When Is It Done?

I would like to take another brief interlude from the rock images to mention an issue that I have been thinking about lately.

I have noticed something in my own work and am wondering if others have had the same experience (yikes, could it really be just me?). When I am in Lightroom going through my RAW files to choose ones that I want to work on further, I will frequently make some quick changes to exposure and saturation etc and perhaps even open them in Photoshop to add a quick curves layer. I do this to try to quickly see the potential of an image since the RAW files are, by definition, fairly flat looking.

Using this process, I pick out images that I want to continue working on in order to ‘perfect’ them. I might work on a chosen image for quite some time. Some of the work is general to the image. By that I mean that it would be needed no matter how else the image was processed. I am referring to spotting the photo as well as cloning out errant objects as well as objects that I noticed ahead of time but could do nothing about, such as small signs and the like. Getting the crop right would also fall into this category.

But then I start working on the aspects of the image that are changeable and dependent on the ‘feel’ I want to give the photograph. This includes things like local contrast, saturation, fine tuning the exposure etc. The funny thing is that while sometimes the result looks far, far better than the starting point after the quick Lightroom adjustments, there are other times (and though they are not the majority, they are still not at all infrequent) when I look back at the quick starting point that I had generated only to find that, even after all the manipulations and effort, I like the starting version of the image better.

I wonder if there is something in those first quick adjustments that allows one’s intent or pre-visualization of the image to come out. Frequently, I wonder if I am doing too much to an image, or if the many minor adjustments that I might spend time making are even noticeable. I think knowing when to stop is a big hurdle to overcome, at least for me.

Anyone have thoughts about this?

More TinEye Invites

I am going to interrupt the brief series on rock abstract images that I have been posting to mention that, since giving away the prior twenty TinEye pre-approved invitations, they have given me twenty more. See here for more information about TinEye and its new image search engine.

So if anyone wanted a TinEye invite but couldn't get one from the last batch, I have more. Just make a comment to this post with a name and e-mail address and I will send one on to you!

Making Rock Images: Pt. 2

If you haven't had the chance to read Part 1 of this series, that post can be found here.

Hurdle #2: Focus

The images I have been making involve isolating small areas of stone that have interesting abstract patterns. This obviously calls for using a macro lens, and I have been using a Canon 180mm macro with a 1.4 teleconvertor. Because the magnification is so great, the depth of field is quite shallow, and, in my opinion, the toughest part of making images like this (aside from finding a great composition) is assuring edge to edge sharpness across the photo. In this post I thought I would share some of the aspects of achieving sharpness that I have worked out thus far.

There are two planes that should optimally be perfectly parallel to each other. These are the plane of the rock slab surface and the film or sensor plane. In addition, while the surface of the sensor is, for all intents and purposes, perfectly flat, the plane of the rock surface will not be. So where does one start?

My first step has been to make the back of the camera itself perfectly level to the ground while the lens is pointed downwards. This must be done in both the north/south and east/west planes. I check the 'levelness' with a short bubble level by placing the bottom of the level flat on the lcd sensor screen in both the north/south and east/west orientations.

I quickly found out that making such adjustments in two planes with a ballhead while the camera is pointed straight down is quite difficult. This is because when the ballhead is loosened the camera can move freely in both planes and thus it is very hard to adjust the camera's position in one direction only. My solution (without buying any fancy new equipment) is to separate the two plane adjustments. I do this by dropping the camera (mounted on a focusing rail which ultimately makes life much, much simpler) as far down as it will go into one of the ballhead slots. As long as the camera is as far down into the slot as it can go, the 'levelness' of the north to south plane will not change. That plane can now be made level by putting some cardboard underneath a tripod leg (or legs) to make the back of the camera parallel to the ground. Now the ballhead lock can be loosened and the camera rotated in the east/west direction until it is level in that plane as well. You can recheck the position in the north/south direction, but as long as you maintained some gentle downward force on the camera so that it is down in the bottom of the ballhead slot while rotating it east/west, the north/south leveling should remain intact.

