No Airbus A380...but I got the beach instead

Aye carumba, the commute gawds and those that govern nerdy events like the A380 landing at LAX were not in sync. It took me nearly 2 hours to get to LAX...I was just blocks from parking and viewing when it passed overhead. The thing is huge, it was early and as I was in the middle of a turn in traffic I couldn't even grab the camera phone to snap a pic. Damn....did I tell you it was huge? It looked like a mini-strip mall on wings gliding out of the overcast skies. Amazing.

Anyway, all was not lost. I was minutes from Venice Beach, my personal mecca for spiritual renewal and I headed there next.

For a winter day there was plenty of stuff to see and do. The skies were heavy overcast which affects the color of light. IE it tends to be bluer, less saturated and less contrast. In the old days you would stick on a warming filter if you were shooting slide film that would return some resemblance to natural color to the scene and work with the lack of contrast and saturation. Luckily those days are past and we can enlist photoshop to address those areas simple filters can't.

Venice in my book is one of those rare places where all sorts of humanity converge, co-exist for but a moment and feed of each others energies. (It's also a great place to take your relatives from the mid-western and plains states so they can see the slice of life that can shock and awe but I am wandering off topic). Anyway, the people, the color and the energy always bring me back refreshed in spite of the traffic I have to slog through.

I shot a lot of stuff today, little stuff, big stuff, surfer stuff, street stuff and will need to put it all up sort of by themes.

warm and fuzzy

Sitting at a ball game this afternoon I noticed the bunting had a nice flow. Using selective focus helped blur out some annoying background stuff that was more "noise" than important detail.

Playing around a bit more I opted to let the balloons drift of into a nice fuzzy too. Doing so let them just become some nice colored shapes rather than a detail. Doing so let the bunting and its changes in direction become the main energy source to tease your eye.

Getting there isn't easy with an automated point and shooter, but the SLR's have the "creative" wheel that lets you make decisions on how you want to show. Here I took the "aperture value" dialed in a low number that limited the dept of focus. Gave me the fuzzy balloons with details in the bunting I wanted.

Bet you were glad to see something other than HDR. Stay tuned as Monday I plan on being in viewing distance of the behemoth Airbus 380 makes it maiden voyage arrival here at LAX. I learned about it at MetrobloggingLA. I remember seeing the Concorde glide over Big Ben and Westminster years ago and was just in awe over that beauty. Now its the polar opposite beast flying over, hope it thrills as much.

Until then...enjoy "bunting and balloons".

More from the Canyon,



Hdr has its moments...enjoy Monrovia Canyon and its waterfall (which is pretty dry, lucky there is any falls at all considering how little rain we had this winter). Its all leafing out and turning green, pretty nice way to spend a day just walking around and admiring it all!

Learning is fun, a walk in the woods is better

I'm still learning the range of capability HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography. Working in the digital realm has so many advantages and the tools out there just increase how fast and how varied you can make the final image.

Today I hiked up Monrovia Canyon, in the San Gabriel Mountains above my house. I debated a bit then left the tripod home. I figured I'd try standing really still and where possible brace against trees or rocks. I was too lazy to bring the tripod and knew that the 2 foot wide ledges I wanted to shoot from wouldn't have the space to have a tripod fully extended. Wish I had brought it as there were many shots that I took where there was just enough movement that the multiple exposures needed for HDR were too far out of registration to be workable as a straight forward photograph. (Call me a bit anal but I want to be able to nail down HDR before I start pushing it further...makes retracing steps easier when you fully understand a process).

Today's shooting was in a location where the sides of the canyon were in shadow with either very dark granite sides or near black Canyon and Coast Oaks with the creek and near white skinned Alders in the sunlight. Difficult to shoot in, even more so when you are working in a medium with a narrow contrast range such as digital (or ?chrome silver based films).

So while I sort through my images I have one of the first I finished posted for right now. This morning it was really foggy and starting to clear when I hit the canyon. The sun had just started to crest the ridge. Leaving areas in intense sunlight with others still in shadow. There were areas where the fog remained which HDR helped better define details like the line between fog and clear sky. HDR really captures the clarity and saturation of color the way a single exposure, even when done well in RAW.

I have learned the hard way, for the last time....you can't hand hold a camera and get 3 exact framed images. Add in the wind causing ripples in the leaves, your registration gets out of whack way to fast. Tripods are a must, no matter the weight and difficult terrain.

Anyway...Monrovia Canyon Morning...I shot it all RAW. The HDR image was post processed and saved as jpeg, low res for your viewing here. The jpeg side started as a single raw image, post processed to get it as close to the HDR as possible in the mid-tones and converted to jpeg at the same low res for more of an apple-to-apple comparison. The RAW image for both middle range of the HDR and the one labled JPEG was the same file....the average metered exposure for the scene.

Enjoy....

Just a few more from my garden this morning, Fortnight Lily, Geranium and Jasmine.

Spring has Sprung...almost

OK one of my passions on the side is gardening, landscaping design and English Roses. The latter I was turned onto when a friend of mine started growing the David Austin English Roses. They are these wonderful hybrids matching old roses with modern roses where they have the look and aroma's of old roses but repeat bloom like modern hybrid teas. I got out of control when I was introduced to a friend of hers that is a master pruner over at the Huntington Library in San Marino. Tamora is my favorite of the breed but its not in bloom, yet. One of his earlier, semi-doubles "Peach Blossom" is starting to bloom and I have included pics in today's entry.

