cars cars cars and a little lomo to make them stand out more

Its no secret I love cars. Since I got on the Lomography wagon and experimenting I decided to grab a couple of car shots and use the process to highlight the cars and create a little excitement around them. The 2008 Mustang Bullitt and 2011BMW 6 series were the car shots I worked with.

A little more lomography for the morning

Still in the lomography frame of mind. Have just about got the process down where I can do the steps without thinking about it too hard. Soon enough I'll be able to just do it and focus on creating impressionistic images from a hi-fi digital with no effort at all. Still will be a bit time consuming but it won't be brain wracking.

Enjoy "Forgotten Path" and "Woodland Spring". The latter I like the image regardless if its impressionistic or realism...well worth the poison oak exposure to capture the image.

playing in the Lomo sandbox a bit...

A few things I'm slowly discovering. My love of dramatic cloud filled skies don't work so well in the Lomo world unless you are willing to give up on some of the vignetting in the sky. What does work best is when you have a solid sky, or a pretty much uniform background.

These three images were done today. Still have the tutorial playing in the back to guide me through the steps as they just aren't down to memory and automatic. I don't have to pause any longer while I do the steps, its just a matter of committing them all to memory. To save you the scroll the link to the tutorial is HERE.

Personally for me the Spring Bouquet worked the best of the series I worked today. The Palms loses some of the vignette in the upper right corner because of the clouds and isn't quite as effective. Similar problem with Santa Ynez Valley...edge vignetting isn't as strong in the sky as I would like.

Much to learn still but am glad I took the tutorial as it helps me better understand CS5's potential better than I had before I took it.

still on the lomo path

I love learning new things. Since stumbling upon a tutorial on Lomo have been just a bit energized with the tidbits I am learning on CS5 as well as producing Lomo style images.

In this case the Lomo process really makes it possible to allow the center to better highlight the single tree and bridge while blowing out details in the fringe. Makes it possible to give a sense of space via the negative energy on the perimeter.

I still need to learn to take a deft hand at the sharpening and unsharpening part of the process to better transition between the two. This is just a start.

Of course the learning to better control masks and adding grain has me thinking again about what I can do to make "autochrome" style images better in CS5 as well. Stay tuned for more on both counts as I meander down the impressionists path a little stronger in the coming weeks.

A meander into the world of Lomo

Where to start. The last month or so has been spent looking into "lomography" or "lomo" for short, which produces some pretty startling impressionistic images. Many elements go into the images. First the cameras are bests described as "toy cameras" for film, yes that silver based stuff I adore still after all these years. Second they take the old outdated film for the most part that has inherent color shifts built into it. Then they cross process it...IE negative film developed in slide film chemicals or vice versa.

The end result is multi-fold shifts in the image compared to what would have happened if you were using quality optics, optimal age film and correct processing. In short its nothing like you shot and its image quality is adorable. The edges are out of focus and the light transmitted drops noticeably. The colors shift with a pronounced blue/green shift. Highlights get blown out and darks just lose all detail. Sharpness suffers at the edges with grain appearing all over adding to the impressionistic feel.

Since I'm not about to shift all of my work to film for the odd lomo image I would want to create I looked to Adobe's photoshop to help me create the look and feel of a lomo image. After fooling around with it I just couldn't get the right result on my own. I wound up starting to google search ways to create it via tutorial so I don't have to reinvent the world. I stumbled upon this excellent tutorial that takes you through the multitude of steps needed to create a lomo style image in photoshop. It is on YouTube and its possible to pause the video between steps so you can work out an image of your own.

The image here is one I purposely shot to try to lomoize. It was successful to a great degree. In the future I need to keep in mind that high contrast scenes will work best with the process. The potential for this process to work with a variety of images is pretty terrific. Of course you need to have a strong image to start with as no amount of photoshop trickery will solve bad composition and exposure.

Its me, my art and my cooking.

Little else I can add to this. Snacky Shack is a YouTube channel done by Monrovia (Surburban LA) artist Joseph R Davis and musician Tommy "Mac" MacCarthy. Check them out as they are interesting and have some fun guests. Recipe over at frazgo feasting HERE.

