Before and After: Creating an Abstract

After

With this post I introduce a new feature I’ll call “Before and After”. It’s not too creative of a title, I guess. But it’s intended to be obvious what the purpose is. If you’ve seen my previous posts and artwork, it’s probably clear to you by now that I enjoy processing my images after capturing them in the camera. So, “Before and After” will give me an opportunity to show you a comparison of two images, and too offer a brief explanation of how the final image was processed.

This is a photograph of a post adjacent to a pier in Annapolis, MD. It was late in the afternoon, and the sky was a faded blue. I was intrigued by the reflections in the water. From my personal experience, I was hopeful that zooming in on a tight section of the scene would result in an interesting pattern.

The original photo is below. Here is a summary of steps I took to process the image:

1. Rotate image 180 degrees
2. Increased black levels
3. Increase the blue and aqua luminance
4. Increase contrast
5. Increase fill light
6. Increase clairty
7. Increase vibrance
8. Voila! Image done!

Before

Technical Information: ISO 640, 270mm, F 7.1, 1/200 sec.

Break the Rules: When HDR is not HDR

HDR is a photographic technique that will create a single photo from several images of the same scene, but taken at different exposures. This is a popular technique that allows a photographer to create an image that appears to be more evenly lit than the original. When learning to create HDR images, a photographer will hear the same set of instructions over and over, “use a tripod”, “keep still”, “set the camera controls just right”.

But sometimes when working in HDR, I like to break the rules. There’s nothing to say that an artist absolutely has to use multiple images of the same exact scene. Here are two of my creations. Each one uses two images taken of similar, but obviously different scenes. Everything is different, lighting, angle, exposure, etc. There’s really no trick to share, no rules to follow. Other than, it’s okay to just experiment, have fun, and Break the Rules.

 

 

 

Break the Rules: Hold Still. Maybe Not!

You know the rules: Hold still. Take a breath. Don’t move. Use the Rule of Thirds. Don’t hand hold slower than 1/60th of  a second. Don’t overexpose. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Well I’m here to say that it’s okay to “Break the Rules“. Here are a few examples when I threw caution to the wind and decided to experiment with slower shutter speeds than normal.

The first image shows a very active butterfly. Most of the time you’d want to have a very fast exposure time in order to freeze the motion of a fast flittering butterfly. But I think that slowing things down captured a very interesting blur of the wings. (Technical Info: 1/30 second)

Can you guess what the second image is? It’s a closeup of the Christmas tree in at 30 Rock in New York City. After setting a slow shutter speed, I focused, turned off the auto focus, and then I began jiggling the camera before I pressed the shutter speed, and continued to jiggle it until I was sure the exposure had completed. Technical Info: 1/4 second.

For the last image … why don’t I let you guess what it is! Please use the comments section to make a guess.

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Behind the Image: Village Store

I knew that I was in a special place while walking around Cagne-sur-Mer in the South of France in 2007. The tiny village between Nice and Cannes along the Cote d’Azur features the retreat where Renoir spent the last 30 years of his life. As with most of the villages along the coast, I was on the lookout for that perfect village image. Something that represented the quite pace of the lifestyle, and the variety of it’s people as a result of centuries of generations. The image I took represents one of the most popular images in my portfolio. It’s been hung in galleries, has been entered in competitions and is a featured image of mine on my web site. Here it is:

What do you see in the image? What does it convey to you? There’s no right or wrong answer. It’s interesting though, in addition to the many observations that people have about it, a lot of people say it make a good jig-saw puzzle.

The usual suspects presented themselves along the walk through the village. I’d like to show you some of the photos that I took while leading up to this unexpected gem.

To me, the appeal of this home was the painted medallion way up top near the roof. Although it’s a great looking place, and I wouldn’t mind it if this were my home base while spending time in the village, I don’t feel that my image of this building has what I was looking for.

Around the corner, was this great stepped pathway leading up the hill further into the heart of the village. The wisteria was in full bloom all over the coast this time of year. Walking by a vine or under a trellis was resulted in a very aromatic treat.

Once in a nice sized public square the village started to show some more color. Several features of these buildings appealed to me. Signs. Multiple doors and windows. Vines. Stairs.  What’s that off in the distance to the right? Ah ha! look at all the detail. I was drawn in to the visual circus of the store front.

So I moved in closer. I noticed right away that I was able to position myself perfectly parallel to the store. Unlike other places around the village, I wasn’t hampered by the slope of the ground or the height of the building. Compare this image to the final image above. What do you notice? What are the differences?

I couldn’t leave our tour of Cagne-sur-Mer without grabbing some shots of the rootops over the village. This one is intriguing to me because of the little surprising piece of solitude that one village family has of their very own.

Technical Information: f14, 1/25, ISO 400. I took this image before starting to shoot RAW images. Even though my old Rebel XT was capable of capturing RAW images, it took a while for me to catch on. Now, I capture almost exclusively RAW images. So I think this shows that JPG is not evil. It’s just that RAW allows me to exercise more creativity with images after they’re captured.

Look Up in the Forest

It’s difficult to take your eyes off of a hiking trail so you don’t slip and fall. The brilliant backlit green of these leaves caught my eye as I was hiking through a forest in Greenville, WV. After converting this image to black and white, I was amazed to see the detail in each and every leaf. I had this printed on a 20″x30″ canvas. One of my coworkers where it’s hanging said that it would look great printed even larger. I really appreciated that compliment.

Technical Info: I used the Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 filter to make the initial conversion to B&W. I like using the filter because it simplifies the chore of exploring different conversion options. From there, I continued to fine tune the conversion in Photoshop. Look Up in the Forest, a photo by jbhaber on Flickr.

Rain’s Not So Bad After All

A few months ago I visited Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in Washington, DC for only the third or fourth time that I can remember. On a prior visit, it seemed everything was in bloom. This time, I was a bit early, so there were only a few lotus blossoms and water lilies in bloom. There were still some great opportunities for interesting photos, though. But since the blooms didn’t just present themselves so obviously, it took a little bit more creativity to find interesting images. I think the trick was to constantly change my point of view by getting low, moving sideways, and constantly looking through the camera viewfinder to see how a foreground element played against a background. The first two images below are some of my favorite images from that day trip.

When it started to rain, I thought my outing would be over. Fortunately, I had a rain cover for my camera with me, so I decided to stay a while longer. It wasn’t until the rain stopped that it occurred to me that there were some really great photo opportunities as a result of the rain. I’ll let the last two images below speak for themselves.

I wonder how many of the hundreds (thousands?) of photographers to Kenilworth Gardens this past June (or any June for that matter) were lucky enough to have found themselves at the gardens during or after a rainshower? Lucky, huh!