"Willoway Winter Fog" Hank Erdmann The Morton Arboretum, DuPage County, Illinois.

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Darlene Gallagher
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1 "Willoway Winter Fog" Hank Erdmann The Morton Arboretum, DuPage County, Illinois. Blog #13 The "Enhancing Accent" December 11, 2013 This blog will focus on the subject of The "Enhancing Accent" and Center of Interest in your images. Thanks again for your comments on my most recent blog. It seems I might not be alone in my critique and criticisms of Photo Contests and Exhibitions. But most folks agree that if you pay attention to the fine print, you can avoid disappointments and giving your image rights away. There were some benefits mentioned that I hadn't thought of and I'll share here; Sandy K wrote: "What this contest did for me was mainly hook me up with fellow photographers. Now I have lots of friends with whom to go out shooting (in this area), even late at night where I won't venture out by myself."

2 So the thought again is participate in such entities, but do so with knowledge and eyes wide open! Food for Thought: "To walk on this earth is to walk on a living past, on the open pages of history..." - Linda Hogan "How strange and wonderful is our home, our earth... We are none of us good enough for the world we have" - Edward Abbey The Concept of the "Added Touch" or The "Enhancing Accent"... In all great images, one constant is a strong center of interest. Even in my abstract images, I like to create a point where there exists a center of interest, a visual counter point, or simply put; a place for the viewer's eye to rest. This is so important to an image, so central to its success, that without such a vehicle, an image fails in its mission. Why is this? When people look at images they have two primary needs. First and foremost, there has to be some interest, some visual spark that screams, and does so almost instantly: "LOOK AT ME"! If this all important catching of the viewer's eye doesn't happen, the viewer simply moves on. The image rarely gets a second glance from that viewer. Once you have a viewer's attention, it is your job as the artist to make a statement and part of that responsibility is to remove any ambiguity as to what you want the viewer to see or to look at. It has been said many times that different viewers get different impressions from the same image and that is true. The impression they get is formed by many things, but mostly by the image and their own sentiments, world view, prejudices and upbringing among many other traits. So while I might not desire an image to make any given statement, I leave that (message if any) up to each individual viewer. I do want to say, and it is my job as the artist to say: "Look at this" or "Here is what I'm showing you". I do that through use of a strong center of interest. When we don't have that strong or obvious center of interest, we create ambiguity that says to the viewer "I (the artist) am not sure what I want you to look at/see", I have no clue as to what I want to say, or I'm not really sure of how I've formed or composed this image". When we make an image that lacks this central need, the viewer (if indeed the initial catch is strong enough to even have the viewer looking at it) looks at the image and his eye wanders looking around and around the image looking for the center of interest that doesn't exist and becomes quite frustrated. The result, he walks away thinking the image is a failure and possibly that the artist is not worthy of future looks. Certainly this becomes true in the presentation of numerous images (like in an exhibit, a portfolio, etc.) that fail in the viewer's eye.

3 "Oak Ice Stream" Hank Erdmann Starved Rock State Park, Illinois Canyon, LaSalle County, Illinois. The "Enhancing Accent" here is the ice edges, which I certainly noticed when making the image and what I comoosed the image around, but what I didn't notice was how the ice edges mimic the edges of an Oak leaf creating even more of an "Enhancing Element". Fortunately this isn't rocket science, finding a center of interest, and putting it in your images is an early skill learned by any artist that passes from beginner or novice to intermediate in skill level. Ten years ago this January, I helped start up the Morton Arboretum's Nature Photography Certificate program. In those first intro classes I taught, there were numerous students who came into the program at a very novice level. That is not an insult, nor intended in any way as anything more than a simple statement of fact. The interest in nature photography was high enough for the arboretum to have confidence enough to start such a program but the world was still film based and the skill level curve, at least on the technical and exposure side of the art was a long one and exposure for some was a very difficult skill to master. I knew a few photographers who called themselves "pros" that by their bracketing habits, never did master exposure! I had not one digital shooter that first class, nor many in all the classes I taught the first two or three years. But by year four or five of the program the majority of students were shooting digitally and the photography world had changed, somewhat for the good, somewhat not, but with regards to exposure the novice could now master exposure, if not recognize good exposure, by simply knowing how to correctly read a graph we call a histogram. I can teach that skill in less than fifteen minutes. With a decent center of interest and a good exposure beginners become near intermediate skilled photographers quite quickly and with a bit of compositional skill from the intro class they progressed into other classes as intermediate skilled photographers. What is so greatly different now from that stage just a few years back is that through a hugely increased interest in photography from the digital takeover of the industry.with just the sheer numbers of images such interested folks look at before they enter the program, students now starting the program are doing so with a more advanced skill set, and many of them are truly intermediate skilled artists. I now

