A Frosty Cold One!

When I woke up the other day and saw the frost on car windshields, I was mesmerized by the soft, feathery patterns that had formed. I scoped out our two clunkers and my new van to see which vehicle offered me the best light and perspective opportunity. I selected the van. So I climbed in, closed the door and went to work (without leaving the driveway!). The windshield from the inside slopes strongly so I knew I wouldn’t be able to get a DSLR and lens to fit. I opted to go for my Canon G11 which is small, has a macro mode, and articulated screen (there’s no way I’d be able to position myself to see through a viewfinder).

I was working close and at an angle, so I closed down the aperture to f/8 and positioned the camera screen where the pattern and light intrigued me most. It was still a challenge though as I had to hold the camera in such a way that made my fingers activate controls I didn’t want. Still, as the sun reflected off the window of the house across the street, I was able to work in both warm and cool tones.

Frost on Windshield

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I’m still feeling like winter………

I know what the calendar says, but I’m still scrapping my car windshield and wearing winter coats. I’m also still working through some wintry images and enjoying it. We didn’t get much snow this past winter, but some of what we did receive was lovely. It was the kind of snowfall that left a visual impression of the land instead of overwhelming it.

The image below was made during one of our March snows and it was one of the most visually pleasing snows I’ve ever experienced. As a result I bolted out of the house the morning of and went to work. With the sun rising, there was both warm light and cool shadow to work with. I concentrated on those aspects of the land that excited me the most, contrast and form.

I used an Olympus OM-D E5 with a Panasonic 100-300mm lens to isolate and compress the composition. Working in RAW format, I then developed the image in Lightroom and finished it in Photoshop.

(c) 2013 Paul Grecian – http://www.paulgrecianphoto.com

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Texture

 Certainly snow adds an etherial feeling to an image, emotionally it may be the most important element in a winter scene. I also find however that snow adds a great sense of texture to an image. In fact, it may even emphasize the other textures in a scene by breaking the image up into an almost pointalistic painting.

The soft, even lighting of a snowfall is critical as well, preventing areas from becoming too light or too dark. In the image below, I composed in layers and included some winter red berries to add color punch to the image. For me though it is the texture that turns me on most, something that when working with a two-dimensional medium really gets exciting.

The image was made with a Canon 5D camera mounted to a Canon 28-300mm L IS lens on a Gitzo tripod. I selected a focal length of 150mm and worked almost wide open and at 400 ISO to attain a shutter speed of 1/60 sec. (fast enough to stop the snow falling from being a blur).

(c) Paul Grecian – http://www.paulgrecianphoto.com

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Descendo

The moon is a highly evocative subject whether it’s a sliver, a crescent, or full. It speaks to such a range of emotions from fear to romance. Trees have a similar effect on people, evocative as well, they speak to strength, loneliness, rebirth, and joyousness. Combined, these two elements of moon and trees, make for a pretty powerful visual and emotional effect.

In this image of a morning moon setting against a pre-dawn sky, I composed to place the moon off-center and behind branches. The exposure was made off of the sky and then decreased a bit to make sure I had detail in the moon. The trees are in silhouette but with a twist! Since there is snow on some of the branches, there is a dimensionality to the trees that is otherwise lacking in such an image.

The image was made with a Panasonic G2 and Panasonic 100-300mm lens at around 250mm (which is 500mm equivalent in 35mm terms).

Moonset behind trees

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Winter Visitor

Winter is a stark time of year visually. I think about it in terms of black and white with various shades of gray. In this part of the country (Bucks County, PA), we get a special little visitor that seems to perfectly fit with my vision of the season – the Dark-eyed Junco!

This rather mono-chromatic flier blends in well with the gray-skies and snow-covered landscape. In this image the background and perch mimic the colors of the bird and convey a sense of the season. I like the simplicity of the tonalities in the image and the very limited depth that I was able to achieve with a large-aperture long telephoto lens (Canon EF 500mm f4.0 L IS with Canon TC 1.4X).

Compositionally, I wanted the bird to not overlap with any background elements in which it would merge tonally. Being down low enough to the ground to keep the portrait intimate, that is, at about eye-level with the bird, was also critical.

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Foggy January

I’m really appreciating being able to get back to making photographs. Earlier this week I saw fog again when I awoke and took off, straight to my favorite lake! There were Canada Geese in large numbers and a distant Bald Eagle perched on the opposite shore high in a tree.

Even when working at a location I’ve been to a thousand times, I need to take time to absorb what I’m seeing and feeling. What moved me to start the process was the mist rising off the water against a winter woodland and a large stone in the foreground.

