County Road

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Sun-stained road
slicing through
farm flat
county.

Going to or
Coming from
Home.

It depends, huh?

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The craftsman says, "look, here is what you like."
The artist answers, "Look, here is what I like."

The commercial artist says both of those things.

The academic artist says neither of them.

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Picture by the Canon G-10. Image with AlienSkin Bokeh, Lucis Aperture, AlienSkin SnapArt.... but mostly with... Ted.

The Race Is Over #6 & #7

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I sense by the traffic to this site that this Race Against Racism series may have imposed itself beyond your tolerance. Okay, so let me end it with a fireworks display.. K? Out of the six images that I haven't yet posted these two were always intended to be the final act. The blazing rockets. I love each of them. But then, I'm a sentimental mush-ball when it comes to image making. I just can't seem to reach in and pull out the dark stuff. Maybe there isn't any darkstuff? Hmmmm... gotta think on that since darkstuff seems to be what critics want artists to do, right?

Okay, I will think on how to make gritty statements about the human condition's inevitable overheating of the earth, inhumanity toward one another, tendencies toward senseless savageries, and of course its trigger for wars and ancient obsessions for revenge. Sigh...



But before I go off to do dat... Howzabout we ponder these last two images- the end of this posted series - together. Yeah, they're sweet enough to make your teeth fall out... so clamp them tightly together... hopefully in a smile? K?

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Tech stuff? As before the photos came first through my mighty Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens onto the 40D's processor. I used Topaz, and the AlienSkin Bokeh + SnapArt filters to tease out the thematic style that held this series together. If you'll click on the word IMAGEFICTION in the masthead way up above, you should be able to scroll down and look at others in this series along with the virgin photographs that I pulled directly from my FlashCards. Questions about technical details for this series? Leave them in the comments, or like most people, drop me an email to the address you'll find in the column there on the upper right. Hope you've enjoyed this series as much as I have making it.

Poster #5

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Okay, sorry about that diversion... so now onto the latest race post....
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Kindness moves in the opposite direction of everything else. It is paid, granted, bestowed, lavished in return for what comes the other way. Think of it as an outer circle that keeps everything inside from tumbling out. It's not a gender thing, a racial thing, a liberal or conservative thing. No religious denomination holds a monopoly upon the stuff, nor any single idea. And why do we do it? That is one of those kinds of questions that is larger than the sum of its possible answers.

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And here ladies and gentlemen is the virgin photo pulled directly from my flash card. This guy glowed from the exhaustion and satisfaction of his run. Once again, this went through my mighty Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens and then Topaz, Bokeh, and SnapArt tools. Each were carefully stroked in through masks after I'd worked upon the original image.

Poster #4

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Have you noticed that images come to us as sequels, even though we've never seen the original! This fella was Ethiopian, and the race's runner up. He came a long way to run a little farther that morning.

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here's the virgin image from my FlashCard. Once again the picture came through my big ole Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens. But I teased the image up through both Bokeh and SnapArt from my AlienSkin arsenal. This series has been terrific fun for me. Is it good for you :-)

Poster #3

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Every culture adds to a city's mosaic - and each lives among the markings of past cultures. Cool thing is that environment evolves... you know: the streets, signs, walks, buildings, institutions... Hard things. But they change so much more slowly than the culture. Well except after catastrophes like war or nature. But I digress...

See the culture of the moment is aswirl with new ideas, feelings, colors, and sounds. Soft stuff. And those curl and wipe up against the hard things. Which is what makes cities so damned much fun where the soft mash up against the hard.

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And here's the virgin image pulled from the FlashCard (which you can click on).
Once again I'm playing with a bunch of neat stuff. First the mighty Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens was perfect for wandering around Musser Park during the race. Then I brought the twin AlienSkin filters to bear Bokeh to cream up the ... well... bokeh, and then SnapArt for the painterly pop-ability. Once again they help give the Race Series a common style. Like it?

Emery

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Emery DeWitt sat in my painting studio, the north light of late April streaming across his face. Unfortunately the light held for only about four hours at a sitting so I had to work fast. Even so we had to schedule seven dates to let me block in enough that I could fill it the rest of the way without him. Oil painting's so tedious and, I don't care what they say, it's an unforgiving medium if you lack a clear intent from the start. I've found that "a better idea" really isn't possible with a portrait since spontanaeity isn't, as they say, in the oils.

