Introducing myself: Mabel Amber
I received an invitation from Pixabay to answer a couple of questions, about myself and my photography. It is an honour
Update: since publishing this story (June 8, 2018) my Pixabay portfolio contains 3797 images of which 117 are Editor’s Choice. Downloads so far number 8,059,324 — Some month ago I switched to videos.
Who are you? What are your interests? How and when did you begin to make photos?
I am an artist, creativity is my heart and soul, for many years I sat at my drawing board wielding pen and ink to express my ideas in drawings and in writing. At some point in time the camera started taking over and by the by the drawing pen and the ink jar were left to gather dust. I can’t exactly say “why “ — I guess my artist’s soul called for a new phase. Anyhow, my very first photo depicted a Shetland pony in a field, somewhere in Holland, taken with an Agfa Click II. My grandfather found this camera, in a brown, shiny leather case, by the side of the road to Schiphol Airport, probably in 1962. I was twelve. He seemed very pleased to give it to me.
It would have been nice to post the picture of the Shetland pony, but it’s deeply buried in one (?) of the many stashes filled with old stuff in my flat and storage box.
Later in the sixties I purchased an Ilford Sportsman — my friend encouraged me to set up my own darkroom for developing and printing my photos — I went through with that and had to seriously instruct my family members to NOT touch the shower room light switch (strangely located outside the shower room), for obvious reasons — this cubicle of two by one and a half meters, having been transformed into a darkroom for the duration of a couple of hours. I recall the immense thrill I felt, when the picture began showing up on the sensitive paper, floating in the tray filled with a developer solution. This thrill by the way, never waned — it was still there when, some twenty three years later, I repeated my dark room adventure, with renewed vigour and professional gear. The streets were my hunting ground, I roamed them for hours on most days, shooting people, my Nikon FM2 around my neck.
However, it had to happen and In 2007 I made the break…cut the analog cord and went digital — the first thing I noticed was the immense amount of money that stayed in my purse, without the need for film rolls, the need for chemicals and above all… the constant need to replenish the expensive boxes of photo paper, which somehow were always emptied too soon. My first digital camera was a Canon Ixus 950 IS. The photo below (Amsterdam, Dam Square), was taken with that little silver colored cam.
Somehow I lost it and it’s successors were a CanonG9 and shortly afterwards my first DSLR, a Nikon D90 (plus a 18–105 lens).
The following scenes were shot in Amsterdam, city center, from 2009 through 2013, using said cameras.
Oh, did I mention I actually took serious courses in photography for some three years? Well, I did, high scores too (pardon the self promotion), but I dropped out before getting anything official on paper. The “Studio Photography” bit got on my nerves. So far so good.
(All of the photos above are copyright MabelAmber, ARR)
Where do you find such great ideas to make your works? What or who inspires you?
Since I started posting on Pixabay nature has been my main source of inspiration; now and then I shoot objects, and over the past few months I have been feeling the urge to return to my erstwhile favorite theme: people.
The photos below were shot in Amsterdam and immediate vicinity, with a Nikon D750, a Nikon D90 and a Sony CyberShot DSC-RX100, 2017/2018. All are published on my Pixabay portfolio.
I see my Pixabay portfolio as a diary in pictures — when I set out, somewhere in the early afternoon, I go wherever my feet, or the wheels of my bike take me, open minded, susceptible to anything that comes my way.
It feels rewarding when the members of the vibrant community receive my photos with kind comments and their likes and faves, which bump your pictures on the “popular” pages.
One of the charms of creating stock photos, for Pixabay and other stock photo sites, is the freedom of theme; it doesn’t necessarily have to be great dramatic panoramas in some faraway region, or stunning shots of rare phenomena, or incredible macros of beetles and bees, the clue is in the *usefulness*, thus a subject which at first thought is unlikely to ever be in anyone’s focus, like detail of woven cane, is very welcome on Pixabay where users search for a huge diversity of themes to illustrate a no less huge and divers quantity of themes on sites, blogs and books:
…. or three little teddies reading a big book…
…. and too whims of your imagination won’t be refused….
But, like I said, people are beginning to populate my “diary”, for a couple of months now. Those shots are invariably taken from behind (because I cannot supply model releases, so anonymity is more or less required) — one of my Pixabay contacts termed these pictures “your cheerful collection of back portraits”.
The people photos below were taken in Amsterdam, with a Nikon D750 and a telephoto lens, 2018. CC0 waiver attached. They are published on my Pixabay portfolio.
Among all your works which is your favorite and why?
I can be brief about that: all my pictures are my favorites or none. Because each and every one is my brainchild.
How important is Photoshop in your final works?
Here I would prefer to take the question away from the brand name and instead talk about the importance of “editing”. And that, editing, is very crucial. Although no one should think you can change a bad photo into a good one by running it through an editing program. NO editing can EVER achieve that, turning mud into crystal clear water, forget it.
I find that most of my shots SOOC (Straight Out Of Camera) are, well, okay, but they need that extra boost, mostly in the way of contrast, vividness and sparkle. Editing also adds your personal, unique touch to the image. Now I am not talking about endless fiddling with an image till you edit it to bits. For me editing consists of those aforementioned steps: tweaking contrast, boosting the colors and adding detail and clarity. People photos need to be changed to monochrome; there the color somehow takes away the tension (exceptions permitting).
For that matter, editing photos is not just a thing of the digital era, there was a lot of “editing” or rather, manipulation, going on in the analog days. Take the choice of film, the choice of the film developer, the choice of photo paper, the insertion of filters in the enlarger, dodging and burning, tricks like pseudo-solarisation and the use of toners. To name just a few processes which could influence the actual image on its journey from the unexposed film to the final print. And then there was the rest of the “manipulative” activities such as spot retouching and negative retouching as well as adding color to a print. Those were (and are) laborious and time consuming tasks, requiring a great deal of skill. Really nothing like operating a couple of ready made sliders in the editor. And here too, it appears there is nothing new under the sun, they found a method for removing people from photos (to sometimes insert someone else) only a few decades after photography had made its entrance. Just google “Ethics in Photo Editing”, a great read.
What is the one thing you want to know about photography when you just starting taking pictures?
Get the basics right!
And that is all about iso, shutter speed, aperture and how they interact with each other. Those are the three pillars that photography rests on. Don’t let your mind drift away into visions of the great and awesome pictures showing stunning landscapes or staggering scenes in wonderful cities that you will take, making your friends’ jaws drop. First of all you need to be able to take just plain pictures of plain, every day subjects that anyone could take, only then… with the overall exposure just fine, no noise anywhere, your seaside photos should have arrow straight horizons (please people, even a slightly crooked horizon on that blue sea is an unforgivable crime!), no lurking artifacts, the colors should be pleasing to the eye, no dreadful things like chromatic aberration, no over-editing, the pic should be well composed and… not unimportant… sharp. Also: I recommend you carry out these beginner operations without making use of that little green “auto” button (assuming your camera has a “manual” option — the same goes for focus, first learn to focus the manual way). Then, after you have mastered form you can gradually allow yourself to start thinking about content, you know, the “awesome” bit...
Mabel Amber
Check out my portfolio on Pixabay: Mabel Amber
