This is the last installment of the response to the student.

Just as a printer (the person, not the machine) in a darkroom utilizing traditional techniques, the modern photographer cannot make a mediocre photo better with the computer. He can, however, realize a good image’s full potential. My particular tool of choice is Adobe Photoshop. I cannot recommend this for everyone, however. It has been referred to, on more than one occasion, as an 800-pound gorilla. It’s a very expensive program ($649) that has more features than any one person can fully master. There are a number of alternatives, such as the software the came with your camera (which may include Adobe Photoshop Elements – a much-scaled back version in terms of both breadth and price) or even free online sites and software (e.g. www.picasa.com). Read more »

Window – peeling paint 2
originally uploaded by ryan_451.

I find what turns people on interesting—in terms of art, that is.  It can give insight into what that person holds as an ideal and what images he may aspire to make.  I look for inspiration in any number of things.  About a year ago I stumbled upon the work of nature photographer Nick Brandt.  His images have incredibly rich tonality and he manages to humanize (anthropomorphize for those requiring a word of the day) his subjects.  His portraits are portraits, not photos of animals.  His book, On This Earth: Photographs from East Africa is easily worth full retail.  I bought two.  It’s fantastic!

One need not look only to photography for inspiration.  If you like abstractionist modern art (a la Mondrian) then by all means emulate it.  Or if another style of painting catches your fancy, figure out how to translate it to photography.  I happen to hold painting in rather high esteem and perhaps one day I will get over my fear of blank canvases.  Until then, I’ll look to others’ work.   Read more »

This is the next installment of the response to a student.

Digital photography and film photography aren’t as different as the publishing industry would have you believe. Much that has been written about film photography is just as applicable to digital photography. After all, a photograph is merely focused light captured on a substrate. Your camera is only a light-tight box. You can make a photo with a shoebox and a piece of film or photo paper (i.e. pinhole photography). In order to expose a photo properly, however, you must control the amount of light that reaches the film or sensor. Read more »

Early in my art education (read: junior year of college) I had an internal debate of sorts concerning photography as a medium.  I wasn’t entirely convinced that photography was “art.”  I saw fellow students drawing and painting what seemed like masterpieces to me.  Each piece was proof of a single, creative endeavor, completely original.  That was art.

I hadn’t ever taken an art class before I started the course work for my art major.  I couldn’t draw.  I definitely couldn’t paint (still can’t).  All the people around me were CREATING, and there I was, camera and reproductions in hand.  I was jealous.
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While I know many of you (all two of you who’ve visited) are sitting at the edge of your seats in anticipation of what I’ll post next, I’ve been busy as of late with the whole procuring-a-job thing.  

I know I’ve been slacking.  The sad part is I have a lot of content written, I just have to actually post it.  No excuse.  Originally I was going to post two to three times a week.  I now see that that was ambitious.  I think I could probably handle once a week.  We’ll see.  

In the mean time, here is some pretty:

Faun painting, originally uploaded by ryan_451.

I had seen graphics tablets for sale on various sites for a while and had entertained the idea of buying one for some time.  Then one semester I audited an advanced Photoshop class and rather than buying a book, the professor required the purchase of a graphics tablet.  Well what better reason is there than, “I need it for school!”  I decided to splurge on the Wacom Graphire4 6×8″—white to match my iMac, of course (yes I drank the Kool-Aid, and it was delicious!). [The current equivalent model is the Bamboo Fun (medium).]

It is easily the single best peripheral I own.  I’ve used it everyday for a year and a half.  In fact, I haven’t had a mouse connected to my computer for the last year.  In my workflow, I make heavy use of curves-adjustment layers and their associated layer masks.  The ease with which I can dodge and burn—without constantly changing brush size, mind you—is simply astounding.

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A couple of months ago, I got an email from a student taking a photography class at Jamestown College.  The art professor had referred me to him as I have more experience with digital photography than she.  The following grew out of the response to a him and was published in Professor Cox’s column “Art Voices” in the Jamestown Sun. [It is split it into three sections as it is quite long.]

Many people start photography as a hobby because it is one of the most accessible art media there is.  To start you don’t need to learn how to apply paint to a canvas or worry how to draw something more than a stick figure. You need only to press a button. Inevitably, some will have (rather romantic) aspirations of becoming the ever-elusive “professional photographer” and will seek to make saleable images. Some people want to learn to take better pictures while others want to learn to make better pictures. Make no mistake; there is a world of difference between those two words. I’ve included in the following some of my own philosophies which have grown out of my own readings as well as my art education (including, but not limited to, my time at JC and my personal experimentation in the medium). Take from this what you will and - it should go without saying – with a grain of salt. Read more »

Sometimes I will get so enthralled in what I’m doing I’ll lose track of time. This is the product of one such (very late) night. The original file is quite boring: very grey, lacking of contrast. It wasn’t until after I processed it that I really even noticed the streaks of rain.

The ground and bales required the most work. Four curves adjustment layers were needed to bring the dark bales into relative balance with the sky. The hardest thing was to fine tune the layer masks so that the bales didn’t have a conspicuous dark halo. All the extraneous pieces of hay sticking out of the bales drove me nuts!

This particular night I stumbled across a technique that I quite like. It involves the B&W adjustment layer (though you could use any method that makes a B&W layer: desaturation, channel mixer, etc.). I either overlay (read: Blending = “Overlay”) a color version of the photo on top of the B&W layer (as in this case) or change the blending mode of the the B&W layer itself to “Overlay.” This makes the darks VERY dark, necessitating the addition of even more curves adjustment layers. [I'll discuss this technique in a separate post.]

A lot of work? Yes, but I love the result.

I have two conflicting feelings: 1) I don’t want this blog to be dry but b) I also want it to appear at least somewhat professional. I have a feeling it’s going to be Option B because, let’s face it, it takes a lot of work to be this awesome. Maybe I’ll get my wit done with in this post. Supposedly they have a cream for that in Mexico.

The following is the first draft of my About page:

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Originally I was going to fill this first post with something profound.  (Seriously, the first draft had the words “something profound” as a placeholder.)  But rather than put pressure on myself to be brilliant from the start, I figured I would set the bar low.

I thought it only fitting to start out by posting the image that the flag above was cropped from.  This is one of those images that I couldn’t adjust to my liking.  I was never really happy with any of the four previous versions, but this one is so close to that which I had imagined that I don’t know if I can make it better.  This is my painting.