Heh.. heh.. heh...

Yeah, there was a time that the portraitist did all of that as his subject struggled to hold a pose, hour upon hour. In this case Emery sat across from me at lunch in Café Chuckles while I showed him my new Canon G10, the company's top of the line point-and-click camera. "What the hell," I figured, "why not point and click?" So I did at 1600 ISO. This evening I did the color balancing, adjusted the dynamic range and enhanced the sharpness and shadows in PhotoShop before working the image through AlienSkin's SnapArt filter. I took about ninety minutes for the entire process... far longer than it probably needed, but I wanted to capture Emery's animation and wonderful personality, just so... Y'know?

You oughta' see this puppy blown up to 10"X10"... it ROCKS! I can only imagine how it would look say three feet on a side printed on canvas. Woof! Anybody feel like shelling out a couple of bucks to find
out? :-)

Poster #2

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Odd thing about red haired guys, there aren't many of us... especially in the movies and TV. And when we do show up, we're usually the sidekicks, or the other guy. In the movies, red headed guys rarely get the girl - as opposed to real life where we ALWAYS do. But I digress. See, here're two redheaded guys crossing the finish line simultaneously. Cool.

Against Racism... Poster #1

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Thousands come each year. They fill Musser Park and the streets around it. They run for prizes, they run for fun, they run to be together... Together... Yeah, it's the annual Race Against Racism, and it's about 'together'. Nobody loses... You know what I'm saying?

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First I turned to AlienSkin's Bokeh filter then, to create a powerful poster, once again AlienSkin's SnapArt, this time the impasto filter pulled out exactly what I needed to say. The morning broke cloudy so that light was wonderfully flat and my mighty Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens was the work horse that day. But then again, it's a wildlife lens, right? Plus the image stabilization holds it steady as a surgeon's fingers.

For those of you who enjoy it.... Here's the virgin image direct from my flashcard (again, just click upon it for a larger image). When there are models like this, I guess I could have used a cellphone camera, huh?

The Look II

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Once the event was called "The Patriot's Day Parade." Designed by conservatives to balance liberal opponents to the Viet Nam war in the 70s: the event's still going but its name has changed. Now it's called "The American Spirit Parade." There are few soldiers, no rolling weapons, but there are rolling fire engines and sparkling ambulances. Some Civll and Revolutionary war recreationists ride on floats, and a beauty queen blows kisses along the way. There are still lots of flags, a marching band or two (including a Mummer's contingent from nearby Philadelphia) and even the Porta-Potty business drives a truck filled with its standing coffin-like devices. What're they parading for now? Or against? It's nowhere clear.

And there are crowds. Families still line the sidewalks atop their portable lawn furniture. It's the people that tug at my lenses... street moments. Like this... look.

***

This images pushes at the edge for me. You'll recall Idiscovered that Alien Skin's marvelous Bokeh filter (pronounced bouquet) has done as much to ignite my imagination as LensBabies seem to have done for my friends. So I went back to AlienSkin and downloaded a trial version of their SnapArt filter for PhotoShop. I needed to pull out of this image... well, what I've pulled out of this image you can see up there. And it occurred to me that SnapArt had ways to bring it farther. I needed the image to be about that look. (BTW I see this as a mate to The Look 1) . This was a feeling based almost entirely upon a single eye. But without the swirl of a sense of place, it lost its power.

SnapArt's allowed me to make it explode. Can you feel it?

By Request

(Click above)
A participant in last Wednesday's event at Musser Park emailed me. "Ted, I've seen those gatherings portrayed on TV and in print, yet none seem as sensitive as the handful of pictures you've posted here over the last week. I wonder if you could put some together for me... perhaps in square formats... that I might get framed to hang? I'm thinking that this is a quiet footnote to history and I'd like to keep it in my home office."

How flattering. And of course I have done that... and here are the results. He went on to tell me that he might want as many as three, each to measure about twenty inches on a side. So here's what I prepared for him.

Have any of you comments? They do look handsome... and somehow quietly seem to glimmer at that size. It will be interesting to see them matted and framed, huh?

