OuttaDaGate - Kayak Scramble

A salty inlet • June, 2019

Trigger warning... This tiny essay may distress a swath of readers. Sorry.

Pre-teen boys racing. Families yelping. Girls ready for the next heat. Hot-June summer morning. Squinch your eyes so color streaks against salty air and life is giggling, screaming, joy-filled fun. This is the sort of image these kids will access from their memory storage bins 20, 30, 60 years from now.

As winds of age scour my memories, well... So will I but... um... well... maybe next year?

So we're in an election cycle right now and so many of the candidates seem determined to paint things with an "awful" brush. They explain how we're neck deep in a dystopian pool of cess. Not to worry, they've got plans, strategies, policies that will drain away some of the stinky shit that's stained everything. And yet... Boys and girls play in the sun... colored streaks against salty air and life's giggling, screaming, exciting fun.

Hyperbole's selling all sorts of contention. But that image up there's not grabbed from some legend of a distant time. Unless we've already forgotten the summer that's right now turning to the dazzle of kids wallowing in piles of jewel-colored leaves. Uh-huh there are places where things aren't as charming... I know that. And I confront that in every news story streaming across my monitor.

But maybe... just maybe... a footrace, a ball game, a kayak scramble, a young couple swinging their hands ought to, just on some rare occasion, come out of the media gate?

GEEK STUFF: Canon 7D Mk. II through its EFS 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens. I'd switched on follow-focus spotted on the boat. Post processed in PSCC 2019 to expand the dynamic range then finished in both Topaz Impression together with Alien Skin's Snap Art 4. Oh, Alien Skin's changed their name to Exposure Software.

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. 

Summer Along James River

Summer afternoon along the James River at Palmetto Bluffs, SC

It was wet heat in Beaufort County for our 2016 June stay on Hilton Head Island. You know, the sort of heat that sops clothes like dish rags. It was so chronic you felt a bit chilly when the temp dropped below 95. But then, Hilton Head's in deep Dixie and built atop a mostly drained swamp along the Atlantic's Low Country. This was the heart of the Confederacy where, in my great-grandparents' time the most belligerent of slavery's proponents once lived. In 1850, according to a historic marker in the county seat, this region had 1,111 white people and 8,361 slaves occupying 151 plantations. Cotton was king. 

The James river mixes into the ocean about 5 miles to the southeast from where I found this image so it's tidal at this point. With Charleston to its north and Savannah to the south, Beaufort county's inches above sea level... And well down into reptile and mosquito level. Thinking about this land's people some 150 years ago means imagining a time before air-conditioning. Which is the high tech that finally disrupted how this summer wet-heat went unchallenged. 

For two weeks we largely lived like space travelers on Mars... Locked by choking hot days inside of cooled-air bubbles. I tried bike riding only twice, but even at sunrise - the humidity was so thick that downhill felt like uphill. 

It's not that Dixie's summer days are lazy. No, self defense vacationers tour the place within cars that whisk them between cool bubbles. Down there autos aren't designed so much aerodynamically as they are thermodynamically. Once, decades ago, a southerner criticized me for living where heating costs were so high in winter. He implied that Yankees were energy wasteful. And yet I'm thinking that the electric costs of summer A/C inside of those old high ceiling southern buildings must compete with my gas heat, no? Isn't electric always the most expensive way to do HVAC over the course of a year? 

Ahhhhh well. Southern summer scenes are gorgeously pretty and seem to be accompanied by a deep low voice quietly signing, "Ole man river... Dat ole man river..." And as I scurried back to my car's A/C I wondered just how much fuel, there in the 100 degree plus sun, it took a man to tote that barge and lift that bail... 

Geek Stuff: Took the reference shots with a Canon EF-S 10-22mm (f3.5-4.5) screwed to my 7D. A lot of processing later I'd finally prepared the images for AlienSkin's SnapArt to create this languid late afternoon oil painting into capture the searing sun's glare. As you can see, I try not to use a lens shade and seek opportunities to let the light flare across glass and my wide angle's got a lot of glass surface to attract sunlight. 

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?

Escape: Pepto To Quench Peptic

The Lone Tree
Pebble Beach, California

Six weeks ago my wife Rita had her knee replaced. A bit before  I moved my office from the Business2Business Magazines HQ, here to our home. Four, or so weeks ago, my buddy Rocco-The-Dog died. Last week we bought a new pup. During this, Rita's sister and brother-in-law came for a five day visit.

And, of course, the monthly magazines I edit came out on schedule on the first of this month. Life went peptic...

