PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNEY.com

I’ve never quite understood how “shooting” became the verb of choice for photography. I shoot hoops. I shoot pool. I shoot a gun (well, I don’t but obviously some do). Since every one of those activities involves some sort of propelled object, the word shooting just doesn’t seem to describe what we do with cameras very well.

But enough semantics… because at least with one type of photography, the word “shooting” does come close: when we shoot through stuff! And it’s something I’ve been doing a lot of lately.

What I’m talking about is placing some sort of object between your camera and your subject - either partly or completely covering your subject depending on the degree of transparency of the barrier. In the two images I’m including in this post, you can see what I mean. I shot the image above of a Vietnamese woman working a traditional weaving machine at the annual Smithsonian Folk Life Festival on the Mall in Washington, D.C. If you’ve never been to that festival, it’s worth trying to time your visit to Washington around it, since it’s right on the mall and a lot of fun, and you can still easily get to the museums and monuments.

Anyway, a number of photographers positioned themselves around this woman but as far as I know I was the only one to position myself behind the machine where a clear shot of her would be impossible. But a clear shot was not my intent. I wanted foreground. I wanted depth. And I wanted a degree of mystery, which I think this photograph captures.

In this second image, an otherwise straightforward portrait, a semi-transparent curtain hung between my camera and the model. Again, I think it adds a great deal of mystery and lifts the portrait above the norm.

What are the risks when you want to make images like these with your camera?

Shooting through stuff can be tricky. First, manual focus is a must! Auto-focus will easily be fooled into focusing on the foreground object - whatever it is - and leaving your subject in the background blurry. You might want that in some cases, but still don’t try to rely on your camera’s auto-focus.

Second, watch your exposure. A good rule to remember is that you are exposing for the background - not the foreground. For example in the portrait shot I took of the model, I actually used a gray card to set my exposure on the other side of the curtain, directly under the light and near the model’s face. That way I was able to get a direct exposure of how the light was hitting the model rather than how the light hit the model and then bouncing through the thin curtain.

Which brings me to my third point. If you use artificial lighting, as I did in the portrait shot, it’s important to know where to place your key and your fill light. Unless you want a shadow on your model’s face, place the key light behind the curtain with your model. I placed mine at a fairly standard 45-degree angle to her face. But what with the fill? Ah…I placed that out in front of the curtain next to me. I really wasn’t using the fill to supply much light to the model’s face - it was to provide just a soft amount of lighting to the curtain itself, so that it didn’t fall into silhouette.

With the photograph of the Vietnamese weaver I relied entirely on natural light. I could have used flash, I suppose, but the dynamics of the crowd around her might have made that difficult. Plus, I think the natural light worked well. But either way, if you try a shot like this, the same basic rules apply that would apply in a portrait shoot where you control the lighting. You need to make sure that the dynamic light affects mostly your subject - not the foreground. I didn’t have to use any fill-flash to preserve the color of the yellow-white yarn in the foreground on the right half of the picture, but I would have had it been necessary to avoid the silhouette effect.

So, give it a try. Adding foreground to a photograph can dramatically change its mood.

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