Bokeh Revisited

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Whoa! Got an email yesterday from Terence Tay, the lead developer of Alien Skin's Bokeh. As you'll recall last Saturday (April 18th) I posted a quick doodle I did using the demo version of that application. I'm more than pleased. In such little time I was able to get the effects you can see in that image. I posted other examples of my Bokeh-play on other sites which seems to have gotten a bunch of you interested in the PhotoShop filter. Actually I did the Saturday image about ten or twelve days ago when I first downloaded the Bokeh demo. Then I started applying it to the images I captured on April 15th in Musser Park during the political demonstration.

It's my strong feeling that filters are to us as brushes are to painters. You use them sparingly to tease out the ideas and feelings that you want your art to communicate. I hope that the Bokeh filter was used so subtly in this series that you actually don't notice it since there are a range of other tools at work in each of those images.

My point is, that I'm finding the AlienSkin application increasingly useful, and today's posting from that same Musser Park demonstration would not have been possible in the same time without the Bokeh filter. And yet... I hope that even when you study the image that you won't be easily able to track down the specific elements of the piece which Bokeh helped me create.

It was wonderful of Terence to contact and thank me for featuring his filter. I hope he enjoys this image as well. More importantly I hope that you all do... and appreciate the strength of this man I've pictured here. His strong personality demanded, I think, a dramatic presentation... and yeah... Bokeh seems to help do that.

Enjoy....

Another - Bokeh

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Here's another from the political demonstration in Musser Park last Wednesday. It's also another of my uses of AlienSkin's Bokeh which I discussed yesterday. So?

I have the feeling that the event was rich in cinematic moments... even quiet epic feelings. Here's one. Does it work?

Have You Found Bokeh?

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The software magicians at Alien Skin have a new application called 'Bokeh'. Oh, alright, I don't know how new it is, but I just discovered it. There's a free thirty day download and you can play with all of its functions.

I discovered Belle on a shelf in a run down tourist trap. See there on the bottom of this post? That's where she stood among a bunch of Gone With The Wind flotsam.

I never could figure out what to do with Belle. She seems to niggle at me to find her a place in an image. And maybe I shall some day. But that's not the point. Nope, I wanted to try Bokeh out on something, so I pulled Belle up and in about ten minutes this is what I made. I can see so many subtle (yeah, I know this one's over the top... don't nag me... K?) ways to use the effects this PhotoShop fllter allows. I'm in love... I think. Wuddaya think? Let me know, and if you try their free demo offer, let me know where you've posted your experiments, this looks like a silver bullet, huh?

Oh, and here's the link to AlienSkin's Bokeh , enjoy...

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And here's the original...


Click There




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And here's a last variation.... Hmmmmm.... Not real manly though... Gotta think on this one, eh?

Crushed

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She was among Wednesday's demonstrators in Musser Park. Her fingers squeezed at a sign that she dwarfed behind. Here was a teeny person with a large scrawl that screamed, "CRUSHING!"

Bill Died

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I'm tired tonight.

Sometimes life wears us down,huh? I missed Billy's funeral this morning.He died quietly in his sleep last weekend. The mass was in Palm Beach and there was no way to get down to Florida in time... too many balls in the air here. And that's my point about life... it's exhausting keeping all that stuff aloft.

You may recall Bill Manson. Click here to see the original posting back on December 9 of '07. It remains one of my favorite portraitsr... because I can find Billy in there. I can see him in those eyes and the slightly pursed iips. I can feel the dash of the memory he wafted the way a clearing in the April woods tingles at all of your senses.

I miss Bill even though we rarely saw one another... and to be fair, as he unpacked his memory's baggage, he long ago forgot me. But inside my mind are the times that he and Gerry made my parents laugh. The way he'd show up from somewhere in the world with stories and charm... the way he made a young boy dream that things could be wonderful way away... and yet come back here - so that the farthest part of the world was only days away from home. And as I sit here now remembering all of that... I realize that we're all links... his was a strong one.

Men are like that.

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Incidentally, his daughters Lisa and Amy chose this picture as the front of Bill's funeral card. I'm glad they also find him in there.

Expression

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They met today. In Musser Park. I live beside the park so I saw them meet. Hundreds of them. Today is important in the United States. It is the only day where there is virtually unanimous participation in a civic action. Today is April 15th. To citizens, or legal residents - it is the only fixed date which we must adhere to or face the potential of large men coming to our homes. With guns. It is a day enforced by coercion. There is no other coercion day in this country. If you don't, um, celebrate it the way you are told... that is if you are accused of not following its rules... you are guilty of the charges unless you can prove innocence. That is the only exception to the rules of American justice prescribed in the country's constitution.