Photography's my baking soda: Pepto to quench life's peptic waves. It can be smoothed into the slower moments, massaging at angst and melancholy. This art stuff's is angst processor, dialing it down, or sometimes blotting it out.

Anxiety's tentacles can't hold onto feelings focused on say, the Lone Tree that clings to its Pebble Beach rock cropping into the Pacific. For at least the hour, or so, that I visited this place my mind-muscles floated free of the churning world so I could return to it with stress cranked way down.

I'm not whining. Rita's recovering wonderfully. This knee now matches the other she received a decade ago and its already improved her mobility and comfort exquisitely. I still ache for Rocco's company, but little Musser's fun and filling the void.

Here's Musser yesterday... All 9 weeks of him.

Okay, I found time in moments when the winds were quieter over the past five or so weeks to escape into my images, but didn't open minutes to think about the comments visitors left here below, nor have I responded to mail. That all wanted me to think, and while thinking's totally exciting, the swirl of these weeks demanded time to turn off thought and excitement and to wallow in the Pepto of places like Pebble Beach, y'know?

But... I'm baaaaaack! There's more time to refocus and to have the energy to think as well as feel. Still, it's a blessing isn't it to have this art narcotic ready when we need to mellow away for a bit, and crank down life's peptic volume?

Amsterdam Layover: The Canals of Summer

BTW:  Between Newark New Jersey and Entebbe, Uganda - we laid over - both ways in Amsterdam. Uh-huh, two afternoons and nights in Holland's capital. Can't wait to get back for longer. But, still it is astonishing how much we packed into those Amsterdam hours. And how much there is to pack in.

These three snapshots I grabbed with my iPhone. See, to all of my, er, critical friends… I can still take pictures that look like, well, pictures. Amsterdam, like a hot woman, really doesn't take a bad picture.

Did I go to the legendary Red Light District? Heh heh… wait and see, K?

Antalya, Turkey

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The old town’s
Ancient port
Bobs atop the
Mediterranean.

Antalya, Turkey
Canon 7D, PS4: 8 image pano stitch, Topaz

Suppose...

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Suppose that sky
Met the water
Exactly where
A barn
Met them
Both…
Once upon a time.

West Dennis, MA – at high tide, low cloud and old barn.

Canon 7D: Canon EF-S 10-22mm, PS4: Topaz, Alien Skin: SnapArt2, Custom filters & brushes.

Hudson River Meadow

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Along the Hudson

There are meadows

Fertilized with

Money.

Composition

The world is sweet, mysterious, and beautiful. Sometimes.

Middelbury, VT.

Here's a second take on the image... I'm trying to find a 1920's feeling here in the stillness.

Non Textured Texture

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There was so much texture in the scene, I can now file my nails on the image. Wuddaya think?

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Chill breeze puffs
The day before a
First frost
Crackles summer
Away with
The boat for
Winter.

GEEK STUFF: Chesapeake Bay, MD. • Canon 20D: Canon EF-S 10-22mm (f3.5-4.5), PS/CS4, Topaz, AlienSkin/SnapArt/Watercolor, Custom strokes, textures, brushes, filters.

Fall Before The Fall

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This soon may be gone!

Rode my bike through the Pekway region of Lancaster County yesterday. Fall’s come onto the Amish farms.

Next month the EPA will begin enforcing rigorous standards here to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. Runoff from these farmland’s had an impact upon the Bay which people downstream claim is negative. Even though this is a record year for the heavily fished bay area, the pleasure boaters and fisher people have colluded with the Obama administration to impose draconian regulations upon the nation’s richest non-irrigated farmland here in Lancaster County.

The results may have the same impact that the EPA’s had upon the Central California Valley where in order to protect some odd species, they’ve shut off that area’s water supply almost entirely. The result? Ruined farmers, a greater dependency upon imports (from countries with no similar endangered species regulations}, and an increase in food prices which fall, of course, most dramatically upon the most fragile American families who are struggling to survive in this recession. I suppose those are the unintended consequences of well meaning people trying to do utopian stuff, huh?

So I’m making images before Lancaster County’s farmers, and urban areas are laid waste with EPA regs that will topple them into bankruptcy. Why the urban areas? Because they built water reclamation plants before the EPA was founded. Those operations do not meet the new standards. However, while the Federal government provided funds for communities which never built any treatment plants, it refuses to provide funds to upgrade the existing facilities (remember the Stimulus Bill and all of those never materialized shovel ready projects?).

