Does artistic genre affect what I see?

When I stumbled on this scene my first reaction was “how pastoral this looks” which is odd since I don’t usually think in terms of artistic genre.  Nonetheless, what I saw was the peaceful, soft, illuminated aspects of color, shadow and light I’ve come to associate with paintings I’ve been told are Pastoral in their style.  Turning to the go-to universal definition place (Wikipedia) I expected to find a comprehensive article on this painting style, the influences on its development, major contributors to the genre and how it was supplanted by the continued evolution of visual arts.  At least I was hoping to find some aspects of why we find some scenes “pastoral.”

Turns out this term is used to covered a lot of art, from writing to poetry to music, and yes, painting.  What isn’t seemingly clear, at least in language I could understand, is how the genre is defined.  Reading several critical pieces on the form it seemed all the writers class this style of art not by what it delivers but rather what it is trying to avoid.  Pastoral turns away from urban, civilized, organized, routine aspects of life to embrace the wild, natural, agricultural.  It uses simplicity as a way to forestall complexity.  Some critics indicate it’s simply art about shepherds and their lifestyle (not sure why shepherds are more pastoral than cowboys, farmers or conservationalists other than all those Greek plays and pottery extolling the lives of shepherds).

Way too much information.  I finally found a comment about how the Hudson River school arose in this country as an off-shoot of English Pastoral tradition and then it clicked for me.  The Hudson River school was about romanticism, showing how humans and nature co-exist peacefully.  Portrayals were at times idealized, at times realistic, many times showing the wildness of nature as a backdrop for the idyllic state of agriculture.

Thomas Kincade is probably the most well known American painter using this type of portrayal (although his work is not traditional Hudson River school), a style characterized by the self-proclaimed phrase “Painter of Light,” which was originally attributed to J. M. W. Turner.  Perhaps it was the light that caught my attention immediately in the above scene.  Or the warm vs. cool color palette.  Or just how inviting the composition appeared.  For whatever reasons, it seemed pastoral to me so I make this image to share the moment with you.

Just walking around, winter version

This weekend there was a perfect winter day to be in the woods.  No wind, temperature just above freezing, good snow cover and hazy clouds over head.  I could wander around holding my camera gear with no gloves on (buttons get progressively smaller the bigger your gloves are) and take my time with longer shots since the woods weren’t swaying in the breeze.  The small woods trail I took was mostly empty – many tracks indicated it had been well used earlier – so I had all that nature to myself.  Even the small herd of deer I scared up weren’t in a big hurry – they seemed to realize it was just too nice a day to worry about a lone photographer on their trail.

As the temperature was just right for melting and freezing water I found some very interesting compositions in a small waterfall along the trail.  Water was flowing under the ice, breaking free in places and splashing around to re-freeze into more ice covering the water.  This is yet another way for icicles to be made and to merge together into ice curtains.

ISO 100, 100mm, f/3.5, 6 image HDR

The old saying is moving water won’t freeze and yet parts of it do.  Without the continual replenishing from upstream I’m sure this would turn into a solid block of ice but for now only part of the motion is suspended into a scene for the wandering photographer.

ISO 100, 47mm, f/3.5, 5 image HDR

One fascinating aspect of the stream is how it isn’t lifeless in winter.  While the surrounding trees and bushes have long since lost their leaves and the ground cover naps awaiting spring, under the ice lives mosses and algae soaking up the sunlight while eating what passes in the moving water.  The green of these hardy creatures is visible to anyone taking a close look, right there under the swirling stream.

ISO 100, 44mm, f/14, 5 image HDR

Winter remains the time to practice, practice, practice black and white photography, looking for textures, tones and structures more obvious in the contrasts of snow.  I find the lines interesting; lines we’d ignore in the spring and summer become visible in winter as the snow frames and blocks to give partial forms and reveal new arrangements of objects.

ISO 100, 35mm, 1/200 sec., f/2.5

Of course the wildlife becomes easier to spot as well, dark moving objects against a white background.  How do you sneak up on a deer in winter?  Park your car behind a snowback along the road in your neighborhood and lean your long-lensed camera on the glass, of course.

ISO 100, 141mm, 1/50 sec., f/4 – 50% crop

The shape of things to see

Went out yesterday specifically to look for patterns at the edge of melting snow.  The idea just popped into my head as I was wondering how to do a better job of capturing the texture of snow, since simply making an image of a snowbank doesn’t give me what I want.  As it turns out, the exercise became a study in negative space (of a sort) as I saw that what was around the melting snow was equally as interesting.  Let me show you.