Stone Trees
Copyright Howard Grill

The next step is to level the rock slab. Find a heavy flat object that will serve as the surface on which the rock slab to be photographed will sit. This surface now needs to be leveled in the north/south and east/west directions using the same level as for the camera and adjusted as needed by putting some paper or cardboard under the ends that need to be raised or lowered (when you live in a very old house the floors tend to not be truly flat!)

Now comes the part that ruins the perfection. I find that the rock slabs themselves, even if cut nicely, rarely are perfectly flat. In addition, the edges of the rock slab frequently have a ridge or ledge that lifts it off the surface on which it rests in an uneven fashion. This can sometimes be remedied by using a level and slipping a few pieces of paper underneath an edge of the slab where needed. Also, if the ridge on one edge is particularly prominent, I may let that edge extend off the surface it is resting on. Ultimately this can be a bit of an exercise in futility because I end up moving the rock around to get different compositions. I simply do the best I can with a reasonable effort. Even with these uncontrollable imperfections in the rock slab, the better you have leveled your camera and the surface on which the rock slab to be photographed sits, the better off you will be.

If anyone has any further recommendations as to how to ensure that the plane of the rock and the plane of the sensor or film are parallel to each other, please chime in!

Making Rock Images: Pt. 1

As I mentioned in my last post, I have started to make some abstract rock images after seeing some of Mark Graf's abstract gallery. I have also bought Bill Atkinson's book Within the Stone, which is absolutely gorgeous. After several sessions of trying, I have learned several tricks that have worked for me without buying any new equipment and thought it might be of interest to share them in a few blog posts....if I have time to process some images more fully I will display some of them as well.

Hurdle #1: Finding Rock

This one is pretty easy. Log onto e-Bay and search for Jasper Rock, Agate, Flint or any other type of rock you would like to photograph and start bidding. Bid on pieces that have been cut so that the surface to be photographed is flat (so that the entire surface can be in focus at once). It doesn't matter if the surface has been polished or not. As a matter of fact it is probably better that it is not. The reason is that the polished pieces have typically been cut for jewelry....that means that they often are not flat and, in addition, the pieces are smaller. You want a flat surface and the largest piece possible in order to search around for and isolate different compositions.

Oh, and now that I shared that with you, do me a favor and don't bid against me on anything!

In the next post I will talk about focusing without buying a copy stand.

First Try

Ever since seeing Mark Graf's gorgeous rock and petrified wood macro abstracts, I have been wanting to give this type of work a try. After reading up on cross-polarization (along with some e-mail assistance from Mark) and buying a few specimens, I gave it a go. This is the first photo that I have fully processed and I plan to try more of these types of images, as I particularly enjoy finding abstracts and patterns in nature.

Stone Rainbow
Copyright Howard Grill

Out Of Focus

Last Spring, after experimenting with photographing some wildflowers, I had written a post about purposefully throwing an image totally out of focus and making the photograph an abstract of form and color with no clearly defined shape. These are the images I had taken at the time.

Columbine
Copyright Howard Grill

Buttercups
Copyright Howard Grill

Recently, I was again experimenting with this idea, but was trying to work with it a bit differently. Rather than throwing the image totally out of focus, I threw it out enough to make it clear that the image was not simply poorly focused, but yet not far enough to totally loose the sense of underlying shape. I found the results to be compelling and very dreamlike in appearance, akin to the 'shoot through' technique where one places petals or other colored objects very close to the front of the lens while focusing on something a bit further out.

Floral Dream
Copyright Howard Grill

I am not quite sure if I am totally there yet, but find that I do like experimenting with this sort of image making and think it holds potential for conveying what I want to express while going 'beyond' the idea of selective focus and shallow depth of field. Does anyone else see anything interesting emerging from this, or am I just kidding myself here?

Quick Quotes: Margaret Bourke-White

"If you want to photograph a man spinning, give some thought to why he spins. Understanding for a photographer is as important as the equipment he uses."

Margaret Bourke-White

This concept has been verbalized by many, many photographers. I am just not sure I have 'heard' anyone say it better than Margaret Bourke-White.

