Saying goodbye to 2016

2016 was like a painting washed with vivid shades of dark grey.

I sit here at the keyboard less than a month since my mother died. This certainly painted a gloomy shadow over the calendar year. I know there were some bright spots but it's hard to see them right now.

I want to share this poem which my sister found among my mom's things. I don't know where she got it or why she kept it but I found it so very appropriate.

There's a .pdf copy of it on my website at http://photography.to/weepnot.pdf if you want to share it as well.

---

I took my camera out of my safe yesterday. It's been stored in there for a couple of months now. I haven't yet opened the bags but today I'll put the batteries in the charger and maybe shoot a picture or two in the next couple of days. So to my readers who look forward to seeing photos on this blog, I'm sorry to disappoint today but I will resume next time.



musings... an attempt to be thought-provoking

---

Music is what emotions sound like

Art is what emotions look like

---

I came across the first line somewhere. If you Google it, there's no definitive attribution — several people have said it, you choose. But I added the second line myself.

What moves you?

I'm struck by the thought that I've often said if I were to have a second chance to start again, I'd come back as a musician. I can't imagine that anyone has not experienced that rush of emotion, that joy, that hasn't 'Kvelled' when hearing some music that struck directly at their heart. Tell me you never have...

I sat down at the keyboard today for the first time in what seems like a year. I don't play very well but I improvised a blues version of Ray Charles' "Georgia" and became lost in the song for close to an hour. 

And yet that's never happened to me when seeing a photograph or a painting or a piece of art. Maybe that's just me. Maybe I haven't been exposed to enough masterpieces or maestros of the visual arts. Maybe I'm still mired in the technical side. Can I ever get there? I don't know.

My goal for 2017 and onward will be to convey feelings in my photographs, hopefully in my paintings as well. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop shooting pretty landscapes, challenging people and birds and animals or interesting scenes and activities. But I want to express myself sometimes in my art. Let me try to put that in other words.

Level 1: creating memories. A photo is a "snapshot" if the intent is bringing back a memory in the mind of the maker or participants. If you take a picture of the Eiffel Tower, when  you look at it some years later, you remember being there, that trip, whom you were with, sitting at that café having a coffee and a croissant... another great example is a picture of your kids. You are creating memories.

I remember that trip to Newfoundland. It was a rainy day... 

Level 2: telling a story. An image that attempts to make a third party – someone who doesn't know the maker or the subject of the photo – wish they had been there to experience the moment.

"Putting the world on ignore". This illustrates a "Level 2" image for me. Imagine the sound, the bustle of this Kensington Market street.

Level 3: the mind's eye is when the maker can look at the image and say, "that's what I saw in my mind". It's an attempt to render not what the lens saw or what the eye saw, but rather what the artist visualized.

This is a really early attempt at painting, 'way back when I first started, but it's the only example I can readily find that illustrates what I'm talking about. This is what my mind saw. 

And so is this. It's a photo composite showing what my mind saw, not my eyes. 

The final step, Level 4: from the heart, is when the photographer or artist renders his feelings. The heart doesn't see angles and leading lines and colour palettes, the heart sees feelings.

"Anguish". Maybe.  

Most of the images I care about are level 3. Most of my pictures are level 2. I don't know if I've succeeded in producing a level 4 photo deliberately, I'll have to think more about that. I believe my painting efforts are attempts at conveying emotion but I'm hampered by my lack of technique and skill. But as I read and write this, I realize that's where I want to go.

Here's something important: it could be that others will not appreciate these images. It doesn't matter, I'm doing it for me. You do it for yourself.

---

PS: Topaz Labs is having a fantastic 35%-off storewide year-end sale for both new and existing customers!

Anyone who wants to take advantage of this last deal of the year can use the code “thanks35” at checkout for 35% off ANYTHING in their cart. This applies to every item storewide, including Complete Collection purchases and Collection upgrades! Sign into your account before you upgrade to get the best discount possible on the Collection for owning prior products. If you didn’t see an item in the 12 Days sale, or missed a specific product, this is your last chance to get great savings on any or all of Topaz Labs 17 products.

The code will be active through January 10th, 2017. 

Here's the link

---

What living in the country is all about:

• you have neighbours who will do anything for you at the drop of a hat and not ask or expect anything in return. A shout out to Jack March who not only looked in on my house while I was away but even plowed the driveway and when my ATV/Plow combination messed up yesterday, he came over and fixed it. Not "helped fix it", he did it all because (a) I am the world's worst mechanic and (b) I can't get down under it because of my knees: not and expect to get back up anyway.
• You have the furnace repair tech's cellphone on speed dial. I've had 4 episodes of "no heat", culminating in the last one when I came back after a 10 day absence. They finally found the culprit, some valve or terminal box or something. I hope...
• Not only do you know what a "6mm Clevis pin with wire lock" is but you own one. Actually, I own two (2/pack). Don't know what it is? Neither did I until this morning...
• You know that the meter high pile of snow at the head of your driveway left by the snow plow is called the "cone" and you know how to minimize it (go out and plow a two or three meter swath on your side of the road about 10 meters before your driveway. When the plow comes along, there's less snow on his blade to leave behind).

