Bokeh Lights

As usual I had big plans which didn't quite make it to fruition. With holiday distractions I managed just a single quick session of messing with bokeh lights. Since it doesn't seem we have a topic for this coming week, I may try again with both bokeh lights and DIY lights.... I did enjoy the subjects tremendously so I am hoping to get more time to play before we take all the decorations down.

bokeh lights

I wasn't sure about this bokeh light thing.... I think I took it too literally or maybe too seasonally. I only just now looked up a definition of it and there is a reference to it being not just out of focus lights, which was what I targeted, but any area of the photo that is outside the depth of field. In retrospect, I think this bokeh effect is what I'd been trying to do when I was obsessed a couple of years ago with over-exposed sunshine behind objects.

A friend pointed out that bokeh lights would be fun after a hookah pipe... might make these pictures more interesting, eh?

Forgive the indulgence with this one below...I bothered my frogs so much by splashing lights around their tank I felt obligated to use one of the photos. That's Whisper, my shy one.

Holiday Season & DIY Lighting

My story is much the same as yours ~ involved, busy, so didn't get around to getting my camera out until I was getting ready to close down for the night. However when I finally got started, I had a blast!  As I told you yesterday, I did have a plan and as it turns out, Patrick was totally in to my idea as well. We had a lovely time trying a bunch of different lighting options, but the winner I have posted below was a combo laser & LED flash light..... FUN! Might have to revisit this idea again....

DYI lighting

 As you already know the story of the "shot that got away," I'll tell the story about this grainy view below. The night had gotten away from me and despite my intention to stay in the game I hadn't come up with one project for DYI lighting, no matter how much the concept fascinated me. I spent the evening with my husband and thoughts of photography slipped away.

It wasn't until I was in bed that I remembered I need to make a picture!!!!!! So I jumped up (startling hubby), snatched the camera, & posed, under the covers with my cell phone for light, to click the shutter. That's the story.

Beatles

Okay, in truth this photo has absolutely nothing to do with the Beatles, or even with beetles for that matter (I think the little guy is a fly of some description). Still, this is my pic for the week. I had been out walking and was truly surprised to see this critter making its way across the trail. In November we had weeks of 20 and 30 below zero weather. December has been between 40 & 50 degrees warmer than that (we've even had a thaw!). How this little fellow managed to survive is beyond me. At risk of looking like a crazy lady, I stood by this bug until the skier, seen in the tunnel, passed us. I didn't have the heart to stand by & let this trooper of a fly get squished. Though I sensed that it was near the end of its life, it deserved a dignified death. When I finally left and continued on my walk... I noticed another little fly laying in the snow. It's time had already passed.
     The whole thing reminded me of an evening walk in the first snow one winter in Cortland. As the snowflakes fell I strolled down a tree lined walkway. Spruce stood on both sides of this walk. I started down the path and was stilled by the silence a snowfall creates. I happened to notice something dark fall down from an overhanging spruce branch & sure enough a little black spider lay there in the snow. I figured the falling snow knocked this one to the ground and I picked it up and gently placed it on the trunk of the tree. I saved the little spider.
     I returned to the center of the pathway and continued my walk. Again, something dark fell right in front of me. Another spider had been knocked from the branches! I, dutifully, returned the spider to a tree trunk and then continued my walk.
     As I did I saw many dark little movements. Spiders, dozens of them, were being knocked down by the ever so gently falling snow. I stood there in awe.
    A feeling came over me of a stillness deeper even than that of a quieting snowfall. I saw that this is the cycle of things; this is the natural order. Beautiful things die. Everything that is born, dies. And I saw the futility of my desire to change outcomes. Humbled, I did not try to save another spider but simply kept walking along quietly as their witness. It was one of the most peaceful moments I have ever had.
     This picture may not provoke that depth of stillness, but that little fly crossing a snowy path reminded me of that end of the season of spiders. I do believe, though I only saw two flies, I did witness the end of the season of long-winged flies and the entrance to the season of stillness.

