Emotions evoked by art, and the emotions of the artist

Today was a beautiful day, moderate temperatures, and a Saturday (so that many people with "normal" jobs - unlike mine - were free).  Our window of opportunity for a hike was noon to 1:30, and as you might expect, there were quite a few people, and their dogs, sharing the Crabtree Creek Trail with Ziva and me.  In spite of this contrast with our trip yesterday, when we were almost alone, I made two photos that I felt showed solitude, and even a sense of loneliness.

Revisiting the site of one of yesterday's images, I was intrigued by the strong shadow of the bridge, and allowed myself to become a part of it.

Does that look like a lonely person?  Maybe it just looks like a photographer with a phone camera in hand.  I can't really judge the effectiveness of my own works, but I will observe this: many great composers have created music which elicits powerful emotional responses from listeners.  Sometimes the feelings correlate with things we've all experienced in our lives - sadness, elation, longing, tenderness.  However, the composer is no more likely than not to have been feeling those things while crafting the music.  Having been there at some previous time is sufficient.  I'm sure the same thing applies to great visual artists.  Could Picasso have painted Guernica without being intensely personally moved by the horror of what happened?  Undoubtedly not.  Yet I think that in a lot of cases, a very moving painting results from an artist's memory, or wishes, or pure imagination.

I make no lofty claims about the rudimentary photos that I do to document my frequent walks, but I do think of some of them as art, simply because they are a way for me to explore my thoughts and share things that can be difficult to articulate.  Today has been a very happy day for me, so far, yet I felt like creating some images that I would not describe as happy.  Because I could!

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How Do You Like Them Apples?

I was enjoying the sunlight streaming through a window and betwixt some houseplants this morning. I took a moment to play with some still life photos using strong shadows and sharp textures.

Weighty apple:

Keeping company:

In the spotlight and in the shadows:

Which apple do you think will be the tastiest to eat?  It's no contest - the first is a genuine Honeycrisp, the others are artificial.

[For my photo geek friends, these were shot hand-held with the Canon 100-400 L II IS]

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Me And My Shadow

The title phrase is part of the sentence "This is a photo of me and my shadow", rather than a reference to the old song.  So my shadow and I were out for a goodly trip today, and upon our return we spotted this:

We both thought it was pretty cool, a shadow of me and my shadow.

Me and my shadow, strolling down the avenue,
me and my shadow, sharing stuff we never knew...

Permalink: http://jilcp.blogspot.com/2014/12/me-and-my-shadow.html

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First street shadow of spring

While walking the dog on the second day of spring...

I spotted an odd little shadow play. It was because of the dog. I often look up at the sky, partly out of interest in cloud formations, and partly because of awareness that impending changes in the clouds will have a major impact on how the landscape (or cityscape) looks. But that's a photographer thing. I wasn't even carrying a camera, just walking the dog.

Except that of course I did have my iPhone, which has a very usable camera for certain types of photos.

But I was walking the dog, which meant watching where she was going, which meant often looking down. So I spotted this interesting play of shadows on the asphalt pavement, shadows of...

Shadows of what? Is that an armadillo or an insect crawling along? Actually, what we have here, or rather what was above my head, includes a utility pole with a step-down transformer and several power lines, a street lamp on an arm, and a few odds and ends. The shadows are very sharp because the sun was in a clear sky and quite near zenith. It only took a moment to grab the shot, so doggie didn't even have a chance to become impatient.

It it worth a second look? I enjoy it, maybe because it reminds me of how I used to look at the street as a small boy and spot all kinds of things that the adults might have wished I would ignore. Also, I guess I do like the abstract structure of shadow and light. And kid-style imaginings of creatures instead of just electrical utilities.

