Getting better at macro photography

Up close and personal this looks like a mountain of pumpkin seeds. In reality it is just a small handful in the bottom of a glass dish.

Reality is a bit tweaked though. I almost feel as if I was able to be standing in the bowl taking the shot as well as viewing the shot. Sometimes the macros turn out and sometimes they don't. I haven't yet figured out the magic to the art of macro photography. But I think that part of the key is to not think TOO hard what you are doing.

Photo Group

It looks like art photography is going to be a thing for me for a while. In part due to a lack of studio space and patience for a long project. Also due in part to the ease with which digital photography allows art to be made. I've been quite the shutterbug of late.

And to encourage my subjects to come to me, I am helping to do up the yard. If I am to be close to home then I am going to enjoy it. That means a bird bath, flowers, and a small investment in feed and feeders.

Also, I have been invited to participate in an online group at Google+. http://www.kujaja.com is a collaborative group that hosts competitions within the groups and also puts together books for charities. I was invited by the co-founder and have entered a Black and white competition. We'll see at the end of the month if I will get anywhere with it. So far the one photograph has gained 30 +ups. A far sight more than my artwork or blog posts ever get.

Anyway, these are the blossoms on the flowering crab outside my bank. I've taken out most of the color and tinted it toward the sage end of the spectrum/ I thought about adding a soft blur to the photo but I rather like how it's come out. Except for the one cartoony blossom near the bottom. Hmm.... might have to go back and play with that some.

A little bit me....

A bit of a self portrait. A little layering. A little change in atmosphere and there is something kinda me coming through in my shadow. I kinda like the non-portrait self portrait.

Point and Shoot

In support of the point and shoot camera to learn some skills while you save up for the big DSLR.
These photos were taken today with the simple GE Digital Superzoom I have. Again, you have to understand how the zoom works, account for the distance and where the thing you are aiming at is in the range and shoot. You have to learn what your settings do, how they do it and then select the automatic settings accordingly. This robin was about 15 feet up the tree. The first photo is with the zoom only half engaged.

What I liked best about this particular shot is that the buds didn't get in the way of the bird. It was framed fairly well. The picture follows the rule of thirds, just not in the way they mean. The subject should be in the two thirds margin. Instead, I have the background divided by thirds with the blue sky slicing between the grey of the trunks. The bird is not perfectly centered in the mid section of the rectangle. And it is not crowded.

For the next shot the zoom was fully engaged which brought in the details of the bird's feathers. It also brought the buds in closer and out of focus to partially obscure the all-important red breast. I like his attitude, bill pointed high. He had just finished a song.

I would also like to point out that I did not have to edit these photos. No darkening the shadows. No adding contrast. No sharpening. No adding clarity and no adjusting color.

This is what can be done with a point and shoot if you take the time to learn how these cameras work. Nothing wrong with making these types of cameras your learning tool. Better to spend a couple of hundred dollars until you find out if you really want to do this than the hundreds and hundreds it takes to buy the SLRs.

Botanicals

Taken on Silver Lake. It's funny. But I forgot that there were several kinds of swans until I went looking up the scientific name to make the placard.

I'm sticking close to home this Summer so the inspiration for art, digital and otherwise, will have to come from close to home.

There is little in life more confusing to a person than wading through the scientific classification of things. The internet is a great place for information. But sometimes it is too full of information. I miss the days of a World Book encyclopedia where I could look something up by a common name and have an easy informative graph or table for the short reference in addition to the long complicated description in the body of an entry. World Book knew how to keep things succinct and pertinent to a search. Britannica however is every bit as verbose as your typical arch criminal who loves to hear the sound of his own voice.

EDIT: as it turns out this is not a cottonwood. The fissured bark is at the base. There is smooth bark at the top. It is an Aspen. But in all the information about identifying Aspens no mention was made of "mature" bark. Apparently, trees age wrinkled too. 

