Avard Woolaver Archives - Page 15 of 25

Published October 2, 2017 by avardw

31 Days of Taking Great Photos in Your Backyard

Happy October!

This month’s project is a bit of a departure for my blog: 31 days of taking meaningful photos, right where you are. (I’m using the phrase “in your backyard,” but of course plenty of readers don’t have a backyard. The idea is to continually practice looking for the beauty that surrounds us, wherever we are.)

What’s “31 Days”?

Every October, the blogging team over at 31 Days of Writing puts together a month-long blog link-up. It covers a number of categories, and participants write on their chosen topic throughout the month of October.

Here’s what I will be writing about this month:

On Mondays, “Taking Meaningful Portraits”;

On Tuesdays, “Documenting the Present”;

On Wednesdays, “Making Use of Unique Points of View”;

On Thursdays, “Capturing Light”;

On Fridays, “Moving on from Missed Opportunities”;

On Saturdays, “Using Childhood Memories to Add Resonance”;

On Sundays, “Celebrating the Rhythm of the Seasons.”

I’ll be delighted if you read along throughout the month. And I urge you the check out the other bloggers involved in 31 Days. People write about a wide range of topics in various categories. Some writers focus on offering helpful tips; others share inspiration or take readers through the steps of projects they’re working on.

My blog focuses on photography–specifically, I spend a lot of my time exploring New Topography (i.e., the human-altered landscape). To those who aren’t familiar with this phrase, this movement came into prominence through the work of photographers like William Eggleston, Robert Adams, and Stephen Shore. Lee Friedlander, though he wasn’t precisely aligned with the New Topographers, is another photography giant whose work has always fascinated me.

What I’ll Be Sharing in October

This month I’ll be sharing short essays, one each day, on the topics listed above, along with photos. I’ll also be doing my regular blog entries, including interviews with photographers whose work I admire.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading some of these posts. If you want to subscribe (click on the button over on my sidebar), you’ll receive updates automatically as they appear on the blog. And I’d love to hear your thoughts on anything posted here!

Sunday, October 1: Photographing Fall

Monday, October 2: Family Milestones

Tuesday, October 3: We Don’t Know the Future

Wednesday, October 4: Use a Window as a Frame

Thursday, October 5: The Light of Autumn

Friday, October 6: Film Used to Cost a Lot

Saturday, October 7: When I Was Young, Everything Was Black and White

Sunday, October 8: Annual Traditions Are Overrated

Monday, October 9: Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving!

Tuesday, October 10: With Information, Sometimes More is More

Wednesday, October 11: For a Change of Perspective, Stand on a Balcony or Climb a Tree

Thursday, October 12: For Golden Hour Light, Get up Early

Friday, October 13: The Moose Was a One-Time Thing

Saturday, October 14: Memory of Where They Used to Be

Sunday, October 15: Seasonal Chores Are Great Photo Opportunities

Monday, October 16: For Portraits, Look for Open Shade

Tuesday, October 17: The Best Camera Is the One You Have with You

Wednesday, October 18: Think of What is in the Foreground

Thursday, October 19: For Night Photos, Use Your Headlights

Friday October 20: Had My Camera; Saw a Deer

Saturday, October 21: Small Events Are Our Lives

Sunday, October 22: Photographing Snow Is Really Photographing Wind

Monday, October 23: With a Pet, Try for Candid Shots

Tuesday, October 24: Change Is a Funny Thing

Wednesday, October 25: Watch the Clouds and Sky

Thursday, October 26: Experiment with Your Flash

Friday, October 27: You Can Always Make a Note and Wait Till Next Year

Saturday, October 28: Photos Remind Me of Songs

Sunday, October 29: A Frosty Morning Can Be a Gift

Monday, October 30: Allow Your Shadow in Your Photo Sometimes

Tuesday, October 31: Holiday Decorations Make Great Photos

Blogging Photography

31 Days Avard Woolaver

Published July 31, 2017 by avardw

3 insights gained in my early days of photography

3 insights, Avard Woolaver — Newport, Nova Scotia, 1977 © Avard Woolaver

Whenever you begin something new, you tend to learn a lot in a short time. Here are 3 insights I gained in my earliest years of photography:

I learned to expect the unexpected.

Things sometimes happen quickly when we are composing a photo. There can be a lot of activity in the frame (or almost no activity), yet something or somebody new can suddenly become part of it. The photo above is from my second-ever roll of slide film. On the right you can see a man on a bicycle entering the frame. I had no idea he was there when I took the photo, and was so surprised much later to find this ghost-like figure in the photo. Photographer Gary Winogrand once famously said, “I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.”

I learned to pay attention to the quality of light.

Often, the quality or beauty of a photo is dependent upon the light. Take the same photo on an overcast day, and it may look drab and uninteresting. This isn’t to say that overcast days are bad for taking photos–good photos can be taken in a wide variety of lighting situations. (Notable, though, is that Lee Friedlander didn’t even take photos on overcast days.) It’s useful to pay attention to the intrinsic qualities of the light in order to optimize it.

And it takes so much time to figure out how various factors affect the final photo: is the light muted, diffuse, intense? Coming from one direction? Fluorescent, LED, neon? Is the sky pink, greenish, bright blue? Is rain or a storm on the way, or is there any haze in the air? All these elements, and more, mean we have to figure out how to compare the final photo with what was going on around us at the time, and observe what effects the quality of light can have. And find some way to remember the lessons the light has taught us.

I learned the value of the documentary photograph.

Looking at a photo many years later, you may not know exactly why you took it but still be glad you did. Among other things, photography has been a visual diary for me. It helps me remember the places I’ve been and things I’ve seen. Photos can also become valuable documents of things and places that no longer exist.

We never know the full significance of the photos we take. They’re a picture of a moment, and that moment is gone as soon as you’ve taken the picture. That place–or that person, or cloud, or animal–is already changing before you’ve even walked away. We don’t know until much later whether those changes will accrue quickly or gradually. We don’t know if we’ll ever be there again, ever talk with that person again. The relentlessness of change is masked by its ordinariness.

This has been so evident to me in hearing people’s responses to my Toronto Flashback series. Taken in the 1980s, they show a city that many feel no longer exists.