(Continued from previous post.  Don’t read this post first.  Read the previous post first and then read this one next.)

I turn around 180 degrees and this is what I see.  This is Ida from Winnipeg.  Ida is on a motorcycle.  Ida and her band are 3 minutes away from performing on the stage … but right now Ida wants pictures. 

Three minutes pass and the stage door opens and a hurried “we have to go on stage now” proclamation is made.

The shoot is done.  I head back to the truck.

None of what happened tonight would have materialized had I not had the assignment.  I easily could have stayed home.  There would have been no shots.  But it was “Don’t go out with preconceived notions …” that actually gave the right-side of my brain the permission to actually start shooting.

I did not want to go out to shoot tonight.  I did not.  But I drove up to Whyte Avenue anyways.  I drove around aimlessly.  There was a Turkish festival near the pagoda.  They had the pagoda turned into a hookah den.  I thought that was imaginative.  There were motorbikers at Tim Horton’s, doing what motorbikers do.  But, none of this was fueling my creative drive.

I had it in my mind that I was going to capture the essence of this “Midnight Summer Special Light”.  That was the assignment.  I thought perhaps a nice street shot with the 10 o’clock light might work.  Or maybe a nature shot bathed in golden backlight. 

But no.  Nothing that I was seeing was inspiring me, and my couch was calling me, like a siren to the rocks.  I don’t need to be out here with a camera right now.

So I drove home.  At the last possible minute I thought to myself “No.  I’m going to go and shoot.  I have to get this assignment done — tonight.”  I turned around and went back towards Whyte again.

It was something that Jay Maisel says.  It basically boils down to “Don’t go out shooting with preconceived notions about what you’re going to shoot.”  My problem was I had many notions, and not all of them good.  I was preventing myself from capturing anything.

So I parked at the first parking spot I found and I got out.  I shot a railway marker.  I shot a red door.  I shot a fire tower.  (The same tower incidentally that I shot in the winter.  Only in the winter I shot it at 4:00p to get the right light.  Tonight I shot it at 9:30p and got even better light.)  I shot a blue door.  I considered that this might be the first week that I’m skunked.  For a moment I considered giving up photography altogether. 

Then I looked down the alley, and everything fell into place. It was the light.  It was the freedom that “Don’t go out shooting with preconceived notions” gives you.  It was that I was shutting down my left-brain and giving in to my sub-conscious all-knowing right-brain.  My subject had fallen into my lap. 

These captures are the results of that effort.  They may look heavily manipulated, but they are not.  They haven’t even made it in to Photoshop.

At this point I am thrilled.  I am happy.  Everyting was good and then I did what all good photographers do … I quite literally turned my camera around 180 degrees.

(Continued in next post.)

I had the good fortune to attend a Jay Maisel seminar last year.  One of the burrs that attached itself to my brain was that if you want to improve your photography you’ve got to walk slower.  Also, that you have to free your mind and go out shooting without preconceived notions.  You have to instead react to what you see.

It was sort of an interesting experience for me today in that all of those Maisel-isms came into play.  First, my son wanted to go on the LRT ride today.  Fine enough.  Do I take my camera or not.  I’m not really in the mood for it but of course Maisel would say “take your camera with you everywhere you go”.  So I took my camera.

My son is 4 years old.  I like to hold his hand while we’re walking and listen as he reacts to everything he sees about him.  So, it really slowed down my walking speed. 

We rounded a corner down in the corridors and “bam” this hit me in the side of the head like a brick.  My initial reaction was excitement.  I could feel this photograph.  The light was exceptional, the composition revealed itself right in front of me.

An interesting application of a lesson from Jay Maisel.

This week’s subject was Nature.  I wasn’t sure what sort of angle to play on Nature.  I had thought about “Human Nature” or maybe “Nature vs. Man”, but in the end I let the rain decide.