© 2012 Paul Coffin Photography

 

© 2012 Paul Coffin Photography

 

© 2012 Paul Coffin Photography

 

Much to the delight of my wife, I asked if she would accompany me to the Crate and Barrel store to look for some interesting glass to photograph. Not long after we arrived I realized, naively I suppose, as I should have known better before we stepped foot into the abyss, that I am a buyer and my wife is a shopper. A quick scan of the store and I was anxious to get in and get out, but my plan was quickly dashed as I dutifully took the time to admire every other item that caught her eye. It’s not that I am entirely disinterested, it just doesn’t hold the charm for me as it does her. Perhaps it’s the mars/venus thing.

That said, today’s adventures in the studio with the introduction of color, added to my excitement and to the results I achieved. Next up, colorful liquids and ice.

© 2012 Paul Coffin Photography

 

Last night I spent a few more hours experimenting in the studio, with the final result shown here. A few spills and several attempts at capturing the right pour and I’m pretty happy with the results. I love the way the back light shines through the ale and the black side cards add just a hint of black along the glasses edge. I can absolutely see how it takes hours and sometimes days to get the right image in the studio.  I can’t claim to offer any creative originality here, but am excited about applying my learning to something in the future that will.

© 2012 Paul Coffin Photography

 

I decided to spend a bit of time in my studio experimenting with glass and reflections. It is turning out to be much more difficult than I thought and I now understand why many studio photographers have assistants. Nudge this, click, nudge that, click, move this, change this, adjust that. I have plenty to learn about this style of photography and will just need to experiment over and over to better understand the dynamics of light, glass and reflections.

© 2012 Paul Coffin Photography

 

© 2012 Paul Coffin Photography

 

Another theme I have been wanting to explore visually  is that of the clothesline. I recently celebrated a birthday, and have been writing about cultural and generational trends and activities that existed in the 70′s and 80′s that are becoming lost to time and technological “progress”. The clothesline is one such fading tradition that, outside country living, has all but disappeared due to community covenants and advances in technology. Growing up, nothing beat the fresh smell of bed sheets that hung on the clothesline all day, and the feel of the crisp and cool fabric as I slipped into nighttime dreams. It seemed the sun’s bleaching made whites truly whiter and brighter, unlike the claims of today’s fabric softeners and detergents.

The clothesline in all its simplicity, offers colors, texture, nostalgia and a glimpse into the lives of those whose cloths and linens gently sway in the wind absorbing the fresh air and smells of the countryside. One of these days, I’m going to have a clothesline, just to relive those moments. In the mean time I’ll be on the look out for more on my countryside drives, camera in tow.

© 2012 Paul Coffin Photography

 

Last evening I attended an intimate concert in the rolling hills just north of the northern suburbs of Atlanta at a horse farm called  Chukkar Farms. The warm evening was filled with the sounds of country music from two singer song writers from Nashville, overlooking a large polo field with the super sized moon slowly rising in the clear sky beyond. It was truly magical and reminded me how peaceful country life can be.

This afternoon my wife and I decided to take a leisurely drive to the same area and came upon a small antique store she had been wanting to visit for some time. Attracted by the unique and colorful items that sat outside the store, I was happy to turn the car around and venture in.

This picture, is of course a high dynamic range photograph, that embellishes the color and draws detail from the shadows. The items appear to have been randomly placed on the front porch and the late afternoon sun cast just enough shadow to add contrast to the scene. I know our eyes essentially see in high dynamic range, but the texture and color in the pots was less obvious to me in the sunlight than it is in the photo.

By the way, I don’t say it in every post, but I do appreciate you dropping by to see my photographs and read my stories. I would love your feedback and encourage you to make comments as you desire.

© 2012 Paul Coffin Photography

 

During my second year of college I stayed in a three bedroom home with 3 other roommates in an area called Lansdowne Park, near the Lansdowne Station subway exit in Toronto at 168 Wallace St., pictured below (center). Thank you Google maps for jogging my ailing memory and Google street view for the snapshot.

 

I’m guessing the house must have been built in the 1960′s. Dates of old things escaped me then, oblivious to the history around me in my youthful exuberance. That particular year was an eventful one for me, but the memory that lingers of this place, was how much I hated having roommates and this kitchen (though the picture is one of my favorites). The kitchen, second only to the communal bathroom, was the source and location of many conflicts and shouting matches among the four of us. We were; a superior minded architecture student, a Napoleonic engineering major, a beefy hockey playing weight lifting business major thug and of course yours truly, a mild-mannered Media Arts major in the school of Photographic Arts. We had two drive by roommates, a crazy neurotic woman whose college major and all other details escape me, save her obsession with controlling the house thermostat, and a fashion major who I knew from my hometown and was the only other sane person to ever step foot on the premises in the year I lived there.

Ironically, the picture of the kitchen is exactly as I remember it, perhaps aided by the image itself no doubt. Everything about this place evoked an era I was born into. Too young in my pre-teen years to appreciate the beauty of the simplicity of a time when freezers needed to be “defrosted” and ovens had knobs and warming sections with antiquated elements that rarely seemed to bring water to a boil. Wall paper was popular in those days and of course what child of the 60′s didn’t have wood paneling in one room or another. This very hip kitchen had both!

I remember my mother getting a new Tupperware sugar container, identical to the one pictured on the table, and was delighted to watch the sugar pour onto the overflowing teaspoon that sat atop my hot tea. Was it possible the sugar was even sweeter coming out of the container? I think it was.