---

Yes I did take my camera out for a walk for a few minutes this afternoon. 

And so I leave you with this image as a farewell to 2016  

And here's my wish for everyone, that 2017 will exceed your expectations and when it's over, you'll look back at the year with joy.

— 30 —

Winter at last!

from the 'sporadic musings' department...

I love photography but I think I love music more.

If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I want to come back as a musician. How to explain...

There's a certain joy you feel when you see a painting or a photo but hearing a piece of music that moves you is a whole other thing. Pictures don't bring tears to my eyes or that feeling in my heart that music does. Perhaps these are the ramblings of an aging man but I wish I could have expressed myself with music more. I can't play any instrument well. Not keyboard, guitar or bass, all of which I've had flings with over the years, and I haven't been able to sing since my surgeries a decade ago affected my vocal cords (come on. You've heard of "Simon, Garfunkel and Springer", haven't you? So now I just listen and try not to imagine playing.

I so enjoy virtuosity. Your list probably won't agree with all my choices (yeah, you probably WON'T if you're younger than I, as most of you are!) but can you argue when I mention Oscar Peterson? Or Barbra Streisand? What about Stevie Ray Vaughan? Or Tommy Emmanuel? Or specific renditions of certain songs, like Neil Larsen on the Hammond B3 behind Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"? Haley Reinhart doing "House of the Rising Sun" (here) (or "Moanin'" with Casey Abrams), or Jena Irene covering Elvis's "Can't Help Falling in Love" on American Idol (here). I'd better stop now or I'll be listing songs and artists forever!

You realize that writing these paragraphs took HOURS, of course. I had to take time out to listen to some of these songs (I even invested an hour watching a Streisand concert on YouTube, here).

---

I love/hate Facebook

There are lots of reasons to hate it. Many of them obvious. I'm not going to dwell on those. I think I've minimized them by limiting my "friends" list to people I know or fellow photographers whose work I admire. I'm active in several groups, but only a handful of them where I've enabled notification, so if I understand it correctly, the bulk of what I see in my newsfeed comes from those. Again populated by people I know or respect (major exception: the Photoshop and Lightroom Group where there are people whom I can help). For the most part, I've learned to simple scroll past posts that I consider nonsense and noise. Occasionally I get drawn it, which is why I hate it!

But Facebook is a resource for knowledge and information. There are countless people out there researching and finding and sharing things that you wouldn't find on your own. Great music and images and stories and learning. One case in point is an article I read today, written by Tavis Leaf Glover and shared by Vincent Versace who has a lot of insight into making pictures.

Here's a link to the article itself. I encourage you to read it, especially if you're a photographer.
http://petapixel.com/2016/01/30/10-myths-about-the-rule-of-thirds/

Here's the comment I made after reading the article:

Good article. ALMOST makes me want to turn on my left brain again, Although I agree that the rule of thirds is hackneyed and there are other ways to compose an image, it serves the purpose of making the photographer at least THINK about composition before snapping the shutter. 

 It's easier to deconstruct an image than to construct one. One has to wonder if the classical artists were consciously using various composition rules when they created their art: I think not. I think they unconsciously or subconsciously recognized how to achieve the desired effect, that's what makes – made – them artists. Today we have the opportunity to see tens of thousands of images and create a mindset that subconsciously tells us what we like and what we don't like and we apply it to our vision as we look through the viewfinder. 

 The article did make me think. It made me finally go out and order Michael Freeman's book "The Photographer's Eye". It reminded me to think about balancing elements and gestalt theory. It put me back on the path of pre-visualization. Give me another 70 years and maybe I'll be an artist. 

One of the things I don't necessarily agree with is Glover's caveat, "get it right in camera, don't crop and waste valuable pixels..." (paraphrasing). That's why I bought a D800. It has loads of pixels to spare. Often I don't have time to compose images in the field (certainly not when it involves living moving things!) so I try to include all the essential elements to extract later.

Now I'm almost afraid to post pictures since I'm doubting my composition ability! Not every picture has to be a piece of art, though. However they all have to tell a story!

---

Gales of November

This is another rendering of the pano that I shot in September. This time I edited it using the new "Boundary Warp" feature in Lightroom CC 2015.4. It rendered quickly and beautifully but only from the middle exposures in my bracketed shots.

