Starling 365
These starlings settled right above me, and I had to go inside and clean off the camera and my hair and glasses. These are but two of the hundreds, perhaps even 365 of them, carpet bombing my small space. I was not counting on this tangible radiation when looking for some foreground to go with the cosmos.
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Bigger Than A Book, Wilder Than A Tree II
More from the opening of the Bigger Than A Book, Wilder Than A Tree art show in Vancouver on Thursday evening; the other post about this event can be found here. This show features works by Christina Mackie and the late Jerry Pethick. For more information about the artists and their careers, check out the website of the Catriona Jeffries gallery where the exhibit is being shown until 27 October 2012.
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Bigger Than A Book, Wilder Than A Tree
I had the pleasure of attending the opening of an art show in Vancouver on Thursday evening. Titled Bigger Than A Book, Wilder Than A Tree it features works by Christina Mackie and the late Jerry Pethick. Mackie is a London based artist who has exhibited in many parts of the world, but never before in Canada, even though she grew up here on the west coast. Pethick was an artist based in the Gulf Islands between Vancouver and Victoria, at least towards the end of his life. He passed away in 2003 at the age of 68. For more information about the artists and their careers, check out the website of the Catriona Jeffries gallery where the exhibit is being shown until 27 October 2012.
What is my connection, some of you are wondering, that led me to Vancouver for an art show opening? I have known Mackie for much of my life – we went through elementary and high school together – and she was kind enough to invite myself and family to this event. Since she lives in London, we rarely see her, and the opportunity to attend an opening has not presented itself since I too lived in the UK more than 25 years ago. What a treat! And, she said I should take photos and I could blog about her opening. So, this is the first of two posts about this event.
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First Year
On this day last year Burnt Embers took life. The image at the bottom is from my first post. I took it with the camera set on monochrome – one of the few times I have used that setting as I now realise the value of having colour against which to apply filters and so on in post-processing. The image I posted then was straight out of the camera with no processing. I still like it, but as the version above demonstrates, it had more to offer, had I but been able to extract it at the time.
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White House
Another of my HDR experiments, this time of a brightly lit white stucco house in North Saanich. It was a sunny day with very bright highlights on the white walls and some dark shaded areas so I was interested in how well HDR could handle these extremes. I used a full f-stop for the brackets, all use only 3 images. Some Lightroom adjustments were necessary after the tone mapping. For instance the more distant umbrella below was a dirty grey and I had to lighten it up as best I could. Adjusting levels in Photomatix during the HDR processing was not successful in getting it brighter, but that might be something I need to learn more about, these are some of the very first HDR images I processed.
Pump House
More of my black and white HDR experiments, this time of a pump house near the edge of a field in North Saanich. It was sunny day with strong shadows so I was interested in how well the processing could fill in the darker areas, especially the inside of the pump house. I used a full f-stop for the brackets, all use only 3 images. I could have got more from the interior of the pump house, but at the expense of the exterior balance. I suspect if I had 5 brackets to work with these might have turned out a bit better (I think I got the balance a bit better in the colour version). Even so, I am pretty happy with them.
Beach House
For the past two weeks I have subjected you to the output of my Lightroom 4 and Photomatix Pro 4.2 learning trajectory. With the former I have been mostly figuring out how to correct different levels, apply masks, and so on. The latter, until today, has concentrated on tone mapping single images from Haida Gwaii. Starting today and for the next while I will showing some of my early efforts at HDR, using Photomatix. Many of these images are tweaked in Lightroom as well, usually after HDR processing. I am pretty much sticking to black and white for now – I like the effect in black and white, and there are fewer controls to come to grips with than for colour processing.
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