Since Aaron shook the bees' nest in his last post, I figured I wanted to take a moment to respond, but first a bit about this image.

I give this image one thumb up and one thumb down. It came together nicely, and the shape of the framing turned out just how I wanted, with the horizontal sweep accenting the horizon and the frames breaking out the top and bottom vertically emphasizing the wake from the ferry and the blue sky above Seattle. Unfortunately my Holga lens is too wide and I waited too long to snap these, as the Seattle skyline has been reduced to a mere strip. I really wanted to get the skyline a bit more imposing and interesting in the final photo. I also wanted to emphasize the wide open embrace of water all around and the blustery nature of the day. This photo sort of does those things.

But it tries, so I give it credit for that. And it is another step in my learning this technique, and when it comes to learning, often your failures are more valuable than your successes, not that I think this is a complete failure. I just think I have done others that were more successful.

Now on to the perfect photograph. Hehe, what a transition. My philosophy has always been that using the word perfect to describe photography is a giant waste of time. It is a pointless exercise. It is like describing a photo as good or bad. Those terms are so subjective. One person's perfection is another person's failure, and vice versa. I try to avoid labeling my photos, or even thinking of them, in such terms. I work instead on identifying what they do, how they do it, how other's respond to it, etc.

I think a landscape photograph's ultimate goal is to connect with its audience, whether that is an audience of one (the photographer himself) or many. If it does that, then it is successful. On a secondary level, these photos try to transport us there, make us feel how it was to be there, spark our imaginations, kindle our inspiration, open our eyes, or some combination of all of these.

Before I go any further, I want to make the disclaimer that I do not want to offend anybody if I describe their way of photography and then critique it. The wonderful thing about art, is we each have the right to do it as we please. My goal is rather to point out tendencies and boundaries, to try and poke people, shake them out of their comfort zones, make them think a bit, push them to push themselves creatively.

Because, I think a lot of landscape photography I see on Flickr has grown stagnant. It has become distilled into a science as opposed to an art. It is clinical in its approach, which is ironic because the photographers behind it are often not clinical at all, they are excited and inspired, but the photographs they produce don't seem to capture that as well.

I guess what I am talking about is how so much landscape photography here on Flickr looks the same. Wide angle lens, beautiful sunset/sunrise, snow capped mountain looming over its reflection in a lake, or sweep of ocean along the coast. Composed the same ways vertically or horizontally. Saturated. Exposures blended to be perfect. Everything sharp. Neutral density filter to increase blur, and so on. I am sure many of you reading this will recognize these heavy trends. And again, there is nothing wrong with this per se, photographers are using this checklist to produce some visually stunning imagery, no doubt about that.

But try this quick exercise, find 5-10 of these type of photographers, pull one or two images out of each of their streams, and see how easily it is to fit them all together into one cohesive portfolio. I noticed the same looking at the back of B&W Magazine and Lenswork Magazine. The ads in the back for various "fine art" photographers could have been taken by 2-3 people, the results are so similar. Either black and white landscape (two points if it is an abstract of a sand dune), a still life of flowers (two points if they are lilies or tulips) or a nude female study.

I think there are problems on two fronts with this. First of all, I sort of get turned off by the approach for technical perfection. Why? Simply because the world is not perfect, neither are we. Neither should our art. Modern landscape photography is rapidly leaning towards hyper-realistic renditions of natural scenes, and the result is an image that is so perfect in its sharpness and exposure that it no longer looks real. I have trouble looking at these landscape photos and imagining myself in that spot, because my brain is thinking, "this is not at all how it would look." We create fantasy versions of the Nature that so inspires us. Which is fine if that is your intent. Afterall I have never met an HDR photographer who claimed that style of photography was meant to me a realistic interpretation, but rather an exaggeration. The same with this hyper-real trend to perfection in modern landscape photography. It has become so hyper-realistic in its quest for perfection that it has become an exaggeration. Again, that is fine, as long as the photographer realizes this, and then uses it appropriate.

