No Place Like Home……..or Studio for that matter

In the current April/May issue of Professional Artist magazine I write about the hows and whys of doing a home/studio show as an alternate venue for selling artwork. I had the chance to visit artist Andy Smith during his annual home/studio show, it was a great experience. My wife and daughter came with me and both took some of Andy’s wonderful work home for themselves and as gifts. Andy’s home/studio show is so well done and certainly has me thinking about how I could pull off such an event.

Apri-May 2013 issue of Professional Artist magazine

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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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Breathing the Same Air

I am continuing to prepare for my two-person show at Artists’ Gallery in Lambertville, NJ. I have the honor of exhibiting with artist Norine Kevolic who works in both paint and wood. What is especially exciting to me is that for this show Norine will be hanging landscape paintings for the first time at Artists’ Gallery. I feel that our work speaks to and in informed by a shared response to nature. In fact our postcard for the show presents two rather different works but both made at the same local lake, Lake Galena.

Our show runs from March 8 thru March 31 with an artists’ reception on March 9 from 4-7 pm. The title of the show, Breathing the Same Air, was chosen after I read Norine’s quote for our press release. She stated “My aim is to create a sensuous work in which one feels they are breathing the same air as in the painting”. I knew immediately that Norine and I shared a similar motivation which needed to be reflected in the title of the show.

Breathing the Same Air

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Winter Trifecta

 Certainly one of the aspects of winter that I find interesting from a visual stand point is how it simplifies the landscape. Bare trees and snow-covered ground both contribute to a sense of the austere. Add fog as a component and the landscape all but disappears. I call this the “winter trifecta”.

With this “trifecta” of conditions, I can concentrate on making images that are mostly suggestive of the landscape but still fully representing the feeling of winter.These kinds of images also speak to larger concepts such as being alone, quietness, and visually allow the contemplation of form and light.

There is definitely a quality or feeling to the image that is calming and which I very much like.

(c) Paul Grecian

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Leicester Longwool

Since my first time traveling to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia in 1985, I’ve been back about 25 times. In all of those visits to this amazing historical time machine, one of the things that has stood out to me was the animals. Colonial Williamsburg has a Rare Breeds Program in which they maintain the types of animals which would have been kept by the colonial residents of the period.

One animal in particular though seems to have the most personality – the Leicester Longwool sheep. These comical looking animals have thick, curly wool coats that cover their eyes and give them real character. As many of my visits to Williamsburg have been in early spring, I have also been able to see the new born lambs which are yes, very cute!

For several years I have offered two prints depicting these marvelous animals and have been pleased with the response I received. More and more I am meeting people who are as excited about Williamsburg as I am. In my most recent travels back to Virginia, I made this image of a Leicester Longwool in a winter setting. This image was made with an Olympus E3 with Olympus 12-60mm lens.

(c) 2013 Paul Grecian

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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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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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