Today there were demonstrators in Musser Park, in Lancaster, PA. Hundreds of them. It wasn't an accident that they chose to gather on this date. CNN has labelled their meeting, anti-government. CNN is known around the world. Perhaps you know what it is. And perhaps you know why April 15th is symbolic to the people who met in Musser Park to express themselves?

Is there a Freedom Of Expression?

Oh, by the way there were no elected officials in the park today. No mayors, no City Councilors, no County Commissioners (Lancaster is a county seat), no judges, no state representatives, state senators, no governors, federal congressmen or senators. Nor were any of their staffs present.

Just hundreds of people... expressing. It's never happened there before. About April 15th.

Painterly? Yeah... painterly.

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I've been this way before which you can see if you click here.
But this time it's an exercise. I wanted to see how painterly I could make this image, and how surreal that effect would make the final image.

The idea of surreal is fascinating. Our minds evolved to seek patterns. If we could see a puma in the leafy bushes, we had a better chance of survival. So we've become hardwired to discover relationships among facts. The surreal image presents a number of sharp facts which are, essentially un-related. It's a kind of artistic tease. You know a picture of a salami, a mound of sand, and the back of a man in a derby hat. Surreal.

Now my question here is, can you remove enough of the image ... the facts ... to leave a pattern which is not explicable? Of course by linking this to the earlier version as I've done above perhaps defeats the deal. I guess I should have chosen an image for which you had no anchor, huh?

Hmmmm... Okay, back to the drawing boards... Literally! Grumble

The Poet Wrote...

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"For beauty's nothing but the beginning of terror." - Rainer Maria Rilke

Sigh, don't you love great German poets? Explode-the-milk-through-your-nose FUNNNNY! You get the feeling that Rainer Maria Rilke had a dazzlingly pretty mother... Who gave him that middle name.

Which wasn't totally funny in high school. Um, well not to Rainer Maria Rilke. I've always thought, as I read Rilke, that his mommy's beauty probably talked his dad into a lots of stuff. Like naming his boy, Maria. Which results in either a totally tough youngster... or a kick-ass sour poet. I'm guessing that Rainer wasn't what women call a bad boy, huh?

Boys Dream Of Angels

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There's a myth about Victoria's Secret angels. They're supposed to be the fantasy of healthy young boys. When in fact the angelic dreams of the healthiest boys I knew had nothing to do with jiggling women in sparkly underwear. YUCH!

Nope, we dreamt at a time when things like cars were made NOT to feed the nightmares of grim governments obsessed with sanding away anything powerful, dangerous, wasteful, or romantic about them. Uh-uh. Then they were sleek, muscular, responsive, and melodic angels gleaming squint-bright through our boyhood night-times.

They let us drive a glowing enthusiasm that's somehow dimmed.

Ahh… but those were childish times when leaders preached optimism and its reward was angels that glimmered in a boy’s sleep.

The Photograph Is A Fact

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It's not the difficulty of technique that makes something into art. Nope... nope... it's the challenge of what an image expresses, you know what I'm saying? Hmmm.. Lemme try that differently. The greatest thoughts have been expressed by the simplest technique... writing.

A photograph is a fact... well it is a couple of facts. What it is about is factual. And the thing itself... you can see it, examine it - its very existence is factual.

An image on the other hand. This thing here... It is not about something factual. But you can see it, consider it. It exists. And its existence is a fact, right?

So... so.... What it is is NOT a manipulated photograph. What it is is a feeling that I've enhanced. And how was I feeling? Um, well... just like that image there. Right?

And that's a fact!

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By the way, the feeling I mentioned was all about what's going on in America right now. Urban ideologies are pouring over the countryside. The liberal has broken through the conservative. The taxis are swirling through the covered bridges. How will they be received? Are the country roads two-way? Will they? Can they - ever go back? Are urban feelings way out of place in a foreign country? Or are they the ones that we have been waiting for?

Eats

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Recall the tale of the ant and the grasshopper? Like a haunting tune, it's hard, just now, to get out of my mind. I think it's a news thing? Anyway, it's cheerful to have this memory - the kids will cherish it, huh?

