Week 28 - 2016 in Photgraphs

Day 196

 I was debating the new camera this week. And finally ordered it. So taking photos from this week inspired less than usual. But there were subjects I needed to capture so I used the equipment at hand to take them. Mostly the Nikon D90, which while only 12 mp, is the workhorse of my stable.

Day 193

But I still tried the Nikon D3200 from time to time. In part to prove I really needed a new and reliable camera with more pixels. The turkey feather above was taken with that camera. It is the one of a series of five I took of this subject. But clearly the camera was having focus issues. I, however, like this one. The first Americans see the turkey feathers as spiritual tools or symbols and the out of focus quality of this photograph imparts that.

Day 190

The rest of these are with the D90 and my long lens. And with the plumeria blossoms a certain athletic ability to perch on things to focus in the 10 foot high blooms.

Day 191

Day 192

Day 194

The salmon colored poppies just required being able to stoop down and get back up while still holding on to the camera. When people ask me what I do to stay in shape I say I take my camera for a walk. Just received my new Nikon D7100 so more of those walks in my future.

Day 195

My Favorites of 2015

Clouds' Illusions 

Maybe this blog is less about good photographs than the soul of an artistic mind. I posted 365 photographs in 2015 as photographs of the day. To get those 365 I was out with a camera or in front of my computer post processing some portion of every day. I would daresay I took thousands of photographs. Some I posted on other platforms and for other reasons than the 365 Day Challenge. 

And there are always other reasons to take photos. Reasons people with iPhones take pictures; a great garden, a special flower, a new kitten, selfies, self portraits, great sunrise, WIP photos of art work or home projects. Occasionally those personal snaps make it into the 365 Day Challenge just because it is a reflection of who I am. And the same is true of these favorites in this blog. They were photo of day for one of the days of this year. But they are also the ones I remember most. And the are mostly those closest to home. The opening cloud formation is one of many which rises over the Sentinel Tree on the hill across from my house. There is something about the shape of the hill or the land behind it which creates currents that builds fantastic clouds.

And the two photographs below are from my garden. I don't paint flowers. I do not pretend to be Georgia O'Keeffe (besides I like her landscape work better), but I photograph flowers. It is a relatively new focus for me. My sister, Deborah Binford Baker, is the flower photographer. It is not as easy as it looks. So many variables to factor in not the least of which is breeze with large petal flowers like poppies. The one below owes a lot of its charm to the light, and using a very fast speed. My camera thinks flowers are sporting events.

First poppy

Poppies and hollyhocks grow like weeds. I am not a gardener of Prima Donnas. I will spend more effort on vegetables but flowers need to volunteer. I also do not spend a lot of time in capturing their digital images. The hollyhocks before were a quick snap of a stalk bent under the weight of an afternoon rain. Before I staked the stalk I took its picture.

My other favorites are experiments. Frequent followers of my blogs will know I love to do reflections. There are a whole bunch of rules on reflections oddly enough. When I began taking them I followed those rules. Now I am into breaking them. Number one rule is never flip a water reflection. Reflections look upside down. The one below I flipped. The trees are never right side up in a pond reflection. A little accentuation of the ripple effect using a filter and instant Monet.

It is wise to remember at this point that I am a painter first. Well, that is a matter of focus. Pun intended. Photography was a hobby and a support for my paintings. I do not like plein aire painting for myself. Outdoors is for movement. So I take pictures and take them back to my studio. The advent of digital cameras and post processing programs gave me the luxury of playing with my pictures before I played with my pictures. Lately this playing around has given me an itch to paint with oils. Now I just need a small business expansion loan.

Monet's Pond

Meanwhile I am turning some of my photographs into faux oil paintings. Yes, I could just print the photograph on canvas. And I have done that. And is that any different than doing the painting, taking the photograph of the painting, and then doing a giclee (just French for ink jet) print of the painting?

On the icy shore

Another of my learning curves has been in black and white images. Here again my sister is the master as it were. But I have been working at black and white post processing of some of my images for some time. And taking blacks and whites. Yes, my camera has a setting which would allow me to skip right around color. And yes, a photo is better in black and white if you have that intent. By intent I mean looking for certain elements of design which make a good strong black and white. Elements like noisy sky (or background) and strong light and shadows. The original digital image is in color but from the moment I aimed my camera my mind said black and white for the photograph below.

