Epiphany

New Blog Header picture

Some newsreaders don't show the header picture and whenever I change it, the old one is lost. So here's the current picture preserved in the body of the blog as well. This is a rendering of a snowmobile track on the ice of 12-Mile Lake just opposite my dock. I shrunk it proportionally; the original is much taller. I was going to leave it black-and-white but I really liked the tonality of this version.

Contact me if this speaks to you as it does to me. Picture the image (without the text, of course) as a
48" by 12" canvas or matte print on your wall.

Epiphany

No, not the Christian holiday. A "Leap of Understanding". Wikipedia defines it as,

An epiphany (from the ancient Greek ἐπιφάνεια, epiphaneia, "manifestation, striking appearance") is an experience of sudden and striking realization. 

 In my humble opinion, they're rare, and they should be, otherwise they wouldn't be significant. And in my case, stating them can be a bit embarrassing. Because it feels like you're restating the obvious. Cognoscenti will stare down their noses at you and say, "Yeah, and? This is something you didn't know?"

The last one I can recall had to do with motorcycling. For 12 years I taught the motorcycle course at Humber College. There was one really, really basic concept that all motorcycle students had to grasp. I must have used the words 10,000 times. But it wasn't until one day, riding my bike down at Deal's Gap (The "Tail of the Dragon". Google it if you don't know what it is) when I had an epiphany: "You have to look where you want to go". Motorcyclists will understand this, the rest of you probably won't. I can hear my friend George thinking, "like what are you, new?"

Do you understand what I mean? Yes, you know it but do you KNOW it? Robert A. Heinlein coined a word that applies: GROK. (From his book, Stranger in a Strange Land, and if you haven't read it, you should).

So here's my epiphany for today:

"The only people who care how a picture was made are those who are trying to figure out how to emulate it". 

People who don't have that agenda, flat out don't care. They either like it or they don't like it. They either see and appreciate the maker's vision or they don't. Am I restating the obvious?

Look at that banner picture up top. Do you care how many pixels wide it is? Is it noisy? Is the colour balance off? What's that dark lump about 1/3 in from the right? Do you care what technique I used to make it? WHO CARES? It's an expression of MY VISION.

During the time I spent with Rosa, I think she tried to tell me that 1000 times. I didn't hear it until now. She also used to disagree vehemently with my premise, when teaching composition, that "you need to know the rules so you can know when to break them". I still don't get that – she was probably right but I don't Grok it.

How does that change what I do? It's a bit of a sticky wicket, as my British friends like to say. On the one hand, I'm teaching, and that involves giving people ideas and examples of what to do and what not to do. On the other side, I'm trying to express my vision in my art and that involves none of the above. I've stopped submitting images for competitions and yet with the new club, I'm fostering that learning vehicle. What to do, what to do...

So here are a couple more quotes for your enjoyment.

"I'm succeeding admirably in my rôle as a starving artist!"

"Everything hurts. Except the things that don't work anymore."

Attribute the last one to my father (Robert Springer, 1920-2010), who also coined "female dark chocolate" (no nuts!) in his later years! The other two are mine.

You know what would be cool? If years from now you entered these quotes in Wikipedia and they came back attributed appropriately!

Haliburton Highlands Camera Club

We have, as they say, Liftoff! After a snow-delayed launch, the inaugural meeting of the Haliburton Highlands Camera Club took place on a memorable date: Friday the 13th of December! There were 26 people in attendance (good thing, that’s all the chairs we had!), and at this writing, 17 of them have joined the fledgling club. I find this an auspicious number. For one thing, there are no snowbirds or cottagers in the group, imagine the headcount had we done this in the summer! And a lot of people wrote to say they wanted to be there but couldn't make the last minute schedule change.

I have an amazing 55 names on my HHCC list, from a population that would be dwarfed by the number of residents in one city block in the 'Big Smoke'. My assumption that there is a need for a camera club up here in the Highlands seems to be true. The next step is to make the promised programs happen, and we're getting a start at it. First step is to assemble a team to coordinate our activities, and that's in the works.