Just Flowers

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Longwood Gardens is about forty miles from my home in Lancaster. It's in Bucks County not far from the Brandywine Museum we visit frequently. A legacy of the Dupont Family the gardens sprawl both outside and inside. Last week we stopped by and while the March air was still frigid... well, the arboretum encapsulated what's just about to happen outside the house here in Lancaster.

I don't do flower pictures. If you scroll down to the keywords below this post you'll see "Flowers" and if you click there, well I don't think, of all the images on this blog, that more than about five are actual flowers. There are two reasons I don't do flowers..... (1) they are too damned easy. I mean after all you aim the lens click the shutter and there's a flower picture. And usually it's colorful and all that but (2) They are too damned hard. It continually amazes me to see terrific artists who make flower images that resonate with a new intensity. My flowers are so... so... booooring. They simply don't ROCK!

But still, when I roam through Longwood gardens it's as if my camera fires by itself. And I come away with discs crammed with bazillions of boooooring flower images. There's probably some secret to it. Sigh... But nobody's ever told it to me.

Anywayzzzzz.... just as I only posted one Fall picture last year... here's my one spring flower thingeee.... Suggestions?

Dare Me

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Shiree challenged me. She made this image available with a dare to "Do what you will to me." She wants a new square dramatic avatar. Otherwise... Well, it's my call. Now I figured a couple of things. Her screen name is Magicat. Okay... there's that 'magic' thing. And the virgin image shows some skin, eh? Moreover there's that low key background and the high contrast flash-bulb club lighting. I'm not the only one she's challenged.

Hmmm.... attractive woman, huh? Young. Sexy. Looking for an exciting image - an attention grabber. Look at her features. A couple reeeeely pop right? But that lighting... ohhhhhh that lighting. Fine... that's the challenge. And here...
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Here's my solution. So? Wuddaya think?

The National Gallery • Washington, DC

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Went to the National Museum of Art last Thursday to see the Dutch Cityscape paintings. Pity they refused photographic permission in that show. They were all examples of the mid 1600's Golden Age of the Dutch. And they were astonishingly photojournalistic. Interesting that this sort of razor sharp drawing no longer has much market today. By the mid 1800s photographers had wiped out the market for that craft almost completely. And now, with the arrival of digital tools, photographers are closing in on the impressionistic imaginings of today's fine artists. Hmmmm..... Wonder what's next?

The Artist

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Regardless of what art is... there's another question: Why do people do art?

Hmmmm.... I've got three reasons:

(1) They have an instinct to gather parts of life for themselves or,
(2) They want to save parts of themselves for the future or,
(3) They want to stuff a market in a bottle cast into the tides of time...

You want to add more?

New Link Under Ted's Essays!

Lookit! Yippee, Vonne from The Fine Arts Composite Group at the explosively popular RedBubble forums interviewed ME! And she probed into my photo/art influences, what triggers and maintains my inspiration, what I want to get across artistically, the hardest obstacles, my plans, and my advice to the novice.

I'm psyched. If you've wondered about any of that stuff that I wonder about... just click on the link under "Ted's Essays" in the right hand column and enjoy... and gimme your reactions here... K? That'd be reeeeeely cool and visitors will get a chance to react to your reactions and on and on... Kew-el!

The Second Largest Fantasy

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There are studies which show that the second most frequent fantasy of both men and women is time travel. And overwhelmingly the travelers want to explore history. They want to walk yesterday's streets.

I'm guessing that's why cities try to preserve large swatches of their downtowns. They're like living Disney Worlds. I call them 'squint streets'. You know, if you squint into the light just right, well you can can imagine that abruptly people are dressed differently. That the signs, and streets morph back into time. And... and... see... see... I have not squinched my eyes to peer back reeeeeely far, just to the 30s in Florence. But I'm guessing the next time you walk through this place, you can squint yourself way back farther, eh?

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Once again, I've posted here the virgin images direct from my memory cards. The first was taken with my old Canon 20D through the 17-85mm at f6.3 at 1/100. The ISO was 800. It was still early morning at around 8:05 looking generally northeast. The 1930s Ford pickup truck is a utilitarian beauty. Built Ford-Tough when that meant something - these babies worked their way through the depression on both sides of the Atlantic.

