photography – Page 365 – Ink, Yarn & Beer

Lighting Assignment

In last Monday’s class, we learned about lighting; for this week, we must produce some images with any one of the techniques we learned. Of course, the first thing I did was to head to YouTube! There are some really excellent photographers out there, but my favorite I came across was Jim Talkington, of Prophotolife.com. He has about 33 videos online, both on the ‘tube and on his website. I intend to study all his videos – I really learned a lot, even if my own photos do not show too much talent.

Below, are two of my favorites of the lighting study – a wine glass, and a paperweight. On Flickr you can see the entire studies.

Composition: Some Thoughts

Composition is, by definition, the act or process of “arrangement into specific proportion or relation and especially into artistic form.” This can apply to written and visual arts, and other areas as well. Composition can be practical, it can be adventurous. Whatever it is, it is the individual’s sense of design.

One of the most challenging areas of composition is deciding how much is enough? That will be dependent on a number of things – what are you trying to express? In the old days, when photography did not exist, detail in Western art was much appreciated. Being able to capture realistically an object or person was highly prized. Detail was also valued in Asian art, but differently; scrolls made for a visual adventure, section by section, as can be seen in part of Long Scroll of Sesshu below, unlike the more limited flat surfaces of books.

Besides hand scrolls, multiple scrolls, such as this one presented in the Weng Collection’s catalog, hung side-by-side, created a larger work with individual panels, such as the triptych of Western art.

With photography, realistic and intimate recording of details became possible, and simplification and interpretative exploration began in the visual arts. Zen in the east influenced ink painting because of its simplicity and focus of the moment in which the painting or calligraphy was produced.

Simplicity may have multiple levels. A single line or movement may be repeated. Details can also be within those elements. For instance, in a garden, a curved walk may be the most dominant visual detail, but within that curve may be found many details, such as rocks or leaves or plants.

Simplicity by itself may fail. Placement of elements in that simple composition need to be considered. The most common compositional element discussed in photography is the Rule of Thirds. If you are unfamiliar with the rule, draw a tic-tac-toe grid: this is the Rule of Thirds. Where the lines intersect is where you should consider placing the subject of interest. Placement of subject in each of those four intersections gives a different energy to each picture. Using this same precept prevents placement of horizontal or vertical focal subject in the dead center of the picture.

A picture or painting based solely on horizontal and / or vertical elements is tedious. In this mix something needs to break this up. Diagonal lines, shapes such as circles or triangles, or curves are compositional elements which add visual interest. Balancing all of these can create a visually dynamic composition, but too much or wrongly placed, these same elements may destroy an otherwise compelling composition. At the same time, it is also necessary to consider colors, contrast, and scale. These, too, impact the final image.

How the eye is led to the focal point of the image is key to good composition. This can be called framing. In photography, placement of objects in the foreground is common. Shadows and bright areas are other ways to accomplish the directional sense in a composition. Combine these with diagonals or curves, and the eye is led along a visual path to the area of interest. In photography, this can be a bit of a challenge, but with cropping and airbrushing, distractions can be minimalized or removed. In painting, these elements are far more easily avoided.

In photography, the natural world continually gets in the way. We have all taken portraits of people with things protruding from their heads. Painting a portrait, this is much less likely to happen. Avoiding these distractions can be a challenge, simply because the photographer can be very focused on the subject. However, as one progresses in understanding composition, these become more than obvious, and easier to avoid. What is more subtle is an awareness of color. For example, a person in a blue jacket against a background similar in shade (degree of blackening) or color may be more difficult to assess. Similarity in color is called a merger. This is where an understanding of contrast is important.

Contrast may be high or low. High contrast images display few shades of grey; low contrast studies contain many. If you are not sure about this, take a color photo or paint a picture, and then change it to black and white in your photo editing software. It becomes much more apparent when you do this. Short scale / high contrast subjects can be very dynamic, and often this is more easily seen than the subtleties of long scale / low contrast subjects. Long scale subject matter can be very beautiful, but if there is a lack of adequate contrast compositionally and in adjacent areas, a weak picture may result.

* * *

In the four weeks since I started my photography class, my sense of framing a photograph has changed, as has my sense of color and composition. More than anything, though, I have become more aware of light and shadow. I’ve always liked the shimmering of light through leaves – as much as I love the rustling sounds – but now I find myself looking at shadows in general. Our next assignment is to use light – flash, strobe, whatever – in different ways, such as diffusing it or bouncing it or reflecting it. Of course, YouTube comes to the rescue on that note!

This short course has shifted my perceptions, and I am looking forward to seeing how it plays out in sumi-e. Today, my studio will lose its tenant, and I am looking forward to some quiet and privacy and being able to use my space again. My brushes and ink await.

