New series of images are being created with brand new inspiration. I basically photograph the flowers on my lightbox in comfort of my home in the middle of winter and then go to work in Photoshop to get these dramatic images. I will demonstrating this technique in upcoming Out of Chicago conference! Here are some images..
Visual Wilderness Website has been a useful resource to me for past 7-8 years and when I was asked to write an article a few months ago, I was ecstatic. But life got in the way and I waited 6 months before I had decided that enough is enough. Jay Patel was so kind and quick and it took less than a week for him to get this to the finish line. I tried to give away as many details as I can in this article about how approach, what my settings are, and how I go about post processing. Obviously, 1500 words are not going to cover everything I wanted to say but I gave it a try. I am working on 2 more articles - one for how to work with your subject(s) on lightbox and second one on in-depth post-processing. I am a big sucker for post-processing and I strongly believe that the only way to stand apart from other photographers when you are working with same subject is by coming up with creative ways of processing it. Sometimes, I get too obsessed with it and come up with too many variations of one image and spend days deciding on which is a better version of all. Let me know what your thoughts are after reading the article about what else I can be covering in my upcoming articles.
If you have not been Portland Rose Garden, and you love roses, I would ask you… What are you waiting for? With almost 650 varieties of roses, its a treasure for flower photographers. Whenever I go there, I come away with so many images and I always have hard time picking my favorites and I take my time processing them so they won’t overwhelm me. Today, as I turned 50, I wanted to take sometime to reminisce not just what I have been through in my life but how far my camera took me! All I can say is that I have a great life with a lot of ups and downs and mostly I kept myself happy. I shed enough tears too but my laughs are more lasting than my tears and my fears. I learnt a lot from these flowers. Despite the circumstances, a flower still blooms.
I love lotuses. I am special affection for them probably because I was named after them. This past October, when I was co-hosting a workshop in Oregon to photograph, I had the good fortune to visit Hughes gardens where the lotuses and water lilies were growing in the green houses. Since they were mostly shaded and in a confined space, it was very easy to approach them do closeups. I had about 400 images to look thru. Here is a little series I have done. I did some post processing using Alienskin software. I would suggest 24-70 or a macro lens for this location and definitely have a friend with you to hold a reflector and/or a diffuser to soften the light and minimize shadows. I have used a tripod in this case, ISO 640, f9 and aperture priority mode.
This year, I will be different, said me for many years! Then, I realized as I am getting wiser with age, that I can not be different than who I am. I am made up of my experiences, my emotions, my trials and tribulations and why would I want to be different? So, I will work on getting better experiences, surround myself with people that inspire me, love me, support me and I will try to give love, and support to people around me. No lofty goals!
Here is today’s lesson (learnt all by myself).
I had the great fortune to conduct a workshop along with Jackie Kramer last year in Oregon photographing dahlias, lotuses, roses and many many other flowers. Today, I have decided to work on one particular image that’s tugging at my heart! Here is the original with absolutely no adjustments. Shot with Sony 90mm macro, ISO 640, F2.8, 1/80th sec.
I was not really happy with it. But somehow this rose kept calling my name. For years, my tradition was to photograph sunrise every New Year day and this year, I decided to watch it from my hotel balcony and take it in and surrender myself to the surroundings. (In myrtle Beach, watching the sun rise over the ocean sitting in my pajamas)!! Then inspiration strikes me to process it. I used Exposure software to work on this and just playing with the filters, I stumbled upon this one preset that blew my mind away. I cropped a bit, sharpened and such after the filter is applied!
Then I felt bad about changing the color of the rose altogether so I went back to the original and this time, I duplicated the layer in PS, using Exposure software’s bokeh settings, created a blurred background. Using blend modes, I brought back the center of the rose into the blurred layer. Sharpened a little and finished off with NIK pastel preset at 20% opacity. Here is the end result!
Let me know what your thoughts are. If you want to learn how I experiment with my floral images, I do offer one on one mentoring online to introduce you to various techniques that I employ!
When my mind is on steroids which is most of the time, I go nuts with my flowers (or churches). I have spent 4 evenings and one whole weekend photographing flowers. These are just a few out of 60 images I deemed worthy of sharing.
