Today’s post is a personal take on Eli Reinholdtsen portfolio of reflections. I did an extensive review of her e-book yesterday. Until last weekend, I don’t think I appreciated entirely that taking an interesting urban reflection can be such a challenge. But I chose it as one of my shooting ideas for Saturday’s Worldwide Photowalk. It was organized downtown Rybnik, and I thought I will have a lot of opportunities. But when I was walking down the promenade, observing people and situations happening in front of many window displays, nothing struck me as a photograph worthy. The only thing which saved the project was presence of puddles after the rain. It is far easier to find an interesting reflection in the puddle.
What I like about the image is its almost monochrome feel of the water and the street cobble stones, contrasting with bright yellow color of the building in the reflection. And the three windows, perfectly asymmetrical.

If you follow David duChemin’s blog and other activities, you know that he is very fond of Eli Reinholdtsen work. Maybe you even saw her Flickr photostream or visited her blog to see her astonishing images. But this e-book she authored, “Chasing reflections”, third one in “The Print & Process Series”, provides you with something more. You will find a series of images, followed by Eli’s explanation of “why” and “how” they were created.

Like all previous e-books in the series, this one is divided into three distinct sections. It gives you the opportunity to just enjoy good photography, or to learn from another photographer’s experience.

You start from studying screen-size 37 images. Unless you are viewing the book on iPhone, you can really distinguish all the details. Spend some time looking at those images. Eli’s compositions consist of many layers, all of them contribute something to the whole story. I think those images remind me a bit of Picasso’s painting, where many items, often just fragments, are overlaid on one another. Pay attention to what is behind, and what is in front of the “mirror”, as well as to the background.

Next section is devoted to all the technical details for those, who want to go out and find their own “reflections” project. Eli talks about aperture, angle and point-of-view and importance of light. But foremost, she describes that those images are as much due to careful planning, or visualization, as they are of patience and waiting for that Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment”, just a right person showing up to finish the composition.

The last part of the book is the one I found the most interesting. Each image is analyzed and explained. What was the idea behind it, what artistic decisions were made, what worked and what didn’t. Some show “behind-scenes shots”, like the broken glass, which provided the most intriguing images in the e-book. As I mostly just browsed through images, after reading about them in detail, I found myself going back, to look for the things I missed, for stories I didn’t realize where there.

And here is how the book is described on Craft&Vision:
Chasing Reflections is the third in the series The Print & The Process. Eli Reinholdtsen is a creative photographer who, through her unique and skillful approach to reflections, captures moments and juxtapositions that are truly an art form at its finest. Reinholdtsen digs deep and shares tangible ways to scout, setup, and shoot complex and magical photographs that push the envelope of visual poetry. Her playful descriptions aren’t shy of digging deep into the techniques required to capture movement, timing, and contrast. Chasing Reflections is an inspiring collection of 37 photographs that stand on their own a pieces of pure art (The Print) followed by a discussion of the creation of those visual moments (The Process).

Chasing Reflections is a available now for $5. And as usual, there’s also a special offer:
For the first four days only, if you use the promotional code REFLECT4 when you checkout, you can have Chasing Reflections for only $4 OR use the code REFLECT20 to get 20% off when you buy 5 or more books from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST August 1, 2010.
As a full disclosure, all the links in the review as well as on the right side of the blog are affiliate links.

Also, stop by the blog tomorrow if you want to see my take on urban reflections.

Another obvious subject to photograph during the urban photowalk on Saturday were plants and flowers. I used them as a creative stretch, to start even thinking about other possibilities. They are such easy to pick subjects.
I took this image to show that the flowers are part of the downtown. I really liked it, with one dominating flower, and the blurred but recognizable buildings in the back. Just for fun, I checked how different white balance settings would influence the atmosphere of the image, and really liked the shade setting. The sky was so flat and boring, completely covered with clouds, and adding warmth really made it more interesting, and the color was complementing the flowers.

I am going slowly through my Photowalk pictures. It seems I took some interesting images after all. Good, that I have time till next Saturday to pick my one favorite, looks like my top favorite while shooting might not end up being send for the contest .
Meantime, one of the images I like a lot, but probably will not end up being send out. What I enjoy about this image is the line of street lamp, and a lot of negative space which make the image simple and at the same time, draw the eye where I want it- to the birds. And the fact that although each has its own pose, all pigeons are turned at the same direction, making the image… organized.
I took the series of bracketed exposures hoping to put them into HDR image to show all the nuances of shades in the feather detail in the birds. I also hoped for some detail in the sky, but in this moment it was evenly clouded . But even with high ISO, the shutter speed and burst mode where not enough to freeze the unsettled birds. Not to abandon the idea completely, I use the single-image pseudo HDR. This image is a natural B&W .

I was submitting this image for a Facebook group weekly photo contest, and thought I can put it on blog, too. It can be considered one in the series of “light on the tree”, for which I posted a couple a few months ago.
I saw this birch one evening through the window, and liked how it was lit with the setting behind the trees sun. The light was separating it from the other trees in the background. I went out and found an interesting point of view, and took several images from different distance. This was my favorite.

Few days ago, I had a unique chance to visit a matches factory. It was a very interesting experience to learn, that something could have been easily produced on very large scale already 120 years ago. The light in the factory interiors was really bad, although I put ISO as high as it goes on my D300, most of the photos went straight to trash when I looked at them on the larger screen. From the few which got saved, I prepared this composition.

I was sightseeing some yesterday in the town of Czestochowa in South-Central Poland. One of the places I spend couple of hours was a very well known catholic monastery, where I took a number of pictures. I am planning to talk about that place when I post those. Today’s blog image was taken outside, on the entrance sidewalk. The place is very busy every time of a day, every day, so the birds are very used to people and not easily scared. I was able to walk quite close to this one. It was observing me, all right, but probably looking more if I will give it any food then expecting troubles. Notice the colorful spots on its neck- I really like them.

I saw this Digital Photography School weekend challenge Saturday morning. I would have probably ignored it, as usual, but a quick look around the room revealed quite a number of subjects. I quickly set up the tripod, camera, opened shades and started shooting. My favorite were the star-shaped pillows, yellow of course, which I positioned so they were reaching hands to each other. With a closer crop, all you see are reaching hands. Kind of reminds of that famous Michaelangelo painting “Creation of Adam”.

Since I am photographing flowers nowadays, something flowery for “special Friday”. I got so frustrated with this little bud of a rose. It was just a tiny wind that evening, not enough to disrupt those flowers with more leaves. But the rose has an almost empty stem, which made it extremely prone to shake. I had to give up trying to get a sharp image. And put all the effort to get it moved to the point the photograph got interesting again.

It is this time of the year. You go to farmers market other grocery store, and bring back some cucumbers. But those small, traditional ones. You put them in a jar, pour some boiled water, add spices- like dill and salt, and wait three days. Well, if you are patient. It might happen, like in my parents house, that there is hardly anything left after two days .