Audrey's Films

I wasn't actually sure if I'd seen any of Audrey Hepburn's films, so I hought I'd make a list of her big ones. Here it is, courtesy of Wikipedia's entry on her:

Roman Holiday
Sabrina
Ondine
War and Peace
Funny Face
Paris When It Sizzles
Love in the Afternoon
Green Mansions
The Unforgiven
The Children's Hour
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Charade
My Fair Lady (ah, there's one I've seen! Apparently the role nearly went to Julie Andrews)
How to Steal a Million
Robin and Marian (with Sean Connery; gonna have to see if the library's got this)
The Nun's Story
Two for the Road
Wait Until Dark
Bloodline
They All Laughed

Starting out

I can never think of a clever way to lead in to posting my thoughts on these things, so I'll just jump right to it.

Chapter 1

I loved how the author started the book off, talking about Ella, the Baroness van Heemstra. In the first two paragraphs, we begin to gain a little more understanding of this woman who was Audrey Hepburn's mother:

"Thanks to the composure of the Dutch baroness, her eight- and four-year-old sons could face the heavy weather cheerfully. But if she did not hold their hands tightly, the wind might easily sweep the children overboard. Better to take them inside for hot chocolate (pg. 1)."

What an interesting first glimpes into the Baroness! We learn she was well traveled, she had two sons. She had great composure and a calm head, but an awareness of the world around her. And while it seems she might not mind this storm (mild in comparison with others she has weathered) it's clear that she cares for her children so, without alarming them, she takes them inside for hot chocolate. It's not until page 5 that the "newborn daughter" arrives on the scene and we don't get her name until page 10 that we get her name: Audrey Kathleen Ruston.

While I was reading that first segment, I found myself a little impatient to start hearing about Audrey Hepburn.. However, in retrospect, I think that this was a great beginning! This is the scene building that is important necessary for understanding the relationship that Audrey and her mother would have.

So much information is smashed into these first few pages. Pages explaining the sad relationships that the Baroness had with her two husbands, culminating in the second abandonment (pg. 14) where one day Joseph Ruston, the Baroness's second husband, just walked away.

Chapter 2

Here we read about the effects of ever heating politics had on Audrey's family. In 1939, as things between England and Germany heated up, Ella and Audrey sought refuge in neutral Holland. And, while war had officially been declared, few Dutch people worried, that is until April 1940 when Nazis invaded Denmark and Norway.

Then, May 1940, Holland fell and the German occupation was more than just a distant sort-of threat. "Over the next ten months, the van Heemstra bank accounts, securities and personal jewelry were confiscated. Secure in their wealth for centuries, they now saw almost everything taken away (pg. 21)." With anti-English bias growing, to protect Audrey - a British, English speaking citizen, Ella had Audrey become fluent in Dutch and enrolled her in school under the name of Edda van Heemstra.

During the years, 1940 to 1945, living in Holland became a nightmare. Threats were broadcast daily, German attacks were common-place. Everything was rationed. Audrey saw first-hand the atrocities of the Nazi occupants.

"Families with babies, little children being hauled into meat wagons, wooden vans with just a slat at the top, and all those faces staring out at you," Audrey recalled later, listing snapshot-memories of those deported from Holland to concentration camps. "I knew the cold clutch of human terror all through my early teens: I saw it, felt it, heard it -- and it never goes away. You see, it wasn't just a nightmare: I was there, and it all happened (pg. 23)."

As winter came, things only got worse. As food and fuel became more and more scarce, "the Nazis calmly watched the Dutch people starve to daeth as all available food was diverted to German soldiers (pg. 30)."

But the spirit of the Dutch was unconquerable. There were had "black performances", to cheer the Dutch people. Audrey loved to dance and choreographed her own, amateur routines. She, and other performers, took messages and money to and for the Dutch Underground. It's chilling to read about the bravery of these people, taking such chances in hopes of working toward a better future.

