Art Sunday - Post Processing

Lines

Photography has been in my life for as many years as crayons or paints but until lately I saw it primarily as a tool to aid in painting or as a way of recording the events of my life - the scenes that played in the background. But the age of digital photography has changed that. Today I find myself often "painting" in pixels.

Some disdainfully call it photoshopping, or photo manipulation. The spindoctors in the photographic world have come to use the term post processing, and making correlations with dark room processing with film. I tiptoed in and around the subject for some time. I have had a computer program for digital manipulation of images for longer than I had a digital camera. I would have digital images put on a CD when I had my film processed. I used Photoshop to crop, reduce an image to lines to print on watercolor paper for painting, or airbrush out that annoying artifact in a picture. After succumbing to my first digital camera in 2006 (primarily to record my paintings) I explored adjustment of brightness and contrast. Delicately.

My new digital camera having more megapixels requires a bit more playing with brightness/contrast and hue/saturation. It is the nature of the beast. So is my curiosity. What if games ensued primarily with marginal photographs. Take the bridge across Coyote Creek above.

Coyote Creek Bridge before post processing

I was attracted to the patterns of shadow, planking, and unmelted snow. Years of working with film cameras makes me pretty good at framing a photograph but immediately I wanted to crop off the top of this one. But I also wanted to accent what I saw - the patterns - so I post processed further with hue/saturation over the top.

For an artist that has been attracted to patterns and textures since darkroom 101 in college pushing the limits of my Corel Paintshop Pro program was exciting.

 The original shed roof

Post processed shed roof

It also brought out the artist in me. No longer was photography just a way of recording a scene to take to the studio and use as a basis of the painting. It became a digital painting. I have a friend I met at an art fair that takes this one step further. She prints her image on canvas and then adds texture and detail with paint. It becomes hard to tell where the photograph ends and the painting begins. Art fairs are trying to find a term for this new "mixed media." So far I don't think they have exactly hit on the fact that it is just photography until you add the paint.

Volkswagen original image

Volkswagen post processed

The key in "digital art" as in all art is the artist. There exists those that think because the world has invented another technical tool they can do it. But if they don't have the eye to take the original photograph or manipulate it correctly no amount of technical toys will help. Photo manipulation programs are just darkrooms for the modern photographer. And at no time since the advent of complex color film kicked us out of the basement darkroom have we had such control over our final image.

There are the purists that think Ansel Adams would be rolling over in his grave. But he was as fond of darkroom manipulation of his image as most were in the day of B&W film. I think he would be ecstatic about post processing on a computer. But he also would not toss out the importance of the original image. No amount of digital manipulation will turn a bad photograph into a great photo image. You have to have an artist's eye.

His Kisses and Snowflakes

His Kisses and Snowflakes

Night, you gentle seducer

What comforts do you offer me

Beyond dreams made long ago

And those which may never be.

For these I leave this fragile reality

To wander with the moon gods

Across clouds of snowflakes

A world made to melt with the dawn.

Dreams of his kisses and snowflakes

Like so much glitter from a long ago Valentine

And yet I take this luminescent hand

Following it to my night's bed.

To dream of past kisses

While snowflakes fall onto his golden head

Embracing this fragile happiness

And awake with only glitter in my arms.

Oh, night, seduce me again

Lead me from this tarnished future

And let me play with yesterday again

As snowflakes fall to our laughter.

Let not the dawn awake me

From the sweet memory of his kiss

Let not the day leave me

With just glitter to sweep from the floor.

J. Binford-Bell

August 2011

Escape in Red

Red Umbrella by Christopher Shay


Escape in Red

A world in Blacks and grays
Street lights robbing the night
If all the subtle colors
The rain taking the warmth.

He stood at the rear entrance
Waiting for the rain to stop
For the gray dawn to take the dark night
For his fear to leave him.

The silence of the hall behind him
Became a weight after the call
His mind painting demons in the dark corners
Of his mind and the alley.

The only umbrella red
Was like a siren or a target
Announcing his red fear
Of the empty alley.

Walking swiftly from the panic of the hall
The sirens in his mind announcing his passage
Hiding his face beneath the red umbrella
Declaring his escape.

