Composition and Framing

Yes Edith, they do come together. If composition is how an artist places object in a scene and framing is how a photographer positions a scene in the viewfinder of the camera, what is it when both are used. Is it framposition or compoframing? Or does it matter at all. A good photo is just that... Good.

Here is an example of framposition. This first image is of a bronze figure called "gatherer". It was located on the ramp/walk around the Grand Rapids Public Museum during ArtPrize. In the background is the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel, the old Israel's Building and the J.W. Marriott Hotel.

Below is the J.W. Marriott Hotel as viewed from across the river standing next to the gatherer sculpture. At the base of the hotel is a the work of TAnya Vanden Bosch called Loop de Loop.

Here is a closer view of the painting. Actually it is painted vinyl applied to the first three floor windows of the J.W. Marriott.

So here is where the fromposition comes into play.

When I saw the name of the gatherer and saw Loop de Loop across the river I knew what I wanted in a final image. Thirty odd feet of painting in the hands of the gatherer.

It is most important to see the end, or at least have a concept in mind for these types of shots. If not they are all snap-shots and not necessarily great shots.

Take care all... Doug

Simply Amazing

The above photo was take at the Grand Rapids Art Museum. It is a pencil drawing titled Calvary, American Officers 1921. The artistic tool of choice by the author Chris LaPorte was a 2h drawing pencil. This is just a section of the entire piece as you get a better look at the breadth of the work in the image below.

These are the same photo except the top one was corrected for distortion in Lightroom. The actual drawing goes out of frame in the lower photo. Having the people in the picture gives some for of scale of the work. Below is a closer image of some of the men in the drawing. One of the real amazing aspects of this drawing is how the shadow of the sun presented nearly split lighting and eventually came to broad lighting on the left side of the drawing.

Finally the image below is a close up of one of the officers just to show the detail that was given to each stroke of the pencil. The vision and touch LaPorte had with the 2h pencil is... Simply amazing.

I can think of no better way to close out this post than to present here the Work Statement by the author:

E Pluribus Unim - Of many one.

Many marks make ip the drawing. Many men make up the regiment. Many lines make up the face. Many wrinkles make up the shirt. Many characters make up the story. Many experiences male up the event. Many minutes make up the hour, day, year.

This drawing is both a representation of the people, their legacy and the countless organization of pencils marks that make up a composition. It is about the process of drawing, and also a portrait if these men who must have survived horrific events to preserve what we experience today. The drawing is an exploration of character and an exploration of mark-making to revel that character.

It is also a tribute to lasting legacy. I wanted these men to be life size, so that their impact may be immediate and tangible. They are her and now but also way back when.

Chris LaPorte - Artist

Take Care... Doug

HD-R-Not

Hey all, I was a bad blogger yesterday, sorry. It was the first day we had been home together with our son for a while and the day just slipped by. A bunch of traveling and some time in Columbus at work so yesterday was a whole lot of nothing. In a good way. We relaxed and had a good day.

Speaking of Columbus, I was able to bring my gear to work with me and was finally able to get out and shoot. It wasn't until the night before I was to head home but it was an interesting time. Suffice it to say it was a wet experience.

There is this little creek that runs through Gahanna Ohio and I headed down there towards the early part of dusk when there was still plenty of light. Leaving the 5D2 and home I had my 40D with a few lenses. This was a good area for ducks so I was shooting the EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS with the 1.4 teleconverter to get a little more reach. That was working a little too good so I stowed the teleconverter. Later as in the image above I used the EF 24-105 f/4L IS lens to do the majority of shooting.

I titled this post HD-R-Not because the image above R-Not an HDR. But it could be. The set up was the same as shooting HDR. Tri-pod with multiple images at varying exposure settings. In this case I was shooting in aperture priority and simply made adjustments to the exposure compensation by 2/3 stop increments. The how I blended the images will be covered in a later post as I deleted the original psd file by mistake (I hate that when that happens!) so I must recreate it this week some time as I want to send it off for a print.

Anyhow I had pretty much finished and was packing things up when I felt a couple of drops of moisture. It was not white so it must have been rain. Then there was a crack of lightning and the sky opened up and I was in a deluge of water. Evelyn later thought it quite funny that a pilot got caught in the rain. I assured here that at that moment I was not a pilot but a photographer.

