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Quick Takes: Eddie Soloway - Photographing the Essence of a Subject

© Eddie Soloway Loading...

© Eddie Soloway

"For this day-into-night transition my aim was to capture the beautiful midnight blues and the ethereal quality of the light. A five-second...Read More

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We asked nature photographer and photography instructor Eddie Soloway to share some of the ideas that inspire his imaginative images. Here's the second of a three-part series.

Attempting to capture the essence of a place will always be just that: an attempt. Essence is subjective.

"I once showed a series of photographs and paintings to a class," Eddie Soloway says. "All the images were beautiful, but in those in which there was a more universal subject matter—let's say, waves in the ocean—more people could connect. But if somebody went down his own path and interpreted a place in a very different way, fewer people connected with it. More people seem to relate to pictures that have familiar elements."

So if one of your goals is to make photographs that resonate with the greatest number of people, consider that the more universal the subject, or the experience, the more the essence will be recognized and appreciated.     

One of Eddie's techniques for essence images is to simplify the photograph. "When we make a photograph of a familiar place or a place we especially relate to, sometimes we try to put too much into the image." Which can be natural when the place offers a lot of choices. "You could be on the shore of a lake, and there's a clump of reeds and gentle waves coming in, maybe some fog in the distance. Any one of those elements can very simply convey the essence."

The process of making choices implies contemplation. Whether it's a new place he's exploring or familiar territory he's returned to, Eddie tends to first observe, then think about what he's seeing and experiencing. "I'll slow down and figure it out a little bit before I start shooting. I want to get a feeling for the place and think about how it makes me feel to be there.