TinEye Invitations

The folks at TinEye apparently saw that I had put up a blog post about them. As a result, they gave me twenty pre-approved invitations to give out to join their beta website. I will send them to the first twenty people that respond to this post by making a comment that they want one. In the comment you can leave your e-mail address and name, or, if you would rather not do that, you can e-mail me with your name and e-mail address. I do, however, request that you put a comment in the blog first so that people will see when the twenty invites have been given away (twenty comments) and not continue to fill my in-box with requests long after the invitations are gone. Then again, perhaps I am overestimating what the popularity of the site will be.

Well, no matter. If twenty people are interested, just post a comment and let me know your e-mail address. If there are already twenty comments....well, that's it!

Photoshop Disasters

Deep down, we all love Photoshop. But, sometimes, things can go a bit awry. With photography that generally means that we have ended up in the trap of oversaturation or poor contrast. In the field of graphic design things can get worse......much worse!

How much worse and how often? Turns out quite frequently. And not only work by amateurs....as you will see many of these bloopers are in ads put out by very large corporations. The errors, sometimes small, sometimes big, and very frequently funny have a place where they go for all to see and that place is a blog called Photoshop Disasters.

Check it out here and know that others have erred far worse than you!

Find Your Images On-Line

Ever wonder if any of your images are online, be it pilfered from you or being used with permission. I ran across a very cool search engine which aspires to be the Google for images. You simply give it the URL of the image or, even easier, right click on any internet image after installing a Firefox plug-in and the site searches for the image, or even a portion of the image, in cyberspace.

Here is the link.

A few downsides:

1) At this point in time only a small fraction of the images 'out there' are cataloged and searched.....about 500 million of them.

2) It is still in beta.

3) To try to use it you need to apply for an invitation. The good news is that I got mine via e-mail in about 10 minutes.

4) It didn't find my images on various critique sites where I know they reside.

But within limits it does work. If you go to a microstock site, where images are meant to be purchased for use, and search on a popular image it will return hits where the image has been used, even when the image has been cropped down etc.

Try it for some of your own on-line images. You might be surprised what you find, for better or worse!

Around The House

A week or so ago I had a bit if time, but couldn’t leave the house because I had to be home for one of my children. So I decided to see what I might ‘play with’ photographically while waiting. Sometimes, when I have nothing to do, I gravitate towards the fridge (does that happen to anyone else?). This time, while I was there, I decided that instead of eating I would photograph something….and perhaps reward myself by eating it afterwards. So I felt obligated to pull out something healthy.

I gravitated to some rather colorful bell peppers that were in the veggie bin. They seemed to have everything needed: color and shape. It was with great hesitation that I pulled one out, as all I could think of was that after Edward Weston nobody could or should ever photograph a pepper. Ah well, I did it anyway, or else I would have ended up eating something far less healthful.

Wet Orange Bell Pepper
Copyright Howard Grill

It was sort of fun to play around and decide that I had to shoot something that I could find quickly in the house. I suspect it is a pretty good exercise in training one’s self to see.

The Wall

I recently walked by a wall that had a mural painted on it. I had my camera with me and decided to take a few pictures. A funny thing happened while I was photographing. I realized that I was not taking pictures of the mural itself, at least not in the sense of taking a picture that would show someone what the mural looked like. Rather, I found myself making abstract photographs of little sections of the mural....smears of paint, lines, twirls of color.

When I got home and started looking at the images, I really liked what I saw. I was intrigued that there could be so many beautiful pictures within another piece of art that were never purposefully put there to stand alone.

As in the image below, there was a bit of glare in the photos because of the time of day I happened to be passing by the wall.

Copyright Howard Grill

I plan to go back at a different time of day and take some more photos in better conditions and to also try to do some of this type of photographing when I pass other murals or graffiti. I actually think this would make a nice little project of its own!

Another Use For The Flashlight

In my last post, I wrote about how having a small flashlight helped me to make a photograph better. I have been playing around with one ever since I read Les Saucier's flashlight article.

