’ve been very discriminating about which books I choose to invest my time. Even the large collection of previous acquisitions that filled my shelves has not enticed me in recent years. But One Day has changed all of that. I first read a review of One Day in Entertainment Weekly, my usual go-to for new titles and reviews, and I was immediately enchanted. What’s not to love about a love story between best friends that is told chronologically on a single date (July 15th) over the span of their relationship? The tool of making each chapter a recounting of that particular date over a twenty-year period was inventive enough to make me interested, and the fact that it was a story of friendship above all else pierced my heart immediately. I purchased it last year when I was first developing my own little novella of a long-term friendship that floats between platonic, familial, and romantic, and I had just made the decision to tell my story in segments with gaps between the years. That someone had beaten me to the idea and published it didn’t even irritate me. Instead, I couldn’t wait to pick it up and begin. Of course, I fell back into my non-reading routine before I actually did pick it up, but it’s been sitting on my bookshelf since July of last year, constantly reminding me of its presence and beckoning me to just begin. So I did. This past Saturday, for the Spring Read-a-Thon, this little story of a huge friendship was my first choice for the full day of reading that I planned. I had backups, of course, but once I began reading, there was simply no putting it down. One Day is magnificent for its lack of pretense and plainspeak. The author’s words are often jumbled and rambling and free of pauses, and reading them is like seeing my own patterns of thought in print. And because the language is so unconstrained, the experience of the novel is similar to listening to a couple tell their own personal story over the course of a long, lazy winter’s day — a story full of anecdotes and history and pop culture references that detail what it was like for my generation to grow up in the 80s and 90s. To say I was mesmerized is inadequate, but I felt so connected that I cannot even think of a word to encompass the feeling. Not even a predictable and clichéd happening in the final section of the book was able to take away the extraordinary experience of this novel. One Day is notable to me for another big reason, as well. Throughout my reading I was inspired for my own work-in-progress. Good books are meant to do that, of course, but I haven’t felt such urgency from a reading experience in many, many years. This time, I made notes of language, of cadence, of boundaries that could be pushed and barriers that need not exist in my own creative process. I was inspired as a writer and not just as a reader. And that is a bonus I never expected.

Memorable Passages: She had once studied fashion in London but these days ran a village antiques shop, selling expensive rugs and chandeliers to genteel Oxford with great success. She still carried with her that aura of having been something-in-the-Sixties — Dexter had seen the photographs, the clippings from faded colour supplements — but with no apparent sadness or regret she had given this up for a resolutely respectable, secure, comfortable family life. Typically, it was as if she had sensed exactly the right moment to leave the party. Dexter suspected that she had occasional flings with the doctors, lawyers, the people who spoke on the radio, but he found it hard to be angry with her. And always people said the same thing — that he had got it from her. No-one was specific about what ‘it’ was, but everyone seemed to know; looks of course, energy and good health, but also a certain nonchalant self-confidence, the right to be at the centre of things, on the winning team. Even now, as she sat in her washed-out blue summer dress, fishing in her immense handbag for matches, it seemed as if the life of the Piazza revolved around her. Shrewd brown eyes in a heart-shaped face under expensively dishevelled black hair, her dress undone one button too far, an immaculate mess. She saw him approach and her face cracked with a wide smile. (Chapter Two: “Back to Life”, pg 28)   * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * She owns furniture. At twenty-seven she is too old to live like a student anymore, and she now owns a bed, a large wrought-iron and wicker-work affair bought in the summer sales from a colonial-themed store on the Tottenham Court Road. Branded the ‘Tahiti’ it occupies the whole bedroom of her flat. The duvet is goosedown, the sheets are Egyptian cotton which is, the saleswoman informed her, the very best cotton known to man, and all of this signifies a new era of order, independence and maturity. On Sunday mornings she lounges alone on the Tahiti as if it were a raft, and listens to Porgy and Bess and Mazzy Star, old Tom Waits, and a quaintly crackling vinyl album of Bach’s Cello Suites. She drinks pints of coffee and writes little observations and ideas for stories with her best fountain pen on the linen-white pages of expensive notebooks. Sometimes, when it’s going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery. The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of bus tickets, on the wall of a cell. Emma is lost on anything less than 120gsm. But at other times she finds herself writing happily for hours, as if the words had been there all along, content and alone in her one-bedroom flat. Not that she’s lonely, or at least not very often. Instead she visits independent cinemas and galleries with friends…. At twenty-seven, Emma wonders if she’s getting old. She used to pride herself on her refusal to see two sides of an argument, but increasingly she accepts that issues are more ambiguous and complicated than she once thought. Shouldn’t she have an opinion, take a side, boycott something? At least with apartheid you knew where you stood. Now there’s a war in Europe and she has personally done absolutely nothing to stop it. Too busy shopping for furniture. (Chapter Six: “Chemical”, pp 114-115)   * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * But to just look at someone, to just sit and look and talk and then realise that it’s morning? Who had the time or inclination or energy these days to stay up talking all night? What would you talk about? Property prices? She used to long for those midnight phone calls; these days if a phone rang late at night it was because there had been an accident, and did they really need more photographs when they knew each other’s faces so well, when they had shoeboxes full of that stuff, an archive of nearly twenty years? Who writes long letters in this day and age, and what is there to care so much about? She sometimes wondered what her twenty-two-year-old self would think of today’s Emma. Would she consider herself self-centered? Compromised? A bourgeois sell-out, with her appetite for home ownership and foreign travel, clothes from Paris and expensive haircuts? Would she find her conventional, with her new surname and hopes for a family life? Maybe, but then the twenty-two-year-old Emma Morley wasn’t such a paragon either: pretentious, petulant, lazy, speechifying, judgmental. Self-pitying, self-righteous, self-important, all the selfs except self-confident, the quality that she had always needed the most. No, this, she felt, was real life, and if she wasn’t as curious or passionate as she once had been, that was only to be expected. It would be inappropriate, undignified, at thirty-eight, to conduct friendship or love affairs with the ardour and intensity of a twenty-two-year-old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry, crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photo booths, taking a whole day to make a compilation tape, asking people if they wanted to share your bed, just for company? If you quoted Bob Dylan or T.S. Eliot or, God forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them? Ridiculous, at thirty-eight, to expect a song or book or film to change your life. (Chapter Eighteen: “The Middle”, pp 381-382).   * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * He eats supper with the television on, hopping channels and restricting himself to the solitary beer that came free with the delivery. But there’s something saddening about eating alone, hunched over the sofa in this strange house and for the first time that day he feels a rush of despair and loneliness. These days grief seems like walking on a frozen river; most of the time he feels safe enough, but there is always the danger that he will plunge through. Now he hears the ice creak beneath him, and so intense and panicking is the sensation that he has to stand for a moment, press his hands to his face and catch his breath. (Chapter Twenty-One: “Arthur’s Seat”, pg 416)