Friday, November 25, 2005

snowy friday

"the old bridge"


"fall in winter"


Two composites using methods described in chapter 2.

The first (the bridge picture) is a composite of one clear/one much lighter oof image, although in this case I did the oofocusing digitally using gaussian blur, lightening with curves; blended at 50% in normal.

The second is the same image twice, second layer flipped both vertically and horizontally, blended in normal at 50%.

7 Comments:

At 5:28 PM PST, Blogger chris martin said...

It is hard to kee pup with you Ursula :) These two are great and it is obvious that you are becoming quite accomplished. Now that you have done so much experimentation, using your new talent, I would love for you to use this to tell a personal story is the form of "the old bridge", drop-moss-leaf, and "afternoon chores".

 
At 8:14 PM PST, Blogger ursula said...

Thank you!

A story, with all three of those? Oh boy. That'd be hard. I'm not a writer. And anything personal is even harder :)

 
At 8:42 PM PST, Blogger chris martin said...

Its just that I hate gratuitous pictures. I want something from the artist to come out of be there just waiting for me to find. Those three that you have taken and I have mentioned are the type of photos that hang with me. They have so much potential to tell a whole story. I wasn;t thinking all three to be embedded, rather making use of thr style of the three to paint us a picture of something you wanted to say or share.

 
At 10:32 PM PST, Blogger ursula said...

OK, that makes sense. But I tend to not think in stories, more in impressions.

The old bridge really is the old bridge over the Columbia, in Trail, BC. I've been looking at the bridge ever since we moved here almost 2 years ago, especially on rainy days, because it is so shiny then. I wanted to give a feel for its shininess, and how the houses on the West Trail hill look so tiny hanging there, even though they are very close. This is the kind of bridge that you want to go on, but it's scarey, because you can see the dark, cold waters between your feet as you walk across, and if a car comes by, the bridge shakes, and creaks, and on rainy days, you can just imagine yourself falling into the Columbia, and everything would be dark and cold and shiny.

The "drop/moss/leaf" is simply stuff that I see all the time on the trails. There's a lot of moss around here, and it's beautiful, and often there are water droplets close by, not on the moss, but close - they are very useful for out of focus light spots. The leaves tend to be further away and paler, like background textures, but not really quite there. That's all I was thinking of, stuff I see on the trails.

"Afternoon chores", I was sitting at the bottom of one of the covered staircases that are everywhere here, watching the light play with the street and weeds and rocks, and this boy comes by with his paper delivery bag, so I took his picture walking away, then this father/son came walking up the street, and the son was also carrying a paper delivery bag, the father was carrying a briefcase or something like that, and they were just gently walking and talking, and the sun made such beautiful colours all around them, it was just so peaceful and gentle, sort of like life should be all the time. I though if I put the two pictures together I could maybe give a bit of the feel of the gentle warm afternoon sun, and the friendship between parents and children, and stuff like that. I don't know if it works for others, but it sort of works for me - it's like walking into a tunnel where the air is warm and pleasant and glowy.

I don't know if this will make sense to you, but its more or less the "stories" behind the composites.

May I ask, is that what's bothering you about your pictures, making composites without there being a strong thought behind it to build it up?

 
At 1:19 AM PST, Blogger chris martin said...

You see all of those words were in those pictures. That's why those are so great. You had something in mind when you took the shots and you wanted to tell or show how you feel about something. The notion of a story or a mood being behind those really comes through and I think that is why I like them so much.

Some of these shots we are taking as we work through the book are just to get a feel for the process. I think you are moving forward now and are using the process to tell your story. I am still stuck back at just taking shots. I also feel a little rushed. On DPC I need the whole week for a challenge to let the concept and idea grow in my head before I set out to capture it. Here I am still at the try it stage and haven't yet found a way to integrate it into something I want to say. Does that make any sense at all?

 
At 3:18 PM PST, Blogger ursula said...

It does.

Thanks a big bunch!

 
At 9:51 PM PST, Blogger Sonja (Photographer/Owner) said...

