RichEskinPhoto.com: Nature, Fine Art and Conservation Photography

Quotes

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs – ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Harold Thurman Whitman

“Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.” – Confucius
 
“The best way to predict your future is to create it.” – Anonymous

Links

Ethics of Wildlife Photography
Accidents Happen…Fortunately
Better Dog & Cat Pix
What Not to Do When Imaging Birds
Best Wedding Photography
Interesting Portrait Experiment
Reduce Noise in Photoshop
Noise Comparison of RAW and JPG
11 Women Photographers Who Shaped Photography

Glass blower.

Quotes
“Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees.” – Paul Strand

You already have permission
Just saying.
You have permission to create, to speak up, and stand up.
You have permission to be generous, to fail, and to be vulnerable.
You have permission to own your words, to matter and to help.
No need to wait.
— Seth Godin 3/1/13

Links

Macro Backgrounds
Shooting In Low Light
Portfolios of Blind Photographers – Pete Eckert’s story is particularly poignant and inspiring.
From Harry: Dreamscape
Layer Masks
Making Prints in the Digital Age
Better Editing of Your BW Images
25 Great Unknown Photographers
Best Advanced Composition Explanation I Have Ever Seen

This was taken in Nova Scotia. The area was a pleasant mix of countryside and small towns.

Quotes

“My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.” – Sam Abell

“All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.” – Chuck Close

“If I already have a vision, my work is almost done. The rest is a technical problem.” – Hiroshi Sugimoto

“Sometimes you don’t know why you’re doing something. You’re intuitively following, to see where it leads.” – Edward Burtynsky

Links

Birds In Flight

The Workshop Experience

Great Street Photos

Don’t Be Intimidated

Understanding Histograms

Texture Photography

Healing vs Cloning

Interesting Historical Perspective on Ansel

Think Before You Shoot

“An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.” – James Whistler

The BMA currently has on display more photographs than I have ever seen at one time, all under the heading of “New Arrivals.”  There are three themed exhibits:

1. The O’Neil collection from Baltimore collectors Tom and Nancy O’Neil.  Approximately 20 images with broad themes that embody the interactions of humans and the environment (e.g., Misrach, Schutmaat, Kirkeby, Tice, Burtynsky), and portraits that reveal people’s struggles and achievement (Chao, Bey, Anderson & Low), and a few that don’t really fit in either category.  On exhibit until March 27, 2016.
2. Late 20th Century Photographs from Russia and Belarus.
3. Several other New Arrivals exhibits include single prints from Stephen Shore and William Eggleston, three large prints from Burtynsky, four images from Dorothea Lange’s FSA work in Oregon, and two small works by Edward Stieglitz.

The O’Neil Collection

The O’Neil Collection exhibit in the contemporary wing is interesting for the breadth of the collection.  There seemed to me be three sub-themes:

• The first, as described above of human and environment interactions, included Misrach’s Holy Rosary Cemetery, Schutmaat’s Abandoned Homestead, Hatakeyama’s Blast (stop action limestone blast), Kirekby’s To and From (transmission lines reminiscent of Callahan’s minimalist work), Tice’s Water Tower and White Castle, probably Matthew Pillsbury’s Jane’s Carousel, Ulrich’s Kenosha Wisconsin big box store and Burtynsky’s Oxford Tire Pile could have been grouped together.  All have representations of ecological consequences of human activities on the environment. This would certainly be more a grouping of theme and intent rather style or technique, because both varied widely. The contrast for example of Kireby’s almost delicate image of transmission lines with Burtynsky’s massive tire pile filled with detail is an extreme contrast. Hatekeyama’s Blast ties the environmental destruction of exploding limestone with implied construction of roads and buildings using the limestone.  Tice’s contemporary architecture combines well with Ulrich’s image of the interior of the big and the implications for consumption, waste and banal architecture.
• The second grouping are the portraits of which two really stood out to me:  Dey’s large format portrait of Shalanta and Chao’s of a Buddhist monk Taken with a large format camera, Shalanta was accompanied by statement from the subject. The image truly reflected her positive approach to life. Schutmaat’s portrait of a Wyoming man also works well with this group.  Anderson and Low had a diptych of a star Naval Academy lacrosse star in protective gear and in dress uniform, connecting or contrasting the athlete and the warrior.
• The third group seemed to be more of technique and and style than of theme, without any real connection other than disparate approaches.  Abelardo Morell converted a room into a camera obscura to capture street scenes. The image was displayed inverted as it was taken, and with the softness and lack of sharpness resulting from imaging without a lens, seemed surrealistic. Thomas Kellner took individual 35 mm color negatives of sections of the Lincoln Memorial and then assembled the negative strips to create a fragmented, disjointed image of the memorial; very interesting approach of dis-assembly and re-assembly. Welling’s abstract of draped velvet  and Lyons use of the flag “After 9/11” were interesting images more as an examples of contemporary work than of any coherent theme.

