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I am Kenn Bisio, owner of blueheART Studios in Evergreen, Colorado. My studio is the result of more than 40 years as a working photojournalist and my website is the result of fumbling with web–making applications for the past couple of years. I have settled with the web application,WordPress. It’s actually a blogging application you can use to design a website. It’s free and simple to use. Check out WordPress.
As a young boy, my family and I would travel from the San Francisco Bay Area to Merced, California to visit my Aunt Inez and Uncle Francis. Uncle Francis was a salesman for Sears and my aunt worked for Montgomery Ward. Every year, my uncle would take my aunt to the most exotic places in the world. To physically describe Uncle Francis – just put him in plaid and you had Elmer Fudd. Not sort of. Exactly.
Uncle was a shutterbug. Along with my aunt he would travel the world with his post – war Argus 35mm camera loaded with Kodak Kodachrome film and return with the most beautiful color slides of peoples and their countries. I couldn’t wait for my aunt and uncle to return from one of their trips because we’d hop in the 1952 Chevy Woodywagon and head east to Merced for fun, food and photos.
In the summer, Uncle would set up his Argus projector and silver screen on the patio in their massive backyard under the black walnut tree. After supper we would file out, plop in lawn chairs and settle in for an hour – long, narrated slideshow. That was 55 years ago but just recently I realized it was the slideshows that decided my life’s path as a visual communicator.
At 17 I bought my first camera. A 35mm Minolta SRT – 101. I was working at the Pacifica Tribune as a sports reporter while a student at Terra Nova high school where I excelled at track and recess. I was given rudimentary darkroom instructions by Lloyd Easterby, the Tribune’s darkroom tech and barnstorming pilot of a biwing plane. I went for a few rides with Lloyd in his plane until I realized he flew mostly to rid himself of hangovers.
I just couldn’t get enough of photography learning. I read every photo magazine published during the late 60s. While paging through one of these magazines I came across an ad for a photography workshop in Yosemite by some guy named Ansel Adams. I attended my firstAnsel Adams Photography Workshop in Yosemite with Adams in 1968. From that workshop, I had lifelong friendships with Adams, Morley Baer and Ruth Bernhard.
After more than 40 years as a photojournalist I offer my own photography workshops this summer in Ireland and Italy. Both are two – weeks long. The Ireland workshop is for film photographers and the Italy Workshop is for film and digital photographers. Check out my website and see if you’d like to begin a life as a visual communicator who make images that move the heart and soul.
More coming soon…
PREVISUALIZATION:
A photograph must be seen before it’s made.
Sounds funny, doesn’t it? A photograph must be seen before it’s made. How can a photograph be seen before it’s made? That’s impossible, right? I take my camera and take an exposure. Then I view the exposure on the LCD screen on the camera. But the image on the LCD screen isn’t what I had in mind when I took the exposure. The image on the LCD screen is what was in front of the camera at the time I took the picture, but it lacks punch. It lacks emotion. It lack the qualities that lures the eye to the single frame. What have I done wrong? Why don’t my photographs look like the ones published in National Geographic?
These are issues I address during my workshops. You will learn camera and image management. Once you learn the machine it will be easier for you to see photographs beforeyou make the exposure.
MAKE OR TAKE:
Let’s begin by training ourselves to use the word “make” rather than “take” when talking about exposures. “I made an exposure of a waterfall in Yosemite Valley.” You didn’t “take an exposure of a waterfall in Yosemite Valley.” Take feels like thievery while make leans toward creation.
PREVISUALIZATION:
Ansel spoke of previsualization 50 years ago. Some contemporary photography experts now call Adams’ theory visualization. I like previsualization. Previsualization as I understand it means you see in your mind’s eye the image within the frame before the interruption of the time/space continuum (make an exposure/click the shutter). How many times have you released the shutter only to experience disappointment with the resulting exposure? I still experience a error or two when making exposures. The difference between me and the average camera owner is I will work backwards from the exposure and determine where I went wrong. Usually it’s a mechanical process I neglected to give my utmost attention.
Previsualization is hermetically sealed to three areas of the photographic process (notice I did not state the creative process):
1. The discipline of the frame.
2. Lens selection.
3. Lens position.
THE DISCIPLINE OF THE FRAME:
Herewith is my lecture on composition. Work from the edges in and fill the frame. Any questions? Good. Work from the edges in, not the center out. If you do this, your edges will be clean and pure. You will not have anything in your frame other than what needs to be in the frame. Yes – I can lecture on rules of thirds, leading lines, framing, etc. But it all boils down to – work from the edges in and fill the frame.
LENS SELECTION:
If you use zoom lenses, sell them and buy fixed focal length lenses. Fixed focal length lenses are now called “prime” lenses. I call them fixed focal length lenses because – well – they’re of a fixed focal length.
If you use zoom lenses, sell them and buy fixed focal length lenses because fixed focal length lenses are sharper. Don’t believe me. Use an 80-200 zoom at f/2.8 and a 200 f/2.8 on the same subject. Tripod the camera to effectively eliminate camera movement and make identical exposures of the same subject – boards on the side of a house, bare tree branches against a blue sky. Fixed focal length lenses are sharper. You know the cheapest zoom lens you already own? Your feet. Try moving them.
If you use zoom lenses, sell them and buy fixed focal length lenses because you will be forced to move your feet. Remember our composition lecture – work from the edges in and fill the frame? Well, move your feet. Standing 20 feet from your subject with an 18 – 200 mm zoom and zooming to 91 mm is not the same as walking closer to your subject and framing up with the 18mm. Different is not the same and the same is not different. An 18mm lens is not the same as a 91mm lens. And besides that – go to your local camera store and buy a 91mm lens. They don’t exist. And for good reasons. Who would buy a 91mm lens? No one, that’s who. So – if a 91mm lens doesn’t exist, why use 91mm within the 18 – 200mm lens? Because zoom lens photographers are lazy. They’d rather zoom than move their feet.
If you’re not going to sell your zoom lenses and buy fixed focal length lenses then only use “real” focal lengths within your zoom lens. Meaning – use 18mm, 24mm, 35mm, 80mm, 105mm, 135mm and 200mm. If you do this you will start to see your subject(s) in focal lengths. This means you will know immediately where to place your feet in relationship to your subject. Knowing where to place your feet is the first step (no pun intended, but if it was intended, it’d be a good one) toward the discipline of the frame. And the discipline of the frame is working from the edges in and filling the frame. If you continue to zoom your lenses and refuse to move your feet, you will never see in focal length and you will always be frustrated with the exposures you make. Also – you will not discover the focal lengths where you can really capture critical moments. By using “prime” focal lengths in your zoom lens you will know where to place your feet and have command over the discipline of the frame.
LENS POSITION:
You are now using the “prime” focal lengths in your zoom lens. You are moving your feet, working from the edges in and filling the frame. Doing these two things has brought you to lens position. Lens position is the most critical of all the photographic process you must master. Without lens position you have merely taken a snapshot, not a previsualized captured critical moment that illuminates the human condition.
COMING NEXT: Use light, Don’t fight light.