Before & After

Alas my life is not destined to be easy.  Since it is the festive, holiday time of year I decided early on in the week that I would snap a picture of our christmas tree (using manual settings, at night with no tripod to add to the challenge) as my before and do a cool photoshop technique I learned way back in June for my 'after' version.  Problem is that I can't remember how I did the technique!  I thought I wrote it down, but unfortunately I did not.  I thought I had saved the images that I practiced the technique on (so I could go back and rediscover them at a later date) but sadly, I didn't do that either.  So the technique is lost unless I can drag up the forgotten steps from the abyss of my brain or until I can find another source of instruction (if I could remember where I learned it from originally, life would be grand indeed)  As a result I am forced into a compromise situation.  I am in fact submitting my xmas tree pictures which show the use of a photoshop technique, but it is NOT the one I intended to use.  I guess they came out ok but I sure wish I could remember how to do that other technique...

(before) 

(after)

I got a little carried away playing with the various blending options so the image below is a direct result of too much messing when I should be in bed!  Weird, but interesting?





(after, after)

While trolling through my CD's earlier in search of the images I doctored back in June, I did come across an image I had of one of Ryan's dancer friends that I had doctored. I did not take this picture, she provided it to us, but it does sort of show the technique I was looking to repeat this week. Unfortunately it is much more dramatic and effective with landscapes/flowers/buildings - doesn't seem to work as well with people.  I think it is a great photo anyway...pretty impressive, huh?  Ah to be young again....

(before)

(after)

elementals

I'm going to make the claim, for the fun of it, that all 4 elements are represented below:

water 

(fairly obvious)

air 

(as in damn cold air)

earth 

(a little back story here: this tug was run aground by an intoxicated skipper last fall. he did get a DUI ticket for the occurrence)

fire 

(subtle)

fire 

(smokin')

4 Elements & Panning

Since it finally stopped raining here, I headed to the woods today to try to transform my brilliant idea for panning into a reality. Turns out, as it always seems to be with my photography, that my idea was a lot harder to make a reality than I anticipated. Normally Maci stays right with me on the trails but Orzo can be counted on to race all over the woods. I had illusions of catching him as he raced about, but of course today he stayed right with me. When he did venture off, it was always in a position that made panning impossible. Below is the best attempt of the many shots I tried to get. Clearly he is out of focus, but I liked the image anyway. Since it quickly became clear that my panning plans were going to be a flop, I decided to move over to the 4 elements topic and try that instead. I wasn't inspired at all (which is part of the reason I was doing panning) but I was getting desperate. I snapped the water picture below intending for it to be the first in a series of 4 individual images for each element. I took the model boat picture earlier in the day today, initially hoping to get a good panning shot of the fleet but they were finishing up just as I arrived.  It became "Wind" instead.  I took a few 'earth' pictures while out hiking, but nothing too inspirational, so I quickly lost my enthusiasm for the subject. So I am admitting defeat and simply submitting what I have thus far. I may revisit the panning topic again as I would love to catch Orzo mid-leap as he frolicks in the woods, looks just like a little deer..... Unfortunately nothing too inspirational this week.....

Gratitude & Photographer in the picture

Killing two birds with one stone here. While I used to love to ham it up in pictures when I was younger, age and self-consciousness has changed that position for me. Over recent years I find I am reluctant to put myself in front of the camera's often unflattering focus preferring instead to be the creator, not the subject. However, in keeping with both topics this week, I thought it would be appropriate to change that stance for this one instance. Given the various traumas in my life this Fall, I find I am feeling a lot of gratitute for my good health, the blessings that my family and friends provide me and the simple beauty of some peaceful time alone. Time to contemplate, replenish, rejoice.

gratitude

I wanted to re-do "smile," but just didn't get around to asking anyone to model for me. I was at a coffee shop & saw the cutest young woman, thought I could get "smile" & "coffee" all in one swoop! But a failure of nerve stopped me from asking her for permission (& there was no way to be discrete about lifting the camera...she was sitting right beside me!). So gratitude.

