Renewal

I'm laid up with a case of bronchitis. We had a week of summer like weather and now we're back in much chillier weather. Everything is brown except for the shoots of spring bulbs. The world around here is not particularly photogenic. Spring is a time of renewal and I've been looking through old photos, deciding which to enter in a competition and I asked for input from some friends. The photo above is one I was considering and one friend commented that it might be stronger in B&W so I decided to try it.

I played with the tonal relationships and applied a warm tone using Photoshop's duotone settings. My friend likes the monochrome version better, my wife likes the color version better. To me they are different images and about different things. The monochrome version is narrower in my opinion, it's about the flowing water and the rest is subsidiary. The color version is richer, both literally because of the color but also in terms of what it is about. The warmth of the rock brings it forward and the green of the foliage is appealing as is the tinge of yellow/orange on the tops of the trees from the lowering sun. The green may be particularly appealing at this time of year when the actual world outside is anything but. The color version is more a presentation of an overall experience and the monochrome more a metaphor.

I like them both but I am more partial to the color version right now. In a different mood, at a different time, I might be more partial to the B&W version more focused as it is on the flow of the water. Right now I'm looking forward to more of the world around me being green and warm. Meantime neither version will go into the competition.

A Time for Pondering

The snow in the photo has melted, we got another 4-5 inches and now that has also melted. We're hoping that we've seen the last and it will be spring but I'm not placing any bets on it. Looking back over photos from prior years we've had substantial snow storms as late as mid-April.

I watched a video on the web today in which it was suggested that if one wants to make really good landscape photos you have to go to where the really good landscapes are, the National parks, specifically the western parks, Arches, Yosemite, etc. If you aren't happy with your photos you can't expect to make interesting landscape images near where you live they said, partly because there aren't any great landscapes there and partly because you are too familiar with it. You need to go where the landscape will excite you.

The mention of Arches National Park brought to mind a remark by a photographer/potter friend who said to me "If I see another photograph of Delicate Arch, I think I'll puke." The advice above also struck me as the opposite of the classic advice to writers, "Write what you know."  The only National Park I've ever been to is the one in downtown Philadelphia, PA. The one with the Liberty Bell, Carpenter's Hall and other landmarks of the founding of the country. Not that I wouldn't like to go to some of the National Parks that have grand landscapes and I hope to but I've always felt that I could make excellent landscape photos of the landscape I know, partly because it is familiar and partly because I'm there when it is photogenic.

The photo above for example is simply a group of evergreens on the border between a farm field and woodlot. It is along a road about 15 minutes from my house that I have driven many times and never photographed before. The morning I made this image there had been a wet snowfall that stuck to the trees, in particular the evergreens, and this tableau, looking much like a family posed for a group photo, caught my eye.

I'm a firm believer that the potential for good and often even great (not that I think the above is "great" but I'm quite happy with it) photos is everywhere, that everything can be a great subject under the right lighting and conditions. The trick is twofold. You have to be sensitive to it, constantly looking deeply at the world around you, and you have to be there when the scene presents itself. Excitement is an attitude you cultivate, not something external. There's an old saying 'if you eat steak every day, sometimes beans taste fine'. You can get bored with grandeur too if you allow yourself to adopt that attitude. To make better photos take more interest in your subject matter, whatever it is, approach it with passion and your photos will reflect it. I should add to that you must have the skills to create an image that communicates what you saw and some degree of how it felt to be there.

There can be creative danger in going to iconic landscapes, danger that you will fall into the trap of remaking images of the hundreds or thousands of photographers that went to those sites before. I hope when I do go to one or more of the great parks that I will be inspired to make some photos that are not mere copycat images, but I am convinced that if I can't make interesting photos where I live, the grandeur of a western park will not be sufficient to make my photos great. I believe that it is possible to make as bad or uninteresting a photo of Yosemite as it is of a local farmers woodlot.

SNOW!

After having almost no snow all winter we were dusted by about ¾" Wednesday night. The Adirondacks (South of us) got 3-4 inches and I decided it was time to go wandering and photographing again. It's a strange addiction that I have, this need to go rambling about in the woods and mountains photographing the moods of nature. An addiction it is though and perhaps my camera, like the fisherman's pole, is really just an excuse to be there, taking it all in. Excuse or not, I hope that my images will be pleasant reminder of my wanderings if and when age renders me no longer able to go such places. In the meantime I hope that they are a revealing window for those currently not able (for whatever reason) to experience these places.

