Casual Sunday

It is a rare and much appreciated sunny warm Sunday morning in Portland, Oregon.  We are definitely ready for this after a spring of gray and drizzle/rain.  As I sat eating breakfast I was looking at the orchid that Katy gave us the other day.  I don’t tire of looking at these beautiful plants.  Then I noticed the shamrock sitting on the table in indirect north light.  Again, this plant just seems to be really enjoying spring.  I thought, hmmmmm, orchid, north light, hmmmm.  You know what’s coming.  In the space of about 15 minutes we had set up a background and put the blooms on the counters and exposed to even light.  Single source of light wrapping around the flowers and the plant.

As always, you should be able to click on an image below to see a larger version of the photo.

I had told Dianne that I was going to take a photo of the flower.  She chuckled.  Later she asked if I had been keeping count.  OK, it took a few to get the exposure and compositions that I wanted.  Work the scene baby, work it.

As I was about to quit I thought about shooting the shamrock again but the background was just too dark to work well without some other lights.  I gave up that idea and grabbed Di’s boquet of tulips instead.  Bingo.  Love it.

Now I move outside and get rid of some other plants weeds in harsh direct sunlight.  I guess this warm weather has some downside too.  Whatever.

 

Found friendship

Establishing a new friendship is a wonderful thing in anyone’s life, I think.  I marvel at how we connect with people… some stick and some move on. I never really know when a simple bit of conversation and eye contact might turn into a durable friendship.  Our friends Eric and Traci come to mind.  Happenstance brought us together to watch and photograph a sunset over Portland.  Today, we enjoy their friendship and appreciate being a part of their lives on occasion.  Anndee is another one who I met in a lighting class and found a friend who brings new thoughts and experiences to my life. Other friends have come through our work lives… lots of these people, really.  Perhaps it is that we spend more time with people in the work environment and that allows us to build an awareness of their character and qualities. Of course, some of the people one encounters never “stick” as friends.  It’s amazing, really, how we filter our lives.

And then there are the people who not only become friends but who lead us to yet other new friendships.  A cascade of relationships with common friends is really rewarding. We are in the initial stages of what could be one of the most interesting and rewarding new friendships I’ve had in some time. It all starts with our friend Shyamal who Dianne befriended at work and who became a dear friend to both of us.  It is Shyamal who provided the incentive to visit India where we formed friendships with many others, particularly a few who “hosted” us in different parts of India.  One of these people is a remarkable man by the name of Bhaskar Das.  Bhaskar is one of the truly nice people on earth and brings a lot of passion and experience to his friendships.  We are fortunate to call him “friend”.

Our circle of friends centering on Shyamal expanded recently as we worked together to find a way to get him a camera memory card and Dianne some fresh pashminas from India.  The exchange was facilitated by a wonderful young lady named Katy who used to live near Shayamal in Portland and who thinks of him as a brother.  Katy was heading to Nepal to volunteer as a physical therapist and then to vacation in India for a few weeks.  She agreed to shuttle the camera memory card to Shayamal and to bring the pashminas back to us.  Katy entered our lives over tea in SE Portland and we believe she will be one of the people who “stick”.

But it gets better.  Katy was fortunate to have Bhaskar lead her on a trek into the Himalayas from Darjeeling and show her the Neora Valley.  Her sister, April Ruth, joined Katy at the last minute and shared the time with Bhaskar.  We knew that these ladies would love Bhaskar and that proved to be the case. We met April Ruth and Katy for tea on their return to the USA and found that the short visit was not nearly enough.  They accepted an invitation to dinner and we began to plan a menu of Indian food to get us all focused on our common experiences.

Last night Katy and April Ruth showed up with a gift that immediately told me that there is a lot of connection between us that I had not thought could be there.  They brought us an orchid.  Now, visitors bringing us an orchid has history in our house thanks to our friends Deigh and Jon and Barbara.  I absolutely love the delicate features of an orchid.  The new one offers a pastel palette of colors that deepens into saturated colors as you descend into the flower’s interior. The plant is rich with blooms and a few buds to extend the beauty soon. Yes, I took a few photos of the orchid today.  I can hear our friends in Medford laughing… can’t I Jon and Barbara?  I promise to be a bit more restrained with this one though.

So, Katy and April Ruth joined us in a goal of bringing our friend Bhaskar to the USA to teach and learn. We hope to design and build a sponsored program for him to get here and in which he can see parts of the USA, climb a mountain or two and exchange his passion for outdoor adventure as a means to enrich children’s lives and build a durable appreciation for nature and its wonders.

