Finding the Subject

Blogging is still not second nature to me, so there are going to be some periods of little activity on this site; sorry. (I'm not the kind of guy who Tweets, either, so you'll likely never see me on Twitter posting things like, "I just made toast! Awesome!")


We just got back from a trip to Orlando, mostly a vacation to visit with some friends and see the old stomping grounds where we used to live while I was stationed there for Navy training back in 1997, but I brought all my cameras with me just in case. We were thwarted in our attempt to photograph the shuttle launch at Kennedy Space Center, as delay mounted upon delay due to mechanical issues. As disappointed as we were to have missed one of the last few chances to see a space shuttle launch, I'm okay with the idea that they were trying to do it safely. A stop in nearby Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge also failed to yield a really wide abundance of wildlife like I would have liked.


This brings me to the subject of... subject. Every photographer has run into a situation when you arrive at a location to shoot something specific, and either your subject simply isn't there (such as trying to shoot a live animal migration or you arrive a little early for a wildflower bloom) or the conditions aren't right (maybe you were hoping for a nice sunrise/sunset, but the day you got there, the day was overcast or pouring rain, or the event you came to document got cancelled due to unforseen circumstances). I've come to realize over time that one of the hallmarks of a good photographer is flexibility. Just because the subject you thought you were there to shoot isn't present or the conditions aren't ideal, that doesn't mean you day is entirely ruined. Granted, there will be times when great photography just isn't going to happen (your desert landscape is obscured by a blinding sandstorm for the duration of your visit, for instance), but you need to look at your surroundings from different angles and with an open mind. Okay, so the herd of reindeer you wanted to photograph didn't get your memo to be in this particular clearing at this particular moment; that doesn't mean that meaningful, powerful images aren't there. Great photography doesn't just happen; it takes work, planning and a creative eye, and the patience to separate all the distractions from the potentially great image before you.


So now it becomes a game, and photographers become really good at finding hidden images. Ask yourself: Where's the shot? If the subject you inteded to shoot just isn't available, what else looks interesting enough to shoot? Maybe you've noticed a mountain that is lit just perfectly or an interesting cloud formation you want to shoot, but a telephone pole or a tree blocks part of your view. Will moving to a different location give you a better angle? Will using a telephoto lens to zoom in on a smaller feature of the overall scene before you make a more interesting composition? Maybe the entire meadow isn't ablaze with wildflowers, but perhaps you can still get some close-up or macro shots of a single bloom, or possibly even some fallen petals might be interesting to shoot. The parade got cancelled because half of the participants ate at Greasy Gert's Gas-and-Go the night before and got food poisoning, so maybe there are architectural features along the parade route you could shoot instead, or maybe even a poignant editorial photo opportunity may be found with the unfortunate snack food vendor who set up at one end of the parade route and now has no customers. I'm being silly on purpose here, because there's no way to predict what kinds of shots will present themselves to you in the moment, or what may appeal to your artistic sensibilities at that point in time, so any suggestion I make here is purely conjecture. What matters is that you roll with the circumstances of your photo shoot and remain open to shots you wouldn't have planned ahead of time but which you come across either in the course of photographing your primary subject or because you can't get the shot you had intended.


So take my visit to Kennedy Space Center for example. No shuttle launch, and with the service gantry in the way, not even a really interesting shot of the shuttle on the launch pad. And if you wander around the site, you'll see a lot of touristy stuff, and you might be inclined to believe there isn't anything a professional photographer would be interested in shooting, but maybe you can still get a shot of something no one's photographed before, or at least not in the way you've done it.


Everybody who visits Kennedy Space Center sees the Saturn V rocket on display that took the Apollo missions to the moon, and many people snap a full-length photo of it (or as close to a full-length photo as they can get, considering how big the thing is). By itself, a photo of a rocket is a photo of a rocket, but maybe there is a more detailed shot available. Take it as a personal challenge to find patterns or interesting features on the rocket that aren't so obvious without looking for them.

Here's a shot inside one of the rocket engines. An interesting view, but it doesn't really challenge the viewer, and compositionally it's not all that exciting. Perhaps closer up?

A shot like this challenges the viewer more, making them stop to ask more questions, like "What is that?" It might ultimately not be their cup of tea, but at least it forces them to consider your photo for longer than a couple of seconds, if only to try to figure out what they're looking at.

Or perhaps the outside of the engine is more interesting to you. These heat transfer vanes create an interesting repeating pattern, and again challenge the viewer to identify what they're looking at. Are any of these great shots? No, but someone may still be interested in seeing it, and they'll only get that chance if you get the shot and show it to them. So even though you might have failed to get the shot of the shuttle launch, you can still find things worth photographing if you take the time to look and stay with a potential subject until all its angles are explored.