Putting Lyrics to Pictures

Seeing only dark shapes
Waving in the rain
The streetcar pulls away
I'm alone
The street lamp has burned out

Poem: ©2011 David W. Sumner
Photo: ©2010 David W. Sumner

Back to Basics

Expose for the highlights, compose for the shadows.

I'm still in my back-to-the-basics mode. I've been shooting with my all manual cameras and avoiding my auto focus/auto exposure gear. It's been nice: slow and meditative.

I've been thinking of the basic elements of composition, or at least the elements I favor and consider vital to a good photograph. I'll talk more about that later. But what I'm finding, and of course this is going to sound utterly obvious, is that photography is a lot like cooking: With a few choice ingredients you can create one of the most delicious and satisfying dishes you have ever tasted.

It doesn't take much to make a really good photograph: A few choice elements and a certain amount of visual balance and you have makings of a most satisfying image.

Photo: ©1987 David W. Sumner

With Liberty and Justice for All...

Natalie Morace:

"The American flag makes me think of the past, and the changing meaning it has for people through the decades."


"I wanted to have it in my room, for I found it to hold a nostalgic feeling of a previous US."


"In a way the flag is everywhere around us, but on a wall it is less of a representation of our country and more of a work of art and a representation of the people in the country!"

Photos: ©2011 David W. Sumner

My Last Roll of Kodachrome

Photo: ©2011 David W. Sumner

Never a Truer Statement

"It is essential for the photographer to know the effect of his lenses. The lens is his eye, and it makes or ruins his pictures. A feeling for composition is a great asset. I think it is very much a matter of instinct. It can perhaps be developed, but I doubt it can be learned. However, to achieve his best work, the young photographer must discover what really excites him visually. He must discover his own world."

- Bill Brandt

Photo: ©2009 David W. Sumner

Seeking Stillness

When I go out shooting it is most often by myself. I like the solitude I find in working a scene into an image. Even if I'm on a crowded street I can find myself so completely focused on my subject that I'm unaware of the chaos around me. In those situations I make my image and quickly move on. I don't want to get wrapped up in the social frenzy. I want to get to that next scene that seems to communicate only to me.

One day while shooting in the Financial District on a weekday, I was about to release the shutter when I heard a voice that seemed far away calling "What are you taking a picture of?" It repeated over and over. But I was fixed on my subject and never made the connection between the voice and what I was doing.

After I made the image I lowered the camera, looked over my shoulder and there was a woman in business dress with a brief case looking off in the direction I had been focused on still loudly asking "What are you taking a picture of?" She was right in my face. While I was working I had no sense of her being there except for that little far off voice.

I had no response. I was dazed. I was not at all in her world. I was working my craft as a solitary pursuit much the same way a writer does. I simply turned and walked away. I was shaken and rattled into someone else's reality and I didn't want to be there.

When I'm out on the street working I'm seeking a stillness, an opportunity to find a connection with some interesting aspect of my environment. I'm patient and wait for people or cars to move out of the scene. I'm focused. Sometimes patience and focus aren't enough and I don't make the image. It's something for another day. But persistence in this approach to working usually pays off.

People have said about some of my images that they possess a "timeless quality." I suppose those that do, appear that way because of my efforts to eliminate certain elements that may place the scene in a very specific time. What ever the case may be you can be sure that my images are definitely of the here and now. Maybe it's the stillness that seems to freeze time even more solidly than the fraction of a second it takes to commit the image to film.

Photo: ©2011 David W. Sumner

Go After it...

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."
- Jack London

Photo: ©2011 David W. Sumner