The Tenba bag was a trooper as I pulled the rain cover out and got it in place before things got too out of hand. The Enduro tri-pod was not going to have any problems. So the only ting that was wet was yours me to the bone by the time I got back to the car which was about a quarter mile away. I did learn something from that experience though. That is if at all possible I will leave the tri-pod legs extended and wipe them down before I collapse them. They tended to gurgle when I extended them. Kind of like when you go through a car wash and the windows are dry and you roll them down only to see them wet again.

Great fun though and a nice image for my efforts.

Take care... Doug 

Week Wrap-up

This one was from a couple of months when I was in Marina del Rey for a couple of days. This is a lifeboat that was is on this beach and was just begging to be photographed. I was out before sunrise shooting and the lines of the boat just looked marvelous in a Billy Crystal way.

Working the image was just plain fun. It started with a full boat shot with a distant shore that had a bunch of small boats and buildings on it. This simply said to crop out the distractions and focus on the lifeboat. Desaturating the image with the exception of the lifeboat went a little far so I backed off just a touch. The lifeboat itself is really untouched. Can't say the same for the loop of line on the bow, it was just... weak. I had to boost the saturation of the line but that messed with the white part of the line. Well boys and girls, it comes down to selection and isolation to bring the white out in the line.

It is amazing how many good images we have hiding on our drives that with a little work bring a really striking image.

Have a really great weekend all!

Cya... Doug 

A Warhol Moment

A couple of weeks ago I was doodling around with photoshop and remembered I wanted to recreate an effect I had seen at some other point in time. I was an effect that Andy Warhol would use on some of his portraiture work.

With an illustrators background, Warhol was not exactly accepted as an "artist" by the traditional art community. He would have these hard edge, high contrasty images that looked almost mechanical. Something that was so simple in its presentation but many times complex in its content. Further demonstrating the dichotomy of Warhol himself. 

Painter, Photographer, Producer, Director, Musician, Actor, and the list goes on. It does not matter if you liked the man or not, agreed with his positions or not, Warhol was definitely a uniquely weird and bizarre individual. Leaving a permanent mark in the arts.

Hey... Hope you are having a great Christmas Eve and looking forward to a special Christmas day tomorrow.

Cya... Doug

Back To Work

Well... For most everyone but I still have a week left on my vacations so I will be having my big push in the office project. I hope we all had a good Thanksgiving and restful weekend. Seems the football was rather lopsided and black Friday was  very dark for some families. I like the idea of Cyber Monday which started on Thanksgiving day. It is really too bad for the family in Long Island that lost a son just picking up some work at Wall-Mart. Or the two families that lost husbands and fathers in the shoot-out in a Toys-R-Us in California. Just amazing!

On with the blog. But before I start in I will make the obligatory 

*  *  *  G E E K  A L E R T  *  *  * 

for those that want to take a pass. Cya!

Ok... Here we go! 

One of my brothers-in-law gave me a CD with a number of images he had taken of a lighthouse while we were out on the west coast in September. I am not going to get into composition, framing or the rule of thirds as I actually think the strength of the lighthouse with the foreground elements draws the viewer into the image. The one thing the image is lacking is the pop and depth that post processing really excels at.

Photo by Terry Schnell © 2008

Not being an HDR processed image the fact there is a dynamic horizon in the image make layer composition very formidable. This is simply where a portion of an image is extracted and treated differently than the rest of the image. In this case where the sky is overexposed and the foreground is not too far off we can simply make some levels adjustments then select a blending option that works the best.

Above you can see the layers pallet that make the image below. The "Levels 1 MLP" layer adjusts the sky to a level that bring definition. The MLP is my code to let my know that I am using the Multiply blending mode which further deepens the effect of the level adjustment. As I did not need to do this effect to the  foreground I used the layer mask to block the levels adjustment.

The "Isolated SC" layer is a copy of the foreground. This was done by selecting the mask from the layer below, activating the Background layer and extracting the foreground to a new layer. The last adjustment on this layer was to change the blending mode to Screen. Hence the SC on the layer name.

These adjustments gave the image the pop and depth I was looking for. Now for a small vignette to furteh focus the viewers eye on the primary image. All in all it took about ten minutes (five in selection) of work on make a good image to make it a really cool looking image.

I guess it is back to work for me afterall. back to the office project.

