detail: Sunflowers - 'Vincent' x Vincent

Part of the commercial flower shoot for Sakata at the California Spring Trials were sunflowers, the variety ‘Vincent’.  To get them for spring in California they were flown in from Holland, where they waited for two weeks until the show, for when I was on site to take pictures.

No, they did not look surreal and deformed, but I was excited all day as they called to me from the edge of the staging  room.  They were exquisite, and finally the Sakata folks stacked them in a bucket just perfectly for their moment under the lights.  Only then did they became surreal; impossibly beautiful, impossible to simply click the shutter and move on to the zinnias.  Though that is what I did.  The day’s work was much greater than the one sunflower photo.

This is the makeshift studio at the Sakata offices.

When I got back home I opened the sunflower photo as soon as I could.  It leapt into PhotoShop, and commanded the Topaz Simplify 3 filter tool.  Then PhotoShop’s own liquify brush tool, painting the petals into gaps.

I can’t explain much more than that.  It just happened.

Sunflowers - 'Vincent' x Vincent

Magnolia cambellii 'Strybing White'

I was recently commissioned to photograph a very special magnolia in a very special, private garden.  The resulting photo was to be a surprise gift and I was only allowed access during one afternoon when the owner was away.

I wrote about this adventure on my Gardening Gone Wild blog but did not go into much detail on how I decided to interpret what I found.  I will do this here, on Mental Seeds, where I allow myself to explore new avenues of photography, mostly personal, and mostly initiated by new perceptions I have had since my eye surgeries.

I still see lots of blurs; let’s call it a glow for this exercise.  For interpreting this photo I played with a new digital techniques.  I almost said ” new digital trick” but in truth, I really feel I am not tricking but interpreting.

Trying to find a photo that tells a story of the magnolia on that bright sunny day meant working with the sun, not my favorite light.  It meant working with what the garden could give, and recognizing that whites comes clean in sunlight.  Hmmm, what might work ?

An interpretaion was in order.  I would make a blurry glow.  Here is the original frame, contrasty and raw.

Then using Bridge (Photoshop CS4) in Adobe Camera Raw I cropped the photograph so that I could fill the frame with just the right composition.

Working with the tools, I adjusted all sorts of things:  added fill light, adjusted light and dark levels, tweaked the blue, but the most dramatic effect was moving the Clarity filter to minus 100, which gives the diffuse glow. Too diffuse in some areas, but solved by adding some black.

I really felt I was on to something.  But as I studied the photo I realized the spot of yellow became too prominent and the branch across the upper right was a confusing and unnecessary element.  I needed to unleash the full power of Photoshop:

Same photo but now in the PhotoShop window.  Note I opened a new layer, really important whenever you want to make adjustments, which I named here: ‘remove branch’.

Now clone tool to the rescue.  The real trick of using the clone stamp tool is to use it like a brush, smaller than the area you want to affect; and when selecting the area to clone out, be sure to replace it with selections very near for color match. AND go back and repeat, in effect blending the blend.  Of course when you are working in an area that is soft and out of focus, there is lots of leeway since no-one will ever notice if you screw up a bit.

Removing the yellow blob, still in Photoshop, was done by going to the tool bar: Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation > Yellow and remove about 80% saturation.  Then using the erasure tool I put back some of the yellow highlights (erased the adjustment) in places like the underside of the blossom in the far right.  Voila.

Magnolia cambellii 'Strybing White'

I debated inside myself if I really liked the obvious glow, which is most noticed around the edges of the more out of focus flowers, but it reminds me that I do see things blurry.  Interpretations in my work.

As an added bonus to this lesson, a different way to interpret: silhouettes.  I do love botanic illustrations.  Much, much fun in using the Topaz Simplify3 tool to mask a photo and get to a flower’s essence.

Magnolia cambellii 'Strybing White'

Original:

Details one day if anyone is interested in another lesson….

My Mental Seeds blog is a promise to myself.  A promise of personal work.  A promise to find new ways to express what I see.  Even in images I imagined before my eyesight changed.

This image has been gnawing on me for years now, waiting to be revealed.  Taken from a group of photos I took near Como, Colorado while working on the American Meadow Garden,  I have always felt I had stumbled upon something special when I found this long abandoned road leading into a grove of aspens in fall color.

