Revisiting March 18

I have been wrestling with blogger "enhancing" my photos, to the point that really dark or really light photos were dreadful. Well thanks to a friend [thanks Altoon] who found out where you can turn off this auto enabled enhancing photos feature, I can finally post these; the first day when spring light was apparent. In our old house it's like a spotlight turned on, areas lit up that we hadn't seen for months, shadows in unexpected places, dust and cobwebs too. It's that time when you know the light has come back; actually it's probably the time when the light is most balanced with the dark. All that to say it makes for some dramatic shots.

light on the kitchen cupboards, March 18, 2014

light on the bookshelves, through the old glass, March 18, 2014

Instructions for turning off Auto Enhance : A  2 step process. Go the the Picasa album that holds the blog photos and it turns out that there's a little feature called "Auto Enhance" which you can turn off!! On the Picasa page of the blog photos there's an arrow at the top right which has a drop down menu; at the bottom of it is Auto Enhance and from it you can turn it off. It is set to normal as a default. 2. then go to this link and follow the instructions. https://support.google.com/plus/answer/3338435?hl=en

Dusk Yesterday

Late yesterday afternoon I went outside to photograph the wild turkeys walking about the studios and garden. Looking at the photos on the computer had me wondering how on earth I had manged to mess up so completely. Then I looked at the photos again. Sometimes mistakes are just wonderful.

Blue 1

Blue 2

Blue 3

Shades of Gray

Lately a lot of my photos have been in black and white as I try to figure out this value or tone stuff again. In all my years at art college I managed never to do a color course as I thought everything I made [I was in sculpture] should be white, as then it would absorb and reflect all the colors around it. And I got away with that stance [you can tell what era I'm from] but have had a lot to learn over the years. Now I am stumbling and bumbling to relearn what seemed to be instinctive knowledge when I was young. Having worked in color for so many years it is humbling to work in black and white. So I figure start simple. And if anyone has any suggestions for books to read on this subject I would really welcome suggestions. [Please god, not the Itten]

Experimenting

Portrait, experimenting with tone

Playing With Light

I took a photo in the elevator last week end that has me possessed. And so I spent a couple of hours playing with it, stretching, it, changing the levels, layering it. Still not sure what it is wanting to do or what I am wanting from it, but this is the only way I know to explore what it is wanting to say.

broken light

playing with light

Body parts

Still filing. And discovering old loves. During the 80's  when I was making One of A Kind women's and children's clothes I discovered the magic of photocopy machines. The more often you copy something the more the image breaks down. It was watching generations pass in front of your eyes; there were no shades of gray just black and white and the process reminded me of the Ortho film that I had first loved as an art student. So you will see some black and white images that were photocopied and enlarged to life size then reshot with the camera, and there are images that started life as video that I then took stills from. And you will see some, that I hope are the beginning of a new series.

photocopies, video stills and photos of bodies