My interview with photography professor Stephen Cysewski

Some time ago I had the privilege to ask professor and photographer Stephen Cysewski some questions. He was very gracious to include lots of details in his answers. Stephen Cysewski is Professor of Computer Applications, Emeritus at University of Alaska Fairbanks and has been living in Alaska since 1967.

Why do you take photographs?

Question: In your course you’re encouraging your students to answer the question: “Why do I take photographs?” I have also noticed that you’re creating “photographic scenarios” to help your students think through this question. What are some reasons why it is important to think about one’s intentions for taking a picture? Do these scenarios help your students think more before they shoot pictures?

Bare trees in Creamers Field in Alaska.

Photo by: Stephen Cysewski

All the photography techniques are a means to an end, that end is communication. Photography can be used for many different purposes, most students are too focused on “pretty” pictures and family memories. I am hoping to encourage students to find out the wide varieties of things that can be communicated with photography, ultimately I want people to find their own unique style that expresses their own perspective on the world.

Cameras change, the photographic problems remain the same, dynamic range, subject and camera movement, image quality, color or tonal accuracy, framing a scene, etc. By looking at scenarios you will develop a stable means of evaluating what went right and what went wrong and to be able to apply your hypothesis to any given camera that you are using. The same concepts apply to editing, a scenario allows you to think outside the context of specific software. What are the problems that you are trying to solve is the most important question, cameras and editing software are means to an end of solving problems. Using my Links page I try to expose the students to a wide variety of different photographs.

What are some simple photography concepts?

Question: What are some photography concepts your students understand and implement very quickly? In other words, what are some easy concepts that have a great impact in one’s photography?

The easiest concept and the most crucial and liberating is that you can take photographs of anything that makes you feel, good, bad, sad, happy, bored, angry; just take the photographs. Do not get stuck on only “pretty” pictures. If you could only use words to write poetry you would be pretty limited in your ability to communicate, the same idea applies to photography. Technique is only a means to an end. There are some awesome photographs that are technically messed up, there are many photographs that are technically excellent that are boring and forgettable. Technique is a means to an end, the end is the photograph.

What are some difficult photography concepts?

Question: On the other hand, what are the most difficult concepts for your students to understand and implement? And a follow on to that: what are some things that help them get better with the difficult things?

To evaluate and learn from your own photographs, to use them as a process for understanding both your motivation for taking photographs and as a method to learn to improve your technique.

How important is it to organize your photos

Question: I picked up another phrase from your course syllabus “If you do not organize your photographs you will be overwhelmed !”. How important do you think it is for a photographer to keep his/her pictures organized ? Do your students seem to grasp this truth right from the beginning?

Not in the beginning, it takes awhile to see your photographs as a reflection of yourself. If you do not have a method to re-experience your photographs you will not grow as a photographer. People need to think about organizing photographs, it is like creating a database, it is a creative and abstract process. You can get really messed up with time, subject, technique, quality of the images, archiving, and they can work at cross-purposes. It is important to develop your own style and think deeply about what you are doing.

How do you organize your photos?

Question: How do you organize your own pictures? Or to use a more technical term: what is your photography workflow? What software do you use and how do you back up your pictures?

On the computer, for each year, I create a yearly folder, 2009 Photographs. Inside that folder I create three folders:

2009 Photographs
  2009 Original Photographs
  2009 Current Projects
  2009 Finished Projects

In the 2009 Original Photographs I create a new folder each time I add photographs to my computer

2009 Original Photographs
  100909Photographs
  010209Photographs

I might add a qualifier like 070909Kenai to a folder. I do, after a month or so, a selecting process on the original photographs, I delete the junk, but that is a very liberal interpretation of junk.

I import everything into Adobe Lightroom and use it to tag my photographs. I will also write the tags to the images using Adobe Lightoom.

I will then select and export photographs that I want to work on to the current projects folder, when I am done selecting, editing, and sharing, I move the folder to the Finished Projects Folder.

When Adobe first came out with Photoshop Album it was a liberation, I am now fully committed to Lightroom and rarely even open Photoshop.

I back up to external hard disks and keep one of the hard disks in a different location. All my photographs also go to the Arctic and Polar Regions Photo Archive and the University of Fairbanks Rasmusen Library. My Tacoma and Seattle Photographs go to the Tacoma Public Library photo archives. I send a hard disk up each year to the archive and they are backed up to a super computer in the university.

What photography resources do you recommend?

Question: What books would you recommend for someone wanting to get better at photography?

I have a large collection of photo books. What I recommend for people is to go to a large bookstore, Barnes and Nobles, Borders etc and to browse the photo book area, not just technical stuff, but photo books also. I also recommend getting RSS feeds from a large variety of photo resources. I have created a web log of photographs that inspire me, it is split into two similar blogs. The URL’s are
http://wanderingphotography.blogspot.com and http://diffractionlimited.blogspot.com

Stephen Cysewski’s resources

www.wanderinginalaska.com
www.wanderinginamerica.com
www.wanderinginasia.com

Essentials for organizing your digital photos

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Excellent Lightroom and Picasa alternative. If you need a cheaper and simpler photo manager then ACDSee Photo Studio for Mac (save 20% until Feb 15) or ACDSee Pro for Windows (save $20 until Feb 15) is my preferred solution for organizing all my media. It has a very fast browser, great image editing and it's simple to use.

If you do a lot of image editing like I do, I recommend using Adobe Lightroom Classic CC via the annual Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Lightroom has best photo editing capabilities even though it comes with a steeper learning curve. If you do image editing, Adobe Lightroom is my favorite.

I recommend Backblaze Cloud Backup for affordable & reliable unlimited cloud backup. I have been using Backblaze for backing up all pictures & videos for more than 5 years now. All my invaluable digital memories are safe and secure. This is the best solution especially if you have a large quantity of media files.

Use a reliable & affordable external hard drive for backing up everything on your computer. It is absolutely essential for keeping all your memories backed up and safe.

Start organizing now using detailed, step-by-step instructions and videos:
Personal Coaching (closed) Independent Course Private Lessons
Reference book Basics book Picasa book

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