Part of the group at the inaugural Camera Club meeting. 

So if you're in the Highlands and you haven't joined yet, have a look at our web page and contact me for more information.

Photomatix Pro 5.0

HDRsoft has released version 5.0 of their signature Photomatix Pro software. The world seems to be divided by the three big HDR generating products, Photomatix, Nik HDR Efex Pro and Photoshop HDR Pro (there are other tone-mapping products out there, notably Topaz Adjust). Photomatix is the only one that can run as a standalone, without requiring Photoshop or Lightroom.

HDRsoft has always provided free upgrades to their existing customers, and there seems to be no exception here: I went to hdrsoft.com, downloaded and installed it over Photomatix 4.2.2 and it never even asked for a serial number. They didn't send me a heads-up, though, so if you're a customer, get thee over to the site for an upgrade. Kudo's to HDRsoft for this policy.

I've spent a total of 5 minutes on it since I installed it. I opened a 3-shot/2 stop burst and played with it briefly. It appears to run smoother that before and with more subtle control over the effects. I'll have to do some more testing. My normal go-to has been the Nik product and the one thing it has that Photomatix doesn't is Control Points, although you can do much the same thing with layer masks in Photoshop.

Here's that 3-shot image I ran. All I did to it after returning from Photomatix was to dodge out the bottom of the dirty door a bit, and straighten/crop in Lightroom.

I really should have cleaned the spider webs off the side of the building before winter. Then again, I wouldn't have gotten this shot! 

Topaz Star Filter

If you hurry, you can get the new Topaz Star Effects filter for half price (until year-end). It does really neat stars, but it also does glows: I learned that by watching their Webinar last week, then I tried it on this image:

The glow makes a big difference in the feel of this image. 

I used the star effect on this photopainting of the snowplow after the first snowstorm of the year. 

Go to this link and enter decstar as the coupon code at checkout.

Winter in the Highlands

A day in the life... here's what you have to do when you live up in the Highlands!

...and this

He had no problem with me taking his picture! That's $300 of heating oil being pumped into my tank! I must say the D610 delivers spectacular performance at ISO 6400.

It's not even winter yet officially until Saturday. Looks like we're in for a long one.

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Been there, Done that, Grokked.

Restating the obvious

I'll tie this into photography in a minute, but first... I'm going to use motorcycling as an example.

If you don't ride a motorcycle, you may have trouble understanding this. Bear with me while I try to explain it. One day while riding in a place called "Deal's Gap", or "The Tail of the Dragon" (Google it and watch some videos. You have to see it to understand what "318 turns in 11 miles" means). I pulled over at the end and said to my friend, "I just figured out: you have to look where you want to go!". That's probably the most basic skill in motorcycling, you have to grasp that to ride.

I taught the motorcycle course at Humber College for about 12 years. I had literally thousands of students over that time. But I'm not ashamed to say that teaching was (is) my forté, not riding. I'm the perfect embodiment of the expression, "those who can, do. Those who can't, teach" (there's another phrase on the end of that, "those who can't teach, write about it" but we won't go there!).

"Look where you want to go" was a litany that we repeated time and time again. If you didn't get it, you couldn't pass even the basic motorcycle skills test for your license. I taught it to thousands of people. So I should know it, right?

But it was like an epiphany for me. I finally grokked in fullness what that meant. That day, it finally sunk into my head, like an explosion in my mind. Am I making any sense?

So how does this relate to photography?

I visited the Ansel Adams exhibit at the McMichael museum earlier this week.

Ansel Adams

What can one say about him that hasn't already been said? Not much. I've seen his images in books, online, reproductions... but there's something about looking at a print that the master himself made with his own hands. And while I was there (for much too short a time: I didn't know they closed at 5:00 pm!) I had an epiphany.

More than one thing made him the Master. You know all the theories, you've studied and practiced the Zone System but how the HELL does he get those deep, rich blacks? The smooth, perfect tonality? Adams' skill in the darkroom is legendary. But when I looked at the works that were exhibited, something struck me like a thunderbolt.

"It's all about the Light".