Every time I would go back to the photo I would recall the clean white mountain light turning golden, turning me golden, as it passed through the trees and washed bright over the land.  And every time I went back to try and render the feeling I couldn’t get it.  Now, with a better understanding of my digital toolbox, I am getting closer.

Closer, but not final.  I have two states of this image and am indecisive as to which is “better”.  Having promised to get at least one image and one blog post done every month, and it now being the last day of February, I am postponing my final decision and showing both.

Here is the second state, cropped to a panorama, more golden, more glow.

In both photos I have used the Clarity control of Adobe Camera Raw in different amounts to reduce hard edges without blurring; and in both I have done all sorts of other tweaks to blacks, highlights, and color levels.  I have tried to live with each for a couple days to see which settles in me, and find each make me happy to look at them.

I can’t decide, so – postpone the final decision.

I also played with an abstract expression of the  leaves, hoping I accented the blacks just enough to give these specks of gold some rhythm and structure.

And I can’t resist the calendar view of this grove of trees under the crisp blue Colorado sky.  Note the abandoned road to orient the first photos.

Now onward.  I have decided to be indecisive.  Move on…

M'eyes Tapestry - Weeping Crabapple After the Rain, November

I promised myself I would complete a portfolio of images documenting my perceptions after the detached retina.  There were a good number attempts to do this with my G11 camera in the first months after the surgery.  I never got around to working on very many of them.

These photos are the weeping crabapple tree, ‘Molten Lava’ just outside my office door.  (Click on the photo to see a larger view.)  As I walk out of the office and look into the lower garden, past the variegated Rhamnus and toward the autumnal orange foliage of Cotinus ‘Grace’, the red fruit of the crabapple move in relation to the shapes beyond.  My hyper acute perception that I don’t have depth perception makes me see these red balls of fruit as if they were a cel film overlay in an animation studio.

What fun really to see the shapes line up and become a tapestry !  Planes of perception, sliding  back and forth as I move in mere inches this way and that.  The ability to crop exquisitely in post production, to peek through just enough of the spikey Phormium in the foreground, after cropping out some empty space in the lower right, gives a final composition that fills the frame with a fine balance of shape, texture, and color.

Here is how it looked originally before I worked on it.

I adjusted the color, cropped, removed the stake holding up the young tree, and used a Topaz Simplify filter, BuzSim (adjusted) to create a rich, nearly surreal rendition to match my mood.

In another view of the same scene I used a PhotoShop filter, ‘Palette Knife’ to render the effect.  (click photo for larger view)

Red Rruit of Crabapple 'Molten Lava' After the Rain, November

Note in this version I kept the stake that supports the tree but removed the Phormium leaf.  So many small aesthetic decisions need to be made that can make a huge difference  to the balance and composition of the final photo.  Who knows I may change them again.  So much to learn …

More images to come.  Here is a link to a previous post and photos I took of the Cotinus ‘Grace’ shrub seen in the background, all taken in those same few days, November 2010, after the second surgery.

Dusk, Blackwater Pond

Blackwater Pond in the Cape Cod National Seashore, seen here at dusk last October, is rendered using computer manipulation of the digital file.  There was a time, and I can define that time more precisely: before my vision was altered with the series of retina operations, when I would seldom use obvious manipulation on my photos.  Oh, I was frequently tempted, but never had a clear reason to do so.

Now, a full year after the first operation and only a few months into adjusting to the new vision, I find manipulating photos to be the best way to communicate what I see.  I started this Mental Seeds blog so that I could explore these personal photos and gain better understanding of digital manipulation.  So now, what I see, either actually or in my mind’s eye, is often in need of some post production enhancement and expression.  The new vision has liberated me from strict realism in my photography and given me permission to learn these tools and apply them to my art.

Notice I have not used the word PhotoShop.  Like the word Google, Photoshop is so well understood it has become a verb.  We google for something on the internet, we photoshop our images.   But there are other ways to manipulate photographs without using Photoshop.  Even camera phones have apps to enhance photos.  The painterly affect used on Dusk, Blackwater Pond was achieved with a series Topaz filters.

To be sure, I used the Topaz filters as plug-ins to Photoshop but they can be used with other programs such as iPhoto.  The concept here is using whatever tools are available to make the picture look like I want it.  I love having the excuse of new vision to learn these tools.  Without going into all the specifics, I used the controls within two Topaz filters (Simplify3 and Adjust5) to bring out the watercolor impression after I used Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw to correct the original image.  The affect is best seen on a full size print, but clicking on the photo will bring up a slightly larger view.