4 emphasize composition much more in that class as that is where more photographic learning can be attained. In fact with the images I see in these classes, what I'm doing mainly is tweaking images versus wholesale changing of them. "Rose Hips & Thornes" Hank Erdmann Morton Arboretum, DuPage County, Illinois Just looking at the image in the viewfinder, the thorns of course! But are they the "Enhancing Element? Take a look at the "hairs" on the Rose Hips and their stems! Decide for yourself whether they or the thorns are the "Enhancing Element" or are both of them the "Enhancing Elements" The "Enhancing Element" in this image was obvious So just how do you take a good image and make it a great one? How do you take a great image and make it an award winning one? There is a great book that's been out for years, and it's even been themed for different subjects. That book is called "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" which is real good advice for life, but not necessarily so for art. The book in that series for compositional improvement would be called "DO, Sweat the Small Stuff"! It is little things, small changes, small crops and tweaks that are the basis of most of my critiques in my classes. It is the little things or even one little thing that takes a great image and makes it an award winner. Years back when I was doing a lot of image critiques with Will Clay on Lake Effect Photographic Adventures workshops, we started noticing, or maybe identifying would be a better term, small image elements, that were NOT the center of interest, but were what we started calling an "added touch". It was

an element in the image, usually small in size, but huge in emphasis, which made the image significantly better, especially when the image was already excellent.

5 an element in the image, usually small in size, but huge in emphasis, which made the image significantly better, especially when the image was already excellent. These "added touches" or what Will has since coined as the "Enhancing Accent" are what makes a great image an award winner, the image that gets selected for a calendar, or a book, or the image that earns 3-9's in a CACCA competition (CACCA competitions, images are scored 5 through 9). Now I think I've made my share of such images. And it's fair to say that you can have an excellent image without an "Enhancing Accent". But those magical images are not so common as to think all I have to do is look for an "Enhancing Accent" and put such in all my images and I'll be the next Ansel Adams. I wish it were that simple, but then everyone would make nothing but award winners and someone would, they always do, raise the bar in some other way. Or we'd all be bored by an overabundance of exceptional images...i don't think we have to worry too much about that, seeing what's out on the internet sea of images every day. "Winter Clouds, Europe Bay" Hank Erdmann Europe Bay, Lake Michigan, Newport State Park, Door County, Illinois The "Enhancing Element" in this image is the shadow lines under the ice edges. I noticed these "edges", I'm sure, but more so by their feel versus visually at the time of making the image. These shadows were "enhanced" in image processing, very much in a similar way that the contrast would have been increased by a one stop push process had this image been made on Fuji Velvia film. I also wish that I could say that the reason that I have many such images is that I see the "Enhancing Accent" in the scene as I composed it. To be sure it does happen occasionally, but the interesting fact is that after I make an image and I'm working on it much later in the computer, is when I often identify an element in the image as an "Enhancing Accent". Looking at it I'll remember that element, I might remember knowing it was extremely important to the composition, remember thinking "that (thing) makes the shot", but quite often, I don't think of such an element as the "Enhancing Accent" in the field. Composition is intuitive, or at least it becomes more intuitive as you practice composition, study composition, look at compositions. The more compositional practice you have, the more intuitive it

becomes. With regards to an "Enhancing Accent" in compositions, at least for me, it's more intuitive than visual. I sense such things more that see them.

6 becomes. With regards to an "Enhancing Accent" in compositions, at least for me, it's more intuitive than visual. I sense such things more that see them. I feel their presence and sense their importance at the point of composing an image in the field. The visual sense of an "Enhancing Accent" is far more obvious in the final image. Placement of an "Enhancing Accent" in an image therefore is a product of long term practice and a culmination of skill and persistence. Seeing a composition in the field is a product of seeing, sense, intuition and a honed vision for taking a scene and making it into art. Practice makes perfect is the old saying, so get outside, come on, it's not that cold! Make images and practice the art and practice the skills and get the "Enhancing Accent" into your images, they all get "9's"! Allbest, Have a great Holiday and peace to all of you and yours, Hank "The land is like poetry: it is inexplicably coherent..." - Barry Lopez "What is Life?... It is the health of a buffalo in the winter time. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset" - Chief Blackfoot "Newport Winter Sky After Snowstorm" Hank Erdmann Newport Bay shore, Newport State Park, Door County, Wisconsin The "Enhancing Element" for me in this images is very subtle and it is the center lower clouds just above the tree line, they make the image sing for me! Hank Erdmann Photography 903 Windsor Drive, Shorewood, Illinois (Preferred Contact) ~ Cell hankphoto@sbcglobal.net Web:

Blog #13, Mid July 2014

"Susan's Eye" Hank Erdmann, Morton Arboretum, DuPage County, Illinois Blog #13, Mid July 2014 "Abstraction" Food for Thought: "For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything