Slow Photography

"Hey, ain't it good to know, you've got a friend"       ~ Carole King " Friends are the siblings God never gave us."  ~ Mencius A merlin flies over the Wakodahatchee Wetlands near Boca Raton, Florida, USA. One warm December day, three of us strolled the boardwalk of the South-Florida wetlands known for its diverse bird life. Dark grey gators, orange iguanas and pure white herons were at home in Wakodahatchee. Their bright hues drew our eyes and lenses. A banded raptor flew overhead and my friend looked it up in his bird book. It was a small, fierce raptor called a Merlin. Purple gallinule photograph Courtesy Glenn Kulbako www.kulbakophoto.com  Iguanas are arboreal, and a five foot long male iguana can climb trees as quickly and smoothly as it walks on the ground, photograph courtesy Glenn Kulbako http://www.kulbakophoto.com. Below the boardwalk, a pair of purple gallinules were feeding. They hacked away at the roots...

We can command a v ie wer to look, and make portraits more appealing by rethinking how we understand the square .  Example One: Bride with M other What is a s qu are? At left, the picture of the bride and her Mother has the proportion of a True square, 12 " by 12". Th ese 12 by 12 dimen s ions are what the camera recorded. For the photo a t right, I did not change the crop, but instead changed the proportions in post processing. This a dded a half inch of height while keeping the same w id th (12" by 12.5").  I call th is framing the Optical square.  From my experience with clients for wedding photography, I know that most brides , not all, prefer the Optical square presentation over the Tru e square. Why is this so ? True squares can appear wide and broad, due to the visual weight of th eir top and sides. Perceptually, our brains respond to verticals more than to horizontals.  L i ke trees, their shape ...

  "A photograph is only as good as the spirit of the person who took it.  Technique is merely a detail, a consideration, nothing more. "  ~Vincent Versace   Our portraits flow from our spirit and our being. Doing slow photography portraits is a  spiritual practice of  self-realization and other-realization. Our relationship with the other becomes the photograph. During the making of a portrait, the other becomes one's whole world. Portraits are other-centric, not selfies. The self realization is within, invisible.  Beginning with an informed empathy, an interesting portrait flows from the relationship between photographer and subject.  Good photographs are created by relationships with spirit , empathy and mutuality.    Thanks for your visit. Jim.  Jimages.com