I thought the author did a great job not throwing any negative slant on the Baroness's reticence. It was simply part of who she was, a result of her upbringing and life experiences. Yet, from her actions we can clearly see that she loved Audrey greatly. They survived the Nazi occupation and went on to volunteer as staffers for the homes of wounded veterans. By 1946, things in Holland were returning to some semblance of normalcy and Audrey's love of dance brought her out of the depression she'd fallen into. The Baroness supported her daughter in her dream. She took a job cleaning floors so that Audrey could attend dancing school.

Chapter 3

Audrey threw herself into dancing, but 17yrs is too old to begin training for professional dance and the malnutrition during her formative years was too much to overcome. Yet, she didn't give up on it completely. Instead, she opted for theater gigs that allowed her to dance. This opened up opportunities to get noticed, and (as we all know) she was!

New Book!

Woo! Today I'll start reading my book :) Looking forward to the discussions!

New Year; New Book

Looks like Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn will be our next book. I'm thinking that a start-date of about Jan. 15 sounds like that will give us enough time to finish out the holidays and get copies of the book and be ready to go. What do you think?

More Movement

I'm still playing around with what happens when you photograph music. It's a fun game.



Did we come to a consensus on if we're doing The Good Earth or Enchantment?

Choosing a New Book

So, I know we've all but chosen The Good Earth for our next book, but can I suggest that we consider Enchantment: the life of Audry Hepburn anyway? Apparently she was part of the Dutch resistance in WWII, and carried secret messages in her ballet slippers & got caught & put on a German truck one time, but escaped, and it just sounds interesting.

Shutter Games

After studying aperture in action, I wanted to play with shutter spped, but it took me a while to find the right moment. And then wouldn't ya know it, I didn't have my tripod. But we were at the park, and it was beautiful, and Monkey's orange hoodie was awesome against the late fall colors, so I ran with it.



Lesson #1: Bring the tripod. I'm considering tossing mine in the trunk on a semi-permanent basis. I sure wished I had it today! Not for everything, but it would have been nice for some.

Lesson #2: Mind the exposure. My camera tells me if the exposure is "right," but today it was telling lies, and a bunch of them are overexposed. Doesn't seem to have that problem with underexposing.

1/20th of a second. Just a touch of blur on Monkey, not too bad holding things steady. Exposure's not too shabby either, even though I hadn't realized the camera was telling stories just yet.




1/15th of a second. Composition's crummy. Swing pictures are SO difficult to compose! But there's potential, if I crop it right. Presuming that I can figure out how to make it look artistically blurry, rather than just out of focus.




1/8th second. In addition to the relatively long shutter speed, I was also moving the camera, tracking Monkey's movement. This one I just love so much about... but it's way overexposed. I'm going to try to photoshop it to correct that. Not the point of the exercise, but I want this picture!


Following motion works at quicker shutter speeds too (1/25), but it's not so dramatic. However, it's easier to get the subject in focus. And I like the shallow depth of field effect, where his feet are blurrier than his face. Of course, that's probably more that he was moving them right then, and less the photography.

Lesson #3: Angle makes a difference in the lens's perception of movement. These were both taken at 1/40th of a second, but there's a lot more blur in the one taken from the side. Though composition is much easier from the front.






Lesson #4: Freezing action will make it look inactive if it's not done right.


I like this one. It's at a pretty quick shutter: 1/30th. I like the tilted horizon. Composition is ok, though not anything special. Monkey's looking happy. But the sense of the moving swing is almost gone.

Gratuitous Cuteness:

Picking Back Up

Well, I've been wanting to get out and take some specific pictures for a long time now, and today I was finally able to do it. I put the camera in shutter-priority mode, and went to visit a fountain at one of our parks with my tripod. I've decided that I like the S-priority & A-priority modes better than the full manual, because the interface for adjusting them is a bit awkward, and it's very time consuming to do full manual. It'll be a feature to pay attention to when I'm buying my next camera.



It's a gorgeous day today, perfect early fall weather. That was part of why I wanted to go out today. That, and I knew they will be turning off the fountains sometime soon, and I wanted to get this project done. The very fast shutter speed froze the water; you can see droplets in a couple of places. The rainbow is a lovely bonus!