And the street wending it's way through Florence has watched vehicles evolve for hundreds of years. Not sure what car's actually sitting half onto the ancient sidewalk. Is it an Audi? A Bugatti? Anyway, here's my tabletop shot grabbed in my office with direct light. I shot it with my new Canon G10 at an ISO of 400, f2.8 at 1/13th of a second. Handheld as usual (you know I have that tripod phobia). It's part of an antique miniature vehicle collection I keep on my office shelves. Why? It's a man-thing. If you want to see larger images, click on the thumbnails.

Image Compositing

One of my favorite images is "The Spirit" which I made last summer
<- and you may enlarge this tutorial by clicking on it.

Recently I entered 'Spirit' into a challenge on a forum where it was initially rejected because the moderators felt that the rules required that all entries be photographs. As you can see, Spirit does not have a traditional photographic look. And that is the wonderful thing about being a photographic artist today. Just like composers, novelists, poets, sculptors and painters... we are totally free as photographers to create anything we can imagine. This is wonderful but sometimes confusing to visitors.

'Spirit' is completely a photographic composite. It only differs from the wet darkroom technique of sandwiching negatives into an enlarger in nuance. But that nuance is magical, eh? I've invited the judges to visit this site, and to look at my explanation here, showing how I made Spirit soar.

Academic Freedom

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Actions have consequences
Rights have responsibilities
Unless... You have...
Tenure.






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I'm still experimenting with my new Canon G10 so again - for the geeky folk like me who enjoy this sort of thing... Direct from my HD card, here is the virgin photograph of my professor just as I caught him at ISO 400 in the existing light "on campus" in Adamstown yesterday afternoon. Nice automatic color balance, eh? And the painting effects? All done with assorted brushes in PhotoShop... Enjoy.

Chick Magnet?

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Parked outside of Madison Square Garden my Mercedes 500K Special Roadster glimmers in the city, huh? It belongs there with its top down and motor purring. Purring.... it's a sound that attracts, right? :-)

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Okay, here's another shot, a virgin photo of that 1936 Mercedes on my office desk top pulled right from my HD card. Sigh, I like it better in NYC. Whadaya think?

Rocco Redux

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Yeah... I've been to this place before. If you click here, you can see my first (award winning) visit to this image. But as a result of a lot of Australian School influence at the RedBubble Forums... texture techniques are becoming more interesting to me.

Okay... okay... they can be a gimmick. And yes, as April has commented on PhotoSapiens.com, they frequently are used to correct what was otherwise an average image capture. Just recently I actually took what I thought was an average snap shot and purposely lathered on the texture

But, like any filter, lens, POV, or enhancement... texture can also be a useful tool. In this case, I was pleased with the original and wondered if a texture could add some additional wonder to the image. Like a lot of you, I don't take pictures, I make images. So techniques which might reinforce the mystery, resonance, or delight I want to communicate are always interesting.. as long as the technique does not wag the dog... so to speak. Soooo..

With all of that in mind, I've revisited Rocco's Adventure. And? Does the texture deepen the story, or pull water out of the emotional pool leaving a more shallow experience? Thoughts?

Birds

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Get set for this.... okay... here it comes.... READY??

Wonder is a perishable commodity - interest, like bread, can go stale.

So? did I get that right? Huh? Huh?

And if I'm correct, then the challenge we face is in keeping our wonder engorged. And that's one of the reasons why photographers are generally gear heads. It's not that we expect to find the silver bullet in each new lens, filter, or tripod. Nope, we're not looking for the ability to be creative... uh-uh. We've done that before, know we can do it again, just as soon as the mood hits. Trouble is the pesky lengthening time between moods.

So gear isn't a substitute for creativity any more than Viagra is a substitute for sex. We don't want gear to make a picture, but we want it to stimulate one.

Which is probably one reason I just bought this new little point-and-click Canon PowerShot G10 that I showed off yesterday. Cameras don't make art, artists make art. But I figure if I can carry a full function camera in my pocket which will do more than the Leica M series could do back in the 60s... Hey... I ought to carry that camera around. If I'm going to walk about framing all the time, why not have a camera close by to exploit those frames?

So here today I'm posting the second image from my new G10. Yesterday visitors commented on the G10, but they wondered if yesterday's image was direct from the camera. Nope! Neither is this one. I don't want a camera anymore which will produce final photographs. I have lost my faith in a camera's ability to create images which express what I think or feel. But I've used cameras which cannot produce photos which I can enhance into the wonders or ideas that I want to communicate.

