Thursday, November 25, 2010
Sunday, November 07, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Still LIfe I
I like this image alot; it works better in color than black and white, I think. Color seems to bring out a richness in the colors of the antique wineskin that are difficult to bring out in black and white.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
A fun little outtake taking during the still life shooting I was doing yesterday. I'd been wanting to shoot this little vase filled with cherries but cherry season is long over but cherry tomatoes are ripe and abundant right now.
The black and white version has quite a different feel to it that really differentiates the red and orange tomatoes.
The black and white version has quite a different feel to it that really differentiates the red and orange tomatoes.
End of Summer Dahlias
Continuing with my black and black still life work, these nearly black dahlias seemed like a natural against black seamless. I was pleased with the definition in the deep shadows here as well as with the rather broad tonal range.
Film Profile - modified Agfa 100 film with increased and hardened grain.
Filtered with 50% yellow filter before toning with grey green and brown passes of Platinum toning washes.
Film Profile - modified Agfa 100 film with increased and hardened grain.
Filtered with 50% yellow filter before toning with grey green and brown passes of Platinum toning washes.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Grass Covers All
A little memoriam for co-workers and other brave souls that died in the 9/11 tragedy. The works of Sandburg's poem "I am The Grass" seemed appropriate in a way both melancholy and hopeful.
At any rate, I tried some new processing techniques here to establish baseline / sea level black and whites. I think they worked pretty well but will require some use and experimentation to make regularly useful.
Composition Note:
I really liked the way this composed up in the view finder. Surprisingly (or maybe not), the way the angles fall on the main left and right blades of grass at the top burst also fall very close to the harmonious golden section diagonals. More interesting is how nicely they line up with the trunk and branches of the tree as well. Fun.
Mother Nature is the first and greatest Geometer, always.
Taken with the f1.4 50mm on the 20D so effective focal length of about 80mm.
At any rate, I tried some new processing techniques here to establish baseline / sea level black and whites. I think they worked pretty well but will require some use and experimentation to make regularly useful.
Composition Note:
I really liked the way this composed up in the view finder. Surprisingly (or maybe not), the way the angles fall on the main left and right blades of grass at the top burst also fall very close to the harmonious golden section diagonals. More interesting is how nicely they line up with the trunk and branches of the tree as well. Fun.
Mother Nature is the first and greatest Geometer, always.
Taken with the f1.4 50mm on the 20D so effective focal length of about 80mm.
Sunday, September 05, 2010
I had my little Panasonic GF-1 with the 20mm (40mm equivalent) f`.7 lens on it and no tripod, so no messing around with wide angle lenses, polarizers, long exposures with very small apertures, or graduated ND filters. Still, I'm fairly happy with this turned out. Took out some boats and buoys in Photoshop to cut down on the distraction in the water. If I had it to do over again, I'd probably have shot with about a 28 to 35mm focal length to get more sky; I'd polarize it and use a true grad ND and a small aperture to get a nice long exposure to even out the texture of the water. Of course then the ducks wouldn't be in focus. One makes the image one can given the tools, the light and the scene one has, I suppose. At any rate, kind of fun.
Thursday, September 02, 2010
Yellow Tuberous Begonia
Found this blossom in one of the hanging baskets at Pickering Farm in Issaquah Washington one evening last month around dusk.
This image was taken with my Panasonic GF-1 and the Leica f1.7 20mm lens (40 mm equivalent on a 35mm format camera). Shooting with this lens is interesting: when the focus is good the image is amazing. Unfortunately I'm still learning the DOF prisms and close focusing distances for the wide apertures on this particular lens, so this image isn't quite all I had hoped it would be in that department.
It's also been a while since I did one of my full on flower portraits so this one took a bit longer than usual to process and still needs a little more work. I'm still working through whether I like substantial sharpening in LR before moving into PS and before the b/w conversion. The jury is still out on that method and this image is a prime example of why: it seems both oversharpened in some areas and somewhat soft in others. The grain seems a bit stronger than usual when sharpening is done in this manner as well. It's hard make a decision based on just this image because of the DOF and close focusing distance issues in the actual RAW file. More testing is needed but, for the moment at least, I'm leaning away from much more than a minimal pass at sharpening in LR at this point.
From a compositional point of view it's a little static. It *feels* like you should turn the image clock-wise ninety degrees but then the light direction gets non-intuitive. For now, I'm leaving a large chunk of negative space off to the right to balance the composition and to give some breathing room to the little buds heading off to the right and bottom.
Still not a bad image at small sizes. I'll be doing a little more work on this image (mainly some dodging and burning) but I'm not sure a rework from the roots up would do much to improve it overall, given the problems with the DOF prism and relative softness at the center of the blossom.
This image was taken with my Panasonic GF-1 and the Leica f1.7 20mm lens (40 mm equivalent on a 35mm format camera). Shooting with this lens is interesting: when the focus is good the image is amazing. Unfortunately I'm still learning the DOF prisms and close focusing distances for the wide apertures on this particular lens, so this image isn't quite all I had hoped it would be in that department.
It's also been a while since I did one of my full on flower portraits so this one took a bit longer than usual to process and still needs a little more work. I'm still working through whether I like substantial sharpening in LR before moving into PS and before the b/w conversion. The jury is still out on that method and this image is a prime example of why: it seems both oversharpened in some areas and somewhat soft in others. The grain seems a bit stronger than usual when sharpening is done in this manner as well. It's hard make a decision based on just this image because of the DOF and close focusing distance issues in the actual RAW file. More testing is needed but, for the moment at least, I'm leaning away from much more than a minimal pass at sharpening in LR at this point.
From a compositional point of view it's a little static. It *feels* like you should turn the image clock-wise ninety degrees but then the light direction gets non-intuitive. For now, I'm leaving a large chunk of negative space off to the right to balance the composition and to give some breathing room to the little buds heading off to the right and bottom.
Still not a bad image at small sizes. I'll be doing a little more work on this image (mainly some dodging and burning) but I'm not sure a rework from the roots up would do much to improve it overall, given the problems with the DOF prism and relative softness at the center of the blossom.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Suddenly this sort of work feels familiar yet so far away at the same time. I understand this image now - what makes it work and why, what I'd like to do with it and where I'd like to take it. At the same time it feels so far away from my work of just a few months ago. A lot of miles traveled lately - and a lot of energy expended to move out of the familiar and the comfortable. Now my skills need to catch up with my vision again - time to get busy and start learning again and move on from making more of the same sorts of stuff.
This was, I think, some sort of shaft for carrying munitions to the upper floors of the big concrete structure at Fort Worden near Port Angeles, Washington. Now that nearly all the machinery has been pulled out, the windows taken out and the entire structure left open to the air, it's a playground of light and shadow.
Taken during the TME Whidbey Island Workshop 2010.
This was, I think, some sort of shaft for carrying munitions to the upper floors of the big concrete structure at Fort Worden near Port Angeles, Washington. Now that nearly all the machinery has been pulled out, the windows taken out and the entire structure left open to the air, it's a playground of light and shadow.
Taken during the TME Whidbey Island Workshop 2010.
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