The second problem relates to a post I made a long time ago about a three tiered system of learning photography. The first being the bottom, where you are a novice and know nothing really. The second being where you know all the rules and apply them heavily with the last tier being those photographers who have accepted that the rules only work some of the time, and the rest you venture out on your own and sort of operate off of instinct and vision. At the time, and I still do, I felt that it was easy to get out of the first tier. We hate not knowing things, so it is easy to push ourselves to learn the rules. But once we get to that second tier, many of us bog down. We know the rules, they are working for us to help us produce technically sound photographs, we lose our drive to push ourselves because the realm we are operating in has become comfortable and easy to work with. It is hard to push ourselves creatively to break those boundaries we have imposed upon ourselves, in fact we often do not even realize we have imposed them. But we have. For example, if you have a 10-20mm lens and use it for landscapes, go back and look at your last few dozen images. Were they all composed the same way? Two-thirds bottom, one third top. Strong foreground leading to the background. Nice light. Etc? This is after all how we are taught such a lens should be used. But certainly it is not the only way right? Or heck, how many of your photos are constrained to a rectangular or square frame? Just look at that little fact. What, 98% of our photographs are in little squares or rectangles. We have become so used to it, that many of us just accept that as natural. It is one of the reasons I like these Holga panos such, they break that stereotype. They allow me to match the frame with the subject. But most of the time we just take this for granted and go along with it, not thinking that we could possibly break this particular boundary.

Phew. I don't claim to be right about all of this. I am trying to put ideas I have out there in hopes that they may spark other ideas in those that read this, and I always welcome discussion. I think too much of Flickr is way too blindly supportive with too little thoughtful critique. Because sharing ideas and photos, getting feedback, responding and adapting, that is how we learn afterall.

As far as perfection, if it is perfection you think you are trying to capture in your photographs I would warn you to re-evaluate, you will be searching a long time and will never find what you are looking for. Or worse, believe you have. And in the course of that odyssey you will miss a lot of other important things.

That is my take on perfect photography anyway. Thanks for sticking along all this way, sorry I have been sort of absent from Flickr for a bit. I hope for that to change.

And one quick shout out to Rob to congratulate him on finally getting to go home from the hospital. Keep it up Rob!

If you are interested in pricing for my images, or just plain curious, more info can be found at my website: www.zebandrews.com

Tags:   ferry Seattle Bremerton Washington Pacific Northwest Holga Holga 120N Puget Sound 120 film panoramic organic breaking out of the box water travel boat Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

© All Rights Reserved

Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can endure. -- Henry David Thoreau

Sometimes an image so burns itself in your imagination, that even without having seen it you cannot forget its power or presence. Such was this scene for me at Ruby Beach over this past summer. An immensely interesting beach, I love photographing here. We arrived one stormy summer day on a trip down from the northern reaches of Olympic National Park just as the stormy clouds were parting and the beach was bathed in spectacular light. I "saw" this image, an expanse of driftwood lit dramatically with the beach's signature seastacks in the background and the stormy skies swirling overhead, the expansiveness of this scene and all the elements in it. And the inner photographer in me screamed to figure out a way to capture it...

I have experimented a bit with this Holga technique and admit that my results with it so far are works in progress. There are definitely aspects of what I have achieved so far that I am quite pleased with, but I am constantly studying them to find ways to improve. One danger in experimenting with a new technique is that initially all the results look good, just from the new 'wow' factor. When I first started doing my flower macro, I liked many of the shots that now I consider very amatuerish. I had not developed that technique very fully yet, and once I did my results were much better than the initial few photos. See, an image shouldn't be good just because of some neat, cool trick applied to it, that is just a gimmick, and any manipulation can become this. An applied technique should enhance an already good photograph, not carry it. I am in that cautious gray area still with these multi-shot Holga panoramics. I am cautious to try and make sure that it is not just the cool factor of the style that is making the shot interesting, but rather the characteristics of the technique matching those qualities of the scene, and providing a different or enhanced perspective of it.

So back to the beach...

