Oxherding Is Fun

The Pedernales River at dusk gives up the day and turns from the violets of dusk to the blue of night.  The water easily reflects the bluing of the sky and the rocks themselves turn new colors.  The croaking of frogs deepens and the first stars twinkle their faint glow.  Night is upon the land.

Where does a sunset exist?  In the sky above the treeline?  In the water before a waterfall?  In the photographer’s eye of a father and son sharing an adventure?  In memory to be stored up for a rainy day? 

I did not fully understand the the term “the tail is wagging the dog” when I first heard that saying years ago.  Now, with photography I fully do realize its meaning.  And I have HDR to thank for that.  High Dynamic Range image processing results in a wider range of light *and* higher intensity levels throughout that expanded range in the image.

The problem is, that I believe every scene that nature presents to us and resulting image has a best way to process it to communicate what I was seeing in me the artist.  That process might include monochrome, “dark”, heavier saturation or not, Orton, HDR, cropping decisions, etc., etc.  More and more the process of HDR is coming before the image realized.  I already have changed the way I shoot, with bracketing three shots now whether or not I plan HDR processing later.  Below is a good example.  I shot this and the available light and the histogram showed that I really did not need to bracket shots to capture the light on the scene.  But I did anyway and when I got back and processed the normal single exposure I could not get the same color, detail and effect versus the HDR process of the 3 images.  The HDR image better communicated what I experienced on the Pedernales River that day.  Flip side though, of my stock, not one HDR image has sold and I am not too happy with large size prints of HDR images too.

End result: I will keep struggling with HDR or not as its just a small microcosm of the larger struggle in me as a photographer and artist.

Light.   Direct sun, indirect, hazy clouded, sunrise, sunset, reflected, full moon-lit, and on and on…  It is the facilitation of all that is photography and the other visual arts.  Study it before trying to capture it.

I sat at this small pond a long while before I touched my camera.  The light changed the trees, plants, pond and rocks.  As the trees moved with the wind the light danced in the water and when a cloud obstructed the sun the scene changed dramatically.  This image was taken with the full sun poking through the open spots in the tree canopy creating the dappled light.

At recent trip to Zilker Botanical Gardens I was shooting all the things everyone else was photographing: the water lilly blooms, the many bright colorful flowers, the mighty oak, the stream in the Japanese gardens, the dinosaur in the prehistoirc garden, etc.  But my favorite image of the trip is the simple one below that no one else was shooting.  A Koi glides through the water until it has to move sideways so as not to hit the stepping stones in the water.  Simplicity, yet opposites are at work in this image: color and non-color (Koi vs rest of image), hard and soft (rock vs water), animate and inanimate (Koi vs rock).  The stones follow a path that reminds me of the curve within the yin-yang symbol as well.

Without being open to the world around me this image would never have been captured.  And that is the main point I took from Gross and Shapiro’s “The Tao of Photography: Seeing Beyond Seeing“.  An enlightening book on photography from the creative perspective in relation to ancient Taoist philosophy rather than the technical aspects of “how to photography”.  From my first exposure to Zen and Taoist ideas I have known that these ideas are the best path to describing the un-describable: the where, how and why of creativity.  This book will not teach you about f/stops, DOF, composition rules, HDR processing and other techniques.  If you do absorb this book though, you can walk away from a site and possibly get a favorite image that you would not have seen before.

Rope Swing ~ Swimming Hole III — Bull Creek, Austin, TX

Magic happens here
where a tree plants itself into the earth;
roots creep to paths downward,
spreading to hold on tight.
Earth gives the tree water, enzymes, and minerals
through tiny root hairs subterranean
while the tree roots gives back a power to porous the earth.
All of this effort
allows a young child to climb,
grab a rope,
and fly for a few magical moments.

Notes: 3 image (+/-1ev) HDR details enhance processed with Photomatix Aperture plugin.  CaptureNX to assist in correcting some of the HDR processing.  This image demonstrates the positives and negatives of HDR processing.

When in the field, or in the studio, the first action of photography is “seeing”.  Preparation and visualization might be first but these are not usually “in the field”.  How you “see” might just determine the course and eventual end result of your photography and art.

Recently, I was taking pictures of the Spring wildflowers on our land when I came upon some dead Cedar trees that stand naked.  Of course, visual awareness comes first but then it hits me… wildflowers life, cedar death, life-death, yin-yang, renewal, appreciate this day, this moment before this tree.  And quickly it hits me:

cedar death naked, ..tangles of brittle branches, ….a cage of your own

Often when I am outdoors, I see the nature before me but it often quickly morphs into abstraction and into words.  Along with the images it becomes a jumble of Pollock splats that form some coherent whole within me.  Then variations start twisting and turning and it does not stop.

cedar death naked. ..tangled in brittle branches, ….a cage for your life

cedar stands naked, ..tangled in brittle branches, ….a cage for your soul

cedar stands naked, ..tangled in brittle branches, ….a memory cage

It can go on and on.  20+ years ago I started a haiku poem about an event that occurred when I was young and it is still evolving. I have never counted them but it must have well over a 100 variations. It will never be finished. And I am happy for that for that because when the poem is finished, is when I am finished.

How do you see?

I really like this image BUT… there is a flaw in it.  In my estimation there are two foreground flowers that should be in focus. I used too narrow a DOF and have the back flower of the two foreground flowers in focus, the front flower is out of focus. DOF (depth of field) is a function of:

1. distance to the subject (@ 4 feet with this image)
2. aperture used (f/5 for this image)
3. and lastly the focal length (82mm for this image). Film/sensor size matters too but not as much as the variables these three.

Here is a online DOF calculator (http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html) but this does not come with you in the field when you are shooting wildflowers and such where you do want to employ exact DOF settings.  There is an iPhone version of the calculator too which might help in the field.  So, with this image I had only 1.5 inches of an in-focus depth range to work with and that was not enough to get both flowers in focus.

The older lenses that we used would usually have DOF markings on the lens barrel to help.  Then there are abundant DOF charts you can carry as well. Another tool is the DOF preview button on many cameras.  But that is what I used below and still missed what should be the correct DOF setting.  So, in the field, while shooting, how should I have corrected this?  I should have taken more shots at different aperture (f stop) settings.  And I think I will be carrying the portable DOF calculator from now on.

More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field

Hole in the forest
Made of granite, earth and black
in Darkness, a home

There are literally millions of images taken on this spot.  I am standing with camera atop tripod on Sentinel Bridge in the heart of Yosemite Valley.  There are couples beside me with their point-and-shoots and a few other “serious” photographers with tripods shooting pictures with Half Dome reflected in the still Merced River.  How do you get something unique out of this iconic viewpoint?  With the wind still and the treetops not swaying I had a good chance to get an HDR image.  When done, I heard the distinctive three shots bracketed from the guy next to me.  The photographer next to me was doing this as well. Hmmmm???

With all of us bunched on the side of the bridge I decided to go the other side where no one was.  Everyone walked away with their shots of Half Dome but no one got this one of the lazy Merced reflecting Autumn’s colors.  Remember to look beyond the obvious, take a look around, front and back, up and down, grand scale and small scale. Nature rewards those who explore.

This is also a good example of HDR (above) versus non-HDR photography (below).