Wow, I love all these shots in this blog. I'll be back for sure.

 

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Tuesday, November 22, 2005

cloudy tuesday

"frost"


Composite of two images made seconds apart, one in focus normal exposure, the second completely out of focus exposure set to F +1. I am trying to imitate one of the effects talked about in Chapter 2. The two images were blended as follows:

  1. base layer (in focus photo) at 100%
  2. second layer (out of focus photo) at 100% in soft light
  3. third layer (out of focus photo again) at 50% in normal

As usual, comments, suggestions for improvement, ideas are welcome.

3 Comments:

At 12:53 PM PST, Blogger Neil said...

I like the effect here. I've done this technique with long exposures--shoot in focus and while exposed, change the ring. I'll have to try it with a double layer too!

 
At 12:56 PM PST, Blogger ursula said...

Thank you, Neil. I've never tried it "in camera", never thought of it. Your idea is great - I will try that also.

 
At 9:37 PM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

Wow - that's breathtaking. Beautiful light in the final image. I've seen this one in focus/ one out of focus technique used a lot on flowers and find it starts getting a bit cliched there, but this is exceptionally good in this case.

 

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Monday, November 21, 2005

monday monday

A blend of three different images: a drop on a blade of grass, some dried moss, and a maple leaf. No relation, except that all three were found close to a backroad in Trail, BC (lower in elevation, no snow yet).



A blend of 8 images of a cross-country skier. I blended layers 2-8 at 50/layer# (rather than 100/layer#) in normal mode. Images made yesterday close to Rossland, BC.


2 Comments:

At 9:57 AM PST, Blogger ursula said...

Thank you!

Yeah, we've had Winter for a couple weeks, the Snow Kingdom is white, down here in the Columbia lowlands we're brown and grey.

About the xcountry skier picture, I did that on purpose, one picture clear the others barely visible - I wasn't trying for a movement sense so much as for a "what does it feel to cross-country ski in fog". I guess I didn't get it - back to work, Ursula :))) . Trying for a sense of motion is a good idea. Thanks for the comments!

 
At 5:25 PM PST, Blogger chris martin said...

The drop-moss-and-leaf is wonderful. Not to say that the other one isn't, rather I am just attracted to this one. I would like to see a little more of the leaf. You are finding great ways to tell stories with this technique.

 

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Saturday, November 19, 2005

just one more for chapter 1

"winter dreams"

The weather has been miserable today, not just miserable, but that heavy cold grey that makes you wish you lived elsewhere. So I started playing with pictures from September. This is a composite of three close-ups of a little purple flower by the Columbia. I am cheating though, I cropped the finished composite picture.

1 Comments:

At 12:56 PM PST, Blogger Neil said...

Love this one in particular Ursula. The shapes are really complemented by the yellow "background".

I'm working my way down your blog, and I see you've been busy! I haven't had much time to spend either shooting or commenting yet, I'll have to get back to it!

 

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chapter 1 - resumen

Chapter 1 talked about 2 different kinds of multi-exposures, (1) many exposures of the same subject, slightly off register for each subsequent exposure; (2) two or more exposures of different subjets.

Both methods use a single piece of film for the result (no sandwiching). The first and biggest problem is that neither method can be replicated in digital camera at this time. So the question for me immediately became, can I replicate results using digital camera methods, and how.

The answer for me is, "No, I can't. Not really. It's not the same."

But what I can work on is the ideas behind these multiple exposure images. I can work on textures and beautiful soft images, create mood, make dream/nightmare composites, work on abstracting what really makes something what it is. For the ideas it doesn't matter whether it's film or digital.

Anyway, these are my thoughts at the end of chapter 1. And a couple more experiments:



"driving by the cinema"


"first snow"


"salud"

3 Comments:

At 7:33 PM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

Another 3 stunning images.

Is the 'first snow' image a multiple exposure ?

 
At 10:36 PM PST, Blogger ursula said...

Thank you.

