Patagonia 7: Chilean Fjords

Leaving Puerto Chacabuco our Norwegian Sun cruised at some 15 knots along the Chilean Fjords then the Straights of Magellan to reach the next port: Punta Arenas, Chile.

Here's an early morning grab taken from the foredeck while it powered south at some 15 knots along these watery highways. It took two days along first the Chilean Fjords then the Straights of Magellan to reach the next port: Punta Arenas, Chilé.

Up in the early morning darkness I was curious how the black blotches along each bank of this passage would look in the first sunlight.

Those aren't tilled fields. Nope, this place is virtually uninhabited. Instead the dark areas are dense green growths, the yellower regions are, for some reason, less fertile. Perhaps they're too rocky?

Some 25 hours later Thursday 1/24/19

800 miles nearer to the South Pole, the land grows dramatically craggier and mid-summer temps much chillier.

1519 Along the Chilean Fjords

Imagine how this looked to the 500 sailors in Magellan's 5 wind-blown ships as they discovered these passageways in 1519. Did they imagine that only 17 of them would survive their expedition and get back to Spain two years later?

What passed through their minds as they plowed northward surrounded by these treacherous coastlines and spookily quiet landscapes? Landscapes that remained unchanged from this in the last 500 years.

GEEK STUFF: Hand holding my Canon 7D and its EF-S17-85mm lens on the shifting decks of the Norwegian Sun. Canon's stabilizers are uncanny and it's processor can cut into both the shadows and highlights. 

Pennsylvania Barn Series 6

Catching up time... Thought I'd stylize these a bit... Explanation in the GEEK STUFF below

Here's the Southern Side... Or a northern view of the barn. There's a large parking lot off to the left rear with room for overflow under construction behind the fence to the right. You'll recall that there are two distinctive details to the Pennsylvania Barn. I discussed the overlay or overhang back in Series 7, well this is the other side where the construction is banked to allow ground access to the upper floor where we find those glassed access doors enter into...

This is a monster space capable of holding 750 people for parties, meetings, and weddings.This image covers only the eastern half - note how the room's constructed to allow north and south light avoiding the glare of morning and afternoon sun.  Hmmmm... and  I guess it might also host funerals? One could hold the funeral downstairs then come up here to join the family for drinks and luncheon. Or... maybe not, depends if they'll all have to caravan to a cemetery. Heck, if it's a cremation or an Irish wake, they can bring the urn and/or the coffin right on up to join in the celebration of life.

I'm really lit but that circular staircase, it's a woodworker's art! Again, everything is red oak without nails... Instead holes are drilled then wooden pegs are glued into boards. There's a loft upstairs but I wonder if gowned-women will negotiate that staircase. They've installed professionally lit makeup bays off the the left corner above with a huge-multi sinked bathroom to the right rear. There's also an ice box to keep the champaign chilled. There are lots of USB ports and charging stations along with blue tooth speakers to play favorite music from the bride's cellphone. The TV screen is on the wall behind me where I think that beyond full cable options, they've added CCTV to watch the guests arrange and congregate in the Great Room and on the grounds around the lake.

What's good for the geese is great for the ganders. Here's a fully equipped man-cave with broadcast, movie, and sports channels. There are also blue tooth speakers to allow groom to play loud music (the room's soundproofed. There's planned CCTV to watch the guests arrive, and a game box under the TV with controllers on the couch. Of course there are abundant USB outlets and charging stations. The wet bar is part of fully equipped kitchette and that's a large changing room/bathroom in the right corner. 

GEEK STUFF: Unfortunately I had to resort to paintings for these last two images since I was invited to capture the exterior at sunrise and consequently did not tote along indoor lighting. Bummer. These are all multi image panos stitched together from hand-held Canon 7D images then processed with various tools. 

The Pennsylvania Barn Series 4

Ahah! See - there's the barn and how it fits into this scene. Told you that it looms over everything. And since this is a wide angle view, well - this still understates its mass. Anyway, look at its overbite. 

Okay, that's really an overlay, the way that the second story overhangs the space below - it's a key feature of a Pennsylvania barn. It kept farmers and animals out of the elements, and allowed wagon and truck loading and unloading as well as pulling stuff to the animal stalls up there. Easier to clean out as well. The place is huge.

GEEK STUFF: Hand-held my goto 17-85mm on the Canon 7D Mk-II. Processed with PSCC-2018 and worked with Clarity in the Topaz studio then finished with AlienSkin's Exposure X3's Technicolor - at least in spots. Really love the color density that it affects. 