Thanks, Katy and April Ruth.  Your gift will be a centerpiece of our daily lives for a long time. Both the flower and your friendship enrich our lives.

Ahhh, Spring

Even though this has been one of the coolest and wettest Springs I can remember, our bleeding hearts are displaying like never before.  This annual rite of Spring is one that I anticipate each year and I enjoy watching the blossoms mature outside our dining area window.

This year’s first portraits were done the other day using the “field studio” approach that creates a pure white background and eliminates the need to cutout the flowers in order to composite the flowers with other subjects on white.  The shoot went well and the results were as anticipated.  I’m still trying to decide if I really like the pure white so I tinkered around a little to experiment with some other backgrounds.  The photo below uses a textured background in which the color and contrast has been adjusted to taste.

You can click on the image to get a larger view if you’re so inclined.

On white

You may have suspected that this would be coming.  We are preparing all the gear for a busy day tomorrow… granddaughter Gina’s lacrosse tournament tomorrow morning and a long anticipated yoga shoot with the Savonn at Sellwood Yoga tomorrow afternoon.  Since the equipment was out and available I thought I’d shoot a couple more blossoms on white to see if I can become more familiar with the technical parts of the setup.

I call this one “Who’s your daddy?”

Simple, sensual lines.  I like simple.

Have a great Easter!

 

Loving spring

Our shamrock is experiencing a phase of luxuriant growth and blossoming.  It has given me many hours of pondering, shooting and playing with the varied blossoms that pop up and which last about 1 – 1.5 weeks.  The other day I set the camera up and started it on the task of taking a photo every 15 seconds as a group of blooms opened up…. or were supposed to.  Turns out it was too cloudy and dull to really get the blossoms to expand as anticipated.  I took 2600 files and made a small movie.  If you’re interested you can find the 1.5 minute production here.  Be gentle with me, please…. I know it isn’t real exciting or necessarily well done.  Ya’ll know that I learn by doing…over and over and over it seems.

http://www.bpmphotography.com/Movies/Good-Morning/22272703_8dw7sB

I’ve been reading another book about nature photography and was impressed with the author’s presentation of blossoms against a white background.  My first thought was that he was cutting them out and compositing them in a Photoshop file.  Turns out that the “on white” product is actually done in the field and totally in-camera.  It’s all about a white background and light thereon.  I don’t have the plexiglass that he uses in the field but I can sure make a white background using a small softbox and a speedlight.  I’m pretty content with this collection of images of our shamrock.  A few technical issues but overall the technique will get used quite a bit as spring brings blossoms to the Cascades.  It will, won’t it?  Please!

Our bleeding hearts are getting ready for their annual posing session.  I’ve done black and green backgrounds in the past.  This year will see some white as well.

The gift

If you look at the previous post you may find a theme… be it flowers or friends. This post goes to a long-time friend in Walla Walla who years ago gave us some shamrock cuttings. Our shamrock has given us a lot of joy over the years and I thought that maybe we’d run out of luck when the plant just seemed to be waning… lacking spirit and vitality if you will. And then it started to recover. I thought it must be a seasonal thing. Unbeknownst to me Dianne had fertilized the house plants and the shamrock bounced back… vigorously. New leaves and flowers are abundant and the plant just seems to be really enjoying itself.

I had a recent email exchange with friend Deigh about stacking images to create a depth of field in a photo that can not be attained without some magic. Macro shots are noted for their shallow depth of field so it is hard to get a full blossom in focus. I’ve seen a lot of photos posted recently that I really like. They show flowers in full light and with great focus across the blossom which fades into a very blurry background and foreground. I’m just guessing that most of the images were made by stacking a sharp image with another copy that is blurred out and then masking out the flower so it shows as being sharp. However they do it I like the results. I set up my camera today and used the shamrock blossoms to test a composite image creation using layer blending in Photoshop. I’ve had good luck using this routine in the past and will continue to use it in lieu of software that is designed to do just this one thing… blend sharp parts of multiple images to form one image in which the sharpness is extended.

I loaded 13 images into Photoshop on our new PC and waited for the magic to happen. It did. My thanks to Stacia for the gift that keeps on giving. My thanks to Dianne for bringing this beautiful plant back to life so I could play among its blossoms.

