Looking Back…
You know me by now… when I haven’t got the time to get out and shoot, I go back through older photos, looking for new perspectives. So…here you go!
White Mountain Portrait
Bishop Range Eastern Sierra--3shot Pano
And a little manipulation a a shot I took in 2009…
Alcatraz Guard Tower
Thanks for taking the time to look!
Landscapes, Lizards, and More Fire
Kevin flies back to Colorado tomorrow. It’s been an incredible week, but I’ll be sad to see him go. We’re making plans for him to come visit again in August, and that will be really nice, but…I’m gonna miss him when he leaves…
Yea, it’s really been an incredible week. I met my son. Zayne met her brother. And we really enjoyed each others’ company. It will definitely be sad to watch him go, but I know he’ll be coming back…
Thanks for looking!
Manipulations and Textures
This is a whole new world to me. I’ve seen texture overlays on a lot of work. Some of it is excellent, some of it is…well…less than so. I finally decided to play around and give textures a day in court for myself…
Brutal World
Old West Sunset
Stone Intensity
It’s kind of fun. I don’t know how much more I will be playing with texture layers and such, but it’s an interesting way to present a completely different look from what I normally produce, so I’ll play around with it here and there, I’m sure…
Anyone that would like to leave a comment with advice, tips, tricks, etc, please feel free to do so. Thanks for taking the time to look!
P.S. For anyone wondering, I got the textures from Shadowhouse Creations. Excellent library of free textures.
“The Golden Spiral”
Well, I was recently asked to explain my use of the Fibonacci Spiral in composing complex scenes for landscape photography. This is a very difficult concept to put into words. FAR more difficult to verbalize than utilize, so to save me the words, I will let the Digital Photography School Forums do it for me, with their very clear description of Divine Composition.
Unlike The Rule of Thirds, the Fibonacci Spiral is something that can be a bit more daunting to utilize in the field. Afterall, it’s fairly easy to visualize your viewfinder cut into equal thirds along both axes. It does, however, take a bit more forethought and practice to utilize the spiral. Don’t fret…with practice, it becomes as much a second-nature instinct as the rule of thirds…
Here is a couple of examples of some of my own photographs, and how the Fibonacci Spiral was applied during composition–
As you can see, it really isn’t as complex and daunting as you might think upon first trying to utilize it. It’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with ratio and proportions of the spiral while in the comfort and convenience of your computer chair. The more the image of that spiral is engrained in your memory, the easier it will be to visualize in the field. Happy Shooting!!
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- Mono Reflections
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- Artesian Sunset
Do Overs…
Remember when we were kids? Like most photographers, I always save my original, straight from the camera files, just in case I ever want to re-visit them. Over the last couple days, I have done just that. So here are some older shots that I have recently re-worked to what I believe are better results. I hope you enjoy!
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- Storm Over Wheeler Crest
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- Sunrise over Mono Lake
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- Peace in the valley
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- Convict Lake II
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- Convict Lake
Up, Up, and Away!!!
Sometimes, you just gotta put the chores aside and get out there to play with the kids. It’s not about doing anything constructive, or trying to accomplish something. You let the kids be kids, and somehwere, somehow, deep inside your soul, you feel something of your own kid waking up to laugh with them…
What do you do when you don't have a mulberry bush? You go 'round the fence post
Rosie Posie getting airborne
She always told me she wanted to fly...
I hope you enjoyed them. I know we did!!
Thanks for taking the time to look.
Playing with Fire…
So…we went camping. I posted a bunch of photos from our various day hikes along Bishop Creek yesterday when I got home. As promised…here are a few of my favorite shots of the campfire. All were shot at ISO 400; f/2.8 and about 1/400. Handheld, manual focus, manual exposure to get those really deep silhouettes and prevent blown highlights.
These last two are my favorites of the group, as they actually have some abstract form to them…
Dancing at the Gates of Hell
Phoenix Rising
Thanks for taking the time to look!!
Color Conversion
Every once in a while, I will take a shot in color, get home to process it, and just find the results less than satisfying. On these occasions, I sometimes convert the image from color to B&W, to see if I can get more of what I am looking for from the shot…
The Iron Man Traverse...err...Iron WOMAN Traverse...