There is something about these Holga panoramics that have an expansiveness to them, and that is what made me think to try this type of shot that afternoon. Of all my cameras that I had with me, this is the one I reached for. My Pentax 67 was loaded with color, and its images are ... too perfect. Too crisp, too sharp. My pinhole would not have been sharp enough, its slight softening tends to smooth out jagged features a little. The imperfections that Holga images tend to have, and the uneven way I knew they would all overlap is why I figured my little plastic $25 camera would be best suited for capturing what I wanted. This is eleven separate exposures, believe it or not. I was attempting to get an even narrower, more panoramic result originally, but seeing it all together I kind of like it as it is. Still, I am adapting to how wide the lens on the Holga can actually seem when used in this manner, that and keeping the shots organized in my head as I am shooting them off. But this is basically what I pictured in my head, this is the image that so piqued my imagination, and begged me to do what I could to realize it in film.

I developed the negatives, made a couple of proof prints, and then promptly set them all aside, no scanning, no experiments at blending them together. I just got busy. I kept remembering this image, and kept thinking I should really set aside the hour or two to put it all together to see if it actually worked or not. But weeks became months. The image itself remained burned in my memory, though I still had not seen it in final form. Every time I saw the page of negatives amongst the stacks of other pages, this image would spring back to the forefront of my mind, not that it had ever drifted very far. Because it had been such a powerful scene that day, the wildness of it all, the savage beauty of the turbulent ocean and the remains of her sometimes violent accomplishments. So finally, I sat down and scanned. I took the eleven single images and, not unlike a jigsaw puzzle, started fitting them together. I enjoy the process, trying to balance what you so strongly remember with what you hope to see, to make a final image to mirror that which was powerful enough to stir your soul...

Phew, anyway, the Pacific Ocean does this to me. People sometimes look at me like I am crazy when I tell them stormy days at the beach are the best. Then again sometimes people just look at me like I am crazy without me saying anything about the ocean. I am happy with this. My imagination is sated, even if my drive to further explore this technique is not. The day you stop exploring afterall, is the day you begin to live a little less.

I must finish up with a couple of links. I have posted this style image before here and here, I mention it because I have said a fair amount about it, and my inspirations behind it that may or may not be worth reading. Ted Orland is the photographer whose work I originally saw that introduced me to using the Holga in this manner. And I must also thank SeekingFocus, who unknowingly, helped provide me with a bit more impetus (probably just the right amount I needed) to finally sit down and see if this roll held what I hoped it did. And finally another take on this amazing day.


If you are interested in pricing for my images, or just plain curious, more info can be found at my website: www.zebandrews.com

Tags:   Holga Washington Pacific Northwest Ruby Beach black and white B&W film Fuji Neopan 400 plastic cameras toy cameras coast Pacific Ocean yeah, a $25 camera did this ocean driftwood blanc i negre Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

© All Rights Reserved

"... I dream to be an artist. I pray that someday, if I work with enough care, if I am very very lucky, I will make ... a work of art. Call me an artist then, and I will answer." --The Princess Bride


I consider myself a photographer...stop. Not a fine art photographer, nor a master, or a photographic genius. Not a savant or a guru. I guess if you pressed me I might label myself as a landscape photographer, but only hesitantly as I am reluctant to confine the definition of my photography so. Simply put, I make pictures, therefore I am a photographer.

The words art and artist are tricky titles to apply, there is a lot of gray area. I try not to think too long about what is art and what is not, it really is not usually that relevant to what I do. I shall say though that I believe art is not something one does haphazardly or on occasion. Just because you smear paint on a canvas, does not necessarily make you an artist, nor does one's ability to press a shutter button.

The mild rant aside, recognition as an artist, is not what drives me. I do not actually dream of being an artist. What I do dream of is being a teacher, or at least someone who facilitates the spread of ideas and knowledge, specifically relating to photography. There is little that is more rewarding than sharing an image like this and seeing it excite (rather than impress) others. Knowing they will go out and incorporate those ideas into their own personal vision of the world, which will have just become that much wider because of the new inclusion of perspectives. Then knowing they in turn will share those visions and ideas back again with the rest of us. That to me is a much richer reward than any list of accolades.

