Eliciting Cooperation–A Critical Photographic Technique
©Bert Gildart: Of course my daughter and granddaughter aren’t really interested in anything in the frozen stream; rather they are making the photographer happy by pretending to see something we discovered on Thanksgiving Day.
People add interest to your photographs, but trying to elicit cooperatioin is a skill that must be acquired. Family members can be the most challenging!
What Angie is doing then, is passing on skills learned while a young girl to her daughter Halle, and those are to appease the photographer and try and make the picture better by feigning interest in the subject at hand.
FARMER’S ALMANAC
In this case the subject is a small creek located near the Isaac Walton Inn immediately adjacent to Glacier National Park. Interestingly, winter doesn’t seem to be taking hold here, and that goes contrary to the predictions offered by the Farmer’s Almanac. On August 24 I reported that the Almanac said this was going to be a rough winter and, of course, that still could be.
But here in the mountains of Montana that doesn’t quite appear to be the case, despite the frozen stream which Angie and Granddaughter Halle are studying so intently.
Despite the appearances of this stream, winter in Montana's Flathead Valley is long overdue
Actually, obtaining cooperation from subjects is a good skill for photographers to acquire, and in my next two posts (come back on Wednesday and Friday) I’m going to discuss some of the techniques I’ve used on images that have been very well published. One of the images, in fact, has been published over a dozen times. Another of the images was syndicated overseas by the United States Information Agency, an American agency that has bought many stories from me over the years.
LACK COOPERATION FROM FAMILY?
Then, next Monday I’ll be posting photographs that accompanied a story I wrote for Smithsonian Magazine. So many stories about nature can be depressing–because the outlook for so many aspects of natural world is now so grim. But not so for the subjects of this story, which will describe the return of the elephant seal, a conservation milestone.
So stay tuned and log in for some materials that I think you find interesting. And by the way, why didn’t Halle and Angie lift their heads a little higher? Well, I tried, but who can ever get family members to cooperate?
That’s a subject I wish one of my photographer friends would address. Post it and I guarantee you’ll have a least one reader.
THIS TIME LAST YEAR AND THE YEAR BEFORE:
Pileated Woodpeckers: It it Hector or Hortense?
Tarpon Springs, Florida (Nov 06)
