Category: Photo Journal

Photo Journal Tuesday

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Once upon a time. . . . .

Sometimes keeping my blog is like a fairy tale. I “tell the story” and then put it out of my mind. Yeah, I forget my intentions. One part of my reframe journey is to set intentions and keep them.

In June, I stated that I was beginning a photo journal series to “analyze” the images that I am receiving and making. I wrote then about how I love to photograph patterns. I also love to photograph light. And flowers. And reflections.

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I took this picture two weeks ago while walking through Dreher Island State Park, just three or four miles from my home. These trees are covered in water most of the year and as a result have drowned. The graphic nature of them—the stark nearly black trunks and the more faded ones create some drama against the lake water. And then there are the reflections that are disrupted by the ripples created by the breeze. The water itself reflects the gray skies of that morning. Even after adjusting the white balance in post-production to account for the cloudy conditions, I could not eliminate the blue-gray quality of the light in the image.

This image in a way speaks of the coming winter months when more the hard-wood trees will lose their leaves for the winter. Yet, even though they suggest the starkness of the coming winter, the scene does not feel dead or empty to me. The ripples in the water suggest movement. Lake Murray may be a freshwater lake, but there is rhythm in the movement, signs of life that may be just resting for the season. And even though the color is “cool,” there seems to be some promise of warmer days to come.

Kim Manley Ort’s Photo by Design class is helping me look closer at the world, see the light, the lines, the shapes. Photography is all about seeing so that the light can “write” the story on the sensor or the film. 

Wednesday Photo Journal #2

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This past week was beautiful for the most part. We had a few thunderstorms and some much needed rain, but Saturday was typical South Carolina summer—hot and humid. I went out with the camera for a few minutes to walk around the back yard and to check out the secret garden that is so secret, it doesn’t know it’s a garden. I am not the one with the green thumb here. Most of my “garden” is in planters—one red-orange hibiscus, some white and purple verbena, dianthus, and lavender (which is not blooming yet). Over in the other garden, I have sown a variety of wildflowers, but they have not matured enough to bloom yet.

The last few times I’ve gone out to ramble with the camera, I’ve taken very little gear with me. I choose a lens before I go out. This time, I chose the Lensbaby double optic with the Composer Pro. I took the macro filters with me to use—if the spirit moved me. And it did for a few images, but not many. One of the things I like about the Lensbaby double optic is that it is like shooting with an 85mm lens. It is a 50mm lens on a full-frame camera, but my Canon 7D is a crop sensor. I almost get the effect of a macro lens without the filters. The two filters are 4mm and 10mm each. I think I mainly used the 10mm.

Here are a few of the images:

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I have been playing around with the Topaz Labs plugins for Photoshop. I especially like Simplify because I an achieve some painterly effects, as I did on these first two images. The old barn is on my father’s-in-law property. I have been photographing this old barn for a while now, and each time I get a different effect. for this image, I chose to use a watercolor effect. It needs a bit a tweaking yet, but I like of like it. (I even cloned out a building on the right side of the image so that barn would be the star.

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I love the texture of hibiscus. You can see the veins in each petal.

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I tried to create a vintage look for this rose, but as I wrote last week, red is a difficult color for me to photograph well and to process well. I think I may tweak this image more and use the Topaz Labs BW Effects. I love the Opalotype effects. I think that would give the image a vintage look. What do you think?

 

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Even though I walk around the back yard and the ponds frequently, I always see something different, something new. That’s what I love so much about contemplative photographic practices: it’s all about seeing the world through eyes that are wide-open, receptive to possibility.

Wednesday Photo Journal

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A few years ago, I signed up for Kat Sloma’s Find Your Eye: Journey of Fascination online course. At that time, I thought I would have plenty of time to complete the class. As usual, I was mistaken. Just as the class began, I was hired to teach middle school English classes in a long-term sub position. My photography was pushed to the side. And as it happens way too often, though I saved the files, I forgot about the course. I receive Kat’s monthly newsletters, and she mentioned that she was discontinuing the Find Your Eye series, as well as A Sense of Place. I have the lessons; I even printed them out this time. Now, I need to work on them to (re)discover my photographic eye. To tell the truth, I need to find the inspiration to photograph again.

One of Kat’s practices is to keep a photo journal in which the photographer pairs images with words. She uses the practice to help the photographer discover his or her “eye,” to see patterns and trends and tendencies. I think it’s time that I put my mind to doing this “for real.” So, today, I’m beginning a series of Photo Journal entries in which I think about the image and write about it. I might just tell you what I was thinking when I took the picture; or I might tell you a story about the image. I may even explore my editing choices.

So today, I begin.

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I walked through my bedroom one Sunday around lunchtime. Light was streaming through the slats of the blinds, and it fell across a sheer black infinity scarf I had hung on the door knob. Behind the scarf was a tote bag. I grabbed the camera and snapped the image. I was drawn to the stripes of light across the scarf, the contrasts of white light and black. The gold bag behind it and the pop of red on the right side attracted me as well.

I have learned that there are two or three colors that are particularly difficult for me to photograph accurately—black, red, and white. With white, I tend to “blow” out the exposure, and often the black comes out charcoal gray. And red? Well, red often comes out any shade other the red that I actually saw! Thank goodness, there is Photoshop and Lightroom to help me out of those jams, but even then, sometimes the red is not right. I’m not stressing about the accuracy of the color in this image, though. I am drawn more to the contrasts of light and dark, to the drapery of the scarf, to the lines.. It is admittedly an abstract image.

I’ve noticed that more and more, I am taking abstract images—focusing on parts of things to capture the shape or texture or the pattern.

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When I was still teaching secondary English in a public school, our principal had every teacher take a learning styles inventory. I discovered that I am a global, abstract, and visual learner. According the Howard Gardner’s theories, I possess a linguistic intelligence (why should I be surprised? I am an English teacher.). So sometimes, my photography surprises me. I enjoy photographing details, the small pieces that make up the larger whole.

William Blake once wrote, “To see the world in a grain of sand. . . . “ Sometimes the whole is contained in the detail.