Either way, the original was pretty dull in the camera, even though I “saw” the  pastel sky colors reflected in the water:

I was pretty disappointed how the camera interpreted what I saw in the waning light and didn’t even think to work on this photo until I decided to learn the Topaz tools.  The graphic composition was strong but had little of the feeling of that soft gloaming evening sky.  The tools brought back the color, and the watercolor effect simplifies the scene and allows it to glow.

As long as I am working on my art photos from that shoot I’ll show another one.  No filters needed on this view of native shrubs growing alongside the pond.  Realism is the message.

Native Shrub Tapestry by Cape Cod Pond

I have always seen flat, tapestry patterns in nature.  I haven’t shown very many but now have the opportunity and excuse to explore the fine art side of my photography.  Whether or not my vision is forcing me to see new compositions, I can’t yet judge.  Certainly I am building on how I have learned to see and some of these new photos I may very well have seen anyway.  But I am sure I wouldn’t be showing them.

Next up: 2012.  I hope to approach a gallery in the new year and get these things shown properly, large and on paper.

Tupelo Leaves, Sight Slices 1

I am baffled by what I sometimes see.

I will slap my face looking at a scene and wonder why am I not seeing what I expect to see.  The Tupelo tree (Nyssa sylvatica) in my front yard commands attention when it comes into fall color, and I expect to be amazed every year.  I expect to see a blaze of color, a shimmering collection of all its leaves.

I didn’t see it that way this year because my eyes do not work together as they once did.  I can certainly manage daily life, but my photo instincts have changed.  The eyes see so very differently now, with all surgeries done, new glasses, and a single contact lens in one eye.  It has been more than a year since the first retina surgery and all seems stable, but the partial vision loss and spherical aberration in one eye has left me unbalanced.

I am at once frustrated and amazed at the current state of my vision.  The imbalance only really affects me when I move.  Standing still, my brain tends to correct things and lets the right eye, always the dominant one, decide what I am seeing.  But when I stop to think and let both eyes work, they do not focus the same way and I see in slices.

This sounds more radical than it is, I will never be a case study for Oliver Sachs; and in these examples of the Tupelo leaves I have exaggerated the effect.  But the fun part of seeing so differently is allowing myself the excuse to play.

Here is the original photo of Sight Slices 1 (above).  A nice photo in itself.  A straight photo in my old style.  No blur.

By playing with PhotoShop, adding a blur filter and then painting out (erasing) certain areas as “slices”, I am able to draw attention to specific leaf clusters rather than the whole tapestry.  And much more intriguing to look at don’t you think ?  Attention is drawn to the details, the slices, that make the whole.

Let’s try another one.  Here is the original for Tupelo Leaves, Sight Slices 2:

To make a full tapestry feeling, I need to crop out some rather empty areas on the left that make the photo feel unbalanced.  Then realized I needed to add some more leaves to some “holes” in the composition:

Knowing I was going to blur out most of the photo it was very easy to cut leaves out of one part of the frame and move them to the “holes”.  No sloppy edges would be noticed.  Then, once I had the composition I wanted, I blurred the entire photo and painted away the slices I wanted to reveal.  It took a little trial and error but here is what #2 looks like:

Tupelo Leaves - Sight Slices 2

Each of the Sight Slices photos has a different feel and color contrast but illustrate a bit of the impressions I get when I let both eyes truly study a scene.  I see slices of detail in the midst of a subject; and really, whether or not it is blurred.  I have always looked carefully at the details that make a composition, but my vision problems allow me analyze this duality and create photos I wouldn’t have thought about before.

I think it is more interesting to consider the scene with this duality anyway.  As we look into the details that make up any scene, our eyes see the details while the brain assimilates the entire view.  Well duh, but I never thought about trying to illustrate it.

For a little background, I finish with a wide photo of my Tupelo tree as seen from my front steps.  In my workshops I have  a topic “Find a Photo”.  I stood on my steps looking at this scene and wondered what I was seeing.

I also wondered when I would rake the leaves:

Provincetown Dawn on Cape Cod Bay

Sometimes the less said about the creative process, the better.  Sometimes I just want to do my work and move on.

If you like this computer altered photo of dawn at the beach in North Truro during my recent trip to Cape Cod, I will be most pleased if you stop reading now. Here is a larger size to better appreciate the alteration.

Thanks for stopping by.  The photo should be appreciated for what it is.  Explaining it implies it needs explanation.

