Balance in a Composition

Another image that I looked back on, about 1 year after I took it. I cropped it somewhat, and I really like the result. Quite nice tonality, and again we have the red - green color vibration. Cropping it in the square format really helps to make the image. One of my favorite photographers  is Mark Dubovoy. A tip he gives is to avoid taking images that he calls "postcard images", or types of images that are very common in composition. I try to follow that advice. The original image was a "postcard" image. Cropping it in the square format, and zooming in changed the feeling of the image totally. The bush is supported by the root and stem below, and this gives a feeling of balance. Without that shape below, the same impact would not have resulted. Centering the bush in the square is also very important. The square format resulted in an interesting overall shape, and quite often I do not allow the original 35 mm format dictate how I want to present my image.

Abstract

I like abstract art. It is quite easy to find images in nature that are abstract. Most often I find them in a shot that I had taken, but somewhere within the original image. This is a crop of a shot that I really did not care for, and often I would look at it, and leave it. Tonight, I decided to do a crop within the original, and this is the result. It may not appeal to everyone, and this is the nature of abstract art. That little dark area in the center draws your eye into the center of the image. So the eye does not wander all over the place within the image. A good photograph or painting always has some obvious abstract element to it. In fact the way to see if an image,whether a painting, drawing or other, has a flaw, is to turn the image on its side, or upside down. The flaw will be immediately apparent. It is the abstract element of the work that makes this stand out.

Ice Fields-Tree

This amazing place, the Columbia Ice Fields, always provides interesting images. The sky was quite over cast, and very little sunlight was available. I took this shot, not noticing the tree in the foreground, until after I downloaded the files, and opened the image. It portrays the isolation of any living thing in the glacial till at the base of the glacier. A ray of sunlight appeared momentarily, enough to cast some light on the gray scene. Really a striking moment.

B+W Impressionism

OK, so now I'm playing with photoshop! I did like the result of doing this from a color image. I chose the green channel, and brightened it a bit. I might make a digital negative from this, and perhaps try making a paper negative from that. Then who knows what the result may be? I was inspired by a young photographer in Edmonton, Jonathan Luckhurst, who was part of a show starting last Thursday night. The show is called Fading Lives, shown at the Louie Gallery. All of Jonathan's images are very impressionistic, and have an ethereal quality to them. He shoots with a pin hole camera to help get that effect. His web site is: http://www.jonathanluckhurst.com/portfolio.html. Of course, my image does not come near the quality and atmosphere that his possess. I admire his work very much.

Dead Tree #2 Athabasca Falls Area

This is the third image of the three panorama shots I took at Athabasca Falls, in Jasper. I hope to show these three as a set. All three images are 30" by 16.5", all fair sized prints. I plan to go out shooting in the next few days, and add a few more prints to choose from. I like the color of these three images, and they complement each other.

Valley above Athabasca Falls

Here is another shot from the same location as the previous post. What caught my eye here was the bright band of color on the mountain in the background. The setting sun highlighted the light green area in the distance. The actual image is a bit more saturated than as shown here. I cropped it to the same ratio as the previous post, and I hope to get a set of three, all of the same aspect ratio. I am printing these images as large as my printer will allow, 17 x 30". In fact, I have not printed an image this wide before, and it will be a bit challenging to matte it. There's not a lot to say about composition here, other than the horizontal lines contrasting the verticals. The previous image posted has a lot more going for it as far as compositional elements are concerned. This really is more about color. It is almost a monochromatic image.

Burnt Tree

On a weekend trip to Jasper with the family, I did get a chance to do some shooting. I find it difficult sometimes to shoot in the mountains, because I tire easily of the common mundane photography that is so prevalent of that area. Hopefully I can come up with images that stand out as being a bit different, but still has visual appeal. Shots like this contain a lot of green color, and sometimes the color can be overpowering, as it predominates so much. Not only that, an image still needs line and shape to draw attention. So here the burnt tree creates a nice diagonal across the image. The diagonal meets the vertical and the eye ends up going back and forth across the image. The horizontal tree on the ground also directs the eye back and forth across the image. Actually the central focal point is the conjunction of all three lines.  The red tones in the burnt tree creates a vibration between  red and green colors, since they are opposites on the color wheel.

Impressionism

This happened by accident. I was on a trail ride, and was trying to take photos as we went along. I guessed that some of the shots would be blurred, due to the slower shutter speed, and also because the ride was not very stable. Anyway, I liked the result. In fact, I had recently asked myself, why does a photograph need to be in focus to be successful? I guess that the die hard pixel peepers would say "yes". But, to me, art does not always follow convention. Just ask Picasso. I also love the color that my Leica M9 always provides. I may do more of this kind of photography.

Sasha and Leica

This is Sasha, our grandson. I took this image with my Leica M9, using a 50 mm Summicron lens. Thorsten Overgaard, a Danish photographer who shoots mostly with Leicas, always says that the Leica lenses are designed to shoot wide open. This was shot wide open at f2. The result is, not only a very sharp image, but also beautiful bokeh in the background. The M9 is also special since very little color adjustment is required in photoshop, as is quite often the case with DSLR's. Another advantage of the rangefinder Leica M9 is that it does not have an IR filter for correction as do most DSLRs. The IR filters cause the images to lose a bit of sharpness, so this is not a problem for the M9. In addition, the M9 has a full frame sensor, in a very small camera. At the time I purchased it, it was the smallest full frame camera in the world. I won't tell you what I paid for it:)