Late 20th Century Photographs from Russia and Belarus

Approximately 22 photographs including photographs from Lithuania and Ukraine as well Russia and Belarus from 1959-2000. In general, the images were not exceptional except for being images of a time and place in the Soviet Union where things were controlled by the State and these were unofficial pictures. I thought the two images by Galina Moskaleva were the best of the group, although extremely different.  The first was from a series of young people who had been exposed to radiation and had to have their thyroid removed.  The second was of two children repeated and colored.  I didn’t understand the curator’s placement of these images by the same photographer, separated by a grouping of four images by a different photographer.  It would have been easier to compare the evolution of Moskaleva’s work if they were adjacent.

Other New Arrivals

These were scattered though the museum.  The most arresting were three large prints by Burtynsky (Silver Lake Operations, Rock of Ages and Shipbreaking).  The two by Shore (Holden St., North Adams, MA) and Eggleston (Untitled, from Troubled Waters) were also a well-considered comparison of mid-20th century urban scenes transformed by light. The four small images by Dorothea Lange, taken during her time with the Farm Security Administration were all of dwellings during the depression in Oregon; one of an exterior and three interior, and provided some interesting insight into life at that time.  Finally two small images by Edward Stieglitz; one of his wife George O’Keefe and of another artist, Marsden Hartley.

If you are interested in photography these current exhibits at the BMA shouldn’t be missed.

Quotes

“I fell in love with the process of taking pictures, with wandering around finding things. To me it feels like a kind of performance. The picture is a document of that performance.” – Alec Soth

“What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.” – John Berger

“It can be a trap of the photographer to think that his or her best pictures were the ones that were hardest to get.” – Timothy Allen

Links
 
Wildlife From Your Car

Using Gradients in Portraits

Developing Your Own Style

Ansel

Shooting Action in Low Light

Best Explanation of Blend-If Sliders I Have Ever Seen

Mary Ann Falls, Cape Breton Highlands, Nova Scotia, Canada

Usually I use a quote to open a topic or a general thought for an issue or an image.  This excerpt of most of Seth Godin’s blog of Nov. 27, 2015 is the subject.  I post it here to return to on an annual basis because it is comforting to know that others also recognize the absurdities in our current cultural norms. Occasionally feeling as if I might be the only one who finds it totally absurd that people would literally trample each other to save 30% on something they really didn’t need is replaced by a recognition that at least a few people feel the same.  What was at one time a act of love or appreciation, or a sharing of happiness in faith, has become a social obligation, even worse, it has become a competition to outdo last year or your neighbor.

This seems to be part of a larger cultural split. A few companies and people are moving to a more generous norm:  sustainable production and living, tiny houses, green business, and treating employees fairly, while the majority, without shame or concern, seem to recognize nothing but increasing shareholder value (or their own material possessions) regardless of the impact on individuals and the community in which they reside (or their own finances), and often simply accepting that it means their lives will not improve no matter how hard they work.  It seems to me that our society can find a middle ground where profit is well-served, but the contributions and costs to all are recognized.

