Swirling abstracts from everyday objects

 If you have a camera that allows you to take a photo while manually zooming the lens, some interesting abstract or semi-abstract images may be produced from ordinary objects that are close at hand.  Below you see two examples, both of which show the original scene near the lower right of the image. These were taken by setting the camera to shutter priority mode, and selecting a 1/2 second shutter speed. Then, while holding the lens zoom ring (starting at the wide angle position) and rotating the camera body (so that the lens zooms out to the telephoto position) during the exposure, the swirl effect was produced.  So, the basic idea here is to smear the image falling on the camera's sensor in two different ways simultaneously, by zooming out from wide angle to telephoto during the exposure while rotating the camera body rather than the lens zoom ring. It works on all sorts of subjects both indoors and out.  And with a digital camera, one can experiment freely to obtain just the right effect.

Swirling snowman container, Tamron 17-50mm lens

Swirling wall art, Tamron 17-50mm lens

More Photo-Impressionism

Here's another attempt at achieving an impressionistic effect without digital manipulation.  This is, as described in my previous post on the subject, the reflection off the water, turned upside-down.

Bridge at Kubota Garden, Seattle

I Was Photographing Him While He Was Photographing Me...

Well, it seemed that way to me anyhow; he was pointing his camera at me while I was pointing mine at him.  I really don't know if he liked me in his composition or not, but at any rate, in my photo, he provides a nice focal point.  By the time I snapped the shutter, he had already taken his picture, and is now looking at it on his camera's LCD screen. Click on the image for a larger view.

Japanese Garden, Washington Park Arboretum, Seattle

Impressionism, with a camera

The current Monet retrospective at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais in Paris inspired me to think about how I might create an impressionistic photograph without resorting to any sort of digital manipulation.  The two photographs below are, as they say, "straight out of the camera."  The first is a perfectly straightforward shot of  water lilies, with the rippled reflections of the trees and shrubs in the background providing the desired impressionistic effect. The second is actually the reflection, turned upside down, of the people standing over the pond (with distracting parts of the image cropped away).   Very simple to do, and lots of fun.

Water Lilies, Japanese Garden, Washington Park Arboretum, Seattle

Overlooking the Pond, Japanese Garden, Washington Park Arboretum, Seattle

Once in a while you do get lucky...

On the first day of autumn, my friend Mahesh and I hied ourselves over to Discovery Park in Seattle to catch the sunset at the West Point lighthouse there.  Very fortuitously, a fellow on a board, steadying and propelling himself along with a long pole, came floating into my viewfinder just as I was framing my composition.  His silhouette reminds me of figures I've seen painted on the tomb walls of the Egyptian pharaohs.  Although the size of his image in the photo is very small, the contribution it makes to the overall interest of the scene is large.

West Point Lighthouse, Discovery Park, Seattle, Canon 450D w/Tokina 11-16mm lens @12mm

Photographing Morocco

Morocco is a horn of photographic plenty. It has so many aspects that appeal to the photographer. Walled, labyrinthian medieval cities, coastlines that border on the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, an inland spine of mountains running up the middle of the country, canyons with marvelous rock formations, isolated villages, and crumbling kasbahs, and beyond that, camels kicking up the sand of the Sahara desert. This is North Africa, the Mahgreb, the western-most edge of the known world as mapped by Arab cartographers of long ago. Inhabited by a mix of Arab and Berber stocks, with a bit of sub-saharan spice thrown in, it is exotic without being dangerous, the food is great and inexpensive, and the traditional Moroccan hotel or riad (a mansion converted to a small hotel) is exceedingly charming, and will find favor with even the most budget-conscious traveler. Read and see more in the full article Photographing Morocco.

Cascades d'Ouzoud, Middle Atlas Mountains

Medina Lane, Marrakech

I Found Lost Negatives by Ansel Adams at a Garage Sale

Well, not really, but I did find a charming old broom that I may use as a prop in a future still life. I've been reading about a fellow in California who, at a garage sale, purchased 65 "lost" negatives he says were taken by Ansel Adams.  Even after these negatives were certified by "experts" as being genuine Adams, and valued at $200 million dollars, there is still doubt as to their provenance.  A woman in Fresno California has produced a print by her uncle Earl that appears to have been taken within minutes of one of the "Adams" negatives, thus suggesting that the negatives were created by uncle Earl, and not Adams.  In all the discussion and debate about whether these images were the work of Adams or uncle Earl Brooks, there seems to be little mention of the artistic merit of the photographs.  The small-sized images I have seen displayed on the inernet do not appear to me to be among Adams' more compelling images.

      Day's End, Santa Rosa Mountains, California

If the photo above could be unquestionably identified as a previously undiscovered image by Ansel Adams, the negative alone would perhaps be valued in excess of a million dollars, not to mention the value of any subsequent prints made from it (Mr. Norsigian, the owner of the 65 garage-sale negatives, is selling prints from his "Adams" negatives for up to $7500 each).  Unfortunately for me, this is not an Adams image, it's one of my own, and because I am the photographer and not Adams, the image is worth (to be kind) considerably less than a million dollars.  I believe this current controversy is just another sad example of how an artwork's merit is too often judged more by who authored it than by its actual content. What do you think?

Turning the Mundane into Something Special

Sometimes the ordinary may be made compelling. At the last full moon I strolled down to Matthews Beach, which is a Seattle city park on the western shore of Lake Washington, not far from my home.  Like many city parks, Matthews Beach gets its grass mowed periodically, has some nice trees, and is popular for picnics in the summertime, but it is hardly a scenic wonderland.  Nevertheless, armed with my tripod and a telephoto lens, I marched down there to photograph the moon rising over the Cascades in the east. Compositional elements being rather scarce, I was forced to choose between a drab but tall lifeguard's chair, and some tree or other to provide foreground interest; I chose the chair. The simple elements combine, I think, to produce an interesting image.

                               Full moon over Matthews Beach, Seattle

Still Life Photography, Renaissance-style

I find it quite rewarding to create a still life photographically in the style of the Renaissance masters such as Caravaggio (see one of his paintings below ).  It's actually quite easy to create the type of lighting that is typical of this style, but more challenging to create a compelling composition.  You don't have to restrict your subjects to fruits, hourglasses and dead pheasants--just about anything is fair game. Thrift stores can be a wonderful and inexpensive source for props, and you may have stuff lying around your house that may be used. The two photographs below were created using the techniques explained in my article Renaissance Still Life Photography.  See more of my still life images here.

                                              Caravaggio's Still life with Fruit on a Stone Ledge

      Still life with Mandolin

      Photographica

  

Looking for one kind of photo, finding another instead

Yesterday evening I went to a spot in Seattle I had noticed while riding the bus, a place where the street overlooks some curved freeway off ramps and on ramps, which in turn lead the viewer to the Space Needle in the distance.  It turns out I was unable to construct a compelling composition from this scene, but the radio towers on a hill on the other side of Lake Union caught my attention, and the resulting image has a bit of an abstract quality to it. The bright sunset sky put the towers and hilltop into stark silhouette, with the clouds looking as if someone might have sketched them in with a crayon.

      Radio towers on Queen Anne Hill, Seattle

On-camera user's manual

Why don't camera manufacturers put the camera's instruction manual into the camera's memory?  With today's high resolution screens, the manual can be perfectly readable and always handy when it's needed most. Below you see a page of the user's manual that I loaded into my Samsung TL500/EX1.  You may be surprised how I did it. See On-Camera User's Manual for the full article.