Tag Archives: wondering

A trip to New Winchester Indiana and beyond

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My friend Eileen and I were on our way to Cloverdale, IN to photograph flowers at Hilltop Orchids (which will get its own post later) and we passed through New Winchester along the way.  There are some deserted homes there that just beg to be photographed and we were there to oblige.


This place is at the corner of highways 36 and 75.  I’ve been by there several times and always wanted to stop.  This was the time.  That building to the left was probably a convenience store and perhaps a gas station.  A house is to the right.


Buildings like this seem so much more attractive to photographers than homes presently occupied and taken care of.  Perhaps part of the attraction is that lives were shaped in these places at one time and what happened to the people remains a mystery.


I find that the way I shoot, the windows remain largely opaque giving only a hint of what is inside.  Technically it would not be a problem to show inside detail but this is a metaphor for me – looking through the window into the past and the past remains a mystery.


Or a mostly blank wall.


This place is out in the country.

Who slept there?  Who dreamed their dreams there?


Again a wall, and opaque windows.


Who hung their coats there?  I don’t know.

Feel free to touch the paint

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My brother is an academician who studies Mormon missionaries – why they are so dedicated to their mission, what it is like to be one, etc.  He himself is not Mormon but has had a long standing interest in that religion.  He told me about a couple of young missionaries who were going door to door in a small town.  They walked up the sidewalk of this one house and across the front porch.  They knocked on the door and after a few moments it was opened by a very irate man who said ‘What’s the matter with you?   I just painted the porch and can’t you see that paint’s still wet?  Who are you and what do you want?’   Thinking fast, one of the missionaries said ‘We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses and we’ll come back another time!  Sorry to have walked on your wet paint!’


I’ve been working with Corel Painter 11 along with Photoshop and have been so immersed in it I haven’t even been out to shoot much let alone write about it.  Lots of paint here but no wet paint.


One of the first things I found out about this program is that it destroys details and presents pretty much only the larger elements along with tonality and color.


In other words, it puts a high premium on basic composition.


One quickly finds out that ‘it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.’  And the swing here is composition.


I’m starting to get it.  The good thing about it is that many elements of composition can be learned.  Probably not all of them, certainly not all of them, but enough that any photographer or painter can improve.


Painter is almost as complicated as Photoshop so the learning curve is long.  But one can do enough right from the start to provide encouragement.


I’ve mentioned before that I’ve always wanted a painterly effect in my work and now that possibility is here in spades.


We had a lot of rain night before last and there were puddles in the driveway.  As soon as I saw them I knew I had to photograph them.  I’ve photographed puddles before and been disappointed because too much detail showed.  Gravel and blacktop aren’t that interesting to look at.  That’s changed now that I am using a paint program.


It’s fascinating to notice that I’m looking at the world differently now.  I’m not sure how to describe it, but having some idea of what I can do with images – standard photographic techniques and now painterly effects – affects what I look for.


Makes for a larger world. And it’s a world where the paint doesn’t need to dry.

What is there and what you see

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Photo Venture Camera Club went to Garfield Park in Indianapolis to photograph flowers and foliage in the conservatory yesterday.  This is always a good trip.


A friend and I were talking as we were shooting and he said that his wife asked why he photographed leaves.  He responded that he was attracted by the textures, colors, shapes, etc.; in other words, aspects we see but which do not translate easily into words.  The leaves were more a platform for exhibiting these features than they were objects in and of themselves, at least for my friend.  I suspect that is a problem for some photographers – they go out to photograph, say, leaves, and don’t get much because they are not attending to the light, the shapes, colors, textures etc., aside from the label ‘leaves’.  I bring this up because it can be hard to avoid getting trapped by the words.


Words are important as ingredients of communication but unless one is doing documentary photography where it is extremely important to show exactly what is there – the aftermath of a storm, the condition of a house that is for sale, an accident scene – the features of the scene – the light, textures, shapes, colors – are often more important than the fact that we are photographing leaves, trees, reflections in water.


As you can see from the examples I have shown so far, I don’t think it too important to represent what I saw as objects so much as platforms for the features.

On the way home it struck me that maybe this is at least part of the answer why photographers are so often attracted to crumbling buildings.  These buildings can’t really be adequately described by words; pictures, images are needed and what is interesting about them is not so much the crumbling structures themselves but the textures, colors and shapes.

Well.  Having solved that problem we can move on to solving the problem of bringing peace to the world.


On second thought, let’s save that problem for another day.

Learning more about painting photographs

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I’ve found that learning often progresses by spurts followed by a leveling off and then, if I keep at, another spurt and more leveling off.  The longer I’m at it, the more time elapses before the next spurt.  Right now I’m early in the process of learning to use Corel Painter Essentials 4, a paint program that, with a lot of choices on the user’s part, can turn a photograph into what looks like a painting.


This image (above) started out as a photograph of a tree in a rock wall along the Buffalo National River in Arkansas.  Below is a spring storm on that same trip.


Here’s a hummingbird coming in to feed.


I do like this program.  And for all my complaining it isn’t hard, it just takes getting used to.


There are programs (apps) for the iPhone that do amazing things with photographs taken with the iPhone.  All the work is done in the phone and it is surprisingly good.  To see some good examples, click on the link to see Rad Drew’s work.  Be sure to look at the whole album.  For my part, I’m not tempted (yet) to get an iPhone.  I am happy to play with Photoshop and Painter Essentials.


Can’t go anywhere with my wife without seeing quilts of some kind:

I am still working on this one.


Actually I’m still working on all of them.


