A Woman in Red

I photographed Leah last summer.  She is beautiful and gorgeous. As you see, she was wearing eye catching red dress. Since the color of her dress is intense pure red, I requested her to stand in front of old back wall. That brings good contrast between pail wall and her, and she is more standing out in the image.

Now, a photographer have to work a little bit harder on the computer.  I wanted to enhance my inner imagination of kind of Gothic, like Gotham city in Tim Burton version of Batman. So added rusty “yogoshi” weathering effect on entire image.

I would be glad if you see the mood I saw in my imagination.

Please click the idea to view larger image.

Crocus – A messenger of the spring

Calgarians experienced extremely mild winter of 2015 to 2016. But still it is good to find a sign of spring arrived. I visited Drumheller and I found many crocuses blossoming in the badlands soil. Crocus would be a messenger telling us it is the end of long winter.

Not loving affair with Nikon D800

I have been using range finder cameras as my main camera for over 20 years. I would say I am in a relationship with Leica. They are often assertive and frustrating, but when I treat the camera well and carefully feed good light the camera gives me stunning beautiful images. You know I mean…this is truly a relationship.

On the other hand, Nikon D800 is job partner.  It is reliable and covenient, but I don’t expect the “surprise” which I found in images from Leica. So I often take Leica. I use D800 for mostly for event photography or when I am lazy.

Having said that, I have decided to taking D800 to Lake O’Hara trip in this fall. The reason is the shutter of my Leica M9 has become unreliable after 160,000 actuations.  This is known issue of Leica M9. Lake O’Hara is considered to be backcountry so if something happens to a camera, I cannot get a spare camera easily.

So I took my D800 for a hiking to lake Agnes as a trial. Also I got a Cotton carrier camera system so I tested the Cotton carrier system well. Here is my new look.

Cotton Carrier is quite confortable.  It is nice on my neck. I put 3 more lenses in a shoulder bag, but it was not heavy unexpectedly.  Now I gave a “go sign” to myself to take Nikon system to Lake O’Hara.  Another good thing about the Cotton system is a Arcaswiss tripod plate is coming with the kit. So I can put the camera on my panorama head as well. This is handy for landscape photographers.

Playing with reflections of lights – Nikon PC 24mm

At the end of August, I visited “Forget me not pond” in Kananaskis Country in Alberta with some PPOC members. The pond is basically for family activities and nothing like “landscape photography spot” photographers imagine. Also It was around 2 pm; the sun was way high up. Possibly, at this time of the day, I would take a nap in my car. But I am photographic artist of year of PPOC national competition. I should be able to come out some images.

First thing my eyes caught was shining reflection of sun light on wavy surface of the pond. I was playing “out of focus”. I shot the reflection as out-of-focus, and creating rings of light in frames. Then I remember one of the purpose of this visit was testing my new gear, Nikon PC 24mm lens. At this point, I did not care about typical landscape photography. I wanted to do something with the shining and moving reflection of the light.

So when using a tilt and shift lens like my new gear NIkon PC 24m, one of the purpose is obtaining hyperfocal focusing, technique to focus from foreground to infinity. But in this case, I wanted mountains and clouds to be on-focus, and foreground to be out-of-focus to get large bokeh of light ring. I could achieve it by tilting the lens to opposite direction from when we tilt for getting hyper focal focusing.

Regardless this is a good or just okay image, I could get the photo I imagined. So this shot is considered to be successful. The image I saw the was lights fallen from the heaven like falling leaves. So this image was titled “Falling lights”

You can try out Nikon PC 24mm lens and more lenses including Canon lenses in my fall workshop in Kootenay plains in Canadian Rockies. Please register from my website before sold out.

 

Presentiaon by Olivier Du Tre about Black & White, and my case

I am helping organizing speakers for a small camera club in Calgary. I invited multiple award wining photographer, Olivier Du Tre as a speaker for the club meeting in May. Oli is landscape/fine art photographer, residing in Cochrane, Alberta. He shoots only black and white, and furthermore, he totally switched to film recently. He mentions “zone” while others are referring Nike Silver Efex. He will cover many aspects of B&W photography in the presentation. Please check his website. Also the info about his presentation is here.

So about my story how I started B&W and why I like B&W. When I became interested in photography about 20 years ago, I was suggested to try color slide film because it was considered to be more advanced compared to negative print film. One day, I took BEAUTIFUL sun rise shot on my trip. I thought it was glorious shot and showed to everybody at work. But one person said the photo was not remarkable. His reasoning was “Color dominates the image too much. Besides color, nothing to see”. And he recommended B&W film. I was pissed off, but anyway, I tried B&W. My first roll…I quite like images. But 2^nd and 3^rd rolls…I didn’t get good images. Usually, I got quite interesting or so disappointing images. Not so much between. Then eventually, I realized good composition made difference in photography. Color comes next to composition.