It started with the Blue Jays screaming at the pew pewing Cardinals. The Jays stood still and actually let me take photos. The Cards not so much. So I filled the feeder and sprinkled a seed/nut/fruit mix on the ground. I got chickadees this morning. I could have had a very pretty red headed sparrow with an Eye of Horus brow line but the camera didn't cooperate.

The female Cardinal was on the ground foraging so I think I need to consult some pros about what types of feeders the bigger birds would prefer. The shallow tray is only going to make the finches, sparrows and thrifts happy.


When did I turn into such an old lady?
I'll blame Midsomer Murders for this one. It surely isn't a Sherlock kind of habit.

Swans on the Lake with a GEDSC

Playing with photography still. Taken today on Silver Lake, south of Traverse City. The camera is a GE digital superzoom which some people think is not worth buying and is only good for toasting bread. I beg to differ.

I've taken some really great photos with this thing. You have to know how to compose a shot. And you have to understand how things focus for each of the settings on this camera. Once you understand that there really is no reason that you can not take good or great pictures. Can you do what Ansel Adams did? Maybe. Can you do what the NatGeo guys do? I don't know. My guess is probably not. But if you are going to learn then this was a really inexpensive camera to start with and no reason to be ashamed for the purchase.

But let me tell you, even if you can't get the "perfect pro shot" with this one, you can get a good substrate for digital manipulations. Take the about shot of swans. The camera zoom was set as high as it would go. They were still out of focus and with the angle of the sun they were in a glare with the light radiating off of their backs. There is still depth in the shot. The mid ground where the tree trunks are is distinct. The top of the frame where the silvery branches are is full of texture. It wasn't the "perfect" shot. It did need help with some photo editing. Enter PicMonkey.

Adjusting the shadows and contrast sliders brought things into focus through visual trickery. It didn't really sharpen the features but it cut down on the feather glare. It also made the bare branches stand out a little more. But it was still a weak and uninteresting picture. That means it is time for a filter. I used the Stock Film filter on the Reala setting and played with the slider until I got the look that I wanted. It looks more like it did live in this picture. But the glaring bright greens in the undergrowth on shore are gone so as to be almost monochromatic in appearance.


Of the 20 something shots I took of the swans while they were within range only one did not require any editing of any kind. That is this one of the pair digging in to get some good propulsion. Not a bit manipulation went into this one. They were just at the edge of the camera's range to take this. A few feet further out and there would have been no hope for it.

So you can, in fact, get a good shot with this "worthless" camera. When I am more confident in my abilities I will graduate to a :big girl" pro cam. For now, this one is perfectly suited to my needs and abilities.

Photography: Food

I've made a new pinterest board. It's for food porn... you know, those impossibly beautifully plated meals in the french tradition that make you think of nothing but gorging yourself. Sensual. Hypnotic. Designed to make the cravings intense enough to blow your mind. And make you jones for the thing that is out of reach. It is the fantasy meal that no average American fare dinner will ever live up to. It is the unreality that makes reality intolerable.

Why do we torture ourselves with such imagery?

I want to learn to take these kinds of photos.
I want to learn to prepare those kinds of meals.

I want to produce the kind of food & work that gets into the deepest part of your subconscious and lives there until you go mad for the desire of a piece of sculpted chocolate or a fruit tart that looks like something with which a serpent could tempt one out of Eden.

I started out with these kinds of photos. you might remember this from a trip to Grand Rapids with my old housemate. It's a good photo. But it isn't food porn. It is mere documentation, though by no means was this a mere dessert. That was the best ever chocolate pudding I have ever eaten. And I thought that some of the home made ones, from scratch not mix, were good. 

And I got a little better once I read up on how these kinds of photos are taken. MACRO lens, flattened field of vision and natural lighting make all the difference. And while this is still better than the mousse/pudding.....

You see the grain in the cake, the textures and variegation in the frosting and the depth of the shadows it still needed something. So it gets a little picmonkey treatment and voila! 

Closer to being food art photography. 

Closer. But not perfect. Perfection being slow in the making. And not all that easy to come by even with a few articles on the subject under one's belt. I don't know what it is about food. It is difficult to use props yet props are rather essential. Or so it would seem. Food also has a relatively short table life. It doesn't take long for frosting to lose it's sheen, veggies to dry out and meats to begin to shrink and lose their freshly seared pucker.

