Opportunity Knocks – Centennial Park in Summer

Parthenon

We detoured into Centennial Park for an impromptu photo shoot  on our way home from a lovely birthday lunch at J. Alexander’s on West End, compliments of my friend Elizabeth who was visiting from Memphis. I only had my point and shoot with me, but the profusion of summer blooms, overcast sky and unseasonably cool temperatures in Nashville’s busy urban park begged for some camera action.

Rose in the Memorial Garden for Abused and Neglected Children, with the Parthenon in the background.

Elizabeth with her Flip video camera.

Green Coleus in the Childrens' Garden

Red Coleus in the Childrens' Garden.

Red Hibiscus

Pink and red Hibiscus

Steps to the Sunken Garden.

Fruit panicles of the Golden Rain Tree.

Watauga Lake resident

How different the park looked on this summer day in July from my last visit in April. Redbud, Cherry, Iris and Daffodils had given way to Cannas, Crepe Myrtle and Hibiscus. It’s an everchanging scene, except for the Nashvillians who come in droves and the ducks in Watauga Lake that beg for bread whether it’s January or July. My point and shoot was definitely up for the job, and was suprisingly good on the macro setting. I don’t want to wait three months to go back, but the heat and humidity have returned, and it’s really bright out.

It pays to get on the ship while it’s at the dock.

The Garden as a Photography Studio

Garden beside the Art Institute, Chicago

Impressionistic view of the Art Institute garden

A beautiful garden is constantly changing. Spring flowers fade, summer blooms take their places, and periwinkle turns to crimson. The whole face of a garden can evolve naturally into something else in a week’s time, so I don’t know why I felt the need to alter the beauty I saw in the garden next to the Art Institute with my camera.  The shadows beneath the luminous branches, the varied greens of the leaves, the patterns formed by the branches created an already perfect place.  Still, I could not ignore the urge to move the camera while the shutter was open to create an intentional blur.  I wasn’t sure what would turn out until I looked, but the impressionistic result is an entirely different garden from the one that actually appeared before my eyes.

It often takes many attempts at intentional blur to get something pleasing.  I was trying to keep track of six year old William on our recent trip to Chicago, and he wasn’t about to hang around as I turned the garden into a studio while leisurely trying to achieve my goal, so I was very happy that my one and only shot turned out as it did.

It All Becomes a Blur

Quebec Parliament formal garden

I had an opportunity to visit Quebec City, Canada last week. The formal garden that formed the front entrance to the Parliament building pictured above was visible from our hotel, inviting an evening walk across the street.

Marble gardeners

A closer inspection revealed large areas of texture and color. The whole garden was so beautiful and well tended, it made me think ruefully of my poor little spot in the world that I have abandoned to the mosquitos, ticks and rabbits.

Iris

The iris were bright spots of contrast in front of the purple barberry. I was inspired to capture their beauty in abstract form by shooting while moving the camera from left to right as the shutter opened and closed. The camera settings for this shot were ISO 250, 1/40 Sec. I would adjust from there to obtain my abstract.

Iris, blur # 1

This time I made sure I was in shutter priority, and increased the shutter speed to 1/30 of a second.   The ISO remained at 250 for each shot. 1/30 of a second wasn’t fast enough. This slightly blurred result looked like it was suffering from camera shake instead of  being an attempt at fine art abstract photography!

Iris, blur # 2

This time I dialed the shutter from 1/30 of a second to .5 of a second and took another shot. The forms of the iris blossoms were still recognizable, and I liked this version, but the shutter still hadn’t been open long enough for the camera movement to fully blur the subject.

Iris, blur #3

With this final shot  at 1 second I got the abstract I wanted. It takes some flexibility in thinking to deliberately aim for an out of focus photograph, when such care is usually applied to avoiding it, but the result is fresh and unusual. Taking photographs of a single subject from as many different angles and perspectives as possible is a useful exercise. Producing an abstraction of a subject is an angle that might not be tried very often, but can be interesting.

