Baseball inspired HDR work

My neighbor Craig is a pro-baseball scout and batting coach. He has a client who has season tickets to the Dodger's game. Those seats are 16 rows up from the 1st base dugouts. Last night he passed the tickets on to Craig and I got an invite to attend. Primo seats at one of my favorite games. "The Freeway Series" with the LA Dodgers and LA Angels.

It was a pretty good game. Dodgers were on top of it all pretty good, actually very much on top their game as the final score was 6-0...yes the Angels didn't score a single run. I can't remember the last time the Angels were so completely shut down like that. I almost feel sorry for the Angels' fans that drove up from the OC to watch the game.

As always I bring the camera along and shoot. One of my fascinations still is HDR and how movement is recorded during the conversion from 3 RAW files shot in sequence to an HDR file. Tone mapping allows you to go real or surreal. I went both with these, though one is definitely more on the surreal side. Final images are post processed with Virtual Photographer. Regardless of the options available I still go to the exaggerated saturation of the early Kodachromes.

making a mess art...well sorta

I don't know what it is about this yard but the story behind it puzzles me. I've actually been by it hundreds of times and never paid much attention to the ever growing piles. What is wrong with the residents? Ill health? Packrats? What does the inside look like I wonder as well? Is this a giant swap meet waiting to happen? Why hasn't anyone stolen anything out of the yard. If someone did steal from the pile would anyone notice? Why hasn't code enforcement noticed it yet?

It certainly is unusual for the neighborhood. It was not what one would expect. It just begged to be made important and surreal. I think I did that more so with the opening image. The fence keeping it all in is just a nice touch.

These were shot bracketed, the RAW files combined via Photomatix HDR file generation. The HDR file was tonemapped using Photomatix. Virtual Photographer was then used to adjust the final image.

A little Orton exploration

Am getting a little bored just lying around. Although I'm getting better just don't have the energy or the mobility to go shooting. I did feel well enough to fire up photoshop and dig through some older images I liked and see what I could do with Orton.

One of my favorite flowers is the African Iris aka "Fort night Lily". Its a no nonsense, no effort, odd pruning out every couple of years and whatever water falls on it keeps it going. My kind of plant.

This image was shot early morning for the longer shadows. It was framed so that the bulk of the plant was in the shadows with only the blossom in the light itself.

I discovered a new Orton technique with photoshop that I decided to try in photoshop. Pretty simple and straight forward. I think I like the results a lot more than the other I found.

Open your file. Duplicate with a new layer and name it "sharp". Use the sharp filter and sharpen the layer. Use the adjust tab and adjust your saturation and color curves. I increased the saturation for this layer from "0" to "25" Change the blend type to "multiply". Merge down the layer.

Use the duplicate new layer and name it "blur". Go to the filter tab again and use the blur option, "gaussian blur". Adjust blur to desired level, for this image I opted for a blur level of "20". Next go to the adjust tab, chose brightness and adjust brightness upwards, for this one I used a "20". Change blend type to "multiply" and adjust the opacity which I used at 75%.

Merge down the final image and save as a jpeg with maximum sharpness (IE minimal compression).

The steps aren't hard, a little time consuming but when you can find a tutorial out there it is pretty easy. In the end I like this a lot more than the original image, then again I like the romantic impressionist view of the world.

Enjoy, now for a hot tub and an ice pack as I've had enough up time for one day.

Things are going to be coming through a little slow

Just when you are on a roll things can go sideways. Tuesday sitting traffic some crazy old guy rearended me. HARD. Then for good measure he backed up and gunned it again ramming me hard a second time. Basic neck and back sprain/strain. I won't die and its proving out my brothers theory "we're like cockroaches...you can't get rid of us easy". It will slow me down a bit so do don't expect a lot of rapid fire stuff like I had been doing. (The circle is around c5 subluxation that is causing the neck problems).

Pics in my flickr set "I has car wreck" named in honor of the Lol cats.

Orton or HDR?

Tough to tell which I like more or less than the other. HDR has a way of capturing such a complete tonal range and a few tweaks makes it very surreal. Orton does similar.

The 3 complete cars are done in HDR. The trim detail on the '47 Road Master grill was done with Orton in mind and added in a layer of grain. I give them a final wash with Virtual Photographer to bring about a depth of color found in the old Kodachromes printed on Cibachrome.

