See how a little altitude can make big fish look like minnows?

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That’s good. That’s great. It means you know the path to better photography (like the path to a better cast) doesn’t necessarily run through a $1000 camera or $800 fly rod.

Bravo, Zen photogs. You’re better than halfway there.

Let’s Review

The first post was all about recognizing this one, simple fact: when you’re taking a picture, you’re composing an image on a two-dimensional surface — just like a painter.

You can’t rearrange the objects in the photo, but you can move the frame. Remember: Don’t look through the viewfinder or LCD screen — compose on it instead.

Ready for more? Good.

Zen Tip #3: Wait for it, wait… wait… there!
The camera freezes a moment in time, and because you’re running the show, which moment is entirely up to you.

Even in less-dynamic photos, you’re looking for a “decisive moment” — that split second where the elements of the photo come together.

Dave Roberts crafting a very difficult trick cast. Note the dark background.

Most fly fishers drag out their camera, snap a frame or two, and move on with their day. That’s fine, but the Zen outdoor shooter is already investing a couple extra seconds composing the photo, so why not invest a few more into finding the critical moment?

I’m not talking about the obvious timing stuff here — like catching a fish in mid-leap. I’m talking about the quiet things that really help photographs pop.

The float tube stands out when it’s highlighted against a beam of light.

Spray from a taller wave and a glance really pop this image.

I waited for his fly line to highlight itself against the darker water.

Imagine a scene with a lot of river in the foreground. Before you snap and run, look upriver and see if a brightly colored leaf isn’t floating your way — a leaf that would add a spot of color to your image should you have the patience to wait for it.

Shooting a friend on the river? Your picture will probably look better if his fly line is highlighted against the dark background instead of the bright sky.

Every dog has its day; every photo has its moment. Are you willing to wait for that moment?

It’s Zen, baby. Zen.

Tip #4: Dynamic is better: Diagonals and the Rule of Thirds
OK, I lied. Everybody includes this tip in the “top ten tips” articles, and now, I am too.

The concept is simple; diagonal compositions - with slightly off-center subject matter – usually feel more dynamic than centered, level pictures.

See the diagonals? The branch, the wing? Notice the egg sack is off-center?

Notice the disappearing, triangular perspective? It adds movement.

The off-center subject rule? It’s called the “Rule of Thirds.”

Divide a lot of better images into thirds (both horizontally and vertically), and you’ll notice the main subject matter of many of them falls one third of the way from two edges.

You can see it in the photos above; the fisherman and the egg sack are both at the intersection of lines 1/3 of the way into the photo, which offers them a more dynamic feel.

Divide the frame into thirds. This is a good place for your subject.

When you’re composing your images on a two-dimensional plane, you can use strong diagonals and the Rule of Thirds to create powerful images.

Trust me. Master these simple ideas, and you’ll become a zen photography master.

Tip #5: You’ve taken the picture; is your job done?
You arrive home from a trip with a camera full of digital photographs. Do you grab one and send it to all your friends? Maybe, but most photographs benefit from a little touch-up.

For example, every photo doesn’t have to fall within the familiar 2:3 ratio common to cameras. Will your better photos benefit from an extreme horizontal or vertical crop? Would adding a little contrast help?

I added contrast to this “gray day” photo, helping it escape the “blahs.”

Post processing perks up your photos, and even better, you don’t need to buy a copy of Adobe’s bloated, expensive Photoshop software to do it.

I formerly used free image software (Photofiltre), and while it doesn’t offer the scorched-earth power of Photoshop, it does the simple things extremely well, and doesn’t require tons of memory to do it.

Other software is available, and it’s likely some even came with your digital camera.

The power’s available to you, so why not crop, resize, brighten and increase the contrast of a photo?

This unusual framing happened in the PC, not the camera.

For example, photos taken on gray, overcast days will often require more contrast to “pop” for the human eye.

Photos taken after the sun’s gone behind a cloud need a little “yellow” color correction to avoid looking overly blue.

