Season's Greetings

Here I am as Santa... Best of the Season.

Still More Self-Portraits

I am fine-tuning the lighting in the series. Digital B&W has a different "feel" to it over film. Here are my most recent efforts. Shot in PEF RAW mode, converted with PhotoShop CS2.



Two Bowens Bo-Lite heads, main light with 18" softbox at 45° to subject 45° angle to create the triangle of light on the left eye. 36" square silver reflector fill. Second head with silver honeycomb/barndoors as a keylight. Self-Portrait. Pentax *istD SMC FA-Pentax 50mm f:1.4. 1/60 sec @ f:16.

A similar shot, different angle.


Two Bowens Bo-Lite heads, main light with 18" softbox at 45° to subject 45° angle to create the triangle of light on the left eye. 36" square silver reflector fill. Second head with silver honeycomb/barndoors as a keylight. Self-Portrait. Pentax *istD SMC FA-Pentax 50mm f:1.4. 1/60 sec @ f:16.

Some tweaking to B&W.



Two Bowens Bo-Lite heads, main light with 18" softbox at 45° to subject 45° angle to create the triangle of light on the left eye. 36" square silver reflector fill. Second head with silver honeycomb/barndoors as a keylight. Self-Portrait. Pentax *istD SMC FA-Pentax 50mm f:1.4. 1/60 sec @ f:16.


Finally, this time around.

Self-Portrait revisited

A bored afternoon, I set up my studio strobes and parked myself in the lights.

Single  Bowens Bo-Lites, both with silver honeycomb & barndoors. Mainlight at Rembrandt (45° and 45°)  feathered towards the camera. Shadow fill with a 36"
Pentax *istD dSLR, SMC Pentax-M 85mm f:2 lens.
1/60 sec @ f:16

Two Bowens Bo-Lites, both with silver honeycomb & barndoors. Mainlight at Rembrandt (45° and 45°) keylight over my right shoulder feathered towards the camera. Shadow fill with a 36" square silver reflector from the left.
Pentax *istD dSLR, SMC Pentax-M 50mm f:1.4 lens.
1/60 sec @ f:16

Two Bowens Bo-Lites, both with silver honeycomb & barndoors. Mainlight at Rembrandt (45° and 45°) keylight over my right shoulder feathered towards the camera. Shadow fill with a 36" square silver reflector from the left.
Pentax *istD dSLR, SMC Pentax-M 50mm f:1.4 lens.
1/60 sec @ f:16

Two Bowens Bo-Lites, both with silver honeycomb & barndoors. Mainlight at Rembrandt (45° and 45°) background light behind me .
Pentax *istD dSLR, SMC Pentax-M 85mm f:2 lens.
1/60 sec @ f:11

Two Bowens Bo-Lites, both with silver honeycomb & barndoors. Mainlight at Rembrandt (45° and 45°) background light behind me .
Pentax *istD dSLR, SMC Pentax-M 85mm f:2 lens.
1/60 sec @ f:11

Two Bowens Bo-Lite heads, main light with 18" softbox at 45° to subject 45° angle to create the triangle of light on the left eye. 36" square silver reflector fill. Second head with silver honeycomb/barndoors as a keylight. Self-Portrait.

Nominated 2010, Canadian Weblog awards

Worth 1000

I am a member of Worth 1000 for several years. I have entered two pieces so far. Both have done well.

What is Worth1000?
Worth1000 is a collection of online arenas where the worlds best artists compete daily in creative competitions. Worth1000 has hosted thousands of daily competitions since it launched and is well known across the web for inadvertently triggering hoaxes, celebrity amusement and even major media scandals when an entry created here is mistaken for real. (Seriously, the Pentagon once issued a statement distancing itself from Worth1000 images).

That being said, here are my entries:

Here I entered a Photoshop Contest, and placed 12 out of 48 total.

http://www.worth1000.com/entries/452938/me-as-zeus

Contest Rules

Sculpture can be beautiful and stunningly realistic. Photoshop can breathe new life into these stone-cast images preserved forever in suspended animation, and that's just what we'd like for you to do. For this contest, take a manmade sculpture and show us the life held captive within it.