Shooting in my garden is one of the added benefits to all the work. I've been at it for years and enjoy it tremendously. I love to take the viewer into the floral and let you really see it up close and personal. Its startling on how much detail is in any given plant when you take the time to look at it.

Isolating the flower or plant material can be tricky as the back ground can have a lot of unwanted stuff. Controlling lighting at times needs to be done and for that I use reflectors and shade cloth to keep the contrast within reason on the plant itself. The best reflector yet is a matte white poster board as you can bend to "wrap" the light around the blossom and keep just enough contrast to keep the details.

Letting the backgrounds go completely out of focus helps keep the flower the center of attention. Those backgrounds I manage too at times with variegated backdrops made from poster board to keep the distractions to a minimum.

Time of day affects the quality of light. Mornings and afternoons the shadows tend to be a bit "bluer" which isn't a problem if your flowers are in sunlight. The warmer tones of early morning really make the blossoms pop against the bluer backgrounds of the shaded areas. Always a plus in my book when nature provides the drama in the scene.

Enjoy the "Peach Blossom" in its phases of bloom!

Bad News, Good News kind of week

OK...for those of you shooting with a digital slr you know the tricks calm place for lens changes, body facing down while lens is off, use only a soft squeeze bulb to clean out the sensor cavity if needed. In my haste for stuff last week I goofed majorly and discovered it while shooting. My sensor was dirty and when I got back down the hill was cleaning lenses to prevent further contamination etc., when for reasons I don't know I grabbed a can of "dust off" and shot it in the cavity. My luck it was just humid enough that the blast of cold air instantly condensed and a wave of moisture hit the sensor and "fogged" it with propellant.

Sadly, Canon was no use....several days turn around, no guaranteed completion date, and a couple of hundred dollars to the rescue. A little research and talking with local pro-shops I discovered a little gem in nearby Pasadena who not only had turn around times of same day to a couple days max and inexpensive on top of it. Cleaning up the sensor was a total of 3 days (dropped off Wednesday AM and picked up Friday afternoon) for $65. And they did awesome work that included a pic taken before and after cleaning. So...the info on this gem:

General Camera, 2218 E Colorado Blvd, Pasadena CA 91107, 626 449-4533. Ask for Sabrina as she was the gem who helped me out.

Anyway, today I got back up into the mountains and shot once again with HDR in mind. I am discovering that the HDR only can do so much to in terms of blending, after that its up to your eye and use of Photoshop for the final blending to bring in a natural appearing image.

I shot "Alder Creek" using HDR post processing to blend 3 images, average exposure and bracketed plus or minus 2 stops. That final file is then post processed in Photoshop to restore some contrast and sharpening.

I do like HDR. The color saturation is much more pronounced through out an image. In this scene there is the added problem of light rocks surrounded by shadow where in the avg exposure jpeg most of the detail is lost and the sky lacks a lot of color. In the hdr not only do the light rocks have a lot of detail, there is more detail in the shadows and color overall is very saturated with a rich blue sky. More natural in terms of what I saw rather than what the camera captured on an average exposure.

Now its off to explore how far I can push limits with the program. This is getting interesting. In the mean time enjoy "alder creek" and note the differences between the HDR final image and the JPEG Avg exposure.

Wow...HDR by Photomatix works

I spent the day, well until about 1 when I needed to head down the hill, shooting with HDR in mind. Recall if you will HDR means High Dynamic Range and Photomatix is a program that allows us non photoshopCS2 types to explore that aspect of digital imaging.

To a large degree this program is pretty idiot proof (and yours truly needs all the help he can get some days). It does take a lot of finesse to get images that don't have a lot of ghosting or odd highlights at tone boundary's. As time goes by I'll get a better understanding on what hdr can or can't do. The finesse will come as I work with the program and learn its limitations better.

Today's project was to go out and pick through situations that are buggers to shoot, high contrast, shadows in naturally dark objects and highlights on very white objects all in the same scene. A digital camera I've discovered has a narrow range of contrast it can handle not unlike silver based chromes (aka slide films like ektachrome). So up into the San Gabriel Mountains I went to shoot in the worst possible conditions for extremes of contrast to see what HDR could do.

After a little exploring the other day it is painfully obvious that if you are to avoid any problems with ghosting and registration you must shoot with a tripod. Something I have only rarely done as it prevents me from easily and quickly bouncing around to get just the right angle and framing on a subject. Its a personal preference, kind of like a chihauhau type pooch...I have to bounce around freely and a tripod slows me down. That aside, it is invaluable when shooting with HDR in mind so I worked with it.

I used the recommended 2 f-stop bracketing from recommended exposure value which is the default in photomatix. I shot them in RAW which is a format where all the detail in the scene is preserved in its raw or "as shot" state by the camera with no compression which produces very big files. Fortunately the EOS20D does the bracketing automatically so once in place is bang, bang, bang on the shutter release and its done.

For Alder Creek I took the 3 exposures and used the "Shadow and Light - enhanced" tool to blend the 3 RAW files into one image. I saved the file then opened it with Photoshop and did my post processing for color balance and contrast cleaning up. I was impressed with the final image.

