WILLIAM J. HIGGINSON

I began pairing photographs with haiku perhaps 7 or 8 years ago, but became increasingly frustrated with the variance in translations of the same poems, my inability to arrange the combinations into a coherent order, and near-total ignorance of the cultural aspects and meanings of the verses.

I owned many of Bill Higginson’s books, most well thumbed and note-laden, and when his name appeared during one of my Internet searches, a bulb just went off. I emailed him in 2002, he graciously responded, and over the next 4 years, after journeys down many side canyons, we assembled the project that became Butterfly Dreams. It remains the single accomplishment in my life that I am most proud of, and it would simply not exist were it not for Bill.

Pity Bill!
I’m sure he will receive credits in his next life for his patience with me during this crafting.

Bill: “This combination simply doesn’t fit together—the haiku you quoted is incorrectly translated and when fixed, makes no sense with this image.”

Michael: “But the subject matter is such a good match…can’t we use the incorrect translation?”

Bill: “Groan” (reaching for Maalox).
And so on and so on.

Bill always won those discussions, and rightfully so. He was patient with my ignorance, but unyielding in his pursuit of accuracy and purity in his chosen genre. (And no, we did not use any “incorrect” translations…)

Bill passed away this afternoon. His wife, partner, and fellow-poet Penny Harter was at his side, singing to him as he left. May we all be so blessed.

White Balance

Copy and paste the link below or click on the post title "White Balance" to go to a short article about White Balance:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/6455684/White-Balance

Bracketing in the digital age

Growth rarely seems to be one single epiphany, rarely a situation where one is suddenly faced with a new reality and yells, “AHA”!!! Archimedes notwithstanding, I think artistic growth is more often a series of small steps that delivers us to a new way of looking at our world.

When I was a beginning photographer, I would bracket (making multiple exposures at different camera settings) extensively, hoping desperately that at least one exposure would correctly translate my vision onto film. My wastebasket overflowed, but I learned eventually how to create a “good” exposure. (As long as I could remember which settings I had used for each image). As my skills increased, I found myself looking with disdain at the process of bracketing, seeing it as a sign of a shooter not really confident in his or her understanding of light and exposure. It was a great source of satisfaction to “nail” an exposure and having the confidence not to bracket. Seems pretty shallow in retrospect, eh?

Interesting that now as a digital photographer, I find myself bracketing probably more than ever. I no longer bracket for general exposure, the histogram having pretty much eliminated that worry. I do bracket for very specific exposure, such as the images I placed on the blog previously, in which the color range could not be captured with one exposure. I also bracket for dynamic range, where image contrast far exceeds what I can capture with one exposure. I also bracket for depth-of-field, using layer masks in Photoshop to blend images together in order to increase apparent depth-of-field. And of course, I bracket composition, often choosing my favorite image after the fact, on the computer screen.

“What goes around…”

P.S. The attached image has nothing to do with bracketing. I'm just having trouble letting go of summer. Sorry.