This is a 360° pano image that consists of 6 original images shot with a 17mm lens on my full-frame D800. I was able to increase the coverage of this picture by about one-third by increasing the boundary warp to 100%. By the way, it's 94 megapixels in size, 22k x 4.2k pixels. LR rendered it in about one minute. I pixel-peeped at 100% and I'm unable to find a visible seam. Colour me impressed. When you blow it up, you can see every grain of sand, every pine needle. That's due to the superb lens and of course, the D800. Obviously you're not seeing the detail here on the blog! I toned the image in Lightroom and used Topaz Clarity to bring out the clouds. No cropping, no other edits.

If you click on the image it blows up only to the 800 pixel width that I rendered for this blog. However I have also uploaded a larger version here. Still only 4000 pixels wide (to keep it a reasonable size) but depending on your browser, if you click in the picture, you can see some of the detail.

The October 20-23 session is FULL. Amazingly fast! So fast that planning is under way for a second session a week later, October 27-30 (we still can't wait for November!).

It's an inexpensive outing in a spectacular place. Check it out.

As I write this, I haven't yet updated the web page to reflect that fact, and David hasn't put the booking page in place for the second weekend. I need to know who's interested in coming so we can make it happen, so please take a moment to email me and tell me if you're thinking about it. I'm giving some thought to gearing the second session more to 'intermediate' than to 'advanced' photographers, so more tutorials, more hands-on coaching. What do you think? Tell me!

Most of the information, other than dates, is exactly like the original weekend session, which you can read about here: www.photography.to/gales.

update: It's official and the site is up! Go have a look!

---

Winter's here

I was going to say it's a weird winter, but it's just a little late. Last day of January as I write this, and  ice fishing – the mainstay of the winter economy up here in the Highlands – is just getting underway. Another snowmobiler died yesterday when he went through the ice so we all have to think about being careful out there.

Ice racing is happening in Minden. I spent an hour or so there yesterday and if you can, you should drop by. It's at the fairgrounds on Bobcaygeon Road. It's hard to capture the feeling with still photographs, you have to experience these guys driving faster on an ice-covered track than most of us can on dry pavement.

The lines on the ice surface give this a sense of motion, even though the shot was taken at 1/1000 second to freeze the action. 

The driver in the orange and black car at right was head-and-shoulders better than anyone else on the ice. In fact, he held back at the start line, giving everyone half-a-lap lead and not only won the race but pulled over near the end to let people catch up and unlap themselves. I'm told it was Tom Prentice, but I don't know for sure.

Some drivers weren't as good, or at least were driving beyond their abilities. Good thing they had snowbanks! I saw one car climb halfway up an embankment but nobody had an accident while I was there. 

Fender benders don't count. Imagine driving 100kph on a pure ice track, competing for position and trying to pass (or not be passed) in a chicane, while sliding sideways in a full 4-wheel drift. These are street studs, by the way, not racing studs (which are much longer). It's interesting that these are the exact winter tires I have on my car (less the studs)!

This is one of the drivers. I'm sorry, I didn't get his name but I thought the picture is compelling. So I don't know who he is either! Made you look. He said, "I thought you were taking pictures of my car, not me!" I was... He said, "be careful not to scratch the paint on my car!" LOL 

---

Picture of the week

I ventured out on the ice on 12-Mile Lake a couple of days ago, on my 4-wheeler. I was assured by people who seem to know, that there's an 8" (20cm) thickness of hard water, almost enough to support a car, but some spots are thinner than others, wherever there's moving water. After 8 years here, I basically know where that is, but still I was being cautious. That's my ATV in the photo.

I want to comment on the composition. As you'll see below, when I shot the image I had the horizon in the middle but that's because when I shot it, I wasn't sure if I wanted to add drama by including foreground or feature the sky. So I left room to crop. 

This is one of the original images, SOOC ("Straight out of the Camera"). This was one of five, in fact it was the darkest one because I had my exposure comp set for +1. The finished one was an HDR merge in LR, some toning adjustments including de-haze, small crop to move the horizon, graduated screen toning and colour temperature/saturation adjustment on the sky, some spot toning on the ATV and hut, burn in on the bottom ATV tracks, that's pretty well it. Oh, and a small vignette because Ansel Adams said that a picture isn't finished until the edges are burned a little. About 15 minutes in LR, never took it to Photoshop. 

— 30 —

Musical Interlude

Thought for the day

   by Tim Churcher on Facebook Photoshop and Lightroom Group, with permission

"Art is self-expression through making your own artistic decisions, as soon as you hand those decisions over to someone else, it ceases to be art and becomes painting by numbers. Making your own artistic choices is essential to developing as an artist, it is infinitely better to make your own mistakes than follow the 'correct' choices of other people. So if you have an artistic decision to make, you are the only one who can decide, if someone else does, it is no longer your art."