The other difficulty is that food is food. I still have a hard time seeing it as all that artsy. Of course the way that I cook it is not. But to make really great food art photos you have to be able to 

see an alternate presentation. You know, something other than what you see when you set the table. 

So that means looking at it not like food but as something else. You have to look at it from the building blocks of composition. A bowl of soup is just a circle with a pattern. So how would you present a circle in a more interesting composition than sitting smack in the middle of a plane of existence? 

Divide your circle into half. If that is not interesting enough then quarter it. Make the texture the star. Let everything else fall away but not so far that the meaning of it is lost. 

And now we are closer to getting what others call food porn. 

Photography

It's my thing these days.
While things are all tucked up in storage I am playing with the tools that I have at hand. Tools and subjects. I've also been toying with the idea that I would leave off of art for a while and write. It's hard to do everything that I like to do and still make a living.

Honestly it is hard to do anything and make a living these days. Grief is rather closer than I like and gets in the way every time I sit down to do anything creative. Usually grief and other such high emotions make great fodder for art.

Granted, there has to be a cool down period, a chance to let things settle in the mind and heart so that you can concentrate and not be distracted by all the things that run through your head. The grief is still fresh enough that picking up the old tools isn't sufficient for keeping everything at bay. So there is this....

Learning better blog photography though online articles and then playing with effects in post takes enough concentration that I can start to forget the things that plague me. 

She's a great companion. But she isn't mine so her helpfulness is a bit limited where I am concerned. 

She has quite an intelligent face doesn't she. Sometimes I think that she sees through everything. And I wish that she could tell me what it is that she sees.

Still Learning Macro

While galavanting around the grounds of our public library, I found a tree of maple seeds that were just turning from green to dried up brown. While I struggled with the wind to get the cluster to hold still I made a discovery with the macro setting on my camera. The trick to a good macro had eluded me for a long time. Now I get it. And I have been looking for things to get good close ups and practice the technique. 

Foraging for mushrooms is a great opportunity. I only wish that what we found had been edible. It was either not a good species or past its prime. How annoying. Still, there were plenty of photographic opportunities.

One of my favorites is the copper fern. That was almost already in 3D from my perspective. The lighting after the rain before the sun came out seemed to make everything stand out in relief. This fern was in a sea of green ferns so it had an advantage to standing out. It was gorgeous. 

The coral fungus, which would have been edible if I had seen it a week or two earlier is only about 3 inches tall in real life. In the photo it looks like it could have been a lot bigger... thank you macro. 

And the failure in the group... the lone wild blueberry. It was the only stem of berries I saw. And it was the only berry. For whatever reason the leaves are sharp and well defined but the berry is out of focus. It's almost as if I didn't let the camera adjust and snapped it too early... which is what normally happens.

The maple seeds were from the library trip. THAT is a great photo. I'm still trying to figure out how to duplicate those results. 

Spooky

Manipulated photo of a turret at the  State Hospital with a custom texture.

Stealth Photography

The only way to get an interesting photo collection is to have interesting shot. And that means candids. People just are not themselves when the camera is looking at them. Without the candid shot then pictures get boring rather quickly. The same party shot, the same side by side half hug shot, the same blowing out candles shots are get to be homogenous after a while. And pretty soon it doesn't matter who it is that is in the picture because the interest is gone. Scrapbooking high lighted that for me after years of complaining that magazine shoots and yearbooks were all the same. Thus the candid shot becomes the holy grail of group or event photography.

The only way to get a good candid is to blend into the scenery. Don't let anyone know that you are there. That requires two things: 1. a good camera with more than enough zoom and 2. practice.

My flat mate and I went to a local event where a fairly famous person was speaking. I don't know if the general public had permission for photos but I was taking them none the less. Since I couldn't get close without spoiling his reactions and the reactions of his closest audience members I had to rely on my zoom lens. 15x on the GE that I bought a few years ago.


from outside the demo tent....