Although the snow stopped in the morning on Thursday at home, it continued off and on all day down South in the mountains. The view above was made during a brief break in passing snow squalls. A thin spot in the clouds allowed a faint bit of sunlight to strike the snow that had accumulated on the evergreens of this island group making them the brightest spots in a relatively dark landscape. If it were a clear day you would see Whiteface Mt. in the background. Yesterday however, it was totally obscured by the low hanging clouds.

As a bit of balance against my asocial nature I'll add an urban photo taken on the main street in Saranac Lake, as urban as the Adirondacks get anyway and as urban as I like it. I don't often photograph people but lately I'd been seeing scenes that are representative of "the human condition", the moods of our particular subset of nature (see also the photo in the prior post). I spotted that tree against the red and green building as I pulled out of a parking lot. I had to drive quite a way up the street before finding a parking place to walk back to shoot it. Snow was coming down fat, wet, and hard. I arrived back at the vantage point for the photo just in time to catch this lady between the tree and lamppost. After she passed I shot another frame with no one in it, the way I envisioned the photo when I first decided to park the truck and go back, but that one doesn't work as well. It's nice but without the lady it seems empty. It was purely a stroke of luck that she was wearing a red coat and carrying a green bag, echoing the building she is passing.

Phone Photo

Shot and applied an 'oil paint' effect with my Android phone and further modified in Photoshop. This couple was having a very earnest conversation, mostly the guy talking with a lot of hand gesturing. It wasn't a dispute of any kind but he was explaining something that he was clearly enthused about and she was very attentive to whatever he was saying. They lingered well past finishing their lunch.

Reverse Grisaille Revisited

I noticed on my blog stats that the Reverse Grisaille post is getting a fair amount of attention so I decided to revisit the subject.The above is an example of what it does, albeit an exaggerated one. In practice I probably would tone the 'after' down somewhat, at least in selected areas.

To recap the process covered in the previous post; make a copy of your image that you then convert to B&W using the conversion process to obtain the best tonal values without regard to hue (best being your intent and definition). Then drag that B&W "grisaille" image onto the original while holding down the shift key so that they auto-align and change the blending mode to "Luminosity". At that point it will almost always be too harsh and you will want to reduce the opacity to the B&W layer. The "after" in the example above  is set at 80% opacity. While the grisaille layer heightens local contrast it also has the effect of slightly dulling the color so you may need to add a hue/saturation adjustment layer around +10 to 15% saturation to compensate.

So why do it? Can't you get the same increase in local contrast using other Photoshop tools? Yes, but... I find it easier to judge tone if hue is not present. Aside from that this technique gives you a lot of control to play with. For example if you save the layered file you can easily increase or reduce the effect by playing with the opacity slider on the B&W layer. Also you can alter the effect locally by adding a layer mask on which you can selectively paint out the effect wholly or partially by varying the opacity of your brush.

An interesting thing I have noted about this technique is that the grisaille both darkens the dark areas and lightens the light areas. Note the changes in local contrast in the sky and white water where it tumbles down the falls. Also the increased detail in the fallen tree and dark rock at the lower left. It acts like a form of HDR in that sense and seems to do so without creating noise. Another possibility is to use the "Lighten" or "Darken" modes on the grisaille layer for different effects. Those effect only the highlights (lighten) or shadows (darken) and subdue the color more but produce some potentially interesting effects.

If you try this and post results to the web, I'd like to see them. Leave a comment with the URL for your images.

A 'Mountain Afternoon'

When I go on a photo excursion to the Adirondacks it is usually a day trip starting in the morning and coming home after dark but yesterday I went for the afternoon and evening. There was an opening at BluSeed Studios that I wanted to attend because my brother's daughter has some work in the show.

Like here (North of the Park) there was little snow, more than we have but a fraction of what one would expect in the ADKs in February. The sky was totally clear making for very strong light that was good for photographing Whiteface and I spent some time photographing on Norman's Ridge. The farm fields up there were mostly bare but the snow on Whiteface's summit made it stand out nicely and the low winter sun made for good shadows that reveal the shape of the mountain slopes.

The show was very good. A cell phone photo of Rachel Bullard's portion of the show is below, a series of paper works incorporating drawn images and thread suspended in thin wood frames by threads. There was a watercolor of a buck with camouflage coloring and improbably large antlers. Presumably his antlers are so big because his coloring kept hunters from seeing him so he has outlived his cohorts. I missed getting that artist's name. I was also quite taken by the work of Krystal Stowe who uses stain (and paint?) to make drawings on Luan plywood that incorporate the grain of the wood into the drawing. There is lots more to see. If you will be in the Saranac Lake area in the next 3 weeks I recommend going to see the show.