Yes, "first snow" is 2 images, one of a ridge of pines with new snow, the other of a mountainside with mixed trees and brownish growth, also with new snow. The ridge is part of the backside of Red Mountain by Rossland (the backside of the ski resort), the second picture is about 20 kilometres away, by Nancy Greene Pass (I don't know the name of that mountain).

I cheated though, it wasn't the first snow, it was about third or so.

 
At 5:22 PM PST, Blogger chris martin said...

Here I love the first and the third images. I just can't see the effect on the second one. For me, the third one is truly striking.

 

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Wednesday, November 16, 2005

who cares what it is


soft breeze



writer's block

2 Comments:

At 12:35 PM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

I love the first leafy shot. Beautiful curves, pleasing brown palette, just jumps at me.

 
At 9:58 PM PST, Blogger chris martin said...

Wow I am way behind on all of your wonderful stuff. I hope you don;t mind that I put all of my comments into this one post. I promise in the future to comment individually if I can keep up with you.

Chapter 1: both are great. The top leaf is exactly what I have in mind when I try these. The bottom one give the impression of a wood carving due tp your motion. Nice job.

A Couple More Experiments: Your lighting on the pears is fab, but for this style is now appears to me that a background adds so much more depth than without. The tree in rain image is fantastic. Again as I guess is common with this style, I get the sense of a painting - oil.

Monday's Experiments: Again, all are wonderful in their own individual way. Your blending on evaporation is great as I feel clarity in front and abstractness in back. I don't know how you pulled that off. the style used for Afternoon Chores obviously could tell a complete story and is very powerful. River Rock is one of my favroites. Again I get the sens of a paiting and here in contrast to the pears I very much like the empty space in the upper right. I wonder why it feels so different.

One More From Today: Great color and imagination blending portrait and landscape. The texture the results is almost touchable.

Tuesday's Musings: The B&W can hold my attention almost indefinitely. I actually figured out what the elements are, but I found that for the longest time. I wanted to just enjoy the abstractness and NOT allow myself to identify what I was really looking at. Super job. The second one doesn't grab me like all of the rest of your experiments.

Shooting In Series: In stop, I love the lanscape, but the sign makes me feel conflicted. I didn;t think I liked it, but then realized the possibilities for presenting a story and realized how it could be used. Thanks. Glow Daisies is fantastic - top to bottom. Well done!

Wednesday's Landscape: Look another painting! As a former painter, I absolutelt love these and this technique is wonderful for this.

Who Cares What it is: In soft breeze I keep telling myself that I think it is too light - BUT - I can't stop looking at it. I love that when it happens. Writer's Block need more of a "bam" factor for me, but it is still in my top 15 here :)

 

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wednesday's landscape

Pend d'Oreille Cutoff

This is a composite of 4 shots I made back in late October, on a sunny afternoon when the trees were still full of gold. The river is the Pend d'Oreille, which flows into the Columbia about 12 miles downriver. The cutoff is the Nellway road, a very bumpy dirt track that follows the Pend d'Oreille from 7 mile Dam to Nellway (it's about 10 miles of road I believe, but it takes me a couple hours to drive - yeah for Subarus!).

It is a bit frustrating that a lot of the multi-image composites turn out so dark, and frequently lose most detail. I wonder if taking images with very sharp, shiny edges would make for better multi-image composites, although, some of the soft, brown textures I get from these composites are beautiful as textures. I think I am used to more detail in my images. Question: Is detail important?

1 Comments:

At 12:34 PM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

Is detail important ? No, not if the rest of the image has something to say.

In fact, I'm tending to think that the less detail an image has, the more the viewer can project their own story on to it and start to get emotionally involved. Something that's sharp and obvious and all there, tends to lead to a more superficial reading of the image.

So no, detail doesn't always matter.

On the lack of brightness, it may be worth switching the blending mode of one or two of the layers to add some lightness to the scene - lighten or screen for example might raise the tonal levels. Doesn't have to be all of the layers though.

