Category: Photography
Looking
There are days, as anyone creative knows, when you “get it” and things come along perfectly. Everything you do feels right, you learn, and all the knowledge you have acquired throughout your lifetime pulls together and you create something you love, feels satisfying, and adds to your ongoing growth as an artist. And then, there are days where anything and everything you do is crap.
My walk around the neighborhood the other day was satisfying. The ants-in-the-pants restlessness was put into action. While I took some pictures I thought were pretty good, it wasn’t until I got home and started playing with some of them in black and white that I began to get a sense of composition in photos. Sure, I know the rule of thirds, etc., but I wasn’t really using it in a way I found meaningful. When I began the post-processing, I began to appreciate some of my photos a bit more, and with some cropping, rotating, contrast enhancement, or whatever, I ended up with a few I really liked.
This picture was simply a quick shot into the tree above me. I like the shape of tree branches and leaves, the lines created against the sky. Turned into greyscale, the picture was too dark, and the texture of the bark was lost. I backlit it to the extreme, and it pushed the picture to this. A bit of contrast enhancement and playing with the histogram, and this is the result. It’s a rather edgy picture to me – not very serene – but there is something I also like about it, such as where the upper branch begins to get so bright it begins to disappear.
I cropped this picture a lot – it is evidenced by the size of the signature in the corner! Anyway, this crop is of some tiny cactus flowers on a lovely plant with pointy needles. I decided to emphasize the pointiness, both on the spikes, and more generally on the shadows. The back-and-forth movement of light and dark is the idea behind this picture, both soft and sharp.
I cropped this one to bring the focus onto the leaf itself. I pushed this, with contrast and edge sharpening. This is the underside of the leaf, which has a lot of linear texture. I also think this one has the potential to go further in subject matter – calla lily leaves are really lovely to look at through light because the veins in the leaf are so intricate.
Finally, there is this one. I played with it a bit, and finally cropped it and rotated it so that the main branch of the leaf became horizontal and rested in the lower third of the photo. Again, the contrast was pushed, and the final image cropped.
You can see all these photos on Flickr, in B&W and in color.
Altogether, the post-processing was quite a satisfying experience. I thought about my compositions, and saw things in the original photos I liked, did not like, and I learned more about framing an image as I cropped and turned. I may not get great photos out and about, but I do think I will be looking at the entire image more carefully before snapping a picture (unless I am crawling in the mud!).
Restless
After weeks of gloom and rain, frost and ice, this California girl is welcoming with open arms a day of warmth and sunshine. I admit it – we are spoiled here – and I have totally been enjoying actually having weather, but when the flowers begin to bloom, trees bud, and the sun comes out – well, how can one not get spring fever? I’d been wandering around the house, fidgeting, until I finally decided to go outside to see what is coming up in the neighborhood. We have some bland gardens here, and some that are filled with wild and strange plants, as well as some which are just a pleasure to look at because of the variety of foliage, flowers, and trees. My walk was quite satisfying! Below are just some of the things I saw.
Color
I love color. Lots of color. The fact is, it is extremely difficult for me to buy things that, to me, do not have color. That means beige, white, and black. A Japanese kimono full of vibrant colors is far more interesting than the serenity of monochrome; Hawaiian shirts hold endless attraction. Prints intrigue me far more than a brilliant, single color.
Because color is so attractive, the absence of color in a painting – such as in sumi-e – and in photography – become endlessly fascinating in the variations of black-grey-white. Color reduction, meaning decolorization, can be done in various photo editing software programs. This pushes the photograph to near monochrome, but with an essence of color. The same may be done in an ink painting. Both become intriguing as the color draws the eye, but because of the lack of color elsewhere, it also becomes a messenger, speaking to the viewer on a symbolic level. Or, it can simply become an attractive element essential to a composition.
In sumi-e, there is a challenge in gradation and contrast. This is managed by both how the brush is loaded as well as forethought and knowledge as to how dark something will dry – or, more challenging – how light. Understanding the paper being used, the qualities of the ink stick, the subtleties of the brush become an art in themselves, all of which lead to the success or failure of the final painting.
In photography I am finding much the same challenge. In playing with software, such as Corel Paintshop Photo Pro X3 and Photoscape, I can take a colored photograph and either decolor it, separate it into multiple pre-press layers, or simply change it to a grey-scale image. Red flowers which look awful in color can become quite fascinating when rendered into black and white.
Composition also plays into photography, as much as it does in painting. Because one is physically doing a painting, I think that the elements of composition have time to unfold, and the unconscious works toward the final result long before the concept is visible to the artist. It is a slower process altogether.
The very nature of photography lends itself – especially with digital – to taking picture after picture after picture. Only now am I considering more carefully my compositions. Knowing I can crop and edit in software, as well as the fact I don’t have to pay for printing, lets me shoot all over, all and everything. This lets me play. Play is creative, fun, and educational. Happenstance leads to analysis in looking at photographs, which leads to thought about all the elements which come together, as they do in painting, to create the final image: light, subject, color, direction, contrast. As a result, I am developing the skills which permit me to think ahead a bit; these are the same skills, conscious or not, which I apply to a painting.
I am finding that my preferences in photography echo those I have for paintings. Simplicity and contrast. Less is more. Whether or not I succeed is up for question.
Light
Probably the part of the short photography course I took that has stayed with me the most is light. We take it so for granted. Without it, we could not see colors or shadows or reflections in the mirror. Setting up the wine glass and paperweight for a photo shoot made me acutely aware of just how light plays on, and through, and past an object. Color, too, is certainly impacted by light, by too much as well as too little.
I have no strobes or flashes to use with my borrowed camera, only the pop-up flash. I have a diffuser for it, one which acts to disperse the light as it flashes, softening it so that it is not harsh and casting odd shadows in the wrong places. As a result, I took a shop lamp with a broken switch – the light was on all the time unless I turned off the surge strip – flashlights, overheads, and daylight coming in from the windows. I also used an Ott light, which has a full-spectrum (all the colors) bulb. White foam board reflected white light back onto the objects. Below, you can see the set-up, as well as the fact that daylight was behind the camera.
I bought two packages of colored construction paper, one white, one with about 10 bright colors in it. These were used as backdrops as well as to the side of the wine glass to create reflections of color from the shop lamp, and the flash when it went off. The shop lamp is so beat up I had to balance it on the foam board – no clamp!
Placing the shop lamp in different areas bounces the colors back in different ways. I set up lamps and lights in a number of ways.
For both the paperweight and the wine glass, I went through all the colors of construction paper! The paper was under the paperweight, and to the side of the wine glass. Lots of colors for really lovely reflections.
It took a lot of time to do these – but not as much as I expected once I settled on the final light and paper set-ups. Then, it was factory work! Change colored paper, click! I changed lenses for the paperweight, using the 70-300 zoom, while using the 35 mm prime lens for the wine glass. For all but one of the wine glass shots I used flash, which resulted in some reflections of light on the background. The one which I forgot to flash turned out the best, I think, which I showed two posts ago. If you want to see all the pictures, you may find the paperweights here, and the wine glass here, both on Flickr.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 