Works on paper by Rachel Bullard

at BluSeed Studios, 24 Cedar St., Saranac Lake, NY

Postwork Shop Pro 2 Review

Back in December I wrote a post about PostworkShop basic in which I said that I would probably buy the Pro version. I finally did. The differences are in the amount of presets available and the size of the image you can process. The basic version would only work with images up to 800 pixels per side. They have an "Artist" version that will work on images up to 2000 pixels/side and the Pro version that is unlimited. They are about to upgrade the program to Ver. 3 however and when they do that the Basic and Artist versions will go away. If you are interested in either of them you'd best buy it now.

For my earlier post I had only done web sized images. Since buying the Pro version I've been playing with that and have made some new observations. The first is that when you are working on larger images it gets slower. A lot slower. When I tried working on full sized files from my Canon 7D (18MP) it came to a screeching halt, totally locked up when I attempted to use some presets. Now I should point out that I am working on an older computer (5-6 years old) and I will be moving the program to my new computer eventually, a fairly simple process of de-registering it from this one and registering it on the new one. OTOH I note that one of the improvements they list for Ver. 3 is that it will be faster, so apparently others had experienced slow processing too.

Now for the pluses. There are lots of presets in the Pro version. You can play with the settings on many (but not all) of the presets. It works in layers which gives you the option of several blending modes. There is a style editor, a bitmap editor and a batch processor which I presume can be used to process a series of images to an identical style. There is a lot to the program and I confess that I've only begun to scratch the surface. If they cure the speed problem with version 3 and my newer computer handles it better I can see this becoming a tool I use fairly frequently for "Fine Art" and illustrative images.

The photo at the top was made on a tall ship cruise on the St. Lawrence last September. It has two added layers, Antique Drawing 2 and Pencil Drawing 13. Both presets were modified from their defaults and the layers are set to different blending modes and levels of opacity. There are much more extreme possibilities including this Warholesque preset (which has very limited options).

Some of the presets give results that are barely or wholly unrecognizable as having been based on the image you started with as in the case of the following two using canned presets, both of which are variations of the same image as the one at the top.

The first of those two (Impressionism 1) had no user adjustable options the second (Cubism) did but I ran both presets straight to see the effect and both are at 100% opacity. Personally I don't see the second as "Cubist" but that's a semantic quibble. Where some of these more extreme presets may be useful is with different blending modes. I can't see myself finding a use for "Cubist" though nor any of the abstract presets.

I haven't even gotten into the style editor or bitmap editor. There are way too many possibilities in this software for me to go into them all and many are not the sort of thing that will appeal to those who only want to enhance the photographic qualities of their images but if you are inclined to walk a bit on the wild side there is plenty here to keep you occupied.

As with all my reviews this was not undertaken by a request or even with the knowledge of the publisher of PostworkShop, nor did I receive any consideration for it.

Discount

Just a quick note to let everyone know that Blurb has a promotion going until the 27th of February. If you use the code SAVE10 you will get $10 off the price of their books (including my book of course). They didn't mention ebooks but since my ebook version is already less than $10 I'm sure that it wouldn't apply.

My Fascination with Trees

As the previous two posts show, and others in the past, I spend a lot of my photography time on trees. Like humans, most trees get overlooked, lost in the crowd. Some stand out because they are unusually attractive or they are battered survivors. This one literally stands out, taller by more than twice than any tree around it, on a steep slope above a 25-30 foot cliff over Chapel Pond on Rt. 73 in the Adirondacks. You need to be in a boat to see it silhouetted against the sky like this. From the road side of the pond it gets lost among the trees on the slope which continues up behind it.

Back when this country consisted of British Colonies trees like this would have been considered property of the king. At that time the British navy ruled the seas and the ships of that era depended on tall straight trees like this for their masts. They'd have had a tough time getting this one though. I can't help but wonder if this tree was there back then, smaller of course. Few humans ventured into this part of the Adirondacks back then, a few natives perhaps. It was only a hunting ground for them and there were no tourists at all.

Un-winter Tree

We are having what some locals are calling an un-winter this year. Sort of like an un-birthday I suppose in that it feels as unreal as Alice's Adventure. Normally we'd have lots of snow by now and January is usually the coldest month of the year. We have had some real cold, down to zero and even a bit below but it has quickly bounced back up each time and overall we are enjoying above average temperatures for this time of year.