The Pennsylvania Barn Series 3

Ok... still haven't reached the barn there on the right in this series. Lens distortion caused the foreground to appear bigger - while in fact - the barn actually LOOMS over the caters' truck entry and the professional full kitchen... Cool the way the designer incorporated the food support wing to look nothing like what it is. 

GEEK STUFF: Canon 7DMk II, Canon 7D, EF-S17-85mm, Processed in PSCC-2018, multiple iterations created then blended on the macro side with Alien Skin's ability to capture such emulations of film with Exposure-X. I grew up using Agfa slide films with its decisively elegantly rich palette. On the micro side, after the usual cleaning up in Photoshop Topaz tools allowed me to enhance every little part of the image. Together with Photoshop's adjustment layers - there's every tool imaginable. 

But perhaps others can imagine more?

The Pennsylvania Barn Series: 2- Daybreak - 6/19/18

The Caterers Quarters

   The restored Pennsylvania Barn session I did last Tuesday was sort of a convocation for the place. The owners have built an "Event" structure aimed at hosting any number of celebrations, particularly weddings. 

   Now I'm walking slowly around the building in the background is the spring house displayed in an earlier post, in the foreground is where a catering truck can enter directly into a fully equipped professional kitchen so they are out of the elements with a LOT of room laden with all of the equipment for a team of cooks to work. This building is connected to the stone barn behind it and stairs together with hidden hallways allow wait-staff to access multiple levels of event rooms.

   Look there on the upper right behind the farmhouse. There's a huge heart mown into the hillside grass.

GEEK STUFF: Not much to add from the earlier captures, same camera and lens, however this is a five shot pano stitched together in PSCC-2018 in post where I used Alien Skin's powerful Exposure X3 to add a Kodachrome II palette while painting in the sky and highlights with PP's curve adjustment layers. while the lighting was just pre sunrise and relatively flat, I added the romantic glow with my own tools to emphasize the key details and to allow edges to fall into vignette.

The Water's Colored: Sunrise Near Osterville, Cape Cod, Massachusetts

Just before the sun rose over Cape Cod colors almost became neon. The Cape's about water, and the palette seemed washed onto the frame with soft brushes. Alone on that bridge I felt as if I ought to have a tripod, canvas, and a large tin of watercolor pigment. 

Watercolors have a cellophane transparency as they wash across one another and sink into paper. The thing about this medium that really resonates with me is the lack of detail when colors are well diluted. I stood there and watched an abstract come to life along this back-lit tidal channel. About a quarter mile down the road to my right there's a tiny port where a fishing boat motor dieseled to life and the scent of sizzling bacon mixed with salty air. 

I hand-held five shots with my Canon 7D through an EF-S 10-22mm (f3.5-4.5) at 10mm. then merged the them into a pano in PS4. Then I sucked out the color in a layer processed in Topaz B&W Effects 2. Then I worked the color range back in from a layer I processed in Alien Skin's Exposure X starting with Kodachrome II then shifting it warmer. Each region of the merged layers was carefully processed in PS4 to bring the dynamic range into a dreamy mood. Then I worked the merged frame in AlienSkin's Snap Art4: Water Color, carefully laying in the brush strokes. Sometimes people ask how much time I expend in a final image like this. This one took about 11 hours to replicate how I felt standing on this narrow Osterville bridge at sunrise on a cool September Tuesday morning. 

Can you feel the breeze in your face?

What's the Magic?

Nauset Light (1877) • Cape Cod, MA

Nauset Light (1877), Barnstable, Mass, Cape Cod - United States

Once upon a time, - boys and girls - Nauset Light was a key part of the Global Positioning System. And from 1877 on,  if you were near Barnstable on the North Atlantic at night... it was a part of the Cape Cod 8-lighthouse Positioning System.

Today's GPS is a disruptive tech. It made this cone at daybreak only pretty. It's been decommissioned and the keeper's house was given, along with the light, to a preservation society.

It's one of the East Coast's least photographed lights, and hard to find sitting smack in the middle of a neighborhood of cottages that grew around it.

Now, here's the question... Why the hell do we feel driven to make images of these things? They were public utilities. So are dumpsters and fire hydrants. Have you got many dumpster/hydrant pix? Okay, maybe it's a supply/demand thing? Not as many lighthouses around... Does that explain it? If that's the reason, well then why don't we picture every old bridge? Or municipal hall? Or ... you get the, um, picture, right?

And yet... yet... I don't care what sort of art you're into, you gotta' admit that the itch to do something with a lighthouse tingles-right? What's the magic?