Tim was responding to an ongoing (to me, annoying) trend on the above-mentioned group, where people ask, "is this better in black and white or colour..." (dozens of times every day). I was trying to find a way of saying, "Dude, what does your vision tell you? What you think, is more important than what someone else thinks". I think he hit the nail on the head.

The other annoying thing to me on that group is the frequent plea, "what's the difference between Lightroom and Photoshop", or "I don't want to rent the software, where's the best place to buy Photoshop?", or "can someone tell me how Lightroom works". I've learned to simply scroll past those threads. They've now banned basic photography questions ("which camera should I buy...") but with close to 100,000 members there's a lot of traffic on the group. Check it out, though, if you're on FaceBook. It's a good resource, for Photoshop users of any level.

Musings...

File storage

I just read a thread on Facebook where someone complained that there was no CD/DVD drive on their new computer. I'm pretty sure there's no floppy disk drive either... and I got to thinking about my archives of images going back 10 years or more, on CD and later, DVD. Even worse, my old company stuff (when I was in the desktop publishing business) is on 100Mb Zip drives. Haven't seen one of those in years!

Where's file storage going to be 5 or 10 years from now? Unless you diligently update your file storage to current technology, then do it again every few years, nobody is going to be able to ever retrieve or see your images. And yet, you can still see Leonardo da Vinci's pencil sketches from the 15th century and prehistoric cave paintings... what does that say about the disposable society in which we live today?

PS: I have copied images from 2006 onwards (and a few earlier ones) into my hard drive and imported them to Lightroom. But there's a ton more, including boxes and boxes of 35mm slides...

More Musings...

I'm not an elitist, OK? However I have not been inside a McDonalds in 40 years. Or in the drive-through. I take that back: I did eat there one time on a motorcycle trip when there wasn't anywhere else to eat, and when my kids were little they had a great play area for someone's birthday party...

Anyway, I would never eat their fast food, 'way too many calories and grams of fat. Someone gave me some French Fries that tasted like pressure-treated sawdust. If I do eat at a fast-food place it's Wendy's (good salads) or occasionally Harvey's (flame-broiled burgers). But people have been talking about their coffee, so I tried some. Note: I did NOT go into a McDonalds, I bought a package of the Tassimo McCafé disks. I'm hooked.

Don't get me wrong: Tim Horton's is my staple (although I don't like their dark roast, I prefer the Nabob versions) and a pot of coffee dripped through a conical filter from freshly ground Kirkland House Blend beans is an almost daily occurrence, but I have to admit that the McCafé stuff is pretty good!

Free Wallpaper

Here's a background picture for your computer monitor. Enjoy. I'd love to know how many people have downloaded and used it, so if you have, please drop me a note. If you want a different one, something you've seen on my blog, again shoot me an email request.

There's a widescreen version here (1920x1080), and
there's a standard version (1600x1200) here.
Simply open the page, right-click and "save as..." to save the image on your computer.

I don't just shoot landscapes...

Wendy invited camera club members to come out and shoot at the Celtic Music Jam group on the weekend. Turns out I was the only taker... which was good in a way because it was about a dozen people squished into a living room! She said afterwards she was amazed at how I made myself invisible, to which I responded, "yeah, like the elephant in the room"!

There were at least 4 more people who didn't make it into this wideangle shot! For the tekkies, I used a Gary-Fong-Diffused-speedlight off-camera, pointed at the ceiling with the top open. Treatment was with Topaz Adjust and then Impression/Chiaoscuro preset. I warmed up the white balance on purpose.

I switched to the 70-200mm for this shot, zooming in as tight as I could. Finished with Topaz Glow/Fur & Feathers and Chiaoscuro again. I never appreciated the latter filter until now, it really focuses attention on the selected area (the hand and violin fretboard). 

I guess you don't call it a "fretboard" on a violin since there are no frets. This isn't my kind of music but it was fun! I'm pretty sure these people don't know who Stevie Ray was...

Speaking of music, my new favourite guitarist is Tommy Emmanuel. Don't know who he is? YouTube him or just click here or here (with Bob Littel) for a sample. (OK, if you liked those, try this one).

This musician was a study in concentration. I don't think he's as severe as his expression indicates but I think the high contrast black-and-white conversion suits this image. There are some painting effects, but minimal, just for texture. And I used a lot of my black-and-white flower techniques on this image. 

I haven't been out shooting much. It's winter and although I talk a good show, well... and my ATV is in the shop (apparently going to cost me a ton of money to fix. I should have bought a newer one... oh well, it is what it is). I've been busy with other stuff – related, because a lot of it has to do with the camera club, etc. Have to get back to it. 

OH: and if you're in the area, remember to visit the Agnes Jamieson Gallery in Minden for the Juried Photo Exhibition. It's on until February 7th. Bring your wallet! (just kidding. Sort of...)

