Tuesdays meander along the river

For those of you who follow my flickr account know that I do a lot of silly blogging as well as put up chunks of unaltered jpgs from my shoots.

I shot it all RAW and those files are used to produce the final images that will be in shows and available for sale through some local galleries and online sources. I will often put in some dumbed down (ie low res small versions) on flickr as well so you can get a feel for the finished pieces.

Yesterday I did manage to get myself back to the San Gabriel River, this time I entered from Duarte's Encanto Park and walked across the old Pacific Electric Bridge. What is interesting to watch is how natural elements try to reclaim things put in place by us humans. Even the tiniest crack becomes the foothold for some plant to set up its own housekeeping. Other plants use what man put in place as its own impromptu trellis. Of course we have a habit of calling them weeds when they don't have some immediate use for them.

Two images here. One is a trail along a swampier section of the river near one of the big dams that serve to slow the flow of the water through the area. The Army Corp of Engineers did this to control flooding, but also to encourage natural recharging of the local water table through seepage and percolation through the porous soils of the area. That's a good thing.

The other image follows the Man vs Nature theme that I randomly revert to. In this image a wild sunflower (I don't know its real name) has grown around and through a chain link fence and using it as a trellis to support its growth. I like the contrasts that are present on many levels. The color of nature vs gray of man, the soft flowing lines of nature vs the hard lines of man, and nature using man made objects for their own purpose.

For the "River Trail" pic I did it in the Orton style. It is a simple process with CS2. Open the raw file then duplicate as a copy closing the original. Do what adjustments are needed to bring the color in balance then use the duplicate layer function. Increase the brightness and contrast of the new layer, then use gaussian blur to a power of 15. Then those two layers were blended using the "multiply" function. It was merged together then given a final post process with Virtual Photographer for that old timey Kodachrome saturation and printed on Cibachrome one would have (could have?) done in the old silver based Orton process.

Did I tell you how much I love working in the digital realm? I can only imagine the amount of darkroom time needed to get this result. And don't forget the cost factor either which makes digital art so much cheaper than the old silver based materials.

"Sunflowers" was processed from RAW. The resulting file was manipulated in its 16bit form to bring the exposure and color balance into check. Then it was given a run through Virtual Photographer to bring about the saturation and tonal range that the earlier Kodachromes were capable of.

Enjoy, its time to run off and do some more shooting somewhere.

I got strung up today...in that good happy kinda way!

I finally got installed at the California Wine and Cheese today. A bit later than planned but that was outside the control of myself and the owner Tom Dugan. It was due to our waiting for the museum style "arakawa" hanging system to arrive. Its there and set up which makes installations so very easy.

All that said...I wound up bringing along a piece that Tom liked and noted on his site the following: "We do not know which works he has chosen, but my favorite on his blog site is "Seine Dusk." Just incredible colors. " Well Tom if you read this am glad to have accommodated, even if by accident for you as it is a piece I like too. I thank you as well for giving me a chance to showcase my work in your establishment!

Most of the pieces have been here and maybe even shown as a work in progress on my flickr page. I can't say that I have any new pieces to debut as those were done the end of July at the Art Walk. What I am bringing is a range of work illustrating from traditional photographs, into HDR and into my more impressionistic watercolor photographs.

The catalog:

"Rose Blossom" - photograph

"Game Over, Bodie Hotel" - photograph

"Henhouse Eggs" - photograph/digital art

"Bodie Blue Window" - photograph/digital art

"Chapel of St John the Evangelist" - HDR Photograph

"Desert Sunrise" - watercolor photograph

"Pietra Blanca Lighthouse" - watercolor photograph

"Siene Dusk" - HDR watercolor photograph

"Not James Dean" - HDR photograph

"Old Faithful" - HDR Photograph

Now for the fun stuff, the reception is set for Friday August 24, 2007. As soon as I have the details I'll let you know more but we are looking at something like a 5-9PM to catch all the after work crowd. I also understand one of the local wineries based in Sierra Madre may have a representative there that night so this could make for a lot more fun.

If you want a personal notecard with the details leave me a not with your email addy or snail mail!

Hiss clonk hiss clonk hiss clonk

The sound of the trusty old printers is slowly putting me to sleep. Getting maximum dpi on the trusty old inkjet takes for ever to get a lot of big prints done. But I am on the final print.

I open at the Monrovia Coffee Company on or about April 3 or 4th. This is an interesting venue to show case art for the members of the Monrovia Art Festival Association. Lots of foot traffic, a gracious host who doesn't charge us a dime to hang in her business. No gallery commissions either does it get better than that? Maybe but its the closest thing to nirvana I have had in a while. Tentative run date is April 5 through June 5, 2007. I'll post a note here when I am installed and the run dates.

In prepping this show I am keeping with the rule of 3's. 3 themed groups with 3 images in each. AM working with a floral group, an impressionist landscape group (this sorta boldly crosses more to digital art than straight photography) and a Monochromatic Color Spot group. Most of the images in the show are those I have blogged in the last month or so...that means a lot of really fresh stuff being hung.

The latter group is one I have been exploring for a while and most of the images were very well received (IE I blew them out the door) at the fall Celebrate the Arts in Monrovia. So I worked them a bit differently. I've even switched papers to a nice matte finish that tends to have a much nicer saturation with the dark tones as well as a cleaner finish in the highlights. Suits what I need for these images much better than traditional glossy paper or the watercolor papers I use.

Anyway "Henhouse Eggs" is the last to roll off the printer today!

Its good to run down other paths.....

Especially when its with scissors or at least the scissors icon on the old Photoshop programs. I've been thinking about interplay of color with light vs dark the last few days. I still have a few different areas of exploration and have been following the digital art again. This time around is impressionistic excerpts reinserted into an altered reality.

I do enjoy the old timey look of a Black and White photograph which is now interpreted with items removed and backgrounds altered with Optic Verve's "Virtual Photographer" . (This is a great plug-in for Photoshop that very easily emulates silver based imaging in the digital realm...and its free). The removed element is altered as well and then reinserted into the back ground. A few more tweaks and edge cleaning and voila a whole new image. Really cool and certainly beats either handcoloring black and white or making a bajillion masks that have to be aligned under the enlarger.

Today I worked on a couple of new ones following this theme. For your comments and general viewing "End of the Lime" and "Henhouse Egg Carton"