Neither are entirely real interpretation and presentations. I tend to real back with HDR and be a bit more literal. I like them both for different reasons. I guess I'll be running parallel paths for a while.

Still running down the orton path this week

This morning I took advantage of the cool air, brilliant warm sun and no fires in the area by taking a walk through Duarte and Monrovia. I shot most all bracketed as I do a lot of HDR processing.

I have to admit that I am totally digging the orton effect being recreated in the digital realm. I found a new method with CS2 on flickr and worked with it some. I think the results are much closer to the orton I remembered.

Creating these I opened a raw file for max data and adjusted the "normal exposure" then opened and saved as a no compression jpeg. I duplicated the layer the went to filter>other>high pass and used a fairly high ratio. Then I took that layer and adjusted the blur but going to filter>blur>gaussian blur and used a moderate ration of 15-30. Then I went to adjust>brightness and lightened it up approx 1 stop.

The blending I used was "multiply". Then I flattened the image. A final correction with adjustments>levels then tweaked the highlight and shadow ranges. This was then put through virtual photographer to bring colors closer to what one would have found on Kodachrome printed on the old Cibachrome pos-to-pos print material.

It sounds like a lot of steps but after a few times I got the flow and it goes pretty fast. It still takes longer to resize for here and flickr before saving and posting somewhere.

Quite the honor tossed my way!

I got the call the other day. The Monrovia Art Festival Assoc (soon to be officially renamed Monrovia Association of Fine Arts) has named me "Featured Artist" at this year's Celebrate the Arts to be held October 11 & 12 2008 here in Monrovia.

President Bill Beebe gave me the news, told me I earned it for all the work I put into the organization as well as the consistent quality of my images. His parting words..."Go forth and produce some great new things".

Well, I think the Orton series I just kick started today may be the trick. I'm totally digging the effects being recreated in the digital realm. Virtual Photographer helps recreate the soul of the old silver based media it was originally done in.

This image is my most favorite so far. I have a lot to go back and do. Duh...I have no idea why I never dug into it more. Enjoy, more to come. I have an "Orton" set running on Flickr so enjoy the set at it grows. Drop me a note on what you like or dislike and why. I like feedback. Honest.

Orton...the next path to meander down

Back in the college I remember a few of the guys in the fine art program were very heavy into the orton process. They got some pretty amazing results if you were into the impressionists painting and the like. I was pretty enthralled with the idea so I too experimented in it a bit.

The process was pretty easy. You had to use slide film to in order for it to work. You exposed your first slide for accurate exposure and sharp focus. The second exposure you threw it out of focus quite a bit then over exposed it two stops or more. The two slides were then combined and printed.

I opted to do my printing on cibachrome as it was a very contrasty and saturated media compared to the other positive to positive papers and processes at the timeThe results were show stoppers as it looked like a foggy dream instead of a literal translation.

To be honest I nearly completely forgot about it until one day I spotted an image that was done orton style on flickr. Turns out they had an entire group and that got me to thinking about it all over again. It took me a few months to get around to tinkering with it, but enjoy my first experiment.

This test image from Riley's farm is a bit more involved. I took the overexposed image of a series shot for hDr. I blurred it significantly with the guassian blur tool. I saved it as a copy. I then took the normal raw frame and genderated an hdr file with the overexposed blur too. The HDR then was tone mapped and next to micro contrast controls while tone mapping. The final image was run through virtual photographer with contrasty slide overlays upping the saturation of the colors and adding a "film grain" pattern. A lot of work and definitely an example of digital art rather than a straight up photo. I liked the result now I need to get the steps needed loweredI have a lot to learn but you get the direction the next meander is taking me.

Orton in the digital world exploring the surreal in another meander I'm starting.

Road trips and Spring are a good thing.

Spring and Road trips are good combos. The colors are their most intense. Capturing the intensity isn't always that easy. This years trip took me up from LA to San Luis Obispo, San Simeon and back all along the coast.

Knowing a little about contrasting colors is a big start. Growing up my generation got that in elementary school art classes. The contrasts vary with the time of day and whether you have clouds in the sky or not.

