This weekend, I return to my ongoing project of creating a coffee table photography book to document every Roman Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Today, I share my work from St. Andrew by the Bay in Annapolis, MD. 
This project presents me with a challenge of balancing competing priorities.  I want the photos to be beautiful decoration, creative art, representative documents, and religiously faithful.  Most important is the balance between fine art and documentary photography.  I want this book to serve as a reference for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, which is the oldest in the United Sates.  Such a reference does not exist.  I want to document the status of the Catholic Church in the United States early in the 21st century. I envision a reference that would be valued by churches as well as secular libraries.  But, I also need the photographs to be beautiful and artistically creative.  Achieving this balance means that I need to makes a few concessions at both ends.  The images can be neither overly religious nor completely secular.  
For example, notice image #2 below of the bench.  I would guess that most non-religious people would see this as a row of park benches.  However, member of this parish, and possibly a few other Catholics, would recognize these benches as pew for an outdoor chapel. And, if they look closely, they will see the stones between the pews that mark the Stations of the Cross, a common feature in Catholic churches.
At the other extreme is the photo above, which is a close up of the Eighth Station: Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem.  Catholics will immediately recognize this iconic feature.  However, I created this photograph with artistic elements to appeal to a broad audience.  I created a steep angle of view from below, as if a child was looking up.  Most adults (taller than 5 ft) would not regularly see from this angle. I also reduced the color saturation and enhanced the sharpness to allow the viewer to attend to the details of wood-carving marks on the statues.  I also adjusted the light to emphasize the shadows created on the wall.  I find it appealing to notice the difference in textures between the wood and the shadows.  These artistic elements would apply to a photograph of any sculpture and are not specific to Catholicism.
A few of the images below represent another balance between art, documentation, and faith.  For the interior shots, I applied a treatment of high-dynamic-range (HDR), which is common practice in current real estate photography.  This treatment eliminates most of the interior shadows and enhances the colors of all of the elements in the photograph. So, I created beautiful images that capture the architectural qualities, but I also included specific elements of a Catholic church, such as the altar, crucifix, and apse in image #4 below. Image #6 below is especially representative of my own artistic preference for balance and symmetry in showing the aisle leading out to the narthex.  This view is well-known by Catholics, and welcomed with anticipation after a particularly uninspiring homily.  
I also chose to capture images with people included. Doing so creates an artistic challenge because I can't have the people recognizable without getting a signed photo release form.  I had a cute shot of a little girl by the outdoor altar but I chose this one of the curly-haired boy because you can't see his face.  The black and white image of the outdoor altar shows the activity of parents delivering their children for morning preschool, but their faces are sufficiently obscured.  I also chose this subdued color treatment, as well as black and white for the baptistery, as a way to add visual variation to this set of images.  As a group, I don't want them to appear too similar to each other.  
So, I hope I have achieved my intended balance of decoration, art, documentation, and faith.  And, I would like to give special thanks to Marie, who opened the church for me and turned on the lights.

I visited the National Mall in Washington, DC to see the creation by Cuban American urban artist Jorge Rodríguez- Gerada.  You can visit the website for the National Portrait Gallery and click on the satellite photos to get the best overall view. There are many thousands of other images already online for this work of art.

But, as a photographer, I am rarely interested in capturing a popular location, such as this one.  I find that all of the interesting shots have already been taken.  I can makes pictures that are equally as good as the best ones I see, and mine would be better than the casual snapshots. But, mine would have to be substantially better than those created by more established photographers.  If I go to to the same location with the same equipment as other photographers, my images will be about the same.  

So, my challenge is to discover something new that has been overlooked by most other artists.  In this case, I chose a ground-level view.  One basic technique for creating interest in photographs is to move the camera either higher or lower than normal eye level.  With the millions of new camera phone pictures posted daily, people have become overwhelmed, and bored, with seeing everything from eye level.  So, here, I moved my camera almost to the ground.  

The result is a detailed, close-up view of the soil used by the artist to create the display.  The Washington Monument is blurred in the background (another example of bokeh) to give you the ability to place the location.  But, in between, the remaining ground and the trees give a slight illusion of being out of perspective.  

