Something Totally Different

 

You are probably wondering what is up with this blog image. Well, as I have mentioned before, a good photography club can present you will new opportunities in photography. This past week my club setup a program night where we all learned about shooting images of soap bubbles and soap films. While I am not planning to share the setup here (unless there is popular demand), I thought I would share some images from the shoot.

The soap film images were the most intriguing to me, but the question is, what to do with them (see the adjacent image which is a straight take). They look like some late 60’s psychedelic art. But, the key appears to be just let your imagination run wild and ask what do you see (kind of like the cloud game we played as kids – or still do).

 

 

Images:

1. For the first image I saw the Horse Head Nebula when I looked at the soap film and so using a mix of Photoshop (lens flare) and Niksoft tools I created the image you see here. I will likely change this a bit more, but you get the idea.
2. This is what a straight soap film shot looks like. Who knows what I will see in this one.
3. This soap film clearly had a mountain landscape in it but I wanted to see what would happen if I shifted the color balance and used Topaz’s Simplify and Adjust to play with it (and play I did). As time went on, I saw an effect that made me think of Van Gogh’s Starry Starry Night. Using Niksoft Viveza as well (for the stars)  I ended up with an image I call Van Gogh’s Rocky Mountain Night (sorry Van Gogh…).
4. The last image is one of the soap bubble images.

Two Poppies

Being spring, the garden nurseries are now open and stocking perennials and annuals to fill our garden beds. As I have noted before I am both a photographer and gardener. I now look at flowers for not only how they will look in the garden but for their photographic appeal.

Poppies are wonderful subjects with the crepe paper pedals and showy centers. As you can see in the blog images I picked up a couple of them and before planting them have taken the time to photograph them with the setup I detailed a few blogs ago, http://staceyglloyd.blogspot.com/2010/02/anticipation-how.html.

Next year I will photograph them in their garden settings.

Image details:

1. The first image is composed from two images. They both used a heavily textured piece of glass moved in a circular motion. One (A) had the glass between the two flowers and the 2nd (B) in front of both flowers. In photoshop the two were blended (normal) slightly with A in the background. Using a brush the flower center detail of A (the white poppy) was revealed via a mask .
2. The approach for the second image was similar, but with different glass that was held still. This created the water like illusion with the center of the front flower being out of the “water”
3. With a pink backdrop an in camera overlay of a sharp image and a soft focused image where blended to create the soft glow.
4. Poppy bud and flower in front of a obliquely moved glass pain with yellow tulips in the background.

Technique, Subject and Abstraction

 

Do you ever find that after you discover a new technique, you start linking that technique with a specific subject? For example, I have found that after using pans and swipes on tall vertical trees I tend only think of using that technique for trees. While it works well for trees, it can work well for other subjects (if I think of it). One thing that helps is to abstract and associate techniques with the abstraction. For example, tall pine trees can boil down to strong vertical lines.

While lying on the ground shooting hostas emerging from the ground yesterday, I was able to abstract and see it similar to a forest of vertical lines. I have included a couple images from that shoot here along with a forest shot from the past.

There are a lot of other possibilities during spring - grape hyacinths can look like tall trees with purple foliage when viewed from the ground. So get out there and see differently – abstract and try something you never would have before with a subject.