Encouragement

My friends Deigh and Eric have recently posted photos of Morning Glories and dahlias and their images encouraged me to get the freshly cleaned camera out of the bag and go the back yard before the serious rains begin.  Years ago another friend gave us a clump of Japanese anenome that has filled in a corner of our yard and has produced beautiful blooms each year.  At this point the stems are laying low to the ground and I almost mowed them off yesterday… stopped only by a nagging thought that I had not taken any photos of them this year.  So, knowing that time is limited before the blooms are totally gone I ventured out.

The first attempt was fairly traditional… line up a bloom and shoot.  I have to work my way into a photo session so the first few frames are usually a mind, attitude and technical stretching session.  I was pleased to see this little insect fly in and probe around slowly looking for one more meal before winter.

Then I looked around for something different.  A cluster of horizontal stems showed the backside of a couple of blooms and a few buds.  I admit that I’ve never paid much attention to the underside of the blossoms and found them pretty captivating.  I actually like the underside as much or more than the action side of the bloom.

So, I moved in closer and shot several angles of the smaller bloom near the top of the above image.  This last image is my favorite of the collection.  I’m reminded to stay alert to different views, to turn around and look behind and to wait until you are sure the opportunities are gone before leaving.  I enjoyed kneeling there waiting for the breeze to stop and for the bloom to stand still.  The wait gave me time to enjoy the flower and the act of recording it.

As always, you can click on an image above to get a larger view.

Taking a break

I’ve been pretty well tied to the computer monitor since I got back from Colorado…. finishing up the initial processing of a wedding, working up images from Colorado (stay tuned for that one) and drafting a licensing agreement for commercial use of the images I took of prima ballerina Gavin Larsen.  I can’t wait until those images are fully available to me…lots of plans.

But, I’ve been sitting too much and getting stiff in the back.  I ate lunch watching some bees work over a new patch of echinacea that Dianne planted.  I thought “what the heck” and got the camera out.  I mounted the 200-400 lens with an extension tube and set up a remote flash to blast away at a blossom.  Then I sat back and waited… and waited… and waited for a bee to land and work over the blossom I had selected.  I wanted to shoot at very high shutter speed and small aperture to get the bloom and bee in focus but throw the background into black….or at least dark.  The images below were shot about 1:00 in the afternoon on a cloudless day.  It was really bright out there.

As always, you can click on an image to see a larger version.  Pretty soon I’ll be testing out Google + for image presentation….end of the blog?  Hmmmmm…

Rose Garden

It was a perfectly lovely overcast Thursday… great for photographing flowers.  I headed for the Rose Garden which I expected to be fairly people-free for a few hours.  I had not visited the Garden this year since the blooms were late and Rose Festival created a swarm of people.  Today seemed like a good day to go see what was happening.

I went with intent to shoot pastel colors and abstracts.  I always have my eyes open for water drops and, usually, the sprinkler system provides a nice rainfall simulator.  Not today though.  The blossoms were dry and, for the most part, mature or over-mature and fading.  There were, of course, several new buds and blossoms but none that really coincided with my photo theme of the day.  I shot a few closeups of some nice organge and yellow and pink (I think) blossoms and got tired of it rather quickly.  I decided to just wander and look for patterns or other things that might catch my eye.

I watched a photographer working a bride and groom near the sculpture.  Interesting but not my style for sure.  I hope the couple are happy with the results.  I headed down the path on the south end of the garden and the hostas started drawing me in.  I found a spot out of the way and settled in to shoot the interiors of several hosta blossoms.  Now that I’ve spent some time processing the images I’m confident that I get to try again sometime.  They say you have to fail to progress….. I made a huge jump forward today I guess. Here’s the only one that has any merit IMHO.

A sure sign of Spring

Photographing bleeding hearts in the Spring is as much of a tradition for me as heading to the Painted Hills with friend Deigh.  This morning was overcast and slightly breezy.  I’ve always been curious about how the 200-400 lens would perform with some extension tubes added to its already bulky form factor.  I attached a 36mm tube and donned the knee pads before heading out into the back yard. Dianne and our friend Kim spent time watching and laughing at my contortions as I shoved, tugged, twisted and realigned the camera/tripod combination.

I tried to time shots between gusts of the breeze but only with partial success.  The image can be sharper and the composition can be better if I eliminate some nearby leaves and such.  Not willing to do any trimming or totally wait out the winds I shot with the intent of learning and enjoying the beauty of the blooms.  I love these little blossoms and the fact that they tell me that Spring is here… at least sort of.