Progression

I keep seeing patterns that match, that meld, flowers turning into bees and leaves turning into lightning. So I had to put them together, somehow.

This cinematic slideshow is an attempt to show something like what happens in my head. The pageant that is “creation.” This one is all photos shot in North Georgia.

Working in a new medium is confusing and exciting, and puts you on shaky ground. Let me know how I did.

Tilt. Shift?

So awhile back, faking tilt-shift photography was all the rage on flickr and similar places. The idea is to make a normal landscape photo look like it’s a miniature via Photoshop gradient mask and lens blur. Like this:

It’s clever and cutesy cool and many people have spent hours playing with the effect.

[MORE EXAMPLES from Bryson City on my photoblog.]

Yes, even me.

Maybe it’s the desire to play God, make everything seem small but strikingly clear.

Or maybe it’s a nice way to make up for the fact that you can’t afford a tilt-shift lens.

Or that you didn’t position yourself strategically to get the effect you wanted.

Or… that you had too much light to limit the depth of field.

Or, didn’t know how to use the equipment you have to create a very narrow strip that’s in focus.

[Straight out of the camera. Shot with a Canon Powershot S3, supermacro, 1/50th at f5]

[Straight out of the camera. Shot with a Pentax K10D, 50mm lens reverse-mounted, at f1.7]

Night vision

Last night I was on my deck with a big portable halogen lantern, trying a new technique called light painting, which involves “spraying” beams of light across a scene at night during a long exposure.

The results were not exciting. I stood there, flicking my hands at all the bugs that were drawn to the lantern, debated whether to put on some bug spray.

Then I looked down. A big beetle was lying on its back, apparently dead. I crouched over it and looked at those fine joints in its legs, the gloss of its shell body. Started shooting.

Two and a half hours later, I had some photos that I could love. The artificial lighting really helped – not for what I thought, though.

These bug photos will not sell very well as decor, but they are about illuminating the life of the night.

And the beetle, it turns out, was alive. When I tried to pick him up, he wiggled back to his feet and stalked off into the night.