Permalink: http://jilcp.blogspot.com/2013/03/first-street-shadow-of-spring.html

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Shooting in midday sun

Generally speaking, outdoor photographers prefer to work during the golden hours - just after sunrise, and as sunset approaches. The reasons are pretty well known, and make sense for a lot of situations and subjects. For example, when the sun is near the horizon, the direction of light creates shadows on the land that bring out texture. The color of the light is usually warm, because it is traveling through a greater expanse of atmosphere before reaching the ground. When the subject is a person, a light source directly overhead (such as noonday sun) casts unflattering shadows from the brow and nose, leaving the eyes in darkness ("raccoon eyes") and the mouth with a slash across it. Late afternoon sun (especially with some cloud cover to act as a diffuser) can be a perfect start to great portrait lighting, as long as the subject doesn't have to squint while looking toward the brightness. It can be better to turn the person away from the sun, using it as a backlight/hair light, while adding another, gentler light source in front of their face. But, that's a subject for another time.

Sometimes the only chance to shoot is in the middle of the day, and it is not impossible to find (or make) good light, especially if your choice of subjects is small animals or plants. Today I enjoyed watching some migrating birds, including some not always seen in my area. There were a pair of red wing black birds, but they were too shy for me to approach and photograph well without preparation. As I am a shameless opportunist who doesn't consider common birds any less fascinating than less common varieties, I took aim at a foraging robin who wasn't quite so skittish. In the first shot, a patch of sun through the trees caught his front and helped it stand out against a shadowed background. The feathers of his wings and underbelly are muted in tone, but the head sparkles.

A moment later, he moved to a spot where all of his topside was lit, and as a bonus for me, some shiny dead leaves reflected a bit of fill light to his belly. I like the attitude caught in this split second.

Meanwhile, the confused flowers blooming in Raleigh three weeks into February made quite a display for me when I got my head all the way down to the ground. I knew that to balance their illumination with the bright sky in the background would require some help, so I made use of a really high-tech piece of equipment - a sheet of aluminum foil, crinkled a bit and shaped into a curve. This reflected light into the little purple umbrellas opened a few inches above me, highlighting their yellow reproductive parts. Working with a wide angle zoom, I used focal lengths ranging from 29mm to 35mm for these shots.

Even pale yellow flowers call for fill light when they face the ground.

The color contrasts were important to me when shooting the purple flowers against blue sky and green leaves, but didn't make as much drama with the pale yellow flowers. I decided to take advantage of the tonal control that black and white offers, and worked the relative contributions of blue and yellow to gain maximum contrast. After a little tweaking of a custom tone curve, I got a pleasing result.

So, in about an hour with the sun near zenith, I managed a few shots that may show some possibilities for making midday light work for photos. 

Permalink: http://jilcp.blogspot.com/2013/02/shooting-in-midday-sun.html

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abstract patterns all around us

The late Jack Horkheimer used to end each of his brief "Star Gazer" episodes with the admonition to "keep looking up!" Sometimes, if one is looking for photo inspirations or ideas, it pays to look up even when one is indoors. It's easy (relatively) to be drawn into an instance of beautiful architecture, just as it would seem easy to make great photographs if one could only be always surrounded by a gorgeous landscape. In truth, although we rightly treasure images that painters and photographers have created based on wonderful scenery, there is art involved. Feeling elated by what surrounds us is natural for all of us, but to convey that feeling in an image is always a challenge.

The flip side of this idea (pardon the ancient metaphor!) is that with imagination we can make something interesting out of what may seem highly pedestrian subjects. Here's what I was getting at when I mentioned training our eyes - and our attention - in all directions, including up (and down). If you try to see what's around you in an abstract way, as the patterns of light and dark that are really all that our eyes perceive, sometimes the mind starts to see things differently from normal, ingrained interpretation. That happened to me as I stared at a ceiling for a few moments. I saw abstract shapes, not  simple shadows and textures. Even though an object recognizable as a lamp is a focus of the composition, my attention is drawn to the surrounding patterns which remind me of various kinds of living things, but none definite. I hope some of those qualities come through in this small version of the image.

One thing about an abstraction: you're not tied to a realistic representation. I think this image also has possibilities when presented upside down. Here it is, also a bit larger to make the texture a little more evident.

Jess Isaiah Levin

www.classicalphotography.com

Permalink: http://jilcp.blogspot.com/2012/07/abstract-patterns-all-around-us.html