Do you see those red horizontal lines across the middle of the picture?  Those are the lines of string that the artist used to map out the sections of light sand and dark soil. They are about an inch off the ground.  So, while all of the other photographs of this exhibit were taken at eye-level on the ground, or were overhead shots from the top of the Washington Monument or from satellites, mine is the only one I've found that takes the viewer right down to the surface of the soil itself.  Considering the soil is the artist's medium of choice, it seemed fitting to give you this perspective.

I like taking photographs of other photographers taking wedding photographs.  This group might not have been for a wedding, as she is in black (not white) and he is not in a tux.  But, it was some sort of formal shot on the steps of the memorial behind them.  Perhaps it was for an engagement photo.

When I captured them coming toward me, I intended the District of Columbia War Memorial to serve only as an interesting backdrop to establish their location in Washington, DC.  But, during processing, I was able to bring out the glowing effect from the memorial.  To me, it looks almost like the memorial is lit from within, which it is not. The marble columns even have a slight appearance of translucence, which they are not.

I get this effect by enhancing the dynamic range of the image.  The shadows are made brighter and the sunny areas are made darker.  Part of this effect is automated by the software, but I have to make adjustments to ensure that the result is appealing. Most recent real estate photography uses this treatment, commonly known as HDR (for high dynamic range). 

So, in the end, I now see the memorial as the primary subject of this image and the couple getting photographed serve as props to show that the domed, peristyle Doric temple is a living part of the tourist experience in Washing, DC.  In addition to looking up both terms peristyle and Doric, I also learned that this monument is specifically NOT the National World War I Memorial.  This photograph shows the District of Columbia War Memorial.  It is the only monument located on the National Mall, although it is correctly identified as being in West Potomac Park.  The National Mall is east of the Washington Monument. And, I learned that this monument, in 1931, was the first to include the names of African Americans and women along with white men.  In 2008, Rep. Ted Poe of Texas, began an unsuccessful effort to incorporate the DC into an expanded and nationalized World War I memorial. The citizens of the District were able to mobilize opposition to kill the plan. In 2010, renovations began and it reopened in 2011.

I enjoy my new appreciation for this undervalued monument.  I hope my photograph does it justice and honors those who served and died.

This owl is blind in one eye.  I think it is this eye, but I don't remember for sure.  This owl was hit by a car and rescued and rehabilitated by a nature center.  

I made two versions of the same photograph. I did so because I was trying to hid a mistake. Look at the right edge of this photo. Do you see the white space on the wall behind the owl? That white space is especially unpleasant in the original photo, so I used software tools to create this antique plate effect.  This was the only treatment that adequately blended the white space with the shades of the rest of the photo.

I created this version first, but I had to crop the image tightly against the edge of the owl's head.  I cropped it to 1x1 format with the hope that a square image would be interesting and you wouldn't notice that it was cropped too tightly. But, in this color version, the white space was simply ugly.  I worked on it in Photoshop to fill in the space with blue to match the left side of the image, but then the edge of the details of the feathers on that side were obviously distorted. 


So, for both of these images, I cropped the image to focus attention on the owl's eye.  An owl's eye is a well-known image in popular culture.  And, the eye is the most prominent element to this image, so I used it to build this final image around the eye.


Both of these photos are examples of how I sometimes have to make artistic decisions because of an originally bad photograph.  But, with Adobe Lightroom and Google's Nik Collection software, I am able to create the image on screen that I have in my mind.  To me, that transformation is what I see as my role as a fine art photographer.


I just learned that the Barred Owl is the only common owl in eastern North America that has brown eyes. All others have yellow eyes. 


Which photo do you prefer?  Please comment below.  If you also send me your address, I'll send you a printed 5x7 of the one you like.

I found this monarch butterfly in a patch of thistle at the Greenbury Point Nature Center near Annapolis.  

At the most basic level, I enjoy this photograph because the pink, green, and yellow colors are pretty to look at.  The butterfly itself is clearly visible, but not immediately obvious, which adds a bit of interest.  I also enjoy looking at the complex texture of the thousands of spines on the thistle leaves.  I also framed and cropped this image to reveal a tall, narrow curve of the shape of the thistle flowers with the butterfly placed at the peak of the curve.  This line serves to encourage the viewer to continue scanning up and down the image.  