 

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Tuesday, November 15, 2005

shooting in series

This is turning into a bit of a personal discovery journey. I went back through a bunch of pictures I made this past Summer, and noticed that I tend to shoot in series - I have quite a few "series" of pictures, getting closer series, all sorts of different angles series, just plain same shot series. This is coming in handy right now.

Both images below are made from composites of pictures made in June of this year. The stop sign picture includes 4 separate shots, the daisy composite includes 3 separate shots.

"stop"


glow daisies


10 Comments:

At 2:15 PM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

the 'motion' and the stop sign has an obviously appealing juxtaposition. I wonder how it would look if you punched a mask through so that the largest stop sign was the only one you'd see and it would be only from a single layer - i.e., adjust it so only the background/ surroundings are multiple exposures and the stop sign is just static.

The daisies are lovely. All very entertaining and inspiring.

 
At 2:16 PM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

I really do get the feeling, particularly from the daisies and the people shot below, that I'm looking at dream sequences, or half remembered locations. Very cool.

 
At 2:18 PM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

Okay, I'll stop at 3 comments. The insights in to your personal discoveries and thought processes are a lot more interesting to me than the specific mechanics of how you've layered the images.

To be clear though - I want to know about that too, but the more personal thoughts and feelings are a whole lot more educational and interesting than the drier, less personal technical details - keep 'em both coming!

 
At 2:21 PM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

Okay, I lied again. 4th comment/ question. You mentioned that you are shooting in series - are these over multiple days, or single sessions and getting closer ? Is it just a by-product of working one particular subject, or is it revisiting the same ideas on different days, in different lighting, or even just similar subjects ?

As I'm writing this, I'm thinking of all the different ways a series could come together to get used for a multiple exposure shot.

 
At 3:18 PM PST, Blogger ursula said...

Thank you. I should try the idea with only one stop sign, multiple backgrounds.

------------

About series: I revisit places and subjects, over and over, different times of day/year, different light, whatever. That's why I usually end up walking alone nowadays, nobody wants to come along anymore. My husband tells me I spend way too much time looking at just one patch of moss. I enjoy it. I've learned a lot about how light works from this.

What I didn't realize is that what I have on my hands is a bunch of groups of similar pictures that lend themselves rather nicely for these experiments in multiple exposures.

The idea of using a series over time for composites is very appealing. I haven't tried that. So far I've just tried series within one shoot. Hmmmm. Back to work.

This is fascinating.

-----------

By the way, how do you get the comments to show right below your posts in your blog? Mine show in a separate window. I tried changing the settings, but it didn't work.

 
At 9:01 PM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

the comments thing needs you to edit the template and add some javascript. If you are interested I can point you to a guide for the steps you need to go through. It is easy if you are comfortable with editing HTML directly. Probably quite strange if you are not familiar with it.

 
At 10:49 AM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

For the inline/ hide comments, look at

this blogger hack link

In particular, the Peek-a-boo comments section. I just edited my blog template to add the changes, it was pretty straight forward.

 
At 11:58 AM PST, Blogger Neil said...

Ursula, I think dream is a good metaphor for these. In the first picture, the background is perfect for this, but the multiple exposure effect on the stop sigh itself sign doesn't work as well, perhaps because of the text, perhaps because they don't leave a "trail" to follow, if you understand that. I'd like to see one of them much more dominant in this case.

I do like the effect very much on the flowers. They seem the perfect subject for this. It's very dreamy and ethereal.

 
At 2:05 PM PST, Blogger ursula said...

I got it (to show comments on the same page)!

Thank you!

 
At 4:16 PM PST, Blogger ursula said...

Neil, thank you. I agree, something isn't right with the stop signs. I don't want to work on that right now, but it should be revisited.

I like the word "ethereal" (and also "ephimeral", "susurrate", and "delicate"). Four words I would love for people to use when looking at my images.

 

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tuesday's musings ....

Vivid vs. soft, it seems that in general, the more layers, the softer the final look. The possibilities are almost overwhelming at the moment.

