Toadstool

We're lucky in the Northwest to have so much rainfall and generally moist weather since we get the craziest mushrooms and fungi. I've been working on a portfolio of black and white images of fungus for a while now. This image isn't included in the collection since it's a different camera (a Lomo super fisheye) but I like it so I thought I'd share.

Playing with Painter 12

Today I played around with Painter 12, which has been hanging out on my computer for a while. I made this piece by cloning two different versions of a photo I took today of some ferns. One version is color while the other was a b&w version of the same shot. I used a variety of cloning brushes to get different effects including a fibrous brush texture and a smeary oil effect. Painter is a really spectacular program for getting painterly effects with a mind numbing number of possible brushes and surfaces. I doubt I'll ever be worthy of its power.

A vision of crows

Homage of sorts to William Henry Fox Talbot

A while back I took one of my old cameras, a Kodak duoflex and attached a "shooting chute" of sorts. The idea is that you use an old camera and shoot a digital image through the lens, so you're getting a picture that doesn't look like what you would normally get from a digital camera (or from the original, film camera either). The set up looks like this:

It's pretty ugly and wonky to shoot through. I had originally made it a pinhole camera by removing the lower lens, which is why it looks more like an "unoflex"than a duoflex.

Anyhow, I shot some photos through this contraption, using the Canon G9. Here is an example of one of the shots:

I decided that this reminded me a bit of a William Henry Fox Talbot photograph. This one:

"The Open Door" - William Henry Fox Talbot, 1844

Honestly, it's just that both photographs have a lone broom as the subject that makes the association for me. I decided to try to imitate the tonal qualities of the Talbot original. Here is the result:

"The Neglected Deck" - Leslie Levenson, 2013

Way more greenish than the original. But it's fun to try to mimic photos. I'm always amazed at how I overestimate my own skills when I try to do something like this. I know soooo little. It's good to keep trying though.

Puyallup Fair 2013

I took this photo at one of the 4H events last Sunday morning. My way of approaching the fair is to go early in the morning, when it first opens and leave within about 2 hours. The perfect arrival and departure times for a person who wants to be where crowds show up but who hates the crowds.

4H Angus Cow and Calf Pairs Judging

Fresh art

I've recently committed to doing at least one hour of art every day. I try to give myself a list of the projects I'm working on and my next actions so I can just start when it's time. One of my projects is putting together a collection of 100 digital prints. The goal is to print the digital images and have them in a physical collection ready to show when necessary. This has forced me to troll through my Lightroom catalog to look for images that go together or that I want to manipulate in Photoshop.

Here is an example of some sort of tree seed/pod that I photographed a while back. I made some preliminary adjustments in Lightroom and then moved to Photoshop and played around with a variety of plug-in filters I have. I'm pretty pleased, though I think I'd like to see some sort of texture over the top of the image.

Recent pinhole

This photo was taken with the Zero Image pinhole camera. I took it in the Tide Flats area of Tacoma. I especially love the glowing amber color that can be seen inside the pipes.

Dried picture of fern

Here is the final, dried photo from yesterday. The ends are still a bit curled but they'll settle down with more flattening. 

Inkodye on paper

The past couple of days I have been printing using Inkodye to print some botanicals from my garden. Yesterday, I printed on fabric. Today I decided to try printing on paper. When I researched it briefly online, most of the comments didn't sound too positive about using paper (you have to wash your print in very hot, soapy water with agitation). I wanted to try it anyhow so I got out some Fabriano Artistico watercolor paper, picked a few plants and went to work. 

I have to say, I had virtually no problems using paper. The color faded a bit during the washing process but it wasn't too bad. I'm pretty pleased with the end results. Here are a few shots of the progression:

The freshly coated paper at the start of the printing process. It was really sunny today so it immediately began to change color. 

This is the print right before washing. Notice the color change to dark violet. 

The final image as it's drying. I would show the dried version but the print is under a heavy book right now, flattening. I'll try to post a final version of it once it lays flat. 

I'm really enjoying this process, at least for contact printing objects. I'm not overly pleased with my results from enlarged negatives yet. I think I need to use very contrasty negatives to get something I will like. 

Goat head with shadows

It's been too long since I've posted. It's not for lack of time. More for lack of feeling inspired to write anything. I'm not writing much today either. Just posting a photo I was messing around with...

