Voilá ….Smile Mr Wren!
Wasn’t so hard after all. Stay turned for more Blue Lego Guy adventures.
Wasn’t so hard after all. Stay turned for more Blue Lego Guy adventures.
I have had the exclude duplicates item ticked on my picasa imports by default, for the longest time. This helps avoid a lot of duplicates turning up because some photos where left on a card or a phonephoto was uploaded via wifi more than once or via different services, However because I now have my photos flow across several computers and software packages it is surprising just how many duplicates do turn up. So I have also been using a neat little utility program from digital volcano called duplicate cleaner, which is design for all file types but does work very well with media files like photos, video and music. The biggest feature of this cleaner is that it can recognise the same file contents, even if the name is changed. If the file is a jpeg and has been post processed it will be considered as different. Also if the jpeg has been rescaled it will also be considered different. This is fine I probably want to keep these,
During and particularly as I reach the end of the month I move my photos from the collection points (laptop computers) onto a backup drive and it is at this point that it is most useful to run the duplicate cleaner (if you have a lot of files it can take a while …so go get a coffee). After this I then copy the backed up files to the archive drive and make my DVD/CD backup set of the archive (this is my one remaining traditional backup, everything else is now on portable hard drives). I don’t delete the photos on the collection computers until I have finished the backup –> duplicate clean –> Archive cycle. The very end of the month is the right time to do this.
I not sure how many times I have heard good photography (including my own) dismissed as faked in Photoshop. Further I’m also not really a fan of a lot of the on-click Artistic apps around. However there is definitely a place for intelligent post processing, in the whole process of art –> graphic art–> photography. By example is you shoot RAW it is almost certain that you must undertake some post processing to get an acceptable image. It is just unfortunate that fakery seems to dominate people perceptions and photoshoped has become such a disparaging adjective for a photo.
The cartoon is a golden oldie by Aaron Johnson, and his work a quite photocentric you can see more of the duck here.
Source : As seen on PetaPixel, via Mosaic Lightroom Newsletter
I just read an interesting article in The Artist Magazine by Paul Talbot-Greaves titled “How to paint nothing” (January 2014), in which he comments,
“Many people have said they probably wouldn’t notice the subject in one of my landscapes and would probably walk straight past the scene, … So just how do you notice a composition of nothing?”
There is a video of Paul painting a watercolour below (it is speed up but takes just over 10minutes, and is well worth watching to see how he uses a simple colour palette and strong tonal shapes, lines of the river, skyline and a few trees to quickly build a wonderful yet conventional landscape composition). Unfortunately a well meaning (and probably very experienced) photo critic would suggest his landscape needs a red canoe with the canoeist in a bright yellow life-vest positioned at the first bottom “thirds point of interest”, but he would be wrong it doesn’t need to be like that (ok it might be if you want to win the camera club photo of the month and he is judging!). It needs the artist eye to see the colour, composition and tone! That’s all.
I am inspired to apply his insights into the photographic process. One in particular is that “compositional designs are best when strong lighting is involved”, for example using shadows to create exciting negative shapes and add dimension to an image. Paul also is attracted to “the bright, high chroma colours against darker muted tones”
So over the past couple of days I have been quick to pick up my camera whenever I see that strong light variation and strong colours against shadows, and particularly interesting shadow patterns. Did not really matter what the subject was after all it is a photo of nothing, I was just looking for the right lighting ambience, boldish colour and shadows.
This set of images (on the right) are simply of the shadows of a potted yucca plant on my partly open patio doors. I was sitting enjoy a coffee in the sun at the time. I had the foresight to include an EV bracketed set of exposure, so I sent that set off to Google+ Autobackup and this time they did return a decent *HDR autoawesome, but the composition, as shoot, was a bit boring. Also it had a few damaged leaves on the yucca and they were an unnecessary distraction. My favourite tool to fix composition in any photo is the crop tool, It is normally a simple logo of two opposing L shapes, occasional with a curved rotation arrow. Google+ photos has some good edit tools on-line and the crop tool (shown below) has a feature to control the ratio (aspect of horizontal & vertical axis) to keep the crop within given standard size combinations. There is a separate icon at the top of the panel on the right to do any rotational (straightening) adjustment.
I have not bothered about the rule of thirds of any other compositional rule, I was looking for a pleasing combination of colour and shadow and I like the contrast of the vertical door frames and the angled shadows with their lost and found lines feel. An image like this is a great place to experiment with all sort of crops, so don’t stop at your very first try. The wooden door handle on the white door frame is a little distracting but I have not managed to find any cloning tools in Google+ Photo so I have had to downloaded the edited image and then take it through OnOne’s Perfect Enhance 8. Perfect Enhance has a really magic Perfect Eraser which is content aware and does a both quick and reasonable job of removing the handle. Finally I add a big softy vignette.
So the exercise of photographing nothing can be rewarding, and encouraging both seeing more like a painter might but also forcing some creativity in you post processing (in this case perhaps a little more abstract albeit more thoughtful cropping).
“There is nothing wrong with photography, if you don't mind the perspective of a paralysed Cyclops.” - David HockneyI believe what David is highlighting here is that the camera’s view of the world is from a single lens with a specific perspective. We have two eyes and “see” a much richer three dimensional worlds and our vision can be influences by our expectations. For example when we are dwarfed by tall trees we know we are surrounded by
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Yes, yesterday was magnificent! |
This is quite a large segment of the milky way, now largely overhead. It covers from almost the northern horizon to well over head. Made of 5 photos combined with autostitch with auto straighten turned off. (The image below has it turned on)