Taking time

You can say that I am taking my time with blogging and you are right. I still cannot get the right grip with photography and my thoughts are easily drawn to other things. Nevertheless I take a camera from time to time and take some photos, processing them is something else though. In last days my mind was turning around idea of posting something new and yesterday I had a discussion with a colleague of mine, in work and photogprahy, about our photography and this discussion was the final push which I needed to sit behind my computer and process some of the latest photos. When thinking about the photo for processing I was drawn to one which I had in my mind in last weeks, a photo of pink kalanchoe which I wanted to present in little bit grungy way. I used one of my very few textures and after some time I got a photo which I had in my mind for a long time.

~ Rough World ~
1.6 sec @ 100 mm, f/8, ISO 100

I know that it looks a little bit strange with further blossoms out of focus and then a background full in focus but I somewhat like this contrast and I am interested in your comments.

Sometimes, actually quite often, when I am done with a photo I try out different processings just for fun and sometimes I get a result I like. Mayhap influenced by the discussion with my colleague yesterday I tried to give the photo (the original one before applying texture) a high-key look and I really like the result.

It will never stop to surprise me how easily you can change a look and atmosphere of a photo. It may be a good exercise so you can try it, too.

Thank you for your persistence in visiting this blog and I wish you happy Easter.

Addendum: as some of you expressed your interest in what and how I hung on a wall in our living room, here is a photo of the set of photographs we finally decided for. All are prints on canvas, the biggest ones are 40x60cm, the smallest is 20x20cm, overall area covered by photos is 160x100cm and they are above our sofa. It was challenging to find a set of photographs fitting together without distracting viewers (mostly me, my wife and our kids) and we think we succeeded. I was pleased by several positive comments from our friends when visiting us but especially one asking who painted it for us.

Tulips in Black & White

Tulips are amazing flowers. So graceful and delicate with their thick wax petals, tall stems and proudly standing heads. We have been buying cut flowers to our bedroom very often in last months and tulips were the most frequent ones. Once we bought beautiful white tulips which turned out to be the variety with much more petals then only those surrounding the blossom’s center. I decided to try both high-key and low-key kind of photos with them beside some macro shots of center details which I will present in some of next posts. Now I would like to present one high key photo and one low key. Here is the first one:

~ FHK #011 – White Tulip ~
1/3 sec. @ 100 mm, f/10, ISO 100

It was tricky to get all subjects in the photo with right tonality because the leaf on the left side was very dark. Finally, the luminosity masking technique produced the best result.

Following photo is more classical low key image than those from previous post. I leave the judgment up to you.

~ FLK #003 – Trinity ~
1/3 sec. @ 100 mm, f/16, ISO 100

I tried various presets of conversion to B&W but after all I manualy changed the tones and their lightness in Lightroom. It was also a bit tricky to get all the details as I wanted. I wanted high contrast but I didn’t want to loose all details in leaves. I must say that I’m pretty happy with the result.

Let me know if you like these photos or not and why. What works for you, what would you change or do differently? This all helps me to understand how you perceive my creations and how could I do it better next time.

Enjoy spring!

Technical information: all photographies in this post were taken with Canon EOS 450D camera and Canon EF 100mm USM macro lens mounted to a tripod, in natural conditions, indoors.

Ful or less?

I mean colours. And a photo. Colourful or colourless? You probably know this. Sometimes when I am processing a photo I end up with satisfying result but then I start to think “how it would look like when applying this?” This is exactly the case of photos in this post. I took this photo some weeks ago along the photos presented in previous post but it took me some time to get down to the processing. The main reason was that I had 5 images with different plane of focus which I planned to merge into a stack to get bigger depth of field. I knew that it will require more time than routine post-processing which usually takes under half an hour. When I had the stacked image I knew that I want to make a painting from it. Well, a photograph which look like painted. I knew all the tools that I need (Photoshop, Alien Skin Snap Art 2) and also the process.  I wanted the result to look like this.

~ Intertwined (Oil on canvas) ~
1/15 – 1/4 sec. @ 100 mm, f/4 – f/8, ISO 100

When I have a photo in Lightroom for usual processing I try application presets sometimes, just to see if something  fits the photo. I did it also this time and sepia preset did something that I really liked. I did only small tweaks to default settings and the result suddenly matches my “Flora in High-Key” series. And it can’t differ much more from the photo above.

~ FHK #10 – Intertwined ~
1/15 – 1/4 sec. @ 100 mm, f/4 – f/8, ISO 100

I like both of them and it leads me to thoughts about suitability of different styles for different occasions. While colourful photo easily drags someone’s attention, as human eye is very sensitive to colours, the BW or toned photo must attract with something else because the main attraction – colours – are removed. Colourful photo looks very well on monitor and it can drag viewer’s attention easily even in thumbnail. Once he is trapped and viewing full size version he can enjoy all the details and additional processing. In case of the second photo it might look a bit mundane and “tasteless” at first sight. Viewer who is not enjoying this kind of photography will very probably move his eyes to something else soon.