Have fun, keep it clean, be creative. Don't forget the cliche list. As always, quality is a must. We will remove poor entries no matter how much we like you. You'll have 48 hours for this contest, so make your submission count.


I merged my face into Zeus, and chipped away the stone so have my face emerged. PhotoShop tools included drop shadow and freehand selection to remove the stone.

My best entry was in a pure photography contest, here I placed first out of 39 entries. Worth 1000 gets more entrants in the PhotoShop and Illustration classes.

http://www.worth1000.com/entries/416901/autumn-sumac

This is a Advanced level contest
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In this contest we want you to bring us closer to autumn, show us the details. This does not necessarily mean we want macro shots, although they will be allowed, but simply that we don't want the whole forest. If a whole person could fit in your image, you're too far away.


I am happy with both images.

Darrell Larose

Colour or Black and White?

I have been playing around with this image:



A boring snapshot, with some kitchen equipment in the background. I played around in Photoshop CS2 a bit and tweaked the background a bit.


I then went and adjusted the levels, desaturated, and nudged the curves a bit for this version.


The final product is just an online profile photo. I could have saved some Photoshop work if I had set-up my studio lights and background. But The end result would be about the same amount of time.

Darrell

The Large Negative ...

Ok, I am really digging down deep into my archives.  These date to 1974 and 1976. I went for a walk along a local nature trail, humping the monorail view camera and large tripod all day. Finding this clump of Oyster Mushrooms on a tree. I took photo in the autumn of 1974, and I still like the photo. Possibly the only image from my first semester I still enjoy.

Linhof Kardan Color, Schneider 121mm Super Angulon, Ilford FP-4x5" Agfa Portriga FB.

When I look at my favourite prints on Brovira, Portriga, Ilfomar, Ektalure, Gallery, Medalist double-weight fibre papers. They just have a je ne  sais quoi that pigment or ink is missing. A B&W from a mid range or better printer on glossy photo paper looks very much like a RC print. But a fine-art DW FB print is just ... different.

This is the absolute last photo I took at Algonquin College photography program. I didn't like the texture shot I took. So the last morning, of the last day of class. I thawed out some 4x5 VPS, loaded the holders. Pulled my belt off. Turned on a 2K Colortran and took this image. Fired up the C-41 line processed the film, printed the photograph, dry-mounted and handed in the photo all before lunch. My instructor asked how come he never saw the image before... I answered " It didn't exist before this morning!"

Linhof Kardan Color, Schneider 121mm Super Angulon, Kodak VPS 4x5"

Darrell

Early Digital Photography

Way back in the old days I worked in a large commercial studio in Ottawa. We like most studios shot weddings (fun actually) family portraits and commercial. Product shots were often shot on large-format up to 8x10" depending on the client and art director's requirements.

When I ended up in retail I was handed a 2.1 megapixel Olympus C2000Z point and shoot camera around 2003 and was requested to produce work for web, eBay and in store POS materials. I was recalling the days of sweep tables, 4 -2400WS stobes, huge softboxes and the related hardware...

But never one to not accept a challenge I worked with this toy digi-cam. The store did have a used small plexi sweep table that we seconded to the task. Here are two of my favourite images from the days

The store became the exclusive Voigtländer dealer in the Ottawa region, but the official importer's photos weren't really that good. So I used my mini-studio and created this POS piece of the Voigtländer Bessa R w/ the 12mm Ultra-Wide lens.



Both were close cut with Photoshop 5.5 back then... Could I have done better with a 4x5 Sinar and digital back... probably! But having a handle on the limitations of the camera, one can achieve results.

Darrell

Corrections in Photoshop.

Sometimes our photographs can use a little bit of help. Here are a couple image pairs with the before and after images.

Here we have Nancy, who showed up wearing a less than optimal top. This created a few problems. But was fixed in Photoshop.



This photo appears here.  The summer time top with the bare shoulders distracted from the image. I did the new top, cleaned up her skintones, and decided it worked better in Black and White.