Then I started printing by myself. I read many books about printing in darkroom. I could obtain prints by following text book. But I could not tell if they were good prints or not. I found a kind of the mentor and I showed my prints. I kept visiting him. I gradually learned “tone” or tonality was really important in prints and each master photographer had signature tone in his/her prints. Photography is picture by light. I realized light comes always first, even before composition.

This is an image from Vermilion Lake in Banff in snowy day. I knew I could not expect gorgeous scenery including well-photographed Mt. Randal since the sky was still so grey. But I tried and I found this composition. All elements were line up vertically. When I grabbed my camera, the sun was a little off from the center so I waited about 20 min for the sun moving to the center.

Line up by Hiroaki Kobayashi on 500px

Actually, now I found I could apply more burning and dodging to this image to enhance the story I saw at the scene. No wonder many B&W photographer stay in a darkroom for months.

Anyway, please check out, Oli’s amazing B&W photography in his website. You will see what I was talking about.

It is not “beautiful” sunset but… – Overlapping Memories

As I mentioned before I sometimes have precise vision of final image before I press a shutter button at the scene, but also I often just capture a scenery without particular idea of final image. Occasionally, images are just only “beautiful” and did not speak to me regardless of how process the image, but occasionally my imagination grows while I am editing the image.

This is one of the such type of my photos. I took this photo in Jasper last year. I was shooting sunset on the mountains and reflection. While I was waiting for the sky turned to beautiful orange, this scene came to my eyes from the position I stood to different angle. I changed to long distance lens and took some shots. Even I did not use a tripod for this image.

I edited the “beautiful” sunset shot but it did not speak to me even though I took hours for processing. Then I looked at this image. It somehow appealed to me. Although I needed some trials and errors before I got an idea of editing map to the final image, I like this image much better than the sunset image….maybe because this reflect my personality? The sunset image is staying in a hard drive; this image was exhibited at my Wabi-sabi wanderlust show in February and sold.

 

 

By the way, I am on process of rebuilding my business and my business name will be changed to Wide Bright Sun photography from Wide Bright Pass Photography. I hope I can announce my new web site before long.

 

My photographic exhibition at Framed on fifth in February.

It has been 2 years since Framed on Fifth, lovely framing and art gallery booked me for a gallery show. Now it is happening.  Although 2 years seems long enough to prepare images, it passed very quickly. I must be a rain man and I got bad weather whenever I go to big trips. I end up to get many subtle, gentle almost melancholic images. Then I went through all landscape images I have taken since 2009. I realized I am getting more subtle images because my style may have been changing. 

So I titled this gallery show,  “Wabi-sabi wanderlust”. Wabi-sabi is Japanese term, in part portrays a true sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing.

My show will be at Framed on Fifth (1207 – 5th Avenue N.W., Calgary) from Feb 1st to Mar 1st. The opening reception will be Feb 8th from 5pm. Also I will have artist talk, ” Meet the artist” on Feb 15th from 2 pm to 4 pm. I will have a photo critiquing session as a part of the artist talk.  Please bring a couple of your photos.

By the way, this show is part of Exposure Photo Festival 2014. Many gallery shows are listed this year as well. You should check the out.

Lastly,  I will share a time-lapsed video, I made for fun. Just check it out.

Black and White conversion to the image “Island” (3) – Technique from wet darkroom

In my last blog, each parts of the image were looked after　and vignetting was applied. It is getting close to what I imagined. But I felt the island, the woods at the center, was somewhat still weak as a main subject. So I need to spice up a little bit. I used “Curve” layers to modify contrast and brightness. But it did not give delicate control over the intricate patterns of the woods. So I used a different technique.

Before showing the process, please allow me to talk about a little bit about conventional dark room process. In darkroom processing, can contrast be adjusted LOCALLY, like I did in my previous post? Originally, contrast was determined by a GRADE of the paper (#1 to 5, #1 is lowest contrast and #5 is highest) so the contrast can’t be adjusted locally. Then Multigrade paper was developed. With the MG paper, contrast was determined by different density of filters, placed between enlarging lens and the paper. The darker filter, the more contrast. By applying different density of the filter to particular part of the image, contrast can be adjusted locally. This is same as I have done in my previous post. As a more advanced technique, different densities of filters are applied to the SAME part. The principle of enlargement is same as shooting with a camera. It requires certain exposure time; it is just longer than shooting. Now please imagine you need 30sec to get proper exposure to a particular part of the image. With a moderate contrast filter, you get a result with lack of punch. Now, you need more contrast but you don’t want to lose gradation of the tone. So what you can do is divide the exposure time (30 sec) to different filters. E.g, High contrast filter for 8sec, medium one for 15 sec and low contrast one for 7 sec to preserve the gradation. I use this technique for the wood part in digital processing.

