Lookout - New Criticism DAMN!

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GRUMBLE! Once upon a time my images were rejected from photographic sites because they were visual art. Now they are getting rejected from visual art sites because... they are filtered! See this image? I've posted the original below. There are photographic based web sites that are for images which have been enhanced by brush and specifically must show the brush strokes. Look at my image here. See the strokes?


Now look at the original. Do you see any strokes? Yeah, I carefully laid the strokes in - with SnapArt2 from AlienSkin. And NO... I did not push a button and get a one-size-fits-all paint-by-numbers, cookie-cutter result. This image was created with over three dozen layers. Look for example at the tree line, the cropping, the quality of light. I have mixed impasto with oils. I have mixed brushes and even in some places employed pointilism. Everywhere I improved upon the dynamic range to create what I felt as I created this image from a picture I took around the corner and down the block from my home here in Lancaster.

This was not a mere swirling about of brushes in CS4 or Painter XI. This is the result of significant forethought, and the application of extensive technique to achieve an end I DARE YOU TO REPLICATE!!!

It is a unique work of art which, among other tools, involved SnapArt2 - a number of times in different locations. And yet it has been rejected as (mere) filtration. If it's so easy to do... go ahead... DO IT! Damn I am pizzzzed.

At first post processing was rejected out of hand by the organic photographers. Now filtration is what? Too easy? THE HELL IT IS! Sigh.....

Grumble... Rant... ERRRRRG! Isn't this just the latest variant of the "I don't know what that is but it isn't photography" close minded schools of mental fertilizer?

Damn I am HOT!

Moi

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My friend Steven Issell was brave enough to use AlienSkin''s SnapArt on his own picture. and people have griped about the avatar I'm widely using. Sooooo.... Today I stood in front of a window, held out my Canon G10 and snapped this picture of me. Then I carefully applied the impasto option that SnapArt offers taking care to make me look as good as the basic material will allow. After all, I own the blog right? So here's the result... And I'm holding AlienSkin totally responsible for making me look like that. Pity you can't see the canvas effect, and the depth of the paint. It's cool to see the effect even on such a familiar face.

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No virgin images or gear stuff this time. Whatcha see is what I got through the G10. Nice that it has 14.5 Mpxs though, they really allow the filter to function and hold onto max sharpness.

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).

Cape May In August

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Cape May's a city that hangs on New Jersey's southern point. A piece of it faces the ocean, another piece the bay. And between the two edges sit Victoria's houses. Something about the deliberate way people present their homes hits my illustrator button. The town's pieces look like magazine covers, don't you think?

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Hey... now you can follow me on Twitter!! Tweet me at http://twitter.com/Editor_Ted

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And here's sort of the virgin image, well seven images... pulled from my FlashCard and stitched together in PhotoShop. It should be easy to see where I went from here, right? Not sure if you'd call this assembled images pre or post processing, but they're what my Canon EOS 40D saw through its Canon EF-S 10-22mm (f3.5-4.5). After this assembly I cropped, then warped it into acceptable shape. Of course there's extensive tone mapping then both Topaz and Alien Skin's SnapArt finished the job.

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....

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 #5: Sunrise Over Clara

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Until digital, photographers were taught to seek and find. All other artists were taught to express what they thought and felt. Photographers pared down what they found, while the rest of the art world built up what they imagined. For the photographer to succeed s/he had to apply imagination to re-work a discovered object or moment. S/he created by eliminating while all other artists created by … well… creating.

Here's a sunrise over the second pond at the Potter County hunting camp I've been discussing since my visit last weekend. Now about that sunrise that's "over" Potter County... the point is: well I felt it crackling through the leaves and pouring itself down onto the shrubs, mists, and glades. And here's how I felt it.
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PreProcessing: No surprise that I continued to shoot through my Canon 40D's EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6). PostProcessing: Here we see the power of AlienSkin's SnapArt water color brushing's robust ability to interrelate with Topaz filters. Of course I enhanced the red scale of the sky throughout the shrubbery's highlights. It seemed to me to be a study in early morning textures.

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.

Potter County #1: The Lodge

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Went to visit The Endless Mountains at their western edge this weekend. Here's the hunting camp that sits on its estate in Clara, a tiny town in Potter County, Pennsylvania. Quiet, remote, nice neighbors, but not many. It is a tad different from New York City a week or so ago. There's a reason that Pennsylvania's called the Keystone State. It's the doorway between the megalopolis of America's east coast and the country's west.
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This lodge sits on a LOT of land which forms the biggest part of an Appalachian mountain. Oddly, the folks up there don’t name their mountains, I guess because there are so many of the things? After all, when you have lawn full of grass, you don’t bother to name the blades, eh?

