Patagonia 2: Impressions of Santiago, Chile 1/16/19

Santiago's Cooly Wealthy & Sparkly

Here's where we began our trek in January of 2018.

Chilé's capital marks the Pacific-top of Patagonia, which forms the bottom 20% tip of South America that Chilé shares with Argentina. Starkly modern: crystal fingers erupt from Santiago's earth like glittery blue nails of a haughty latin diva. She's home to about two thirds of her country's population and fueled by Latin America's hottest economy. The city reflects its searing summer sun glaringly as a mirrored radio telescope faceted with glass and precious latin passions. Neither New York, London, nor Brussels wears a richer cloak of ambitious success.

Geek Stuff: Santiago demands a wide angle lens... It's almost impossible to step back far enough to frame any of her parts. So I screwed my EF-S 10-22mm (f3.5-4.5) onto its Canon 7D Mark II to make sense of her pieces. Then, pulling out a digital pen I sketched out the Square, a multi-tiered neighborhood restaurant, and poked between the shoulders of twin heaven-scrapers to scribble in another tower popping from the ground behind. Everywhere the throb of contractors, taxis, and people-throngs cranked up Santiago's latin pulse.

If you can make it there... you can make it anywhere.

Crayon New York City °1

In high July color

Bubbles and melts.

Like flamed-plastic toys.

Like feeling-seared film.

I walked through New York’s mid-day tropics… Storing stuff in my memory-bin that’s marked Summer In The City. I found new image puddles – left out in the noon-day sun – that melted right over those I’d stored in that bin before. These new ones were like casings to harden around stacked feelings that burble and glow when I poke around for memories of city summer.

Crayoned Impressionism: Canon 7D, Canon EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6), PS4: Two square details carved from a 3 panel vertical pano, Topaz Adjustment, AlienSkinExposure 4: Color Films - Polaroid/faded-darkened, Snap Art3: Crayon. Custom spot-applied color shift adjustment layers, original created to be printed at 30" X 60".

Storm

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When the heavens open in the tropics - it's as if the air abruptly becomes solid.

A Jewelry Bridge

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They have made precious bauble art here for centuries.
All along the bridge, on each side are some of Italy's finest jewelers.
Now here's the question...
If you stand here at sunrise...
And squint your eyes way way down...
Wouldn't you swear that the bridge itself looks
Like the stuff that's made
Inside?

I'm just sayin'....

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The Geek Stuff

Ponte Veccio: Florence, Italy
Canon 20D EOS 10-22 mm @ 11mm, f7.1, 1/125sec, ISO 200 – 9:12am
PS3, Topaz and AlienSkin SnapArt Oil, custom brushes.

Swatch

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Imagination opens a big door
And shows us what's
Inside.

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NYNY
Canon G10
PS4/Topaz/AlienSkin-SnapArt2-Oil/Custom Brushes

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Stormy April

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There's a storm overtaking the capitol. Things have prematurely hottened. One senses that the world's oldest democracy is hunching its shoulders against a series of thuds. It's as if the air's charged with static sharp enough to sting like spitting dust as you lurch into the headwinds of a maelstrom.

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Once again in this series, I'm working through the challenge of mid-day glare, on a summer hot afternoon. Impressionism? Well, yeah.

Baby New Year - 2010

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Just a short nap now and then a whole new decade will happen for Katelynn Rose. And the murk of this decade fades in its light. Happy New Year everyone.

What Are You Doing New Year's?

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Here's a variation.... a touch of New Year's fun while I'm awaiting ordering my new camera. Some of you might recall the original of this babe I posted some time back. Here she is again, all dressed up... and ready to PARTY.....

BEST WISHES EVERYONE!!! Happy 2010, and thanks for all of your support, suggestions, and comments both here and the passle who continue to lemme know what you think exclusively by email. That's why I've posted an email address over there in the colun on the right. You're my buddies... and you've made 2009 a nice year. In Angel's lingo.... MIL GRACIAS!

Yellow Plus Blue

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Hmmm... Is there a difference between discovery and creativity in art? Lemme try that differently. Is it all about process or maybe its more about concept? Okay... okay... still not clear, right? Sigh. When Michelangelo decided to pull 'David' out of that enormous hunk of stone... well, how much did he know before he began hammering? Had he imagined the boy/man and then dug him free from the marble? Or did he find him as he chiseled away pieces of rock?

I started this concept out by watching a man on West Chestnut Street in downtown Lancaster. And I used my EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens to snag him free of the crowd. Then I went to work in PS/CS4 to reveal his character which originally attracted my lens - by building up tonal maps that let me dig into shadows and highlights. But as he emerged on my digital palette he demanded a setting. A moment... Yeah, his presence was the concept but the process wanted a place to both compliment and amplify it.

And I thought of the rugged coasts of Northern California where the yellows of the hillsides complimented the yellow of the guy's shirt. And then... then... a palette of yellows and blues all seemed exactly correct - perfect to balance the way that the coastline seemed too romantic for this portrait. So... so... process led to discovery. And where does creativity come to visit? Maybe that's a judgement for the visitor to make? Maybe we cannot conclude we are creative, merely presenters or discoverers... eh?

A FOOTNOTE: I built this image yesterday but before writing this tiny essay I rode my bike through Musser Park, next to my home here in Lancaster. And there on a gorgeous Sunday were two young painters from the Pennsylvania College of Art And Design each working in palettes of blues and yellows. While we each discovered very different images, I wonder. Is there a yellow/blue something in the air here in the Historic District? Cool.

