At the end of last week’s post I suggested a couple of exercises that were essentially taking the simplest subject you can find and trying as many distinct variations in photographing it as you can. Someone wrote me asking for examples, but going back into the files from so long ago, and digitizing them, is more effort than I’m willing to make. However, I did have one example handy.

This is from my days as a student in a Photographic Design course sequence. Our assignment was to shoot a “High Key” image. That means all tones in the photograph are at or lighter than a mid-tone. For the non-photographer, a mid-tone in this instance is very specifically halfway between black and white. For photo nerds, depending on one’s generation, it’s Zone V, or 128 on an 8 bit tonal scale.

I shot the eggs on a white ground with soft lighting. Something this simple might give a little idea how much you can do with changing camera position and/or lens, changing the lighting, or varying technical settings like aperture/shutter speed/ISO. And all that is before doing any editing of the photograph.

Then I made a standard print from the 35mm negative. (Remember this is in the chemical darkroom days.) Most photographic printing paper is “negative-acting” so when I printed the original negative onto photo paper I got a negative of a negative–a positive–the top photograph. Just as one example of the many directions you could go, I took that print and printed it (contact print) back onto another sheet of photo paper, creating a negative of a positive, getting a negative image–the bottom photograph. The texture picked up in that print is mainly from the fibers of the paper in the original print.

In today’s digitized, AI world, something like the above would be easy to create out of nothing, but the value of the assignment, regardless of medium, is not in finding the “right” answer (there is no right or wrong answer), but in what might be learned in exploring, experimenting.

For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” Henry David Thoreau

One of our regular stops whenever Barbara and I are in Paris is the Rodin Museum, and it looks like there has been some significant deterioration of this statue in the intervening eight years, between our last two visits. Not really.

The photograph on the right with the cracking torso was shot as a reflection in a large mirror that has some reticulation happening in the glazing. By careful movement and positioning I was able to isolate those lines on the statue, flipping the final image horizontally to get the correct orientation.

My Nikon School colleague Michael Schwarz and I did some small group photo workshops several years ago that combined some classroom, shooting excursions, and critiques. It frequently happened that when we were going through students’ work we might see 2-3 photos of the same subject as the photographer was starting to explore it, but then looking for the “next” shot in the evolution we’d find they had just stopped shooting and moved on, often just short of getting a really good composition.

Never stop looking for a new variation. In several visits before 2016 I’m sure I photographed this guy. In 2016 I did at least 4 variations, and again in 2024 at least 4, finding, at last, a different view. In a crowded place like this, a lot of patience is also necessary, to stand in position and wait for the other visitors to move out of the frame, or at least to a place that minimizes their importance.

If you want to test your ability to recompose the same scene or subject in different ways, try one of the assignments I had in school: take a plain white coffee cup and saucer, on a plain solid tone background, and changing nothing but framing and lighting, see how many distinct versions you can find. If you want a real test, do the same exercise with only 1 or 2 white eggs.

For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index

Certain photographs I have made stick in my mind. Sometimes it’s because the photo is so good; the Fates conspired to put me in the right place at the right time, and I didn’t blow it. Sometimes it may be a personal connection to the person, place, and/or moment in the picture. Sometimes I don’t know why.

I like this photograph, some impromptu merchandising on a storefront in Prague, but I expect many people would be, “Meh.” I suspect most photographers have favorites from their files that no one else gets.

This image exemplifies an answer I give when asked, “What’s your favorite subject?” For me making a photo is a design exercise; subject matter is secondary. My job is to take the various visual elements presented to me, shapes, tones, and colors, and find an arrangement of them that is interesting and cohesive, and, if there is a narrative, inform and support that.

For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index