Metering Matters

This is an earlier version of the photo used for class this week. I think it's actually better because it's simpler, more direct - more powerful.

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I was struck by many of the photos submitted this week. Simple and powerful: The dog by the lake, the incredible deep landscape, the spring-loaded rowers under the bridge - and others. And I don't mean simplistic. After taking this class I have much more appreciation for what goes into taking a good photograph, and how simplicity may be the result of a lot of work and thought filtered through an artistic vision.

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I think seeing this has led me to a new insight. In the version of this photo submitted to class I added a layer (another unrelated photo blended in) towards the end of the process. This adds a bit of a tacked-on quality that subtracts from the integrity of the whole. In work since then I am beginning the process with the blending of unrelated photos. This leads to a more "authentic" underlying structure (I feel anyway). Then that structure can blossom into what it needs to. I feel this latter work is a return to a more powerful simplicity for me. On several new works I had to stop myself: "It's done!"

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It reminds me of some of the better paintings I got when I first started many years ago. When I look back at them now I see something - yes they were simple, but they had something. Truth? I dunno....hmmm.

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It does remind me of my first teacher telling me that painting is not putting makeup on someone's face, no. We're painting from the underlying structure. There's a reason that dab of color goes in that certain spot. And now, after years of painting many "abstracts", I still feel this is true.

Shutter Speed Experiments

I come to photography from a background in painting. My main interest initially was to take better photos of my paintings; but now I'm falling in love with "painting" on the computer. I have several editing, sketching, and painting programs - all of which I'm still trying to learn.



Moving from painting into photography, and now into photo-painting - which I have dubbed "phainting", raises several issues for me. First, the difference between painting and photography. Photos seem to be all about translucency. In painting we work with light and shadow, and with glazing can get some beautiful transparency - but it still has body. And if we paint thick we can get lots of body. In a photo it's always light - even the darks and shadows seem quite different from an actual painting.


A second issue involves quality and expectations. I'm definitely trying to learn to take better photos. Yet, sometimes it's the bad photo that is more interesting. And playing with the bad photo that can take me to an unexpected result I get inspired by. This may just be a very personal issue, since in painting I'm always willing to drop a preconceived notion to follow a painting to where it wants to go. My favorite paintings happen that way. They are a discovery rather than an idea materialized.


These pictures are versions of playing with shutter speed. The first ones are of a water fountain that came out way too dark. While increasing the exposure in Lightroom I got something much more interesting to me than the actual fountain. I've played with the white balance, different filters and effects in Elements, and the brightness and contrast of each.


I also played with a photo of a spinning bike tire - copying, rotating, resizing, and changing the level of transparency multiple times. Different filters and effects changed the colors.


















In this photo I've blended the water fountain and the bike tires. This is a technique I'm really into right now - combining two totally unrelated photos and letting one show through to various degrees.




The last experiment is of pipes going up the outside of a building which I blurred by moving the camera. Changing the white balance to Florescent gave me a color I liked. The only other editing is a small over-brushing of part of the dark area at the top which was too blurry in a way that subtracted from the whole composition. The one part I don't like is the lower left that got cut off in resizing for this blog. In the actual photo that angled area goes straight down to the bottom.