***

Here's an image of the coastline which is really the result of three virgin images stitched together into a pano in Photoshop, which were taken with my Canon 20D through its EF-S 10-22mm (f3.5-4.5) at approximately the same time as mu subject on an equally sunny day.

Potter County #6: Gene Kelly?

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Hey, that's pretty cool! Downtown Coudersport sitting in the August saturday sun. Looking like... like... Looking like this image here. The way it's looked for what? A century? More?


You know how people say, "New York City? Yeah, it's a wonderful place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there."??? Well to a whole lot of people who remember a time that they learned about in history class... Coudersport's the sort of very small town where they'd like to visit and live.

Thing is though, it's not real easy to find, which is why maybe it's been preserved. Wasn't there a vincent Miinelli movie once about Scottish village that disappears into the Highland mist and returns for a day every century? Hmmm... Not sure but odd how the woman dancing just off to that park on the left there... Just beyond the frame... Odd how much she looked like, what was her name? Cyd Charise? Pity, I thought I'd caught her... Wonder why you can't see her?

You don't think???
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PreProcessing: As you probably realize by now, the only lens I took out in Potter County was the EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6) I screwed onto my Canon 40D. Here I pointed it at Coudersport's main street and shot a series for a panoramic. PostProcessing: Stitched them together in CS4 and turned to Topaz to even out the dynamic range from the extreme light then AlienSkin's SnapArt's Impasto to build up paint into a three dimensional texture. And why... It's Almost Like Being In Love... eh?

Potter County #4: The Coudersport

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Ever seen a glimmering hunk of amber? You know, a translucent glob of ancient resin which collected around a seed, a bud, or an almost forgotten bloom in its center? And as you twirled it around, did it trigger memories that you didn’t really have? Recollections of a time before you should remember?

Coudersport is the county seat of Potter County, Pennsylvania and about 2,700 of the county’s 18,000 people live in the town that was formed in the early 1800s. Young, even by American standards, still it’s collected the ambitions of the turn of the twentieth century along a main street of shops, parks, and small office buildings. The streets hold memories of marching bands, and loggers. It is not a land that time forgot, rather one that time remembers lovingly – even longingly. If Coudersport did not exist, Disney would imagine it. In Coudersport you expected Mickey, Pluto, or Cinderella to skip out from door and alley ways.

On a sunny Saturday last week, it glimmered within its resin of amber time.
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PreProcessing: Again through my Canon’s EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6) in Coudersport’s main street where I found their working movie house. PotProcessing: Lots of things going on here. I want to create a series of square format images that will hang among the various panos I created in Potter County and at the hunting lodge I posted a few days ago. To create the Edward Hopper mystique here I first turned to Topaz, then teased in two effects from AlienSkin’s SnapArt2. First the Comics filter, then I stroked in Impasto to deepen the nostalgic sense while reinforcing the palette that could have been washed out in the mid-day August light. Happily, I think it worked well.

Potter County #3: Pond 1(b)

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See if you write, say poetry, you keep your audience attentive with every paragraph, sentence, and word. And you string them together with no hiccups, burps, or stammers. Reality simply isn't allowed to muddy access, distract, or leap out to screech "BOO!"

That's what digital artists do now. Like I did here. Right?
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PreProcessing: Here's that pond I posted yesterday captured by my Canon 40D's EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6) at the hunting lodge in Clara. PostProcessing: Okay, I had to move the furniture around a tad on this piece of the pond to enhance the dazzle of this misty place through a gentle sunrise shower. I did the reconstruction in PS4 and exploded the feelings with AlienSkin's Bokeh and SnapArt's oils. Sweet.

Potter County #2: Pond #1

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If you'll look again at my last post and peer just to the left of the building... well walk that way and immediately beside and to the rear of the lodge is where I stood to grab this pano of their first pond. In fact, that tree to the right here... see it? That's the tree which is framing the top of the lodge in yesterday's post. It seems as if the blue egrets have reduced the trout population this year since even through the mists you can see to the bottom of the six foot deep waters.

PreProcessing: As yesterday, I caught the series through my Canon 40D's EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6). PostProcessing: The four images stitched together nicely with CS4's merge tool. I cropped it some, diddled with the dynamic range then used Topaz and AlienSkin's watercolor devices to tease out the mystery of the pool.

Angry Making

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If you lived paint, worked to make your hand behave your eye, and labored to master drawing, color, form, texture, shape and dimensions.... It has to piss you off to see that now there's none of that between a moment and the artist's feeling except a button and a swirl of the computer's mouse.

I believe that images have to be about something - something that is not photography. If it is merely about photography it is merely about craft. Instead I need to find feelings that aren't words. If they are words, then why not write them instead of imitating them in an image?

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PreProcessing Last week in Grand Central Station. That's in New York City. Three shots with my Canon G-10 to create a triptych. Like stained glass in a great basilica... which in a way Grand Central is. The church of bustle, of mid-point, of arrival, departure, of scurry to wait. It is a place for grand tension and release - which is a metaphor for cathedral. PostProcessing Simple glam layer sandwiching, abstracted into neon with pointilism courtesy of AlienSkin's SnapArt2.

Doll Face Puddle

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Found her at Valley Forge. Really. She seems right for that encampment, eh?

I've begun to notice that I don't seem to have a dark side. I look at my images and yeah, they hit the three bases... they appeal to visual, emotional, and intellectual puddles of the mind. I'm happy with the way they communicate what I want them to... It's just that dark side stuff is considered so... so... DEEEEEP, right? Everything else splashes about in shallower puddles.

Ah well... she's charming... and I'm guessing that there's still a tiny place in a lot of us for sweet, huh?

On the other hand.... maybe I'll go upstairs and think some dark thoughts... I'll letcha know :-)