To speak a bit of the technique used to create this image, I first saw this idea demonstrated by the photographer Ted Orland. I was visiting Yosemite and happened to stop in at the Ansel Adams Gallery where Ted had an amazing photo of Mono Lake done in this style. His photo was a lightning bolt to my imagination and not too long after seeing his image, I found myself standing along this stretch of the Oregon coast hoping for a nice sunset. It was an amazing afternoon, and I spent it up on the cliffs reading The Princess Bride and taking photos, but I was certain the sunset was going to fizzle because of the layers of clouds on the horizon. Sure enough the sun sank behind the thick band of clouds and the sky started to gray out so I hiked down off of the cliffs and figured I would linger on the beach...just in case. The sun reached the horizon and the burst through the thin layer of clouds there, lighting up everything for about 10 minutes. I double-timed it far enough down the beach so the sun was not behind the cliffs and close enough to Haystack Rock to photograph. Before I left I shot this panoramic with almost an entire roll of film through my Holga. The final photo ended up being the product of eleven separate shots scanned and layered together in Photoshop. It is an interesting technique, and an excellent way to burn film. But it is fun, and it has allowed me to find yet another way to see and capture some of the amazing things I see in life.

Tags:   Holga panoramic Oregon Pacific Ocean Pacific Northwest Cape Kiwanda Pacific City coast beach sunset Haystack Rock toy cameras plastic cameras multiple exposures seascape Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

© All Rights Reserved

I like imperfect photography. I admit it. Give me a bit of camera shake. Some lens distortion. Shallow focus or none at all, I'd like to see it. Got some overexposure, underexposure or multiple exposure (intentional or not) throw it my way. I enjoy vignetting. I'll even make time for grain and noise. What can I say, I like to see imperfect photographs even more so than I like to see "perfect" photographs.

But before I get too far down that path, I would say I spent a lot of time working on this shot. I like these multiple shot Holga panoramics. They just take so much friggin' time to put together. But I still like them. A large part of it is because it is kind of like sculpting. I start with a scene, in this case Horseshoe Bend in Arizona, and then I produce however many shots I think I need to complete the scene. Then I scan them all into Photoshop and start merging, blending, erasing, and balancing. It would probably be pretty interesting to many of you to see how this looked right after I had everything scanned and "assembled" in Photoshop but before I began the actual blending. It really is sort of similar to a sculptor starting with a rough block of clay, then slowly the excess is removed to expose the artist's vision within. I slowly erased and blended and this image slowly emerged. But until it did, I did not really know how it would look. I mean, I had no idea exactly where the frame lines would emerge, what the final overall shape would be, only that in there somewhere was an image of Horseshoe Bend that wanted out.

But even with all that hard work there are dark, uneven patches where the exposure of one frame did not quite match another. Where colors are not quite cohesive. Where lines don't quite jive. I corrected a number of these trouble spots but finally decided enough was enough. See my goal was not to create a "perfect" image. If that is what I had wanted I would have not taken my Holga. I would have taken a DSLR and used some program to seamlessly stitch these 12 or 13 frames into a single panoramic frame, or I would have just shot a really wide angle lens to have caught it all.

Where would the challenge be in that though? Or the magic?

I had actually written quite a bit more on this topic, then erased it and rewrote it. That too got erased by a computer glitch, which was ok because it still wasn't quite what I was looking to say, so I rewrote it again, and again erased it. I figure by this point I am just whipping the stubborn mule of my brain to try and say something I need a bit more time to ponder. So I will end for tonight, because I really just want to get this image posted at this point, I like it too much to let it just drift here privately until I get my words in order.

I will close with a few of the key thoughts that have been present in the various mini-essays that I have written and erased up to this point:

The magic in this world can almost never be confined simply to our ideal of the perfect. I think more magic is caught in the imperfections of the photographs we take, than those that are flawless, in no small part because the world we photograph itself is riddled with flaws and imperfections. Many of them are glorious.

The best photography does not just impart a sense of the subject but of the photographer. Not just what is in front of the camera, but behind it as well.

Breaking the rules of photography for the sake of breaking the rules is counter-productive. It really is no different than following all the rules of photography for the sake of following them. A good photograph is not just a checklist of what was done right. Nor does it flaunt what was done wrong. It is what it needs to be to communicate with the viewer.

