Finding Your Unique Visual Language

Early in my photographic career, two of my photographer friends were out on a fine art photo trip and I suggested we all take a photo from the same tripod holes.  I wanted to experiment and see if we all saw the world in the same way.

To my surprise, all of our photographs looked completely different.  We all have, what I call our own "Visual Language".  Everyone sees the world in their own unique way.

I recently took this a step further and looked to see if there were any similarities between my personal fine art photography and my commercial photography.

What do you think?

For those of you just getting started, the process of finding your personal "Visual Language" will take some time.

The best way I know to figure this out is to shoot, shoot, shoot!

The other advice I have that has helped me figure this out is, print out little thumbnail prints (no more than 2x3 inches ) of your favorite images.  Lay them out on the floor and start putting the images together that look and feel similar.  This will help you start seeing your own "Visual Language".

  

    

Tell Us A Story

As we mentioned last month, we've been shooting some projects lately that convey different stories. The concept of these projects has been to entice the viewer with mouthwatering food and invite them into the world we've created. 

In part two of our storytelling project, we'd like you to tell us the story instead of us walking you through it. We envisioned a plot that inspired these images. But the story we imagined may not be the story you see. What's your interpretation of these scenes?

Some Storytelling and A Little Southern Cooking

We've been shooting some projects lately that tell more of a visual story than straight-up product shots. The concept of these projects has been to entice the viewer with mouthwatering food and invite them into the world we've created. Let us walk you through a couple of the stories.

I know you can smell warm peanut butter cookies with a hint of coffee from the Java Jam drizzled on top. You can feel the ice cold, creamy milk as it hits the back of your throat, chasing the tasty cookie. You can also imagine yourself in that warm, sun-drenched kitchen listening to the birds chirp through an open window on a lazy weekend afternoon. Can't you?

Fresh local milk and Java Jam topped peanut butter cookies

It's summertime in the South. Someone grabs an old, weathered table and drags it under a huge oak tree for a picnic on a steamy afternoon. On the menu? Spicy Southern fried chicken, buttermilk biscuits smothered with Tupelo honey, pickled tomatoes from the garden, cabbage slaw and fresh squeezed lemonade. Finger-lickin' good!

Summertime Southern fried chicken with pickled tomatoes

Some "behind the scenes" captured while shooting these two images...

Macro Focus Stacking

We were recently tasked with shooting a sunflower seed for an ad agency that specializes in agriculture. Their client needed the image for a billboard and print ad campaign. For comparison, sunflower seeds are about 3/8 inches tall by 1/4 inches wide. Billboards, on average, are 14 feet tall by 48 feet wide. So...in order to get images of the teeny, tiny seed as large as possible, we needed specialized equipment. We rented a Canon MP-E 65mm Macro Lens that is capable of 5x magnification and a focusing rail. 

Because of the extreme magnification, we had very little depth of field – say, about the thickness of a sheet of paper. Therefore, we ended up employing a process called "focus stacking." We shot in increments of 1/4 centimeter to capture 15 images of the seed at various focal depths. While none of these 15 images had the seed entirely in focus, collectively, they contained the data needed to generate one focused image of a sunflower seed. 

We used Photoshop to blend the 15 shots together and generate the final seed image. Photoshop masks out the unfocused areas and keeps the areas of the image that are in focus. The end result is a crystal clear image in focus from top to bottom. Stand alone programs such as HeliconSoft and Zerene Stacker also offer this feature. If you plan to do a good deal of macro focus stacking, I'd suggest investing in a stand alone program.

Photography is about problem solving and visually communicating what your client wants to say. This project employed one of the smallest subjects we've ever photographed, and we had a blast figuring out how to show every detail of a sunflower seed!

Wide view of our teeny, tiny set.

Closer view of the set and seed being photographed.

We shot the seed on its side as it was easier to light it horizontally. It was rotated vertically in post-production.

Focusing rail we rented, which allowed us to seamlessly move the camera 1/4 centimeter at a time. 

David concentrating on focusing and shooting every 1/4 centimeter.

The final image with the "stacked" sunflower seed for the billboard campaign.

David's stylized version, with a more dramatic sky.