Obsolete America

Here's a few more from the day run Annette and I made to the lower Delaware coast, where farms and fishing are a way of life. The old and shuttered remnants of farms and rural businesses caught my eye and resonated with me. As technology changed the impact on the small rural economy and lives of those who tended these places; they were abandoned. The rooms now vacant, the windows boarded and the doors locked, never to be used again, as they fall into ruin on the landscape.

Private Lessons

Well, what do you do when there are two mornings in a row filled with rain? Pick one and go shoot. Yesterday I was supposed to conduct a private lesson in the morning, with a focus on composition of water and landscapes, but got rained out. Today it was rainy when I got up at 5:00am to go to the Susquehanna State Park, but the weather forecast looked better than yesterday, with just occasional chances of thunderstorms and cloudy skies...so we went. When I arrived at the boat ramp at 6:45 the river was shrouded in fog and there were already two boats drifting in the water. So I snapped a couple shots before my client arrived. We worked on some shots of the pier and then moved upstream and made some images of the rocky river bed in the fog. We actually had amazing conditions, fog and overcast made for some very moody shots. After shooting the landscape we moved on to the Herring Run and made some waterfall images. By then it began raining again, but we had a good shoot and good subjects.
I made just a few shots in the morning, but mostly helped with composing images and technical adjustments.

Hampden, HDR

Today was a workshop day in Hampden, creating a few HDR images while assisting the workshop participants compose and bracket images for processing in Photomatix.
We had fun and made great progress on compostion, camera functions and processing images.
I only snapped a few so I had some files to demonstrate in the afternoon, during the classroom session.

Impressionism and the Landscape

Today, Annette and I headed to the marshes of coastal Delaware. We had beautiful blue skies in the morning with thin light clouds and by the afternoon we had overcast skies with soft even light.
I was in the mood for looking at the landscape as an impressionist.
I saw the beautiful textures and subtle colors of the marsh as swipes of color and soft forms. In the late afternoon I saw the s curve in the wildlife preserve road against the green grass and brown trees as a swipe of lightness dividing the two tones. In the grasslands and small shrubby trees on the borders of the marsh, I saw the opportunity to make some multiple exposures of the soft hues and textures. Here are six shots, the straight shot of the scene and the impressionist shots. The landscape swipes are done by moving the camera in a horizontal pan as the exposure is being made. This process calls for lots of swipes until the desired effect is achieved, either by slowing down, recomposing or speeding up the motion.
The multiple exposures are in camera 9 exposures, and as each exposure is made moving the camera ever so slightly in a vertical fashion.

Henryton Hospital Sanitarium

Today, painted the old wrought iron kitchen table, that belonged to Mom and Dad and that sat in their kitchen for many years, as part of my kitchen spruce up. I also did some private lesson preparations, played with these two images, motivated by Tony Sweet's Blogcast on Mirror techniques....I didn't get out shooting today so I went back to some file images from Henryton I had not yet processed looking for some that were good mirror effect candidates.....

Port Deposit

This morning I met Barb, Annette, and Steve and headed to Port Deposit for a mentor shoot with some members from the Baltimore Camera Club http://www.baltimorecameraclub.org/

It was a bright sunny morning and we helped some members with technical aspects of making images as well as assisting with compositions. In between I made a few images as we moved through the town's main street. We enjoyed a nice lunch at Joe's Grog House on Main Street. http://www.portdeposit.org/?a=restaurants

Friday

Today, started with the cable guy...Comcast...I have been having intermittent reception of signals to no signal and very interrupted streaming of videos, so I called for service...well it took 2 and a half hours, and lots more headaches, but the bottom line for the day was finally things are working great and I can download new image processing software, like the Topaz Simplify program for processing images...lots of photographers are working their images in these programs for artistic renderings with interesting effects so I thought I'd give it a try.

I only had time to process one image today and here are two versions of the same image.
The first image an HDR image tone mapped in Photomatix then processed in Photoshop, applying a little diffuse glow and some plastic wrap filter. The second image is the first one brought into Topaz Simplify and further enhanced....well it's a look...

Longwood Blue Poppies

Today, I went to Longwood with Steve, Steve and Annette to shoot the blue poppies. Longwood was very crowded but we were able to get to the poppies before all the foot traffic created such a breezy situation, that it was impossible to continue shooting them. The color blue is so incredible..and the petals are so translucent they just glow blue.
This shoot was a far cry different than yesterdays sanitarium shoot. I almost felt like a brought a ghost home with me from that creepy place.

Henryton Hospital Sanitarium

Gosh it's been nine days since I was out shooting. I have been on a home project painting my kitchen and turned down several invites to visit Henryton with Tony, Barb, Kathleen, Don and Arthur. Today I was able to get out and while Barb has been there now five or six times I was just getting started....so here are a few from the place I made today. Barb and I met Arthur, Jeff and Kathleen there to do some shooting. I admit the place is a little creepy. Having grown up in the area, where we used to goof off in Marriotsville and Woodstock as kids, we stayed clear away from the place as it was a sanitarium for the mentally impaired and there were lots of stories about what went on there. Walking into the place for the first time I was a little uneasy, but soon the photo mojo took over and it just became a photo opportunity for High Dynamic Range images. Most of these images are 7 bracketed images processed in Photomatix, then worked again in Photoshop. I'd like to go back to explore more than the first floor in the oldest building.

Longwood Gardens

Just a few more I processed from Longwood Gardens on Saturday with the group from The Baltimore Camera Club. The Poppy reminded me very much of a painting from Georgia O'Keefe. The chandelier was from the Grand Ballroom at Longwood, located behind the conservatory gardens and is an HDR image.

Longwood Gardens

Several members of the Baltimore Camera Club headed to Longwood Gardens today. It was a beautiful spring like day and the gardens conservatory was a bit crowded. I made a few flower shots and then went into the Grand Ballroom and decided to make some HDR images of the beautiful room. I spent most of my time there as the frequent visitors passing in and out would interrupt my sequence of bracketed images which were already taking a lot of time due to the light range in the scene, bracketing 4 stops down to get detail in the shadows at f22 took some time when the noise reduction kicked in as well.

We had a nice lunch around noon and then headed home.