…join me in the search for the simplicity found on the other side of complexity!
Undiscovered subject: can you spot the spider? (click for larger image)
Yesterday I was climbing Blue Mountain, just west of Missoula, MT with our dog Angua. I ran into some great flowers and took a number of macro shots using extension tubes.
It wasn’t until I was doing post processing this morning that I found an added bonus. I was doing sharpness checks at 1:1 in Lightroom 3, and suddenly there was …. a dustspot? No, it was…. a spider! A very tiny one to be sure, hiding in the petals of the subject flower.
Can’t see it? Here it is close up and personal. In retrospect I was extremely lucky that it fell within the depth of field. I’ve shot bugs before, but I believe this is my smallest wildlife subject to date.
See him tucked away there, near the petal tips? (Click for larger image)
The author makes contact with Art at the Henry Gallery
No, this is not about great art shots of nature and/or abstraction. I love taking those, and I frequently spend my free hours seeking them out. But these days it’s tough paying the bills with art photos. On the other hand sculptors and painters often need photos of their Art for their business selling art. Press releases, catalogs, fliers, and small run reproduction needs all create a market for the agile, technically proficient photographer with the right gear. So if you can’t ORIGINATE the value chain by creating the original art, as a photographer you can at least still eat by JOINING the value chain!
Artists are not generally wealthy, and there is plenty of competition, so shooting art is not a way to make a LOT of money. But it IS a way to meet some creative people, to test your technical skills, and to have fun taking photos of people within their creative space. Who knows – it might also help cover your costs in slow times, or at least keep you from getting bored.
For me, shooting artwork breaks into two kinds of sessions: commercial recording gigs and creative celebrations. Recording gigs often don’t even directly involve the artist. It’s a straightforward job that pays $10 to $100 bucks for each delivered image depending upon quantity, complexity, and location. You’re expected to produce perfectly color balanced, proportionally correct, glare-free, spotless high resolution TIFF and JPEG images of the artwork – sometimes in your own studio, often elsewhere.
The real creative photography fun begins when the artist gets involved. (No, I’m NOT being sarcastic. Artists are great – or at least they can be – if their ego isn’t too big or too bruised.)
What makes them so much fun to work with? (more…)
Photoshop gives you the power to do things to photos that can make anyone with with a sense of taste beyond the one found in their mouth cringe. This do-everything monster does have a bit of a learning curve (which sometimes feels more like a WALL as you struggle through it…). But once you get over the frustrations, it’s well worth the climb (see link below).
I started with GIMP several years ago, switched to Photoshop about 12 months ago when I got serious about doing professional photography again, and by last fall (more…)
I love it when two seemingly unrelated areas of my life collide with positive results.
Monday and Tuesday we had 9 inches of fresh spring powder snow in the mountains around Missoula, so Wednesday morning I headed for Snowbowl, our local ski area.
I enjoy winter photography as much as the skiing, so I took along my 20D, fitted with an 18-200 zoom. I like getting back into the silence of the woods and photographing the peace and serenity of snow, trees, and blue sky. (more…)
” I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841 – 1935)
Associate justice on the US Supreme Court (1902 – 1932).
Sometimes Holmes’ wonderful, elegant, and often elusive “simplicity on the other side of complexity” comes not from external system improvements, not from better technology, but from simple practice. You’ve experienced this. Remember riding a bicycle? Now remember learning to ride a bicycle? (more…)
