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| Photography Week Features: Bethany Salvon Posted: 05 Aug 2011 09:35 AM PDT
We wrap up our week long look at photography with our esteemed author, Bethany Salvon! Bethany is a professional photographer, travel junkie & author of the new photo ebook – Getting Out Of Auto. She can be found at her travel site Beers & Beans. She has a B.F.A in Photography and has shot everything from famous musicians to gang injunctions, corporate functions, hotels, spas, product promos, national events, studio shots, food, travel images & weddings. She is also the travel photographer for San Diego Uptown News – a southern California newspaper. She is currently traveling the world with her partner in crime, Randy Kalp and doing her best to photograph the moments that take her breath away. Besides being the founder & photographer of Beers & Beans she has been shooting weddings for over 11 years and also owns and operates Nariko's Nest, her wedding photography business. Her favorite food is the blueberry and she never wants to be eaten by an alligator.
While you do shoot travel ‘porn’ at times you seem more interested capturing non-typical travel photos. Why? I have always been a photographer of moments. Don’t get me wrong there are some amazing landscape photos out there that suck you right in and bring you to a place and I love those photos. Personally I am more intrigued and involved in what goes on in the landscape then the actual landscape itself. One thing I am always working on is a way to incorporate the landscape style image with the moment-in-time style image – it’s a always a work in progress. I’ve always been interested in spatial relationships between people and objects and how people act & react to the things around them. It may sound a little corny but I feel the most in tune with life when I see the moments that pop up in front of me and I have the opportunity to engage with them. Sometimes it as if they moment is popping up to say “Hey, look at me! Look what’s going on here! Don’t ignore me!” It’s almost as if I was placed in that very spot, at that exact time just to record them. I sometimes think its like my tiny role in this great, big world.
When do you find the mood in your photos? Is it the very moment you snap the shot or later as you are reviewing your images? It depends. Mostly I shoot because I see something that moves me. It’s a little different on assignment or during a wedding because there are things that simply have to be on the front of your mind. I’m always striving to capture that shot and that mood whether it’s for myself or for an assignment. With the in-the-moment photos I care much less about technicality and getting things perfect – I am far more concerned with seeing the moment & capturing it as it happens. In those cases the mood comes from the moment itself – the instant the photo is recorded and how I felt when I recorded it. If it’s a one-of-a-kind moment I usually know exactly as I click the shutter how it’s going to reveal itself. In that instant I can tell if it’s there or not.
Henri Cartier-Bresson said – “I don’t take the photograph, the photograph takes me.” If a moment has made me stop and look at it then the photo has already taken me in – I have already seen it in my head or I’m anticipating it. All I do is set the camera quickly and take the shot. Every once in a while I get surprised by a photo when I’m reviewing images and I find one really great image that I missed when I was shooting. It’s great when that happens, like a little happy accident. I also take steps in the editing process to make sure the mood and feeling of the image comes across to the viewers.
What advice do you have for people looking to improve their images? Keep shooting. We all go through times when the photos just don’t look right and nothing is panning out. You have to shoot through it. If you’re bored with your photos, shake things up and try a totally new technique. Try something totally random like shooting everything upside down or while spinning your camera. Sometimes when you do that you find one little image that sticks out and then you start to see things a completely different way. I often turn to shooting from the hip street photo style when I need to shake things up. Sometimes the camera sees things that we don’t notice. I find that exciting and it reinvigorates me. Don’t beat yourself up – remember that a professional aims to get one great shot out of a roll. A roll is 36 frames so just keep shooting until you find something you love and then try to repeat it.
Get Out Of Auto - I know it sounds biased since I wrote the book but if you really want to improve your images you need to learn how to use and manipulate your camera. You need to get out of the auto setting and create your own exposures. You want to record the world the way you see it instead of relying on the camera to make those decisions for you. The Getting Out Of Auto photo ebook is a great place to start since it covers exposure, composition, technique, cheat sheets & so much more. But you don’t need to buy the book – you can take a photo class or do research online as well. It doesn’t really matter how you go about it but giving yourself the gift of knowledge is essential if you want to take the next step in your photographic journey.
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