— 30 —

Am I one-dimensional?

today you get some "sporadic musings" to start things off. Just trying to change things up from time to time.

...I hope not. At least I'm trying not to be. Yes, my first passion is photography, but there are other things in life. Something missing is people and I'm trying to correct that, but I do have others: writing, teaching, music, the outdoors...

I love music. If I could come back as anything in another life it would be as a musician. I envy people who can express their emotions so, well, blatantly. When was the last time you looked at a photo or a painting and were moved almost to the point of tears? Or with joy? So all of that said, I know that I can't play any instrument like I want to (my keyboard is sitting to my left as I write this, a guitar leaning against the wall and a handful of harps (harmonicas) lying on top of the keyboard. All unused for months now). But I can certainly listen to others play and perform.

What's driving this discourse is the fact that I attended a great concert in Haliburton last Saturday, by Harry Manx (and Steve Marriner). Both terrific musicians, first one in a long time. I didn't bring my camera in, although I could have – I decided I wanted to enjoy experiencing the music instead of trying to photograph it. I gave in and shot a couple of iPhone shots, that's all.

Too many links... go to YouTube and search for these guys. Their music is off the wall and not what you're likely used to but you might be impressed by the skill and emotion with which they play. PS, I never thought I'd be impressed by someone who plays a Sitar (or sitar-like instrument like the mohan veena) and clearly is influenced by Indian music (OK, George Harrison...). He did drop the "Ravi Shankar" name.

As I re-read this and wonder why I wrote it anyway, the realization has set in that as I age, I've transitioned from participant to observer, and that's not a great feeling. I used to ski, hunt, fish, hike, work out, play racquetball, put 17km on my legs and knees on a weekend teaching motorcycling... I was invited on a trip to Yellowstone yesterday and have been considering Iceland. But my first thought is, "how much walking is involved"? {sigh}. I really have to do some of these before I can't any more.

Message: don't "put off until tomorrow what you can do today..."

Another Great Experience

I've been fascinated by American Sign Language for some time. I haven't learned it properly because I really don't have anyone nearby to practice with, although I know three people who are very conversant with it: my cousin Dr. Steve who is a psychologist and specializes in deaf patients, Shannon, a photographer friend from the Huntsville area who is hearing impaired and in fact teaches ASL, and my friend Ilana who works with deaf kids at the York Region School Board.

Enough intro? Ilana and I went to a new restaurant in Toronto called "Signs" where all of the wait staff are deaf. And you have to order from the menu using ASL (there are 'cheat sheets' on the menu and the table!). The food is good, prices are Toronto-competitive, and the atmosphere is outstanding! I highly recommend the place.

I was going to photoshop this to make me taller and slimmer and not so stupid looking, but hey, 'I yam what I yam'. Ilana, of course, doesn't need any photoshopping! 

By the way, when we first walked in, the maîtresse-d' (did I get that right?) specifically said it's OK to take pictures. In hindsight, I should have taken some shots of our waitress Chandri (her 'sign name' is "Candy". You'll understand what that means if you get into ASL), while she was talking with us. Signing with us. I will next time, because I'm definitely going back. Watch the little video on the Signs site.

What's fascinating about ASL is it isn't just making signs with your hands, speaking in ASL is like acting. You need to add body language and facial expressions. People who speak it well are soooo fast! It's hard to read them! But our waitress and the other staff at Signs know that, and are really helpful!

By the way, as long as I'm rambling on about this, did you know that there's less and less need for signing today? Two reasons that come to mind: a large percentage of profoundly deaf people can regain some hearing through cochlear implants today; Ilana tells me there's almost no need for signing in the public school system any more; and electronics, like iPads and the like, make communicating much easier than it used to be. See? You learned some trivia today!

I DID photoshop this one. Slim, eh? Too bad it's not that easy in real life! 

PS If you Google "ASL" or "American Sign Language", there's lots of links to learning the basics.

Speaking of iPads...

I was, right? OK, I mentioned them... I can't use my old iPad 1 as much any more. Somebody mentioned recently that Apple has built obsolescence into the iPad (and iPhone) products. They have, haven't they? Consider that I can't upgrade the I/OS in the old iPad beyond version 5. Then apps come along with updates that I can't install or worse, that I can install but no longer work. I haven't figured it out yet, but iBooks, which I used to use to read a library of books and pdf's on the iPad, doesn't want to work any more. Hell, I can't even play Scrabble. I think Apple wants me to buy a new one... anyone else have this issue?

Colour Space

For my photographer and Photoshopping friends (what photographer doesn't do post processing today?), the issue of colour space is important. Bottom line, what you see on your screen will likely not match what you get when you print; and what you see on the internet (especially FaceBook!) doesn't look like what you're seeing in Photoshop or Lightroom. It's not a simple topic.

