Indecent exposure . . .

While in Astoria, Oregon, I photographed reflections in water because I loved how rich the blue and gold colors were (top photo).

Glancing to my left, I saw a rusty piling that had some light blue paint splattered on it (bottom photo). The piling was lighter and brighter than the background water. If I metered off the darker water, the piling would be way overexposed. So I metered off the piling, figuring it was better to have the piling properly exposed, not caring if the water went darker. Did it work? Well, yeah, except that I've really lost all the drama in the water, haven't I?

Luckily when I take miserable shots such as this, I can keep them, blithely writing them off as "teaching tools!" Ha! Love this job...

©Carol Leigh

Bad Photos and Why They're Bad: Genoa Leaves

Have you ever taken a quick shot and later wished you'd spent just a bit more time and taken it "right?" That's my situation here. I saw these leaves clustered together in the street, right next to a curb, pointed my camera down, clicked, and then walked on. I figured it was a nothing photo, was in a hurry to get somewhere else, and simply didn't pay attention.

Looking at it now, oh, how I wish I had taken more time. Look at the variety of leaves I have here. Isn't it great? Some good, some dead, some torn, some colorful, some not. And the light's good — light shade. But where, oh, where is the design in the picture? There isn't one.

I should have picked one or two exceptional leaves and placed them lower or upper right, lower or upper left, pursuant to the Rule of Thirds. Why? So you'd have a focal point, a place to begin and end your visual ride around the picture. As it is, there's nothing here that catches your eye to begin with, nothing that moves you from one point to another, no rhythm, no movement, nada.  You don't know what I considered important in the scene and, apparently, neither did I!

What's the solution? For me to fly back to Genoa, Nevada, hoping the leaves are still there? Of course not. The answer is to pay more attention when I photograph, to slow down, not to be in such a hurry.

So although there's a part of me that still sort of likes this picture, it's really a bad one, and now you know why.

©Carol Leigh

Train Scratches

Traveling home from Astoria yesterday, we passed some old train cars. How could we not stop? Here you see the train car that I saw. And here are three examples of the types of things I extracted from the scraped, scratched, and scuffed paint. Woo hoo! ©Carol Leigh

Boat Scratches

Here's what I saw on the docks — scratches on the side of a fishing boat. By moving in as close as I could (without falling in the water), I isolated a couple of abstract images from those simple scratches.

When composing something like this, I think of it as a little landscape, so in photo #2 you see how I placed the "horizon line" down low as well as placing the wider, darker part over toward the right, which gives the smaller bits room to fly diagonally into the frame.

In photo #3 I divided the scratches into layers, into horizontal bands. The black strip up top and the dark blue strip at the bottom "frame" the lighter, airier  center section.

©Carol Leigh, celebrating the ordinary

What the heck was I thinking?

I'm conducting an online class right now, critiquing photographs, and one student, Dennis, posted a photo where I thought the light was too flat and weird and there wasn't any texture in some wooden elements. It reminded me of some of the initial photos I took with my very first digital SLR back in January of 2004. I tweaked Dennis's photo to help illustrate what I was talking about and then tweaked this photo, which looked similar (in lighting) to his picture.

Back in 2004 I put a wooden spoon on a red silk scarf, put something black behind it, and then, either using a flashlight or candlelight, I photographed the spoon. The top photo is my original image, which I thought was rather cool at the time.

Today, older and wiser, I brought that same photo into Photoshop and applied a Topaz Adjust 5 effect called "Detail Strong" to the photo. Using a layer mask, I allowed the effect to come through on the wooden spoon only, not on the scarf. Why? Because I wanted texture to show on the spoon, not the fabric. You see the effect in the second picture.

But it's still too yellow (due to the bizarre lighting I used), so I desaturated the yellow color in the picture (using an adjustment layer) and then applied the Topaz Adjust effect "Detail Strong" to just the spoon. This looks (to me) more natural.

As for the red silk scarf the spoon's sitting on? Well, that's just weird! Dramatic, but weird!

©Carol Leigh, eight years older but not nearly as wise as I should be . . .

What I Saw/What I Made

Making something from what might appear (at first) to be nothing is what I take especial delight in doing. And yesterday, at a boat yard (my playground), I found a lot of nothing to shoot. Here are two examples of what I found "hidden" on a boat's rudder. I've also included a shot of the rudder so you can see what I saw.

You know, it's like macro photography on a larger scale. When shooting close-up, we find something small to fill our frame, something extracted from something larger. Here I zoomed in on just part of a larger whole, making what I think is a pleasing design. Ah, but then it's also like landscape photography, isn't it? Out of everything that's laid out in front of us, we extract from a larger whole, choosing which mountain to include, which grove of trees, which barn, etc. Taking this to the absurd, it's like celestial photography, isn't it? We select out part of a larger whole, creating compositions that are pleasing to us... And on it goes.

Anyway, this is what I was doing yesterday. And now you see what I saw, and you see what I made.

©Carol Leigh, seeing the big picture in a very small way

Passion and skill