One thing I love to do in spring is get up early on a Saturday morning and just roam around the yard and look at all the emerging life. Sometimes I walk around with my camera and just see what beautiful art can be found. Here are a few of the images I captured on a couple mornings.
You can see additional images from the exhibit here. There is a very nice set of abstract images there and you may find many of them inspirational to creating your own abstracts.
If you would like to purchase one of the book compilations from this exhibit you can do so here when they become available ($24.95).
I posted a Facebook entry recently where I applied a new iPad app called “Rays”. In this blog entry I will go a little more in depth and show how I applied Rays to another image in my catalog – the result is the lead blog image.
The original image is on the left – before applying “Rays” . It is a B&W HDR image processed with Nik’s SilverEfx Pro. I selected it because it is a high contrast image with a strong white area; an area where it seems plausible for light rays to emanate.
I transferred this image to my iPad where I could apply the Rays app. Now the fun begins. The first thing you will want to do is slide the “Brightness” slider to the right until you can easily see the light rays. Next you will want to 
place the point from which you want the light rays to radiate. In this image I placed the little round circle that denotes the light source in the upper left corner where the sun actually was when I captured the image.
I would suggest that next you try adjusting the “Threshold” slider. This slider determines the highlights from which the app will create rays – from just bright white areas to light shades of gray. Adjust until only the areas you want emanating rays are doing so.
After that try adjusting the “Length” slider. It does just what you would think – control the length of the light rays.
There are three other adjustments you can make to get the look you want: the “Ray Opacity” and “Source Opacity” sliders and the ray color selection box.
The 2nd image is the resulting image from Rays. Notice however there is a problem. The rays are overlapping the large rocks in the lower right-center of the image. That area should be in shadow. To correct that I opened the new “Rays” image along with the original image in layers using the PhotoForge app. I was then able to paint a mask over the areas I didn’t want to see rays. The result is the third image. I made one more adjustment in Nik’s Snapseed on the iPad. I felt the face of the rock where the light was hitting was a bit too light. I added a selective control point and slightly reduced the brightness and increased the contrast to bring out the rays. The result is the top blog image.
I am looking into taking things a bit further by adding a little graduated fog using Nik’s ColorEfx Pro (back on my Mac). This might make the light rays seem even more plausible. With all the tools of the digital age, your imagination can explore all kinds of imagery. Have fun.
While observing the light around you, it is always good to keep an eye out for shadows. Maybe it is the middle of a bright sunny day and it is not so good for capturing what you had in mind. Look around, there may be something fun in the shadows. The two stairway shots here were the last images I captured on an outing to a sewage pump station (more on that at a later date). As we headed for the stairs to exit, I saw these fun shadows and stopped to work with them a bit. As always, I try to look for both horizontal and vertical framing compositions. Sometimes a subject can lend itself well to both.
The images were processed with Nik’s SilverEfx Pro.The edges were burned (darkened) to keep the viewers eyes in the frame. I used local adjustment points to selectively lighten/darken and add contrast to specific areas of the images – areas where I wanted to draw the viewers eye.
When faced with the scene before you, there is always the question of how you want to interpret it. Here are two takes on the same scene taken when we had another snow recently. Both represent an orchard in the snow, but there both have a different feel.This first is a very literal interpretation documenting the receding visibility of a foggy winter morning in an orchard. The later is a more whimsical interpretation that is less harsh and only gives the impression of an orchard in winter.
Which do you like best and why?
One of the beautiful places I have the privilege of living near is the Columbia River Gorge. It is a little over an hour away from my home. I don’t go there enough, but when I do, I am always in awe of the beautiful landscape there: falls and meadows, mountains and ravines. From thick forest in the west to golden brown treeless terrain in the east. They can all be found in the gorge. If you have never been there, I highly recommend it The photographic opportunity is endless.
On the left is one of the many falls in the gorge – Latourell falls.
Below is a wetland meadow that you will find behind you when you visit Horsetail falls. It can be found just across the railroad tracks (watch out for trains!). Late afternoon sunlight gave the grasses and trees a wonderful golden hue.
I received the results from a juried exhibition on Friday. Much to my disappointment none of my images were selected. The same was true in the fall for another juried exhibition. It can get discouraging. But as in the past I reviewed the images selected by the juror and tried to learn something for the future.
After looking at the images that were selected, I can see that I was a bit off the mark in the images I submitted for the targeted theme, “In Your Dreams”. I should have submitted some other images that might have done better.
I did do some quick review of the juror’s work before hand but I didn’t really study as I should. Here is a pointer to the selected images – PhotoPlace (In Your Dreams). They are quite good. Take the time to look and them and evaluate the overall style of the images selected.
Blog image – this is one I probably should have submitted. It would have been a better match than most of those I did. This image is an B&W HDR image shot at Pittock Mansion with a radial blur blended into the edges using Photoshop. The ghost (me) was blended in using layers as well.
This was a series of the magic moments I wrote about in a previous blog entry.
I have continued to explore and experiment with new techniques during the winter months. Light painting has become somewhat popular with landscape images and is used by s0me commercial photographers for product lighting. Light painting involves taking long exposure images while the photographer (and/or assistants) use flashes or flashlights to "paint" the landscape or still life arrangements. I have included a couple of samples from my experimentation in this blog. As you can see, very dramatic and what appears to be complicated light setups can be created this way. I happen to have a collection of old cameras and the associated gear so I have been using that for my subject matter.
I learned this technique from Dave Black who is a master of lighting (I highly recommend you take a look at this work – very nice). I have outlined the basic steps below. It is hard to describe all the nuances without showing the technique on a video.
When unique events occur we need to be ready. This past week I made a point of getting out to shoot given the extensive flooding in the area. This presented an opportunity to create images that aren’t available every day. I set out to create an image I missed last time it flooded. The water was not the same as before so the image I had in mind was not there. Driving around the area, I did end up finding some opportunistic images as the sun rose and lit up the mist and fog.
In the lead image, corn stalks sticking up out of the water in a flooded field add interest to this image of the sun rising above the early morning fog. In the image below, oak trees in the water surrounded by golden grasses presented another unique scene you can’t capture everyday.
Is there a unique environmental condition taking place where you live? Record snow, floods, drought or fog? While these may not be good things, they do present the opportunity to capture images that may not be available for years to come. Images taken at times like these can set yours apart.
