I frequently photograph at Phipps Conservatory, a small but interesting Botanical Garden in Pittsburgh. One every nice thing about it is that they have several different shows throughout the year. The current showing involves not so much flowers as it does statues. The show, called "Gargoyles" features over a hundred gargoyle statues and statuettes among the flowers. It really was different and enjoyable to photograph them.
I was taking some pictures in Pittsburgh's Homewood Cemetery a few days ago. It was the first time I had gone there to photograph, as the idea of shooting in a cemetery has always made me feel, well, a little intrusive.
I was saddened by the recognition that even in a cemetery you can still be forgotten.
OK....here is what a scene, any scene, would more or less look like to us as observers in 'infrared' if we eliminated the visible light wavelengths.
It's always enjoyable to make photos of reflections. For one thing, many people who don't photograph never really see these types of details, and when people do take note of them it tends to be fleeting. It's only when such details are 'frozen' in time that they can be really appreciated. Most folks end up being amazed that a patch of water could really look as intensely colored as this.
There were several aspects of this particular image that made it enjoyable to capture:
First of all, to get these types of images one often has to bend and contort themselves in order to find the angle that best portrays the reflections. However, in this particular case, it was easy. The conditions were just perfect to get reflections in the water and I could just stand on the wooden deck overlooking Ohiopyle Falls with my 400mm f5.6 lens (long, but quite light) and pick out small patches of water that showed intense reflections from the trees. No bending over or twisting into painful positions at the water's edge.....nice!
Odd as it may sound, I have always thought that stairwells would make interesting photos. Depending on where they are and how they are lit they can appear a bit creepy or menacing. Anything that conveys a feeling is always a good candidate for a photo.
Despite the above, there were several factors that kept me from taking photos in a stairwell before. For one thing, depending on the lighting, the contrast range can be quite high. Thus, I thought the image would best be made using several exposures with an HDR technique, which I was not using until recently. In addition, someone with a tripod and camera blocking a stairwell is sure to attract attention....I could just hear the security guards running, particularly after my prior run-ins with guards.
Recently, however, I decided it was time to give it a try. And the perfect place seemed to be at work. That way, if the guards came a-running at least I had an ID and they would know that I worked there and who I was. So I picked a time, very early on a weekend morning when I had to be at work anyway, and set up the tripod in the stairwell and took some shot sequences for HDR processing. Here is what I came up with:
I have been 'playing around' a bit more with black and white conversions and experimenting with the types of moods that black and white images can convey.
A few years ago I went on an amazing workshop with Nancy Rotenberg, which took place on the Oregon Coast. One of the most surreal places I have ever seen was Bandon Beach, Oregon. In fact, it was so other-worldly that I took one of my images and made the colors somewhat surreal in order to try to convey the 'feeling' of being in that location, rather than just using the image to show what the location looked like. While I liked the image, I always had my doubts as to whether the viewer would understand what I was trying to say and feared they would just see the image as 'hypersaturated'. Of course, if the image doesn't convey what it is that you, as the artist, want it to, it has failed, at least on some level.
