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Avocado

Avocado

Bell Pepper #30, Edward Weston

Man, this is hard. Gives me a new appreciation for Edward Weston's natural studies series. He photographed several bell peppers; take a look at his most famous, "Pepper #30." I don't know how he controlled the light to get such depth of tone and beautiful interplay between highlights, shadows, and negative space. Not to mention the interesting composition. I fell short in a couple of places in this image. As I was taking it, I realized that I (a) couldn't quite visualize how I wanted the light to work, and (b) didn't have the technical proficiency to make it happen, or even experiment. There's a lot to work with here: the arrangement of the avocado halves and the space betweeen them, the light/dark interplay giving depth to both the convex pits and the concave holes, the shine of the hard outer skin and the soft matted texture of the avocado flesh, and three-dimensional frame of the bowl itself. That's a lot of variables to control, and without some kind of vision at the outset, you're setting yourself up to photograph one big mess.

Still, I like working on this series. It provides a nice controlled method of practicing, without the time constraints or lack of repeatability when shooting "in the wild." And if I don't like this image, well, we just may have to eat guacamole again next week. Such a shame.

Pomelo

Pomelo

April and I have started a small project to frame and hang some photographs of food near our kitchen. What you are looking at here is a pomelo (think giant grapefruit with a milder taste). The photograph makes it look very... fleshy.

I do. 07/31/2010.

Copyright Hassel Weems Photography

Divided

Divided

Those of you who know me well may understand the significance of this image.

Peter, the father, the rock
turned to sand falling
slipping through fingers
dividing
what was one is now many

Jeff Gee

Jeff Gee

This is a photo of my good friend Jefferson Gee. He was my roommate freshman year, and we've managed to keep in touch since then, though we don't see each other as often as we'd like. Each time we do, it seems like an endless stream of good conversation. He's just one of those guys you click with, you know?

Well one place we did get to see each other was in Europe. Last summer, while I was in Oxford, Jeff was studying all summer at the Georgia Tech campus in France ("GT Lorraine"). We decided to take one weekend and meet up--in Switzerland. We thought it was wild that two kids, one from New Jersey and one from Alabama, could go to school together in Georgia, and then manage to meet up in Zürich. Fun times.

While we were bumming around Zürich, he would ask me questions about my camera gear and photography. I took this photo to demonstrate the difference between a wide-angle, close up shot and a shot with a long lens from further away (which quickly followed). I wanted to show him why the long lenses are preferred for portraits, but I ended up liking this photograph better. Sure, the telephoto shot captured his features more accurately, but I feel like this one better captures his personality: fun to be around, a little goofy at times.

See, the significance here is that you won't find a "HowTo" article on the Internet telling you to take portraits with wide lenses, and rarely will you find that advice in books. All the "rules" say portraits should be taken with long to normal-perspective lenses. And, if I had just been taking the shot without trying to demonstrate anything, I probably would have put on a 80 or 100 mm lens, backed up and composed, and captured his features well. But because I was prompted by Jeff to experiment--even though I already knew what the result would be technically--I discovered a new result aesthetically. It seems I need to be asking myself the question, "Well what would happen if ...?" a bit more.

Industry

Industry

Finally got around to taking another pic for the GT Photo Club. This week's theme was "Industry." I took a picture of some scaffolding at a construction site close to the house. I had to set up the tripod (love the new tripod) on a small strip of land right next to an Atlanta highway. Exciting photographic danger.