For comparison purposes I took the RAW file with average metering, adjusted it with Canon's "Digital Photo Professional" and adjusted the white balance to neutral then adjusted the brightness which then was converted to a jpeg for editing in photoshop. The final adjustments were then to refine color balance, saturation and contrast.

The differences in Shadow detail and highlight detail while preserving a natural luminosity was very good with the HDR image. HDR also did a very good job in keeping highlight detail....look a the detail in the extremely light gray alders in the background. Both involved the use of the base EV RAW file and somewhere along the line the HDR file lost some of the color richness to the simply converted RAW to JPEG used in the comparison. In this image at least the richness in the red/browns was lost in the HDR conversion more so than the blue/greens. Not that its objectionable, but my penchant for wanting deeply saturated color does make me question how much I am willing to trade for expanded gray ranges in the final image. Something to ponder and explore.

What I do see in all of this is that it will be very interesting to see how this expanded range will work into my impressionist images on watercolor paper. Also a few of my old loves, antiquated interiors and night photography may be the areas where HDR may have its greatest impact.

While I ponder it all, look at "Alder Creek" in its Base EV and HDR conversions and enjoy them on their own merits.

Worse than a kid at Christmas

I am so amped over my new toy Photomatrix so I can explore High Dynamic Range photograhy. I barely slept and was up early today reviewing the manuals and getting a grip on the basics. The frustration lies in that I can't get out right now as my dance card is very full today.

I went through my library of images that I have shot in the past bracketing to try out the program and ran into a stumbling block of sorts. I shot all without the benefit of a tripod and as a result the images are just far enough out of registration that the results were full of bizarre artifacts and ghosts. That might work when I want to exploit the programs abilities for the impressionist or surreal qualities later, right now I need to nail the program basics. (I like to exploit and do things on purpose rather than give it up to chance).

Ever anxious to practice I pulled out the camera and started with a shot of my living room corner. It has a huge range of grays as there is an open window with sky behind it (extreme light) and a couple of gray leather chairs (about as absolute black as you can get). Exposing on an average you get nice detail in the blinds but the interior is lacking all detail. Exposing for the outside makes the interior coal black. Exposing for the interior leaves the outside glowing like some sort of A-bomb aftermath.

I shot it with the camera on tripod to remove the registration issues. I then shot the scene using average and very extreme under and over exposure from the metered average. Photomatrix then was used to open the 3 files, and using the variety of blending tools I was able to put together a nicely merged file for further post processing in Photoshop.


So here you go my living room as a test subject. I have the images placed in under exposed, overexposed, average exposure with the final HDR image in the end. To make the manageable files I compressed with jpg so there is some loss of minute detail, but you get the overall idea. Look at the HDR...details on the floor and darkest parts of the chair and some detail out the window all with a nice range of grays and saturated color in between.



I think I'm going to like HDR...maybe in time for my one may show at the Monrovia Coffee Company in April?

New toys are a good way to start the month

I did spend some time at Santa Monica Pier yesterday after the visit with my tax lady who also is in Santa Monica. I figure I deserve some fun after that grueling drive. So a few block detour and voila there I am.

I did some shooting sorta on the fly not sure what I was looking for and kept mulling about the "High Dynamic Range" effects available in Photoshop CS2 which I found out about last year. High Dynamic Range aka HDR is an interesting tool where a subject is shot 3 times once at average exposure, once to expose shadows for maximum detail, then once for the highlight details. The program uses a variety of filters and brings the 3 images together in such a way that you still have great contrast but have complete detail in your shadow, highlight and mid-tones that you can't do even with the best silver based films. Really cool, but Photoshop CS2 is off my radar this year as it is more of an expense than I want to tackle right now.

Low and behold, the BloggingLA site that I check into frequently for the more off beat happenings in LA had a really cool entry by Dave Bullock with an image he shot and used HDR to bring in all the sky and shadow detail. (Recall that skies are a theme I've been exploring in recent weeks). His 6th street Bridge image is startling in how well it is a done technically and artistically.

What I found particularly stunning about his image is that it looked natural. So many working with HDR haven't produced much that had a natural feel. HDR is a tool that can be very surreal but I haven't seen that side exploited as much as it being more miss than hitting the mark happy accidents. (My opinion based on the limited HDR examples I have seen, love the surreal but it can't look like it was an accident).

The nice thing is that Dave also included a link to Photomatix program he used for his HDR. Wahoo its a price point I can afford and as of this morning its mine. Now to go out and purposely shoot avec tripod so I can put this program to use. Stay tuned a powerful tool and a free wandering mind can be a fun combo!

Anyway...enjoy the pics of the demented toys from the Beach and stay tuned for more fun stuff with HDR very soon

Beer goggles on visiting the rule of 3's

Silliness aside a beer does cause one to lower inhibitions and roadblocks. (The mental ones not the DUI Check points).

Today was one of those glorious So Cal days, sun out, 60's and WWII P51 Mustangs buzzing my neighborhood while I washed and waxed my cars. The first buzz I sat and blogged them on my cell phone. The second round I just stood there dumbfounded and when they made a tight circle to come back I ran and got the camera out. I managed to get a few photos for my "scrapbook" aka "Misc folder".

During dinner tonight I thought about those planes and of a rather dramatic sky we had a few days ago when a storm was coming and thought "wonder what those P51's would look like against that sky?" Fortunately I blogged that sky and had it available.