Cya... Doug

Gadgets, Geeks, and Art

I must admit I lean a little more on the side of the "next best thing". That being said, I thoroughly enjoy when I have moments of spontaneity in shooting some abstract thought or scene that strikes me. Over at Scott Kelby's blog, Laurie Excell dad a tremendous guest blog on the artist in each of us (click here). Personally my artistic eye sees the whole picture in it's final product before I take the shot. The camera comes to my eye and the image is verified before I squeeze the shutter. Not saying that each shot is a keeper, not by a long shot. What it is saying is the moment I squeeze the trigger my expectation is this could be a keeper. The image above for instance is one that I saw when I was walking back to the car. I needed a different lens for it to work and I knew that given the lighting, Photoshop would be employed in post production to reproduce the image that my eye saw at that moment.

My brother-in-law is a true digital artists. He slices and dices images to assemble them into some of the most bazare images that look so fantastic it blows you away. The image to the right is one that Bill won the Best of Year for Alteration of Reality category for the Chicago Area Camera Club Association. Clearly when he looks at the world, there is a very different thought process that goes on than that of myself.

Neither of us are machine gun shooters, but see something that our mind identifies as a possibility and we set, aim, and shoot for the best possible image we can get in camera.

So where is this all going. No where it hasn't been for years of artistic freedom. To allow the artist to capture, develop, process, and present there work is a cornerstone of expression. Many people would like to censor certain aspects of artistic expression but this is a very slippery slope to go down. I am convinced we are far better off as a people to maintain the freedoms, and perpetuate a stigma rather than having an all powerful government board decide what is proper or not. The first amendment is a two edged sword but its the "First" amendment for a reason.

Take care all, I get to go home tomorrow so I will be posting form home unless I really get distracted. It may end up being "No Blog Thursday".

Cya for now... Doug

It's Good To Be Friday

Hey all... It is a little late but I wanted to get something out. The weather in West Michigan these past couple of days has been just beautiful. Clear sky, cool mornings and the highs in the low 70's. Just pristine. Ergo I have not been on the iMac very much the past couple of days.

This image above is a six image pano of the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River dividing Washington and Oregon. It is the last dam on the Columbia before going out to the Pacific Ocean. and has a really interesting and viewable salmon ladder as they go upstream to spawn.

Go out and have a great weekend in what ever you choose or have to do.

Cya Monday... Doug

Friday View

Just a quick post. Ok the post is quick but he image is not. Here are four images that I captured while out in Newport Oregon. Having the EF 70-200 mounted with the 40D's high speed burst selected just grabbed some really nice crashing waves.

Being out on the road has limited the day and I have an O'Dark 30 show in the morning so have a great weekend. Cya... Doug

Run... Run... Run...

Hey all! 

Sorry I did not get a post out yesterday. We have been along the Pacific Northwest coast just running our buns off. On Tuesday, we shot down south of Newport Oregon to Seal Rock and then further south to what was going to be a Sea Lion shoot but they folks said they were not really out right then so we headed back north. We ended up in Newport for dinner along the harbor and the sea lions were just parking up a storm. They were soooo funny!

The lighthouse pic above was shot yesterday morning and is located just north of Newport. The specs on the photo are: Canon 40D with an EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM lens shot at 70mm with a shutter speed of 320th second at f/8 with an ISO of 100 with spot metering. Had to use the spot metering to pull the sky in. At the time the circular polarizer was not going to do me any good as the sun was low on the horizon and behind me.

Tomorrow we are off for home in Michigan and I will not put a post up, but will get some more shots up on Friday and into next week.

Take care all... Doug

The Great North West

Good Monday to you all. The post is a little late but that is because we have been running all weekend. Last week while in the Mt Hood area we got out in the morning and were able to get the wonderful shots of Mt Hood glistening in the waters of Trillium Lake.

While there we had run into another photographer that was shooting with a buddy of his. The were nice enough and told us some interesting tid-bits and that we should continue on the road when we were done. He said it was a gravel road but we should have no problem with it. As it turned out there was not a problem to get people to stay.

Well... He was right but the road (below) was twenty miles of hard and rough road. Fortunately due to the slow speed we were able to react to many off road features.

As there were three of us in the truck we decided to put it out that if anyone of us wanted to stop for a photo op we would stop. What it turned out to be was a five second committee decision weather we would stop or not. One such stop is this image below.

The closer to the banks we got, the better we knew the shot was going to be. The shadows are sharp, the river leads you into the photo, there is a massive foreground object, and the sun is eliminating the background. The specs are at 3.2 seconds at f/14 and 40 mm focal length.