Adams' composition skills were exquisite. But when I looked at his prints, "Redwoods, Bull Creek Flat" and "Birch Trees", what struck me was the lighting. In the Redwoods, especially, Adams intent was to get the viewer to look at the texture of the trees and he did that by shooting in perfect light. Now I grok.

Here's my attempt at replicating an Adams-type image:

I shot this in front of the McMichael Gallery after they closed at 5pm.  

Here's another shot from that afternoon, nothing to do with Adams but I think the landscaping at McMichael was done with the photographer in mind!

It's an HDR, of course.This is about textures, and drawing the viewer's eye from lower left to upper right. I'm not that happy with the sky so I may come back and rework it.  

A cool place to hang out

There's a great online forum that welcomes new and experienced photoenthusiasts alike. It's a small group, but there are members from all over the world! We especially need new people who want to make use of this great resource. If you're ever stuck with a question you can't answer, or looking for a better way to do something, this is the place for you!

A little history: some time ago, a bunch of us became disgruntled with the way another forum we belonged to was being run. What had been a friendly place had become uncomfortable and commercially motivated. No point in identifying them...

So we left and started a new place to hang out. The activity level has become a little low and we were trying to come up with why. Someone pointed out that the old forum was a busy place because a lot of people asked advice about photography in general, Photoshop/Lightroom, even such topics as copyright issues, suppliers, etc. They went on to point out that the members of the new group are all experienced and knowledgeable so these questions didn't come up. We need new members who have questions about stuff!

So we have a place where there are about 100 experts (and me. I'm not expert...) who love to share their knowledge and their work, who are all friendly and non-judgmental, who would like nothing better than to help answer any and all questions. Who love to see people's work and provide gentle critique (if it's asked for) and suggestions, who like playing photography games like the ongoing "Battle" where you start with a common image and do whatever you want with it creatively, or the monthly "Rally" (soon to resume) where you have a week to shoot and submit pictures on a specified topic, or even "Where is this?" where you do whatever you have to, to answer that question about a photo submitted. Marco is quite devious, but they're all solvable!

So you're all invited to join. It doesn't matter about your experience level, whether you want to ask questions or try to answer them, or just join in the banter and fun, and enjoy images from the members in the "Show and Tell" threads. You don't have to post, you can just sit back and read but it's more fun if you do.

Here's an example:

Remember the picture of "The Angels & Mini-Me" that I put up last week? I really wanted to do something like this with the face image on the wall but couldn't remember how. So I asked on the Forum and got a quick response from Philm Phalm that reminded me how to use "Displacement Mapping" in Photoshop. 

So where is this forum? What's it called? How do you join?

The forum is called "The Imaging Forum" or "TIF" (you can't say "The TIF Forum", that would be repetitious redundancy!)

You access it here: http://www.suitehound.com/forum/ and joining means just registering and supplying a login name and password. All you have to agree to is to be friendly!

See you on TIF?

While we're at it, there's a monthly "Rally" that I host on TIF. Basically you are given three topics or categories, you have a week to shoot the pictures and then submit them, then everyone votes on their favourites. The winner gets the undying adulation and respect of their peers, and gets to choose the topics for next month. Go to TIF, then look for "Battlegrounds and Rallies".

A great weekend shooting!

We had 8 or 10 people show up for the Photowalk in Algonquin last weekend. The dawn shoot at the Frost Centre was outstanding, here's one of my shots from there:

That's Ben and George. A misty sunrise on St. Nora Lake. By the way, this will look different in different browsers, the foreground is supposed to have no detail in it, just a silhouette. I have to do some more work on it before it's finished.

And here's a completely different treatment, shot by my friend George who ventured all the way up from Toronto for this photoshoot:

Reproduced with permission. This is an outstanding image, a full 36Mp frame from the D800. It certainly won't look as good here as an 800px wide image, but you get the feeling. I'm encouraging George to make a large scale print, this is a real winner! 