This weather doesn't make for good winter photographs though. There is little snow and where there is snow under trees it is littered with twigs and limbs from the ice storm and wind. I went to town today and came home past this tree which I have photographed several times before. Since the last time I took its picture the town highway department cut all the shrubs that had been growing around it. In the process they broke a couple of limbs (a large one hanging on the left side of the trunk and the little one hanging off the end of a limb on the right) leaving it looking lonesome and forlorn. Coupled with the bare field and overcast sky I decided it needed to be rendered in black and white.

I'm fond of trees. They are a favorite subject, especially trees with character and this one definitely has character. Stunted with broken limbs, galls and missing strips of bark it continues to sprout leaves every spring. It reminds me of another tree, now gone (and I never got a good photo of it - darn) that continued to leave out every spring despite a gaping hole through it's middle. There was one narrow strip of bark up one side and that was enough, like some people I've known who keep going in spite of everything.

Tenacity

This photo was after the recent ice & snow falls. It is a small tree growing on a section of slanted rock in the middle  of the St. Regis River at the bridge on the Allens Falls Rd. The river bed here is divided into several channels by these layers of rock up-thrust at an angle. The cracks and crevasses provide just enough soil and water for some shrubs and saplings. It is a rough life though when the river floods in spring as this poor tree shows. I'm always amazed at the tenacity of trees growing in some of the most unlikely and inhospitable places. The Desiderata says that we should listen to others because even the dull and ignorant have their stories. I think trees have something to teach us too, even in their silence.

Lingering Ice

We  had two mornings of freezing rain followed by about 5 inches of snow and now we are "enjoying" sub-zero temperatures. It was minus 18º F early this morning, By the time I went out to fill the bird feeders and make some photos of the sun illuminating the ice on the trees we were having a -5º heat wave. The belated advent of winter here has been good for photography though. I went out yesterday on a photo exploration and fond several good subjects. The results are posted at https://picasaweb.google.com/113942839858347342814/IceSnowJanuary142012.

The trees in the photo above are in my side yard. The wind last night knocked off the snow but it is so cold that the ice is still hanging on. That will change in the next couple of days. The forecast is for rising temperatures with a Tuesday high around 38-40º. Maybe I'll go snowshoeing this afternoon while it's still winter. The way this winter is going, who knows if I'll get another chance.

Ice Storm

We haven't had much winter weather this year until last night. Normally we'd have snow in late November or early December. Occasionally we've had snow as early as Halloween that stayed all winter. So far this winter I've shoveled once and it wasn't really necessary then, only an inch and a half. Last night and this morning the weather was more like we'd expect in January, freezing rain followed by snow. All the schools were closed because of a half inch of ice on everything but when the snow arrived it was pretty.

The freezing rain made a lot of folks around here nervous though, a kind of PTSD from the ice storm of '98, five days of freezing rain that took out the power across Northern NY, New England and Quebec for anywhere from a week to a month or more. We were lucky and had our power back after only 7 days. Some communities in Quebec were without power for nearly 6 weeks.

I didn't take many photos back then. When I left for work in the morning it was dark and when I got home at night it was getting dark. When I wasn't working we were spending our time surviving, melting snow on the wood stove for water, living by candlelight, staying warm. Today I could afford the time to admire the ice on the trees. I'm retired so I had nowhere to go. The photo is from my side yard looking back at a neighbor's shed.

New Year - New Direction

I hate to complain but 2011 was a lousy year for print sales. The pits. Not just for me but for most other nature/landscape photographers I've talked to. Ebooks on the other hand seem to be taking off big time so for the new year I am going to be offering some ebooks starting with an iPad/iPhone version of my Blurb book (link in the left hand column) which is only $4.99 directly from Blurb.

For those of you who have Android or Windows tablets/phones I'm sorry to say that so far Blurb only makes ebooks for Apple products. Apparently they are working on expanding that to Android and other platforms but I'm not waiting. I have bought a program to do the conversion to Kindle, epub, and other ebook formats myself and am looking into the distribution. My new years resolution for photography is to produce a series of ebooks, both monographs like the B&W book and some instructional books. Stay tuned.

If you have an iPad/iPhone you don't need to wait for the Adirondack B&W book. Just use the link. The photo above is from the book. It was made at Connery Pond on an autumn day. The infrared look is actually red filtration that darkened the blue sky and evergreens but brightened the reds, oranges and yellows. If you look closely you'll note that there is another photographer in the scene, in the grassy area to the right.

A new year to make photographs, woohoo! Look out 2012, here I come.