Embracing Limitations
And the value this can add to our photography
Hello, I’m Gill and I write a photography blog inspired by the landscapes of Suffolk and beyond. Please subscribe to read more of my writing and visit my website to view my images.
This week my blog post has been inspired by my lack of time.
I am sure we all have those weeks where we have so much to do that we don’t know which way to turn or which job to start first. Well this has been my experience this week. Consequently I haven’t had much time for photography or blog writing.
I would love to say that I am one of those organised people who have a month’s worth of posts already scheduled but unfortunately I am not - I always write my posts a few days before they go out, usually because I like to react to what the week throws at me.
So today, with lots of time constraints, I thought I would write about embracing limitations in our photography. Whether that is time, kit, location or just perceived ability, we all have constraints to contend with as we progress along our creative journey. Although these may sound like a bad thing I actually think limitations can be useful and can often help rather than hinder our photography.
In a bid to prove this I decided to focus on my garden for this weeks photography and in particular a small patch of fennel which is growing in the corner of my vegetable patch. Although it seeds itself everywhere and is actually a bit of a pain, I love the delicate whispy leaves, the pale yellow lacy flowers that are so reminiscent of cow parsley and the gorgeous hues of the aqua and green stems. Focusing my attention on this plant for even a few minutes is enough to tell me that there is a world of possibility where photography is concerned.
Picking up my camera and fixing a 105 macro lens to the front I began thinking about how I could portray this plant in different ways. My limitations for this challenge were my location (a small corner of my garden), a single subject (the fennel) my lens (a 105mm macro) and my time (I had an hour to shoot the images and a day to process them and write a blog post). All other aspects of this challenge were open to experimentation. And by this I mean:
Shutter speed
Aperture
Light and shade
Colour or black and white
Straight shots or ICM and multiple exposure.
Already my limitations were not feeling quite so limited.
I began by using the sunlight which was still quite low in the sky and was creating some lovely hues and bokeh on the flower heads at the top of the plant.
Next I tried some ICM on the stems as I thought this would give me some lovely colour combinations. I have been inspired by Mark Cornick’s project String Theory and had this in mind when I was trying the ICM shots.
Next I focused on the foliage and wondered if I could create an impression of what it might feel like to be inside the plant looking out.
To tell the best story I decided to look for shots that focused on all parts of the plant; the stem, the foliage, the flowers and the seed heads and I tried to use some unique angles by shooting up and down as well as horizontally.
After an hour of photography I downloaded my images to the computer and had a look to see if there was anything that was remotely interesting to work with.
It became obvious that there were some shots that were very light in nature and some that were much darker and I decided that this contrast would be a good starting point in identifying images that might work well together.
My idea was to produce a small body of work that depicted my interpretation of fennel.
Some of my shots worked well in colour and some I felt worked better in black and white so in the end I decide to put together two collections - one for mono and one for colour and show these side by side. I might eventually produce a handmade chapbook using these images but due to my limited time this week that will be for another occasion. However I have laid out my initial thoughts on image selection, pairing and flow and you can see these below. If I was to make a chapbook it would need a few more images and fortunately I still have some unprocessed raw files that might be worth looking at.
The first two colour images of the stem were created using ICM, the foliage shots were made by getting inside the plant and using a shallow depth of field and the shots of the flowers were over exposed using the sunlight on a faded wooden fence as the background. For the last image in this series I used a multiple exposure created in Photoshop of the fence textures and the flowers.
I hadn’t initially thought about black and white images as I loved the natural colours of the plant but playing around in Lightroom I realised that some of the shots worked so much better when the colour was removed. I think as a set the black and white images actually work better for me.
The first two of these shots are ICM images which I think in black and white have a very sketch book feel to them. The other images are just straight shots using shadows and highlights to create the dark and white backgrounds.
So what have I learnt from my limited and very rushed project?
Despite only having an hour to make some photos I was pleasantly surprised at the diversity of the images I created.
I enjoyed using ICM and multiple exposure techniques which I am sure I would get better at if I used them more frequently.
I loved spending time observing the fennel and watching all the snails and tiny invertebrates that call it home.
I realised that there is so much potential in small subjects if only we spend time looking for it. We can make photos anywhere - even at the bottom of the garden and we don’t need to travel to far flung places to create something of value.
My shots are not the best shots I have ever produced, but I like them as a body of work (all be it rushed) and one which shows my observations of one plant in my garden over a period of an hour. I think they portray feeling rather than technique (see last weeks post) and I hope they give a little indication of what is possible if we embrace limitations and focus on something that might at first seem a little dull.
Surprisingly I have also learnt that black and white photography is something I should do more often.
This post might seem a little frivolous in nature but there is a serious side to it in that experimenting with projects like this will always be useful going forwards. It will generate ideas, spark creativity, hone observational and storytelling techniques and will ultimately make us all better photographers. It is also something fun to do when time or travel limits other possibilities.
Finally I will leave you with a quote by Paul Sanders which seems appropriate for this project.
Everyday we should see the world with fresh eyes as a beginner and be inspired by what we see.
If you have been inspired by this one hour project or have undertaken your own project with limitations it would be lovely to hear about your experience so please leave a comment below.
Thank you very much for reading and until next week enjoy your photography.
Gill
Beautiful photos, I really like the mono one with the snail.
100% agree with sometimes just go outside (garden or open space) and just "look"!! I have been making myself use my 100mm macro MUCH more since reading your blogs and and find endless possibilities with looking up close! Thanks for inspiring us all!