Here's what late summer looks like in Nauset through my Canon 7D's  EFS 70-300mm lens after I poke and sculpt it in PS4. And here's why people buy homes on Cape Cod and others travel so far to vacation here, or on the nearby islands. For a quarter of a century we lived in New England... And even thirty years later, as I sit here in Lancaster County tonight... I feel its tug.

BTW... How's this look on your monitor? Too dark?

Good Morning Florence

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An oarsman snaps
His way along the
Mirrored Arno.

The light enwraps
Its coat over the
Ancient feeling.

Canon 40D, PS4: custom brushes, Topaz, AlienSkin: Exposure4: Color Slide: Agfa RSXII 100 <- My favorite film ever!

Technicolor Sunrise

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The mosquitos were big as birds as the sun rose over Chatham beach here on Cape Cod... Well, that's how they felt. The buggers seemed to hit like bean bags as they drilled into me. I'd been out of my car maybe four minutes as I grabbed at this pano then dashed back ahead of the snarling swarm. I still can't decide if they resented my arrival or welcomed it like a hungry lion herd felt when they stumbled upon a lonely wildebeest. I think I've left less blood behind when I've donated the stuff at the hospital.

Anywayzzzz.... you can see from the virgin images which I tugged into this pano below that the photos could have used more time for color balancing, even straightening, huh? What's more the Coast Guard station there in Chatham (the Atlantic Ocean's on the other side of that dune the building sits upon) was way small thanks to the perspective of my wide angle lens. So, how to create a powerful image that didn't look enhanced?

Well, first off I stripped away the blue and warmed everything up by color balancing the image with the curves tool, then added a warming color filter layer that I first blocked then brushed into the appropriate areas. Then I teased the building larger and moved it a tad leftward to honor the rule of thirds. It took a bit of time to hide the seams from both that move, that enlargement and of course the lines where PS merged the three pano panes. If I'd had more time, I'd have balanced the three original exposures more carefully when I took them but those bugs were spattering off my body and worse... attacking my eyes. EEEEEEP!

Then there was the straightening problem. So I used the ruler tool and aligned the roof line to vertical, bringing the entire frame into balance. After that came the relative dynamic ranges needed to balance the lower half of the image with the sky. All done with adjustment layers of course. Additional adjustment layers allowed me to brush back in the highlights in the grasses so they both sparkled and pulled the eye toward the building.

What I was after was a classic sunrise image where the enhancements, while considerable, were invisible. Did it happen? Does the final image at the top create the illusion of authenticity? Hope so... One of the reasons I enjoy enahced phtographic art is that the tools let me reveal what my feelings want to find in an image. And sometimes create ImageFiction. Which of course is the um, clever name of this blogsite, right? :-)

Cannon 7D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm (f3.5-4.5) Handheld three panel pano. PS4.

Dawn At Whalebone Mansion

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Wealth from whales
They thought – was
Forever.

Hope unsullied by
Knowledge of
Scarcity
Or pain.

Momentary hope without
Maturity or experience
Is nestled upon
Ignorance.

Sunrise
The Penniman House
A captain’s mansion
Chatham, Cape Cod, Massachusetts

We vacationed in New England last month, just before flying to Turkey on what was more a business trip. Of course dawn on Cape Cod always sings to me an hour or so before it rises. And it pulls me out to ride or walk the back roads, this morning in Chatham which is on the Atlantic side of the Cape. From the chanticleer above the Penniman House you can see the sweep of Chatham harbor behind me as I took this image.

Canon 7D:3 part pano, PS4: Custom brushes and textures, Topaz, AlienSkin: Snap Art 3, impasto

Turkey Notes - Istanbul Morning

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The morning call
Echoes from
Mosque to mosque.
A soprano melody
Along the city bustle
Melody line.

I took notes – with my Canon. Jotting onto FlashCards: my feelings. And of course in Istanbul, you feel the morning pull you awake. Is the city always sunny? dunno... but we never saw rainy clouds in July anywhere in the country. Of course it was mid summer and it was hot. Surprisingly there were palm trees in Istanbul. Since it sits at about the same latitude as Lancaster, we were told that the weather was comparable. But a palm tree would freeze its coconuts off here in the Red Rose city. Maybe it's because Istanbul pokes into both the Black Sea and the Med that it's warmer in winter? Anyone know?

Notice the buses in this scene. Istanbul has a spectacular public transit grid of mixed buses trolleys and light rail together with a bustling taxi and limo industry. The things are crowded at all hours. SRO... But with maybe 19 million people living in the city, a tad of crowding is expected, huh?