Continuing downstream there was another opportunity. This 3.0 second at f/4 shooting at 100 mm gave such a nice soft velvet feel to the running water. With so much quality scenes to shoot it was hard to pick out the ones I wanted to take to post. Being on the laptop I am limited in my production as I do not have Lightroom installed on it.

Over the weekend we were downtown Portland for the Race for the Cure and got some images from that I will post later this week as well as the seashore photos I took today in Newport Oregon.

Take care for now... Doug

Don't Know

That's it... I just don't know why I took this photo. I was sitting in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency in Columbus OH waiting for one of the other pilots so we could go to dinner. I laid my head back for a second and saw what you are looking at here. I took the Canon G9 and dialed in some settings and laid it on the arm rest pointing at the ceiling. Slowy squeezed the shutter release an there you have it. The photo could easily be titled Pipes, Panels and Light. As it turned out there was a little more work post than I was expecting but I ended up getting the image the way I wanted it. If I only knew what that was?

Take care and enjoy your week... Doug

Miami Pre-Heat

A couple of weeks ago I was conducting a checkride out of Miami, the post was titles Early Riser. That was a pre-dawn condition when I took that shot. This image was captured on final approach into MIA on that same morning. The sun was still low on the horizon and cast this really nice light on downtown Miami. The water on the bay was really smooth and gave a great reflection on some of the buildings.

Enjoy... Doug

Pre-Blog Post #3

This image is a couple weeks old and was put together as a demo to my brother-in-law. While he is a PS guru in his own right, there are many roads to the final product in PS as those that are junkies already know.

The demo was to grab an image from Google Images and see what we could do with it in as little time as possible. It started with an image of a single F-18 Hornet flown by the US Navy Blue Angles and grew from there, here is the process. 

• Remove the plane from the background.
  
• Clone the number off the tail.
• Create background sky using the clouds filter.
• Add additional clouds using  very large hard circular brush and gaussian blur.
• Create multiple aircraft using duplicate layer (ControlCommand-J)
• Position aircraft for a diamond formation
• Create the 1-4 tail numbers
• Merge the numbers to the relative aircraft layers
• Expand canvas and turn background black
• Add mat-board trim lines using stroke (8 pt)
• Add frame and color copy from blue on the aircraft
• Add layer style drop shadow
• Add and trim frame highlight
• Add Logo layer
• DONE

Enjoy... Doug

Friday Just for Fun

I was going to delete the previous post but it more or less summarizes (again) my feelings of the Hyatt in Columbus OH. I can get a good connection in the break room at work so that is where I am posting from right now. I kind of feel like a gypsy scrounging a connection where ever I can.

On Tuesday in Wichita KS I when across town to the Learjet factory where they had a Lear 31 mounted on some posts. It looked really good. But then the Lear just has that cool look to it anywhere it sets or passes. I have a bunch of time in a Lear 31 and it was a really fun ride even though you felt as though you were at the tip of a missile.

Seeing the Lear mounted reminded me of an experience I had with an employer of mine in Elkhart Indiana back in the day. He owned a Lear 23 (the first model of Lear) from the 60's and was getting a little long in the tooth. He had asked me what I thought he should do with it. I told him to offer the airport (city) to mount it on a stand in the terminal round-about. Figuring it would be a tax right-off for him and the aircraft was only worth what he could get for the engines which was about 200K. He got mad at me! Go figure.

Anyhow I had to get some pix of this 31 and do something with it. I had my Canon G9 at 9mm, f/4 @ 1/500 second , ISO 100. I think the ND filter was turned on also but don't hold me to that.

Hope you all have a great weekend and I'll see you Monday... Doug

Monday Again

This is a church in Lexington KY. I first saw it from my room at the hotel looking over the convention center. After an early dinner I took a walk to the church to see if there was a decent shot before the other buildings shadows became too long.  Well, here you have it with the one shadow just starting to encroach on the church.

The weekend was spent on the road but I am looking forward to this week as I am hoping to get to the Chicago Bears training camp later in the week for to photo opportunities.

Cya tomorrow... Doug

Nice day in KY

Well, I never made it to Detroit yesterday. It ended up being Lexington KY. What ever, I was welcomed by very nice weather and temperatures in the mid 80's, much cooler than the 99-102 out in Wichita KS. I spent the better part of the day airlining having had to go through Memphis. Of course MEM was getting beaten up by some nasty weather so we had to hold for a while. There is a saying in aviation... If you have time to spare - Go by air!

