[MUSIC] Welcome back, we'll get to the business of working a scene, and you'll find out exactly what that means and hopefully have some fun with it and make it part of your every day life. So let's get going. What does this thing mean, working a scene? Is it something theatrical, are you going to be in a movie? What's this all about? Well, working a scene is a concept that's very familiar to photographers who've been at it for awhile, but it's something that can only begin once you find a scene to work. What working a scene is, is basically every day engaging in the act of creative problem solving, because you are interested in the act of creative problem solving, and you are also interested in learning more about your camera. And making the use of that of that camera something that's very fluid and natural for you. Of course, it helps to have a camera with you everyday. And, of course, if you've got a cell phone, a smart phone, and maybe that's your primary camera, you're good to go. If not, one of these little devices thrown in your bag, over your shoulder, around your neck, carry it with you everywhere you go. You'll be ready for action. I'm going to start off with as short and simple example of what this working a scene thing means. I came upon this scene when I was waiting for my nephew, who was working in a surf board shop down in Florida, here in the United States. And the first thing that attracted me was the color. I saw this yellow in the surfboard, little bit of yellow in the scene in behind it in the poster, and without thinking too much about the rest of what was there, I just naturally raised my camera to my eye and [SOUND] like this, made a vertical composition. That was my first picture. Having the benefit of growing up in the world of film photography one of the things I try to resist when I'm consciously engaging in this act of working a scene is taking the picture, and then instantly doing this. Looking down, hitting the rewind knob, the review button, the preview button, whatever you want to call it, and examining the first picture that I shot. If you have to, just cover the screen with your hand, don't look at it or put a piece of tape over it or maybe take a piece of cardboard or something and and fix it on there, but if you're going to be working a scene, try not to constantly look at the pictures that you're making and just get into this fluid action of making a photograph. Whatever works best for you, do it. In my second picture, I switched to a horizontal framing. And I found myself motivated to work with that yellow content a little bit more. I don't think it's a very satisfactory picture, not a really good composition. There's a lot of interesting elements on the left-hand side, but not so much on the right. It feels like it's very heavily weighted on the left. And I really don't like it very much. But it was a way to work into the idea of what might be there. This is sort of like a sculptor being presented with a block of marble and just chipping away until all the sudden the sculpture that was hidden inside is just there. In my next picture, I tried to shift my vantage point and moved around a little bit. And I found myself on the left-hand side and lo and behold, there was a really weird, strange little logo on the left side of the board. I noticed that, and I said, boy, that's kind of interesting, and it has the same kind of shape, and line, and energy as the boy that's on the surfboard that I didn't even notice in the first picture. Behind the head on the poster in the background. I also found when I was from this vantage point, moving over to the left, all of a sudden now, the sun and my shadow were playing around together and creating this shadow figure on the board. And I thought, wow here's some symbols for people, here's me as a symbol in my shadow and maybe I can work with this. I was a little bit satisfied with that previous picture, but there was something about it I didn't like, and if you look at this photograph, you see the little black mark in the center? Well in the previous shot my shadow was overlapping that, and it just bothered the heck out of me, so I moved a little bit to the side, just a little bit more to the left. And then the nature of my shadow, those lines that I was creating, the lines that were on the board, the images of the people that were in the poster in the background, the image of the people in me, those all were kind of working together. Another thing happened, the yellow on the left hand-side is really a prominent color now. And its inter-playing with the yellow that's in the poster board, especially on the forehead of the man, who appears to be peeking over the the surfboard. And there's something called an implied line, an invisible connection between the lower left and the upper right now. That yellow color, the patterns in the lower left, the patterns in the upper right, they're all working together pretty well. And I'm pretty satisfied with the picture. So I've worked the scene. Okay, working a scene is practice. It's practice for your eye, it's practice for your technique with the camera, it's practice for you understanding the different capabilities of the camera. Does the photograph I just made there at the serve shot fit into a meaningful long term series that I've created and I'm going to show on an exhibit in a gallery or in a museum, or maybe sell to some collectors or institutions for their archives? Probably not, although maybe I should put some of them together, we’ll see, but right now it’s really more a motivation for me to go out and do something creative and test myself. It does fit the practice that many of us photographers have of everyday practicing just like if you are a music student, if you play the piano, or you play the