ISO 100, 35mm, 1/80 sec., f/14

I started seeing some sort of yin/yang compositions where the snow had melted off high spots and remained in the depressions.  Not only is there a contrast between the light and dark areas but since I was looking around in a sandbox, there is a contrast of textures as well.  The sun is about a hour from setting so the low angle cuts across the top of the peaks and reveals the snow texture as well as the sand pebbles.

ISO 100, 53mm, 1/125 sec., f/10

Light and dark, shadow and highlight, edge and pattern.  What is the subject of the image?

ISO 100, 35mm, 1/160 sec., f/11

Where the snow has thinned enough for the darker sand to start showing through I’m able to see the snow’s texture better.  Light requires shadow in order to illuminate?

ISO 100, 100mm, f/14, 6 image HDR

The last image is simply to practice capturing the subtle gradations of tone as the sunlight curves along the gradual slope of the snow.  The transition from light to dark is a fraction of a degree of angle, and right at that point you can see the irregular surface mottling where the snow has melted at different rates.  Macro textures and micro textures – snow has it all.

Back when I knew less

Periodically I browse through my Lightroom catalog, sometimes to change ratings on images, sometimes to see if a new processing technique will give me a better version of an old image, and sometimes just to remind myself where I’ve been going with my photography.  The other day I was looking back at images from this time last year and two years ago.  It seems I’ve gotten better at technique, composition and overall image meaning, but in many ways I’m still making the same images.  Good instructors continually say to push yourself out of  your comfort zone.  Not sure what that means in many ways.  I’ve not yet achieved comfort in what would you considered my comfort zone.  My photography interest is the outside world in many aspects – these are the images I’m most comfortable making.  But I’m not comfortable with the results I see.  I want more depth, more striking-ness, more you-are-there clarity in my images in addition to stories and interest.  As I don’t feel I’m delivering that in my images I’m uncomfortable with them.  I don’t need to attempt abstract art in order to feel uncomfortable yet sometimes I feel that’s what instructors are saying – stop doing what you do all the time and do something unrelated to it.  I appreciate the Zen benefit of ridding your mind of constraints, but shouldn’t I keep working on my discomfort where I know what I want in an end result?  I’m sure it’s an internal argument many photographers go through.

So, I was looking at image from two years ago and came across a winter HDR series I made.  The processing tool I was using at the time really didn’t deliver the look I wanted thus I moved on to other images.  Now I have what I consider better tools and experience using them, as well as a different ‘eye’ on the subject, so I played around it again to see if I could get what I saw at the time.

This time the HDR came out better than before, although it is still obviously an HDR.  Expanding the tone compression (the way software manages to deal with wide dynamic ranges) would make the dark areas lose all detail and blow out the sky highlights so I left it this way.  I used the History brush to enhance the highlights and darker areas, increasing the contrast along lines to make them more obvious.  Also brought a couple of brighter lines from the background to the foreground to simulate sunbeams on the ice.  I like the effect – your mileage may vary.  What I see is an almost surrealistic image, which is about what I was seeing the day I made it.

Another thing about photography, at least for me, is how it mimics chess in your mind.  Much like a good chess player can remember how the board achieved the current arrangement even days after walking away from it, I can look at the images in my Lightroom catalog and pretty much tell  you where they were made, why they were made, what was going on around there at the time, and other aspects of lighting, weather, colors, etc.  Although I made this image two  years ago I remember where else I shot at this location, why I chose this perspective, how cold it was and how I imagine all the people walking by thought I must be crazy standing there taking picture after picture when there was virtually no light on the lake.  It’s an interesting condition, probably exacerbated by my visual learning style, but it sure makes keeping the metadata and key words up to date easier!

Anyone else have this condition as a photographer?

You never know what might land in the woods…

Banish the color!

It’s the time of year when I go back and forth in my battle to understand color.  I wonder if the great early photographers would have had this problem if they had color available to them?  Can you imagine A.J. Russell standing in front of the two steam engines at Promontory Point arguing with himself (“color or black-and-white; which will capture the moment best?”) while all those people are waiting to drive the last spike of the transcontinental railroad?  Other than technical considerations it’s probably why most of photojournalism is in B&W – one less think to worry about.

I returned to some of my images from yesterday and stripped the color out, leaving just the shapes and tones to tell the story of the scene and moment.  You be the judge – which are the more interesting images?  Click on any image to see a larger version.