Learning about the color of light during the day we picked up along the line. I still remember a basic Color Photo class in college where we took a series of pictures from one spot one hour apart from dusk to dawn to watch the progression. Slide film worked best as you couldn't balance out the shifts during the day. The day starts with the red end of the spectrum getting the emphasis moving to Blues at mid-day then back to the red end at dusk.

This photo the brilliant orange flowers I spotted blooming at the Santa Barbara Zoo. Orange's direct contrast is Blue. A lesser contrast is Green. To make those flowers really pop I altered the framing to get more of the blue sky in. Add in the mid afternoon sun with only a light haze and you have two shades of orange contrasting with each other. Color Contrast, Sharp Shadow Contrast and you have an image that grabs the eye and shakes your sensors a bit. Not relaxing but vibrant.

Time for me to get busy and sort and process the 12 gigs worth of pics (all shot RAW so the files do take up a lot of space).

The devil is in the details "La Petite Mort"

Can you count the levels in this painting? The artist Coop graciously let me visit his studio to view his newest painting "La Petite Mort" that he is working on. I know him because he married one of my best friends from college and is a truly fascinating person. The man paid his dues to get the recognition he does for his work. Pretty amazing stuff to see in person.

Back to the levels of this painting. There is the base with the profile of two females, blue with deep red lips in a pucker. Then there is the red line skeleton grim reaper painting. Then there is a skull done in a pink halftone layered over it. The last layer he was working on when I left after lunch was the placement of a stencil of the skeleton reaper but that is getting ahead of myself.

The halftone is a recent direction in is painting in the last year or so. He indulged me on the process of getting the half tone done. For starters he took a photo of a chrome skull. Then he cropped out what he needed. Then he reversed it to a negative image, added in the halftone filter and adjusted angle and size of the dots. The halftone image was then printed on regular paper. Then that was put into a opaque projector and projected onto the canvas with the other layers already in place. Then came the tedious of painting in each and every dot.

Each dot size varied and took a difference type of stroke to get the size right. The smaller dots made it possible to go quickly down each row. Larger dots needed broader and more precise sizing. The larger ones also needed many more brush refills with each in the series. The detail photo below of the lower left corner gives you an idea of the size and variety. Imagine doing enough dots to create a skull in half tone on 2, side by side 6X6 foot panels!

There we go a short visit and a lot of appreciation for the work behind this latest big piece from Coop. I have more on my flicker set "Coop's Studio". Coop as more on his flickr "La Petite Mort" that follow the progress of the painting. He also blogged about it on "Positive Ape Index". And of course my pal Ruth has some on her flickr page as well.

Wish you could smell it but spring is here

Did you ever notice that some smells can transport you back to another time and place so vividly you'd swear you were right there right now? For me the lilac does just that. The scent transports me back to our back yard in Iron River, Michigan and 1st grade all over again. When they bloomed we knew that spring was solidly in place and only days before school was out for the summer. I still remember just climbing into the tree and being surrounded by the purpley-pinks and that heavenly scent. Nice to have those journey's every now and then.

Simple photo was post processed from RAW through Virtual Photographer to bring about the more saturated warn look of an old Kodachrome film. Nice to be able to emulate those old silver based films and bring that emotional feel to the digital realm.

manet, monet and jack...jump back into the impressionists garden

I could not help myself a play on words referencing pop culture. Of the painters the impressionists have always struck a cord deep within. It was the use of line and color to not present a literal interpretation of a subject, rather left the interpretation to your own background and biases. In this case local auto parts store "Pep Boys" has their founders "Manny, Moe and Jack", I have the impressionists Manet, Monet and Jack Beck.

Georgia O'Keefe did some incredible paintings exploiting the erotic, sensual sometimes outright sexual nature of the shapes and forms in nature. In particular she did many close-ups of flowers in particular that exploited the references to the female anatomy. (More on her in the Wiki).

The Iris in detail the way the petals flow and the brilliant beard and the anther take on some very erotic overtones with a little stretch of the imagination.