The stormy sky was shot with my Snap Che-ez camera that has an incredible arty recording of the view in front of it, poor color rendition, poor contrast, little detail and for the love a Pete the end result is every bit a Monet, Manet or similar impressionists image ready to be worked further.

I thought a bit about where to go. The rule of three in design applies to photos as well, even easier to do when you have the ability to control so much with a PC. Interestingly three also works its way into the rule of thirds in terms of photography and painting as well. Short version of it all is that your brain works best in interpreting and being excited by 3 elements within an image. Those elements if placed in the upper or lower third do more to excite the eye than dead center. (The latter I have talked about in the past in terms of horizon line placement).

So, inhibitions aside I took that stormy sky, ran it through a few filters. Then I took a nice shot of the P51's in formation cut them out and pasted them into the sky. It has its flaws, but it also has opened up a few doors for me to explore more. Photoshop sure has a lot of advantages over silver based masking and I got this done pretty quickly but I digress. Knowing these rules I sliced up a nice pic of the planes flying in a formation of 3. Then I pasted them into a heavy reworked sky, placing them into the lower third to bring more importance and drama to the sky. The planes weren't worked for some of that man made vs nature impressionist contrast I have been exploring.

So here you go...P51 Storm, enjoy!!!

One last reminder, tomorrow (February 25, 2007) is the artists reception at Paint N Play, I'll be there, come see me, have some free booze and food while you are enjoying all the great art! It is from 3:30 to 6:30PM. The details:

Paint-N-Play

418 S Myrtle Ave

Monrovia, CA 91016

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"

Giving back is learning too....

I was given quite the honor to serve as mentor for a friends daughter up in Seattle. Part of their graduation requirements is to write a paper on any topic they chose and to pic a mentor. Lauren opted to do her paper on using PhotoshopCS to alter color in photographs. I was approached by her dad a long time friend to see if I would do it and OF COURSE I WOULD!!! For me learning never ends and mentoring teaches the teacher to explore again while sharing what they already knew.

Now Danny (her Dad) is a avid photographer and his skills are growing quite rapidly and we've talked at length on where to go and grow. The real surprise is that Lauren has a real flare for the "decisive moment" and is using her color alterations to change the mood of the picture. A picture she worked on was sent for critique. She wanted to make the lady look more cartoonish and to a large degree it worked. Enjoy the little sample:

I truly believe that giving back to others is important. Whether you formally call it mentoring or it is a situation where you and a few pals sit and critique each others work its still important. It forces you to think about what you do and where you want to go as well as helping others grown.

To that end Lauren's project has made me think about how I apply color or more aptly work with it. Photoshop can do major altering and when I work with the realm of digital art I do a lot with it.

Shooting an image that I intend to be presented as a photograph has its challenges. Nature provides us with color and all sorts of contrasts. How we photograph them, IE manipulate the image through exposure at the beginning as well as fine tuning the RAW data for the final print can greatly affect the final product.

So Cal only rarely gets the dramatic sunset, mostly because we have a brown haze that filters out a lot of light, or the marine layer is thick and dulls the light to soft grays. Tonight we got one of those dramatic skies the kind I can sit for ever and watch the colors change due to a winter storm clearing out and giving us some clouds to reflect some of the bright reds back down on us instead of being lost in space. I was lucky in that the clouds were big enough that they cast shadows so I had a blue-gray sky with the brilliant red. I exposed for the sky and bracketed so I would get some of the subtle highlights on the trees in the foreground for some added details. I framed it all so that the foreground was largely black which further electrified the colors in the clouds (contrast of light vs dark, red vs blue....its all about color this time). Enjoy, and by the way the palm tree was framed to be important as that is an LA icon if there ever was one!

Its good to explore!

Exploring and telling what we saw is part of being human. Cavemen did it with the end of a burnt stick on a cavern wall in Lascaux, France were the first to document what they saw, modern man does it too with our art, written word...spread faster than ever before with the help of the 'net.

This mornings activity was to sort through the images I shot up on the Central Coast in and around San Simeon. A couple of them I worked into clearer (IE removed some atmospheric haze) photographs and once happy...deconstructed into my more impressionistic painterly images. The latter I continue to have more fun with, seeing some old Dutch Renaissance paintings added some clarity as to where I wanted to go with what I have been doing. Love both the the literal photograph and the impressionist so I run both directions in tandem.

For your viewing are 4 images. First two are of the Piedras Blancas lighthouse, the latter two are of the Santa Inez River Valley in Solvang taken from the Santa Inez Mission. In each set the first is a literal photograph with the next one as an impressionistic version. (In the light house version the differences are hard to 'cipher as the process of reducing size and pixels causes a lot of detail loss).

Rennaisance Dutch and me....



This past weekend was a literal journey up the coast to San Luis Obispo and Hearst Castle. The landscapes there are similar and different than here in the LA Basin as they get considerably more rain each year. Add in the castle and things get to be a bit other worldly.

I thought a lot about the old dutch masters while wandering about Hearst Castle as much of the interiors were decorated with pieces from the Rennaisance, but looked like they were the subjects of those old masters.

