Light and shade

Fab Four Fireworks

2009-11-14T15:21:05+00:00

Bonfire night, or near enough, saw the Fab Four waving sparklers at Dave's camera. Then there was one of Sparkly's delicious casseroles to eat, preceded by chestnuts roasted on an open fire I'd made in the garden from deadwood collected over the past few weeks from The Tree House's four trees.

Dave, as you see, made a good job of setting his Big Cam's menus and bolting it to my tripod before using the self-timer so that he could join us for this snap. He so loves a challenge.

The underlying production values and other technical details are not at all obvious, but I wanted to write about my experiences this week with using on-line photo editing applications. We read about "The Cloud" and "Web 2.0" but what does this mean in practice? I am pleased to find that things have developed and converged to such a point that I can see no difference in quality between the two pictures you see above. They do differ, but only in the process by which they were formed.

The first image I made traditionally in Adobe Photoshop, by cutting pieces from two different shots which Dave had e-mailed to me. I had downloaded his work, then manipulated it on my laptop before uploading the result to this blog. The second image was edited in a virtual reality, courtesy of the links between the various free services I subscribe to. My Yahoo! e-mail account is linked to Picnik, which is where and how I worked on the above photo, still attached to an unopened e-mail. All the basic tools I needed were freely available, right there on my laptop's screen from a remote store associated with my e-mail account. Everything was running harmoniously in my browser. The Cloud had provided me with not only the means for editing, but also the channel through which I was able to transfer the end product back to yet another remote server system, at TypePad, where Light and Shade lives.

I'm really getting very enthusiastic about this way forward. I am hoping it heralds the end of being forced to upgrade expensive software versions far too frequently to ever get value for money from them. It also allows me to work from any location with an Internet connection, instead of being locked into one expensive computer system at home. I am currently finding it to be simultaneously liberating and empowering technology.

And still it goes on

2009-11-11T11:11:00+00:00

Scarlet Poppy head,
A bleeding heart in the rain.
Flanders’ own flower.

Two Brothers in Arms
Immortalised in Granite
Never made old bones.

In Memoriam
Lest we who are free forget
Their sacrifices

Micro studio

2009-11-06T16:27:14+00:00

If you want to play with light, just to see how it behaves, and you’re short of space and equipment, simply scale things down.

This liqueur glass was back-lit by no other light than that coming from my laptop's screen. The room was dark. I drew the virtual "roll-paper" blue background and the yellow "spotlight splash" in Photoshop, using only very basic tools. Any other similar digital image editing application would have done. The rest should be obvious from the setup pictured below. I stood my point-and-shoot camera on a couple of books to raise the lens to the height I wanted. The glass was standing on a dark brown, leather-bound book.

The result certainly doesn’t bear comparison with what a real studio shoot would have given, but it does show you how studying the behaviour of light (at very low cost) can lead you towards more success in creating the kinds of images you want to make.

Above: room lighting switched back on to show everything.

Above: screen shot of dark blue to light blue gradient background and a big, softly brushed yellow blob.

Blue door

2009-11-05T05:57:00+00:00

This economical solution to numbering the three dwellings behind this blue door reminded me of an old riddle. It went something like this: “What costs threepence for one, sixpence for twelve and ninepence for one hundred?” The answer was “brass door numbers”. Amusing when you’re nine years old and reading the jokes section in comics. But that was back in the 1950s, eons before Nintendo games had captured young minds.

Little Malvern Priory

2009-11-02T19:23:40+00:00

Little Malvern Priory was the subject of a recent post here called "Painting by numbers". I went inside this afternoon, to better appreciate the spirit of the place. It soon came to me that light was painting random surfaces, illuminating nooks and crannies in ways which demanded my study. The more I looked, the more detail I discovered. I became completely absorbed for half an hour. But enough of words: I'll let the pictures tell the tale.

Wet leaves

2009-11-01T11:23:35+00:00

Heavy winds and driving rain brought down lots of leaves last night. These were the latest to fall after the street sweeper had made four trips since 5 a.m. this morning outside my mother's house. I know because she told me so. At age 84, with failing eyesight, these are the sorts of events which fuel her conversation.

Toftly Fuchsias

2009-10-29T09:46:41+00:00

Many of Yorkshire's blooms seemed to have lasted well in the recent mild weather. These Fuchsias were vibrant in the unexpected warmth of a fine, late Autumn day. A sharp close-up didn't convey sufficient of their brilliance for me, so I twisted the camera about a bit on a slower shutter speed until I'd got what I wanted.

Look for the detail

2009-10-24T18:57:41+01:00

This attractive old carved wooden door almost certainly has a story or two to tell. When subjects like this catch our eye, it’s easy to capture them in a trice. But I think it’s worth taking an extra few moments to explore them more closely, looking for detail we might otherwise overlook because of the instantaneous nature of digital photography.

Painting by numbers

2009-10-16T18:54:46+01:00

I rarely apply any really obvious Photoshop techniques to my pictures, but this afternoon's strong side lighting put such clear edges and bright colours into the Malvern landscape that the photograph I grabbed from the roadside survived my playful processing. I can see why so many artists have been inspired by walking in these hills.

As a child I had a few Painting By Numbers outfits given to me for birthdays or Christmas presents. I was fascinated by the dozens of thimble-like pots of paint. Each one had a screw lid. I used a matchstick to mix the pigment back into the oil, which had usually floated to the top between times. The illustrated box lid was always full of such exciting promise. But my clumsy attempts to re-create anything like recognisable copies of those Old Masters' famous works always frustrated me. I knew not why, because I tried hard to succeed. I so, so tried. I got the numbers right. I chose the proper size and shape of brush. I cleaned the bristles in white spirit between each different selection of paint. I stayed inside the lines: I was that kind of a kid. But the finished articles never lived up to my expectations. Happily I discovered the power of the lens pretty soon afterwards. Ah, though, if only I'd had Photoshop back then . . .

Some English place names . . .

2009-10-10T22:19:53+01:00

. . . are really quite amusing. This one is on the A40 in Herefordshire.