Last point... I tried to make this, at least in part, about the neighborhood mosque where the Imam chants/sings the morning call to prayer. And that is an interesting point. It was explained that while Turkey is a secular nation without a state church, the government does erect mosques and hires the imams who I suppose are sensitive to the um... sensitivities... of the interests of the place from which their checks come? Dunno, but it's an interesting arrangement.Actually the prayer call coming from the loud speakers on most minarets is a peaceful background sound, much like the peeling of church bells.

Istanbul, Turkey – Monday morning
Canon 7D, PS4: pano stitch, custom brushes, filters, Topaz, Alien Skin: SnapArt: Impasto, Custom textures.

Back From Turkey

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Golden…
The morning.
Constantine might
Recognize his city
As his church turns
Golden.

Just back… from ten days straddling two continents..

The Hagia Sophia
Istanbul, Turkey
From the roof of the Ramada hotel
Canon 7D: PS4, Topaz, AlienSkin: SnapArt, Oil Paint, custom filters, textures, and brushes.

Okay... after writing all of that Andreas Manessinger broke it to me that this is NOT the Hagia Sophia but in fact it's the Yeni Camii or New Mosque. The Hagia Sophia - Constantine's fifth Century cathedral is yet to come.

Which brings me to...

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Carved or released?
The houses of Mardin
Pop from their stone
Cool beneath
The broiling
Sun…

There is in Istanbul the world’s largest minature park – or park of minatures…
Miniaturk, Istanbul, Turkey
Canon 7D, PS4: Custom brushes, textures, Topaz2, AlienSkin: SnapArt, colored pencil, Bokeh 2, Planar.

Spring Breeze

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Sunlight is gold,
Not golden.
Squint,
Dazzle,
Glare…

It’s the chore
Of Spring
Breeze cleaning
Whatever the
Nocturnals left
That’s flyable.

Amish Farm, Lancaster County, Pa
Cannon G10: PS4: Topaz, AlienSkin, SnapArt, Watercolor: Custom brushes & textures.

Emporia Tanked

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Sunrise burns
Pepsi quenches.
It is not
A tankless
Job...

Emporia, Canon 40D: 40D: PS4: AlienSkin, Bokeh2: Topaz: Custom textures & brushes

Hopper Sunday Morning

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Hopper revisited as I continue to study and grow from his haunting work....

From high up Edward Hopper smashed light against substance – to invariably watch substance flinch. In buildings he found his fears and desires. Or did he release ours?

He revealed in the struggle between light and substance outcomes that mattered. But… but… even dreadful stuff matters. And somehow, in his torridly lit frames there remained an intangible alienation of a visitor’s shadowy dread.

*
Sunday morning rooftops, Lancaster, PA.
Canon 40D, PS4, AlienSkin: Snap Art:Oil paint, custom brushes and filters.

Late Summer Saturday Morning

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Does it matter which war? Is he any less lonely here?

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Early bike ride, Saturday morning, August 28, 2010
Canon 7D: EOS 10-22 f/3.5-45.: f16, 1/800sec, ISO200, -3f
PS4, Topaz filter

Bokeh2 - Tester

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Alien Skin has asked me to test the beta version of its newly developed Bokeh2. Here's a first try, done very quickly. The only filter tool is Bakeh2 in PS4. It is very smooth.

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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_
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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.

Got A Question For You

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I've been wondering... What is the use of art? Matching the couch? Covering a hole in he wall? I know that a large number of furry little rodents decorate their burrows. Ditto the way a lot of birds weave stuff into their nests. Hmmmm.... are some animals driven to decorate? How do they decide between worthwhile decorations and junk?Are there more, um, fascinating decorations? Do some decorations resonate more than others? Is there a collection instinct? If there is, upon what is it focused? How do collectors of decoration decide? Do they have advisors? Are there experts? Critics? Educators? Analysts?

Apparently all human cultures collect art just like those cute rodents. Even ancient peoples seem, well, driven to decorate their graves with shiny things, drawings and statues. Decoration seems to be almost a necessary condition of human-ness.

So what are the uses of art? Body decoration? Balancing the palette in a bathroom? Is the value the picture, or inside the picture? Is art an object or a package?

Okay... my head is hurting now. Think I'll go find a Rolling Rock.

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Oh yeah, the picture here: I took it at dawn in Wellfleet on Cape Cod as the tide gurgled in under my feet. It actually does gurgle and hiss, oozing seemingly out of the muddy ground. Charming though, and it makes the sort of picture that blown up and framed... Well it goes pretty damned well with the couch, huh? :)