The one master everyone has heard of is Rembrandt though he is not known so much for landscapes as some of the others. Those that did landscapes that struck me the most were Van Goyen and Vermeer. Painters of the era were the first to include dramatic skies with clouds doing things rather than a pretty perfect blue sky. Van Goyen and Vermeer in particular struck me with the prominence they gave their skies and the drama it added to their final painting. Both also used very strong shadow elements to heighten the tension in the painting and bring more attention to the sky.

Clouds do add a lot to the sky and it something we notice even as kids trying to make out a face or shape out of the random fluff drifting overhead. I am certain early man watched the sky with the same wonder, and even fear as storms could wreak havoc on their mud huts and crops.

The land around the Castle does not even remotely resemble the flat plains and marshes of Holland. The clearing skies as a winter storm passed through the area had all the drama and play of light and shadow that the Dutch Masters so ably captured in their paintings. The setting and the sky, well it made me think of the old Masters as I went about shooting in and around the castle and San Luis. Once I got started I quickly switched lens to an ultrawide angle so I could capture more of the sky and all the shape and form the clouds added to the image unfolding before me.

The picture I am sharing is "San Luis Farm" I captured it just as the storm as breaking apart and a strong shaft of light from the rising sun illuminated some hills just past the farm. Now I'm thinking about taking it apart and doing a watercolor print with it. Imagine it with an impressionists twist, until then...enjoy the image as it stands in all its literal photographic simplicity.

Showing Update

Damn it has been busy around here with stuff and not able to shoot much. A new gallery has opened here in Monrovia. I am among the very first artists invited to show some work. So...4 pieces are up. The grand opening gala is scheduled for February 25 at 3:30PM.

The gallery is located right on Myrtle avenue in the middle of Old Town and will feature the artists from the Monrovia Art Festival Association.
The specifics:

Paint-N-Play
318 South Myrtle Avenue
Monrovia, CA 91016
February 25, 2007 3:30 PM

So....come see me for some free music food and hopefully...booze along with the art on display. Among the pieces I have on display is "napping snail".

Rules are meant to be broken....

OK, I've always been one to break the rules. I of course never whine when I get busted and have to pay the piper for my little digression.

Today's rule breaking was pretty mild. (Mild as in a gorgeous day here in So Cal ~ low 70's and as good excuse as any as to grab the camera and go for a walk). The San Gabriel river was bone dry as whomever the powers that be are have decided to stop the flow of the river for a couple of months. Makes no sense but it gave me a chance to explore an area that has been underwater for a while.

No, the walk in a dried up river wasn't the rule I broke today. It applies to the images I was shooting. Common line of thought are that you place your horizon line, real or imagined either at the bottom third or top third of your image when working with landscapes. This adds the sense of depth and spaciousness (or lack of space such as compression).

Today I opted to position myself in a manner where the horizon line was more or less centered, but used man made graphic elements to create the movement and tension to move your eye from that to elsewhere in the picture.....something off center. In this case in the middle of the dry river there were 2 large pipes that created very strong hard edged lines. The angles they lie in takes your eye away from the center line and keeps your eye moving drawing you in. So there.....a rule broken but it works because other elements within the frame overrode the urge to drift to the center.

I also used to my advantage the shift in light color this time of year. With the sun lower on the horizon you get the warmer tones much earlier in the day. The low light skimming also creates some interesting shadow and contrast changes from the summer months. Shooting north this time of year gets light coming very straight on to a subject which more evenly lit. Also due to refraction, or how the suns light passes through the atmosphere you get much deeper blue skies. The warmer tones and more intense sky add to the energy your eye has to grab hold of when looking at the final image. All that plays into today's shooting and final image as well.

Enjoy "Pipes" shot only a few hours ago here in the San Gabriel dust hole....

New Year and outta the 06 funk

Don't know who I should apologize to first, those who follow my blog or myself for putting my photography aside for the last couple of months. Good reason it happened...finished up the remodel of the house. This wasn't a little paint make over, rather ripped out the entire kitchen and new put in, 2 bathrooms gutted and new put in. Ditto the patio. Some pics so you can see what was done:

Finally last night I got to go out and do a bit of shooting. I chose night time streeet photography for a reason. Am off to London and Paris in April and really want to hone this skill. I spent many years doing night work and loved the quality of light so its a circle back to an love for me. Why I had to pick one that was very cold windy I don't know, but I did.

Wandering down Myrtle Avenue during the Family Festival and Old Town Monrovia when I stumbled across the Kettle Korn store front. This place is usually pretty pristine and it makes the most incredible Kettle Korn. The scene caught my eye and I started to shoot.

I knew when I first peered in the window it was something I'd more push towards the impressionist view with after processing. To do that, you still have to have a good exposure and this scene had its challenges. Dipping back into my bag of tricks I knew that the "Zone System" so beautifully designed by Ansel Adams was the way to go to make it work.

The Zone System is a theory that simply helps you break your scene down into blocks or zones of the shades of gray from absolute black to absolute white. It gives a 10 stop range of gray. The zone assumes that the perfect neutral is an 18% gray and from there you base your exposure. You pic the zone within your scene that you want to be 18% gray, meter that area and expose as your meter readout dictates and voila the area you wanted is perfectly exposed.

The problem with this theory is you have to carefully chose what you want to be the 18% gray. Of course you better know the contrast range your capture media can record. Regardless if it is film or digital sensors each has a range it can effectively capture. If you aren't sure find your self a preprinted (Kodak used to make a great one) gray scale zoned on one side and neutral 18% on the other and take some test shots. Knowing your media limitations help you get closer to the "right" exposure for the gray scale representation you want in the final image.