You’re still reading.  I suppose knowing there are these words ahead you expect some insight.  Why did I alter the photo ? Or why was a garden photographer on this beach at dawn.

First, I show this picture because I am exploring.  I have been defining myself as a garden photographer for more than 25 years and am feeling constrained by that definition.  Entirely self imposed I know, but never-the-less I have been seduced by the successes I have had to think that gardens are where I should spend my energy, and other work was irrelevant – i.e. I couldn’t sell it.

That statement alone is fraught with other meaning but it is true that I take few pictures that I don’t think I can sell.  I hardly take any family photos because I know they can not approach the quality of my professional work.  A sad confession to make as a photographer.  I wish I could say I was consumed to take photos regardless of who sees them, technical quality, or market value.

With those very thoughts about how I define my art bubbling through my brain, and adjusting to the changes in my blurry vision these past few months, I went to Cape Cod for a family reunion centered around the 80th birthday of my Uncle Graham.  My uncle is an oceanographer and has lived in the dunes of what is now Cape Cod National Seashore most of his life.  He is friends with the poet Mary Oliver whose words have immortalized the area and inspired me to bring my cameras in a vain hope to capture an iota of her insight with an image.  This, of course is impossible, since a poet’s genius is in the fact they do not lock you into their visual but allow your soul to soar with your own imagination.

That being said and wanting to explore some new work, I had the excuse to pack my bags and tote my best cameras on a non garden trip.  I planned an early morning expedition to High Head and the immortalized ponds on the first day, before all the family was to gather.  Yet when I looked out of my motel room overlooking Cape Cod Bay in the pre-dawn light and smelled the air, I could not resist the beach.  I decided to be exhilarated by the dawn rather than forcing myself into the poet’s preserve.

I grabbed my G11 point and shoot camera and walked toward Provincetown.  Is sublime a too banal a word for my feeling in that morning light ?

This is  what the camera captured of those little lumberman’s bungalows facing the bay.

The best camera is the one you have with you when the heaven’s open, and the G11 became my tool.  Any digital image capture would need enhancement of this scene but the limitations of the point and shoot to enlarge to exhibition size persuaded me to use some artistic filters.  With the filters transforming the pixels, I can make a large print without some of the noise and, well, simply, make the scene more painterly.

It is a slow process learning to use digital photo filters, but I find myself comfortable in the work.  It allows me to feel more careful in selecting images I want to share, slowing down to work on aspects of the photo that bring out mood.  Perhaps I should be working more on my straight camera skills to bring out the mood.  Perhaps.  But I am not consumed to take pictures.  I feel consumed to make some art.

Beach Foam at Dawn, Cape Cod Bay

After the sun came up and its fresh light skipped across the gentle waves of Cape Cod Bay, I used the G11 macro feature and swivel tilt viewing screen to capture a low angle view of the bubbling beach foam.  I won’t bother to show you the original, and this interpretation still needs some work I think.   Sometimes the less said about the creative process, the better.

Katsura and Berberis - Foliage Tapestry Swirl

Drifting through Beth’s garden in the quiet still morning I was unsure whether I would take any pictures.  I just wanted some time to appreciate her marvelous Oregon garden so full of choice plants and foliage textures.  Before you take a decent picture you have to see it; and I am unsure of my vision these days.

My eyes are not right.  The cataract surgery went smoothly enough but I am still left with the pronounced vision loss in the left eye from the detached retina surgeries.  I am wearing a single contact lens in the “good” eye but feel very unsure of my balance, have limited stereo vision, and not seeing the way I want to see.

I can’t yet put my finger on what is not right, but I do know there is no going back.  My vision will never be the same.

Angst.  No better word as I look for some inspiration in a garden I know should inspire, even in this quiet season of late summer.  I have it to myself.  Quiet, a cathedral in the trees.

What DO I see ?  Relax and respond.  I see light when it hits me in the face.  I see it blur in my eyes and flare across everything.  Are there pictures here?  Do I have to see my old definition of beauty ?  And if I don’t, what DO I see ?

Let this be the new reality.  Trust the story.  Embed the feeling.  I let the journalist in me play with the Moss Man as he holds a seat for Beth’s departed sister.

But what else?  Where is beauty ?  I don’t know damn it !  I feel all swirly and unsteady;  shapes blur and meld.  Shoot that then.  See what happens in the computer later.  The camera image is only the starting point; and the journey continues.