 

                                   







 

 

                                                                                                                                   bit of  a crop...



 It looks like I am right there in the front row when in reality I am over 35 feet away. No one is worried what my lens will see and I am not obstructing anyone's view. All in all I would say it is a successful technique. It is one for which I will need practice. So I tired it on the cats today. I would have to say that my success with cats is limited. Not that anyone is ever truly successful with a feline.


Stealth is a handy tool to have. You need to have good camouflage. That gets tricky indoors if there are not a lot of decorative pieces. With cats, everything has to be a blind or you don't get the good shots. For things that are that vain, you'd think they would be camera hogs. But no....
I had to go between the fringes of a fleece blanket for these:



cat at rest in contemplation



cat realizes it is being watched

 

Box 2 continued...

I am not sure why Blogger does that when I am uploading multiple images. This is the second time that I have tried to add a second batch to a post and it decided not to let me see my library. If I were a paranoid Spook* I would think it was the Russians. It doesn't help that all of the spam in my stats is coming from Russia. So stop it if you don't want to get blamed! Oh... right. The bots don't actually read the posts.
So, moving on with the last post:





These lemons were from Jennifer Harrison's art class. The graphic representation of 5 in a complementary color was the assignment, if I am not mistaken. The left is done in acrylic. I love acrylic because it let's me work with texture. I am a very tactile person. The left is in watercolor. The graphic "advert" style on the left is fun to do once in a while. I need to do work like that to take me out of the rigid adherence to reality that sometimes I get mired in. I can not do that kind of simplification on a regular basis. Jennifer kept encouraging me to make more decisions in the realism with the reduction method in mind.

It helps your brain edit out the things that just don't matter. And she is right. The acrylic makes a strong statement. Those lemons are "gift wrapped". Definitely a life lesson in there. :)

 

 

You might think that these apples are watercolor. In a way they are.... it is acrylic wash. A lesson from Jennifer about playing with your medium to see what all it can do. 

 

My hands. I purposefully did two left hands in this drawing for Glee Fenby's class. I can not draw left handed. And  my right hand is not exactly photogenic. That is my own bias, I have no deformity. I just don't like my right hand.

The self portrait is woefully misshaped and distorted because it is a vertical orientation on an 18 by 24 inch piece of paper and I was working flat. It is the same issue I have with the peacocks that I started this past Winter.... accidental forshortening. It is me.... one of the best self portraits I have done. But I look like I got caught in one of Wesley's distortion field projects in school.

 The drawing pad containing all of my assignments from our text book in Glee Fenby's class and the only project I was not going to be embarrassed to post: from Commander Mark's book that I taught my daycare kids with 10 years! before I got to school myself. I loved Mark Kistler's program until my mom did what she always did and went off the deep end competing with him and then me. There is some thing distasteful about an adult that has to find a way to put down little kids.

Speaking of Russians. There was a kid who got to be on the show quite often. He was good. He could out draw Commander Mark, and Mark said so. He also said that was the point and the hope of every teacher: to have the student surpass the master.

 After a full 6 seasons of Doctor who I look at these chess pieces as Daleks in disguise. I need a break from BBC.

And I need to figure out what my eyes are doing when I have multiple objects in a painting. At first glance this watercolor still life is astoundingly talented for someone who at the time was new to watercolor. My glass is not as screwed up in the symmetry department as is usual. The banana and peach are well shaped, shaded, balanced and placed in the composition. The purple fabric is very natural and soft looking as it should be. But then you look at that apple. WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!

It looks like the peach smashed into it and collapsed the thing! The apple should have it's left side behind the peach. Instead they look like they are competing for space and it ruins the whole thing. I'd like to say that was a freak, one-off accident. But it isn't. As I was taking photos today I noticed that is a recurring problem in my work. Now if it is something that is happening with my visual cortex then I have a huge problem. If the issue is that I don't stop often enough to step back and look objectively then I need to change my methods and the problem is fixed. Of course by the time I get the  drawing done I am so starved for color that I could just be rushing myself... in which case that is a discipline issue.

either way.... that is at least 15 hours wasted. There is just no way to make that yellow apple melt into the green background behind that damn peach!