In the field, I used a Canon 5D Mark II camera and a Canon 70-200mm f2.8 L IS II lens on a Gitzo tripod with a Really Right Stuff  head. I like to work with the mirror locked up and a 2 second self-timer. This image was made in color and converted to black & white. I developed the image further using levels, curves, shadows/highlights, and some sharpening. When all was finished I applied sepia toning to emphasize the mood.

(c) 2013 Paul Grecian

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Looking Up

It’s hard for me to not anthropomorphize the behavior of animals looking up to the sky as being spiritual. There just seems to be a natural interpretation of any animal with their eyes searching the “heavens” as seeking guidance or being lost in a sense of wonder.

As someone who spent their college career in the study of animal behavior, any form of anthropomorphizing was unscientific. As an artist now, I don’t have to fight that urge. In fact I think it has become a part of my image-making process. I look for the “expressions” in animal subjects that relate to my own emotions and feelings. My work isn’t just about the animal in my image, but also about how their behavior speaks to our own lives.

This little kit Red Fox was part of a den I worked at for over a week. I  feel like I caught it in a private moment of youthful contemplation of the universe. Color isn’t important to the image, so I rendered it as a black & white. To instill a sense that it was unaware of my presence, I composed so that it blends into its surroundings but made sure that the eyes and ears (pointing forward with its line of sight) are clearly visible.

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First is Last

I was at Artists’ Gallery in Lambertville, NJ this past Sunday (Dec. 30) meeting and greeting visitors. A very nice couple came in sometime during the middle of the day and selected a framed piece of mine to purchase. The sale represented my last sold piece of the year and so that made it a bit more special. The image is of a flock of Cedar Waxwings in a tree against a winter white sky. I titled the piece Birds of a Feather and printed it a bit high key in order to bring out color and details in the birds and limit any texture in the sky.

The image itself was made during my first outing of 2012 (in January) and the last image that sold in 2012. The print itself was the first that I made of this image as I introduced the print late in the year. The sale made me feel like I was completing a circle of sorts.

I used a Canon EOS 1D Mark III camera with a Canon EF 500mm f4.0 L IS lens fitted with a Canon TC1.4X III to make an optic of 700mm. This rather heavy combination is placed on a Gitzo tripod with a Foba Superball tripod head and Wimberly Sidekick.

 

(c) Paul Grecian

 

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Artistic Process

The artistic process differs from medium to medium and is of course a never-ending learning process. As an artist working in the medium of photography, I cannot help but compare my medium and process to others. I find it both helpful in understanding my own medium but also in growing with it. And although I have been working in digital format for almost 10 years, the medium still feels new to me.

There is one aspect of working in digital format  that may be more important than any other. Unlike working with film, having immediate feedback on the camera’s LCD means being able to respond both to the scene in front of me and to the image I just created. And so as in painting, sculpture, or even composing music, I can analyse the result and adjust the process to do things differently.

Mostly, people think of that feedback as a way of checking that the camera is working correctly and that the image reflects what was desired. That is helpful, but maybe even more important is that the image itself becomes a new thing to which I can respond. Just as a painter lays down a brush stroke and then responds to how that brush stroke changes their feeling about where to lay down the next brush stroke, the photographer can respond to an LCD display of an image to determine what next direction to take.

In the image below that I made in Acadia National Park this past August, I was able to respond to the image I made as separate from the scene in which I was working. The image I made then could send me in a different direction than the scene itself would have.  As a result I could respond by changing focal length, perspective, polarization, exposure, composition, and if I chose to, also white-balance and application of a variety of other camera-based controls. The immediate feedback offered by the camera’s LCD allows me to be more creative in the field and ultimately with the final print.

This image was made with a Panasonic GH2 with an Olympus 9-18mm m4/3 lens at 18mm hand-held.

Cloud and Grasses, (c) 2012 Paul Grecian

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The Maine Thing – Day 8

During the evening of our last day in Maine I walked outside my friend’s house and was struck by the most star-filled night sky I’ve ever seen. There was a very clear Milky Way and a tremendous number of stars. Having done some night image making before, I immediately set up the tripod and camera for some long exposures. The sky was great, but I wanted something more in the image. I needed something to ground it.

Composing at night can be tough, but I knew anything I included other than sky would be in silhouette. Well, anything except an alternate light source or something reflecting that light source.

My daughter had just gone up to her room and turned on her light. My first thought was to have her turn it off. Then I realized that the window would be a great addition, as would the warm incandescent light. This image was made with a Canon Eos 5D Mark II and Canon EF 17-40mm f4.0 L lens. I used an electronic cable release, and in Bulb setting counted to 30 in my head.

Window to the Night Sky (c) 2012 Paul Grecian

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