When you're editing, you're likely using a "colour space" which is bigger than what the printer or monitor can handle. For example, you might have something fluorescent orange which won't look that way when you print it, but you want to edit it in such a way that you can see all the detail, all the nuances of colour in the program, onscreen. But as I said, the minute you want to post that image online or print it, you have to convert it to the colour space those media can handle. And that's not so simple either! For example, do you want that range of fluorescent orange colours to look like the brightest orange you can print, or do you want to "map" them down into the colour space so you can still pick up details?

A good example was that business card I showed you last week: the printing press uses cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks to create the colours, your monitor uses red-green-blue*. They're obviously going to look different and in this case, I had a greenish tinge. Both Lightroom and Photoshop have the ability to simulate what the image is going to look like in a different colour space – PS more that LR – and it's called "soft proofing". Here's an example

The picture on the right is what the image looked like when I finished editing it (just the colour, etc. I haven't edited the picture itself, so don't criticize it!). But when I saved it for FaceBook it looked like the middle one. In order to make it look good in sRGB (for online or printing) I had to change it in Lightroom to look like the picture at left.

* Actually whenever you put ink on paper, you're dealing with reflective colours and when you look at images on a monitor, it's transmissive colours. So all printers work on the CMYK principle. When you send an image to your inkjet printer, you send an sRGB image and the printer translates that into how much Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black to put on the paper. Some printers have more ink colours (the Epson 7900 has 11 of them, if I recall correctly) in order to reproduce nuances better. Some newer ones can work in other colour spaces. I don't know any printer that can reproduce fluorescent orange the same way a monitor can.

So if you've ever sent a picture out for printing or posted it online and you were disappointed with the colour, this might be the reason why.

Don't get me started on the need to calibrate your monitor if you've got any hope that what you see is what you're going to get! What if your monitor was too red? You'd adjust a picture onscreen until it looks right but look at it on someone else's monitor or in print? If you calibrate you have a chance that they'll be the same.

So much for my lecturing for today. It's one of the things I talk about in my Photoshop and Lightroom workshops. Want to learn more? It's the right time of year, the weather outside's getting frightening! Read about it at www.photography.to and sign up for a course!

What's Art?

There's a discussion going on on Facebook about whether using Topaz Impression is cheating, pretending to be an artist. There are arguments going back and forth about how the computer is not a real art medium, how only people who hold brushes and get paint on their clothes are real artists...

I'm torn. Clearly, anyone who can translate their vision into a shareable medium is an artist (I consider ALL musicians to be artists, see above). Regardless of how you do it (Warhol and his Apple Mac were used as an example), it's art. And there's nothing wrong with emulating someone else: otherwise the question, "who were your influences when you were starting out?" would be meaningless. COPYING someone else is a no-no, though.

Dumb example. I created this in a game for my grandson on my iPad by bringing up an image on my computer, looking at it and then sketching with my finger on the iPad to copy it. This isn't art. It's copying someone else's art. 

But if I take one of my photos and apply brush strokes and textures to it using Topaz Impression, does it become art? Well it already was art... I'm just making it look more like how my mind saw it. Impression's presets are labelled "van Gogh", or "da Vinci", or "Cezanne" or... does that mean I'm pretending to be one of those masters? I don't think so. Since I never studied classical art, I had no idea what those masters did or what their work looked like. As I look through the presets, I find ones that I like, they could be called "X" or "Z" or "fuzzy brush strokes", doesn't matter. By the way, I'm enjoying looking at paintings and would like to know more. I need to go to Kleinburg (The McMichael Collection) again soon. The AGO is south of the 401... 

Can you create art on a computer? Without question. Look up Patrick LaMontagne. His work is amazing. Do I think the National Gallery will ever display a work done in Impression? Who knows? Who ever thought that a Campbell's soup can would be considered art?

I love Impression. It allows me to add another dimension to my images, and as I said above, it makes them look more like what my mind saw. Is it art? Youbetcha.

I reworked this old image in Impression, using the Edward Hopper I preset as a starting point. Probably not something I would hang on my wall, but fun...

Here's the thing. Pictures with minimal editing in them now look flat and lifeless to me. I have to get out of that mindset.

So now some pictures...

If you want to practice shooting birds in flight, go to the dump! Just as I learned from shotgun hunting, when you have a whole flock, you have to pick one bird to focus on (or use a small aperture to get huge depth of field). In this case I got lucky, I had the wrong focus point selected!

There's a plug-in for Lightroom that shows you which focus points were used when you shot the image. 

Sometimes the bird is just standing there, posing for you! My camera is always set to AF-C (continuous tracking) and back-button focusing, so I'm always ready, whether the subject is moving or not.  

Nailed it! But I did shoot about 50 images... I liked this one the best. 

