Saturday, December 29, 2012

It was a dark and foggy night …

It was a dark and foggy night … visibility was a few yards, not many lights besides the streetlight to reveal any detail. Yes, my friends, this is a mystery story. But fear not, I will not bore you with dull and dreary prose, my flair is photography.

LJK_6024-P

Even on the camera monitor this looked pretty dull and dreary. No photo masterpiece potential here. Maybe the “art department” can make something with these frames. Always a chuckle there.

So I decided to use flash. Now, mind you, I fully expected the result to be closer to a view of a photo gray card than a useful picture, but what I got surprised me. Let me show you. I enhanced the contrast so you can see better the object of my astonishment.

LJK_6023-P-C

Are these ghosts, small-scale turbulences in the fog, condensation on the lens, ghosts, GHOSTS?

Have you ever photographed fog with on-camera flash? This is the way to bring out ghosts where there are none!

OK, have you figured it out yet? Inspect more closely. Note that the “ghosts” are made up of various sized uniform circles. Circles! Bokey circles, out-of-focus, blurred images of points of light. Yes, the fog consists of tiny drops of water. It was thick, as I told you. There were enough of these small drops floating in front of the camera to act as tiny bright specks, illuminated by the flash.

.:.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Creativity on Demand – Scheduled Periodic Posts

With the year coming to an end so is also my trek with “The Weekly Photo” and my “POW” posts (“Photo Of Week” and “Picture Of Week” on my other channels). It was an interesting attempt at coming up with an image every week. There were interruptions, but for the most part I am pleased with my efforts.

Before turning the leaf to a new venture, here the last of “The Weekly Photo” series.

Christmas Tree – The Weekly Photo

The idea of a scheduled post, be it daily, weekly, or some other interval, is to encourage keeping your camera with you and being alert for photo opportunities. For me that worked quite well, especially after I added a smartphone to my tool kit. The photo here, as so many in this collection, were spontaneous discoveries and photographed with my Nokia phone.

Being creative on demand is a much more stressful challenge. Maybe I will try it again sometime, but for 2013 I have a different project in mind with “aperiodic” posts. Sometimes individual photos, but also “essays”. To keep my enthusiasm active, I have given it a name: “Gallery EXP”. Yes, it will be an EXPeriment, but also an EXPloration, and hopefully also EXPansion of vision and skill. You will be able to see my EXPosition over on Silver Canvas. To get the gallery started I have included some favorite images. Where it will go – nobody knows.

I want to thank all who have commented on my posts, either by comment, email, or in person. Your kind words are very much appreciated.

Now let’s look forward: Happy New Year!

.:.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

We won’t let go!

We did let go.

One of the glories of living in Georgia is raking leaves until March.

.:.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

The Weekly Photo

My friends and loyal readers know how much I delight in playing with photos. “Café Art” is my term for my manipulated creations. This week in my “POW” posts – there is one for photos, and one for “art” – the two selections form an interesting combination. The photo selection looks more like my usual café art, while the manipulated photo seems almost realistic.

Together with “The Weekly Photo”, this project is almost concluded. I set out to post a “Picture of the Week” and a “Photo of the Week” almost a year ago. Some weeks were missed due to circumstances, but it was a lot of fun. Like most of my endeavors, there were multiple objectives. Few viewers discovered the POW pages behind the posts, and even fewer stumbled into the albums. These will be more accessible when my sites get “freshened up” in the new year.

Yes, of course, clicking on the images starts you on a trek. Enjoy the trips!

.:.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Cottonwood in Winter Frost

Once again a treasure from Stephen Blecher. He writes:

Hello Everybody, here is a picture that was scanned from an old negative. It was impossible to make a good print directly with an enlarger, because the the density range of the negative didn't match the print paper, so the set of negatives remained untouched. I recently came across them, and with the miracle of Photoshop I could make interesting prints. This picture was taken near Chatfield in late November, under unusual conditions. It was very cold and fog was rising from Chatfield reservoir, as a result hoarfrost formed on everything, producing a uniform coating. You can see it's not snow. Since fog was still present, the visibility was limited and the sky had no color. The overall effect is quite somber, but it certainly gives the impression of a cold winter day. (The jpeg doesn't reproduce the sky accurately).

To see a collection of photos by Stephen Blecher click the photo.

.:.

The Weekly Photo – Just Sitting Around

Not much happing after Thanksgiving and Black Friday since just about everybody is doing their part for Cyber Monday. Alright, so just two out of five are doing their shopping online, but all are enjoying the glorious sunshine.

.:.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Playing with Photos

For many years I have been a doodler. My dictionary defines doodle as “to scribble or draw aimlessly…”. Of course, I take issue with “aimlessly”, it has always been “just letting ideas flow”. These days I like to use a photo as a basis and see what “flows” when using tools like “Artistic Effects” in Word and other Microsoft Office apps as well as photo editing and painting programs. So it isn’t doodling anymore – I am creating Café Art!

Here I will let you, dear reader, peek into the making of a recent opus. It starts with this photo of a young dear. It is my “Photo of the Week” – click on it to go to the post page at Gallery Ludwig.

This time I did not have a specific result in mind. I tried my usual favorites, especially the plaster painting effect that PaintShop Pro calls “Artistic Effect .. Topography”.

A number of variations later, I liked this:

The I followed another tack.

I played with many effects, made color and cropping changes and finally settled on this color pencil sketch for this week’s “Picture of the Week”. You can see it larger on the post page at Silver Canvas.