New online gallery for me

A friend of mine, Joseph R Davis turned me on to a new online gallery site for artists to showcase their work. Its pretty slick in that it gives an art lover and potential collector access to your work in the form of everything from note cards all the way up to ginormous stretched canvas prints. They do all the mark-up math, and prep for mailing and collect the money. The site is "Fine Art America and you can find me HERE. I've got a few images up but have a ton of stuff to do before it is all done, profiles, image details, gallery's events etc.,.

The image used in the post is done by post processing a RAW file in the orton style. I chronicled it here in the past, but it is an Adobe CS5 intensive process when one works in the digital world.

To achieve this image do your color correction from the RAW file and open. Create a new layer and label it background copy (usually the default name anyway). With that layer increase the exposure by a factor of between 1-2 stops where you still have dark areas showing. Then use the saturation tool and increase saturation by a factor of 10-20% just so you aren't as washed out due to the exposure correction. Use the blending tool at "multiply" to allow both layers to show together. I use the merge visible tool to put the two layers together, then save as a jpeg for easier up/downloading. (I also save the PSD file as it is larger and more detailed for my printing for show work).

I've been so busy with other stuff

I haven't stopped photographing nor my art. The art has taken a side burner while I focused on a few other projects. Most with SoCalAutoBlog, but also busy with documenting the creation of an Art Bear for the 125th anniversary of Monrovia CA where I happen to live. To see the raw images from these projects do stop in at my flickr sets.

Monrovia Art Bear

Drivers Edge

Chevy Cruze Eco

The image here was that of a 2011 Chevy Cruze Eco that GM lent me for a few days to enjoy and review for SoCalAutoBlog. I took it up into the San Gabriel Mountains near Crystal Lake as part of its test drive and of course for his photo shoot...great locations all over the place up there for just that.

This image was shot with HDR post processing in mind. I knew there would be harsh shadows and steep contrast and I knew bracketing and using HDR would calm those evils and give me details across the board. I used Adobe's CS5 to generate the HDR files from the 3 bracketed images and do the tone mapping as well.

Down and out of City Hall

Its over, twas a nice little run at the "City Lights" gallery aka wall in the lobby of City Hall here in Monrovia. The stuff was liked...which is always a good start.

Now to find a gallery or two to show in again, other than the Paint n Play 2 Art Studio and Gallery here in Monrovia.

keep it simple silly

Its so hard for me to stay in the lines let alone keep things simple. However subtlety is something I'm working on in my art. Not so much the slap your face with this is different, rather stops you for a second to go "huh!?" while you ponder what you are looking at trying to figure out what got your attention.

So...I took some Black and White negatives from a shoot the other day and hand colored them quite subtly. Well, kept it to simple elements rather than an entire frame. I think "LOS" was a bit more successful than the wild flowers.

A little stroll with the camera

A lot going on as usual all over the place and finding time for myself to just shoot becomes a challenge. Fortunately it all came together the other day and I got to go for a walk along the San Gabriel River.

I stumbled across some new urban art under the Encanto Park Bridge in Duarte. There's a new group in town, not the usual "DESG". They call themselves "Los Asult" and have started a mural under one of the bridge pilings. How can I tell the difference between urban art and graffiti and simple tagging? Easy...one has a lot more to it other than a quick scrawl to mark territory. Compare the piling with the simply tagged chair. Says it all.

The one thing I've noticed about doing my own B&W work again is that I do miss the instantaneous thumbnail at the back of the camera that tells you if you got your exposure and composition right. Require much more focus rather than spontaneity when shooting. Not that the latter is a bad thing, as its not. I've discovered, or re-discovered that I like the forced concentration that working in film requires with a manual camera. A lot of thought goes into the process for exposure etc., than with a DSLR. I like it. A lot.

Of course the lack of spontaneity has its draw backs too. The process of doing ones own film and then getting it scanned is time consuming and finding a morning free to devote to it is difficult. But I'll still take it as the rewards at the end make it worth it.