Shooting pictures in the winter is challenging. For the above shots, I set the exposure compensation to about +1ev because I wanted white, not grey snow. Read about it and other winter tips in my 56 page eBook, "Winter Wonderland, a guide to taking better pictures" available for FREE to subscribers to this blog (click the Newsletter link at the top, or here). If you're already a subscriber, you'll get an email with the link to the free eBook. If you don't want to subscribe, you can get the eBook here for $2.

Here's my picture of the day. I went out for a walk and saw the grass poking up through the new snowfall, and the boat mostly buried in fresh snow. It was coming up to sunset, so the shadows were interesting and as soon as I spotted this scene I knew basically what I wanted to do with it. So I shot it with the idea that I was going to process it with brush strokes. I chose the "Georgia O'Keefe" preset in Topaz Impression (there were about 8 presets that I liked for this!) and didn't change it much. This is definitely going on my list of images to print. 

Just a reminder that this time of year you might want to have some Holiday greeting cards printed up with your own images on them, or mine if you prefer. I can help, very inexpensively fro excellent quality. And think about giving gifts of art, it's perfect for those who are really hard to buy for! I have a great selection of images on my SmugMug site (just working on updating it today), on RedBubble (check out their pillows, smartphone and tablet cases and skins and other stuff! Some great gift ideas there!) and on Fine Art America, all at very reasonable prices. Check them out or send me an email and let's talk!

— 30 —

Inspiration

I love music.

Not all kinds, mostly blues and jazz and, it occurs to me, most of the artists I listen to are dead. Oscar Peterson, Janis Joplin, Moe Koffman, Jimmy Smith, Paul Butterfield... and SRV.

There are exceptions, of course: Barbra Streisand, Eric Clapton, Gordie Lightfoot, the Eagles, Leonard Cohen, Rhoda Scott, lots of others, of course. Almost nobody contemporary, though. The nearest I come to that is Casey Abrams (and Haley Reinhart). I love their rendition of "Hit the Road, Jack" and "Moanin'". I have about 10 different versions of that last song by various artists.

I consider all the artists I've mentioned to be virtuosi. Not just lucky accidents, people who have skill and talent and have taken them to the pinnacle. Yesterday there was a Labour Day event at the Inn across the road and they had live music going all afternoon. Sitting here, I suddenly heard what sounded like a B3 (the Hammond organ I'd kill for) so I wandered over. The keyboard player was "just OK", as was the group he was in. 10 minutes later I was home, put on some Rhoda Scott and some Tony Monaco...

I'm writing this because this morning, a thread about Stevie Ray Vaughn showed up on Facebook and of course I had to fire up iTunes and play some tunes. I listened to "Pride and Joy" and "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and as I'm typing this, "Voodoo Child". Sometimes I listen to a cut and want to try to learn to play it on the keyboard or guitar or harp. Lately I just listen and enjoy, recognizing I'll never be able to play like that, even if I had a hundred more years to practice.

What's this got to do with photography? It occurred to me that you get your inspiration from experiencing what others have done. When I see images that move me, I think one of three things: (a) I wish I could do pictures like that, (b) what a good idea, I think I'm going to try to use that technique, and (c) I can do and have done better.

The other day, Lance Gitter, a photographer I met about 10 years ago at the Richmond Hill Camera Club, posted a new book he created, called "Gitterized". More about it down further. As I viewed it, thoughts (a) and (b) went through my mind. Lance inspires me to try harder and do better.

PS: iTunes, in its infinite wisdom, picked a random track from my library to play next. How is it possible that I forgot to mention Ray Charles. "Georgia on my Mind" is playing now...

In my next life, I want to come back as a musician. I think that's the best medium in which to express and share your emotions. Sounds odd, from a left-brained person but as I approach my 67th birthday in a few days, I realize that my priorities have changed. My goal in photography is the same: to express emotion and mood, not just technically correct images. Thanks for those who have inspired me in that direction.

Maybe this has inspired you to think about what you're trying to accomplish with your photography. Or painting. Or music. Or writing. Or...

Here's a story with emotion in it

I rode over to the MWWP yesterday. I was actually going to shoot some landscapes enroute but forgot my polarizing filter and Xume adapter at home, so I just shot some kayakers. One caught my eye: different from the usual bearded old guys and grungy characters, she was young and blond and cute and very photogenic.

At first, I couldn't figure out why she was sitting for such a long time off to the side, concentrating on the Otter Slide (a feature in the MWWP waterway). She'd get partway in, then turn around and back out. Another kayaker would be coming down the river but well above, and not actually going to enter the slide yet... it reminded me of a motorcyclist I knew years ago who wouldn't come out of a gas station because she was afraid of the traffic, even though it was light... I figure that she's not that experienced a kayaker and was not confident she could actually do it.