The top image is two photos blended in normal; the bottom image is a series of 7 photos blended in normal.


3 Comments:

At 2:13 PM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

wow. You are really getting in to this! The two milk jug shots are beautiful - a great tonal contrast and I just spend a whole lot of time enjoying the abstract shapes and then trying to decipher the underlying subjects.

The softer, more textured water? shot has a lovely layered feel to it too. It doesn't have the immediate impact of the stark, sharp jug shot, but has its own appeal. I'm continually impressed by the images you are putting up.

 
At 3:21 PM PST, Blogger ursula said...

Yes, the bottom picture is water, a pool by some rocks in the Columbia.

 
At 12:45 PM PST, Blogger Neil said...

The first, abstract shot is quite perfectly done! The shapes just interplay perfectly.

The second doesn't quite have the same impact, but suggests that such water shots are excellent for this technique. I guess what doesn't work as well for me here is that the overlaying image on the water is really faint, and I mostly see the water.

 

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Monday, November 14, 2005

one more from today ....


One thing we have a lot of around here is rocks (rocks and trees and water, the Arrogant Worms have it right). This is a rock face by the Columbia. I made two series of about 25 shots this afternoon, one vertical, the other horizontal, diffused afternoon sunshine for light. Living North gives you good shadows in winter almost any time of the day :)


Here I combined a bunch of verticals to create a flowing sideways texture, then combined that picture with one of the horizontals. Both times they were blended using the decreasing percents formula. I'm starting to like that formula.


I think I will experiment more with this rock face - it looks a bit like a cathedral. I wonder if combining architecture and rock pictures would work.


2 Comments:

At 7:49 PM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

You might want to switch on the feature that requires comments to be validated to avoid this sort of spam.

Your comment about architecture and rocks is interesting - how about people and textures that suit their personality ? You could probably say quite a lot about a person with what you merge them with...

 
At 7:52 PM PST, Blogger ursula said...

Thank you. I will do that.

 

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monday's experiments

"evaporation"
two pictures, one from a couple days ago, the other from today


"afternoon chores"

two pictures superimposed

"river rock"

a series of 9 pictures of a few rocks in the Columbia - the contrast between water and rock is quite beautiful in real life, I tried to give it back a bit here.

4 Comments:

At 6:51 PM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

All 3 of these are very arresting. The colour palettes of the first and third really appeal to me but they are all beautiful.

For the images that are of different subjects, what motivated you to combine particular images ? Was it just the spatial and tonal relationships, or is there some connection for you between the pieces ? I'd love to understand more about this part of your process.

Are these 'straight' layers, or have you moved pieces of the images around to better interplay ? One idea is to consider transforming/ resizing and masking elements - though that starts to stray more towards the bounds of straight compositing for my current comfort levels.

Beautiful work again!

 
At 7:32 PM PST, Blogger ursula said...

Thank you!

The river rock picture is straight blending of 9 images using the decreasing percents formula (100/layer#). After blending, I adjusted the histogram of the picture to provide a bit more contrast, as blends of many layers tend to make for "dull" pictures. I was working today on textures: rough rock and smooth water.

The two top images are also straight blends (100/50), no resizing of the images to start. The people picture I cropped slightly afterwards (cut off some from both small edges - I generally prefer not to crop much).

For the people picture, it was just that I thought they might look good together. The bottom picture is flipped sideways, which created a sort of tunnel effect. They were made a couple minutes apart, so the light is very similar in the two.

For the other composite (evaporation), they were not made at the same time. The branch picture is a couple days older. The bottom picture is trees reflecting in a pool on the Columbia, flipped upside down. It looked like the trees were evaporating, so I thought, maybe if I incorporated a picture of a branch with drops it would work, sort of like the drops are evaporating. It was just a spur of the moment idea after the fact, not while making the pictures.

 
At 7:47 PM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

I'm intrigued by the notion that I probably could never shoot a new photo again and still be able to produce wonderful images, just from all the rejects and successes sitting on my harddrive right now.