So the question I have about the G10 is not whether it will produce perfectly rendered moments, but whether it will give me material which is indistinguishable from the stuff I can gather with my DSLR and its lenses.

So here's my second try from Friday afternoon's shoot at the Amish farm. This bird house sat exactly to the left of the corn cribs on yesterday's image. I wanted to find wonder in that little spot. So? Does this create a sense of place? Is this G10 capable of doing what I've been doing for over half a century with my lenses and cameras?

Whudaya thihk about that challenge for the G10, and whuddaya think about "Birds"?

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For those who are interested in reeeeely geeky stuff (like me), here's the virgin image direct from the HD card without any enhancement of this image. You can judge for yourself how much opportunity the G10 has provided me in kneading out my own feelings about the moment. I think this Canon machine's a keeper. Do you agree? I can see a lot of situations in which it could replace my 40D and my three lenses. There's only one problem though. It sure doesn't give me any authority. I doubt anyone will give me the respect that comes when I screw my Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens onto the D40. It sure doesn't feel like a serious camera. While it's about the size of the M series Leica's, well, with the large LED in the back and the just-slightly-clunky body... It sure won't get me into any place that excludes beginners. Which is a topic for another day, eh?

Suffice it to be said, this box, and its user (me) will probably be dismissed by other dedicated photographers. It makes it look as if I have failed to pay the dues for admission into the club... either in terms of gear or in terms of experience. Hmmmm.... that could be an important consideration here. But again, that's a whole new topic.

Amish Farm In Winter

NEW CAMERA TEST - WUDAYA THINK?

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My new Canon PowerShot G10, point-and-click came this afternoon. So at 4:30 I raced about five miles out of Lancaster and on a back road found this Amish farm vista. It's shot in RAW mode at f11 and 1/500 with an ISO of 200 with the sun low in the sky behind me. The thing allows for full automatic override and it's got a 5X zoom that seems pretty well made to match the camera. It fits into my pocket and, oh yea, most importantly it's got a range finder and a 17.5 mxpl sensor. I think that few P&Cs still have range finders which means heavy battery drain, and glare problems. However the range finder suffers from gordo parallax chopping.

So... here's the first image I tried. I'm impressed with the palette information re. sky to shadows. I've cranked this out so that I can easily print it at 4 feet on the horizontal edge (someone want to convert that to meters?) The dynamic range seems very strong. But ... well... what do you think? It's hard for me to carry this sissy little thing. It seems to challenge my man-hood. I feel girly or amateurish or... well, both. And yet I can see that I can carry it about in my pocket and consequently get image material that I'd never other wise get since lugging my normal kit is a challenge..

Okay... if I hadn't mentioned it was a P&C... would you have guessed? Be brutal... okay?


BTW.... note the date. This is THE DEAD OF WINTER here in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Note the (missing) snow cover! Hmmm...... Yesterday it was about 50 degrees. This may just be a belated January thaw.

Lunch Time

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Everywhere I look
I am framing.
You know?

And since everything has
multiple explanations
I try to frame questions.



And if they glow
like windows to
another place.

Then the result makes me
wonder. So that's
what I look to frame...
And finally capture.
You know?

Wonder.

Texture Addiction

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The texture rage is cresting. Im not sure why textures seem to add additional dimensions to otherwise ordinary snapshots. Any thought?

The Violinist

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Hmmmm.... can art be entertainment? If it is, is it then a 'lesser art'? Is the intention to entertain too shallow for a serious artist? Maybe... maybe the word 'serious' is automatically negated by the word, 'entertainment'? Which makes me wonder if I should be entertained by Mozart? Picasso? Tennessee Williams? Fellini?

Here's an image... my image... of a violinist, a woman who is quite gifted. She wields her bow like a fencer's foil. It darts, stabs, dnces, and glides cutting feelings from the air. Her training was serious, so can her performance be entertaining?

Is this image entertaining? The jaws of my camera bite a moment free from the blur of time. And that provides me with an opportunity to express my feelings and thoughts about the frozen instant. So? How much is art, how much is entertainment. Or can it all be entertaining art, or artistic entertaiment?

Particularly when it is an image of an entertainer interpreting art?

Grumble, once again, my head hurts from all of this. Goodnight.

Yellow

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We have a huge common inheritance. I tend to lurk among the supporting scaffolding.