Meeting room at the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico

Another area of exploration has been the DSLR selfie, a self portrait without aid of tripod. I do not mean to be anti tripod. I own three. I just often find them more work than aid. And with the selfie they do not give you the deer in the headlights look of the iPhone. And unlike the iphone the DSLR selfie gives you the chance to include context. At the very least the "I am a photographer" element. I like the one below because it seems more like a painter's self portrait than a profile shot for a web page. Well, except for the DSLR.

Selfie with Camera

I don't take portraits. Used to do a lot of candid portrait work. Seemed to open me up for requests to do weddings. I don't do weddings. Or children. But I do fur kids. And I currently have a kitten, Thicke, who is a ham. He loves to pose in bowls, baskets, basins, and boxes.

Thicke in the Basin

So now in addition to my camera going in the car with me it goes around the house with me. 

To sum up these favorites of 2015 are very personal to me because of subject matter or as milestones on my path to being a better photographer. 

Week 29 - 2015 in Photographs

Day 197

I decided to dedicate this week of photography to flowers. With our wet spring and summer they seem to grow and bloom like weeds whether wild or cultivated. I had thought my Borage did not make the winter. Instead it came up outside the hollyhock bed. Only one of those has bloomed thus far but the buds are numerous.

I begin this week with an orchid blossom from the plants in my studio. For years I bought orchids to enjoy the blooms on them when bought and they never seemed to bloom again. Now I have three blooming for a second and third flowering and a baby which was spawned off of the older orchid seems to be setting up to bloom itself.

Day 198

The salmon poppies were extraordinary this year. And even our heavy rains did not daunt them. I am including a bonus picture of half the field of poppies this year. If one poppy because of size and depth is difficult to photograph a bed of them is even harder especially with a slight breeze.

Bed of poppies

My peony bloomed this year. It has yet to be highly successful but it produced two blooms and I captured one of the buds just opening and with an ant on it. There have been more insects than we are used to this summer.

Day 199

The first hollyhock to bloom was the newest, a variegated double ruffle pink. Its blooms were too heavy for the stalk and I captured this photo before I staked it of a cascade of blossoms.

Day 201

And another of my neglected (forgotten) irises bloomed. The danger of planting too many things at once is you forget what you plant. The longer I garden the more I learn. Only one or two new plants at a time. I say that but I have put in three new hollyhocks this summer and some new grasses in the wild herb bed. Thankfully it has rained enough I think they are surviving my neglect.

Day 200

And then there are the blossoms which I have not had to care for: the sunflowers on the sides of the roads and the cholla cacti.

Day 202

Both species put on a grand show this last week or two. Desert plants and high mountain botanicals have taken advantage of the moisture after the drought of several years to bloom and pollinate.

Day 203

And what photographer doesn't want to take advantage of that. I promise no flowers next week. I have saved up some photographs of Folsom and Johnson Mesa for the coming week.

Week 27 - 2015 in Photographs

Day 183

Summer. There is a fullness about the earth and a warmth in the sun which even the frequent rains do not diminish. And the sense of light is somehow different than even a cloudless winter sky. I was once again drawn to the wooden chairs on the patio. And their shadows. In this morning light they seemed to be warming up for loungers with mugs of coffee. I wanted to put down my camera and linger.

Day 184

There is a balcony above the cobblestone patio and the lounge chairs. It is of another era though built at the same time. It opens an expansive view the wooden chairs do not share. But it is right they are on the garden level. And the balcony is on the drinks level.

Day 185

Feel like Georgia O'Keeffe with another poppy creation. I do not paint them. Somehow paint cannot capture them like digital photography. Still looking for the penultimate depiction. This is very close. But there are more days in the season to practice.

Day 186

It has been a rainy summer which adds the dimension of dew and rain drops to photographs of simple flowers. I love this peony just opening to the sun this last week. Our humidity is generally in the single digits but today I checked and it was 88%. Hard to tell the dew from the mist from the rain.

Day 187

And everything is going bonkers growing. The grasses are so very high and all the flowers seem to be blooming at once. Hard for a photographer to narrow their focus.

Day 188

Rain adds to the streams and to the ponds. And when the sun is out before the clouds come in the water sparkles as if it just fell.

Day 189

Or seems to reflect all the green around it. I am generally not a green palate person but it is hard not to appreciate all the green after several years of drought.

