Imaging Light in Autumn

Optimism ebbs and flows. Sometimes I feel I'm on the right track with digital imaging; at other times I feel I am deeply deluded. 

On Tuesday, after fixing lunch for Tony, I did not shoot the photo images until after he left. I prepared the plate with food, set up the table and the lighting and took shots in what I think was a more professional way. The following day, I followed up with more studio shoots of fruits in a woven basket to which I added whimsy in the form of an Indonesian salamander crawling among the apples.

I have lately been aware how change comes very slowly. I have always told people that losing weight was a matter of changing your lifestyle. I am learning the truth of this as I begin to pare away the weight I have gained recently.

The same holds true for learning photography and digital imaging. It took me three weeks to experiment and gain confidence manually adjusting aperture on the Canon D5. Now I find myself implementing the little I know about studio lighting. I need to study lighting even more and still life is right now accessible for me to learn this.

On public TV the other day I watched a landscape painter talk about Paul Cezanne and how he changed visual art and moved it from impressionism to modernism. He set his easel at the same spot outside Aix-en-Provence to paint the various lights that bathed the Sainte-Victoire mountain and the wild valley below it. Cezanne was religious about trying to capture light. Light, too, is at the heart of photography, certainly at the heart of the images I want to capture and display.

Fall Apples

When the energy is high, the mind feels overwhelmed with stimuli. Images appear significant, probably way beyond what they mean. Details heard sound profound. And there are dozens of options for how to use the time and not enough time to do them all.

Yesterday, after purchasing my balsamic vinegar from Trader Joe's, I crossed the street to T. J. Maxx. I wanted to get some ramekins to measure and mold rice on my platter. I want to lose the weight I've recently gained and also work on improving the quality of my daily living. There on a stainless steel shelf were many-colored bottles and containers of balsamic vinegar, and other goodies my mind lately has been wanting to use in the kitchen again. Specialty cookies from Italy, France and even Greece, wonderful vinegars, flavored or aged. There were sachets of herbs and tins of teas. I dreamt of the lands I have visited and want to visit them again. These products from across the Atlantic seem richer than anything I could find at Marsh or even Trader Joe's.

At lunch today, watching Travelscope on public television, I was struck once again by what global village means nowadays. Joseph Rosendo, the host, took viewers to the Christmastime markets of Northern Germany. I had not wanted to visit Northern Europe before. I loved the summer scenes of Southern Europe along the Mediterranean - olive trees, sun-kissed tomatoes, orange and lemon trees, cypresses and eucalyptus trees, ceramic planters full of impatiens, begonia and geraniums, outdoor markets, outdoor cafés, village churches in the shade of giant plane trees, etc.

What 20th century prophets forecast is now our reality. Through travel, not to mention numerous television shows and DVDs we can now visit the remotest corners of the planet and see how people there live and enjoy their lives, master catastrophes and celebrate survival.

Back in Indiana, this is autumn as I have not enjoyed in many years. When my friends, John and Dottie, were still alive, we drove all over the state drinking in the images of autumn but in the last ten years my world has gotten smaller than the Po Valley of Don Camillo. Watching Rosendo's program this afternoon I thought I might put up a Christmas tree this year. I had already told my friends I was going to fix Thanksgiving dinner this year, something I had not done for two decades!

My readings on time, what it is and how we subjectively and objectively experience it, shows the triumph of the concept of linearity. One event leads to another and neither will nor circumstance will move the hands of the clock back so we can live this minute again, that day again, that lifetime again. But within the compass of our short lives we can see cycles, the ebb and flow of perhaps a handful of elements that dominate our lives. Sometimes we forget a few but they come back again and they seem more precious then. 

We grow our appreciation of the small and large details of life with time.

Lake Macatawa, Michigan

These are images from my trip to Saugatuck with Tony in July 2007. I still have not resumed doing Photoshop tutorials but just from processing at least 10 images every day I am learning the effects of various adjustment tools in the program that I have already learned. 

Learning is a continual process and cumulative. After I found out about washed out details from too little or too  much exposure, I have corrected these before doing anything else. Now I find out that while increasing fill light to reduce the no-detail blackness improves the image (unless I want to leave the black areas dark), correcting from too much exposure sometimes is not necessary depending on whether I want the details to show. It all depends on what the image requires. The way the image looks in the end is what matters. Now if I was to print these photos I might take a different approach to restoring washed-out details.
For posting on the Internet, images tend to look better when I really push up the saturation and add to the clarity in Adobe Raw editing. Somehow, posting the images tends to wash out the colors, maybe because I have chosen white as background for Flickr and this blog. Compare these photos, for instance, with the photo in the previous post from Sorrento.

Torna a Surriento

All the years that I took pictures when traveling to Europe, the Philippines or cities here on the North American mainland and the bulk is hardly worth processing. The images I shot my first digital camera, a Sony, are awful and those shot with my next camera, an Olympus were hardly better. I really moved into serviceable images when I bought my first Canon SLR but I didn't consistently take Raw Files until this last trip to Naples, Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast last May.

