Beetle with Flower
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I say beetle with flower but it could just easily be flower with beetle. Moreover a close look at the flower appears to show some strange looking faces looking back at you (or so it seems to me). Combined it’s an odd but interesting combination that breaks a few of my photographic guidelines but still has potential to create some interest.
Needles and Chilis To Beat the Pandemic Boredom (Two Photographs)b
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My efforts at true macro continue, finding subjects to photograph can be challenging. I began by pinning the chili to cork so it was held in mid air. After several hours of fiddling with lights I got a shot of the chili, and then more time was spent in Photoshop erasing the pins and learning more about how to fix backgrounds. The needle also took the larger part of the day. I have great close up vision but had a hard time seeing the hole in the needle to centre it on the camera. Both of these photographs are efforts at learning what works and doesn’t in true macro. It’s early days.
How much magnification? (Two Photographs)
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I am told that to get to 10x life size, a microscope and loan from the Government is required. 3-5x life size is a fairly good extreme to begin with. My bellows with a 50mm enlarger lens, and a 24mm extension tube can manage about 4:1. To get some context, here are details of Canadian and US dimes. Specifically the Queen’s profile and Roosevelt’s ear.
Urban Grunge (Three Photographs)
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In any modern city there are these grungy dark corners. The shapes and colour remind me of some of the older forms of modern art in museums. The composition can add to the inadvertently attractive grunge.
Windows (Two Photographs)
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There is an endless number of variations on how windows (with or without reflections) make for great photographs. Depending on how you process window photos you will be surprised at what is in the reflective portions. Sometimes you can mix the surreal, abstract and reality in one shot without compositing, often just by adjusting shadows and contrast.
Texture (Two Photographs)
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Texture has many meanings in photography; it can refer to mood, background or even the subject. I try to keep this in mind when taking and processing photos, as it’s an element I can make creative use of. I chose these photos because texture is front and centre.
An Abstract of an Abstraction (Two Photographs)
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Twist 1.5 was crafted by Alex Wyse and Ken Gould in 1978, and it has weathered many a storm in its outdoor location since then. These shots were almost inside the sculpture itself, to reflect the detail and working of the wood. Just a piece of the whole on a day when the kids weren’t playing on or in it.
Moore -ish (Two Photographs)
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I have been fortunate to have seen many of Henry Moore’s sculptures as well as the work of Giacometti, another sculptor. These photographs remind me of their work or put another way the post processing was influenced by their styles.
Dali-esque (Two Photographs)
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I mentioned earlier my criteria for the legitimacy of taking photos of the works of other artists (signed or unsigned). Here I took a piece of the whole that reminded me of Dali’s work. Photographers can learn a lot from other art forms and mimic the light, general ideas, and moods. It’s almost a must in one’s photographic education.
Abstraction (Two Photographs)
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Often when I am walking about with a camera, I am looking for something that stands out in and of itself, because of the light, the way the shadows fall. In this case it’s the corrugated wall of a church. Personally I think this works best in Black and White.
Nobody Does Abstract… (Three Photographs)
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I’ve said it before, and fairly recently, that nothing beats nature’s ability for the abstract. Many painters have tried, many famous, but it never looks quite so real or imposing as when it’s natural. There is great debate over whether photography is an art or not. I have always thought the answer was straightforward – great photographs are great art; bad photographs….just as it is with drawings, painting and sculpture.
Modern Art or Nature?
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There is a body of modern art that escapes my ability to make sense of. Moreover when it comes to the kind of randomness Jackson Pollack was famous for, my view is that nature does it better.
Red and Brown (Two Photographs)
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I posted these awhile ago in black and white. I have decided the colour is also worth putting on the blog. I used red and brown in the title but it could have been burnt sienna or rust or a hundred other obscure names in the red, brown and orange group of colours. When someone tells me what colour something is I am always tempted to ask what shade. Have you seen how many colours there are in the Pantone catalogue… But in the photos it was the abstract nature of the bricks and colour that drew me to them.
Abstract (Two Photographs)
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These are the result of my working with hard contrast. When I saw these plants in the field I knew there was something I wanted to work with. I wanted to try some radical edits that take the original subject and make the results somewhat more abstract rather than realistic. Working with contrast and sharpening tools did the trick.
Natural Abstract (Two Photographs)
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I like to think, before I take a photograph, about how it will turn out after I have shot and processed it. That permits me to focus on what I want in the frame and what my camera needs to capture (settings that need to be considered etc.) . This kind of photo makes that easier than when photographing a bird. I find it improves my photography.
Marsh (Two Photographs)
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When I narrow my focus I sometimes see the beginnings of an abstract composition. Here I wanted the plant to come alive within a composition that had no real boundaries, and that avoided deciding on a specific subject.
A Colour Photograph
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If it were not for the garbage on the ground it would be hard to tell if this was a black and white or colour photograph. What caught my eye was how the light hit the concrete and gave it some tonality.
Allegory (Two Photographs)
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These are photos of elements of the Arthur Erickson extension to the Bank of Canada (it used to be publicly accessible but no longer). I think the photos make a great allegory for the state of the world economy and its complexity.
Straight No.2 (Two Photographs).
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In Monday’s post I complained about the lack of straight lines. I have decided to give up and go with what I saw. These are the back windows of a hotel in broad daylight. The results of the light, shadows and clouds is abstract and compelling. I am not sure that this works quite as well in colour.
Shadows (Two Photographs)
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These are the fun street photographs that are both simple but made interesting by shadows. Photographers often talk about the importance of the time of day, emphasizing sunrise or sunset. What you don’t hear enough about is the rest of day when the sun is angled making for interesting shadows.
Montreal Windows (Two Photographs)
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Montreal is a a bigger, busier city than Ottawa and provided more opportunity and some additional challenges (like traffic) for my kind of city photography. Both photos are HDR, originally shot in B&W, processed in colour and filtered back to B&W.
Surreal Windows (Three Photographs)
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These photos should speak for themselves. I just wanted to say that the one with the ladder does have a colour-cast, sometimes they actually enhance the photograph. Once in a while working on photos that are somewhat abstract is refreshing.
Chairs (Three Photographs)
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If a photography student complained to me that they could find nothing to photograph, before flunking them, I would tell them to take a selfie. I agree sometimes the mood doesn’t hit and you are otherwise absorbed making things difficult for photography. Familiarity with a place sometimes blinds us, but it can help us see changes and anomalies that make great photographs. I could go back to this deck to re-shoot the chairs but the likelihood of them being stacked like this and the light being right are almost nil. I’ll go back for other reasons.
Contrast (Three Photographs)
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In photography contrast can mean many things, including tightening the tonality, contrast between colors. contrast between objects etc. A very flexible word. These were taken on different days but contrast is an obvious choice for this series of photographs. In my experience people see the connection even if they cannot articulate what connects these types of photographs.
