Brandon came over last night and went over the images we captured from his first shoot. Here's one. The rest are at http://duendearts.smugmug.com/gallery/7460868_Y39uz#481296381_dAF4U.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Brandon's Choices
Brandon came over last night and went over the images we captured from his first shoot. Here's one. The rest are at http://duendearts.smugmug.com/gallery/7460868_Y39uz#481296381_dAF4U.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Simply HDRI
These are Photomatix-processed using their beta Aperture plug-in from images I shot this morning. I just took three bracketed shots of two scenes I thought might display what HDRI would look like. Richer colors, but somehow too rich to look real.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Far from Here
Reading Nicholas Gage's Portrait of Greece this morning made me go back to the photos I took on our trip there in 2003. I was using an Olympus camera then with I think just 5 MB images, and producing jpg. Memory is more vivid than this image near where we sat at a table just feet from the placid Aegean waters dining on roasted octopus and lamb.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Thai Chinese Graphic Art
I was fascinated by examples of packaging and graphic art prevalent in the former East Bloc countries of Europe, especially East Germany. Orange and green were the colors I took away from a book compilation of these images, the same color I find on this faux grass-mat bag of jasmine rice from Thailand.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Brandon Twice
After finishing Kaiti's shoot I went back to the images from Brandon's second shoot with me. I was disappointed in what the four-hour shoot produced. I was trying new techniques and didn't get the shoots I wanted. This is one image that I like. I didn't plan it to come out this way but with a little tweaking it really came alive.
Less flowers, more passion
I asked Dru are Trader Joe's today today what his plans were for Valentine's Day. "I get off at two," he said, as he started reading the next customer's purchases into the computer. "Me and my lady, we're spending the afternoon at the museum and later a ceramic-making workshop." CNN Live reported fewer people were buying flowers and chocolates. Instead they are trying to re-ignite passion in their relationship.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Working in both Phostoshop and Aperture
Two nonproductive days go by and then wham! The magic is back and I can't get enough of it. After preparing the 109-image proofs gallery for Kaiti today I decided Brandon's images deserve another try. I should really do the PS CS4 tutorial at lynda.come for photographers but until I do this works best for me: prepare the images in PS CS3 and finish in Aperture. The controls in Aperture for vibrancy and black point compensation seem more robust and easier to use than they are in PS. I know. I should be using Curves. Until I do, this half this, half that strategy is the best I can do.
Kaiti in Gray Scale
Images are fascinating for me as tiny adjustments sometimes bring a dramatically different look to a shot. I have not shot in black-and-white although friends tell me I should. There is a kind of economy to gray scale that I like but is it maybe the association one has with large-format black-and-white "art" photography that creates its lovely effect?
Kaiti on Black
Shooting is exciting; processing is a chore. For the kind of shoot I do, processing is as important as the shoot. It's in processing that I determine the kind of image the photo will take. It's in processing that I apply most of what I have learned about what I want the image to look like. At most of the shoots I've done since May, I've used mostly white backgrounds. With Kaiti I decided to try a black background again, this time setting up the light more carefully that it only falls on the model and not on the background. The results are wonderful!
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Reason To Believe
On public television tonight was the Nova program, Judgement Day, pitting Intelligent Design against Evolution Theory in the interpretation of the First Amendment. As I watched the show I began to remember the evolution of my own beliefs about religion and science. Born and raised in Catholic Philippines I was even more religious than the typical child growing up in the 1950s. Religious church ritual was the one activity I looked forward to throughout the year. In adolescence, that faith began to shatter in the face of personal experience. Teachings in the Bible conflicted with what I was learning in high school and later in Pre-Med. By the time I left the Philippines to come to America I was still nominally a Christian but found myself substituting 80% of what I read in the Apostle's Creed with items I could believe. It was not until just 25 years ago that I confronted my own disbelief. I no longer believed in the God I learned in Sunday school and heard about every Sunday. But I held on to other components of theistic religion. I discovered Buddhism and that became my unacknowledged religion the next 20 years. I transferred what I believed about God to mystical experience. I used reason and common sense in interpreting what the Bible and other religious "scriptures" taught. Tonight I realized I could not hold on even to those anymore.
Judge John Jones who ruled that Intelligent Design was not science and that teaching it would set back the progress we have made in such crucial areas as cancer research was bombarded with death threats. No opponent of creationism was so threatened. This pointed out to me how highly emotional religious belief was and this was the final straw for me. I can find in many of the world's religions pieces of wisdom to apply in my life but none of them hold my complete allegiance anymore. The written records of religions and their founders were products of human intelligence and experience. Belief is more emotion than reason. I cannot hold as true any more statements in these records or scriptures like the sun standing still or going around the earth when experimental observations in science say something else.
If I no longer believe everything religions tell me, then I need to look at what now clearly are simply superstitious beliefs that still dominate the choices I make and expectations I have about life. I can look back fondly to the past but recognize that what I remember is idealized. Nostalgia is bitter sweet but like the animal that I am I need to learn to value the present. This is what tonight's program really means for me.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Kaiti Reposted
I was not happy with this image of Kaiti I posted last Friday. Here's a better edit of that image. Color remains one challenge whose mastery eludes me. There are others, too, but sufficient for the day are its troubles. Tomorrow's another day.
What If Athena?
Our little lives are fraught with little fears. How would it feel to live free of them? Is worry-free equivalent to happy? What if to be happy is to stop pursuing freedom so much and just relishing the discomfort of our lives? What if Athena breaks out of my head?
Momentary Spring
Last Tuesday we added four more inches of snow on a foot already on the ground. Today the temperature peaked just below 50° and we could see grass again.
The White River streamed with melting floes.
People streamed at the Monon, riding bikes, walking their dogs, holding hands while pointing at birds' nests on empty branches above, celebrating our momentary spring.
