Quiet Time

These last few days I haven't been able to photograph much. Over the weekend, the cataloguing and editing program I use, Lightroom (LR) from Adobe, provided me with its own version of the BSOD; it announced that "the catalogue is corrupt and can not be recovered." For those who know the program, LR stores all the changes one makes to raw files in its catalogue - crops, exposure, contrast, saturation and so on . While my original pictures were all intact (in raw form) and I had backups of both the pictures and earlier editions of the catalogue, this was some, but not satisfying, consolation; I had effectively lost many months of edits, as LR resolutely refused to recognise one backup after another. I thought I would have to rework all the raw files all over again.

Eventually after much hammering away, LR recognised and "repaired" a catalogue dating from early February this year - which confined the loss to a couple of months. And then, miraculously, after closing the program, turning the computer off and on, and replacing the now functioning February catalogue with the latest two-day-old April version, LR "repaired" this latest catalogue and all my edits are back on hundreds of pictures taken this last year.

I am now going through the very lengthy process of converting all the photos into a format where all the edits are written into each image file, and not stored in a separate catalogue, for one's vulnerability to the corruption of that catalogue are now all too apparent. A cautionary tale. Backups are not enough.

I did manage to get out one morning, to Great Falls again. I had read with great interest Aiko's retelling of some of the lessons she has learned in her photography one of which is not to be "greedy". One doesn't like to come back from an excursion with nothing; on the other hand, this need to get something, anything, seems to fuel somewhat hasty "snapping away" and then one often comes home with exactly nothing! This time I saw a sliver of pink down a rather steep rock face; it turned out to be a bush precariously perched between a pair of rocks. Heeding Aiko's advice I spent an hour with this one bush. The pictures attached were taken with a wide angle, focal length 17mm, with the camera about 2-3 feet from the bush. Both exposures were taken at f/16, with shutter times of 1/3 and 1/2 seconds respectively. One picture has the sky in it; the other doesn't. Can't decide which I like better. Oh, and thank you, Aiko.

The Highline

The Highline is an elevated train track in Chelsea that has been made into a park. Here are some images I made last Friday while you all were enjoying Scott's Run.

Here are two faces of Scot's Run: Fall and Spring:

Very different moodes and colors.

By Aiko

Took many reflection photos with green color. I was debating in my head wheather I should crop the wood stiking into from the left or not.

We were srrounded by young green everywhere. I was trying to take all in and took many photos of leaves. Not many reflected what I saw in my eyes but this one might be very close to what I saw while taking photos.

I run out of battery while taking below dogwood flower.

I could not go home without this picture and stayed in my car and re-charged the battery and got back to the flower and took this shot.

The plant left is called Jack-in-the-Pulpit and poisonous if ingested.

Barbara takes a picture

Spring 2010 - my struggle and pleasures

Comments may not coinside with the photos next to it. But you know what I am pointing out to.

I was trying to take a group photo of this plant but couldn't get a good one. So I focused on one.

The Beauty of the Bluebells are, for me, very difficult to capture: this is my third year to challenge.

Is this a kind of trillium? I know the name in Japanese but am not sure about the Englishname. I want to see large flowered trilliums in VA this year.

The color of young green leaves in the woods are cascading onto the water of creek

Good Evening:

Renee's "flowers" quote from Edna St. Vincent Millay reminded me that a week or so ago I had taken a number of pictures of flower-beds at Wheaton Recreation Park, which has a great staff of wonderful gardeners, in an attempt to figure out what makes for interesting shots of flowers. (Apropos of the quote, though ,I would not have guessed it was from Ms.Edna; if ever there was a riotous and chaotic life here surely was one - the last person who would care about picking a flower and having her way with it.)

Anyway here are some shots. While I imagine they might grace a page or two of a gardener's catalogue, they are not really all that terribly interesting. Run of the mill, really. Does anyone have any ideas on what might make for the kind of view that would make someone stop and take another look?

I include a couple of serious crops - to show the detail available. These are each -at a rough guess - about 5-10 percent of the total picture. They are shot with a Canon 17-40mm L lens on a fine camera. In fact I think the crops are a lot more interesting than the whole picture. But insofar as this is a landscape class the challenge is to get a wide or deep picture in which the flower beds feature as an element. Perhaps that's the problem here - the framing needs serious thinking.

Farid

Catch up

With some welcome prodding by Jay for critical feedback, I've gone back through the blog to offer some opinionated comments with the hope of being helpful. I hope you don't agree with everything and have responses to some of the comments offered by all.

Assignment: Come to location with a specific articulation of technical, visual design or expressive challenge for the day and I will attempt to work with you. We'll see what develops in terms of what can be shared within our group - on location and in blog and class critique.

"flowers" Friday April 16, 2010

"I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one."
– Edna St. Vincent Millay

Weekend Pictures from Great Falls, VA

Timing

Spent a Sunday morning out in Great Falls, and include below some pictures along with my own critiques. These two pictures have less to do with critique than with my own continuing astonishment at what a difference a few minutes takes - they were shot 7 minutes apart with a telephoto (185 and 200 mm) from Overlook 3. Two painters who were on the platform told me I should have got there earlier for the spume and spray were far more salient. Anyway, picture 1 is not deliberately blurred, it just shows off the mist thrown up by the falls; in picture 2 the mist has been somewhat burned off; a few minutes later and it was a lot less evocative.

Going Walkabout

On a well beaten path off trail in Great Falls, Va., I came across this small tarn. A steep and rocky climb down to the edge of the pool and then up again to a rocky ledge providing an overlook. For once remembering what I am supposed to be practising this week, I tried out different perspectives and attempted to achieve sharpness front to back. Here are four views. The first, from the edge of the pool seems to me now pretty blah. At the time the rock face was quite interesting containing ledges with some white and pink flowers. But all the detail gets lost. Picture 2 is pretty awful - everything intervenes in one's view of the pool. Picture 3 is better, I think, but it is awfully clutttered - what is the viewer supposed to be looking at? The photographer can't seem to make up his mind as to whether it is the foreground or the background that is of interest. Finally picture 4 achieves a simple uncluttered view of the pool and, guess what, it is pretty blah too. There was an interesting picture here, I think, just failed to get it.

self-critique

Different angles.

One picture to me is more interesting than the other. Picture 1 (I hope I've loaded these correctly) is somewhat dull and flat and the "trail" line leads off the left frame into nowhere. Picture 2 - shot from a lower angle - makes the rocks point upwards, compresses the greenery, and the "trail" line leads to the horizon inviting the traveller to walk a little; it has the very good luck of having a much more interesting sky. (Both shot with a wide angle, 20mm.)

Crops of Ms. Kiefer's fine forest pool

It is all green

These are all shot with a wide angle lens with minimal cropping around the edges.