18

Feb

Minimal Advice: Coffee – stress – Photos

*3  By: Andrey Starostin

You’re only as big as your dreams –

 – I drink at least one cup of coffee every day.  Lately my coffee has been espresso ranging from Arcedium beans to Metropolis Red Line, but the drink has been a cortado.  Every so often I relapse to my original “craft” (snooty, snobby, lets call it connoisseur) coffee days of pour over coffee.  I got into good, and it truly is better, coffee when I was introduced to pour over coffee by David.  I usually relapse at David’s house, where I am consistently surprised at the level of nuance he can extract from fresh beans.

David is that individual on the left there.  For 9 or so years now, David has been my best friend.  Every time I have an existential moment and reconsider my path in life, David tells me the same thing, “Do what you know, what you Love.”

Humans naturally avoid stressful situations.  For some reason, I’ve been dealing with this first hand lately.  Maybe it has something to do with me still being in my first year as a college graduate.  I’m here to share with you what I’ve slowly come to realize.

David has to be my most photographed model; cat may be the next closest contender.  This week I brought my camera gear to his house.  I knew we were having coffee.  I knew he would be wearing some nice clothes.  The set up was minimal.

  I brought a light stand with a hot shoe flash and a 40 something inch umbrella.  My camera of choice was the Fuji x100s and I slave synced the flash with a Wein infrared trigger.  If you look at the kit, it’s pretty minimal.  The entirety of it does not cost that much.  But man oh man is it a problem solver this kit.  Set up before the water was boiled, I was ready to shoot.  ISO set to 200, f2.8 on the 23mm fuji lens, and shutter speed at 250th.

The beans were single origin Costa Rica by Intelligentsia in Chicago.  They were scale weighed, freshly ground by motor driven temperature controlled conical burrs, and bloomed in precisely heated filtered water.  We take our coffee seriously and it shows.  It shows in our faces as we brew and further more when we taste.  The procedure is extrapolated and the results are consistent.

Take a look at these photos we came up with.  Then keep reading.

 

Back to this realization I was talking about.  This advice David keeps giving me.  “Do what you Love.”  I’m in this unfortunate situation where I finished the plan that was laid out for me.  I’m talking about that “go to school, get a degree” mentality our parents drill into our heads.  Well I’m done.  I got a degree.  Now what?  I don’t have a “to do list” anymore.  I came to the realization that I have to make my own to do list.  I have to plan something.

You have to figure out what is worth your time.  I feel that if it makes you happy, it is worth doing, it is worth giving money to, it is worth spending time with.  For me that is photography, that is writing, drinking coffee, time with my girlfriend, riding my bike, cooking, skateboarding.

At this point I have lined up my interests and passions and had to take the time and figure out what I can make a career out of.  I need something that I can make a living doing but not hating my life dreaming about a vacation.  When it comes down to it I love vacations, but they are stressful.  Planning, traveling, hotels, trying to find a bargain…it all sounds like my blood pressure rising.  I need something I do every day, a livelihood that I can dedicate my time to, something I can learn from and continue enjoying.

That is photography and writing.  I love cooking but I couldn’t handle being a commercial level cook.  I love coffee but the only way a barista life suits me is if I owned my own coffee shop.  I would love a coffee shop, but business loans and entrepreneurial ventures don’t line up with my life right now.  So that leaves me with photography and writing.  I’ll keep reading and writing, but what really gives me joy, and I mean giddy take you back to your childhood joy is photography.  I’ll keep from complicating my other passions and focus my attention on photography.  I love every aspect of the photography industry. I am a people person.  I am technologically sound.  I have a creative, business centered mind.  Photography is my game for sure.

My free time therefore is spent in the world of photography.  If I have a chance, I’m going to take a photo of you.  I love it.  I’ll do my best to make sure you love it.

I couldn’t visit David and have a cup of coffee without turning it into an impromptu photo session.

I think everyone needs to figure out what it is they can do every day for the rest of their lives and find a way to surround themselves with said thing.  It is worth it even if it doesn’t amount of a livelihood.  It’s time spent having fun.  I’m willing to be though, if you spend all your time doing something you’re passionate about, you’ll find a way to make a living doing it.

If you would like to leave a comment, know more about something, have some kind of question for me please do so.

Along with following this blog, you can:

Observe my stream of consciousness style life on Instagram.

Regard my humble love for portrait photography in My Portfolio.

Send me an email Have a conversation with a real human being at Andrey@Starostinphoto.com

  **** Thank you so much for reading my blog. ****

9 years ago Short URL Comments

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20

Sep

The Value of Your Photograph

*2  By: Andrey Starostin

You can put a price on anything worth buying.

– What else is new? Feel that twitch in your back pocket? That’s the holidays coming.  The fanboys haven’t entered their sixteen digit plastic money codes this quickly since … the last time an iPhone came out.  Go figure.

Leica just released their latest range of cameras including everything from a film rangefinder clinging to the return of the film era everyone wishes would officially happen to an “entry level” medium format body system.

And who could ignore the latest in apple innovation.  Who am I kidding, you better believe I had mine preordered a week in advance.  Call me a fanboy, but I know what I like.  I digress.

My point is that photography has been made available to everyone and their grandmothers.  The photography market is tailored to literally every type of audience.  Whether you carry a Leica strapped to yourself with a padlock or occasionally pull out your phone to shamelessly publish how bespoke your cat’s lifestyle is, you can photograph anywhere at any time.