This image, the Iris Beard started as a photo wherein the raw file was opened, nominal color correction was done then converted to jpeg in CS2. The jpeg image was then opened in Paintshop Pro, disassembled, run through a couple of filters so the colors would maintain their saturation when printed on wet watercolor paper. Yes, wet watercolor paper, not running wet, but damp and dabbed off. This method of printing allows the fine details to blur into the paper and render a much softer final image. One that gives you an impression of sexuality and eroticism in nature.

A detail of the center to give you an idea of the image prior to hitting the wet paper and causing it to blur.

Anyway, you get the idea of what this is all about. The final print once it is matted will be on display at the Paint n Play 2 Gallery in Old Towne Monrovia.

I have Iris!

Just in time for Easter one of the Iris stalks opened up. These are a favorite of mine that naturalize nicely in a So Cal garden. Very fuss free and only need to be divide every 3-4 years to keep them really producing well. The blossoms on this old variety are huge and the buds even have a metallic sheen to them before they unfold their deep blue petals allowing the fuzzy yellow stamen to be seen peeking out at the center.

More pics of the flowers in my garden will be found on my Flickr Floral Set. Most everything in there is from my garden. You get to see the pics, I get to smell them and relish the sweet scents.

The English Roses are starting to bloom

Today is about 6th day of gorgeous spring weather here in So Ca. Today it made it to 90 so things in the garden are really budding up big time getting ready for the first big flush of color which will happen any day now. The first of the English Roses are now in bloom.

Wenlock is an English Rose introduced in 1984, very easy to grow and I found out, very easy to propagate. This one is a new plant that started when a cane on the original had something fall on it holding it in contact with the ground. I didn't notice and when I was giving a clean up in fall I spotted that it had taken root. I severed the main cane the following spring then transplanted this rose to a new spot. Very heavy old rose scent makes it a big plus in the garden. Given the space to spread this one will eventually be 5-6 fee wide and a good 6-7 feet tall!

Don't be rununculus...its SPRING baby!

Spring is literally only days away here in So Cal. The winter flowering stuff (which the rest of you in the rust belt don't see until May in your area if you are lucky) are just about done blooming. What is coming up now is our Spring flowers. Being So Cal it is going to be big, flashy and extremely colorful after all the rain and cold we had in Jan/Feb. The hills around LA, the deserts and the mountains are bright green and things are starting to bloom.

My gardens are the same. The first of the Giant Tecolote Ranunculus are blooming right now. They are the most tempermental bulbs I have ever dealt with. For reasons I don't understand I had killed so many of these easy to grow and naturalize flowers it is not funny. About 3 years ago I bought the bulbs for this batch on clearance at Costco and they finally took. Go figure, same spot as the others were that died. I like the way they look, just getting them to go is a killer. With luck....

The rest of my gardens are full of buds just waiting to explode into color. I can't wait.

You never know where my meanders will take me

Yup the badge gives you a great big hint. Through my pictures first on Flickr then following links to me on Metroblogging.la Arcadia PD Sergeant Tom Le Veque spotted me and offered me a ride along and tour of the APD headquarters. What? I could not pass that offer up and grabbed it. Satisfied a lot of curiousity. Never rode in a police car, never spent time with an officer doing his job. You get the idea a whole lot of new experiences. The complete article I did was titled "frazgo goes for a ride, Car 64 where are you...".

What I can tell you is that an officers job is a lot of travel between calls. During those calls I got to hang out and just take pictures. I did some in HDR and others were just straight night shooting. What you see here is the end result of the purposefully shot for HDR.

I shot these with a wide angle lens, somewhere around 20mm on the EOS20d. I bracketed and shot them +/- 2 stops and used Photomatix for the HDR file generation. The images were then post processed in Virtual Photographer.

The straight up night scene had to have quite a bit of color correction done to get it closer to reality. Damn mercury vapor lights are so orange it really skews things to far out of line. I balanced to keep it on the warm side and did dial in some contrast to get better dark in the shadows. I went for the lonely look without the total despair of letting the tones go very blue and cold.

Spring has arrived in the Mojave!

The lead photo is simply a teaser from this weekends visit to the Mojave Desert around Palm Springs and Palm Desert. I shot a ton of landscapes with the intent of giving them post processing through Photomatix for HDR file generation.

This year wound up being a "normal" winter in terms of local rainfall so the wild flowers are going to be very abundant. Already the desert floor around Palm Springs is bursting in color. Enjoy the few random shots I got done of the wild flowers.

