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.

My winter flower

We have flowers in our house whole year, for example orchids, but there are some flowers which appear there only during some seasons – primulas and hyacinths in the early spring, followed by tulips and daffodils as spring proceeds, then roses, lilies, gladiolas during summer and chrysanthemums when rainy autumn days come. With winter we always buy a christmas cactus, poinsettia and cyclamen. The last named is my winter favourite. With many blossoms, beautiful immaculate petals and unexpected swirls they are constantly drawing my attention. Unfortunately, they never last long. It does not matter if we have them in a bedroom, living room or cold washroom the cyclamen flower never lasts more than couple weeks in our house.

This winter I had dreamed about a specific cyclamen photo for more than a month and so when I saw nice flowers in a shop I bought two of them, both beautifully blooming. Unfortunately, I got sick just the day after I bought them and they slowly started to fade, as usually. After a week I felt a bit better, well enough to keep a camera in my hands , and fortunately one of those 2 flowers still had some nice blossoms so I took my chance and you can see the result below. With petals more twisted it would be exactly the photo I had dreamed about.

~ 2 sec @ 100 mm, f/10, ISO 100 ~

I decided for more shallow DOF (only 10) because I like how the farther petals “dissolve” into the background. When I had this “dreamed” photo I tried to exchange the background for a black one and result is also interesting.

~ 6 sec. @ 100 mm, f/20, ISO 100 ~

It’s interesting to see how much different these 2 images seem to be even though the real differences are very small. I think this is very nice exercise for training viewer’s perception. Let me know which version do you prefer and why.

You can also see my cyclamen photos from previous winter here.

I hope you all had wonderful Christmas and I wish you Happy New Year 2011!

Technical information: all photos in this post were taken with Canon EOS 450D camera and Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM macro lens mounted on a tripod, under natural conditions.

Evaluating photos?

It has been a while since I gave a question to you. Now it is time to give you another

Few days ago, when I was browsing photos on the web (blogs, flickr, various forums), I realized that I must have some subconcious evaluation system for photos I see. When I thought a bit more about it, and discussed it with my friend and fellow photographer, I came to a result that I subconciously divide photos which I see into 4 categories.

1/4 sec. (left photo), 1/5-1/8 sec. (midde 3-stack photo), 1/6 sec. (right photo) @ 100mm, f/10, ISO 100

1. Photos I don’t like.
   Usually photos with a bad technical quality (unintentionally blurred, skewed, with blown whites aso.) or simply those which don’t drag and keep my attention. A topic or subject doesn’t matter.
2. Photos I like but which don’t keep my attention for longer time.
   These photos might be technically perfect but the overall feeling from them is average and such photos are simply not interesting enough to keep my attention for longer time.
3. Photos capturing and emanating certain atmosphere and mood.
   These photos might be of any subject or topic but usually such photos evoke specific mood or feelings in me.
4. Exceptional photos.
   Again photos of any topic or subject but these make me think about the photo. These are not simple “look and go” photos; they drag my attention and force my brain cells to think why the author took it, why in this specific way, what the author wanted to capture and say with it. These are the photos I value the most.

I always try to create a photo of a level 3 in my list, at least, but I am not always sucessful. It is very difficult to create a photo of level 4 for me and very often it is not intentional, rather coincidental. I hope that photos presented in this post fulfils preconditions for at least level 3 but I will leave the judgement to you.

1/4 sec. @ 100 mm, f/10, ISO 100

And what about you? Do you have such a personal evaluation meter? What are your levels and preconditions to them?

Let me know and until then… enjoy the blossoms everywhere!

Techncal note: all photos were taken with Canon EOS 450D camera and Canon EF 100mm USM macro lens upon tripod and under natural conditions. The last photo was created with an old herbarium record on my mind.