A good photograph does not set itself apart from its audience. It relates to them, and them to it. Which is why I think the notion of imperfect photography is so important. A piece can be technically superior, it can razzle and dazzle, and many that fall into this category do. But they never quite touch or move, they just wow and impress (or shock and awe to borrow a phrase that is not missed). Because they are not like their audience, which is human, which is imperfect.

In some ways gloriously so.

Tags:   Holga panoramic Arizona Colorado River Southwest landscape rock river canyon desert film square stitched Plastic cameras strike again Horseshoe Bend Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

© All Rights Reserved

I don't remember where I first saw an image of this waterfall, but it was several years ago, I believe on the cover of a book regarding Oregon landscapes, or perhaps the Gorge specifically. Either way, it was a photo of a waterfall that has haunted me (in the good way) since, hanging out always somewhere in the back of my mind. Unfortunately I never had quite enough information to be able to figure out which falls it was and how to get to it. Then I was reminded of it a month or two ago when separate groups of Flickr photographers made their way out there and came back with some equally beautiful images. So, armed with my renewed interest in seeing this falls myself, my friend Tom and I hiked and bushwhacked our way up and then down to this serene little spot.

This falls doesn't seem to have an official name as of yet, I think of it personally as lower upper Ruckel Creek falls. There are three falls up this creek but this day are goal was only this one. The trek to it is an adventure in itself. A short, and mildly grueling, uphill climb is followed by treacherous descent down a moss covered talus slope full of ankle-breakers and large patches of Poison Oak. But the reward at the bottom is worth all the trouble. A beautiful gem in the crown of the gorge, full of amazing sights. As a side note, Tom and I actually elected to pick our way back down the stream all the way to the trail, just to see if the passage along the creek would be easier than the up and down of the trail. It was do-able, but not any easier.

I took several photos while I was out there, and had to hold off posting all the others (Pentax 6x7, 35mm slide, pinhole) because I wanted to wait and see how this one turned out. I like it, but the process of taking this one shot inspired many thoughts.

First, I really like taking these multiple shot Holga panoramics. It is a fun process to try and imagine how the scene is going to play out, to find the right vantage, and compose the right number of shots in just the right locations. To scan them all in, and then assemble them, much like a jigsaw puzzle. The process is an adventure and I love it. But this is still a technique that I am pretty new to, and I am still very early on in the learning curve.

See, the HOW of a photograph is as important as the WHAT and both are as important as the WHY. You have to remember all three of these when making a photograph. If you concentrate too much on one of these at the expense of the other two... well you end up with a photo that is all about the technique but has no depth, or a photo that has great subject matter but no purpose, or a great subject that is technically handicapped by its poor execution. I think this is what a lot of people respond to with HDR. So often, it is too tempting to take an HDR photo for the sake of it being HDR, flashy and saturated and visually arresting, but with little cohesiveness to its subject matter.

And that is what I am still struggling with, with this technique. I don't want to take a multiple-pano shot of a landscape simple because I can, because if that is my best reason, the final image will not be as strong as it can be. Rather, I am constantly trying to learn the quirks and characteristics of these types of images and match them with the landscapes I am photographing them with.

Which was my intent here. I was trying to catch the tumble and flow of the creek as it spilled away from the falls. I think I moderately succeeded. I like the tumble of the frames and the drop in elevation that occurs in the frame. This is still not a perfect image, there are still things I would tinker with here or there.

There are also several new ideas that occurred to me upon seeing this shot. One, I take all these photos from the same location, rotating the head of my tripod to pan around. Which can cause some interesting issues with images becoming larger or smaller in the frames, causing issues with being able to match them with other frames. But now I want to try experimenting with changing my location (moving backwards or forwards, or to the side) as I shoot. To see how changing my vantage midway through the set of exposures can affect the final series of images. I also think it would be interesting to create a sense of depth of field, by working the shots closer to me and out of focus. Just ideas, but I like photography that makes me think.

Anyway, I could probably go on a bit longer, I fell asleep last night thinking about this image. But thankfully for all of you, I have to leave for work now. ;-)

Tags:   Ruckel Creek Holga pano stream landscape Oregon Columbia River Gorge Pacific Northwest waterfall green lush moss Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

© All Rights Reserved