Very often I think about my photographs as accessories to a living. Something to hang on a wall to make the place nicer or to give it some mood. If I think about the first, colourful, photo it’s not easy to find a place in our house where I would hang it. Or in any other house. I work with colours as with mood/atmosphere evokers and thus every colourful photo needs to be carefully chosen to work with the rest of the room or to create a contrast. Colour photos are good for places where energy flows. They can make living comfortable if well chosen or discomfortable or even irritating in opposite case.

The high-key photos, black and white photos, toned photos and such don’t give so much energy. They are not evoking strong emotions. They can evoke a sense of peace and relax, elegance and even glamour if well accompanied by other accessories in the room. For example we have this kind of photos in our bedroom. With earthy brown colour tones and simple modern furniture it creates fantastic atmosphere where it is pleasure to relax.

That’s how I see and understand “colourful” and “colourless” photos. How do you see it? How do you perceive it?

 

Enjoy the spring while thinking about it

Technical note: all photos in this post were taken with Canon EOS 450D camera and Canon EF 100mm USM macro lens mounted to a tripod, under natural conditions, indoors.

One scene, many possibilities

During my one year experience of photographing flowers I have found out that it is quite easy to take more photos of one scene with different atmosphere, mood and overall feel. This is truth at least for studio shooting. Sometimes it is possible even with a single subject as on following photos.

~ Flamenco Gerbera ~
0.6 sec. @ 100mm, f/20, ISO 100

1.3 sec. @ 100 mm, f/20, ISO 100

Even from a quick glance you can see that the overall feel of each photo is radically different and you can also see that it is the same photo. Well, not exactly – in the first photo I used black background while in the second one I opted for white background. But beside this it is the same photo. The lighting was the same in both cases – the natural sunshine of a medium intensity sometimes after midday. I was afraid that the reds will be overexposed in those areas where the rays of light fell on the petals but I was happy  when it proved to be a negative presumption after looking at histogram for red colour.

These  two photos had had completely different feel even before discolouration of the second one. Such an affect only by changing background. Now realize that you can change also lighting, composition, depth of field, focal length, shutter speed etc. There is so much possibilities.

When I have a shooting session with a flower I usually try to find all possibilities of what might end up as a good shot. Sometimes I visualize the photo and try to achieve it. Sometimes I achieve it sometimes I don’t. Anyway, I end up with photos which may be great even though I didn’t visualize them and haven’t thought about them before shooting.

What I’m trying to say by all this is that from my experience I recommend to not focus only on visualizing the photo, if you visualize it in advance at all, but try to use the scene as much as possible. Use your creativity and I am sure that you will end up with some very interesting and maybe even surprising images.

Enjoy the spring and do not forget to play with a scene!

High-Key Orchid, IOW and Flickr – updated

If you liked my previous post I hope that you will like this one as well. As the name suggests I decided to continue in the High-Key (sometimes called also Hi-Key or Hi Key) series. Unfortunately, the Cyclamen flower died since last session, as many times in past Fortunately, we plant orchids at home, mostly of genus Phalaenopsis, and one of them, white variety what a coincidence , started to bloom a week ago.

If you ever tried to take photos of orchids, you will probably agree with me that it’s not an easy task to get an appealing image of them. I found out that there are 2 ways which can lead to satisfiable results: 1.  take a close-up/macro photo of blossom centre or 2.  take a photo of whole branch/stem with blossoms. I tried both of these and converted them into images you can see below.

[Update:] The left image seemed to have too low contrast and looked like covered with a white/grey veil so I increased contrast a bit and darkened those central spots. The updated image is on the right. Which do you prefer?

1/4 sec. @ 100 mm, f/14, ISO 100

This is a classical composition for this kind of orchid. I like the dreamy snowy feeling of it. For the next image I shot a single blossom on a branch/stem and cloned out the rest of the stem which went to the left from the blossom and left the frame there.

1/10 sec. @ 100 mm, f/6.3, ISO 100

I think that this kind of images, as this 2nd one and the Cyclamen couple from previous post, might be suitable for additional adjustments, e.g. applying texture overlays or simple colour overlays. What do you think?

Now I wonder what kind of flower I will try to capture next because we don’t have any other white flowers at home. I think that I could try some blossom groups of this orchid. Let’s see.

One more information I’d like to share with you. This photo of a Cyclamen from previous post is current IOW on NatureScapes.net in Photo and Digital Art forum.

And finally, I created a Flickr account so from now on you can find my images also there. The link is also on the right side in section My other pages.

That’s all for today, let me know what you think about these images and enjoy the snow and freezy weather  where you have it!

Technical information: both images were taken with Canon EOS 450D camera and Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM macro lens upon a tripod in a dim winter light during cloudy day, indoors, with a glossy white sheet as a background.