Ironman Traverse Conversion
I posted the color version of this shot yesterday, but it never really satisfied me. So I took it back to editing, and ran it through the Channel Mixer. I applied a green contrast filter digitally, and the above shot is the result.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. What do you think?
The Orton Effect
The Orton effect was first used by Michael Orton. Using color slide film, he would take 2 shots of the same subject, one over-exposed and blurry, the other in focus. He would then sandwich these two slides together and the effect would have a very surreal, almost dream-like quality to them. I have heard it referred to as “painterly”, “artistic”, and “dreamy”. Whatever you choose to call it…it’s pretty cool.
It can easily be applied digitally with today’s editing software…
Creating the above image was really quite simple. I use Corel’s Paint SHop Pro Photo 12, so this “tutorial” may not be helpful to those of you that use Photoshop…
The first step is basic processing of the base image. I make brightness/contrast, high pass sharpen, and clarify adjustments to get a solid base image to start with. Than I copy this image, and paste it as a new layer.
I make the top layer invisible, so I can see the bottom layer, and increase the brightness a bit, than apply a Gaussian Blur. I typically use a 15-25 pixel radius, but I have used higher. Be warned…you CAN overdo it.
Once my bottom layer is nice and blurry, I switch to my top layer, and increase the sharpness using High Pass Sharpen once again. Than I decrease the opacity of the top layer, until I can see the blurry layer underneath. Than it’s a matter of taste, adjusting the opacity of the top layer to achieve the desired amount of blur and “halo” from the blurred bottom layer.
Once I have the desired amount of blur and sharpness, I flatten the image, and continue processing, as necessary. For the top image, the processing ended at merging the layers. For the above image, I boosted contrast a touch and clarify just a bit after merging to bring out some of that texture in the rocks.
And that’s really all there is to it. Play around with it. I have found that the images most suited to the Orton effect seem to be those with lots of leaves, trees, or water. These tend to make a really neat dream-scene using this effect.
I hope you enjoyed this, and Thanks for reading!
Trying Something New
So…I picked up a photography magazine the other day. Can’t remember which one, but it’s around here somewhere… Anyhow… It had this article on creating a really neat optical illusion. You take a normal photograph, and make it look as though the viewer is looking at a miniaturized model of whatever your subject is. So I tried it out…
Desert Diorama
Tiny Sabrina
Paradise, CA and Mt. Tom
I don’t know…it’s pretty neat. I suspect it will be over used and become cliche fairly quickly, but…it’s a neat trick, and can make an interesting image from something you might not otherwise even process.
Let me know what you think, and if you want to know how…I’llbe happy to explain. Or I can find the magazine and tell you what it was. Wish I could remember…
Thanks for reading!
Something Different…
Back in the days of darkroom processing, and long before color film became widely used, photographers would sometimes play around a little with colorizing. Most of the time, the technique would consist of literally hand painting a B&W print. The print itself would take care of clarifying the subject, while the paint used, usually a thin watercolor, would add a semblance of color to the image. Sometimes the effect was quite stunning. Most of the time it was mediocre at best. Sometimes it was just plain horrible. But when it worked, the effect was quite interesting.
In today’s digital world, this technique is all but forgotten. Fear not, there is a way to accomplish this with Photoshop, or whatever you use. I use Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo Ultimate 12.5. It’s a good program for basic editing and intermediate manipulations, but not as deep as CS4. Anyhow…
Colorized Round
Colorized Cross
Both of these were shot in monotone, and processed as per my normal workflow, adjusting brightness, contrast, sharpness, and clarity to suit my taste…just like a B&W print would have been. Than, I copied the image, and pasted it as a new layer. I “colorized” the original shot using my Hue/Saturation channel, and selectively erased the monuments from the top layer, to reveal the colorized layer below. I did add a heavy Gaussian blur to the B&W trees in the green cross… The effect is similar to what a B&W print hand painted with watercolors would look like.
Depending on your desires, you can really make some interesting stuff using this technique. I’m not that artistic and I remain very basic in my manipulations. But there is no reason why you couldn’t use as many layers of color as you wanted to create as deep an image as possible. The potential is really limited only by your imagination, so…go play!
Thanks for reading!