Using abstraction is the  only way to photograph my garden at home right now so that the weeds and neglect don’t show. The blurred brown streaks in the photo would be the rabbits eating those carefree Knockout Roses down to the nubbins! Their chomping little rodent teeth go so fast I could produce a blurred abstraction with my camera on a tripod and the shutter set at 1/8000 of a second!

It all becomes a blur.

Taking Stock

 

Looking at the big picture.

 

In art, whether in story or on canvas, one generally starts with an idea, then sketches, develops and completes, although it’s rarely a straight line in effort or in time. Typically there are periods for taking stock and testing the direction your creation is taking, when you go a distance away and look back with your eyes squinted, or you turn your story pages face down and go away for a day, a week, a month. Upon returning with a fresh perspective, you can decide to continue, gesso over what you’ve done, or save the parts to use in something else. You might also decide to go and sell shoes instead, I suppose, but if you make art, you probably won’t do that.  You have to make art, like Salmon must swim upstream. That might not be the prettiest analogy, considering what happens to the Salmon at the end of the journey, but it does make my point.

I have several art projects in the works, not the least among them, my blogs. It has been a spring full of travel, broken bones (now fairly well healed), and good intentions that have been interrupted by life, all in a good way. Projects have languished, as has the spring clean-up of the yard, because of all the above, and rain, rain and more rain.

Spring clean-up tools.

Three days ago I could not put the weeding off any longer.  It was the fifth of May, and it is my rule to be finished with spring yard work by June 1.  This is not an arbitrary rule. On June first, the mosquitos are more than I can stand. I’m a magnet. So, I went out in the rain with the Move n’ Groove, the clippers and the weed digger, and lost myself in the job.

Next best thing to a mountain stream.

It was cool. Of course it was, it was raining! The ditch in the front yard, which usually gives me fits because all the new construction on our street has increased run-off and makes it flood, was gurgling like a mountain stream, providing music as good as any sung by Willie, Lucinda or Etta. There was nothing in my world for a little while except the sound of flowing water, the satisfying removal of chickweed and violets, and my mind refreshing itself, taking stock. It was a productive time, part meditation, part therapy.

Weed be gone.

I have been mulling over my blogs, and as I weeded, I picked up on the thought about what I was writing, and  where I was going with them.

Last October I held the opinion that blogs are a fad written by people who have nothing important to say, and read by probably no one. Everyone writing, no one reading! Last October I received two emails from people I slightly knew that contained links to their blogs. One was on photography, the other on art. I read and enjoyed them, noted that both were written using WordPress, checked out WordPress, set-up an account (I LOVE the computer!), and wrote a blog entry.  I couldn’t say how that happened.  It just did.

My first post was personal, a sweet remembrance of a tender moment between my daughter and grandson, and a tribute to my mother, whose birthday was coming up. My grandson loved it because it had a picture of him.  My mother was very touched.  Then I posted a story about Halloween that contained pictures of every costume ever worn by my grandsons, which was not too hard as they are only  five, two and two.  They loved it and wanted me to pull it up and read it to them whenever they came to my house. I was hooked as a blogger. What I was writing wasn’t important to many, but in my world it was a success.

My next effort was an art post about blind contour drawing. It’s a good thing I liked the result, as my family wasn’t interested in the slightest, and I was my only reader. I posted a link to it on my Facebook page, and started to get some responses from people who were interested in blind contour drawing. That sounds crazy, even to me! It was clear I had two distinct audiences. My solution was to create a second blog. One would be for family, one would be for art and photography. The problem since then has been, in addition to it being a little stressful trying to keep up with two blogs, that often the two subjects are the same.  

My mind played with my blog issues, helping me take stock of the situation, and I came to some conclusions.

I’m going to return to making one blog. Art and photography are intertwined throughout my life, in what I choose to do, and how I see the world and people in it. It never worked, and it never will work, to try to separate them. I learned this from writing a blog. I have changed from thinking of myself as a person who sometimes makes art, and sometimes takes photos, and the rest of the time does the important stuff, to realizing that the art I make and the photos I take speak for who I am.  I have always filtered everything through these two mediums in order to answer for myself the big question of what is my place in the world, but I didn’t realize it until I tried to compartmentalize them into a blog that separated them from the rest of my life.