I added lots of contrast and a little yellow to pop the leaves.

These are more advanced ideas, but don’t ignore simple adjustments like brightness and contrast in your quest for Zen outdoor photos.

You can even fire up some special effects to create the photographic equivalent of five-alarm chili:

Wild, but fun. And fun is Zen too.

Special Bonus Zen Tip (Absolutely Free!)
Here’s a little secret: digital photographs cost you next to nothing.

You learn to take better pictures by taking a lot of pictures, and the beauty of digital photography is that bad pictures only cost you the amount of time it takes to throw them away.

I shot a lot of underwater pics; most were no good (I was shooting blindly).

If you regularly come back from your fishing trips with three images on your camera (all hero shots), then you’re not going to improve your photo skills any more than you’ll improve your fly casting doing it once a year.

When I was in school, I learned a lot in a hurry because I shot a lot of film every week.

After all, most of our photographs are failures, but it’s true we learn more from failure than success.

I only shot two of the lily flowers, and wish I’d shot more.

There are trips when I come back with only three pictures, but I’m more likely to download a couple dozen, a lot of which were taken when the fishing was slow.

Of course, I’m a fly fisher who takes pictures; you can speed your photographic Zen-ness along by looking at the photos of real shooters like Michael Wickes, Dan Mitchell, Gale Rainwater, Richard Bernabe, Val Atkinson.

f/8 And Be There

Fly fishing involves long stretches of largely blank canvas. Those dead spaces offer you a chance to step back and take a few pictures while the other guy fishes (though I don’t know anybody who keeps taking pictures when their buddy starts hammering trout).

The good news is this: photography’s most immutable rule revolves around the saying “f/8 and be there” — the idea being you’ll never take a great photo unless you’re out among the proper picture-taking raw material.

That means — as a fly fisher — you’ve probably already done what is for most photographers “the hard part.”

You’re there.

And it’s true; every once in a while you step into a scene so beautiful, the photos practically take themselves, and it’s just like hitting a hatch you didn’t know existed.

The Zen fly fisher/photographer knows it’s payback for all the bad pictures/dead light/no fish hours you’ve invested, and you enjoy it while you can, and don’t regret it when it’s gone.

See you behind a camera, Tom Chandler.

(You can read Part I of my Zen Photography Hints here.)

Technorati Tags: photography,outdoor photography,zen photo tips

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Both thrive in the presence of a zen perspective; either can place you amidst stunning beauty; and neither reacts well to the application of brute force.

A closeup would have been nice, but the Zen storyteller takes a second to look.

Complicating the process is humankind’s desire to reduce art to science, and the scads of “Top 10 Technical Tips for Better Pictures” articles reflect that need.

Reading them actually does improve your photography, but they often don’t frame the act with the proper Zen attitude — a focused, high-altitude perspective that transforms your pictures from snapshots to storytellers.

As someone with years of photojournalism training and little natural talent, I’m unfortunately suited to the production of a different “Better Pictures” article — one that focuses on your attitude, not your camera.

After all, I learned via struggle and hard work what natural artists are born with, and I’m shooting like you would — on the margins of a fly fishing trip.

It’s Zen. Think Zen.

Zen Tip #1: Use the Camera That’s Right For the Job (more…)

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I stumbled across Gale Rainwater’s photography blog and Web site (actually, he stumbled across us), and I flipped over the work.

While it’s not fly fishing specific, it speaks to one of the things most of us fly fish for — the stunning, unspeakably beautiful outdoors.

It’s proof that craftsmanship still exists in the digital world. Worth a visit!

Technorati tags: photography, outdoor photography, nature photography, gale rainwater

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Thankfully, you won’t see any pictures of that activity, but to start your day on a peaceful, fluffy foot, I give you a few pictures from yesterday’s Wonderdog Wanderings:

Technorati Tags: photographs, snow, trout underground

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Getting outside early in the morning means stinging skin and cold, clumsy hands.

Still, I find myself possessing photographic evidence that Winter in the mountains may not be warm or easy, but it is often spectacular.