ISO 100, 71mm, 1/125 sec., f/11

ISO 100, 86mm, f/8, HDR composite of 5 images varying shutter speed

ISO 1oo, 17mm, 1/125 sec., f/7.1

ISO 100, 14mm, f/8, HDR composite of 6 images varying shutter speed

ISO 100, 35mm, 1/60 sec., f/7.1

The sun is really starting to set early now that we’re off the contrived “daylight savings time.”  At this latitude the sun is getting pretty low in the sky, which means it’s reaching places usually in shadow in the late afternoon.  I took advantage of this to try some lighting adjustments for outdoor photography.

I started with a couple of strobes set up to add some fill light to a scene, reducing the range from lightest to darkest regions in the image.

ISO 100, 17mm, 1/125 sec., f/7.1

In this scene there’s a strobe to the left hitting the decking and rail, and another to the right doing the same thing.  The left one is slightly brighter than the right one.  I wanted to bring out some detail in the decking while keeping the bright sun as the primary light on the sign and trees.  Worked on this type of lighting for about a half  hour but never really saw anything that got me excited.  Perhaps next time a third strobe way back on the left to brighten up that big shadow and bring a little depth to the image.

So, giving up on that approach I chose to work on some HDR images.  With all the high contrast areas the opportunities were numerous, especially for areas where I couldn’t put a strobe (they don’t float).  I pushed the processing beyond “natural” to get some deep textures and drama in the scenes.

ISO 100, 32mm, f/8, 17 image composite of various shutter speeds

This seemed to be going well so I tried inserting some curved leading lines into the composition along with highlighted regions to draw the viewer’s attention.

ISO 100, 14mm, f/8, HDR composite of 6 images varying shutter speed

The reflections were looking very nice; why not an HDR of nothing but reflections?  Besides, the water’s surface acts as a nice polarizing filter to darken and emphasize the sky.

ISO 100, 24mm, f/8, HDR composite of 5 images varying shutter speed

The sky was radiating so much light as the sun set further down I used that as a source for the details in a grungy HDR composition of angled leading lines.

ISO 100, 14mm, f/8, HDR composite of 5 images varying shutter speed

There is a lot of learning yet on using strobes outdoors so I’ll be returning to that again as winter sets in.  Feeling pretty good about seeing HDR opportunities, though, and applying the post-processing effectively to get the look I want.  As with most things, some compositions work well with this technique and some just don’t but only experience with it will enable me to make those choices prior to hitting the shutter.

HDR improving

I’ve got an updated version of the NIK HDR Efex Pro plug-in for Lightroom, which claims to have improved how HDR images are created from multiple shots.  Almost all of my HDR attempts are aimed at a natural look; I use HDR where a single image can’t capture details in the highlight and shadows.  From the initial work with this new version of software I feel it’s an improvement but still there are things that need to get better.  See what you think.

Here are the two extremes of a five-shot series made for HDR, one exposed for highlight details and one for shadows.

When the software rendered the HDR image it was pretty close to what I wanted but there were some adjustments I made to give it a more natural look.  Here’s my result for now.

I’m pulling back on the tone compression as much as possible and still hold details in the shadow and highlight areas – a photographer told me once he hates HDR because the range of tones is too close together, giving an artificial look to the image.  This newer version of the software does a better job of controlling tone compression so it’s moving in the right direction there.  Overall at a glance this is a pretty good image, very similar to what you would see if standing there.

What I’m still seeing, though, is the image is flat, lacking any dimensionality to it.  I’m not sure if this is the tonal compression still being too great or if it’s some other aspect I’m not controlling very well.  The details are there, and there are shadows and highlights, but I’m not getting a sense of a foreground and background, just everything flat on one plane.  Definitely not what you’d see if standing there.

What’s your opinion on this?  Any suggestions on what to change in order to bring back the dimensionality?

Relics in our back yard

Omaha is really just a normal place, so normal it’s easy to miss the unique things around town.  Sure, it’s the home of Warren Buffett, Mutual of Omaha (remember Wild Kingdom?), a great zoo, a fantastic symphony, Union Pacific RR and other neat things but sitting in the heart of fly-over country all its features are readily overlooked by people on the way from Chicago to Denver.  Even folks who’ve lived here for a while (I’m starting to fall into that demographic) tend to be lulled by the normal nature of the place to the point they forget what’s here.

As an example, flying out of the airport and over the river there’s a view of a swing bridge over the Missouri.  A swing bridge is one that rotates around an axis to allow traffic on the water to pass by.  Bridges are everywhere on the Missouri to the point you only pay attention to them when you need to cross the river and there’s not a bridge on the road you’re using at the moment!  Anyway, after a few passes over this bridge I pretty much stopped noticing it as it appeared to be permanently open and not being used.

