The “Thought Process” In Creating Images

The “Thought Process” In Creating Images

By William Lulow

Photography is one of those endeavors that, these days, anyone with an automatic camera or an iPhone can do. It has become a “point-and-shoot” task, almost completely taken over by the AUTO selection on the camera dial. Kodak used to advertise “You press the button, we do the rest.” What could be easier?

Well, I have been saying for a long time now (in well over 1000 blog articles), that that kind of thinking may be okay for the average snapshot, but not if you are striving to obtain better quality or more interesting images. You have to put some real thought into it if you want some real results that stand out from just merely snaps.

Here’s an example of what I mean: I wanted to photograph a band of musicians, as I often do. I had an idea that I wanted to do a take-off on the famous album cover the Beatles did on Abbey Road, of the group in a crosswalk. I had the whole thing set up in my mind, but as usually happens, the “real life” situation was a bit different.

Those who follow this blog, know that I’m always interested in creating great lighting setups as a way to highlight my subjects. So, in this case, when I got to the location I had to improvise a bit by first “borrowing” an assistant Ms. Alex Evans who was with the band members. She helped me by standing with the extra light as well as taking some photographs of the setup with her iPhone.

Here was the setup:

Here you can see the group with me shooting them in the middle of the crosswalk with the extra light over to one side and slightly behind them. Obviously, we had to stop a bit of traffic in order to get the shot, but here it is:

You can easily see the effect of the extra light as well as the fill-in light which was attached to the camera.

Since this was shot in Beacon, New York, the mountain with the radio antennas on it, a prominent landmark, helped to make the location even more evident.

This image was very close to what I imagined, as it should be. The “thought process” should be an integral part of the final product of any photo shoot. After all, it is then clear what we intended the image to look like.