Back to the problem of picking the wrong gray for your metering for 18% gray. Chose an area that is too dark you have great shadow detail but leaves your highlights completely white and lacking detail. Chose an area too light for your metering gives you great highlight details with no shadow detail. Finding the balance is where the artistry comes in. Bracketing helps you with a range of exposures around what the meter recommended to get the final result you wanted.

Now on to todays image. "Kettle Korn" was an interesting challenge. The front of this store was not lit while the back was strongly lit. There was little light from the street leaking onto the front so I had to work with backlit dark objects and a white wall in the back. A stroke of luck was the fake slate floor was there and knew it was likely a zone V or VI, metered that, used the base "f-stop" down 2 stops and shot with 1/2 stop brackets from that starting point from 1 1/2 stops eitherside of the adjusted. Make sense, it did to me at the time. The 1/2 stop under the adjusted wound up giving me the balance between shadow detail and highlight I wanted to portray. Of course I still had a little of balance work to do with Photoshop to fine tune it for the final image that I ran through the "dry brush" filter for the final image I wanted.

So there you go, even digital art you need to know your capture tool and its strengths and limitations. Bracketing helps get you closer to the ideal you envisioned when you saw the scene, digital makes that cheaper. Enjoy Kettle Korn and forgive the long silence...

Controversy means great things are afoot

Lately there have been a series of heated debates in print, blog or other forum regarding silver vs digital imaging, and horrors~ use of computers by photographers. The really ugly stuff starts when the whole "digital art" thingy gets into the equation.

Purists moan regarding the loss of film and silver based paper...yes its happening but manufacturers do that when the market changes. ITs one of the consequences of a free market system, get a grip and deal with it. The manufacturers, Japanese in particular continue to invest tons into silver based product for the professional market. Makes sense put your efforts where the money is.

I bailed on silver based when digital was able to rival the quality and beat it at price. Let's face facts your 4gig CF card pays for itself the first time you fill it up...'cause if it were film for those 1000 images the processing bill would have killed you. I switched as I am cheap and can get the same image for less dineros. Simple as that.

Today after reading a few blogs and a letter to the editor on one of the photo magazines I subscribe too I got to thinking. What irked me was this photographer pontificating out in the sticks in "conker creek, TN" who made the switch from digital as there were no labs around. Fine can live with that. The she wrote "I have found the beauty of actually learning to use my camera - not Adobe Photoshop. I use my Cannon EOS 20D (a little elitist snob appeal??? my comment not hers) as I did my 35MM, and my work is wonderful. The best part is that it's "mine"..."

So while on my walk and enjoying the beautiful weather I thought a lot about this debate. A good image is one that has good composition, if that isn't there no amount of fiddling in an editing program will change that. You can't mask bad composition.

No program will ever let you doctor a bad image where you can call it "pseudo art" as she termed it. An image works or not based on the skill of the artists using their medium of choice. Painters do it, graphic artists do it and now digital artists do it. IF the image can't stand on its own no amount of effect can fix it. You can't apply filters without an understanding of why it works, what you want to convey with it. Couldn't do it as a painter underpainting, can't do it as a photographer for the same reasons. There has to be a method to your madness with an understanding of the final result....that comes through education, experience and practice. And in the end if the composition sucks so will the final product.

I love the realm of digital art. IT allows me to take photographs and do things with the image that it took me ages to do in the old world of dip and dunk in the lab.

So while enjoying a glorious sunny, 85 degree day in November along the San Gabriel River I broke out the Che-ez Snap digital camera and filled up its little 25 image card with these fun little .3 mega pixel images. As I've said before...contrast control is poor, sharpness is poorer, color rendition is sketchy on a good day. It does however make you focus on composition. Which has been a theme of review and focus for me lately.

Add in the camera's artsy fartsy recording of the world as I meander through it, those images are ripe for conversion into purely "impressionistic" pieces. And that I did...

Enjoy "Bike Path" and "Duarte Bridge" for what they are. Exercises in impressionistic focus on pure composition. One works because of the sweeping lines made by man (man vs nature theme snuck in too) that forces your eye to meander through the image. In the Bridge its hard edge of man vs soft of nature forcing you to look into the image. Different composition techniques making images work. Digital art with a camera works, now leave me out of the silver vs digital debate. Here's the final Images "AND THEY ARE MINE"!!!
(If I could blow out a raspberry right now I would)

A composition is all about the flow

Working out some images I shot in the Bishop Creek Canyon area of the Sierra's I thought a lot about texture and energy flow. Of course this time of year there is color, lots of it which makes it even more fun to wander about and just shoot.

Autumn is a fun time to shoot as you have big bold blasts of yellows and red to create contrast and visual tension in an image. Add in natural movement of water, clouds etc., and you can set up an image that has a lot of tension and movement to stimulate your brain. How you funnel that energy is only part of how you convey what you saw at the time to the viewer.

Another factor you have to look at really closely is how you expose your image. The color of light changes during the day, if you want your yellows and reds to really pop shoot early morning or late afternoon. Where possible back light those trees and let them take on a glow that really makes them pop.

