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I'm Just Sayin
Photography Workshop Update 4
My week in New Brunswick (see previous posts) progressed and eventually we were each given an individual assignment. The goal was to take a theme and produce 20 images based on that theme. Among the themes were, softly, solitude, heavy metal, and unmade bed as a landscape. My assignment was "on the verge of chaos."
It was near dinnertime and dark when the assignments were passed out and I was a bit unsure of how to proceed. After dinner I went to bed thinking about my project. About 3:30am I woke up and started thinking of just what would I shoot to create 20 images of "on the verge of chaos." I had been dreaming and suddenly realized just how dreams easily jump from one seemingly unrelated thing to the next. When I realized that dreams were chaotic I decided I would pursue my assignment as if it were all in a dream - a dream of my visit to St. Martins. I was wide awake by 3:45 and thought no better time than now to get started.
My first image is a single exposure, taken with a time delay. It starts the sequence as if I am dreaming. I then proceed into the hallway where I'm dreaming of going out for the day to shoot photos. I set my criteria so that each image would look as if it was from a dream. I also decided that any "special effects" would be shot "in-camera" not created later in Photoshop. By the time breakfast came I already had 4 of my 20 images and the next 5 hours would be a rush to get them all done. Worse still - it started raining.
I drove out to a country road but it was raining too hard to get out of the car. To my surprise, an additional five images or so were take from inside the car - looking out through the glass or an open window. Suddenly I was back on day one - taking photos stuck in one place. I learned the best place to take photos are where you are right now. Being stuck in the car reminded me just how true that was.
I won't post all 20 of the photos, but here are a few of my favorites from the assignment.
Below is my favorite image from the week. It's taken through a wet windshield, looking down a county road. It is a double exposure. I like it just because it is so mysterious. I hope you like it too.
Photography Workshop Update 3
On Wednesday (October 10th - day three of the Freemand Patterson/André Gallant photography workshop in New Brunswick, Canada) we drove from St Martins to Shamper's Bluff located on the St. John river on the Kingston Peninsula where Freeman lives. His property is over 100 acres and is part of a protected nature conservatory. It was a great place to shoot everything from barns to roots. Many of my photos were taken specifically so I could practice shooting long depth of field where the subjects are far apart, but they are all sharp and in focus. In both of the photos below I could have reached my hand in front of the camera and touched the fern or the flowers. The subjects in the distance are far away.
Freeman's barn is a photographer's dream. My first photo of the barn is a "dreamscape" - meaning it was a double exposure where one exposure was blurred and the other was sharp.
The two photos above are both impressionistic photos created "in-camera" using panning. I purposefully overexposed the first one to create a light, airy effect. Justin says the second one reminded him of a Kincade painting.
Last but not least, we were encouraged to take texture photos that could be layered over other photos in a photo editing program. I found a bed of leafy ground cover and superimposed it over a very simple two-rectangle composition of two waxy leaves. Actually if you look close it's a three-rectangle composition... I'm just sayin'...
Photography Workshop Update 2
On the second day of the workshop André took our half of the group into the nearby Fundy National Park. We stopped at a waterfall, a stand of fading trees, and a bluff overlooking the Bay of Fundy. We were encouraged to carefully compose our shots and try to utilize the techniques we were learning. Here are a few results from my second day of the Freeman Patterson and André Gallant workshop in St. Martins, New Brunswick.
At the falls I composed this simple photo of a twig of turning leaves. The photo with the steps was composed as a wide angle shot leading the viewer to my classmates on the viewing platform.
I was in the process of doing double exposures and I accidently took the photo of the falls flowing onto the deck. It's not a great photo, but the angle of the water and the angle of the deck boards created a really interesting effect, so I decided you might like to see it.The last photo I'm sharing from this location is an abstraction of the falls.
The final three photos here are shots of trees along the road. There is panning and multiple exposure on the first two.
The last one is a particular favorite because it is only a hint of what it was originally. It has the feeling of trees on a bank reflected into ice or water, but was not the case. I'm just sayin'...
Photography Workshop Update
In the afternoon of Day 1, Andre Gallant taught us to do a technique called "panning." The objective is to move the camera while the shutter is briefly open to get impressionistic effects. Here are some examples of my first efforts at doing panning. The first photo is of a stand of sunflowers. My evaluation of this photo is that the composition is fine (two strong rectangles). However, the panning doesn't give any real impact the the sunflowers.
Here are a couple of photos that I really love of ferns. You can tell the difference in the effect. I like both but the more blurred one is appealing to me because the ferns remind me of fossils.
The photo of the sea gull was captured by following the bird in flight. I really like the woven texture created in the background.
Below are a few more photos I took late in the afternoon of our first day. I was getting my feet wet with new techniques. Keep in mind, these photos are intended to be artistic expressions and not documentary photos. In other words, they are blurred on purpose... I'm just sayin'...