Plastic milk crates were of particular use to college students back then, since replaced with all things Ikea. How sad. I distinctly remember sneaking around the back of the corner store down the street in the wee hours of the morning to collect my plastic milk crate kitchen pantry, cloths (dirty and clean) containers, and of course who could forget record album storage bins.

Despite the trials and tribulations that come with roommates, independence, college induced poverty and less than comfortable living quarters, these were unforgettable years in my life. A time I would not trade for the world. I cannot imagine returning to those days, but envy those living them now.

© 2012 Paul Coffin Photography

 

Reflecting on yesterday’s blog entry, I was reminded of a photograph I took last year while on a trip to Charleston, SC.

Up until the time I was 8 years old, my bedroom window looked out, beyond the safer boundaries of my backyard, onto a cemetery. It was not a morbid fascination I developed back then to the mysteries of death and of our society’s burial rituals, but an attraction to  the sense of place being in a cemetery so vividly creates for me. With a surname like Coffin, I guess it only stands to reason that I should be so fascinated.

On the day this photograph was taken, I wandered, as I often do, into the midst of a cemetery filled with the heavy weight that the symbols of our passing bring to us. All that was missing was a light fog rolling onto and gently over the tombstones and final resting place of so many souls, to set the scene as I experienced it that day.

Much to my surprise, as I rounded the bend of the church that stood in front of the graveyard, I almost literally stumbled into the man who sat idly and eerily quiet in front of me, resting himself and finding a peaceful quiet in the midst of the city of Charleston. I was, regrettably, afraid, an emotion one feels when confronted with the unexpected. I took pause not to disturb him, stepped back a few steps, lifted my camera and snapped a couple of pictures. He did not move a muscle, and I could feel my breath getting heavier for fear that my intrusion might also startle him.

I was filled with a multitude of emotions that are as fresh for me now as they were then. It was clear he was a working man; hands calloused by labour I could only imagine. The hood of his jacket lifted over his head to give warmth during the cool early morning hours. His shoulders pressed forward and his posture symbolic of the hopelessness of his fate and yet it was his hands, clasped and solid, strong and unflinching that have stayed with me since.

I slipped out of the cemetery unnoticed and left him as I found him, but I was not as I had arrived. Who was he and what brought him to “this” place? I wonder what those hands are laboring at today.

Walking by …

Henri Carti-Bresson has always been an inspiration to me. His iconic image “Behind-the-Gare-Saint-Lazare-1932″, shown here, is the quintessential example of the decisive moment. The moment when light hits film and epitomizes the peak of the scene observed in front of the photographer in the frame of his camera.

I have written in the past that I tend to be less technical and deliberate on compositional rules than I am for instance on tone and color. I am  inspired by Carti-Bresson when it comes to the moment in time that best represents what I see and feel and am keenly aware of the very moment when I press the shutter release and what is happening in time and space in front of the lens.

© 2012 Paul Coffin Photography

 

As I was setting up this image, in the corner of my eye, I observed the man about to enter the frame. Walking briskly in shadow and without notice of me on his right across the street, I clicked one frame. There are a few things compositionally wrong with this image, yet it resonates with me. I wish I had framed it better to include the bottom of his leading foot for example. This particular image is a visual juggle for me. The shadows falling on the facade of the building juxtaposed with the silhouette of the walking man.

Finally, I am left wondering who was this guy, where was he going and where is he now. The photography of strangers always leaves me with these questions. The image is all that is left to document a moment when our paths crossed, and he will forever be a stranger to me.

I have, on several occasions in my blog, referred to the immeasurable patience my wife has for my need to stop on a whim to take photographs of visually interesting and stimulating vistas that often cross my path. The scene shown above is one such visual delight that I came upon while I dutifully, and patiently I might add, waited for her to peruse the many knick knacks, crafts and miscellaneous items strewn about the innards of the store pictured here. I have no doubt, my description, biased by my own distaste for shopping, falls well short of the experience as she might describe it as she skipped excitedly into the depths of the colorful oasis.

Sitting on a bench in front of the store, in Hendersonville, NC,  I watched a variety of people, families, dogs and drifters walk by. I lifted my camera to my eye in the hopes that I might find something or someone interesting to photograph. I literally did not even see what was right in front of me until, panning left to right and back, I saw through my viewfinder the character of the storefront through which my wife had just passed. I immediately laughed at myself for missing something so obvious and proceeded to take a few shots.

I am not prone to add text to my photographs, though I have often thought it would make for an interesting pedestal on which to place my own sensibility to a visual exploration or concept with a running theme. While “Chalk It Up” can certainly take on multiple meanings, its presence in this image, is more about the setting than the message. I’ve been wanting to explore text within the walls of the image for some time. I think I’ll make that my next project.

As many of my fellow photographers will attest, we tend to suffer from what my sons refer to as, GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome). I have also discovered this affliction in musicians, which both my sons happen to be.

Nikon has recently released their much-anticipated prosumer camera the D800, with a whopping 36 MP, driving the need for many of us anxious to upgrade, to examine our supporting cast of gear, not the least of which is the glass we put in front of it. In anticipation of the eagerly awaited D800 I have upgraded my lenses and have begun to put them to use in the studio on my aging D80. The reputation of Nikon lenses is second to none and Nikon continues its long tradition of making exceptional quality glass.  This studio  shot of a Tiger Lily and bud was taken with a very simple setup. One overhead softbox against a black seamless background. A few small adjustments in Lightroom 4 to push the highlights and pull back the shadow detail and voila.

I am very fortunate to be married to a fellow artist, who completely “gets me”, and understands the euphoria that accompanies the creative process that yields the artistic expression of our inner selves. Did that just sound like Lil’ C from You Think You can Dance? Oh well, it’s a pretty cool thing.