Exposing all of that is where skill comes in. Sure, you could just let your camera take an average meter of the scene and your image will more often than not be acceptable. I shot a lot of the leaves and trees bracketing 1/2 to 2/3 stop over/under what the meter said to make sure I kept detail in both highlight and shadow. I metered off the leaves themselves as I wanted to ensure maximum detail and saturation, bracketing to get the other parameters with in reason.

The end result..."Bishop Creek" which I shot later afternoon as the first winter storm (yes it snowed that afternoon) was crossing up and over the mountains around me. I got an energetic composition due to the rushing water and contrast between the cool blues of the clouding over sky against the vibrant leaves of the aspens. Even the few lone sequoia's added in contrast with their dark greens and stout upright thrusts. Am happy with the result...enjoy!

Framing elements make the composition work. Whether deliberate in a studio or in the wild a composition has many parts. Its how these work together determines whether your final image stops people in their tracks and draws them in or they simply skim it over and move on.

How you use negative space, shadow vs highlights, textures impact the final product. How it all balances to create tension or relaxation are in the photographers control. Ansel Adams took balancing those items and by manipulating first in the camera, then later in the printing process adjusted how the elements within the final image he shared with us.

The subject matter often gives you ways to "frame" it with the elements around it. On a walk through the forest its the dark shadows that make the brighter elements stand out more. Contrasting texture in nature is there to help frame as well...rough edges of a stream bed vs the soft curves of the water tumbled rocks, the soft waves of grass in a field against jagged peaks in the hills on the horizon. In our cities its the hard edges of the building framing off a garden or contrasting with the flowing curves of the clouds above. So many ways to bring visual excitement to the viewer.

Of course its this excitement to the brain that brings the viewer into your image. My exploration of man vs nature continues. Elements of man framing those of nature, man's tension added to nature, the largesse of one against the other. It is all about how you compose that makes the image work and what element becomes the star.

A couple from the Santa Monica Pier exploring the relationships with different approaches to composition. First is "Watchers" which explores the steady hard edges of manmade elements against the flowing energy of the waves and weathered wood. The other is "Pier Shops" which explores the color and texture of some elements against a flawless blue sky. In the latter the natural elements add texture even though the construction created hard edges. One is an example of relaxed composition, the other of an energetic composition. Both work just for different reasons.

Relationships matter

Today at Santa Monica Pier I continued my exploration of manmade vs nature. What better place than an amusement park at the ocean (especially on an 80 degree day in November...Had to rub it in a bit as most of the US has winter this time of the year).

Seriously an amusement park is an terrific place to go for comparing what man does vs nature. In this environment structures take on extreme form and color creating drama. This is done to make things look faster and more exciting than they really are. Compare it to nature. Here there is sublety in the mid-day sky.

One such area that contrasts man and nature is at the roller coaster. There is the soft form of the flag being blown by a soft breeze against a brilliant sky contrasting these incredibly strong forms and vibrant colors on the coaster track. Its this contrast that intrigues the eye and gives me fodder for exploration.

For your viewing pleasure...."Flag"

Size Matters

Or at least it does to me these days. Its about exploring shapes and sizes comparing man to nature. Who knows where this theme came from but it has been fun exploring on both levels.

An interesting theme of late is returning to a few of my older themes. Back in my college days there was the whole "full frame" shooters going on in the fine art side of the photo department. Even though I was a "commercial" track student I still enjoyed what they were doing and used it for myself.

Essentially the only rule this group worked on was that the whole frame from your negative had to be printed. It forced you into clean compositions. No cropping was allowed...ever. Several of my friends were very involved in the "full frame society" which was an informal club, more like an artistic movement within the department. The negatives were never printed using the metal masks, but in hand made cardboard masks that included the surrounding information from your negative on the final print. Those gobbly gooky numbers and letters became graphic elements in their own right as part of the final image.

It was something that appealed to me then and applied it to how I started shooting. Only on the absolute rarest of occasions will you ever see me "crop" out anything. To paraphrase a popular ad theme these days "what's in the frame stays in the frame". Without realizing it until recently I still shoot and print full frame.

On a recent walk about I stumbled across a school yard scene. It had the elements that struck me...size and man vs nature. So I shot it, and with the help of photoshop removed elements, add some impressionistic touches to others then melded it all back together again. The result...exploration of large vs small, man vs nature in "Schoolyard"

Today is shooting at the beach. Next week if I get my living room painted....up onto old Route 66 between San Bernardino and the Cajon Pass.

PS...at Aztec through 12/31/06

Oops...I almost forgot. I still have 3 pieces hanging at the Aztec Gallery located at 311 W Foothill Blvd, Monrovia. The gallery is open 5PM-9PM on Friday and Saturdays 12PM-7PM.
The gallery is a co-op so the artists showing all take turns staffing the gallery and answering questions about their art and those others showing there.

During the other days of the week you can call the Monrovia Art Festival Association at (626) 256-3124 to start making an appointment for a private showing that fits your schedule. The answering service will put you in contact with one of the members on the Executive Committee who will help arrange for an artist to open up the gallery when you can come in to the the art there. (It will likely be me as I am most flexible and closest to the gallery).

I have 3 pieces there. They represent a few of the themes I've been exploring for a while. They are "Shropshire Lass" a traditional photograph, "Half Dome" in an impressionistic watercolor photographic style, and "Alexander Rose" a hybrid watercolorphotograph and digital image.