Step 1. Create a mask on the woods as precise as possible.

 Step 2. Create a Curve layer for high contrast. Please take a look a curve and the image below.

Step 3.  Create a Curve layer for low contrast.    

Step 4. Change opacity of the each curve layer. The high contrast curve adds edges of lines but it will sacrifice tonal gradation. The low contrast will recover the tonal gradation. I find this technique is effective to clouds or hair.

It is done. I saw bluish toning would suit this image so I added selenium toning by Nik SilverEfex. This is finally competed image.

Related posts:

• Black and white photo – “Island”
• Black and White conversion to the image “Island” (1)
• Black and White conversion to the image “Island” (2)

 

Black and white photo – “Island”

This photo was taken in August, 2013 in Banff national park. I knew it would be foggy in the morning, so I prepared my camera gear for the next morning to shoot waterfowl lake. When I woke up, my tent was surrounded by mist. I rushed to the waterfowl lake. Well, usually, when I plan a shoot for a particular scene and am aiming a specific image, I don’t get images “I” feel wow. I sometimes say landscape photography is like Symphony but I have been thinking lately I still improvise a lot of time like playing jazz.
After I left the Waterfowl Lake, I drove up to Saskatchewan crossing. Then this scenery came to my eye. I stopped my car and snapped some shots. I didn’t apply any special techniques but I had particular final image in my head. The woods in the swap looked like floating island. Possibly, the idea was come from Japanese animation, unconsciously. I see it in black and white.

Please click the image for the larger size.

Although the shooting was easy and quick, post-processing was a difficult delivery. I needed to start from scratch for 3 times to meet my inner view “Floating Island”. I am planing to share the post-processing I have applied to this in the next post.

This photo will be exhibited in my next gallery show titled “Wabi-sabi Wanderlust” in February at “Framed on Fifth” in Calgary.

A happy new year!

A weekend of the Calgary flood – Stephan Avenue

On June 20th, the most disastrous flood in 100 years hit in South Alberta. I woke up late in the morning of the day, I found some posts on Twitter talking about Canmore and Banff. Twitter posts were brief messages so I did not understand what was actually happening in Canmore. More people started posting on Facebook and I noticed the water level of the Bow River was drastically increased over night and houses along the river in Canmore were under danger of flood. Then the images on youtube were even more shocking. The Bow River was running violently. Actually, the high volume of broke the bridge on the highway 1 and access from Calgary to Canmore, Banff was shutdown.

I had a work to do at the other side of the city. I was driving on Memorial drive around 02:30 pm. The water level of the Bow River was very high but bridge pier were not covered by water. Actually people are still walking and jogging in the park along side of the Bow River. I remember people were talking about condition in Canmore and Banff, but not Calgary when I started my shift at 3 pm. But it did not take long for us to realize it was not unrelated disaster for us. The TV news was reporting showing horrible images of Bragg Creek, High River, and Bowness area was evacuated.

When I was going home from work at 11:30 pm, I saw many police cars everywhere. The Memorial Drive, which had been still safe 9 hrs ago, was now closed. Although it was nearly midnight, many people came out to watch violent river and take pictures.

Next day, when I woke up, Calgary was very different. All local TV news was reporting only the flood. Many areas were flooded and evacuated. Stampede Park was also flooded even though there were no more than 9 days by opening day of Calgary Stamped. I could not move from TV, not because I was excited by watching the news. I was just so shocked and lost energy. It was so devastating.

But I am a photographer. I could not stop the urge to document the disaster. But the images of the actual flood had been already published everywhere…hundreds of them. Moreover, I am not a press photographer. I was not interested in photographing violent water.

So I visited downtown on Saturday afternoon. All businesses in downtown core were closed but people could still access the area. The down town was really quiet, almost no traffic. It was like ghost town. Only I do remember is military truck passing my car. It was like one scene in a movie, “I am legend” but this was real.

 


Stephan Avenue on Saturday after flood – 4

Usually, many people are hanging around on Stephan Avenue, the main street of the downtown on Saturday afternoon. But I saw only some cyclists and securities patrolling closed building. Also I think I saw some business owners came to their stores to check something before closing for days. Usually, I cannot photograph shadow like this picture in a busy normal day.     

Stephan Avenue on Saturday after flood – 2
 


Stephan Avenue on Saturday after flood -1 

All restaurant were closed, even Macdonald.  In normal weekend, people are enjoying beer and dining everywhere on the Stephan Avenue.

Stephan Avenue on Saturday after flood – 3

More photos and stories are coming in the future posts.