Light Rains down

Another one from the weekend. This is probably the most abstract I've ever produced. I've stripped this one down to light and shadow. Shape and form are pretty much out of the window on this one.

Apres Georges

Georges Seurat that is.

The Impressionist school of painting has always been one of my favourites. Particularly the work of Georges Seurat. So imagine my surprise when I looked at these images and found myself thinking

"Georges Seurat would have painted like that." Actually any one of a dozen Impresionists would have painted like this but the small dot-like texture of these images put me in mind of the pointillist style adopted by Seurat.

Forgotten forest

For some reason I forgot all about the shots I took in the woods behind the cabin this morning. I just found them on the camera just as I was about to erase the files on the memory card. Good job I checked. I'm quite pleased with the feeling of light breaking through the leaves into the woods with this one. I found I'd taken about 8 shots of this scene all imperceptibly different.

ISO 100 f22 4.0 secs 27mm ZD 14-42 ND8

Crazy Day

Well, not so much a crazy day as a crazy hour this morning up at the cabin. It was about 70F and very sticky when I got up this morning with som early morning mist on the lake. But that very quickly burned off and by the time I'd got back from my curtailed run the sun was shining quite brightly and I managed to produce some quite interesting images of some tree trunks in the front yard. The particular trunk below I'm very happy with as it has some good detail in the trunk while tending towards the abstract. Rather than having a painterly feel to it there's a roughness almost like a pastel drawing.

Above: ISO 100, 4 seconds, f9 42mm ZD 14-42 ND8

This Vee'd tree has a particular fascination for me. I'll probably take more shots of it before long. Perhaps I should even find out what sort of tree it is. Perhaps I should find out what all these trees are...
Above: ISO 100, f 10, 3.2 secs, 37mm ZD 14-42, ND8

Then the strangest thing happened. The fog blew back in again. I've never seen that happen in all the years I've been going up to the lake. Visibility came down to 100 yards or so obliterating all detail in the far side of the bay. Perfect conditions to try a blur-o-graph

Above: ISO 100, f22, 5 secs, 200mm PL 45-200, ND8

Lessons in lighting

A weekend jaunt up to the cabin always presents me with new photo opportunities and fires up my creative juices. So here's a few from Saturday. The first two are of some birch tree trunks in the front yard. Exactly the same trees. Its just that for some unknown reason I managed to underexpose the first shot by a stop and a half and by the time I'd pulled that stop and a half back with CameraRaw the tree trunks took on a different hue. I like them both.

These birch grove shots were an exercise in patience. I saw the grove in the light of the setting sun and knew I had to get a picture. But by the time I had my camera ready. The sun had gone behind a cloud. I had to wait some 15 minutes for the sun to return, meanwhile mosquitoes feasted on me... In the first shot the sun was just starting to appear from behind the clouds in the second was a fleeting moment of full sunlight. Just as quickly it was gone.

waterswirls

By way of a bonus heres some extra pictures from down at the river this afternoon. These were all shot almost wide open with all the ND filters on the PL45-200 lens and as a result I was only getting exposures of 1-2 seconds at ISO 100. These were all hand held. When I saw them on the camera screen I wasn't all that excited with them but I knew better than to delete them just like that, I could see some interesting patterns and textures in there and after I'd boosted the sharpness, contrast, clarity and blacks and boosted the saturation in CameraRaw I was starting to get happy with them.

Above: the swirls on the right hand side are particularly appealing f9 2.5 secs
Above: though in a shorter exposure of 1 second at f9 the swirls disappear
Above: I get the feeling of an impressionist painting from this one f9 2 secs
I almost want to believe that this is a rough sea in a violent storm, but I know that those whitecaps are only a few inches tall f7.1 1.3 secs

This is what I find really exciting about blur-o-graphy. You really never know exactly what you've go until you get the pictures home and see them on the computer, full size. In that way in these days of hi-tech we have a photography process that is just like getting prints back from the processor. The more things change the more they stay the same eh?

Water, water everywhere

Whilst out for a run at lunch I came across a scene that I liked and after I'd run home, showered and changed I returned camera in hand to take this picture of a water fountain. All nice and symmetrical that just cried out to be photographed in a panoramic format. I was quite lucky in that it only took me 12 attempts to get something I liked.

Above: ISO 100, 1.3 secs, f 22, 91mm PL 45-200, ND 2, 4 & 8 filters

So, buoyed by the success of the panoramic format shots I headed down to the river in town to see what I could do there. Even with all my ND filters mounted on my PL 45-220 and using f22 I could only get 8,10 and 15 second exposures. I would have liked perhaps 30 seconds but these three pictures are not entirely unpleasant