The Beauty of Back &White

Some subjects just seem to work much better when you step away from the power and snap of color and back into the world of black and white. While black and white photography certainly still plays a major role in art photography, it has clearly lost its sway in the mainstream media culture. Black and white cinema - only, if at all, in small art theaters. Not in magazines, not on my iPod or iPhone, nor even on most PowerPoint presentations that seem to drown us. Of all the electronic gadgets that I surround myself with, only my Kindle clings to black and white - and even there Amazon promises color will soon arrive.
This past weekend the Experimental Aircraft Association brought its lovingly restored WWII-era B-17 Flying Fortress to the Leesburg Airport. The B-17 was a legendary plane in the hands of the US Eighth Air Force flying from England across Europe and dropped more bombs than any other aircraft in WWII. While the toll on crews was heavy, this aircraft continued to fly and bring crews home even after suffering unbelievable damage. My "Bucket List" includes a flight on this, but the $500 a flight cost will keep it in the bucket for a while.
I shot, as I always do, in color, but the more I looked at the images the more they called out for something else. I reached for my favorite tool for rendering black and white, Nik Filter's Silver Efex Pro. This plug-in - Photoshop, Aperture and Lightroom - gives you access to a wider range of options. The top photo is a dark sepia and the second image is something called "Wet Rocks". I particularly like the second effect as it seems to capture a little of what it must have looked like flying across the unfriendly skies of Nazi-controlled Europe.

It had to happen sometime this summer..

The Dog Days of August have arrived in Washington. The temperatures are in the 90s and the humidity close to that and the results is air that could be cut with a knife. Time to stay inside until the sun goes down and find something useful to do....and when I have done that - or postponed it until tomorrow - play with Photoshop.
Mirror image effects are fun to play with although they really do require restraint - something that PS encourages you to lose. The effect can at times be subtle as in the blog post of an abandoned truck. You have to look closely to recognize that it is the result of a mirror image and not just a very wide angle lens adding distortion. At time the effect can be both abstract and contemporary in its comment. Anyone who is having to cope with the daily revelations about the operation of the Washington Metro will recognize the connection with the Metro escalator photo. Sometimes they are just fun as in the "martini for sweethearts" photo. And at times they are just pure form that challenges the viewer to provide meaning and identification - if any.
Of course, all they really represent is the justification I found to spend a few hours away from the Dog Days of August. Next year the beach or mountains!
If anyone is interested in trying to replicate these mirror effects a quick search of the web will provide multiple ways to accomplish the same. Most work and all burn up hours in front of the computer.

Photographers are toy collectors

Or maybe its just male photographers, or maybe its just me. I have ended up with a lot of "accessories" that I do not remember what they were originally going to accessorize. The RayFlash is one of these. It essence it is a poor man's ring light. The very original thought behind it was that since most photographers already have a flash why not just take a bundle of fiber optic cable bend it into a circle, figure a way to mate it with the existing flash unit and you would have a very efficient ring flash for next to nothing - really about $200, but as photographers calculate that is nothing.
This weekend I decided to put it to use. Well, actually that had been my intention when I bought it more than a year ago. At that time I had an image of doing some crazy New York-style fashion photography. There was an immediate problem. I lacked New York fashion models! So into the equipment closet went the RayFlash. Then last weekend I decided that I actually had a lot of gorgeous dahlias that cried out to be photographed. Dahlias have some advantages over New York fashion models, almost as beautiful, but cheaper and lower maintenance.
The strategy I hit upon was to go outdoors at 2PM on a sunny day with the RayFlash mated to my Nikon SB800, with a 105 mm macro and a D700. How did I do it? How did I get such a black background?

Locavore - Someone who eats food grown locally

Who knows whether its the tough economic times we find ourselves in now, or a concern with the impact of climate change on our environment, or a rebellion against corporate-sameness that has robbed us of seasonal variety in our diet, or a genetic memory of how tomatoes should taste? Whatever the reason, I certainly have observed an astonishing growth in local farm markets. Not only have their numbers increased, but the variety of foods that can now be found continues to expand. The markets range from the small side-of-the-road markets that sell the produce of individual gardens and small farms to the weekly markets that now exist not only on the fringe of urban areas but in the downtown cores of most urban centers. In the Washington area one of the largest is the Sunday farm market in Dupont Circle which is surrounded by Embassies, restaurants, hotels and a very diverse urban population. Spiral out from this urban center and there are markets in every direction, including my favorites at Lake Anne in Reston, Virginia, and in Leesburg, Virginia. But Washington is not exceptional in its farm markets. San Francisco has one located in a stunning location with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Boulder, Colorado has a market that for sheer diversity of food and helpfulness of its sellers is hard to beat.
The last quality of helpfulness counts a lot for me as a photographer. After all, I am not buying a lot. Try carrying sacks of peaches, raspberries, corn and fresh bread along with a Nikon D3 and a 24-70 mm lens! Yet I have never once had a seller be less than fully helpful as I ask questions like "What is this?" "How do you grow it...harvest it...cook it"? "What does it taste like?" If you show a genuine interest, you find yourself learning more than you ever set out to and a lot more than simply capturing images.

Here Come the Hummers

You know that life is good - at least for the moment - when you can sit on a deck in Colorado with a good glass of wine and friends "at hand" and a 70-300 mm VR "in hand" and a constant stream of broad-tailed hummers posing in front of you. If you decide that you would like to try something different there is always the Flood filter which makes you wonder for a moment of how this shot was made. Actually the life of these little marvels of nature is so amazing that they need nothing added to stop me in my tracks. All pictures made with natural light which demonstrates that I was doing more shooting than drinking!

Ode to childhood memories

In processing some of the images from last week's trip to Colorado, I realized that one in particular tugged at a childhood memory of a vacation and its images recorded in the ancient days of film. My mind's eye remembers these childhood trips through the color cast and grain of long lost Agfa prints. A vividness that is very different from the high def of most digital images - much like the difference between the sound of a vinyl 78 rpm record and a modern CD. The image itself is a 6-shot, handheld panorama made with a Canon G10. Post-processing of the RAW images in Aperture, pano-merging in PS and then a dose of Lucis and Topaz Adjust 3.0. Break all the rules on how to shoot a pano, then spend time in post-processing to try to recapture the look of a far simpler camera and a discarded film. Go figure! And the view is from a turn-off on Trail Ridge Road, the highest continuous motorway in the US, with more than eight miles above 11,000 feet and a high point of 12,183 feet.

Sometimes a photo grabs you

This blog photo was taken while in Colorado last week. A group of us decided to attend the Arts Fair in Winter Park. Having promised all that this was a family vacation, not a photography trip masquerading as a family vacation, I just grabbed my Canon G10 to take along. One of the coolest participants was playing an electric acoustical violin . What a sound! He had hung a very rumpled white sheet to provide a back drop. After some PS work we now have a photographer's white backdrop.