La Spezia and the Italian Tour 2006

Three years in a row, Merma and I traveled with Go Ahead to Italy. These photos were from the trip to Northern Italy and the Italian Riviera in 2006

Late Autumn Light

It is light, the quality of light and how it strikes objects here on earth, that remains the major inspiration for my photography.

Light alone is just light, of course. The other half of the equation is mind, the quality of mind and how it perceives objects here on earth.

I've seen so many beautiful days go by recently and nothing inspired stirred in the mind. Seeing may be a simple chemical reaction in an indifferent brain but seeing and seeing beauty is a more complex activity, perhaps even linking sensing or conscious particles beyond the tiny confines of this bony skull that cradles this poor brain.

All my life I have been searching for the formula of happiness. For me happiness, not the Buddhist kind that induces one to non-action but worldly happiness is state of a fecund mind, a mind that seeks to create from the sheer overflow of its energy. Being human is the opposite of indifference. To be human is to be prejudiced, to be the other pole that energy can travel from where it originates, where it has always originated. Without my pole, energy is simply potential and to be human is to turn potential into something concrete and actual. 

It must be somewhat like the behavior of electrons in quantum physics. With the human eye to observe them, they are everywhere. When touched by human consciousness they freeze into specificity.
Maybe I am putting into words needlessly what I might be content to leave unexpressed. But to experience beauty and not express it seems to me not seeing beauty at all.

Capturing an image on the camera's photosensitive cells is most of the work a photographer does but increasingly I am finding that what the camera produces is simply raw material for the work I must do to create the images I like.

And the work I do relies on the quality of mind for raw materials are everywhere around us but must be ignited with the energy of desire for them to come together and partake of our lives.

Ancient Pompeii

These are all the images from Pompeii that I wanted to post. We drove out of Naples to walk up the slopes of Vesuvius earlier that morning. Clouds enveloped the volcano and I got few usable images but by the time we arrived in Pompeii the sky had cleared up.

Processing these photos demonstrated how the color I choose for each image varies widely. Compare, for example, the first two images posted here. Notice how different the color space of the two.

How should I handle color in a series of images? I could strive for consistency and correct the white balance but then I lose the advantage of the "magic hour" light when I take the photos. On the other hand I could process each photo on its own merits and create the color balance I want but then the series will show the variations as if the images had been taken on different days.
Another area of consideration is cropping. Most images are composed as I want to compose them at the time I shoot them. But I like 16 x 9 widescreen images because I want these images to be usable in widescreen videos that I want to put together. Some images look best in other cropping shapes. For instance I like some images to be even wider than tall to emphasize scope while perfectly square images sometimes work best.

Having stopped doing my tutorials in Photoshop, I am using this time to learn more about the aesthetics of digital imaging. Then again I may be simply indulging myself. I do think I am learning just by using the software but I think it is time to go back to the tutorials.
Taking photographs on a group tour has its limitations as well. Other people get in the way and the tour moves at a pace different from how I would like to move. I often don't have time to compose an image the way I want to. Most of my images are shot quickly.

There are advantages to shooting quickly. Chance makes me take images outside what I would normally do and broadens my scope with surprise. I do know though that a professional shoot would involve taking the time not only to find the best locations or compositions but also to set up the camera correctly.
On the other hand, working quickly is balanced by the spontaneousness of the shots I take. Other people's energy influence mine. This is one reason I love shooting models, not just people I recruit in the moment. Models have their own ideas for the images and our energies together create something better than if I were working solo.

I need not only to go back to doing active learning with both photography and post-production but also review what my goals are in photography. I can then map out the direction I want to pursue and shape my web galleries in that direction as well. 

Tuna and Veggies

The rain lightened up by noon and I drove to Sichuan for lunch. I had not eaten there in weeks.

Lunch at the Sichuan restaurant and at 8 China Buffet unfailingly reminds me of what has become my most fabulous memory of eating - the nighttime beachside buffet at Boracay. 

On the most famous island resort in the Philippines, one wends through the lamplit path between the seaside guest cottages and table after table of tropical buffet next to open-air restaurants with tables in multicolored table cloths and white plastic chairs.  Obtrusive loudspeakers carry live music through the air. Filipinos are some of the best musicians in the world although not known for inventiveness. As a race we are great imitators.

At the restaurant we chose, the table lined with fresh banana leaves groaned under the burden of native delicacies like a whole suckling pig lechon, stuffed fried bangus, fresh crabs, prawns and shellfish, Spanish-Filipino specialties and platters of luscious tropical fruits, all lit by fllickering kerosene torches and overhead strings of lights. Dining to the accompaniment of ocean waves splashing on the nearby sand and salty breezes lapping your face for me is the apical gourmet experience.
Food has always been important to me. At Sichuan today, my favorite was the dish of tofu cooked with garlic, green onions, ginger, fermented black beans and savory Sichuan sauce. While hot, the sauce adds more than heat to the dish. The hot pepper is the heart of the dish's flavor core.