I got all checked into the Hyatt in downtown Lexington in amongst a 6,000 person postal carriers convention. I say WHAT? Why on earth do we need to be paying (stamps will be going to 43 cents in the not too distant future) for mailmen to be having a group hug at a convention. Do they go over new technologies in footwear or stamp goo. I don't have a clue!

Well after check-in it was out of the uniform and off to dinner. While walking to dinner the front of the convention center (attached to the hotel) had this long curved water fountain that just had to be photographed. It took a couple of exposures in aperture priority to balance the frozen water of the falls and what would look like a big blob of cotton on the top of the fountain. The curved fountain does a nice job of drawing your eyes into the image.

Well... That is pretty much it for the week so I will see you on Monday... Doug

Majesty

When I am in the cockpit at Flight Level 370 I often get these wonderful vistas that the camera just can not capture. I can take a pano and get the image of the view but I don't think there is a camera made that can grab the hundreds of thousands of square miles in true three dimensions. What it does do is provide a different view that often is not brought to public viewing.

This image above is not from a low level flight but rather one day while I was driving home from Columbus OH on US route 23. I had just driven through a very good thunderstorm and this is the view I was blessed to behold. Some of the aspects of this shot I got with My Canon G9 was the tail end of the dark thunderstorm that matched the foreground semi-silhouette of the tree line. Obviously the sun rays are the dominant subject of this image but the sun is also lighting an area of clouds off in the distance to the left. This is just a wonderful view of natures beauty that God routinely paints for us to enjoy.

I hope you an get the same enjoyment form this image as I did. Take care... Doug

Altitude Separation

Hey all, hope you had a very nice weekend. It is my first day back at work after a very enjoyable vacation where I stayed home the whole time. We were able to spend some time at home with our two boys and attend the annual Grand Haven Coast Guard Festival and Saturday night fireworks show. It runs about forty minutes and as usual it was spectacular even though there where waaaaay too many people in attendance. Loads of fun anyhow.

Back just a bit when I was down in South Haven I was able to snap some pix of a really interesting sunset. Using my 40D with a EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS lens I set the lens on the back of a park bench and got some really nice images. This one was at 1/1250 at f/4.5 with an ISO of 400.

The sunset started out really mucky and I did not think I was going to get anything worth while. The I saw some rays of light peeking out from the bottom of the clouds and figured this could have some possibilities. I especially like the image above as the clouds, sky, water, and sand all play an integral part of the image while leaving the sun, birds, and reflection as the primary focus point. Its thats frame within a frame kind of thing.

I'll have to see what my travels will produce this week on the G9 so check back later this week.

Cya... Doug

Cheater Thursday

Nice title... Read on.

The other day when I had the Harley down at South Haven I was going for a good sunset shot. I rode down the normal road to the beach and the sun on the Lighthouse was exactly opposite to what would make a good shot unless of course I was looking for a silhouette which I wasn't. So I went back around to the other side of the channel where another beach was with condo's or rental units facing the beach. I saw a picnic table close to the water that made a great place for my gear and tri-pod. Due to the thick haze, setting sun and grungy looking water the light was really sucky. Ok... lets try the HDR thing and see what happens. I took five exposures all at f/4.0 and ranged from 1/2000-1/200th of a  second. I had my EF70-200 f2.8L IS lens with a 1.4 teleconverter mounted on the 40D.

When I got this images into Lightroom I was even further unimpressed. Well it was time to see what CS3's HDR function could do with it... Not much, but it did give me a place to start. What started out to be a simple HDR became one of my most tweaked photos. I had taken the five shots in portrait orientation and it finally gave me a headache on how to finally crop the image which as you can see I went with a square classic look. Stop Blog...

5 minutes later...

Thinking about that classic look I just jumped back into Lightroom and gave a B&W effect to one of the images and I don't know if it helped or not. It was just one of those yucky days.

Anyhow, now that I have pulled back some of the onion skin you can see that there were people in the image. And yes with five images in the HDR there was plenty of ghosting of people so they all came out of the final product. I thoroughly enjoy shooting people (hope Homeland Security did not just catch that), or should I say photographing people but some times they just get in the way if you know what I mean.

All in all it ended up looking pretty nice... Oh by the way it is not cheating but artistic impression and technique. Cya later... Doug