Two Down, Two to Go

Through the local adult school, I am taking a short four-week long intermediate digital photography course. Whew, is it a lot of work! I’ve learned a lot I never knew about, as well as put it into practice. I have learned about rear curtain flash, how to pan (at which I failed dismally with the 70-300 mm lens my friend the Nikon Hit Man loaned me), as well as some very basic elements of portraiture. We also are being introduced to Photoshop Elements 8, even though 9 is now available. The instructor is Tom Ferguson, who has been in the photography industry for ages. His experience shows in how he is able to answer questions; as a teacher, he is to-the-point and a lot of fun.

This past week’s work has been time-consuming, and thought-provoking. We have to do portraits, and we need to be able to explain our choices of background. Working with the color wheel, using analogous colors (colors near each other on the color wheel), complementary colors (colors opposite each other on the color wheel, such as red-green, orange-blue, yellow-purple), and split complementary colors (yellow-blue violet-red violet), we need to choose one or many, take some photos, and print out some pictures. Finally, depth of field, making decisions, and explaining our choices. All of this forces pre-visualization and some thought before just pushing that button. Good lessons.

New Lens

The 70-300 mm lens is simply way too big to lug around while learning how to use a new camera, as well as trying to meet assignments. I decided to invest in a short, prime lens, and bought a Nikon 35 mm AF DX f/1.8 lens. It was definitely worth it. For one thing, I can actually hold the camera! (Maybe I’ll try some panning shots today.) The autofocus is very nice, but even better, I can fine tune the focus manually, even with the autofocus on. Incredibly easy to use.

Portraiture

For the portraiture, I took some pictures of friends and family, and did some manipulating of the colors and focal planes in different software – Elements, Corel, and Photoscape. I also picked out some photos from other times, and manipulated those as well. So, one new photo went into the printout for class, and 3 older ones. What was interesting – to me – was that I got all colors of skin, from rosy to black, and was really pleased with the overall post-processing results.

In my opinion, most cameras make people too red – too warm – and in the end, everything else becomes too red as well. I decolored, to some degree, most of my pictures to begin with, and then did a few other things. I really try not to do too much manipulation, but with portraits, by and large, there is too much stuff going on, and simplifying everything is very important to keep the picture interesting and focused on the individual.

This picture of Josh initially had no depth of field. As a result, the bright red flowers of the dragon tree demanded your attention, drawing the eye away from the focal point of the picture. Using Photoscape I decolored the picture (Josh was as red as the flowers), and then selected the filter to create a region out of focus. The result toned down the flowers, Josh’s skin, and sharpened the face. Much better than the original, though maybe not the best portrait shot I took.

Color Wheel

For my color wheel studies, I was at a total loss, and spent days thinking about it since last Monday’s class. Then it hit me – my socks! I have a drawer full of socks, hand knitted, store bought. I’m always struggling to find the boring socks to wear to work – there just aren’t too many. But – there are a lot of colors – and so I pulled them out. What a pile! Socks everywhere, sorted by color and intensity.

For this exercise, I thought that the analogous color would be really interesting because most of my socks are multi-colored. Doing this could be something of a challenge, but in the end, it was not especially hard. I also did one sock shot with split complementary colors, but for the complementary color study, I found some fallen leaves on the bottom of my blue bucket which I thought made for an interesting, yet simple, study.

This photo was set up in Elements 9 as a collage. These are the analogous color groupings of my socks. I sort of messed up and put the same picture in twice (the red and green socks). You can see these socks in greater detail on my Flickr page.

This photo is all about complementary colors – orange leaves in the puddle on the bottom of my blue gardening bucket. Quite serendipitous!

Depth of Field

Having an f/1.8 lens really allows me to open up my camera and have a very shallow depth of field. This can be too shallow, and the interest points of a photograph can rapidly disappear. Finding that sweet spot was really fun. By the same token, having a very wide depth of field, such as in landscape photography, may work for or against you it seems.

I like this photo for its shallow depth of field, along with the complementary colors of the deep blue sky in contrast to the orange-red of the rock.

These two photos are good to compare depth of field for losing the subject (the one on the left) and finding it (the one on the right). I like them both for different reasons, but think that the one on the right needs something to be done with its color. Neither have been post-processed.

Here is the same landscape – two views, each with different depths of field. I don’t think having the cacti out of focus does much for the scenery; having it in focus is more successful.

The curves of the road in this photo work nicely with the different patches of vegetation in the valley and up the hillside.