Yesterday, coming home from the park, I fixed myself a quick lunch using canned tuna that I quickly sautéed in olive oil, adding a Thai coconut marinade at the last minute to lightly coat the gold-flecked fish flakes. With my version of fried rice that I cooked with crisp dry salami pieces and quick-roasted tomatoes drizzled with olive oil and coarsely ground pink and red peppercorns, the platter looked good enough to photograph. 
After lunch, I arranged the basketful of vegetables I had bought at the grocery on my way home. First I tried using a Chinese silk runner as background. I unrolled the black mylan background I have not used in months. Shooting models I didn't realize that the black background worked best when the lights did not show it up. Whatever I photographed would appear to sit in pitch-black darkness.

I should really take the time to set up the lights and background if I want to shoot platters of food and food ingredients instead of shooting on the fly as I have been doing. Anyway here're a few of the resulting images.

Autumn at Broad Ripple Park

My photo-taking and processing frenzy continued into yesterday morning with photoshoots at Broad Ripple Park and at home. Here are some shots from the park.

Ordinary Goodness

I went into a processing buzz yesterday and processed some fifty images. In addition to revisiting my files from the trip to the Amalfi Coast last May, I processed images from the second shoot I did with my model, Arron, the first we did outdoors.

I look at the arty and artful images that other photographers, especially those who shoot for fashion magazines, and yearn to make similar images, images to stop you in your tracks to say, Wow!
But those are not the images I find myself taking or making. The images I have posted on my websites tend to be ordinary, documenting ordinary moments and insignificant time. My model shoots are also influenced by this way of seeing. 

Oh, there is much I can improve both in how I take photographs and in how I process them but I have always told myself I needed to find my own "voice" as a photographer. In the beginning we are all imitators until some of us realize that what we do naturally is better. We can't all be Steven Meisel or Mario Testino. We shouldn't be. The world needs the diversity of seeing that we can individually contribute our own of seeing else the world would truly be poorer by the limitation.
When I started shooting Kaleb, my first model, I knew nothing about fashion or model photography. I was simply enthralled by being able to capture images of a man that I could choose and create. Close-ups and medium shots, seeing him from uncommon angles, cropping the image to focus on some part of his physiognomy or body - the three hours we spent together were over before I knew it.

Photography allows me to cut the world I see into pieces. Maybe I shall never be an artist. With money and people resources I can set the stage more elaborately but that has not been my lifelong style. Our art reflects who we are and who we are is how we think of ourselves, and more important, how we live ourselves.

The 20 or so images I posted of Arron are images I have not posted or even shown him before. By the time I shot these pictures I had been buying fashion magazines and perusing fashion photography Internet sites. I was aping fashion photography. Arron wanted to be a fashion model. He loves clothes and appearance, something I don't put down but is no longer part of my own design of living. I wanted to help him pursue his dream. The last time we talked I told him I wanted to shoot him again but not try to do fashion shoots. I want to capture my own vision of beauty in images.
The vision continues to change. I want images of ordinary places and people but don't want to bore people with non-sequiturs. I want to encourage others to see, really see, instead of just yielding to the routines of indifference.

But I am also drawn to making something beautiful, if beauty is that which draws our attention and makes us take that sudden gulp of air. Beauty should liberate hormones and make our heart pump just that much more forcefully.

Nowadays with so many people owning equipment and technology with which to concretize their inner vision, beauty seems trivialized. Just writing about it makes me weary. But I find myself at times really shaken out of my rundown life and feel that surge of delight I had forgotten I could feel. Hackneyed and overdone our works sometimes rises above what we deserve. It is for transcendent moments like this that we strive though our hearts are sated and our minds disbelieving.

I'll keep on processing the photographs I already have and shooting new images. Frankly I don't have better options.

At the Broad Ripple Park this morning I met Dave, an engineer now retired for ten years. He told me that he didn't set goals. To set goals, he said, would be to disregard how we really do not control how our lives unfold.

Maybe we do come to a place where we can do something because we delight in doing it. Maybe this is what Joe Campbell spoke of as finding your bliss. Maybe I have come to that place, and what I do takes on a soul of its own. It is alive as I know I am alive, controlled by forces I don't own and loving it.

Grotto dello Smeraldo

I have not processed my European travel photos in a while, intent as I have been on taking advantage of the fall colors in Indiana. Today I decided to revisit the Amalfi Coast shoot. 

These images are from the 20 I processed just from the one day when we drove the bus to the Emerald Grotto off the Amalfi coastal road (private buses are assigned days to go east or west). There were a couple of shops right there cut into the mountainside then steps going down to the tiny inlet where we took small boats into grotto. The guy who paddled our boat stopped it along the sequence of stops inside the cave with its stunning green and blue-lit waters and sang Neapolitan songs. I recorded his songs on my Sony HDV camera. I have yet to even listen and view that clip.
Outside the cave, the sky was still overcast. We took a motorboat along the coast, passing by resort hotels high up on the cliffs or huddled in tiny inlets. Gradually the sun came out. By the time we arrived at the former Maritime Republic of Amalfi the skies were blue. Time for some lemoncello and chocolate pastries at the square in front of the Byzantine-inspired cathedral with its imposing wide staircase to the church a hundred feet or more above.