Since every city in Pennsylvania is teetering upon insolvency as a result of other sorts of mandates imposed but not funded by the Pennsylvania state government, these waste treatment costs will probably be the last straw, creating ghost towns throughout what is the commonwealth’s most economically diverse and lowest unemployment region.

Go figger, huh?

Oh well, enjoy it before winter sets in….

Canon G10
Lancaster County, PA

Processing: Canon G10: 3 handheld wide angle images stitched together in PS/CS4: AlienSkin/SnapArt, Topaz, custom brushes.

PART TWO

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And thirty miles or so south of that image up top there was this one taken last week at a friend's house overlooking the river meeting the tidal waters of The Chesapeake Bay. Here's on the shore of Northeast, Maryland we're watching the runoff of centuries of Yankee farming flowing into the headwater's of the American South's most treasured Atlantic Coast bay. And here they're arguing that the tons of fertilizer and animal droppings carried by the river system have changed the very nature of their life.

Once again this is PS/CS4 stitching together six handheld Canon G10 images taken with its widest angle at ISO 600 as the sun set. I used Topaz to additionally enhance the dynamic range.

Barn Wall

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Wandering around north county. In a barn there were some old pictures hanging on the wall. Discolored, faded... you know. Found some water damage but this one was under glass in its frame. Fun to watch it pop back out.

The D70's got a great processor in the dim florescent light. Great capturing color balance in the auto white mode. Oh yeah... I did cheat and add a texture screen and diddled in both Topaz and Alien Skin's Snap art. And, um, maybe I usedCS4's warp tool to create more of a 3D feeling. Okay...okay... I repainted the colors and altered the palette to make the feeling explode. And yeah, I warmed up the exposure a bunch.

But other than that... nada!

Fun, huh?

This Sucks!

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Everyone runs into the great suck. And it seems that no matter what you do... Suck City!

Is there any thread that I could have pulled to find meaning in this mess?

I captured this image along the Arno river in Florence Italy a couple of years ago. Our apartment was in that first building to the left. The day was glorious, there was a photographer's sky. But... but... but... I failed to find the idea or feeling that pulled me through this frame. So I ladled on craft... and ladled... and ladled. And the thing wound up as a grotesquerie. Which is another way of saying.

This sucks!

And it drove me nuts. And I couldn't stop ladling. So I've revisited it over the years... and... and... AAAARGH!

Grumble!

Blossom Time

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Drove down to the Capitol last Tuesday. Cherry blossoms and tax day - both come in April. Pretty day last week... next week comes April 15th and the death of Washington's blossoms.

Bowers then showers.

Summer's End

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How very soon
We paddle away
Summer...

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.

Eureka!

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Ever noticed how scientists are ashamed of epiphany? Read a scientific paper and you will never find the words, "And at this point in the procedure we abruptly realized that Dr. Skinny had accidentally spit into the solution and that his saliva added a stimulus to the precipitate that overcame the impasse resulting in the miracle hair restoration break through."

Nope, read their stuff and Point A results eventually in Point Z through a well planned process that never veers from the genius of the scientific team. Of course Point Q was probably Dr. Skinny's spittle, but the report fails to account for epiphany that emerges during the process.

Visual artists are not scientists. See this first image? I wanted to apply my new interest in AlienSkin's SnapArt to some images I'd taken at Pigeon Point Light on the California Coast. And I thought it'd be cool to create an illustration featuring my feelings about the light.

And then a funny thing happened along the way to creating that image up there.... This happened! BOING! I discovered that SnapArt's oil painting options allowed me to swirl thick strokes to compliment an idea I had when I dramatized the original photograph with Topaz3. I'm thinking of it as Doctor Skinny's spittle...


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And the virgin image that started, or startled, my imagination? Here's what my Canon 20D saw through its EF-S 10-22mm (f3.5-4.5).

Fisher's Bench

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You know: There's a really big difference between showing a moment, and revealing its quality and character. I'm convinced that technique is what cranks volume into an artist's voice... Right? Technique lets me dig out the feelings I want to communicate with you. It's reassuring to know how many tools we have in our bag now. How much volume we're able to build up.

PreProcessing The hunting camp up in Potter County has a couple of stocked trout ponds. Here's one I like that looked wonderful through my Canon 40D. PostProcessng The tone mapping was done in PhotoShop CS4 with the help of Topaz where I imagined the mist. Then I used AlienSkin's Snap Art's water color tools to tease out some golden grit.

THE VIRGIN IMAGE!

Haven't done this for a while, but given how much effort this image took... thought you'd enjoy seeing the original I stitched together from four shots into a panorama. Enjoy....