Here you can see better the droplets, with the very quick (1/1000) shutter.


1/800 of a second. Not a lot of difference, but you can see some in the center spray and the feet splashes to the far left, when compared to 1/1000.


1/640 of a second.


1/500 of a second. It's starting to be noticeably more like sheets of water at this point.


1/400 of a second.


1/320 of a second.


1/250 of a second.


1/200 of a second.


1/160 of a second. At this point, my batteries died. I still had just a couple of f-stops that I could have used, but the camera was done, and my "fresh" batteries were also dead. Bummer. In addition to not really finishing this, I also didn't get any pictures of the kids playing at the playground or in the fountain!

One thing that's interesting is that the little "icicles" of water running off the orangy part of the fountain get longer and longer the slower the shutter goes. I'm actually having a hard time deciding what I like best: 1/800 is very nice, but so are the last couple on the slowest shutter speeds. It's hard to say. I think I may do this again, but point the camera at some running kids and see what I can come up with there.

Gaining some Understanding

In the last paragraph of the introduction, the author comments that "For many readers, the material in this book will be brand new territory, while for others, the material may serve as an affirmation of what is already known (pg. 11)."  I'm deciding that I clearly fall in the first category.

When I got the book and flipped through the pages, I felt all inspired by the pages of dazzling picutres! Heck yes this is what I want my pictures to look like!! But, like Ritsumei, I've come to feel some frustration as well. Sure, this guy is professional and has been doing this photography thing for nearly 30 years, but come on! This is a How-To book! I read the first chapter, what's the hold up?

Heh.. turns out that before I could really do the simple exercises outlined in Chapter 1, I needed to become better acquainted with my camera. So, I went back and re-reread the applicable parts of the manual. And, though I originally thought I might get through this book without taking notes, I've since decided that they might actually come in handy :)  (my notebook is ever so much more handy a reference than always looking up the full manual online).

Happily, between the explanations from our book and the examples and commentary from the manual, I'm actually beginning to feel like I might be able to (eventually) master these manual settings! Hooray!

As it turns out, my camera doesn't seem to be capable of going completely manual in the way the exercise wants. I can play with the aperture, and I can play with the shutter speed, but I can't do both simultaneously. So, I set the aperture to F5.6 and the camera would automatically adjust the shutter speed to what worked. Since the ISO on the automatic setting was 100, I just left it there for all the pictures on this round.

Here is what the automatic setting does:

This one I adjusted the aperture to F5.6 and the shutter speed was 20.

While my camera doesn't allow me to tweak the shutter speed while I pick aperture settings, it does have an extra gizmo called "Exposure Compensation" that I can play with; the manual gives some hints as to what settings to use (EV). So, the adjusted picture was a little dark for my taste, so I adjusted the EV to +1 1/3 and this is what it looked like:

All this tweaking definitely does take longer, it may be some time before I use it to capture spontaneous things... but the hope is that eventually this knowledge will lodge itself in my brain well enough that I'll get quicker and know what the "right" exposure should be.

Still, in the meantime, this is way fun!

Understanding Exposure

Hurray for new books! I'm very excited about this book, though I'm finding the process of learning the manual controls is still frustrating. Not that I want much; just instant perfection! For some odd reason, my pictures didn't immediately look like the photographer-author's the instant I opened the book! Ah, well. I guess that I'll have to learn it a bit at a time, just like everyone else. (I need some smileys to add a winking one here. Forums have spoiled me, and ;p just isn't as cool as it once was.)

So, here's my picture, the one that's officially the "Setting and Using Your Camera on Manual Exposure (page 15)" picture. Only, I didn't use the aperture he suggested (f5.6) because my camera's meter said it didn't work. I used f3.5, with a shutter of 1/800, ISO 80. One thing I've come to suspect since starting to read this book is that I don't have a lot of aperture options. But that's OK. I'm still going to learn to use them to the best they've got for me!



First thoughts about manual mode: this takes longer than my programmable-auto setting. And it's hard to make it work inside. Hopefully, both of those things are problems that will go away with some practice.