Until then I promise to get out and explore the old route 66 relics, and not just those local icons here in Monrovia.

Great Art, Free food and booze....

OK..I had to get your attention somehow. Beyond art the usual big draw seems to be free food and booze. (We can hope that Trader Joe's, corporate hq here in Monrovia comes through for us again).

The Details....Focus One Gallery, 404 E Huntington Drive, Monrovia, CA. Thursday November 9 from 5PM to 8PM. (Sorry its not later but this Monrovia and early bedtimes are the rule). It is located at the SE corner of California and Huntington Drive. From there exit either Mountain Avenue or Myrtle avenue and head north about 2 blocks to Huntington Drive. From Myrtle the Gallery is 4 blocks east on Huntington. From Mountain the Gallery is 6 blocks west. Really easy to find. Ample free parking. Did I mention Free food and FREE booze?

Anyway, my newest piece, "Bodie Blue Window" will be hanging at the Gallery through December 31, 2006.

Artists Reception ~ Art at the Aztec

Consider this your invitation to the Artists reception 10/28/06 at the Historic Aztec Hotel here in Monrovia from 5-8 PM. No invitation needed, no RSVP needed. Just show up and enjoy an evening of art, munchies and cocktails with us at the Aztec. You can't miss the gallery as it is right on Foothill Boulevard about 3 blocks west of Myrtle Avenue. For you mapquest fiends the actual address is
Aztec Hotel
311 West Foothill Boulevard
Monrovia, CA 91016

I'll be there as I have pieces in the gallery as well as displayed on the sidewalk that evening as part of the event. It will be here that the newest piece from the Bodie series will be unveiled. It will be a large piece (20X30 image in a 24X36 frame). It is one I had a lot of fun working on.

The teaser thumb of "Bodie Blue Window" is attached for your viewing pleasure.

I was framed I tell ya!

Pun intended. The show last weekend was terrific. Not often you get to see first hand someone's reaction to your work first hand and non stop.

I was very excited that a lot of my newer works were hitting home and stopping people in their tracks, drawing them into my space for closer inspection. All told by the end of the weekend I know that the meandering path of exploring styles and exploiting the digital image is working for someone besides me. That kind of feedback is priceless. Very motivating when you have that kind of feedback.

Why so long to write in here again? Well I picked up 3 commissions for larger images of what I was showing. The first is framed and ready for delivery to the Balder family in Temecula. It is a large sized print (just under 24X36 inches) of one of my favorite images. It struck a cord with them as they both grew up in Arizona and it reminded them of where they came from. The piece is "Mt Charleston Storm" and it was posted here earlier this summer. A piece I am most pleased with and certainly gains a lot in a very large format print.

Enjoy...watch for some new stuff very soon as I was invited by the director of Graphics and Printing at Santa Anita Racetrack to go in and just shoot to my hearts content, the horses and the art deco structure at the place. She saw my work at the show and liked it enough to extend the invitation. Wahoo...does it get better than this?

Stay tuned as soon as I finish up the commissions I am out shooting again!

Art from the Heart

As sappy as it may be but I firmly believe that sharing your art is as important as making a buck. Its about giving back to the community.

This weekend is the Monrovia Art Festival Association's biggest event and fund raiser. MAFA is a non-profit that donates its proceeds every year towards art education in the public schools. I firmly believe that art is a communication tool that children need as much as any other tool they are given in school. With art being cut from the elementary schools in California I am very proud to be a part of the group that earns money to give these kids this important tool. (MAFA has given nearly 100K to fund art education over the last several years).

So....this year I am donating "Old Rose" from my watercolors collection for the auction at the "Celebrate the Arts" taking place this weekend, October 7 - 8, in Library Park in "Old Town Monrovia".


"Old Rose" started as a digital image. I pulled out the rose, worked it out to soften lines and create a painterly effect, changed the background to make the rose pop better, reassembled the image and printed it on soaking wet watercolors paper. The final image is different than what you see here as the inks do float, bleed when printed giving a very painterly effect.

Enjoy the image, if you are in the park this weekend look me up!

silly camera...serious imagery

Back in the day, specifically my SIU-C years there were 2 camps in the photo department. The fine-art group and the commercial group. I walked the fence on both though technically my focus at the time was the commercial side. Getting a BS sounded better was the logic at the time.

There was a movement way back then to use a camera called the "Diana" which took horribly crude photo's. The fine art group ran with it and did some really amazing things with it. Flash forward some 25 years and I found its replacement the"Che-ez" by Snap. Horrible color rendition, horrible contrast, poorly fixed focus on a plastic lens but it never leaves my belt loop. Always on the ready for what strikes my fancy as I meander through life.

It really suits my impressionistic exploration in some ways better than the EOS 20D I usually use on my shoots.

Today I happened by a local landmark, actually a pretty slick icon from Route 66's hey day getting rehabbed. Much of the building is getting painted its original colors...the sign, neon of course, is still untouched. Add in a few clouds and the whole man vs nature thing is up there to explore. Since I always have the Che-ez on my belt loop I snapped of a few frames.

Enjoy "hotel"...worked over images from the Che-ez.




P.S....stay tuned as I have still not decided which image will be donated for the silent auction this week to benefit art education the Monrovia Schools. Will post here once I decide.