Darrell

First Visit to Mud Lake

I made a brief visit out to Mud Lake yesterday, mainly to get a feel of the area. Mud Lake is a Conservation Area withing the Ottawa City limits and has a pretty diverse range of flora and fauna.



I did a trip around the lake to get an idea where things were and how the light was. So I can plan a much longer photo expedition (I went for about 90 minutes). I did see, one Muskrat, but was in too much clutter for an interesting photo. About 2 dozen squirrels, including one very curious grey that approached me (I guess it thought it was a model). Countless Canada Geese and Mallard ducks. A shy Wood Duck drake that was swimming towards me and into a pool of sunlight until he was spooked by two yahoos on mountain bikes (who ignored the no bikes signs)

Several Cottontail rabbits, lot's of grackles, red-wing blackbirds. I didn't encounter the Black Capped Night-Heron or Green Heron that have been seen at Mud Lake.  Almost every log had a sunning Eastern Painted Turtle on it.

All photos were taken with a Pentax * ist D, and a SMC Pentax-M* 300mm f:4 lens.



A Mallard drake, the same fellow a few moments later.



A Canada Goose on her nest, no goslings peeked out from below her.








Darrell

Here is a MSN Maps, satellite view of Mud Lake.

From RAW to Final Image

I took this outdoor portrait of an Ottawa model. The day was overcast which made for a lovely soft light. The World's biggest "softbox". I shot in Pentax (PEF) RAW 12 bit format. I'll start with the Original image converted to png and downsized from the 3008x2004 pixel (12.6 MB file size)



Pentax *ist D, SMC Pentax-M 85mm f:2 lens. PEF format, 1/125 sec @ f:5.6

Overall not a bad image, the camera default 2:3 aspect ratio will be cropped so I composed the shot to allow cropping from the top down to a 4:3 format.



I was content with this low-key image for a bit, but decided to see how it would work as a Black and White image. So I did a B&W conversion with Photoshop CS2.



I always add just a slight hint of warm tone (sepia) to my digital Black & White images. Often not even that apparent but I find they print a bit better.

Finally while playing around with the RAW(PEF) in Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta 2 I saw what the final image could be. I adjusted the levels and warmed the photograph up a little. That created to me a nicer image.



None are really better, just different interpretations. Just like when I used to go into my darkroom with a negative.

The final image did win an Award of Excellence as mentioned in my previousBlog post.

Darrell Larose

Final Camera Club Slide Competition of 2009-2010

I entered 4 images into the Camera Club of Ottawa's final  slide competition of 2009-2010

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Advanced Class
Topic: Open



Linda

Award of Excellence



Jasmine & Josh

Honourable Mention

Both images were shot near the Château Laurier, along the same pathway to Major's Hill Park.

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Advanced Class
Topic: Nature



Mallard at Sunset

Award of Excellence



Heron at Sunset

Honourable Mention

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Both nature class images were photographed on the Ottawa River between Island Park Drive and Tunney's Pasture. Both were only a few minutes apart. I was almost ready to pack it in as the light was getting low.

Darrell

Curves

One of the more interesting buildings in the National Capital Region, is Douglas Cardinal's National Museum of Civilization, across from Parliament in the old Hull part of Gatineau, Quebec.

Cardinal was inspired by the Canadian Shield when he designed this building.



Here we see an overview reflected in a nearby window.



Here is another view of the many curves of the structure.



Some curves are organic in look.









Finally a detail of the Zen Garden on the site.



Darrell

Homage to Equivalents

Alfred Stieglitz (1864 – 1946), famous American photographer.

Stieglitz began a cycle of cloud photographs he called "Equivalents, from 1922-31 " claiming that form conveyed emotional and psychological meaning in the visual arts, not the specific subject of the artist.

I have always liked clouds and the sky, so perhaps inspired by the great Alfred Stieglitz, are some clouds in a boiling sky.

Moments later they have changed...

In weather like this change is quick...

And almost as quick as they formed, they left.

Darrell