A bunch of Callas and 8 hours of photographing yielded a ton of images. I was playing with selective focus, textures as background on my desktop, lightbox and other props, and various lenses!
I know money can’t buy happiness but it bought me callas and they made me happy. They kept me busy for 2 evenings!
I will try to explain my process of photographing these flowers in detail in upcoming posts.
Lot of my non-photography friends, especially women, complain that they don't find time in their busy lives for any hobbies. I tell them that the first thing I did when I felt the same way was to minimize my time spent in kitchen to less than 3 hours in a week. Viola, my photography took off because of that. I prioritize and I get by!! This image was taken on one of those crazy road trips I took with 2 of my friends to Connecticut to speak at a camera club and made a stop at Battell Chapel at Yale University . This is a 4 frame #Vertorama with tilt-shift lens. What did you give up for your hobbies?
What can I say? Columbia, South Carolina is starting to steal my heart bit by bit. The people here are so welcoming and achingly loving! Everywhere I go, I am making new connections. I would like to think that it's my awesome personality but the truth is South Carolina is charming and people here are exceptionally friendly! Here is a tribute to the city that welcomed me with open arms!
#Vertorama #Handheld
When the world around me crumbles and when I feel out of sorts, when I feel the weight of my troubles drag my soul into the abyss, and when my heart is broken and pain is unbearable, I turn to photography….to seek light, to fight back, to feel alive, to recharge, to meditate… my heart sings with joy, my life seems to be in order, and I feel like I have a purpose in life.
Lesson learned: Change the way you see things just like you see thru different lenses and you see different perspectives of the same scene.
My experiment with this carnation continues. I just wanted to prove myself I can be very happy with spending 3 dollars on flowers and have hours and hours of fun, just as much as driving 6 hrs (which I did today) to capture fall colors. Not everyone of these images will be a wall hanger but it is one way to force yourself to learn to see. Even the most everyday, taken for granted things in life can still teach us so much, if we stop and pay attention.
The first three images were shot up close with Raynox Super Macro Lens Add-on to my Sony 90mm Macro lens. It’s important to remember to use tripod even if you have a very steady hand. It just slows you down enough to pay attention to the composition. The edges of the petals can give you unlimited possibilities. The only ask here is you take the time to look through the lens.
#4 and #6 are shot with black felt background and I have lightpainted the flower from behind. You just have to be careful with light spilling over on the frame so it might take a few attempts to get it right.
#5 and #7 are converted to black and white using NIK filters. When you take away color from the flower, you are left with the lines, form. Since flowers are known for their attractive colors, it’s hard to imagine them in black and white initially. But as the times goes by, you will start identifying the flowers that would look great in BW. My experience shows that backlighting will enhance any flower both in color or in BW. Try tulips, callas, begonias with lots of petals and such. But always remember that if you don’t experiment, you won’t know.
I am a sucker for light play. This was a perfect place for me to hangout with my fisheye lens! At South Carolina State House
St.Paul's Chapel survived without even a broken window when the twin towers fell on 9/11. It's also the oldest surviving building in Manhattan. This chapel served as a place of rest and refuge for recovery workers at the WTC site who slept on the pews, their helmets as pillows. For 8 months, this was a place for 100's of volunteers working long hrs serving meals, making beds, counseling and praying with fire fighters, construction workers, police and others.
It shows that for those 8 months, there was no thought of skin color, race or religion but only unity and humanity.
This church was founded in 1697 and witnessed the first miracle: surviving the great fire of 1776.
I have shot these 2 image with my camera propped on the grand piano near the altar to get the perfect reflections.
National Cathedral
Every time I go to DC, my heart swells up with pride to see our nation’s capital! I can feel the history in the air. I can’t explain this feeling in words. Once I took up photography, it became even more pronounced. This particular Saturday, I was invited for a private photography tour by my fellow cohort from Arcanum. I’ve tried photographing this place a few times before but was unsuccessful due to the scaffolding inside to repair the damage done during an earthquake a couple of years ago.