But, I also like this photograph because I just spent the past hour learning about monarch butterflies and thistle.  I learned about the Mullerian mimicry between the monarch and the viceroy, and how it used to be believed to be a case of Batesian mimicry. That's what I learned as a kid, although I didn't know the term.  I also learned that milkweed is the preferred food for the monarch, but it will eat thistle, too.  The monarch population is declining rapidly, due in part to the decline of the milkweed population from herbicides.  One study estimated a 90% decline in monarchs since 1996.  And, I learned that thistle is classified as a noxious weed by the Maryland department of agriculture, and that various varieties of thistle are classified as pests by at least 35 states.  I think this photograph shows Canada thistle. If I'm wrong, then it's most likely Bull thistle.  Canada thistle is not native to Canada, or anywhere else in North America.  It is native to the Mediterranean region and is believed to have been carried to North America by European colonists during the 1600s.  

This owl gives me the opportunity to describe the difference between documentary photography and fine art photography--at least as I understand it.

I create nearly all of my images for the purpose of producing fine art photography, and with the intent to sell them.  Fine art photography is my opportunity to express my artistic impression and often to evoke an emotional response from the viewer.  This technique is contrasted with documentary photography, which is intended to present to the viewer an objective re-creation of the original event, or object.  Photojournalism and medical imaging are examples of documentary photography.

I intend to print and frame this image of this screech owl during molting.  There are several processing techniques I applied that make this image an example of fine art.  First was the composition.  I want the viewer to focus on the owl's eyes, so I followed the "rule-of-thirds" and placed his eye at the cross of the top right section of the image.  I also intentionally place the corner of the brick wall as a vertical line on the right side of the image. This element serves to provide context for where the owl is located as well as to stop your eye from going off the right side of the image.  On the left side, by contrast, the owl's other eye is visible, but less dominant. And the horizontal white lines of the brick wall in the background match the horizontal line formed by the owl's eyes and direct the viewer's eye toward the left side of the image.  I use these composition techniques to encourage the viewer's eye to naturally move around the image with interest.  By contrast, in a documentary photograph, the entire photo would be perceived nearly instantly, and without a desire for further exploration.

I selected relatively wide aperture to create a bokeh effect. There is a particularly shallow plane of focus in this image, maybe only 1 cm thick, which is focused on the owl's eyes and the brick wall to the right. Everything further back, such as the back wall, is intentionally out of focus.  I want the viewer to recognize that the wall in the back is made of brick, but to then not pay attention to it. The bokeh, or blurred-effect, achieves this goal.

I also manipulated the colors and the light to add artistic appeal.  I applied a subtle effect of making the center of the image brighter relative to the edges.  I placed the center of this effect at the base of the owl's beak, just between the eyes.  I did so to focus the viewer's attention on this location as a starting point for viewing the photograph.  I captured this image at precisely 3:00 PM on a downtown street in Annapolis, MD.  I mention this time because it is the absolute worst time of day to get good color in an image. However, it happened to be the time that I came across the owl.  From about 10 AM through 4 PM (in summer) the light from the sun is flat. It is a bright white.  This effect is bad for artistic photography because the diffraction of the color spectrum is what creates the beautiful colors we all enjoy. Do you remember learning about a prism in science class? During the first few hours of the morning, and again right before sunset, the sun's rays reach the surface of the earth at an angle, which causes the reds and blues to become more distinct, and therefore easier to capture by camera. So, to compensate, I increased the contrast between the light areas and the dark areas of the image.  I have computer software that does this for me.  And then I increased the saturation of the the colors to make the entire image appear brighter.  

The last adjustment I made was to sharpen the overall image.  I wanted this image to give the viewer an especially close-up view of this owl during the molting process.  Again, I used special computer software that analyzes each pixel of light in the image and eliminates any fuzziness at the edges of each individual feather.  I could have chosen to smooth the overall image, which would have blended the different areas of the picture to give an overall softer impression. If this owl had not been molting, I might have done so. But, I saw interest in the details of each individual feather.  This sharpening effect also enhances the texture of the brick wall on the right side.  This image is another example of my work that will appear more interesting in person than it does on your screen.  The copy that you are looking at here has a resolution of 72 dpi, which is optimized for computer screens. The copy that I will print has a resolution of 360 dpi, which is optimized for my EPSON 3880 printer.  In person, you would be able to see much additional detail that is lost on the screen, due to the inability of most computers to display such crisp edges.  Again, this effect is one of the elements that makes this fine art, as distinguished from documentary photography.  I want the viewer to pay attention to the detail of the color and the texture of the image. I can achieve that result from a printed photograph much better than online.