Week 26 - 2015 in Photographs

Day 176

Wish I could say this week had a theme but I cannot. Beyond the fact that it was summer. And it was not yet the height of tourist season. I could get out with my camera and visit the spots I like to photograph before they got crowded. And this year it was a green summer. I debated getting my camera a rain coat and included a plastic bag in the camera equipment.

The wet conditions created frequent morning fog as captured in Day 176. I am still debating how to post process fog photographs. I do like them in black and white a lot.

Day 177

The frequent rain storms also gave some lovely clouds to capture. This is looking to the southeast out my studio door. I love the horizon line with trees on the right but I frequently have to crop or clone out tops of neighboring houses. Yes, I live close to the back country but so do other people.

Day 178

Another nice thing about summer is the tractors are out. In in my neighborhood that can mean you will see a collection of oldies and goodies kept under tarps in the winter. I have photographed this old red tractor more than once, but never head on. I was attracted to the bundle of baling wire on the front. I can see the driver stopping and gathering up the offending wire and wrapping it to the grill before continuing on with clearing of the irrigation ditches. Probably not going straight to the trash. You never know when you might need a piece of baling wire. Who knows how long this bundle of wire has been there - added and subtracted.

Day 179
Eagle Nest Lake looking east

There is a lot of debate over just how long the drought has existed in the west in general and northern New Mexico specifically. Or if it is over. It seems to depend upon how long you have lived here. I know people celebrating the rising level of Eagle Nest Lake. And I was happy to see how far up it had come from 42% capacity low. But I also know in the photograph all the foreground green was once water. And I know the lake is a storage area for irrigation water owned by ranches down stream. As long as the rains continue downstream the lake gets to keep most. The State Engineer's office closely monitors water and water usage and water rights.

I took this picture before a series of rain storms which dumped between 2 and 4 inches of rain on already saturated ground. Poor Cimarron Canyon got too much and the road was flooded because of avalanches and fallen rocks. It was closed for two days. I think we got to keep a lot of water in the lake then. Not all because you cannot kill the Cimarron River and its fish. It is home of some rare trout Fish and Game are trying to re-establish.

Day 180
Shirley Poppies

Photography can be educational and not just about f-stops. I frequently take pictures because of color and form and the light, then come home and research what it is I photographed. Easy to just say poppies for the above photograph, but they are not just poppies. They are Shirley Poppies. They have a smaller seed pod in the center and bloom earlier than my oriental poppies which are just beginning to bloom.

Day 181

Another picture of Eagle Nest Lake. This one from the north parking area of the state park. More water means more reflections. And more rain this year means more new green grass and more yellow wildflowers on the banks and the hills. Even the conifers on the hills are a different green, more blue, as they take advantage of the rains to sprout new growth.

The photograph below shows the bright green of the new foliage on the aspens mixed in with the pines. And it show now snow on the mountains around Black Lake. Summer is here. Is the drought over? Or is this just a brief respite before it returns? We are all hoping for the former.

Day 182

Flowers of 2014

Poppy in Wane

It was a wonderful year for flowers in my neighborhood. And right in my yard. The poppies in the front yard grow like weeds. I often even forget they are there until they put up buds and then I will water them furiously out of guilt for neglect. It seemed a good year to practice taking photographs of flowers because I was often too busy with my solo show to go much further afield. And why go further if your subjects are right there.

Purple Double Ruffle Hollyhock

The hollyhocks seemed to be in competition with the poppies. There are two major issues with flowers as far as I am concerned, one is the breeze, and two is depth of field. Both the poppies and the hollyhocks because of size seem to be challenges. I should have started with daisies. My default cheat was the sport setting on my camera. Greater depth of field than the "flower" setting and it stopped the waving around of petals and stalks.

But sometimes as I mentioned in the previous blog on the photos of 2014 you just get lucky, like the day I arrived back from hanging my solo show in Trinidad, Colorado to find the first poppy of the year blooming or the one below of the last poppy of the year when I returned from another day trip. Both were quickly snapped in landscape auto. The salmon colored poppies were numerous and made appearances all over my timeline on Facebook in between those two solo shows.

First flower of the year

I planted the double ruffle hollyhock this year but a volunteer was this single hollyhock in the same color. I think it was from seeds I picked at the houses of friends and threw into the bed in front of the studio. And when photographing this blossom I was so intent on the focus of the outer edges of this 3" across bloom that I did not see the bee until I uploaded it to the computer. The exercise I had set myself was to not try to encompass the whole flower in the frame. That was also the governing exercise on the opening photo.