I don't know if that is liberating or constraining, but it is sure kicking around in my head just now.

 
At 7:57 PM PST, Blogger ursula said...

That thought had never crossed my mind before. I think I am too driven to go outside and explore to worry too much about it :)

 

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Sunday, November 13, 2005

a couple more experiments ....



Both are combinations of three different images, both were each subsequent image was shot a bit closer to the subject as before (using fixed lens, so no zooming).

For the pears I used a black background, then combined the three pear pictures in three layers at about 40% in normal mode with that background. The result was rather dark. I lightened, added another layer, and blended in soft light (forgot the percentage).

For the tree in the rain, blended using the decreasing formula (100/50/33/and so on). I used 6 layers, 2 of each picture, background was the original at 100, second layer the original in soft light at 50, third the second picture in normal at 50, fourth the second picture in soft light at 33, and so on (more or less, again, I didn't write down the numbers exactly, and I'm never particularily exact when it comes to post-processing).

4 Comments:

At 9:07 PM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

I don't think it really matters too much if you capture the exact percentages you use :) The key is just to play until it looks good, and then stop!

Something else that may address your issue with the background layer being too dominant is to use the hard light blend mode on one element, if the overall image isn't contrasty enough.

 
At 9:10 PM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

I forgot to mention - the tree image is truely beautiful. Lovely light, colours and overall autumnal feel.

The pear image I think has a whole lot of potential too - but I think it maybe needs a few more layers - it looks a bit too real but with motion blur - the gap between the edges seems a bit severe ?

 
At 12:58 PM PST, Blogger ursula said...

Yeah, I think you're right. More pear pictures. Maybe a different subject, I ate the pears.

 
At 2:09 PM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

Well - an opportunity to buy some more then :) Never can have enough fruit.

 

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chapter 1

First attempts at multiple exposures:



For the first image I took the same image 9 times, slightly moved each time, then merged in normal at decreasing percentages. After merging I added another layer of the original picture, blurred using strong gaussian, and blended in soft light at about 30%.

For the second image, I took two different shots and blended in a variety of modes. One of the shots is a closeup of a leaf, the other is a blurred (vertical camera motion) of some aspens.

--------------------------

NOTES:

What I found most interesting about Chapter 1 is the notion that for this kind of multiple exposures it works best to have the individual frames be quite in focus. It makes a lot of sense. The stacking of sharp, in focus lines and shapes would create a dreamlike effect quite different than the effect created with longer exposures/camera movement.

5 Comments:

At 5:15 PM PST, Blogger Neil said...

The second one works very well here. I am less sure that the first is better than attempts using single frame motion blur as an alternative technique. Perhaps what doesn't come out of that is the same "multiple pattern" I see in the book.

I shot some tests today, but I am out of disk space, so I haven't been able to process yet!

 
At 7:22 PM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

Weirdly enough, I prefer the first one over the second :) The only comment I'd make about the first one is to watch for the bright highlights in the background - I find my eye drawn to those out of focus high contrast areas, and I think I'd prefer to be spending my time looking at the leaf.

 
At 7:38 PM PST, Blogger ursula said...

Thanks!

The bright, OOF areas are strange - on a photo by itself they serve to give a glow or highlight to the leaves; in the multiple exposure they become annoying.

I suppose that goes again to emphasize that it's best to stick to one thing at a time. If you're working on multiple exposure, don't also work on OOF highlights. Maybe. Something to think about.

 
At 8:51 PM PST, Blogger John M. Setzler, Jr. said...

I particularly like the first one. I can't really comment on it as pertains to the book because I'm without it for a few days until it arrives, but I love the surrealism and impressionism presented in the image. It creates a mood that is somewhat like the change of seasons... there is a transition going on and the idea behind the photo supports that quite well...

 
At 12:20 PM PST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I just stumbled on the thread in dpc, so I don't really know much about FP's ideas, but I have to say that you have created some wonderful pictures.

 

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