Um, did I mention that the guys never invite wives or lady-friends along? Un-huh, there are still places where men can drink, smoke cigars, play cards, scratch their…. um… And, oh yeah, sometimes hunt. Think of it as an ANTI-SPA. Wonder when that’ll get outlawed, huh?
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PreProcessing: I used my Canon D40 to capture a series through its EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6): PostProcessing: PS/CS4 stitched the shots together and after rigorously adjusting the dynamic range, adding a new sky, and eliminating a parked car – AlienSkin’s SnapArt2 techniques allowed me to mix colored pencils with oil paints and create a mixed media rendering of the lodge-where-women-don’t-go

Aura

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Imagination works between different versions of the truth… it fills in the inconsistencies either merging the alternatives or patching up the one chosen. Imagination’s a lot like the corner man in a prize fight. He tries to un-batter the fighter between rounds. Tries to send back a champion each time.

The fine artist understands that there’s a difference between showing a moment and cracing open its meaning. Artists communicate auras…. That curious mesh of time and space that‘s a carrier for quality and character.
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PreProcessing This is, of course, the protagonist from yesterday’s Night Shelter captured in a Florence Street with my Canon 20D’s EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens. PostProcessing Layers of PS CS4 to model this man’s aura into three dimensions and then the generous use of AlienSkin’s Bokeh to isolate him so I could finally turn to SnapArt for a subtle layering of oil strokes.

Night Shelter

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Digital artists maneuver in a space between technology and magic. A technician is judged by the reproducibility of his results. It is just the other way around for the artist. Rearranging reality is well within the privileges of my poetic license. Technique is a language… it allows communication between subject, artist, and audience. Artists aren’t so much spectators as they are speculators about information.

Feelings find shelter in the night… and in dreams.

We are what we feel.
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PreProcessing of each of these elements happened In Florence, Italy through my Canon 20d's EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens. PostProcessing in my MacBookPro with PS CS4 where I brought together my scene and its protagonist using AlienSkin's SnapArt to create the theatrical moment.

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.

Screened

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Sculptor Alberto Giacometti wrote, "One never sees things. One sees them through a screen." He argued that the image held primacy over the existence it was supposed to depict.

I take photographs, not so much to remember where I've been, but to discover it. My scan of a moment which will never come again is infinitely inferior to my camera's scan of that same instant. Later I can study it through a different lens... the lens of my emotions and feelings which I can focus infinitely tighter than the distractions of the original moment allowed me to do. There, in my studio, I can find in the image shiny details which come together to form conclusions that were simply not obvious at the 'real' instant.

There is so much more in a photo than in memory. And so much more that imagination can do with that memory when it's discovered for the first time in a quiet study of its photograph.

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I had the Giacometti quote in mind as I prowled Manhattan soooo.... Pre-Processing: Last week in Times Square. Usually we look to the Times triangular building from some one or another angle... and we miss the walls to that square. Chris and I ate our lunch from behind one of those windows on second floor of that building up there to the left. And we peered down on the swirls going on below. Then we came out, and I looked back and up... and grabbed four shots for a pano.Post-Processing: I had Photoshop CS4 stitch together the pano using the power of its 'collage' layout option with which I deliberately created a tumbling effect. Then I stitched them together again using the 'cylindrical' option which allowed me to tease out the central building as the star of this trio. I added palette and a sky from Cape Cod. I used Topaz in part to dramatize some elements and the Oil painting option (carefully applied in stroked layers) to the scene all around the central building to drop them back and to allow that central building to pop. Of course there is considerable detailed work with the dynamic range. As usual, my final file for this image is about a gigabyte. I'm a storage hog.

Just More Flowers

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I won’t send flowers
They’re too easy
And yet flowers
Are too difficult


So I won’t…
Except once or
Four times
Each year…
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Pre processing in my Lancaster back yard this weekend through my 40D with its Canon EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6) screwed on. Aperture priority of course with the thing opened full to squeeze the depth out of the field. And Post processing? Well I hunted for the personality of these girls in CS4 with AlienSkin’s SnapArt tuned to play the music.
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See… Back in late March I posted the first in this series of my manly attempt to picture girly flowers. Sigh… No matter how I try, they come out hard and muscular. Flowers are about nuance… but I’m not certain a man quite gets that… Which makes flowers for the guy artist simultaneously too easy… and too difficult. Well, there’s always Fall, eh?
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Suckability

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John Updike in an essay quite critical of photography as an art form wrote, "We cannot expect the camera to suck in, with light and shade, the photographer's emotion." Mr. Updike died recently before he got to fully appreciate what photographers can do now. We can suck... and we can regurgitate... at a level with painters. Now whether we can suck as well as they can... Hmmmm... That depends upon the suckability of the individual artist, huh?