Katsura and Berberis - Foliage Tapestry Swirl Vertical

]]> http://saxonholt.com/blog/art/tapestry-swirl/feed/ 11 http://saxonholt.com/blog/art/daves-shell/ http://saxonholt.com/blog/art/daves-shell/#comments Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:20:00 +0000 Saxon http://saxonholt.com/blog/?p=564

.

What the heck is this ?

I am not sure I even want to explain.  Ask the eminent photographer David Perry.  We are trading gifts and challenges.  I brought him some colorful Witch Hazel leaves last fall and he hung them on a clothesline.  Mr. Perry’s post.

He had wonderful color to work with, many leaves to select from, delicate notes from nature awaiting the maestro to create a symphony.   And he brought me an oyster shell from one of his Hood Canal excusions ?!  Yes he gussied it up with a Tillandsia from Flora Grubb but really, this was not to be a challenge with color.  Not yet, read on.

In truth, it is a beautiful shell and David has honored me with it.  Simple yet covered with barnacles, stark but full of life.  A precious treasure with heft and balance.  The tenacle-like leaves of Tillandsia made it an intriguing scientific study, and  I knew immediately I wanted to put it on my black velvet studio cloth.  A study, not just of the shell, but a study of black and white, of graphics and negative space, shadings and animation.

The shell became something else now, it moved, alive.  It became many things depending on how I turned it, framed it, cropped the space surrounding it.  With the shell halves at right angles it seems like some sort of inquisitive animal, or alien spawn:

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With the shells only slightly parted, as one mass, I imagine an asteroid hurtling up through space, or jellyfish in the deep:

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Or animated, a creature chasing its tail:

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In all these, the graphics make the photo.  It is all about space, composition, and one’s imagination.  But what about the shell itself?

I studied the shell closely, holding it to the light, and wondering about its own essence.  I began to see color.  Not the flashy color of autumn leaves, not anything the shell would flaunt.  But delicate blushes of pearl through the thin parts of the shell.  There, as I held it up to back light, this shell became a she; and she glowed for me.

Click on photo to see before and after. Then refresh browser to repeat

]]> http://saxonholt.com/blog/art/daves-shell/feed/ 4 http://saxonholt.com/blog/art/a-blur-is-a-blur/ http://saxonholt.com/blog/art/a-blur-is-a-blur/#comments Fri, 15 Jul 2011 19:12:13 +0000 Saxon http://saxonholt.com/blog/?p=496

Kurtis Pond, Blur #2

I don’t know where the blurriness of my left eye has led me.  Did I “see” these blurry water reflections, or did I just get lucky ?

Standing by the edge of this pond in Mettawa, Illinois late in the afternoon of a long day of shooting, I felt an unwelcome wind pick up and ripple the fine reflections I anticipated shooting.  Day is done, no more garden photos now.

But wait, I can still take photos.   I can still play and experiment.  The composition is there – shapes and colors.  Try for mood.  So what if it is blurry ?  If the Sweet Flag dances and the water shakes, if the tree is a ghost in the cool steely blur, well then, that is the story.  Isn’t that what I am really seeing?  See blur, photograph blur.  Easy.

Kurtis Pond, Blur #1

Silver streaks made visible with a long shutter speed were once waves, only imagined brush strokes when I let my blurry eye wonder.  Not much I really see actually.  Muted color, indistinct shape; and blurs.  I didn’t know what the camera would see.

I have cataract surgery on Monday.  Many months of blurs may finally be corrected.  For the better I presume.  Actually I don’t presume, I’m counting on it.  I am pretty darn tired of stumbling around.

Back to the pond; I try frame after frame as the tree disappears and returns amidst the shimmering grays, the Acoris trembling against the wind.  I exposed many frames with the camera, previewed, and kept only 3, contrary to all advice – which is not to edit and delete in camera.  We are advised to pick favorites at home with the safety of back-up files and hindsight.  Not these images though.  Have courage of your work.  I wish I could have picked only one.

Kurtis Pond, Blur #3

After the next surgery, perceptions will change again.  What will I see ?  What will I remember of the blurs I saw ?  Gauzy soft impressions will become a technique not a reality.  Was I lucky to see blurs ?  Was I lucky the camera could see it too ? Or is a blur just a blur no matter what reason the photographer decides to use it?

Hmmmm.  I am thinking too much.  I like . . . I show.