Endless fog

It feels like it's been endless days of fog. It's cold and damp and makes one feel that going outside is asking for a bout of claustrophobia and a chill. However, even on days like these when the mountains see more sun than we do, it's important to get out a bit. We took a photo walk around Clark's Creek Park this morning. The fog gave the forest an eerie quality. The moss glowed and everything was lovely quiet. It was really beautiful and good to get out of the house.

No visible moss on this tree. It's a giant, old snag of a tree that could come down with a mighty crash in the right windstorm.

Old tintype

I've been trying to photograph every day, but today I got caught up in scanning a bunch of old photos from my great aunt's scrapbooks. With that came some online searches for a place I knew as a kid and people that Pat was friends with. The day seemed to escape from me (as it does when I get sucked into the rabbit hole of the web...perhaps I should say something silly like, "caught in the web of the web" - ugh!).

There was a tintype in Pat's collection that may have been of her mother. I can't really tell but I see a similarity to another photo that has "your mother" written on the back. The tintype is pretty damaged but the picture is intact. I did a little Photoshop work but wasn't really interested in doing a ton of restorative work on it today. If this was my great-grandmother, then the girl is Mary Louise Butler who was born in 1887 and died about 5 weeks after I was born in 1965.

Mary Louise Butler?

Detail

Trains on the move

We decided to have a date afternoon today. This meant we went to a couple museums, had coffee and then saw "Lincoln" at the Grand. Excellent movie with acting rather than action (what a novel idea).

The Washington State history museum is located in Tacoma and always has something interesting to look at and ponder. There is a large model train on permanent display that is fun to look at...very detailed (it's a realistic representation of the historical rail lines in the area). Anyhow, I took this picture while the trains were in motion. I put the shutter speed down to about an 1/8 of a second which gives the picture the effect of the train speeding through the scene.

A walk in the park

Went for a walk in the park with my mother this morning. We saw lots of ducks and geese and a cool tree. My mother told me that she sees parents frequently photographing their children sitting in this tree. I processed the picture in Silver Efex Pro. Not sure if it's something I will use. I'll have to try some printing to see if it's worth the cost of purchasing the software. The photo is much more interesting in sepia than it was in color.

Frost

Frosty morning. I stopped by the side of the road to photograph a beautiful old oak and found these little frozen delights. It's supposed to be similar conditions tomorrow morning. Maybe I'll take a few more snaps with the macro.

Winter sunshine

With the beginning of a new year comes surprises. The past two days have been notable for the sunshine and blue skies - a rarity in these parts. This morning there was fog and lovely frost covering the world. I'm hoping for a repeat of this morning's weather tomorrow since I have a photo scoped out that I spied en route to an appointment. 

I've been puttering around the house today (that's actually a lie...I've really been puttering around my computer cleaning up photos, researching, and organizing a bit, though I did wash most of the dishes). During one of my breaks to stare at the light outside, I ventured onto the deck to get some shots of long shadows and the blinding light. I managed to get a blur of a hummingbird heading to the feeder. Not a technically good photo, but I still like something about it. Maybe it was the fact that I couldn't actually see the photo as I shot it since the sun was right in my eyes. Maybe it was just the fun of getting buzzed by the hummingbird.

Even the flies were enjoying their time in the winter sun...

A mini-pinhole

These are a couple film canister pinholes I took a bunch of years ago in Portland, OR. I was taking a self-portrait of myself and the fellow on the right asked me what I was doing. When I told him I was taking a pinhole shot, he volunteered to "sit" for a portrait. I taped the canister to the railing and exposed for probably about 15 seconds. I used lith film since it was easy to load in the darkroom and easy to tray develop. Because it's lith film, there are lots of little black and white marks in the negative. I removed some with Photoshop but it's really too thankless a job to clean up entirely. Plus, I consider it part of the aesthetic. The negatives were contact printed on silver gelatin paper. I scanned from the print.

Autumn showers bring mushrooms

Beauty in the everyday

I like to keep my camera close by: even when I'm doing something as ordinary as cleaning dishes or making dinner, something often catches my attention. In this case it was the sink with the colander and a shadow and the counter with light reflections through a glass pot.

Colander, sink, and cast shadow

Orange counter with light, glass and tomatillo sauce

Stumps of Alder Lake

This photo was taken with a Fujica 6x4.5 using Efke 100 at Alder Lake in Elbe, WA during last Thanksgiving.