The Photowalk went really well, with one or two glitches. The bakery we intended to go to wasn't open that early so we had to find another place: then we got confused and split up and a couple of people couldn't hook up with us later. By the way, Algonquin Park was a real zoo as expected. When we drove out around 2pm, there was a lineup of cars at least 5km long at a dead stop, waiting to get in the West Gate. Fortunately we were going the other way!

I didn't have my "A-Game" with me. I hit a bit of a flat spot and was really not happy with my images that day — I predicted it, though: I don't like shooting in bright sunlight. No excuse, I could have done better.

The next day, I went out on the morning "Loon Excursion" with Mike Bertelsen. I'm going to save some additional pictures for the next blog post, but here's one for your enjoyment.

This is a 3-month old Loon chick about to take off on his very first flight. I have some shots of that epic inaugural voyage, but you'll have to wait until next week to see them! 

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Spinning Wheels and Traction

Have you ever had a period of time when you feel like you're making no progress whatsoever? Silly question: we all have. When you wake up in the morning to the same to-do list as yesterday and you go to bed with the sense that you've done absolutely nothing proactive all day? It's been like that for me for a while now, but I'm beginning to get some traction, I'm on the cusp.

Something has to click to get you moving. Sometimes it's not just one thing, it's a combination of circumstances and inputs, but today I feel like I've begun to get under way. I think the problem I had up to now was too long a list of things I want to do, so in the end I did nothing.

Some people work doggedly away at tasks, little bites at a time until eventually it gets done. I don't work that way — never have. I like to develop a concept mentally, then when I grok the gestalt, I leap into action and do the whole thing all at once. I was going to say that's the wrong way, but I don't think there's a right and a wrong, it just "is". Am I making any sense? Especially given my mixed usage of terms from different genres?

So for me, spinning my wheels is when I'm stuck on a concept (how's that for mixing a metaphor?). One or two of them have now come unstuck. (1) I know how I want to teach photography workshops and (2) I know how the course material should look (well not "look", but "be"). Now I can move forward with it and my goal is to be ready to start teaching by the end of April. Watch this space to see how I do.

What got me unstuck? Not just a single thing, several. The main one, though, is engendered in this word: "simplify". On the surface, it contradicts what I said two paragraphs ago, but not really. I see the whole concept but instead of taking a parallel approach, focus on one thing at a time. I learned this when I came across an eBook by +Anne McKinnell called "Before the Shutter" (it's a free download, you can get it here). She devoted 28 pages to one topic: "Plan before you Shoot". This isn't a comment on the topic; it's about her approach to it. By the way, it is a terrific concept and worth reading, It's also worthwhile visiting her site and reading about her lifestyle, something that I'm only one lottery win away from emulating!

Why did I write all this? Two reasons: if I write it down I have to do it or someone is going to call me on it, and maybe it will help a couple of my readers who are also stuck. Oh, and it plants the seed that if you are a beginning photographer or you teach novice shooters, I may have something for you Real Soon Now.

Early Adopters:
why I'm not one or at least want to avoid being one.

Every time I do it I kick myself. You'd think I would have learned by now. Not only is it an incredible waste of time and resources, but it generates a whole new level of frustration. So the watchword is "be patient".

I did NOT install Lightroom 4 Beta. At least I did that right. But when Adobé (I spell it that way because of the very funny spoof, "Fotoshop by Adobé" which you should watch on YouTube) came out with the full Lightroom 4.0 release, I bought and installed it. For me there were more bugs in it than there are mosquitos in Tuktoyaktuk in late spring, and it was totally unusable. I had to find convoluted ways to revert to LR3.6 without losing any work. At this writing, I've installed the LR4.1 Release Candidate, which seems to be working but I'm not doing any serious work in it until they make it official.

"So let it be with Photoshop". There are all kinds of new and wow! tools announced in CS6, but I'm not jumping in yet. I'll wait until the final release is out, even version 6.1 if I'm smart. Besides, I don't think I'm going to be able to run it on my antiquated dual-core-Vista 32- 2Gb RAM laptop so it's going to be an expensive upgrade. That said, if you're new to Photoshop or if you are still running an older version, you should probably upgrade to version CS5.5 now, because it comes with a free upgrade to CS6 when the time comes. Here's the link. It's an especially good deal if you qualify for the Educational pricing.

