My apologies if you have browsed through here expecting a “Six Reasons My Five Reasons Are Better Than Your Four Reasons” type of post.
I don’t have any keys to photography for you. All I have are real keys I came across as I decluttered a closet this weekend. I’m fond of the rusticity.
The shot is lit with an SB600 through an umbrella.
This is one of those shots where I think that black and white expresses better what I saw than the original color would.
There are a few colors in nature than absolutely transfix me. The color of tall grass in mid-winter is one. The color of forrest undergrowth in early spring is another. Just the way that first green of the season is so vibrant and almost luminescent, and the way it contrasts with the wet leaves from last fall decaying on the forest floor.
That green is all well and good, but I think that this black and white version shows how that green hue glows among the trees in a way that a color image could not.
Among other things I’ve been doing recently, I’ve been working my way through Piet Van den Eynde’s ebook The Power of Black and White in Adobe Lightroom and Beyond: A Master Class, available through Craft and Vision for a mere $5 (which is a steal). Although much of the book can be a bit redundant in the early chapters if you already know your way around Lightroom, the later chapters offer some very valuable tips on converting color images to black and white…and not just black and white. Stunning black and white. Beyond the expert composition and subjects of the images used as samples, the range and intensity of tones the author gets out of the sample images really is striking.
So I think that I am going to be posting a lot more black and white conversions for now, as I dig into the techniques he’s using to bring shades of grey to very very vibrant life.
I think I did alright on the above image, taken at the previously discussed Nepaug reservoir. editing was done in Lightroom, with ample use of custom brushes to jigger exposure, contrast, clarity, etc. Really wish my lens had been about 5mm wider. Oh well.
Nepaug Reservoir in Collinsville, CT is just one of those places that makes me want to take pictures. Having a day with interesting light and clouds doesn’t hurt anything, either. Another lovely walk with the family, and a few interesting captures to work on my black and white processing.
My sister moved to Germany today. All the best to her and Phil! I headed up to Connecticut to say auf wiedersehen to her, and found a list on the refrigerator of the photos she was planning on taking with her.
Many similarities in the quality of those first two items
That’s a pretty sweet list. I’m awful glad she had the good sense to find space on her wall for some Ansel Adams, what with my excellent images taking top spot. Here are the two of mine she’s taking:
Not bad for being taken with the D40 and kit lens; the bottom image was taken, I believe, the very first day I owned it.
I’m trying to remember to stick my photographic nose into more things more often. I’m in a bit of a spell where I’ve been shooting a bit more and therefore have more editing to do and more deadlines to meet, and so it’s not everyday that I pick up the camera and do something just for the exploration of it.
But I had moment today, and my garden really does look best if you don’t take the wide view, so I appreciate the macro-ish capabilities of my Sigma 24-70. It’s not exactly a macro lens really, but you really can get right up in something’s schnozz-piece, and the focusing distance is very friendly.
It is a truism in photography that you are supposed to take a picture every day, just as in writing you should write every day, or in singing you should sing every day. Cliche or not, it really is good practice for spurring the creative juices; there’s no better time to think about photography than when a lens is between you and world. Seeing things that way helps me think beyond my current shot and mull over larger ideas of projects and aesthetics. And even though those things are diversions for me these days, how I play around eventually trickles down to my professional work.
My professional work, by the way, is not gardening. Especially not this year. Zoom and macro helped me avoid the weeds.
A couple of friends just bought a new grill, and they asked me to come over and “kick its ass,” which is the kind of thing I do when I’m not using ambient light and a 50mm f1.8 to create soft, washed-out, paper-thin DOF photographs of high falutin’ fishes dishes I cooked myself. I must express some amount of disappointment in the access I was given to the grill; I really only got to cook the appetizer, and the rest was all planned out and that plan left me out. But I will be back. Oh, I will be back with giant hunks of unfashionable cuts of meat.
Grilled rainbow trout, melted fennel, coconut milk.
Is there a type of shot in photography that just gives you the howling fantods every time you see it? For me, it’s when a photographer points the camera down and shoots his or her own feet. I’m not saying my reaction is rational or deserved. I’m just sayin’, is all.
So just to be the complete opposite of that, I shot a bunch of shots last weekend with my camera pointed at the ceiling, which had this fairly large, paned mirror on it. The ceiling wasn’t that high, and there was certainly no balcony there, but the mirror provided the opportunity to shoot from somewhat above the dance floor and dinner tables. I like the framing, too.