However, at what point can you call your photo publish-worthy? Does it offer a mid-day laugh?  Would someone pay for it? How about taking a photo that changes someone’s life.  Let your photograph profit someone other than yourself.  Grab your polaroid camera hand a senior citizen one of the last photos of themselves they will ever gaze upon.  Go to your local animal shelter and take some photos of the animals up for adoption out of the goodness of your heart.  My girlfriend dragged me to the Champaign County Human Center last year and every cat and dog we photographed was adopted within the next couple weeks.  Out of my love for the furry once again, I digress.

   The Snapshot

    Everyone needs to take at least one of these daily.  The snapshot is the byproduct of a compulsive photographic mind.  It is the twitch that says, “hold on, I need to…”  It keeps things interesting.  There is no excuse to not document your life, but please leave these photos in your Facebook albums.  These are not for the unwarranted public eye.

The Photograph

    This is what got we in the business into the business.  This is what gets your heart racing as your frame lines up and that shutter fires, locking a perfect moment into your control.  Let the world see these.  Don’t watermark them and make us look at words.  Let the work of art shine for what it is.  Believe me, if someone wants to steal the photo, no watermark will prevail against photoshop.

   Take more photos people; they last longer than your memory.  As for the value of your photo, eventually snapshots turn into photographs, I promise.  If you can take a photo that benefits you none other than providing the joy of putting a smile on someone’s face, you’re a real photographer worthy of any camera you want.  Just have fun with it.

If you would like to leave a comment, please do so below.

    Along with following this blog, you can:

Observe my stream of consciousness style life on Instagram.

Regard my humble love for portrait photography in My Portfolio.

Send me an email Have a conversation with a real human being at Andrey@Starostinphoto.com

  **** Thank you so much for reading my blog. ****

10 years ago Short URL Comments

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15

Sep

The (not so) Beginner’s Guide-to-Photography

*1  By: Andrey Starostin

No two photographers are the same; remember that-

-Remember that the next time you admire a cliché legend like Annie Leibovitz or Henri Cartier-Bresson.  Both are immediately recognized and respected, but the latter could not be further different than the former.

(Speaking of clichés) The key is having fun.  Let me make something clear– if you do not have fun the instant you are in the same room as a camera, you are not a photographer.  A photographer is giddy with a camera in their hands.  And fun is respectable.  That photographer will get better with every frame their camera captures because they are not conceptualizing how their photos will look on their computer, they are thinking about how much fun they are having.  If photography is fun to you, I can provide you with my blatantly biased and profoundly honest opinions.

Fundamentals are prerequisites to success.  If you don’t know what varieties of light look like to your camera, you will never take the photo you wish you did.  With that said, I introduce to you the two types of photography:

Candid 

    This is Henri Cartier-Bresson’s cup of tea.  His subject is wild.  Cartier-Bresson observed the world around him and was prepared to capture “the decisive moment” at any point throughout his day.  His image is captured, not created.

Contrived

    Meet Annie Leibovitz, she makes her way to the studio with an image in mind.  The model has been booked and prepped, hair and make-up did, backdrop dropped, camera tethered, and magazine waiting for publishing.  Her image is sculpted, not found.

    Once you figure out what type of photography you crave, a bag of tools must be earned.  You must commit a set of rules to memory both mental and muscle.  You must be able to enter a space and have camera settings buzzing in your head to the extent where if you are handed a camera, your hands move faster than you can explain.

    However, regardless of what tool you possess, the single most valuable skill in photography is the ability to see and differentiate light.  There is natural light and there is artificial light.  Natural light comes from one source – the sun.  Artificial light is every other source, designed to most closely replicate the sun.  Learning how to use the sun’s natural light to your advantage will allow you to replicate a scene artificially at any time.  We will talk about types of light later.

    There are three basic settings that every (useful) camera has control of.  You’ve heard them before, but here they are:

ISO: This is your sensor’s/film’s sensitivity to light.  For analog cameras, you adjust the iso (otherwise known as ASA) one time: when you choose your film.  On digital cameras, the iso should only be adjusted when there is too little light hitting your subject.  If you can, adjust everything else before you adjust the iso.  The higher the iso, the more light you will pick up.  However, the more light you are picking up, the more grainy your photo will appear.

Aperture: This is a set of blades in every lens.  Adjusting the aperture sets the amount of light you let through your lens.  Like the ISO creates a grainy photo when adjusted, the aperture controls the Depth of Field in your photo.  The wider open your aperture, the thinner the depth of field, making whatever you are not focussed on have the Bokeh effect popularized by DigitalRevTV on YouTube.  As you close your aperture, the depth of field widens, allowing for more things in your frame to be in focus.

Shutter Speed: This is the thing immediately in front of your sensor/film.  It is the satisfying fluttering click that fires when you press the big button.  It controls the amount of time light can enter your camera.  The longer the amount of time, the blurrier the photo will get if you can not keep your camera still (use a tripod).  The shorter the amount of time, the more crisp a subject that is moving will be.

   That is all I want to say about the droll fundamentals that is The Exposure Triangle.  Look it up somewhere else for more detail.  Then come back to learn about how to turn that into art.

    If you would like to leave a comment, please do so below.

    Along with following this blog, you can:

Observe my stream of consciousness style life on Instagram.

Regard my humble love for portrait photography in My Portfolio.

Send me an email Have a conversation with a real human being at Andrey@Starostinphoto.com

  **** Thank you so much for reading my blog. ****

10 years ago Short URL Comments

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