Rita's visiting her family this week, so I went to NYC for the day last Friday with my buddy Chis Herr to do a day of pre-processing with my Canon G10. A peculiar thing happened. It felt claustrophobic. I've not ever been as aware of the teeming masses that crammed the sidewalks and streets. The police were enforcing the traffic lights in teams with solid white chains to corral the pedestrians from simply ignoring the signals. Crammed, jammed, slammed about I had no sense of fear, but lots of discomfort as the tide rushed along the grimy ways.

The city's showing its age, and melancholy.

Oh... Post Processing for this surreal capture was done with Lucis Filters in CS4. At the moment at least, my recollections of last Friday seem best described in surreal.

Rapture

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Sometimes it pours like syrup... it's stuff we can touch, and feel it run across our skin. And if we peer into it, eyes closed, it's a warmer than a baby's giggle.

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"You know," she said with a peculiar smirk, "you're never more than four feet or seventy seven seconds from wonder."

"Huh," I looked up from my book at the woman in the seat across the aisle.

"Actually," she wasn't really looking at me... more through me, "wonders are so commonplace that they're frequently invisible to us. Artists though... artists they recognize every one of them. Or at least I think so."

"Huh?" I said again. Not terribly original but I wasn't really in a conversation with her so much as I seemed to be her very small audience.

"Yet you know, they're not all of the same moment, um, import," there was a childlike quality about her. "But even then it takes an artist to understand the differences. Most are just moving, passionate, instants. And then there are those few wonders which can move the artist to.... to..." Her eyes flittered. Hunting that word sent her head moving almost as if she were a little girl on a midsummer's night adventure tracking a dancing lightening bug.

"They can move the artist to what," I heard myself murmur willing the word to come to her... to have her reveal it to me...

"To... to... _rapture_."

The rest of the trip we both sat... silent.
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Apple pulled its service today. Now http://homepage.mac.com/byrneprintmaker/ sits up but my door's closed. I can't remove it, change it, or alter it in any way. I guess if I stop paying for my mobile me subscription it will vanish in a puff. But since MobieMe is a cloud where I sync all of my machines, that's not likely.

So it will bob up there on the virtual seas. Odd huh?

I gotta find another place to store my images. Suggestions?

4 Rules Of Wedding Guest Etiquette Photography

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Maria and John were married last weekend in Pittsburgh. And the reception was held at LeMont...

The gourmet restaurant sits behind a crystal wall atop Mt. Washington which peers down upon The Point... where the mighty and historic Ohio, Monongahela, and Allegheny rivers swirl together to showcase Steel City's astonishing explosion of world headquarters.

While they're destined to enjoy a lot of things, the couple - my wife's cousins - will never again be the stars of a setting to rival their wedding afloat in a glimmering gem filled with everyone they love.

I wanted to capture one feeling to bring them back there each time they open it up over the years. A memory for them... So? How'd I do?

Following the rules...

When you're a guest there's a clear etiquette involving photography.

Most importantly, there's a professional who's earning a living documenting the event. .

• Rule number one... DON'T COMPETE! Don't interfere, insinuate, elbow, or shove into the pro-space. You're not the cook, so hunt for the crumbs.
• Rule Number two... Don't compose the bridal party. They have entered the zone of photography fatigue. The pro has done all of the standard poses, configurations, assemblies, and CLICHéS!!!!
• Rule Number three... Discover the details and candids. These are the atmospherics which will bring the memory book to life for the kids twenty years from now. You know the people better than the pro, know the culture. Know what will make Aunt Clara tear up, Uncle Jim giggle. You know about Harry's hairpiece and Myrna's implants.

And you know what the bride and groom consider romantic. If you want to give them a present, don't go looking to grab yourself one.

Here's your chance to repay your hosts for a great family meeting... By marrying your craft to their tastes.

• Rule 4... The wedding is NOT about you... yet strangely, the more invisible you become, the more memorable you will be....

Justin

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this is my nephew Justin. He's married to Suzy... who was last night's posting. We're in Pittsburgh for the Fourth Of July weekend. Fireworks are making my dog Rocco crazy. Poor little guy. He doesn't understand how patriotism involves exploding things. Hmmmm... maybe I don't either. Lemme think on that.