WC Bean Photography

Aloha! Welcome to the first installment of what we hope will become a regular, eagerly anticipated feature of my website. For those of you visiting for the first time, welcome. Kick your shoes off, grab a cold drink, and enjoy. For you old timers, well, I guess you CAN fool some of the people all of the time. But thanks for continuing to indulge me.

If you've seen the site in the past you probably have noticed some major changes going on. We're still in the process but should be finished soon. I guess this is like the Eagles' Farewell Tour I. This is the last time this will EVER happen. Until next time.

You know, people are always asking me "Bill, where on earth did you photograph that exquisite image?" Not quite in those exact words but hey, it's my site, I have editorial privileges. One of the main changes you'll notice is the way the photos are displayed when you click on a thumbnail. We're adding location information as well as some tech data for each and every image on the site. Other changes will also help to make the site easier to navigate.

More specifically related to the newsletter, in future months you'll see such things as photo tips, equipment and software information, and from time to time I'll offer specific details on where and how some of my favorite images were created. Should the e-mails warrant, I'll also add a question and answer blurb.

I could probably prattle on forever but I suppose by now you're excited to see what this Newsletter is going to look like. So in the immortal words of The Black-Eyed Peas, "Let's Get It Started."

Photo tip #1

One of the things that absolutely drives me nuts about digital cameras is the common opinion that digital cures all that ails you. Bottom line is this: Digital or film, the basic physics of photography still apply. IF YOU USE BAD TECHNIQUE YOUR PHOTOS WILL BE BAD! With that in mind, use the following things to make your photos better.

1. ALWAYS use a tripod or some other device to steady your camera whenever possible. Low light situations still lead to slow shutter speeds which leads to camera or subject movement which leads to fuzzy photos.
2. FILL THE FRAME. Robert Capa said it best: "If your photos aren't good enough you're not close enough." So use your zoom or better yet, trot your happy self closer to fill the frame with your subject.
3. PROPER EXPOSURE IS THE KEY! A lot can be done with modern software programs like Photoshop but always remember that your camera's meter, no matter how sophisticated, is trying to make the scene you're shooting appear grey. If your subject is predominately dark or light you need to compensate to avoid muddy looking photos.

For further elaboration on any of these points, shoot me an e-mail and I can provide more details.

Enhance or Altered?

There's a lot of debate these days between photographers that have realized and embraced the capabilities of digital and the old school shooters that swear by film. The first of these points, that digital doesn't have the potential quality of film, is so ludicrous that I won't waste time addressing it. What I'm more concerned with is the perception that once an image is enhanced digitally it ceases to be a photograph. Personally I think this is also kind of ridiculous and here's why.

The key, in my mind, is to define the terms "enhance" and "alter" and how they relate to photographs. Sooner or later every photographer working in the digital darkroom will do some silly stuff while exploring the power and capabilities of Photoshop and other popular software. Bring in a sky from another photo, add someone to a group of people, take out power lines or fence posts, those kinds of things. That is what I refer to as alteration. A few of the images on this site have been "digitally altered" and are disclosed as such.

"Digitally Enhanced" is something else entirely and here lies the problem. Ansel Adams, one of the 2 photographers who's work inspired me to become a photographer, and one of the icons that many Nature and Landscape photographers aspire to emulate, was the master at enhancing his images. Prior to his death he wrote several books on the subject. During the creative process Mr. Adams would see in his mind's eye a scene and how it would look when the final print was done. With that image in mind he would change the way he developed his film and NOBODY did more burning and dodging of prints than Ansel and his darkroom assistants. All with the goal of enhancing the images he created.

Every photograph displayed on my site has some degree of digital enhancement. All images are corrected for color and exposure. Almost every image has been burned (making selected small areas of a print darker) and dodged (making small areas lighter) and all images have been cropped to present the images the way I envisioned them when I pushed the shutter button. When I was producing prints in a conventional chemical darkroom I did exactly the same procedures. Burning, dodging, color and exposure correction, and cropping were all done to just about every print I ever printed which numbers in the tens of thousands.

Contrast that with some popular photographic techniques that are sometimes employed by film photographers. Every photographer out there manipulates prints in the final process. I defy any successful photographer to prove they never burn, dodge, crop, or otherwise change the original exposures they make. Many shooters, both film and digital, stack very exotic, very expensive filters on their lenses with the aim of portraying their "vision" of what they saw before pressing the shutter button. Some of those expensive filters, notably ones like the Sing Ray color enhancing filters, tend to produce colors that are found NOWHERE in Nature. In essence, they're producing a false image while they profess to be more pure and clean than those digital cheaters among us.

As I mentioned earlier, a few of the images on this site were digitally "altered." Images such as the San Francisco Boats and Reflections were created using a Photoshop technique that I'm really fond of. Basically it requires converting the photo to a line drawing and then adding back some of the original color creating a watercolor type of effect that I really enjoy. These images were sought out and photographed with the express intent of altering them in Photoshop using the Graphic Pen technique. The Monument Valley Dunes shot had a row of ugly fence posts removed using the Photoshop Cloning tool. Both of these techniques could probably be done in a conventional darkroom but not without great difficulty and a lot of time and patience. Maybe that's the root of the disagreement. Photoshop allows me to do in 2 minutes what used to take 8 or 10 hours in a conventional darkroom.

Whatever the cause of the problem I believe that my photographs which are enhanced digitally are no more and no less photographic creations than anything I ever did in a darkroom. If you or someone you know disagrees with that please feel free to buy me several icy cold adult beverages at an establishment of my choosing and we can debate it further.

What's Goin' On?

The remainder of 2006 is going to be an interesting year. Already this year I've taken trips to the Pacific Northwest and Winter Park, Colorado. In March I photographed my daughter, Heather, competing in the Special Olympics Winter State games at Copper Mountain and will be photographing the Summer state games in a week or so.

Right now I've got 2 trips in mind for the rest of the year that center around photography. As always, I'll be heading for the hills in July to catch the wildflower bloom. There was a lot of snow last winter so while this won't be a banner year hopefully it will be better than last year. Either way, how can you lose when you spend time in the Rocky Mountains?

The second trip is still in the planning stages and a couple of things have to fall into place for it to happen. I'm definitely going to attend the Outdoor Photographer seminar put on by George Lepp and Rick Sammon in Salt Lake City on September 16 and 17. If everything comes together I'll be leaving Salt Lake and heading for Phoenix where Judy will be attending some business meetings September 19-22. Along the way I plan to stop and photograph the Coyote Buttes area of the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument. There is a formation there called The Wave that I've got a strong hankering to photograph. Then after spending a couple of days in Phoenix seeing Judy and visiting with Erin and Katrina I'll head back to Denver stopping along the way to photograph the changing aspens in southwest Colorado. Cross your fingers for me. I really want this trip to happen.

On that note, it's time to end this first version of the Newsletter. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any thoughts on what I've expressed or subjects you'd like to see covered in future editions. The e-mail address is: bill@wcbeanphoto.com Also let me have your feedback on the new website.

Good luck and good shooting. I'll see you out there.