One day I was driving on the Iowa side and noticed interstate 29 passes pretty close to that bridge.  The Iowa side span is indeed permanently open (the bridge was taken out of service in 1980) and glancing over I saw a couple of interesting compositions, as well as a trail running along the river.  “Can I walk to the bridge,” I wondered?  Usually structures like this are surrounded by fences, guard shacks and warnings to stay away pending dramatic legal actions.  Was it possible this one was more accessible?

I love bridges.  They are physical statements of man’s ability to overcome a force of nature – the river.  Given the duty they are called to perform, steel bridges always look spindly and undernourished to me, yet they hold up all that weight and allow us to get from one side of the water to the other.  It’s engineering magic and that thrill doesn’t go away for me just because it’s an old bridge or not in service.

The compositions I thought I saw were indeed there when I made it over to the shore.  I even got a chance to play around with “obvious” HDR, which I think really brings some drama to structures.  You can see some images below.  Take a look at those gears and rollers needed to turn such a massive piece of metal.

I met a guy fishing near the bridge and he told me a little of its history as he’d grown up in the area.  He knew it had been in service when he was a boy but didn’t have an idea of how old it was.  Both of us wondered why it had been left standing – scrap steel is very useful and cost efficient to use these days.

Still, I thought it was just another bridge abandoned as the railroad consolidated to newer and fewer routes.  When I got home I thought I’d see if there was anything on the Internet about it to but in my image metadata, but not really expecting much.  It’s just an old rusty bridge in Omaha, right?

Was I surprised.  It’s called the Illinois Central Swing Bridge and in the early 20th century it was the longest swing bridge in the world; even in 1975 it was the third longest.  The Iowa side was built in 1893 of wrought iron and the Nebraska side in 1908 of steel.  Although it’s not used anymore (oddly enough the bridge is owned by the Canadian National RR) it remains standing just in case a problem arises with the Union Pacific Missouri River bridge farther downstream.  Not a bad idea given the amount of rail freight that passes through Omaha every day and the nasty nature of the Missouri to go wild at times.

And I’m not the only person finding this bridge interesting.

There you have it, yet another not-normal thing found in the Omaha area.  I really need to pay more attention to what’s around…

Click on an image below to see a larger version.

ISO 100, 16mm, 1/320 sec., f/7.1

ISO 100, 14mm, 1/125 sec., f/10

ISO 100, 15mm, f/7.1, five image HDR

ISO 100, 20mm, f/7.1, five image HDR

ISO 100, 14mm, 1/250 sec., f/7.1

ISO 100, 31mm, 1/320 sec., f/7.1

ISO 100, 14mm, 1/250 sec., f/7.1

Posing the environment

Water and its reflection was a strong element in many Impressionist paintings because it was such a dynamic subject, always changing the appearance of light’s reflections from it by shape-shifting with the wind, current and tides.  Pay attention to rippling water on a bright day and notice how the colors change with the curvature of the waves, first reflecting the sky, then the shore, then other waves.  It was these multitude of small areas of color the Impressionists captured with their pigments, creating dimension and movement with their brush stokes.

Reflections even now help set the tone of an image, creating anticipation for the viewer even before the substance of the whole image becomes apparent.  Manipulating reflection is one way to change how an image is perceived and received.

Take this basic reflection image:

5 image HDR, ISO 100, 14mm, f/7.1, various shutter speeds

Calm for a Great Plains composition, it promotes a late afternoon stillness that doesn’t really convey the heat in the area right now.  All the cool colors counter balance the warm tones in the building and trees, suggesting a pleasant spot for a picnic or just to sit and watch the geese.  A fairly traditional portrayal of such a scene, rich in detail with emphasis on drawing rather than coloring.

This image of just the reflection is much more Impressionistic – less drawing emphasis and more on placing colors in conjunction to offer the suggestion of form.

ISO 100, 44mm, 1/100 sec., f/7.1

I wanted more of that effect for this image so I tossed a rock in the water just below the bottom of this image and then made several shots as the ripples expanded into the reflection.  By combining them in Photoshop I got this result.

ISO 100, 44mm, 1/100 sec., f/7.1

Probably more abstract than Impressionist as the form is falling apart but it nonetheless shows how reflection and movement can change the nature of an image.  Compare this to the first one above – do you not feel less calm and more “agitated”?

Periodically we outdoor photographers can actually manipulate our surroundings to deliver an specific mood.  Might as well take advantage of it when we can!