Slow Photography

GETTING THERE: After sailing to Long Island, Bahamas in February 2018, we rowed our dinghy .4 miles (650 meters) east from the anchorage to a sponge fisherman's area ashore at Gray's Bight settlement, Long Island. First called Yuma by the Arawaks, and later named Fernandina by Columbus, Long Island is 180 miles southeast of Nassau.  Explore the Shrimp Hole and see the shrimp bodies reflected by the undersurface, an experience like floating in space, in this video:                 Play   Video "Exploring the Shrimp Hole, A Salty Paws Adventure" THE SHRIMP HOLE: We'd been previously to Long Island's famous Deans Blue Hole, one of the world's deepest at 663 feet. However, swimming in the shrimp hole was surreal. To get there, you can drive South from Thompson Bay. Since we were anchored, we landed a dinghy and took a short walk across the Queen's Highway and through the grounds of Saint Mary's Spanish c...

Slowness is beauty. There are many ways to slow down our photography: relaxed awareness, mental willpower, a tripod. Bronze Buddha, Nikko Japan. Slow photography is more being, and less doing. To practice it, we start by believing that slowness is beauty.  Awhile ago, living in Kyoto, Japan, I found that the idea "slowness is beauty" was part of Japanese art and culture. The phrase is: "Oso-sa wa utsukushi-sa."  Her is an exercise. For part of my workshop on ideas in photography, I offer a "slowness is beauty" exercise to photography students. We practice Slow Photography with the low ISO setting on our cameras. Bob's Barbershop, Cambridge Maryland. Low and Slow. In summer, or when the light was particularly bright, a low and slow ISO helps us work deliberately. For example, I used ISO 64 when I walked past Bob's Barbershop in Cambridge Maryland. The light was overcast, and I changed ISO to 64 on  my ...

Spring sunrise off the New Jersey coast. 1. THINK FIRST     Check out that Mode dial on your camera. There may be a letter B on it. B means Bulb. It keeps your shutter open for as long as you hold down the shutter release, giving more time to expose the image. Allowing more time is the point. When we choose B on our mode dials, we can also mentally change our operating mode to Brain . B for a longer, more leisurely exposure, and B for Brain.   Our brain has two main systems that fire up our visual areas to make better pictures. The one we often think of is left and right brain, but that division is an outdated, simplistic idea about our amazing visual processing system inside our Brain. Spring in a water fountain. 2. PHOTOGRAPH IN HEART MODE   Thinking, Fast and Slow is a 2011 book by Nobel Memorial Prize winner in Economics Daniel Kahneman. In his book, Kahneman shows us two types of thinking we can use for our pho...

"Handy Color" Bahamas, Ruins of the lighthouse out building on Great Stirrup Cay. (C) Jim Austin Jimages, 2013.   Clarity In photography, clarity is a vital element. Clear subject matter outlasts stylistic trends. Today, to be given a second glance in the flood of millions uploaded daily, a photograph would do we ll to have contrast and focus . This clarity requires good focusing and enough definition of the s ubject that viewers can see and recall it. With the passing of decades, clearly su bject matter defines memorable photographs. Rarely do we remember images with subject matter we can not decipher. Chance Favors Only The Prepared Mind It began with a bet, that a galloping horse would not have all 4 hooves off the ground. What we remember, 150 years later, is a classic photo of a horse with all four hooves in the air. We may hav e forgotten Edward Muybridge, whose many hours of preparation and innovative lenses let his camera catch a split secon...