drums or some other instrument, you're going to practice everyday, right? And photographers should too. We should fine tune our skills in exposure, framing, focus controls, all those various and things that makes us photographers. Let's take a look at one more. This is a little bit longer series of working a scene. But I think you'll see where I ended up and where I started and maybe how you might find something in your neighborhood that will work for you too. This series started out as I was walking back to my car after visiting a friend who lives on a nearby lake. I saw the sunlight creating the most beautiful colors. Really nice beautiful warm colors in this tree and the sky above was a beautiful cool blue, so now you know about what motivates me. Just as in the surf shop picture and in this picture the first thing that usually attracts me is color. What's the first thing that attracts you? Is it color? Is it pattern? Is it people? Dogs? Who knows? But think about that. What is it that attracts you, that gets you started, saying, gee I gotta pick my camera up? What's going on here? So I made that first shot, and then I said, let me get a little closer here. Let me move in and walk up to this tree. I just wanted to get near it anyway, it was just so beautiful. And I found that there was a potential for a balance between abstraction and reality, when I raised my camera and looked at a different vantage point to frame something else in. And just looking at the top of the tree and seeing that color now isolated from everything else, except for that blue background. I thought it was kind of an interesting picture, but it wasn't quite what I wanted. So, I said, let me see what I can do about maybe changing things up a little bit here. Push that abstraction element. So, I skewed my vantage point. In other words, instead of holding the camera straight up, I'm tilting it a little bit like this. Maybe, getting down and moving around and seeing what's happening in my frame. In the next few pictures, I turn my attention to the lake itself. Just to my left hand side actually. And I was really close by the lake, I was looking up at the tree and I looked down to the left and I noticed a pattern of branches that was very similar to the patterns that I was working with in the sense that they were abstract, that they were linear, that they were warm colored. And so I played with that for a few photographs. Let's take a look at those. Maybe you noticed in those couple of photographs that I was working with the branches of foliage emerging from the tree, from the lake excuse me. There was this little white fragment at the bottom of the frame that kept intruding itself in there and it was the bottom of the boat you see in this picture. And I figured, well, if the boat wants to be in the picture, I'll let it and so I stepped back a little bit. You can see the foliage there behind the boat, that I was working with originally. And low and behold, there wasn't just a boat there, but there was something that honestly I had not even noticed. Don't ask me how. I guess I was so interested in the tree, but I hadn't even noticed this steel image of a bird. Sitting right there by the boat, wow. So I started to work with that. And in working with this bird, I said, I don't need the boat. Let's go with something else here, and tried to place that bird element in different positions, and see what kind of meaning I could have arise from that. Using different vantage points. Soon I got back to the element that interrupted my work in the first place, and that was the golden glow of that light itself. Now, I'm looking actually just 180 degrees opposite from the direction I was looking at the tree. Remember, the tree was illuminated by that beautiful sunset light. And now I'm looking back towards the sunset itself. And bingo, there's the bird, there's the sunset, there's the lake, there is a little fragment of a boat, this is standing to fall into place in a different way here. So I started to move in closer to that bird, and closer and closer, and finding a few different angles, changing that exposure just slightly. And looking at how the light was now interacting with this fragment of the bird in this, I imagine it's a steel image, little sculpture of the bird. And as I turned my camera I found the sunlight glinting off the bird in a number of different ways. Finally I swung my camera around almost completely so that the sun itself is just behind that bird fragment, and it made quite a dramatic silhouette of the figure. But I ended up going back to an original scene where I was actually more having the, I was looking, perhaps I would okay, say this is more Southwest. And so the sun is glinting off the bird, I'm not looking directly into the sun, but I think this composition combination of light is really what I was interested in. And what I ended up with and what I never expected when I started working the scene, just looking at that tree so, where should this lead you? Well, one of the things that I hear quite often from my students is, my gosh, Professor Glendenny, I'm going away this weekend. I'm so happy, I'm going to get off campus. I'll finally have something and someplace that's interesting to photograph. And, well, I challenge them into go back into their own backyard, whether it's in the dormitory or the house they might live in off campus, and see that all around them in their own backyard, just like in your own backyard, there are absolutely amazing things to photograph. Ways to test your eye, to test your sense of composition, test your camera abilities to make pictures that are really interesting and that might actually get you started on a new project. So get in your own backyard, work a scene, and work your own creativity. [MUSIC]