And I’m starting to see image possibilities with a view toward doing these ‘paintings’. More about that later.

It is what it is

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I will freely admit that I don’t really like to go out in the rain to shoot but when that’s what we have and it is foggy, and I haven’t been out with a camera for a few days, well, it’s that or nothing.


I seldom have anything but the most general expectation for what I will find, this morning it was ‘there will be fog’.  Sure enough, there was fog and it works well to separate subject from background.

I made a print of the image above and I was surprised at how well it works.  Part of the reason was the condition of the weather but another important factor was the software I used to sharpen the image.  For a variety of reasons a digital camera softens the image a bit and it makes all the difference to get the sharpness back and accentuate it some.  There are lots of ways of sharpening and the garden variety methods, in the hands of an expert, work very well.  I’m not an expert.  I have been using Pixel Genius’s most recent version of their sharpening software (PhotoKit Sharpener 2.0)  and it performs well beyond expectation.  One of its features is to produce an image that looks just lousy on the screen but works well as a print.  As it turns out, the process of printing introduces some softening too and their software accounts for that.  The image above used a different set of parameters for display on a monitor.


I was also pleased to get all the shots appropriately vertical.  I am forever tilting the camera one way or the other and then having to straighten the image in Photoshop or live with it.  Today all went well.


It’s really pretty funny when you think of it, but I was out with a couple of thousand dollars worth of equipment (camera, three lenses, good tripod, etc.) and one addition that saved the day  This was a plastic grocery bag I put over the camera as I was lining up the shot and leveling it.   This is not exactly in the same league as

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

But it was essential that the camera and lens not get too wet.  The plastic bag came through.

Paying attention

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I suppose that someone walking through the woods on a beautiful day in the winter talking on a cell phone is staying in touch after a fashion.  They just aren’t in touch with what is around them.

Thomas Jefferson had something to say about this:

” A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprize, and independance to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks. Never think of taking a book with you.  The object of walking is to relax the mind.  You should therefore not permit yourself even to  think while you walk; but divert yourself by the objects surrounding you.  Walking is the best possible exercise.”

Nowadays, Mr. Jefferson wouldn’t have to take a gun with him, he could take a camera.  You can shoot with either device.  I have an idea he would have been an avid photographer.


The world around us goes on its merry way whether we pay attention to it or not.  And it’s beautiful whether we pay attention to it or not.


I had shot the same scene (below) the day before but it was overcast then and there were no shadows.


I couldn’t think of a good reason to go swimming, so I didn’t.  To use Jefferson’s words that would likely have been “too violent for the body” although it would probably have stamped “character on the mind”.


Watching the water from the bank was enough of an experience and one I’m likely to repeat.

Wondering in the trees

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I really had no idea what I would be shooting today, I just knew I was going out.  The day was bright and around 20 degrees.  We haven’t had a great deal of snow but what there is, is hanging on.

I would like to say that I was ready to shoot anything that would stand still long enough but in the case of the image below, the seed pods were still for most of the 1/3200th of a second the shutter was open.  Otherwise they were moving pretty briskly.


I had to chase this one for awhile too.  Not exactly strenuous exercise but fun.


I’ve been doing more with sandwiching multiple images exposed for different lengths of time (high dynamic range or HDR).  This is part of a walnut plantation.

It reminds me of the Robert Frost poem, ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ – ‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep.’  And like all of us, I have promises to keep.

Telephone survey

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I got a call a few minutes ago; the fellow was doing a survey of in-home use of broadband, cellular, long distance and cable service.  I’m not really the one to talk to since I don’t watch TV and while I have a cell phone, I still have to read the customer instruction manual to figure out how to use it.  I believe it does have a camera on it and that might get some use.  But I was the senior male in the household so I got tagged for the survey.


As I was answering his questions, typically by saying ‘that does not apply’, I was thinking about which images from today’s shooting at Fort Harrison State Park I would include in this post.  There were shots of trees but they didn’t seem to have the same impact as simple dead weeds do in the snow.


Or, for that matter, water flowing among snow-covered rocks.  I took several shots and they all are different because the patterns in the water keep changing.  Fascinating to watch.


I remember several years ago watching a movie (on TV) where a fellow put his foot through the screen.  That seemed a bit extreme at the time.  It doesn’t seem odd at all now.


I don’t advocate watching less TV.  If you enjoy it, more power to you.  My interests are just different.  Not better or worse, just different.


I’ll probably go back and shoot more tomorrow.  I know I missed a lot of good stuff.  Especially close to the ground.  And close to the water.

Snowy day

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We’ve had a few inches of snow so far today, enough to go out with the snowblower but not enough to argue against going out to shoot so it was off to Fort Harrison State Park.


Picnic tables have nice geometries in the winter.


Reflections are fascinating any time of the year but especially so in the winter when the snow outlines shapes.


When I was composing this shot of the tree I thought I would take out the little red flags with Photoshop but I find that they add to the composition.


I wouldn’t even have noticed these leaves in spring, summer or autumn.  But there they are in winter.


Maybe there will be more leaves tomorrow.  Probably, but I had better go check.

EcoLab at Marian University in Indianapolis

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Becky and I went to look at the EcoLab at Marian University this morning.  Last night someone brought a picture of a cedar waxwing to our camera club and was talking about what a good place the EcoLab is to go to see birds.  So we went.  We did hear a couple of birds but didn’t see any.  That didn’t matter in the least.  This place is well worth visiting for the general photography possibilities.


It was gently snowing and that only added to the charm of the place.



When I saw the scene below I thought of the caption ‘Three Points of View’.


We’ll be going back, I’m sure of that.