This is classic gothic architecture and it’s the world’s 6th largest cathedral and 2nd largest in the US. The wrought iron work throughout the cathedral requires a tour in itself. I tried to capture the essence of the architecture in this trip and I know I will be going back many times to examine and capture intricate details in the future.
Here is the #Vertorama that shows the cathedral nave and ceiling while the sunlight casts beautiful shadows through the stained glass windows.
Here are the images to show the view from the floor above the ground level
Here are the hallways and altars in the basement of the cathedral.
Ever since I got my first taste of photographing a church with a meetup group in 2013, I was smitten. Then I came across Klaus Hermann’s HDR Vertorama book and my mind was set on pursuing this kind of photography. I have been dreaming of visiting various churches and cathedrals around the country for last 2 years and then eventually to go to Europe and visit as many cathedrals as I can. I am fortunate enough to be able to spend so much time to develop my processing skills and I finally began to feel confident in showing my work to others without flinching.
This series of photos are from the Cathedral of the Assumption, the cathedral mother church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky. Built in 1841, this cathedral is known for it’s Gothic Revival architecture. This place is absolutely magnificent and when we walked in, there was not a soul to be seen. My heart did little jumps at this rare opportunity of the solitary experience without any disturbances. There was a little pedestal at the entrance with a bowl filled with holy water and you could see reflections of the ceiling and the alter in the water. There was no way to use the tripod so it had to be hand held shooting if I want to include the reflections in the image. Fortunately Canon 6d is very good with high ISO performance so I took the challenge of hand holding the camera, resting it on the edges of the bowl and I think I have some unique shots. Of course I had some inspiration from an image on 500px so it is not too unique after all.
At first I have taken the straight on shots, and then the series of shots to make a vertorama, then I switched the lenses to take some fisheye shots. I was ready to try out the reflections at this point. My friend was so helpful in turning on the lights and that was really special as the whole cathedral came to light in that instant and for that I am so happy. Now comes the fun part. I learned one thing over the course of 2 years of visiting the churches.. always ask to go to the 2nd or 3rd floor if they have it and allow people to go there. The perspective is so different from up there and here are some examples. Always take your time to experiment but first take the cursory shots as you might not have as much time as needed to experiment.
Here are some more with different perspective...
I am looking into various forms of photography and luckily came across a meetup group in Philly holding workshops on various kinds of trick photography.. I have attended a few sessions and now I am hooked entirely.. The only problem is I can not come home and create this setup by myself.. that requires a lot more skills than what I have.. Carpentry, Flash usage, tinkering with electronics.. I would rather drive to Philly and shoot the photos in a studio set up by somebody else..Call me lazy.
Because of this cold weather, I am hesitating to go outside with my camera. So my alternative is to buy some flowers and shoot them at home. My florist is happy to see me every other day..I bought this rose and it looked perfect just the way it is. I tried to shoot it with white, black, natural backgrounds to see what works. I also shoot it in macro mode as macro is some thing I would like to pursue in future. I loved the background as it is much more dramatic but it looks staged.. Next fav of mine is macro shot. But a lot of people told me is that white background is bringing out the delicate essence of the flower.
A few weeks ago, I had gone out with a meetup group to do some star trail photography at Cape May. The organizers and I were the only ones showed up for this event so I got to spend a lot of time with the experienced photographers and picked their brains for tips and tricks.. They let me use the filters they brought. I had seen one the most beautiful and stunning sunsets that day.. Too bad I did not get to do the star trails for that's for another day.. [nggallery id=11]
I live 15 minutes away from this place for past 7 years but only after I started photography that I started to visit GFS regularly.. Every time I go there, I come away with beautiful images. For people living close by, I would suggest to visit GFS at least once every season.
I had the good fortune to visit Notre Dame Basilica in Montreal. I was not sure what to expect as I am not familiar with Gothic architecture. I was so pleasantly surprised once I stepped inside. It was spectacular and the blue light bathing the alter was so mesmerizing.. I have attended the light and sound show and it was more like a history lesson. They allowed the tripods inside but only gave us 15 min to take the photos and of course, with so many people around, long exposures were almost impossible. I managed to take a few and I went back the next morning to see if I can get more. I wish I had a couple of days just looking at the details inside the Basilica..
