Category: Anecdotes

The “Artified” Photograph

Cat Nap

Because I painted for many years in traditional media (oils and acrylics), I’ve always had mixed feelings about photographs that are photoshopped to look like paintings. I always thought of it as cheating. There is a certain aesthetic and sense of awe that goes with knowing that someone actually physically created a visually stunning work of art with brushes and paint, and that they may have spent weeks, months, or even years completing it. Well, I’ve had to readjust my thinking a little.

In a previous post I wrote a tutorial about how mediocre photos can be transformed into stunning black and white images. Today I want to talk about other options for photos that would otherwise be headed for the trash bin. They may be a bit blurry, orange, unflattering, uninteresting, or whatever. While it’s true that many do belong in the trash, others may have a little something . . . even if you can’t quite put your finger on it right away. This is how it begins.

I tend to take a LOT of photos, which has led to my son referring to me some years ago as the paparazzi – inaccurate in my opinion because I don’t stalk celebrities. However, in certain situations, I will just keep shooting. For example, the photo above is one of about thirty during an impromptu “session” that began while we were waiting at a pub for my daughter-in-law to get off work and join us. I just happened to have my little Canon Powershot SD780 with me. Nobody was posing – it was just a case of mom playing with one of her toys again. Last night while doing some computer housekeeping, I came very close to deleting the entire series, one picture at a time. Eventually getting down to a handful of so-so pics that I just couldn’t bring myself to get rid of,  I was determined to make them work. Enter Topaz.

Almost deleted this one!

Topaz is a photo-editing plug-in that has a lot of presets with effects that you can customize. Anyway, feeling that the photos were unsalvageable with basic editing, I decided to try out various effects (that were frankly quite hideous), but then I stumbled upon one that worked. I gasped. It definitely looked like a painting – one with the style and subject-matter loosely reminiscent of a Normal Rockwell. So I gave the same treatment to half a dozen others, adjusted the colour tones in Lightroom, and posted three on my son’s Facebook wall. He must have been impressed because he made one of them his profile pic.

Now I have a different perspective on “artified” photographs. Although I don’t plan on going crazy with it, at least I know that there are options for saving some photos from being deleted forever.

 

 

Moody Monochrome

I am not a wedding photographer. I don’t even consider myself a photographer. Not really. If something catches my eye, I take a picture with the idea that it might be usable… for something… perhaps a future project. My subjects range from rocks and insects, to shapes and colours, to cherished friends and relatives. One of the best courses I took while studying fine art at Emily Carr College of Art and Design was a black and white photography course… back in the days of film, chemicals, and darkrooms. I transitioned to digital years ago, but I still find that some photos just work better in monochrome.

The images above are from the second of two weddings that I attended up north this summer. This was my niece’s, which took place outdoors on my brother’s 190 acre property in Matheson. Anyway, I basically just wandered around with my camera all day looking for opportunities and anything interesting. The background where the ceremony took place was quite beautiful, and though the sky was unusually ominous, it didn’t rain.

Converting these particular photos to black and white was necessary in order to eliminate the problem of too many colours and shades of green overpowering the composition. By reducing distractions, the vast space and atmosphere are allowed to fully convey their moodiness through texture and contrast in three distinct sections–the sky, the tree line, and the smoother grassy foreground. Objects and/or people in the foreground enrich the whole by suggesting a particular narrative. The result is quite surreal and engaging.

I was surprised that these photos ended up being some of the most interesting of the day, and I just had to share. Let me know what you think, and feel free to share your own experiences/struggles with monochrome vs. colour photography. I’d love to hear from you.

Photography ~ Natural Wonders

It’s been two months since I got my DSLR Canon Rebel T3i 600D, and I can’t seem to put it down. One of my absolute favourite subjects in grade nine was biology, and had things gone a little differently, there’s a good chance I would have pursued a career in science. It’s true what they say — that a teacher can totally affect a student’s life, in either a negative, or positive manner. In my case it was disappointingly so.

In the 1970s it was common in the remote community of Timmins for foreign teachers to spend a year or two in one of the schools at the beginning of their teaching careers. Being in the French Catholic system, I had two Haitian teachers (a married couple) in grades seven and eight, whom I absolutely adored, and on the flip side… there was this muscle-bound, blond and bearded uber-French Adonis-type who liked to strut and torture kids. I’m serious… he would sneak up from behind and whack students’ hands on their desks with a wooden yard stick. But the thing he got the most sadistic pleasure out of was in giving what we called “Indian Sunburns.” This consisted of him wringing and twisting someone’s wrist like a dish rag until the skin turned red. He was known as Hercules on school grounds, and I have no idea why he was not arrested, or at the very least, fired.

Anyway… as I was saying… biology was my favourite subject in grade nine, and I signed up for grade ten biology for the following year with great anticipation. Before I go on, it’s important to understand that the French spoken in northern Ontario is very colloquial and particular to that region of Canada. There are accents, and then there are accents. The first day of grade ten biology, we all filed into the classroom to find our seats as we whispered amongst ourselves about the new, and very sombre face sitting behind the teacher’s desk. This guy was tight-lipped, high-strung, and dead serious. I don’t remember him ever coming out from behind his desk. I knew immediately that this was going to be nothing like the lively, inquisitive atmosphere with our bubbly and enthusiastic teacher of the previous year, but nothing could have prepared me for what ultimately happened.

Mr. X began the class, and a number of students shot nervous looks at each other. I think we were all thinking the same thing — we could barely understand a word he was saying. He spoke in a rapid-fire, possibly Franco-African accent (completely foreign to our young northern Ontario ears), and when asked a question, or for him to repeat anything, the response was more rapid-fire patois, only with an annoyed edge to it. I tried really hard to hack it through the first week, but didn’t make it. I just couldn’t understand what the man was saying. I dropped out of the course with a heavy heart, one thing lead to another, and here I am today giving my friends the heebie-jeebies with random [scientific] photos of whatever creepy-crawlies happen to cross my path. Above is a small selection, but if you’re into bugs, you can see some awesome flies and spiders in my Bugs and Stuff Facebook Album. Enjoy!