Thermoregulatory Plates
ISO 400 ----- 60mm ----- f5 ----- 1/30th
Showing posts with label flower. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flower. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Monday, November 3, 2008
We Now Return to our Regularly Scheduled Programming
Halloween is over, so we can put aside the silliness for another year. No more Trick or Treating, haunted hayrides (or hayrides of any sort), wearing goofy costumes, or being forced to listen to "The Monster Mash". It's nice to have the brief respite every year where kids of all ages are allowed, and even encouraged, to act ........ well ....... silly, but it's time to get back to the business at hand.
There is a certain elegance to autumn. The air is clean and crisp, you have to wear an additional layer or two of clothing, and the smell of wood burning in fireplaces permeates the air. Life is winding down and preparing for the long New Hampshire winter. Root systems are recalling the life force from the vegetation to store it for next springs rebirth. Flowers and leaves dry out, shrivel up, and fall, finding their way back to the soil from whence the sprung.
I'm not real big on the leaf peeping foliage stuff, but I do enjoy a good shriveled up flower or leaf. You see so many spring and summer flower shots, and they are nice, but it's kind of like shooting fish in a barrel. "Ooooooooooooh, ahhhhhhhhhhhh, pretty flower". How can you go wrong? (I take that back, I see plenty of them go wrong.)
I challenge you to photograph something dead and make it into art. Stretch those artistic muscles. push the envelope on your creativity. Feel free to post your photographs of "Dead" in my blog comments. FAIR WARNING: Photographs of people will be removed.
"Trio"
UPDATE: There have been a few people take me up on the challenge. Here is what they have come up with:
House of Six Cats
Judi Fitzpatrick
"Dead"
by Ashlyn
Untitled
by Karen Casey Smith
"Broken Gate"
by CVH
Judi Fitzpatrick
"Dead"by Ashlyn
Untitledby Karen Casey Smith
"Broken Gate"by CVH
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
"Good Enough" is not "Good Enough"
The photographers arch-nemesis....Good Enough. No, good enough is not good enough. If you ever hear yourself say "This is good enough" delete it. Your work should mean more to you than that. You should do everything in your power to insure that every image you produce is as good as you can possibly make it.
Photography is an exacting skill. I can look at every image that I have ever shot and find something that I would like to improve. Every one. Every single one. But at the time that I shot them, I had done all that I could do to make them as close to the image I had in my mind when I shot them.
Now sometimes, this takes only seconds. You are out in the field with your camera and happen upon a scene you want to photograph. Before your camera comes up to your eye you should have a very good idea of what you want your final image to look like. You might have to take a few shots, and you might have to do some post-processing. You might even have to wait for the right conditions or for the plan to come together in your mind.
This particular image was six weeks in the making. I first spotted this wooden vase six weeks ago
and I knew I had to incorporate it into an image. How was I going to do it? I started to formulate ideas in my mind.... worked on compositions in my head. Thought about color palettes and lighting. When I got it to where I wanted it in my head, then I had to find the pieces to the puzzle. The vase I had already found. So I needed the pedestal and the flower. Then I needed the right colored wall with the right texture with the right wainscoting in the right relationship to windows for natural light. Piece of cake. So six weeks later, I was ready to shoot. The stage was set and my camera set up. I placed the camera on the mandatory tripod and framed it up. I adjusted the individual pieces of the composition and framed it up again. I readjusted the items and reframed it. Then I moved my tripod and framed it again. OK, ready to shoot....wait, the light isn't right. Five hours later, the light was right. I snapped one frame and looked at the preview on my LCD. Not quite right due to the little bit of extra space that doesn't show through the viewfinder. I reframed it and snapped one more frame. This one was right. Just as I had seen it in my mind. I got it loaded on to my computer and opened it up full screen. No cropping, a little bit of dodging and burning, a little unsharp mask and it was done. Six weeks to plan and execute and less than an hour on the computer. I can say that this is as good as I can get it. There is nothing that I would change. At least, not right now.
Photography is an exacting skill. I can look at every image that I have ever shot and find something that I would like to improve. Every one. Every single one. But at the time that I shot them, I had done all that I could do to make them as close to the image I had in my mind when I shot them.
Now sometimes, this takes only seconds. You are out in the field with your camera and happen upon a scene you want to photograph. Before your camera comes up to your eye you should have a very good idea of what you want your final image to look like. You might have to take a few shots, and you might have to do some post-processing. You might even have to wait for the right conditions or for the plan to come together in your mind.
This particular image was six weeks in the making. I first spotted this wooden vase six weeks ago
and I knew I had to incorporate it into an image. How was I going to do it? I started to formulate ideas in my mind.... worked on compositions in my head. Thought about color palettes and lighting. When I got it to where I wanted it in my head, then I had to find the pieces to the puzzle. The vase I had already found. So I needed the pedestal and the flower. Then I needed the right colored wall with the right texture with the right wainscoting in the right relationship to windows for natural light. Piece of cake. So six weeks later, I was ready to shoot. The stage was set and my camera set up. I placed the camera on the mandatory tripod and framed it up. I adjusted the individual pieces of the composition and framed it up again. I readjusted the items and reframed it. Then I moved my tripod and framed it again. OK, ready to shoot....wait, the light isn't right. Five hours later, the light was right. I snapped one frame and looked at the preview on my LCD. Not quite right due to the little bit of extra space that doesn't show through the viewfinder. I reframed it and snapped one more frame. This one was right. Just as I had seen it in my mind. I got it loaded on to my computer and opened it up full screen. No cropping, a little bit of dodging and burning, a little unsharp mask and it was done. Six weeks to plan and execute and less than an hour on the computer. I can say that this is as good as I can get it. There is nothing that I would change. At least, not right now.
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