Honorable Mention for Fantasy World photograph

The results are in from the Worldwide Photography Gala Awards – The Julia Margaret Cameron Award and my piece “Fantasy World” (see May 13th blog entry) received an honorable mention in the Profession Fine Art category. There will be a book published that will include my photo. To help in fulfilling its social responsibility, WPGA has chosen the nongovernmental organization Save the Children as beneficiary of ten percent of the proceeds from the contest revenues. Here’s the link to the competition results…some fabulous work! http://www.thegalaawards.net/announcements/the-julia-margaret-cameron-awardees

Summer garden

Summer’s bounty makes for great photo opportunities. Here is my friend’s wheat plot, almost ready to harvest.

Spring, flowers, macro lens…

It may be gray and gloomy, but the flowers still know that spring is here. More experimentation with studio lights and my macro lens. And heck, while I’m at it, how about a few beautiful flowers from my garden.

Illahe Gallery Show

The Southern Oregon Photographers Forum (SOPF) Annual Show opened this month at Illahe Gallery in Ashland. If you haven’t had a chance yet, please get over to see it. The work is diverse. I have a couple of images from my road trip last year on display. 

   

The Worldwide Photography Gala Awards announcement

My image “Fantasy World” has recently been selected as a finalist in The Worldwide Photography Gala Awards for the Julia Margaret Cameron Award in the professional fine art category. The winners will be announced in June. You can find out more information at this site: http://www.thegalaawards.net/

Nature Photography

I spent last weekend hiking the trails in Central Oregon and photographing rock climbing. Here’s a post of some of the action. These pictures were taken using my 16-35mm lens to capture the entire scene. It’s hard to see, but if you look closely at the picture on the right, above the tree on the left, you can see the climbers standing on a ledge on the wall.

Digital Experiment

I ventured out to the local farmers market this morning in hopes of finding some early blooming flowers and luck was on my side. The brilliant color of the camellia sparked my imagination. With a little blending and combining other plant photos, I came up with this beautiful flower compilation.

Night Photography

The other night found me wandering our local park with friends searching for interesting elements to illuminate and photograph. Night photography has always intrigued me because the night removes color and reduces our view to shapes. With the help of strobes and flashlights, color can be reintroduced selectively. This shot was a 2.5 minute exposure at 100 ISO, at f11 with a 16mm lens on a full frame sensor. I used a tripod with a locked cable release, then moved in front of the camera and triggered the flash a few times to light myself. The effect is ghostly! Because of the longer exposure, I was able to capture the ambient light from the streetlights in the park.

Macro-photography experiment

Recently I began experimenting with macro photography. I started by setting up a little scene of fun objects from my collection of stuff. As you can see from the picture, some of the objects are only 1/2″ or so in size. My challenge was to create a depth of field that made all the objects in focus. I used a Canon 100mm lens that my friend loaned me, with a setup of continuos tungsten lights with 3′ umbrellas. My camera was on a tripod, in mirror lock-up with a cable release. I had the f stop set to f22, at .6 seconds. I’m very happy with the results and hope to experiment more in the future. Any ideas or suggestions are much appreciated.

Fine Art Digital Workflow Workshop

This last weekend I attended a Fine Art Digital Workflow Workshop presented by R. Mac Holbert of Nash Editions. I had the opportunity to attend this same workshop last year, came away with many helpful techniques, and again, left with my brain full of information! Because there is such a wealth of information presented, attending a second time allowed me to revisit in-depth the information I learned the first time, but didn’t quite understand. I highly recommend this workshop to anyone working with digital images! You won’t be disappointed.

  BEFORE/AFTER