It sold...at silent auction

Monrovia Association of Fine Arts had its annual Acknowledge the Arts awards ceremony on this past Saturday evening. This image was among those I donated to the cause and was sold at silent auction. It certainly is a good cause, one I devote lots of time and energy too as its mission is to bring art to the community and foster the creation and appreciation of art. We (I'm the Veep and on the board of MAFA) bring art to the schools in the form of art classes in the Village After School Program.

This image was a digital image. It shot on my Canon DSLR and the subsequent RAW file was converted to Black and White with the help of Adobe's CS5. The image was printed on glossy stock just because I love the quality of contrast on glossy vs matte finish paper.

Art Bears set to invade Monrovia

My little corner of LA is about to turn 125 and the stuff for the festivities next week is gearing up. Among the things going on in the "art city" is that we are going to be adding more public art in the form of "Art Bears".

Why bears may you ask? Because in the mid-90's Monrovia had a bear that visited the hot tubs of residents and its antics captured the hearts of the community and nation once the national news picked up on it. He was named "Samson" by the community. As he was a wild animal he did need to be restrained. Rather than euthanize him the CA Game and Wildlife folks opted to capture him before he actually hurt someone. Samson was sent off to live out the remainder of his life in a zoo in Orange County.

This bear was done by my friend Rick Kess. He is just cute as hell. After the parade next week he will be put out on display somewhere in Old Town Monrovia.

As far as my art goes...been busy sorting and uploading some choice bits onto Fine Art America the last few days.

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.

Being subtle is hard for me

Those of you who know me, know too well that subtle is rarely something one thinks of when they think of me. I like bold and in your face stuff with my art. Though subtlety does have its moments for me.

Since I've reverted back to film I've been shooting each frame twice, once to be pristine for eternity, the other to be colored in with magic markers to change the look and feel of the image. I'm not bracketing, rather just shooting the same image twice. Maybe 3 times if I really want to be brave and work an image up to the max or save room for a flub.

Purple makes yellow in the negative world and that is all it took to had the splash of yellow to these two images. A few quick strokes of a purple pen (hmmm...Harold and the Purple Crayon?) and I now have a splash of color that changed up the original images. I like it. I may be doing more so with subtle than with bold in this series. Just maybe.

testing the waters today

Well I finally did it. With a little procrastination and a lot of trepidation I pulled out the negatives from the other day that I intended to color on and did it. Interesting results.

I did a test strip of colored squares to see how they'd convert on a blank negative. Pretty much as expected emerald green yielded a red, blues gave me shades of yellow and vice versa. The pens I am using have a broad side as well as fine point, I really experimented most with the broad side as I really wanted to see how it would translate to color before I broke out the fine tip points.

In a word, the results have been kinda van gogh-ish when one tries to color an entire negative. For reasons only Epson would know the scanner does freak out on full frame colors opting to take only a portion. Hence the more or less square one here. Hmmm...I do need to figure out the cause if I am going to make a go of this hand coloring experiment, kind of pointless to shoot full frame and lose nearly half during the scan. Getting a crop where one isn't intended isn't really the way I want to go with this.

Not sure exactly where I want to go with this. I don't want real color but do want to learn to stay in the lines a bit better. The interesting thing about full frame color that I have discovered so far is the resulting image looks to be more of a double exposure than simply colored. I do kind of like the effect so I may well do more of it and work with the scanner freaking out during the part of the process it does.

Who says you can't add color where none ever existed before on a B&W negative.

Georgia O'keeffe was a hero of mine...

Can you see her influence on my work? I love the erotic feel to flowers when shot up close and personal. Of course the water drops are just icing on the cake, call it floral porn.

I shot these on Tri-X at its normal speed after a rain storm the other day. The resulting negatives were scanned, low res versions for publication here for easier loading, but still high enough quality to get a sense of the real image.

fooling around with photoshop while the scanner does its thingy

Scanning negatives is a long process, well it is if you do extremely high res, which I do for the sake of clarity when it comes to doing prints later. It takes several minutes per frame to scan and the 'puter to process the image to something useable.

What to do in that time? Play in photoshop and see what you can do new or different. I liked the resulting image and it took enough steps to kill some time while scanning in a roll of film.

