Tag: photography

Is it really Monday?

Yes, it is.  I woke up at 5:10 a.m. thinking, ahhhh, I can play today!  Sunday!  Did I really get all that stuff done on Saturday??

Actually, it was Sunday.  But Saturday was not a bad day at all.

Over the weekend I really was quite productive:

  • wrote a test
  • took over 300 pictures at the local botanical garden
  • worked on turning text into HTML
  • looked up how to do lists in code
  • wrote up a recommendation
  • got stood up for an appointment
  • took 2 naps
  • worked out
  • read
  • did some cooking
  • sorted out a lot of stuff and got it organized
  • planted some amaryllis – now I need to plant two rose bushes, and begin the get-ready-for-spring gardening stuff

Oh, and other things, but I didn’t get any knitting done.  I didn’t paint.  But I do feel like the weekend was enjoyable – just one day short of what I wanted!

So Much to Do!

And, of course, not enough time.

I admit, I love dawdling around and just following my inclinations.  I also like checking things of as Done! There are days when all I do is chores, none with any sense of pleasure; days when I am overwhelmed and cannot figure out where to begin.  This weekend, though, there are a lot of interesting things on the agenda beyond the usual chores of bills, laundry, housework.

One is the completion of a year-long project is in its last week.  Because of this, I have been busy doing all sorts of stuff, like editing HTML, playing with code in my haphazard way and getting it right (hooray!).  Another is one class is ready to launch into their externships, and a new class to begin in the classroom – always an exciting period.

With these two are nearing points of departure, doubtless, I will also find more things to swamp me, but I also will have more time to return to painting.  I have not written anything about it, much less done any, because I have been too busy to slow down.  Hobbies such as cooking or photography or knitting can be picked up for a minute or two, and put down as necessary, but painting requires a bit more focus, and it means quiet and solitude.  I also want to pull out my watercolor paper and reconsider painting in that medium.  Photography makes me want to see what I can do with light in painting.  “Suck” is the first word that comes to mind – but the allure is always there.

For fun, though, this week our little photography group met, and we did food.  How to light it.  How to make it sparkle.  How to choose positions and viewpoints and consideration of depth of field to emphasize the subject.  And how the hot lights make everything dry up!  Below are some of the images I took.

I like this one for its composition and cheery colors.

This one is simple in composition, and I like the bit of lace to the lower right corner of the photo and the bright white surrounding the rest of the cherries.

First shot at fresh papaya and blackberries – no glycerin or oil spray.  After about 10 minutes under the hot lights it looked pretty sad!

I like the perspective here, but see the mount under the left side?  That should not be in the photo!!

Papaya and berries sprayed with olive oil mist and drops of glycerin.  You should have seen it before . . .

Fresh salad, no glycerin or oil.

These are looking pretty tasty.

I just like this perspective of the salad.

Anyway, for our next class, the assignment is food, with both narrow and wide depths of field.  I think something for the Valentine season could be fun.  Our next meet will be outdoors at the local botanical garden, which will be wonderful for broad landscapes as well as plants of all kinds.

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.

Child's Kimono

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.

Electric Snowflakes

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.

Wheat in Sumi

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.

Red Rhododendrons - BW Rhododendrons

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.

Fallen

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.

Photo Shoot Set-Up for the Paperweight
Camera Set-Up

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!

Light Set-Up for the Wine Glass

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.

Ott Light and Paperweight with Paper for Back Drop
Final Light Set-Up for Wine Glass
Ott Light for Paperweight

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.

Colored Construction Paper

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.

Persimmons, i

I love the color of persimmons – bright orange fruits silhouetted against the sharp blue of the autumn sky.  These are the hachiya variety, and when you buy them in the store, they are hard.  As they ripen, they become blacker and squishy.

Honestly, I bought these with photographs as my primary thought, but in the back of my mind, ah!  persimmon bread!  And now, having photographed them, my current thought – before turning them into bread – is to paint them.  And so I shall, later on.  Right now, though, on to photographing them.

Set-up for the Persimmon Photo Shoot!

The photo shoot took place on the south side of the house, with the sun rising from the east.  No clouds, just a bit of wind.  Above is the set up – you can see the directional cast of the shadow.  Light was quite contrasty.  The camera shoot involved about 100 or so images (ah, the glories of digital photography!), at all f/ stops and exposures, with a polarizing filter and without.  Add to that, some with flash and some without; some with filtered flash, some without.

The final images here were done with a filtered flash, using f/32 and 1/60 second for exposure.  Post processing was done to clean up spots in the background in the paper, as well as to clean up a few flaws on the fruit.  Color was adjusted to some degree, with the final photo given a slightly warm setting to give an impression of reflected light from the fruits, or from a bit of a glowing evening light.

Cropped Image, Print Size 9x12 Inches
Some Clean Up
More Clean Up with Warming Tint

I pulled on compositional elements in painting – three items, three directions. I also cropped the photo at one point to create a different image, using the two persimmons on the right.  However, the last picture, supposed to suggest an evening glow bombs now that I think about it!  The reason is because the tint of the background is too consistent – certainly not something one would paint!  So, in the final analysis, the ones with the white background are more pleasing to me, and so is the black and white one below.

Final Image in Black & White with Contrast Enhancements

I expect I will do something in sumi-e with these persimmons in the next few days, with and without color. I need to pick up that paint brush!