Here she came halfway across, figured she couldn't make it, and struggled to get back to safe water. She did this a few times while I watched.

Finally, she gave it a shot. Here's the sequence I shot as a burst

Check out the facial expressions from left to right! You can click on the image to enlarge it. From 'worried', to 'OK, I can do this', to 'I'm doing it!' to 'yesss!' to 'Yahoo!'  Can you tell from the last two shots below if she was having fun?

I heard her talking with her mom afterwards, it was the first time she actually managed to negotiate that white water (and by the way, the water flow was quite high yesterday, the Otter Slide was wild!). I sent her dad a copy of this image, I know his name is Keith, but I don't know her name...

Fun story. I'm glad I caught it!

Speaking of Inspiration

I remembered a video that I had watched a few years ago and even embedded in my blog (with permission) in 2011. When I went to revisit it, it comes up as "Forbidden". I looked a little further and found it again on a different site. So I thought I'd post a link to it here (not embedding it, just linking to it so copyright isn't an issue).

Possibilities: "Celebrate What's Right with the World" by DeWitt Jones, former National Geographic photographer. It's worth watching again (although the image quality is lacking but the message is still there).

OK, Adobé. NOW you got my attention.

Adobe just announced that the price of Photoshop CC + Lightroom 5 will be an ONGOING $9.99 per month. John Nack specifically said on his blog,,

To reiterate: the intention is not to get you in at $9.99/mo., then crank up the price after a year. $9.99 is the expected ongoing price.

NOW you got me. No hurry to sign up, you have until the end of 2013. This offer is for those who own CS3 or up. I'll give you the link later, you can't do it yet anyway.

Topaz deal available on Monday

REMINDER: I got an email from Topaz Labs that they're putting Topaz Adjust 5 on sale for 50% off ($24.99) from September 9 to September 30th. It's very rarely on sale, so mark your calendars and jump on it next week! Topaz Adjust 5 is my go-to plugin in Photoshop and in Lightroom, it's absolutely my favourite. Go to this link, and enter the promo code "septadjust" (without the quote marks) when ordering.

'tis the season to be jolly! Fa la la la la... never mind!

Get Gitterized

There's an outstanding book available, written by my friend Lance Gitter. It's titled, "Gitterized". Here's what Lance says about it:

This is a collection of my creative images from the last number of years. I have finally accomplished the goal of putting them together in a format where I can share my creativity, who and what inspired me to make some of my photos and what tools and/or techniques I used to come up with these creations.

Lance's work is incredibly creative. Here (with permission) are two images from the book:

Shot on the Rideau Canal last winter 

This montage is a self-portrait. What vision! 

Whenever I see Lance's work, I'm inspired. And not only do these images appear in the book, but also some of the thinking and techniques that went into their creation.

Lance has generously made the entire book available for viewing on-screen but you would be remiss if you didn't buy the book and enjoy the full experience of seeing these images in print. The link for viewing or buying the book is here.

Sometimes you win

And sometimes you don't.

I spent the better part of an hour at the landfill (polite way of saying "garbage dump") this afternoon. They had the giant chipper going — technically I was told it wasn't called a chipper, but that's what it does. It turns big pieces of garbage into small pieces of garbage. This was construction material, so what they do is to bury the wet waste, the household garbage, and cover it with this stuff. Eventually the deep stuff composts, but I learned that they dug up a Sears catalog from 1950 and it was still readable. "That shiny paper takes a long time to decompose".

Where was I? Oh yeah. I tried my damnedest to "isolate the subject". I wanted to make sense out of the chaos that was there. And I couldn't. So these pictures are failures, but a valiant attempt, don't you think?

They dump big garbage in the top of the chipper and little stuff comes out the conveyor belt to the left. Mountains of it. Then they move the big orange thing (the operator of the big excavator has a remote control) and build another mountain.  

Another attempt to isolate it. Here I did three things:  I put the Neutral Density filter on and shot long exposures (around 2 seconds) to give it a sense of motion, I combined about 4 exposures as layers in Photoshop using "darken" as the blending mode between layers, and I ran Silver Efex Pro 2 and put in a bunch of control points for selective colorization.

You win some, you lose some. I gave it the ole college try.

This is Leonard. He works there. He spent part of the day trying to keep the people dropping off garbage and the bears apart. There were two males there today, but not the big one-eyed boar they often see. f/2.8 on the 200mm and Nik HDR Efex Pro 2 (one image only) helped to separate him from the background.

This is Big John. He drives the tractor that makes mountains out of mole hills. Captured his character, I think. He told me his beard used to be down to "here" but it kept getting caught in the tattoo gun. Tough guy. But a pussycat deep down, I think (don't tell him I said that!).

TTFN!

— 30 —