I am grateful for the snow, mountains, trees, & the sunrise

...and I am grateful for my little Moe.

smile 1.0

My husband, featured in the first picture below, took two days to give me permission to post this picture. It is my contribution to "smile," as it is about as close to a smile as anyone (besides me) might witness of my husband...smiling. It is possible that my husband has two expressions: stony face; and stony face. So. There you have it.

This is not related to the theme at all. I was shoveling the deck & there was a hole in the stack of snow on the rail (this photo is tweaked - seriously tweaked!)

Smile

While these photos are probably not technically what was intended by "Smile", I am taking a bit of artistic liscence and interpreting SMILE in my own fashion. Orzo behaves like a cat. We have discovered that he will chase a laser dot ALL OVER THE PLACE just like a cat. Up the walls, across the yard, under furniture. I keep waiting for him to wake up and realize that this is going no where, yet he continues to amuse. I do think he understands that I am the creator of this diversion, but he is happy to oblige regardless. I have been entertaining myself for days, not only smiling but totally belly-laughing. Seemed an appropriate submission for SMILE.

As a continuation of our tweaking conversation, I discovered that I am really bad at it! Turns out that taking the pic itself was a photographic challenge since I had to try to capture the laser dot and the fast moving dog in dim light (gloomy here today).  I tried unsuccessfully to lighten up these pics by tweaking but all I discovered is I really don't know how to do it properly!  No matter what combination I tried they came out too pixelated. I know there is a lesson in there somewhere but since my family is dancing from foot to foot waiting to be entertained, I will have to revisit the topic at a later date. Off I go!

tweakin'

The comparison between these shots is an exploration into the question: to tweak or not to tweak?

before

after

This may not be a very good photograph to use as an example. Although I like this picture, I find it hard to like. That's part of why I used it last week - it felt like a risk to put up a picture I was unsure whether anyone else would see value in.

In truth these are two separate shots, but they can still be used for this comparison (I must have not saved the original for the "after" shot, though normally that is my habit). Still, the natural lighting in both shots was the same as they were taken only seconds apart and the camera settings were identical. What they illustrate is the difference manipulating cropping, brightness, contrast, & gamma correct can make after the shot has been taken.

Coming to photography after decades of being a writer seems to make this potential issue of "to tweak or not to tweak" a non-issue for me. Editing, after all, can be a wildly magical process where the initial nugget of inspiration gets polished & brought to a shine. That shine is inherent in the original, couldn't come from anywhere except the original. Editing a photo feels like an integral process very much the same as editing a piece of writing.

If you don't like this photo then the differences between the two shots here are barely noticeable! Yet to me the "after" shot brings the viewer in. Just this movement of coming in, allows the picture go from "a picture of a dead leaf" to an invitation to meet an entity (albeit that entity happens to be a dead leaf!). Once cropped for this "invitation" the brightness was enhanced & contrast increased. The invitation to meet this entity is enhanced by allowing more detail to be delineated.

This is a subtle perspective, a picture of something v an invitation to meet someone, and it is likely that such subtleties exist merely in the eye of the beholder. Which, moving from the issue of to tweak or not to tweak, expands this exercise to the value of art regardless of editing!

Mastering the masters is a delicious exercise for our growth. To play with mimicking the work of others can be a fantastic way to try things for ourselves and extend & enlarge our awareness. More than editing, tweaking, or any academic knowledge, expanding awareness is what art, making it and viewing it, can do. To tweak or not to tweak... lay in the eye of the beholder. Art is a prayer that the eye of the beholder is ever maturing by risk of failure to find vision & voice.

Denis Oliver, master

I will put it right out front: I failed. And it is my favorite new thing to do. Okay... while failing may not be exactly new to me, enjoying the freedom to fail is a threshold I've crossed & am glad of it. In this particular case the failure comes in the form of not actually making much effort at all to create a new interpretation of the work of a master. I can't put his picture side by side with mine as an offering for comparison.

But, I can offer an exhibition or two by Denis Oliver (I didn't copy-n-paste his work into this blog as during my attempt to do so I received a kind message asking "please do not copy" and did NOT fail to honor it). What I allowed myself for this stage of the challenge is to start simply by letting his work inspire me, taking whatever effect it does.