Conclusions

With my little Lumix ZS5, I got the taste for depth of field and control of the image. There are still issues with color, but I am inclined to think that it is me. On the Lumix, even with manual exposures, I find that unless I push the EV to a -1/3, the colors can wash out if there are bright whites or spots of sunshine in the image. Better to make the picture a bit dark to get the lighter areas with some detail. This can be modified with post-processing. However, using the Nikon D70 and the 35 mm lens, I find that I most likely don’t need to do this. Too many of my images taken with the Nikon seem too intensely colored, usually toward the red spectrum. This is actually a bit more difficult to correct.

I also have found that I do not like the automatic color balance in Elements 9. If I don’t accurately pinpoint a white / grey / black area, the entire picture can get wonky – but quite often bizarrely colored, and interesting as a result! In Photoscape, the best way to deal with this is to decolor at about a -3 for a starting point. I also like the different blurs available in this software. Corel is confusing, but with practice and exploration, I am getting it. Altogether, each of these three programs will provide good results, with varying learning curves for success. I really don’t like sitting at a computer to learn stuff, but if I have the ability to focus, it is well worth the time spent.

Taking a gander at older photos of some friends, as well as the recent ones I have done, I am getting a different perspective on framing a person in a photograph. I think it is possible to have a busy background, but it is best to blur it out, unless the person is another element in the overall composition of the photograph. Depth of field is important here, as well as knowing just which f/stop will give the best result. I love the blur of the f/1.8, but have learned that it is important for the main subject to be focussed upon enough to keep the picture from losing its point – unless the entire point is blur and bokeh. With landscapes, I think it can vary as far as the overall DOF, but certainly for a grand vista, you need to have a smaller f/stop.

Finally, using color, and my exciting sock collection, my entire sense of color was given a good kickstart! As I have been painting only in sumi for quite some time, I have found my sense of color, and its visual impacts, has been somewhat forgotten. Contrast is important in images – that I think I get – but now my mind is whirling away about color!

Next Class

ISO. Flash – as in bounced, off-camera, for portraiture, slave flash, reflector cards. Other things too! Stay posted!

A Walk in the Dark

Tonight I took a walk with Josh over to the campus where he goes to school, just a few blocks from our house. As it has been raining the past few days, it was really nice to be outside and smell all the damp night scents – earth, leaf mould, cement. The sky is foggy, with the moon appearing and disappearing. I took the Lumix ZS5 with me, and did everything on manual settings, just to see what I would get. Altogether, I was amazingly pleased with the results!

The above exposures are what I think I did – I could look at the EXIF if I wanted to, but it is a bit late in the evening for me! So, I’ll finish with a couple of shots I took as I walked back home.

This last one is looking over the fence into the back yard of my house. As I was setting this one up, a car drove by . . . I wonder what they thought if they saw me skulking along the fence in the dark!

Anyway, all the photos from tonight are on Flickr if you want to see them. Some I converted to black and white, and others I putzed with using Photoscape and Elements 9.

Sparkles

I am a magpie at heart – I love shiny objects. As a kid, I used to drive my mother nuts because I liked rhinestone buttons on my dresses and gaudy costume jewelry. These days, I am more conservative, or at least demonstrate better taste, than I did when I was five years old as far as clothing. But, I am still irresistibly drawn to sparkles – splashes in water – spider webs in the morning light – flickery sun in dark shadow.

Today, I returned to the local botanical gardens. Autumn is settling in. The sky has a different quality of blue, the light is cool and intense. The scent of pine needles rises up with the heat of the day. With me came my Lumix ZS5, and the Canon QL17 GIII. I took a few pictures with the Canon, and oodles with the Lumix. This is the luxury of digital – 60 pictures without the cost for processing.

The path I took this morning was one I haven’t taken before. I always head uphill for some reason, but today I deliberately went downhill. Here, the garden is more of a woodland, with large California oaks mixed in with other native plants. The colors are more brown and green in the woodland area of the garden than up the hill, but there are little bright spots here and there of sunshine and shadow, along with lingering flowers and autumnal berries.

What I looked for today, very deliberately, was the contrast of light and dark, of sun and shadow. I stopped the camera down to -1/3 EV, to keep the camera from making all the light areas washed out. In the shadows, this creates a bit of drama with contrast. Compositional elements were a bit more studiously considered as well, such as movement of a tree branch across the picture, a pathway, a stairway. Some shots I framed with foliage, others I attempted to focus on a specific part, such as a tree leaf, and open the f/stop as much as possible with this camera (which is not more than f/3.3 manual), to blur out the background.

The set on Flickr for today contains images as they came from the camera. Most of them need some help, I think, but a few of the ones of the oaks are interesting and successful as they stand, I think. The one below has been cropped.

I am always in conflict about post-processing images, yet it has been done since the early days of photography. Images have been manipulated by time and f/stop, airbrushing out of unwanted characters who have lost political importance, handpainting. Processing of film images also influences the final product.

Why should digital images be any different?