Warmer

After a cold start to the year, the last several weeks have seen warmer afternoons, which just might be waking up the river.

I’m even hearing scattered reports of rising fish, though they’re few and far between.

Tomorrow I go looking for a few risers of my own. More words, pictures and impressions as they happen.

Until then, good morning from the Underground.

Technorati Tags: mount shasta, sunrise, photography, mountains, fly fishing

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I largely avoid fly fishing coffee table books. The problem? Fly fishing picture books typically attain a kind of artificial beauty, and do so at the expense of spontaneity, realism or soul.

Images are carefully arranged, styled and colored - to the point I’m witnessing the product of an advertising shoot instead of a real moment on the water.

I don’t need to see another red-shirted fly fisher, perfect loop unrolling in a strategically placed dark spot. Or another digital image so oversaturated the angler’s skin glows yellow.

Or - god forbid - another grinning fool holding a big trout facing left, the Sage logo “illuminating” most of the image.

Going Upstream

I passed on Thomas McGuane and Charles Lindsay’s Upstream when it was published several years ago, a blunder I only recently corrected.

Want the one-word review? Stunning.

Lindsay’s black and white photographs bypass all the pretty-yet-distant cliches, displaying in their stead strong, reductive images where the elements of nature (water, air, fire, bugs, trout, etc) are dynamic - not fodder for a carefully arranged still life.

Through Lindsay’s lens, water becomes elemental and kinetic, with the surface boundary between air and stream displaying elements of both.

Trout ebb and flow through his photographs like elements of nature instead of targets, defined not by flashy parr marks or marketable colors, but revealed instead by a quiet swirl in the water or a taut piece of monofilament.

McGuane’s text is smart and cutting as ever, his status as keen observer of the natural world seemingly amplified by the B&W photographs.

M. and I were in a canyon that was sixty miles long. At its far side, the hills were scarred with clear-cuts. A local carpenter looking at the wind-blown and knot-infested trees said you couldn’t get a number-two board out of the whole forest. Nevertheless, someone had tried, and ended up putting the entire load on a train in Great Falls looking for a market that would accept it. The carpenter explained that this pretty forest might become fax paper. People could then send each other faxes about the beauty of nature.

Indeed, viewing McGuane’s text and Lindsay’s photographs in the same context exposes one of Upstream’s weaknesses - the images and words aren’t mixed together on the same pages, but are separated.

Many of Lindsay’s images would have piled meaning atop McGuane’s text (and vice versa), but instead, McGuane’s incisive words were left to fend for themselves, including the following passage - which would have soared off the page in the company of the right images:

Hard overhead light helps the hunting birds and sends the fish out of harm’s way under ledges, logs, brush, sargasso weed, ship’s hulls, mangroves, and rocks. Dawn and dusk, crepuscular light, is an open book and fish are emboldened by their own shadowlessness. The angler becomes still, watchful. Something is about to happen.

Several of Lindsay’s stronger images were photographed just under the surface of the water, then darkly and richly printed. The resulting pictures emphasize form over detail, revealing nature’s repeating forms.

In one instance, a cloud is juxtaposed with an image of water that is its twin.

In another, a campfire occupies one page while an equally hyperactive image of water occupies the other.

Nature, of course, isn’t the only subject of this book, and McGuane neatly exposes many of the excesses of modern fly fishing:

The professionalization of sport by Americans is well afield of the values from which sport originally sprung. There are few figures of absurdity to compete with today’s “fly fishing professional,” who arrives as a kind of booby prize in the general festivity of field sport. In some circles, the amateur angler is fully capable of outbursts of vainglory and self-aggrandizement, invidious comparison, blowhard posturing, and odious, self-infatuated crowing. He scarcely needs the help of a “professional.” Still, it is sad when a little spotted fish occasions frenzies of snobbery.

This is a book that has already been placed on my “A” shelf - the collection of volumes which will remain by my desk until I can no longer read.