Volunteer Hollyhock with Bee

When you have tons of flower pictures they begin to seem ordinary so you dive into post processing techniques to to make the photo special. Though flowers, when you really get to know them, are quite special and also a pretty good challenge for any photographer.

Poppy in the front garden

The other temptation to override with flowers is the full frontal or looking down on them. The hollyhocks were no problem about looking down on because the stalks brought them to my level. But the poppies only grow to about 18 inches so you get to practice squats and getting down on your knees sometimes in other flowers. Glad my long lens does such great macros. I could get far enough away to not crush anything else.

The first flower photography exercises I did were with house plants. Most specifically, orchids. House plants have the advantage of being pose-able. You can be in complete control of the light, direction of the light, background, neighbors, etc. And the breeze. None of which is within your control with plants out of doors other than changing your location or position.

Orchid

And just when you think you have your flower bed and its subjects all pegged for the best photos the plants change the rules. In the case of the hollyhocks the blooms move down the stalk. Back to deep knee squats. The good news is there is an natural tripod to be used in that position. Place legs hip width apart, squat, spread knees, and place elbows on your knees. Also improves your balance as well as leg and hip muscles.

One of the last of the Hollyhocks

The tinge of fall in the leaves I think added to the interest of this photo. Winter is here and it is back to the flowers in the studio and greenhouse. No accidental bees or raindrops as on the hollyhock picture in the previous blog. A misting from a water bottle works to add interest to the inside flowers. But nothing quite beats nature for lighting and gentle rains.

Hollyhock in the morning rain

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Exercise 3 - Shoot Something Different

Tall Wild Sunflowers Dancing

I am most comfortable with sweeping vistas, towering clouds over mountains, and reflections is ponds. This year because of the abundance of wildflowers and flowers in my garden I have made an attempt to do something my sister is best at. Or my photographer friend Terry Atkins Rowe. And it is not that I have never photographed flowers. My loyal readers have seen my portraits of orchids. Such beautiful posers in the controlled environment of a green house.

I do not have a macro lens but my 55-300 mm zoom does a great job at macro if you can get far enough away from the subject. And I like the fact that I do not have to lie down on the ground or erect a tripod necessarily. I often do go into the human tripod - butt, two feet, and elbows on knees. Butt on ground only if it isn't wet.

Thistle

You are never suppose to shoot down on a flower so unless they are tall like the Tall Wild Sunflower or up on a hillside like this thistle it does require some kneeling. Something which I was more than happy to do this year with the salmon colored poppies in my yard.

But because I really am not the photographer in love with painful digital detail, my photos of flowers, I like to think, are more painterly.

The first Salmon Poppies

And perhaps, poetic. And the out of focus is every bit as important to me as what is in focus. Especially since the lovely background above was in fact my driveway. But the out of focus seed pods in the solitary poppy below is the making of the subject - the last poppy of the season.

The last poppy of the season

But at some point one has to make a stab at that mega pixel challenge and see if you can get a flower with pinpoint accuracy. Then you can say I can do that just do not choose to. Rather like Picasso who could draw very, very well but didn't.

Onion Blossoms

I also do not like to cut my flowers and take them out of their environment to control the breeze or the background. The onion blossoms were in my bow tunnel so quite unintentionally they got the opaque plastic behind them.

Hollyhock

The hollyhocks got the rest rest of the plant for their setting. They looked their best in the evening light.

Double Ruffle Purple Hollyhock

It was upon coming in from attempting to capture my hollyhocks at dawn that I caught the growing light on the geranium in the studio.

Pretty in pink

A word about self assignments. There are those we give ourselves consciously and those which are rather subconscious. And some exercises like the 15 foot circle I have blogged about can be done in 10 minutes and others which take a great deal longer. The pick a shape exercise was a few days. The flower pictures were over five weeks. And it was the blooming of the poppies which made me dedicate myself to trying to truly capture them not the article I have been linking to. It just made me see that flowers have always been something I was not good at and sort of avoided.

Reflections, which is exercise #4 on Five Self Assignments That Teach You To See I have been doing for about five years. It has ceased to be an exercise and may have become an obsession. I am debating doing a blog about that or not since reflections are so often featured in my photo blogs.

That leaves me with exercise #1 - Pick a color. It would be so easy to wait until fall and do yellow.