And, finally, I intended to create an emotional response.  For documentary photography, there is no intended emotional response.  One might result, such as from newspaper photographs of natural disasters, but that is not the photographers primary purpose.  You could search online for images using the term screech owl, or even screech owl molting.  Nearly all of the results are documentary photographs and instantly you will know exactly what it looks like.  But with this photograph, I want the viewer to spend time examining the image and to think about it.  Although molting is regular and natural process for birds, I hope invoke a sense of empathy for this scraggly, little creature.  At first look, this bird is not a pretty one. But, I hope that the extreme close-up, as well as the position of the bird's eyes, will give the viewer the ability to see more than simply pretty feathers, which is often the case for most artistic bird photography.  

I created this photograph with the purpose printing and framing it and offering it for sale. I made all of my artistic decisions by keeping my focus on the end goal of this photograph hanging on the wall in somebody's home or office.  I needed to create enough beauty on the surface to make the image appealing from a distance, but I also created it with enough attention to detail to provide additional interest upon close inspection.  I try to create images that give the viewer the feeling of somebody saying, "Hey, come look at this! No, really come close. There is a lot to see here.  You could never see this much in person." I also want the viewer to wonder about the story behind the owl in this picture.  Why is it against a brick wall and not a tree? Why are the feathers so scraggly? Is the owl sick" Is is sleeping?  I hope to create this level of engagement with artistic images. With a documentary photograph, my intent would be to show you the owl exactly as it appeared and without any artistic interpretation. You would look at it once and never need to look again.  But, I want people to buy my printed photographs and to enjoy the experience for many years.

Do you know how to make a Facebook cover photo?  I don't mean that you upload any photo and drag it around to fit the best parts into the available space.  A friend asked me for permission to use one of my Annapolis photos as a cover photo, so I formatted the image properly and shared it.  I offer this one for you to do the same.  

I enjoy taking photographs of other people taking pictures. This a cameraman from Fox 29 in Philadelphia during the Thanksgiving weekend in 2012.  I took the kids downtown to visit the Christmas Village display.  At the time I captured this image, he was filming a college choir singing carols.  

I processed this image to enhance the various textures that I saw: gloves, microphone, strap, pouch, jacket, etc.  I like how the cameraman himself is obviously in the picture, and yet is also invisible, as he is blocked by the camera and covered with a hat, jacket, and gloves.  I chose the tight shot to focus attention on the actual camera as a piece of equipment, but I retained just enough of the surroundings to establish the context that this took place outside in a city. There is the back of a man wearing a jacket and a building at least 7 stories high, although both are obscured to avoid distraction from the camera.

Now, did you already notice that this image is in black and white?  I captured the image in color, but I chose to present it in B/W because I see the textures of the various materials (cloth, metal, plastic) as more revealing than the colors.  I also processed this image to specifically enhance the contrast between the light and dark areas, but without having any total black or total white. Simply, this image is a study in many shades of gray.  Then, to finish the image, I enhanced the sharpness of the edges throughout the image.  

I want this image to give you an enhanced close-up look at the detail of a television camera as if you were standing right next to it and studying it for awhile.  

Do you prefer these extreme stylized photos? Do you prefer more realistic, natural photographs? Or do you enjoy them both and a balance with some of each is good?

This is the photo I went to capture that morning in Annapolis. I particularly wanted the pier that is left from the old bridge. And, I wanted to captured it from across the Severn River, from the west bank.  But, now that I have it, I'm less interested in this shot with regard to the composition of the photograph.  A curving bridge is a classic shot, and the bird in the sky adds an interesting detail.  But, for people who don't know the area, the remaining section of the old bridge only interrupts the foliage on the far bank.  So, I increased the dynamic range of the bright and dark areas and increased the saturation of the colors.  I'm not planning to print this one.  If you like it, though, please let me know.

This image is my second version of this shot that I've shared with you, and I like this one much better.  This version is closer to my original vision of a bright morning over the water and the grass.  I was able to bring out the yellow and magenta of the sunrise on the left side of the image. While this shot is a photograph of the US Naval Academy, I created it to be first an impressionistic view of the sky, clouds, and water.  The thin line of buildings across the center is intended as somewhat of an afterthought, or even a surprise, only to be discovered after reviewing the colors of the sky and the texture of the water.  But, for anybody who is familiar with the area, this image should be an obvious reminder of how beautiful the campus can be in the morning.