Salvadores
Outside of Manila, folk art in the Philippines is rare. People are more concerned with just living, sometimes surviving. The Spanish brought Castilian Catholicism and the Filipinos have grabbed on religious faith to help them through hard times. Hard times though are not what living is for ordinary people. Life may be hard but the difficulty vanishes in the incredible social fabric that defines and supports everyone.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
The model was getting bored two hours into the shoot. I gave her an iPhone loaded with the soundtrack of the movie Mama Mia. "This is just like my iPod!" she exclaimed as she put on the ear buds. Soon she was dancing to the music, her boredom forgotten. Music squirts excitement into uninspired moments. I guess that's what art does when it works. The artist's inspiration becomes ours.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Impatience Wins
One more image and I'm off to the gym. These are images I have not finished processing but impatience wins over caution. It's one thing to pore over one's collection of images like old Silas Marner but I've gotten bitten by the "show-and-tell" bug. Sharing surely is one of man's (and woman's) most instinctive urges.
More Kaiti Dances
I am fascinated when the camera captures an image of the model quite unlike her usual persona. We are legion but try to project one consistent image of who we are. Photography, maybe like psychoanalysis (are there people still undergoing analysis?), reveals the diversity within us that is truly our birth right but something we fight with all our might to hide—even from ourselves.
Tango with Kaiti
I have a love-hate relationship shooting models. It's always exciting but after the deed is done I am a morass of emotions. I can do better than this, why didn't I do that, do I really want to do this? It's symptomatic of life itself, I suppose. Certainty and uncertainty dance a murderous tango. Bottom line: people intrigue me and capturing slices of moments of their being is an extraordinary privilege!
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Sensuality of Island Life
On the island, the heat of the sun striking the skin, the brilliant blue of the sky and sea, the fragrance of ripening fruit and the sonorities of unidentifiable insects reminded us of the raw sensuality of being alive. Colors and shapes were intrinsically beautiful, pregnant with meaning. The landscape of coconut and mango trees flowed endlessly around us. We were tiny in its immensity.
Coconut Roads
Traveling around the island of Guimaras catapulted me back to a timelessly remote past where life was hard maybe but with infectious simplicity. Living in materials-wealthy America we become inured to its hasty cadences. We forget how a slower pace if not as productive of material goods could make us more appreciative just for being alive and for having the time to contemplate this marvelous fact. There were few large motorized vehicles on the island. We got around, the three of us, riding in this tiny tricycle, bumpy but superlative for reconnoitering this lost paradise.
White Beaches Galore
Raymen Beach Resort at Alubihod, Nueva Valencia is one of the more popular resorts on Guimaras Island. It is an hour direct boat ride from Iloilo City on the larger island of Panay and has an intimate, small white-sand beach protected from the South China Sea by another island. Day visitors are welcome but cottages are available for overnight stays. Foreign guests, many from Korea, some from Europe, find their way to this out-of-the-way paradise of deep blue waters and emerald islands.
Fresh Island Fish
In 2007 I returned to the Philippines for a reunion with my two sisters. One highlight of the whole trip was a visit to the adjoining island of Guimaras, now a separate province from my home province of Iloilo. This basket of newly caught fish reminded me of the life I used to live before coming to America. Fish and sea food were basic to our diet, cheaper then as now than beef or poultry. Back then people didn't talk of omega fatty acids or organic produce. These were simply part of our "poor," non-industrialized lifestyle, a simple life that feels to me now idyllic.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Sunday Afternoon by the White River
Up and down the temperature goes. Tonight it will dip to zero but last Sunday it rose to almost fifty degrees. I was surprised at the number of people on the Monon Trail that crosses White River twice between 65th and 75th Streets. We don't have mountains or oceans in Indiana but rivers and woodlands in winter make up in images for storing away.
More Snow for Us
Four more inches of snow fell this morning between seven and nine. Rush Hour accidents closed two Interstates and several city thoroughfares. Two people were killed when a semi rammed into a dozen cars near Anderson. In my little enclave, after the snow, I shot this snowman near the woods bordering the property. Some kids found the time to take advantage of school closing and enjoy the bounties of the weather.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Thinking Cartoon
Cartoons and animation make light the seriousness we often ascribe to "art." I love this effect. Life is even more serious than art and needs the levity even more!
Morning Starts
Mornings should be like this, a feeling all's just starting. Sitting was restless initially until I paid attention: there were shapes in front of my closed eyes and I didn't see them until I looked. The larger picture evaporated; only immediacy remained. I saw how dying could be just like this, inside and not in the larger picture where mind chatters and experience eludes us. What a coverup!
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Snow Tracks
The mercury rose to 47° today under clear, sunny skies. Chunks of snow were falling off rooftops all day but on the ground the knee-high snow looks undiminished. Many city streets still have snow-covered lanes and turns. After lunch and a visit to Half Price for my weekly dose of one-dollar brand-new books, I explored the neighborhoods in search of photos and was not disappointed. I captured a dozen or so good-enough images but have not processed them yet. This was taken north of the Little League field on 86th Street around five in the afternoon.
Braised Hot Salad & Bean Soup Supper
One of my favorite, quick ways of preparing salad recently is to braise the lettuce and other veggies in a Teflon-coated sauce pan sprayed lightly with olive oil. My friend, Kevin, an internist practicing complementary medicine, suggested I eat less raw foods for a while to rest my pancreas. This cooking technique is the result. I add whatever veggies I have in the crisper—celery, scallions, carrots, varieties of lettuces—but generally include whole garlic cloves. Garlic is considered good for the cardiovascular system, helping to clean the arteries and keep the blood from creating plaques. A perfect meal is one that's easily and simply prepared, is tasty and healthy to boot!
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