The first link above is to Denis Oliver's "Nature" gallery. The first two pictures below were inspired by that gallery (particularly by "How Many Lifetimes" & "Skyflakes"). The second link is for the "Landscape" gallery and was the inspiration for the third submission.

I loved this challenge. I could not come anywhere close to reproducing/understanding how Oliver captures the sky in his landscape work. I really really want to make the claim that I just need a better camera! But that would defeat the pleasure of being a novice & flubbing. What I learned was to pay more attention to how the background looks when I'm working with shallow depths. And I had a serious lesson in the preparation (lifetime long?) for photography. When the sun came out & the clouds looked promising, I raced around town trying to find a location from which to shoot while we still had daylight! Photography, as the name implies, is light-written, but it also must be an art form controlled by the god Kronos!

I challenge myself to make a more in depth study of Oliver's work & in time, Kronos willing, I'll offer that side by side comparison.

DO NOT DENY IT

AS I REACH

ONCE, THEY SANG

Master the Master and Cool Colors

Well it has been an interesting adventure this week!  I can't say that I mastered the master (Andy Goldsworthy) but I certainly have come to appreciate how hard he must work at creating his ephemeral sculptures.  I tried to create several 'copy cat' versions and none came even remotely close to the reality I had envisioned.  Add that I then had to beautifully photograph said creation and it was all a bit much for me.  I did give it a whirl though and had fun trying a variety of different options.  Below is my closest rendition.  First photo below is obviously the master himself, second is my feeble copy.

To be totally honest I was so absorbed in trying to master a master this week, that I had pretty much decided I was going to completely ignore "Cool Colors".  Then the fates intervened.  I woke this morning to the most amazing pea-soup fog, thicker than I have seen for a very long time.  I dropped Kelly at school then raced home, got my camera and set off on a fog-filled photo journey.  While these may not in fact classify as cool colors, I wanted to share them anyway. I figure they are close enough? Cool and mysterious?  Cool and eerie?  Cool and misty?

seasonal warmth

Like you, I didn't tackle primary colors, though I like the idea of it. I did play with it last year in our 365 game. And... for warm colors I had desired to get some outdoor, sunset-y kinds of photos, golden hour stuff. But the snow arrived and though a sunset may have still a warm glow, the wind has been wicked & I never made it outdoors! So, I looked for warmth at home.

 

Warm colors

Ok, I confess that I had absolutely no clever ideas for primary colors, so I just ignored it.  Warm colors, however, were pretty easy given the time of year.  I decided to try to work on my night photography without a tripod - playing with the iso/shutter/aperature in an attempt to get a decent working pic.  I take pics each year at our local pumpkin festival and inevitably I can't get the right combination so the pictures all come out blurry.  I think I did a little bit better this year...perhaps the ratios are finally sinking in.  At any rate, so as not to bore you with a thousand glowing pumpkin pics, these are our three pumpkins which we submitted for the festival.

Abstract, Nature & Abstract Nature

As it turns out, this was a great topic for me this week.  I had been trying to get to this particular sculpture park for a few weeks now and the cosmos finally aligned properly so I could get there yesterday.  I think the fates decided to be kind to me by giving me these topics this week and then having the weather cooperate long enough (though it was iffy at times) for me to snap some images.  I am not sure what I would have submitted if my planned visit had fallen through because I had no other inspiration but this one.  I ended up with so many great shots that I had a hard time narrowing down my choices to submit just a few.  These were my favorites....

abstract

I didn't think I'd come up with anything for this topic... but... I was wrong.

more indulgence outside of assignments

The day after cooking at home for the folks, we treated them along with the extended family to a brunch in honor of their 50th. I didn't stick to the assignments at all, but I did learn a bunch by taking loads of pictures in effort to record these precious days spent in celebration. One thing I haven't practiced, & didn't even know I was missing by focusing on the nature/art shots that capture my attention, is timing. There is a lag from when I hit the button to when the shutter does what shutters do - which created many shots worth shuddering over! I missed so many unrepeatable moments. Makes me realize that there is a unique skill that wedding/event photographers possess.