Seth Godin
Unconscious consumption
Black Friday, of course, is a con.

But it’s also a symptom of a terrible trap we’ve set for ourselves.
…
Now, consider the mall. The mall, today.

For the three billion people on Earth who have never experienced air conditioning, window displays and the extraordinary safety and wealth that the mall represents, a trip to the mall is mindblowing. For the typical consumer, egged on by a media frenzy and harried by a completely invented agenda, today is nothing but a hassle.

All that time, all that money, all those emotions spent for not one good reason.

It’s more about what you didn’t get on sale, or how many more people you need to “cross off” or just how much shiny but useless stuff you can grab faster than the next person. A reversal of 100,000 years of not enough to a brief few decades of more, more, more.
…
Don’t let someone else scam you into being unhappy.

“Respond to every call that excites your spirit.” ? Rumi

For details go to the Sustainafest website.

Saturday, Sept. 12, 2015, starting at 1:00, films at 6:30.

Sustainafest Mission: To educate and engage people of all ages and interests to take action in their everyday lives to strengthen our community, improve our environment, and support our local economy.  [And have good time doing it!]

You and all of family and friends are invited to be a part of this year’s event. SustainaFest is a wonderful Maryland non-profit that is bringing sustainability education and action into schools in our area and teaching the general public about living more sustainably.  Their Student Sustainability Lab program, whose programming includes having middle school students build sustainable tiny houses, has garnered lots of attention of late and is quickly expanding into both public and private schools.

“Most of my photos are grounded in people, I look for the unguarded moment, the essential soul peeking out, experience etched on a persons face.” — Steve McCurry

Gina DeLucca at Blues Jam.

It has been a long-time since my last entry. I have been busy and doing a lot of photography but either I thought it would not have general interest or wasn’t quite ready to talk about it.  I think (hope) that split-toning black and white (monochrome) photos may be of at least some general interest.

Split-toning adds different color hues to the highlights and shadows.  Typically the highlights are warmed (reds and yellows) and the shadows are cooled (blue and cyan).  This was commonly done in the “old days” of wet chemistry using different chemicals to add the tones. The way to do split-toning is more obvious in Lightroom which has a split-toning panel in the Develop module than in PS.  However, in Photoshop you can easily use the Color Balance adjustment layer to achieve a split-tone image.

How much you tone and what colors you use is strictly a personal artistic judgement and will vary from image to image.  The starting values I used in Color Balance for the image above are:

Highlights:  +30 Red; -75 Yellow
Shadows:  +10 Red; +11 Blue
Midtones: -40 Cyan

Highlights, shadows and midtones are picked from a drop down menu in the Color Balance dialog box.

For the image above I also used the “increased contrast” curve in the Curves adjustment layer.

I make the best possible black white image to start.  Many folks like to use the NIK Silvereffects presets as a starting point.  I checked out the presets and thought NOIR 1 wasn’t bad for the image above, but preferred what I could do directly in the BW adjustment layer. Final tweaks, a little sharpening and you are good to go!

The second image was processed similarly, but ended up with

Highlights:  +32; Red; -72 Yellow
Shadows:  +14 Red; +9 Blue
Midtones: -40 Cyan

I also vignetted (darkened) the edges significantly using a separate layer with blending  mode set to overlay and painting with black.

There are at least two additional ways to approach split-toning.  In more recent versions of Photoshop you can apply a camera raw filter and even do it as a smart filter so you can go back and modify the tones.  Split-toning is the fifth option from the left at the top right of the camera raw dialog.

A third way is to select highlights or shadows in Color Range.  An advantage to using color range is that you broaden or narrow the highlights or shadows using the fuzziness and range sliders.  This will create a selection when you select HSL or color balance adjustment layers.

Split-toning can be used with color or monochrome to further separate and accent highlights and shadows.  Go play!