I’d suggest it belongs on the shelves of others searching for a different view of fly fishing, water and nature, and dithering around until the book passed onto the “out of print” list means it’s available for 2/3 its $40 list price.

Who knew procrastination could be so profitable?

Several used copies are available via Amazon (one-click access via the link: Upstream: Fly-Fishing in the American West)

Of course, the Undergrounders are welcome to contribute their opinions; any raves, raspberries or contrasting reviews for Upstream?

Technorati Tags: upstream, thomas macguane, richard lindsay, fly fishing, trout, nature, book, publishing

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Tomorrow I fish. But today I point you towards a stellar photography site: The FishEyeGuy.

Jammed with stunning underwater pictures of rainbow, brook, cutthroat and brown trout, it’s worth more than a few minutes of your time.

We found this via the smorgasbord of stuff that is the A Step Apart blog, and wish all the way-below-zero residents of the Rocky Mountain West nothing more than a cup of hot chocolate, including Fly Fishing in Yellowstone, whose daily fishing posts from Yellowstone are sorely missed.

Take a gander at the fish photos. And let us know what you think (I’m impressed).

Technorati Tags: fly fishing, trout, brook trout, rainbow trout, cutthroat trout, brown trout, underwater photography, fisheyeguy

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Via Moldy Chum comes the kind of fish photo that we’d really like to see on a few magazine covers. Click the image above to see a whole series of these seriously odd, seriously entertaining pics.

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Technorati Tags: mount shasta, sunset

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It’s hard work making the elderly look good.

Just prior to publication, the author contacted me and asked to use the photo in the book. I assumed some interior use, and was shocked to find Dave Roberts slinging line right there on the cover.

It’s yet another step in my ascension to worldwide media mogul. Soon, my fame will exceed that of Paris Hilton’s and I’ll be so wealthy that I can hire people to do my casting for me while fishing.

Unfortunately, this new release doesn’t yet have a live Web site, so if you want to order the thing, the best lead I can offer is an e-mail address (click the link below):

Oregon Bamboo e-mail

Price is $24.95 softcover ($60 hardcover).

I’ve been so mesmerized by the visual poetry of the cover - staring at it for hours in a barely controlled lust for photographic perfection - that I haven’t had time to do anything but page through it.

Without turning this into a review of ignorance, I’ll say that it’s a thick book with interviews of a lot of Oregon’s current bamboo rod builders.

More information as I get a chance to read the thing.

And finally, no “aha” posts from those who know Dave Roberts is a lefty - they flipped the image.

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Sadly, there are no trout to be found down there, but even a grotesque shortage of trout can’t deter the Underground.

Still, since you’re unlikely to hear from me until Sunday, consider this the official Trout Underground Thanksgiving greeting, complete with pictures of a few things we’re thankful for (including our readers).

See you after the turkey’s been picked clean!

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I don’t know what I’ll find on the river (hopefully a better pocket water bite than last Saturday), but with the fall colors in full swing in Mt. Shasta, you’ve gotta be alert for what you might find walking the Wonderdog:

Guess the Season? Smack yourself if you can’t.

Some of the more observant might notice the new “navigation” link buttons to the right. I liked the old ones, but they took up too much space and there are some changes coming on the Underground, and that real estate has become valuable.

More on this later.

Too Much for Too Little

I’ve been slaving over a hot keyboard the last two weeks trying to jump start a whole bunch of things, and I think today the hammer has finally fallen on my brain, which feels like it’s stuffed with cotton balls.

Eventually all the slaving will pay off, but eventually can seem like it’s never going to show. Still, at least it poked its head around the corner yesterday when my Copywriter Underground marketing blog, which was selected as “Blog of the Day.”

Not exactly the Pulitzer, but those of you with a few minutes to burn should click over and leave a smart, intelligent, marketing-style comment to one of the posts so other smart, intelligent marketing types will get the hint.

Tonight, my friends, I fish. It’s been too long. For too little. See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

Technorati Tags: fall, marketing, copywriting

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