To get this image I took a cropped down the negative some and using "mode" changed it from 16bit grayscale to RGB. I then created a new layer that was automatically and aptly named background by Adobe's CS5.

I then broke out the eyedropper and picked a shade of red I wanted to "paint with". I used the brush tool, set at a very high pixel count (something silly like 475 pixels) and a textured brush. From there I followed the directions of the petals gradations and "painted" on that new color. Once the areas were colored in I used the blending tool at "multiply" to bring the two layers back together again allowing the original layer to allow the colored layer to show through and giving some detail back to the picture. I merged the layers, dumbed them down to 72 dpi for faster downloading here and voila...geraniums selectively colored.

Of course am busy scanning negatives for use in real handcoloring of negatives in the next day or so when I have time to experiment with that process again.

A day of play...camera in hand.

Saturday 3/26 was another adventure added to my bucket. This time around it was pit passes to the NASCAR Sprint Series "Royal Purple 300" held here in So Cal. Those pit passes were courtesy of my friend Dave, whom I co-own the "SoCalAutoBlog" with, father-in-law who manages the Pastrana/Waltrip Racing.

It certainly is an interesting experience that will eventually get chronicled elsewhere. For here its just about the images I captured of the event. Of all that I shot the choicest ones are in a set over on flickr. Link HERE.

Probably the most difficult thing about shooting on an active raceway is keeping your own safety in mind. Never turn your back on the cars is a good rule of thumb as the noise levels are muffled with the pretty much mandatory ear plugs.muffs one must wear. That is particularly difficult in the garage area where cars can come from anywhere.

The image here is one of my favs. The bright red and repeating shapes of the gas cans caught my eye.

back in the silver saddle again

Did it. Yesterday I loaded up on film and the stuff to process it myself.

Until they were gone I didn't realize how much I had become dependent upon things like auto-metering, exposure and focus. Silly me it took me a few times to get back into remembering to meter each spot, decide what will be a "neutral" 18% gray (recall am a zone system kinda guy) then proceed to frame and focus.

Yes, focus what a chore that turned out to be given my aging up close vision and slight breeze moving things up close in and out of range. I may check focus points in my DSLR and even switch to manual focus often to zone in on one particular spot but its not often I have to resort to that. When I do the DSLR has built in diopters that correct my vision so its not even a major problem.

Doing my own lab work came back very quickly. Funny how one never forgets the agitation routine nor smell of things. I must admit I love the heady aroma of a freshly cracked open can of film, I think I can pass however on the odors from the chemicals themselves.

Enjoy a few from yesterdays test run. Note the water drops on the rose, that pure floral porn! It was shot on Tri-X, iso 400, developed in D-76. I must admit I do love the shades of gray it can record much better than what digital does. Doesn't appear to lose much if anything in the process of scanning to digitize them.

Mixing chems like a mad scientist and a poem

OK, I finally did it. I found the chemicals I needed in a store in Pasadena. They don't carry the biggest selection and a lot is non-Kodak but they at least they carried my favorite "D-76" developer still. I was mixing like a mad scientist in my kitchen all I needed to do my first roll of B&W in I don't know how many years.

While mixing the chemicals I was rousting through my box of tanks and stuff and found a recipe box full of interesting stuff for developing film as well as this nifty poem that I had copied from somewhere along the line of my meanders. It is as follows:

I take to my darkroom out of affection for others.

There I make friends with the world again.

There I learn to look away, to focus on infinity.

There I play god with film, paper, chemicals and lenses.

There, in the dark, I begin to see.

Not sure why it moved me enough to type up on a 3X5 index card all those years ago when I started the reference kit in a recipe box. Its still appropriate for the digital age to a degree though we likely can remove the part about seeing in the dark, and change it up to somehow include the PC.

All that aside I got myself set up to start shooting and doing my own B&W film again. Opted for the ever faithful Tri-X Professional because I've always loved its visible grain structure and ability to capture stuff in low lighting. I even drug out my ancient, and I do mean ancient 35MM camera that is absent any form of a bell or whistle, even the built in meter died while in storage. No loss as I rarely used it and more heavily relied upon a spot meter which I still have that works quite well.

Man the torpedoes and launch the "Zone System" film photography here I come. Again.