I recently found another benefit to having a small LED light. The other day I was making some macro photographs using a 180mm macro lens with a 1.4 TC and focusing manually. I was also using the flashlight to throw some supplementary light on the subject of the image. I had focused and was playing with the direction of lighting when it occurred to me that the light might also help with focusing.

So, I tried a little experiment. I focused manually, then added extra light on the subject and tried to see if the focus was still optimal. I was flabbergasted to find that the vast majority of times, even though I had been sure that my focus was right on, it, in fact, was able to be improved by re-focusing with the added light on the subject. Perhaps being off by a tad is not a big deal for many images, but for macro work it certainly is.....it can make or break the picture.

I don't know if it is my age, my eyes, or what....but I do know that now I will be using the flashlight to help me get that focus just the way I want it when shooting macro images.

The more I use this little light, the mire I like it and the more uses I find for it.

Flashlight Saves Image

I love photographing during Springtime. Last weekend I made my first of what is hopefully to be several trips to local wildflower areas. There was some early goldenrod blooming in isolated patches, and I spent some time with my macro lens making images of individual buds. While I was looking around (and getting the aches out of my knees and hips from crouching for so long), I happened to see a ‘bug’ nestled deep within the swirling leaves of an emerging plant. Though I recently wrote a few posts about the types of photographs I don’t frequently take, and one of them was insects, I couldn’t resist trying my hand at capturing an image of the little guy. I liked the pattern and color of the leaves and thought the best approach would be to take an ‘environmental portrait’ rather than trying to fill the frame with the insect’s head.

I needed some added illumination beyond natural light to properly photograph the insect in the recesses of the leaves and so I broke out my macro flash. However, after taking a few shots, I noticed a problem. The flash was generating distracting specular highlights in the water droplets on the leaves around the bug. Since one’s eye tends to be immediately drawn to bright highlights I felt the flash, while providing adequate illumination to make the photo, was, at the same time, detracting from it by drawing the eye away from the main subject.

I could try to change the position of the flash or to partially shade a portion of it, but I realized that besides the uneven lighting that might ensue, it would also be an exercise in futility as the results could only be seen after the shot was taken……and I only have two hands. Therefore, after evaluating the results on the camera’s small LCD, it would be impossible to exactly reproduce the lighting conditions that were present during the exposure, let alone change them in any type of controlled fashion.

But then I remembered the small flashlight that I had purchased after reading Les Saucier’s article that I previously wrote about. By holding the flashlight in one hand and the cable release in the other, I was able to make the exposure while looking through the viewfinder and seeing the effect of the lighting in real time, enabling me to minimize the specular highlights and produce an image that I found pleasing.

Copyright Howard Grill

Not only that, the flashlight enhanced my creative efforts. Though I ultimately ended up liking the most straightforward lighting the best, I couldn’t help but experiment with different ways of illuminating the bug. I tried using the flashlight to light the little guy from all different angles including backlighting him from behind the leaf. That might have worked if I had a second flashlight to throw a bit more light on the bug from the front as well. Nonetheless, I felt a bit better about not having a second light when I realized that I would then have to set off the cable release with my mouth!

The flashlight is definitely handy to have around. Why not give it a try!

Photographer's Rights: One More Time

I have written previously about issues involving the rights of photographers. Those posts can be seen here and here.

Well, it can always get worse. Check out this poster:




I am at least pleased to say that this was not the work of the USA.....though it certainly could well have been. Nope, this one is from England.

Want the full story?

Check it out on Carol Wright's Photo Attorney blog......the story is here.

The most absurd part of it is that, as Attorney Wright points out, ".......in days where most everyone has a cell phone camera, it's ironic that the larger your camera, the more likely that you'll be hassled. Terrorists are prone to be more discreet."

I am all for stopping terrorists, but this has to be about the most ineffective method around and simply encourages others others to, once again, violate the rights that one has to simply make photographs!

Stone Abstracts By Mark Graf

For the last month or two, fellow blogger and photographer Mark Graf has intermittently written in his blog about photographing rock samples, particularly Pietersite, as part of his 'Inspired By Stone' project. Ever since seeing the images he has posted as part of this project I have simply been mesmerized by them as well. I am equally amazed by the concept of how many beautiful compositions can be found within just a few square inches. Mark talks a bit about how he made the photographs here. I think I might have to give this a try myself.