I also learned that even if everyone is writing, and no one is reading, there is a great benefit in blogging. I know mine showed me some important things when I stepped back and squinted my eyes for the bigger picture.

Portrait of a Young Man

Clematis Henryi prior to May 'showers'

Clematis Henryi when it still had it's petals

All that is left of the white Henryi Clematis

April showers bring May torrents! The Clematis petals are blanketing the ground below, leaving their filaments on the vine gracefully twisted like fine strands of metal, and the gorgeous Iris that opened last week have keeled over into mushy purple mounds in the grass. Fortunately, I took lots of macro shots of them last week before the heavens opened up, and due to the BetterPhoto Summit, a new 50mm prime lens and a cooperative child, I’ve moved on to sunnier pastures, at least until the rain stops.

Waterlogged Iris

I have often given lip service to the benefit of being able to take unlimited photos with a digital camera, without worrying about the cost of film, or of developing pictures only to throw them away when they turn out to be terrible. In film days I would never have dreamed of taking multiple shots of the same thing. Maybe because of those film days, I am still a bit of  a miser with my shots, trying to make every one count. After the BetterPhoto Summit I resolved to break that habit.

I am now committed and excited about using the continuous drive mode. If you are hand holding your camera to shoot, taking several shots one right after the other of the same scene gives you a greater chance of getting one that is in focus, especially since the first one is the most susceptible to camera shake and movement due to pressing the shutter button. If you are taking people shots, continuous shooting is the way to go. The result of my misguided stubbornness about this may be seen in disappointing pictures of people. Like bird photography, which I have never attempted because I just can’t see them, I thought portraiture was a type of photography that I didn’t have a gene for.

The second component of my new approach to photography is a 50mm fixed lens. Several people at the Summit mentioned that they preferred shooting people with a fixed 50mm or 85mm  as opposed to a zoom lens. I used to have a 50mm lens, but gave it away when I got my zooms thinking they would replace prime lenses. 50mm lenses are inexpensive, sharp, good in low light situations and widely used both as a walking around lens and for portraiture. I decided I would buy another one and use it as a start to experiment with prime lenses.

I was not consciously thinking I would try again to make a decent picture of a person, but there couldn’t have been any other reason for such a sudden, single-minded pursuit of a 50mm prime lens. There is a special portion of the brain, I’m convinced, that takes over periodically and tricks you into thinking you need some new piece of hobby equipment. On Monday, for example, you don’t need, want or even think about a 50mm fixed lens. On Tuesday you comparison shop for one on-line, and order it!

My purchase was relatively minor. Some people left the Summit and returned home to purchase new Really Right Stuff tripods and ball heads (no need to name names, you know who you are!), and 400mm telephoto lenses! Oh, so that’s how you get those bird shots? Well, now, that’s interesting.

So, I have my camera set to continuous shot, the 50mm prime has arrived, and along comes the flu epidemic scare. It all works together. Daycare sent my grandson home with a slight fever and since he couldn’t return the next day, he came to me so his mom could go to work. He got out the Playdough and we both became intensely involved in designing stars and bears and snakes.  Why was I sitting there getting Eau de Playdough all over my hands, when I could be taking some pictures of him with my new lens in continuous drive mode?

Walker was in such a cooperative mood for pictures that I was almost giddy, and I took picture after picture as he worked along on his Playdough project.  It turned out to be the most successful people shooting session I’ve ever had.

I’ll refine my portraiture technique for awhile, and then maybe I should think about recording some of the bird life in our yard.

Playdough 1

Playdough 2

Playdough 3

Playdough 4

Playdough 5

Playdough 6

Longing for Spring

 

Longing for Spring

 I have had an irresistible urge to bring some Spring into my life ever since I saw the crocus leaves peeking out of the ground beside the front steps yesterday. Undaunted, they scoff at the bone chilling temperatures that have had me shivering. I will watch their progress over the next few weeks with joy, but today I needed something that heralded even warmer days, like Iris!