I hope to make it up to the Poppy Preserve near Lancaster in the high desert this week as the poppies are supposed to be as lush as they were in Spring of 05. Getting up to the Calico Ghost Town for more of the high desert wild flowers around there is on the agenda as well. It will all depend getting the spare time to pull it all off.

Its Been a Veddy Busy Couple of Weeks As this lead image may tell you I've been busy in the garden. The Myer Lemons have started ripening and they do it en mass. I have over 100 lemons that need to be used up and shared in my 'hood. A batch of lemon bars is done, from the Barefoot Contessa recipes. Another couple of dozen will go into the manufacture of some limoncello with my old college friend Rutz when she comes over next week. Other than that it has been cleaning and feeding time in the garden waiting for the first flush of new growth and the spring blooms.

The other great news is that the Monrovia Association of Fine Artists has named me the "Featured Artist" for this years show in October. Pretty cool, but that means someone else is going to have to do most of the blogging for that event as yours truly can't really put a whole lot of self serving blogs, now can he?

Enjoy Sea Lavender, a purple Daisy and Winter Jasamine that is currently blooming in my gardens.

One of those good news, bad news weeks

The bad news is that I didn't win the Saatchi's Viewer Choice but that's OK. I have one more shot this round and it will go up in the next few days. Chances are...your guess is as good as mine on how I will fare. I did get invited back to submit for the next round of viewers choice in March and again September so I can't be that bad. In the mean time I'll just be busy, shooting meandering down the paths of greatest curiosity. It is what I do best.

The good news, is actually some pretty interesting stuff. The local PIO guy tried to make a big deal about me not being "media" or "press" a couple of weeks ago. No biggy, not like I claim to be some great writer, I do photo remember? Regardless, it backfired on him and oddly some of the bigger media picked up on the story and ran with it. The upshot is that real PIO guys and some corporations saw the article and contacted me offering me "Press Passes" and "Media Passes" as well as invitations to their events.

The first such event I got invited to one GM held Tuesday night called "Chevy Rocks the Future". It was an interesting event, LA area kids won passes in with their parents. Learned about what Chevy is doing to be the lead for the domestic makes in terms of alternative, clean burning fuels.

It was held at the Disney Lot in Burbank and was packed with a lot of the Disney TV actors, some from ABC to promote environmental issues at a kids level and what they can do. A no pressure night, a lot of fun. Then it ended with the Jonas Brothers giving a 2 hour concert.

Interesting for me was being in a press line up with some 50 or so other media members and their entourage. Then the actors were taken down the line and we got our photo ops and asked questions. I did mostly photo. I got to shoot some interesting people, hear some interesting stuff. The shooting was the best. I even got a couple to add to my HDR people moving series.

Enjoy the two pics from the event. They were shot bracketed +/- two stops. The files were then run through Photomatix HDR file generation and tonemapping programs. The final image was processed in CS2 and the virtual photographer plug in to give it a bit more illustrative look and feel.

Vote for me if you like it!

I wrote about it a while back, but here goes. The Saatchi in London is running a Viewers Choice contest where they invite a few select artists to submit work for judging by their viewers. The winning piece when it is all said and done get's hung in a new gallery and a cash prize. The cash is nice, but the big deal for me at least on the old CV is having a piece at the Saatchi.

The piece in this round is "Lincolns Last Stand". It was shot bracketed with the intention of using HDR to capture the full range of lighting and detail yet bring about a surreal view bordering on commentary.

An auto show is a very strange event to see on a press pass (yes, the gabacho got one through his writing on blogging.la). After all the hype of a new model roll out the crowd dwindles, an odd pressman about with the car on center stage. All forlorn and not unlike a bride stood up at the alter. The interesting bit is that the MKS is what may well be Lincolns last attempt to be a player in the luxury car market before being downgraded to entry level luxury. My editorial bit, could be wrong....

The images were shot hand held and bracketed 2 stops +/- from average metering. The RAW files were post processed into an HDR file with Photomatix Pro. The same program was used for the tonemapping. After that the final image was processed with Virtual Photographer to further enhance the real/surreal qualities of an auto show.

If you like it vote for it HERE 2/11 -17/08.