Pietersite Macro
Copywrite Mark Graf
From His Blog "Notes From The Woods"

Have a look at his rock, shell, and wood abstract gallery here. The images are truly beautiful and open up a world that few take a close enough look at.

Insects

About a week ago, I wrote a post about bird photography and mentioned that it is not the type of photography I usually do, but offered up a picture or two anyway. Along the same theme of photographic sub-specialties that I don't frequently undertake is insect photography. In a way, it is similar to bird photography in that those that devote a good portion of their time to photographing insects can come up with the most amazing images.......when you view them it can feel like you are entering a new and surreal universe. Though this image is far from generating that type of feel, it is one that I have liked ever since I took it on a workshop with John and Barbara Gerlach several years ago.

Crab Spider
Copyright Howard Grill

One of the reasons that I like the image is that it demonstrates some of the concepts of composition that I would typically apply to much larger subjects. I like the way the markings on the body of the spider echo the color of the flower as well as the way the two portions of the flower on the left and right droop downwards, echoing the angle of the markings on the spider's body. On a larger scale, I liked the gentle diagonal made by the whole flower across the frame, instead of its being straight up and down.

I find it interesting that the qualities that contribute to making successful images can generally be applied to most subjects.

Focus Magazine Collectors Edition

One of the photography magazines that I have been reading regularly is Focus Magazine. It is, in my opinion, an excellent and very worthwhile publication. I am writing about it now, however, because I wanted to call attention to a very special issue that I just finished reading and is currently available at news stands. Well, actually, I have never seen one at a news stand per se, and while I have a subscription, I do know that it can be found at Barnes and Noble.

What is so special about this issue? This month, the editors have grouped together a large number of past interviews with various photographers from older issues and reprinted them together in one location. There are interviews here with some of my favorites including Michael Kenna, Paul Caponigro, George Tice, and an interview with Arnold Newman that took place just prior to his recent death.

Definitely a worthwhile read!

Bird Photography

I am constantly amazed at the level of devotion as well as the exquisite results that dedicated bird photographers like Arthur Morris are able to attain. Such photography is truly a sub-specialty and, like most areas of expertise, the casual dabbler simply can't expect similar results. Some might argue that this is because of the specialized and expensive equipment that is needed. However, it goes well beyond equipment. It requires the interest, the study, and ultimately the love of the subject and the genre to achieve the type of level of excellence that Mr. Morris has attained.

With that said, during my trip to Sanibel Island in December, I couldn't help but try to take a few shots of the herons that would land outside our condo in the evenings. I knew these hand held shots wouldn't be perfect......but they were fun to take!

Little Blue Heron Silhouette
Copyright Howard Grill

Little Blue Heron Portrait
Copyright Howard Grill

Overlooking Special Opportunities

A recent experience made me realize how easy it is to overlook special photographic opportunities that may exist right in ones own backyard.

For 17 years I have been living a mere 10-15 minute walk from Phipps Conservatory, which a wonderful botanical garden. Needless to say, I have often photographed the outdoor gardens, but never the indoor ones because of the much lower light levels. Little did I know that if you are a member (which I am) you can bring a tripod inside from 9:30 - 11:00AM on Sundays. Thanks to Bob Egan, whose wonderful show "In Search Of Color" is still on display at Phipps, for letting me know about this member benefit.

Two Tulip Abstract - Indoors At Phipps
Copyright Howard Grill

I was able to bring my tripod in two weeks ago and am signed up for this Sunday once again.

I guess the lesson is that if there is someplace nearby your home that would be interesting to photograph, but there seems to be a limitation to doing do......just ask and maybe you will get lucky. Had I asked about photographing Phipps years ago there would have been many cold winter mornings spent photographing flowers and plants! It does make the idea of next winter more palatable though.

Canna Lily - From Past Phipps Excursions
Copyright Howard Grill

Unfurling Spring Growth - From Past Phipps Excursions
Copyright Howard Grill