You’ve taken photos – we all have. Think about your most satisfying images and how they were captured. By ‘how’, I mean how you set about capturing that image, and whether you set out to capture that image at all.
There are typically three ways that we go about the capture of our photographic images.
Serendipity: This is the fortuitous circumstance where things seem to just magically work out for you when you have your camera. Call it chance, fate, providence, coincidence, luck or just good fortune; it was your destiny to get that shot. A rainbow appears but for a few moments, and you are there to capture it. The newborn yawns for the first time and you say ‘hold it!’ as you click your camera shutter. Your 5-year-old catches an 18” rainbow trout and you pull out your camera for that once-in-a-lifetime event. Many of our photos are caught serendipitously, but in fine-art photography, serendipity is rare.
A Stakeout: This involves surveillance, observation and just hanging out at a particular spot waiting for just the right moment to come along. Whether it’s a bird alighting on a pre-focused branch, stars aligning with the moon, your child screaming on the slide just before they reach the bottom, a salmon jumping upstream right into the mouth of an awaiting bear (he, too was on a stakeout), getting a wave frozen in time as it crashed against the rocks, two gondole arriving at precisely the right time, or whatever – it’s the situation where you need things to be just perfectly aligned for the shot to work. One must set up a vigil and wait, wait, wait for it…
Targeting: I will define targeting as planning and then going after the image, doing whatever it takes to get the image that was envisioned. You have a goal in mind, an objective, and an intention to capture a certain final image. All wedding photographers work from a shot list that targets their trademark shots. The portrait photographer targets a certain look as they have you drop your right shoulder, raise your chin and look to the left to capture that ‘un-posed’ portrait. And targeting can involve having several photos on your shot list that will later be combined into that one final image that you were targeting. When we travel to Italy, I often have a shot list, and several final images in mind, as I go about photographing - and I have to check my shot list often.
Combinations: Often, getting the targeted image that you envision requires a stakeout, so a combination is often needed. I’ve taken photos where I envisioned the final image, and then I had to set up a vigil to accomplish the final photograph.
Here are a couple of examples of what I mean by these terms.
The photo below was a result of a Stakeout and Targeting.
I knew exactly what I wanted the finished photo to look like even before leaving home. I targeted the location that I knew was integral to the shot (in this case the Rialto Bridge in Venice). And, I knew that I was going to have to be staked-out for about an hour to accomplish what I had envisioned (I took over 80 photos in an hour’s time of boats on the Grand Canal, all from the same location and perspective). Certain boats from each photo were combined into a image that was selected by National Geographic senior editor Kurt Mutchler for a gallery showing called 'The Art of Travel Photography'.
So, that image was a combination of targeting and then a stakeout.
You be the Judge
For this next image, you decide how the photo below was accomplished. This image, titled ‘Procession’ was part of a four-page portfolio of my Venice images published in ‘Black & White Magazine’ in 2013.
Was this image a result of:
1. A stakeout, where I waited and waited at this location until the two gondole were just perfectly aligned in a ‘Procession’?
2. Serendipity, where I happened upon a location and without having to wait hardly at all, one gondola passed by just as another was coming down the canal to create ‘Procession’? Perfect timing! What a surprise! I love it when that happens! Yes!
3. Targeting, where my goal was to get an image that I envisioned, and which I would call ‘Procession’, and then I went out to make it happen – whatever it took?
I’m now playing the music for the Final-Jeopardy question as you work on your answer - you have it in your head now, right? And I will keep playing it until next week's blog.
Feel free to put your answer in the Comments box below.
Ciao, for now!
Steve