J.Binford-Bell
August 2011

Vanished - A Magpie Tale

Image provided by Magpie Tales

Vanished

It seemed such a lark

The four of them

In the old Chevy

On Route 66.

St. Louis to Barstow

Off to college

The summer of '54

One to remember.

Canvas water bag

Tied to the hood ornament

Luggage lashed to the back

Brownie box camera to record it all.

Three friends 

And a stranger

To divide the cost of gas

Share roadside motels.

Pictures taken

We were there

Post cards mailed

Wish you were here.

And then nothing

Just a void

Like the desert 

Into which they drove.

Just a picture

Mailed from Kingman

California here we come

Goodbye.

Just four more 

That drove off seeking adventure

On the highway west

Unprepared for the emptiness. 

J. Binford-Bell

August 2011

Clouds Illusions

My sister and I returned to her home in San Fidel from Albuquerque and it was raining over the mesa. With the sun in the process of setting it seemed a good idea to get out the cameras. But little did we know what a show we were in for.

Light and dark

Is this what they mean by the sky opening up?

Light Show

The sun was off to the left of the pictures so this glow is a high cloud reflecting the setting sun. It looked like an alien space craft hiding behind a cloud.

In this photo the rain as well as the clouds were catching the reds of the setting sun and it almost looked like a volcanic eruption. With earthquakes in New Mexico and Colorado and along the Eastern seaboard it could have been. These mesas are basalt and not far from El Mapais Lava field.

As the sun set the clouds and rain lost their red cast but this picture looks a lot like the mushroom cloud from an atomic explosion.

New Mexico is known for its cloud formations especially during the monsoon season here. And rain can be very spotty. While taking these photos not a single drop fell on us but we might have been a bit close to the lightning that erupted from time to time. But my sister and I could not miss this photographic opportunity. I don't know if we will ever see its like again.

Canyon Celebration

Canyon Celebration

Deep within sandstone walls

Memories of seas long gone

Written in the ages before words

Etched by wind

Water.

Distant rains on mesas high

Rushing over slick rock and down laughing falls

Drowning the ages

From today

The past.

Scare raindrops rushing down
Seeking the cliff bottoms
Hiding from arid winds
Quick
Hide.

Water racing away

Down slots of stone

Hidden liquid treasure

Of Life

Death.

J. Binford-Bell

August 2011

I won the Poetry Palace Perfect Poet Award for Week 50 with this entry.

The Hurrah
For When you
Pass
Back
Homeward bond.

Once upon a walk

Thoreau said, "Many men fish all their lives without realizing it is not fish they are after." The same thing can be said for photography, mushrooming, painting, etc. I picked up my camera bag this morning and called the dogs and headed out to capture the perfect picture or find the perfect mushroom, or get an idea for a great painting. And what I actually achieved was a state of Zen even if it did not match Magique's.

I so envy that look of pure spiritual transformation she gets when only on of four paws is on the ground. But I was rather happy with my Nikon D90 on the sport setting. I may still get blurred wings on hummingbirds but no more blurred dogs!

I think she spies some movement in the grass but it is almost as if she admires the view every bit as much as I do. I got pictures of this panorama without her in the foreground but she lends a scale and perspective missing without her there. Which reminds me that some of the things I crop out of a picture should stay because of composition. In the first picture I cropped out the blurred overhead branches only to go back to the uncropped version.

I have another picture of this same sun drenched glen without the pine and stump on the right. But it is that tree that sets off the aspens in the distance.

Another use for the sports icon on my digital camera is ripples on water. But I missed the muskrat that caused the ripples.

I am also using that sports icon for flowers. I tried it on a windy day to avoid blur and was thrilled that while it blurred the background it had greater depth of field where the flowers were concerned meaning I had a better chance of all petals or multiple flowers being in focus.

Don't you love the petal of the upper left flower draped over its neighbor? One of the things about looking through a camera or just taking a walk with a camera is that you become aware of details you would otherwise miss.

Details like the shadows of the hollyhocks on the wall. Or the intricate fold and subtle colors at the heart of a flower.

In the movie about Van Meer - Girl with a Pearl Earring, there is a scene where he asks his maid what color the clouds are and she first answers white. So what color is a white hollyhock? Or a black dog with the sun behind her?