 And then there is this: yet another reminder of my ex-fiancé. A graphic representation for Jennifer Harrison's class. I think that this was the last project of the first year. Matt and I were either in constant competition or constantly encouraging each other. This is a project in which he gave me permission to use his handwriting to model the letter "A" in an art nouveau style. And the homework is explained in the 5 areas of the project itself. The technique used tricks from my rubberstamping days. Glossy paper, alcohol inks and gold leaf pen. Simple. But stunning.

Heart Chakra

 snippet of acrylic/mixed media assemblage

Another series still in the works. I have no doubts that it will be finished. There are only 7 paintings to this series to illustrate the chakras. This is the first one that I did because it was the first one I needed to work on. Odd how that works.

I've updated the photography since I have a camera that is way better than the first one that I started posting with. And slowly my camera skills are sharpening. Photo editing software still has to help me soften up the rough spots  and compensate for some limiting lighting issues. And I really wanted to be able to do macro shots of the "cool" parts like they do with Somerset Studio. So this is a macro shot.

This is one of those things that I know I won't finish without Photoshop which is *mumblecough months away from happening. I have a very specific project in mind with the set. So while I am saving up for the software I have plenty of time to figure out what the other 3 Chakras have to say to me about their nature.

Ice Breakers

The kind of proposals I like...


make it easier for my introverted nature to talk about the cool things that I do. I've been keeping up with the promotional tour that Matthias Reim is doing for his upcoming concert tour & he reminds me of something that Michelle always tells me: if you are excited about what you do others will be excited too. I admire people who put themselves out there. I envy the people who put themselves out there. Matthias Reim is a rock star. I doubt that little dynamo needs something to break the ice when he meets new people. I do.

There have been enough random incidents while I have been out and about, painting at a table somewhere, that have taken me by surprise. I've bee asked so many times, "Do you have a card?" No card.

How will I ever get anywhere if I am not prepared when the Universe surprises me with it's favor by dropping something totally awesome into my lap? How many of those people who walked away without my card could have been a connection to something greater? I could have had a show by now. I could have had some commission work. Does that mean that it will never happen now?

By no means. Those experiences have taught me to be prepared. So I placed an order with www.moo.com. The sample cards last year were great. But I needed to work on the presentation part from my end, learn to take better photos & decide how I wanted to represent myself. So I figured it out. Placed an order and when I finally tore through the nearly child proof shipping package & opened that perfect little white jewel box...

There were 100 mini cards waiting for me. Tucked into a shiny little Mylar envelope the swivel case in which to carry them. And for the full sized business cards there was a matte finished black box the size of a cigarette pack but only half as thick. Each piece of this order screams "Great Customer Care!"

I love these guys. I love that I have some ice-breaking tools. Because I can print every single card with a different image if I want to, I don't have to explain my work. I can show it. These cards are a mini portfolio that speaks so much more confidently than I have been able to so far. Who knows... with these little gems in my hand, some of that moo confidence might rub off on me.

This is the whole kit & kaboodle.  They swivel open, dispense easily and I can clip the mini case to my purse or car keys. They will go anywhere. Which means that they can go everywhere that I don't always have access to. These cards are keepers. Thick stock, rich finish and of course... stunning artwork, these last a lot longer than the cards you could buy elsewhere for a lot less to get a lot more cards. But... do you really get more for so little money? We'll see.

 

Photography

macaroons from Simply Cupcakes in Traverse City MI

Photography is just not as easy as point and shoot for me. Thank God for editing software. I need photoshop. There is only so much that I can do with the editing software in my media player. And nothing good comes of the paint program. Yep... need photoshop. The thing that photography helps me with is improving my already pretty good sense of composition. And the macro function just makes me love learning how to take better photographs all the more.

And yes, these were pretty tasty. I don't know if I am going to be a forever fan of these little guys. They did make for a nice treat.