In my vast Lightroom storage vault I found the picture I was looking for, and even though it was several years old, I can still remember the sun that day that turned the Iris into an impossible periwinkle color and warmed the skin on my arms and face. I would spend a few hours turning it into a painting with Corel Painter brushes and forget about cold fronts and wind chill.

My first step was to turn the whole canvas into a haphazard mass of paint strokes using the colors from the original photo.  I used Den’s Funky Chunky brush to do that. I downloaded this brush from a CD that came with one of my favorite Painter books by Jeremy Sutton, and the brush itself has become a favorite.  It pushes and smears paint around in a controlled but unpredictable way that works well in creating backgrounds.

I brought the Iris back through the background using various Cloner brushes, mainly the Oil Brush and Smeary Bristle Cloners, then used the Square Chalk Brush to add some leaves and increase the size of the petals on the left that were in shadow.

The Iris exercise didn’t make me any warmer, but that and the big cup of mocha coffee I drank while I painted made me forget to shiver for a little while.

Inspired by the Rainman

 

Leaves on my Patio ©3DogStudio

I haven’t taken any photographs, except for Halloween, since August.  So, what’s with that?  

I love my amazing Canon DSLR, but I have to admit it’s heavy, it has a lot of parts, and my family is now conditioned to hide or make faces at the very sight of it in my hand.  An attitude adjustment is in order, and I think I know what needs to be done.

Last week I purchased a tiny little camera I can carry in my pocket.  There are very few settings or adjustments, no lenses to change, no tripod to set up, no extensive post-processing. It’s just to record everyday moments from my perspective, and to have fun doing it, like Dustin Hoffmann’s character in Rainman.  His skewed, out-of-focus photos were a metaphor for the way the world appeared to him. Clearly, though, he was happy while he was photographing, and I can relate to that.  My hope is that this accessible little camera will get me back into a regular shooting habit, and be less intimidating for the people I want to photograph the most.

I took some random shots today, evidence of fall in my yard, while I was learning to use the new camera. There’s nothing here I would send in to a contest, but I haven’t been shooting anything at all with my fancy DSLR, let alone any prize winners

Oak Leaf Hydrangea ©3DogStudio

 

The Oak Leaf Hydrangea pleases in every season.  I’ve already saved and dried the summer flowers, now I can enjoy the colors of fall.  The best thing about the Hydrangea is it’s easy-going personality.  It doesn’t mind being too wet, or too dry, or demand special food.  It just enjoys life as it comes, and it’s very photogenic.

There is a one touch macro button on my new camera. It’s a no-brainer to work, and the colors are true.

 

Lamb's Ears ©3DogStudio

 

 

 

Lamb’s Ear leaves stay green through the winter, but they don’t have the fuzzy white summer coating that the children (and I) love to touch.

I’m pleased with the sharp focus I’m getting.

 

Suspended Teacup ©3DogStudio

 

I didn’t create an optical illusion, or add a layer in Photoshop.  It’s really a teacup on a rod pushed into the ground.   I put it under the eaves of the house to keep rainwater from collecting and becoming a mosquito breeding ground.

The little cup has always looked so cheerful on its perch above the ground cover.  Now it looks like it should be retired.  Fall does that to things.

House of Wasps ©3DogStudio

 

 

 

 

 

The dead leaves hanging on the grillwork aren’t signs of fall, but where I had to end a summer pruning job by jumping off the ladder when two wasps flew under my t-shirt!  It seems their home is right beside the grillwork flower on the right hand side, and they objected to me renovating their property!  Do wasps migrate?  If so, I might go out and finish the job.

I’m getting a good feel for the camera.  No fancy footwork allowed, but I wanted a p-o-i-n-t-a-n-d-s-h-o-o-t camera, did I not?

 

Orange Leaves, Blue Skies ©3DogStudio

 

I love the bright, complementary colors of fall: orange and blue, red and green.

The camera did a nice job with a backlit scene, even though I subsequently gave the image a boost in Photoshop.  I lied when I said I didn’t want to bother with a lot of post-processing.  That’s really my favorite part of digital photography!  I love it all.  I must be back in business.  That little pocket camera was a great idea.