Besides, I'm saving my nickels (not pennies any more: they've done away with those, finally!) for a Nikon D800. Again, though, I'm waiting (OK, that has more to do with the $3000 price tag and lack of availability!). For instance, I'm not sure it's supported by the software yet, and besides, think about the file sizes with a 36Mp sensor! One of my backup 1Tb drives is already full! Logically, it'll be my birthday present to myself in September if nothing untoward happens between now and then.

Google+
I really need to join this century. I absolutely refuse to join FaceBook or Twitter, but a new eBook by +Guy Kawasaki called "What the Plus" has convinced me to at least TRY Google+. I'm pretty sure I'm not doing it quite right, but at least I'm getting my Social Networking feet wet. If you're on Google+ you can find me by searching for "Faczen"or just clicking here. Now if I understand correctly, you're not supposed to ask people to add you to their circles, so I'm not (wink, wink!).

New Stuff to photograph!
People have commented that they're amazed how I come up with new things to photograph within a few mile radius of my home. Especially considering I've been here going on 5 years. I did it again yesterday!

I ventured over to Horseshoe Lake Road where the Minden Wildwater Preserve is. It was cold: just around the freezing mark, but there were people already out there in their kayaks! I'm looking forward to another great summer shooting there, and I took this one picture yesterday as a reminder:

Kayaks on the Gull River in Early Spring. I wanted to capture the fluorescent bright colours of the kayaks and still convey the feeling that the river is freezing cold, just after ice-out. So I used Lightroom 4.1's effective clarity controls, then took it into Nik Silver Efex to finish it. First I made it monochrome, using some tone controls to bring the rocks and river to where I wanted them, then I dialed the colours back in by adding in a series of control points. I thought it deserved a rough border to match the water texture, also in Silver Efex. Back in Lightroom, I adjusted the colour temperature. I like it more every time I look at it!

There are a couple of working farms on Horseshoe Lake Road. There were 4 or 5 horses grazing quietly in one field, and I thought I'd practice with the 400mm lens, in anticipation of the moose workshop in Algonquin Park scheduled for June. You know the expression, "fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me"? Yeah, well I did it again. Camera on Manual, not Aperture or Shutter Speed priority. I wondered why my pictures were all over-exposed! But the big thing was: 1/125 sec shutter speed with a 400mm lens doesn't work well handheld.

That said, I did pretty good.

Equine Portrait. I didn't initially go for the black-and-white look, but in a brainstorm, I brought it into Silver Efex again and started working with some other effects. I love the tonality of the animal. This shot wasn't that simple: I had to clone out some stuff (like a post right under the horse and some fence wires) and there was nothing in the sky so I added a graduated screen and then rendered a cloud layer to add interest. This is a 'keeper' for me!

As I stood there, one horse, for no apparent reason, decided to go for a sprint! I rattled off about a dozen frames (sure wish I had been at a higher shutter speed!). By the way, I have to learn to burn more frames with moving animals. Good practice for June.

Feeling his Oats 1. By panning, you can maintain sharpness even at theoretically too low a shutter speed. I've written about this before and it takes practice. Anyway, I love sharpness and texture, so I used Topaz Adjust 5 to enhance it — not excessively but just enough. Then some other tricks in Lightroom, like selectively bringing up the greens (it's still early spring here!) and I used Nik Color Efex, 'reflector effects' to warm it up and Viveza to bring up the exposure on the face and flank. Too bad he wasn't running towards me instead of across!

Feeling his Oats 2. This took a bit more work. The legs were blurred by the slow shutter speed and the whole thing needed sharpening and his fur (OK, 'hair') needed texture. So using masked layers, I did selective hi-pass sharpening, then blurred the background and legs. Not enough, I added a heavy motion blur which gave it the dynamic I was looking for. Some final toning and an enhanced catchlight in the eye and I was done. You like? I do!

So let's see what I can come up with next time. And a progress report on the courses/manuals!

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