September 2013

The Geography of Survival #10 Bozeman, Montana 2013

What to know how to make a digital photographer panic? Mess with their software. My Photoshop program crapped out on me the other day and Adobe has no idea why. They’re working on the problem but said it would be 24-48 hours before they got back to me. (It’s been about 58 hours now, but who’s counting.) I thought I was dead in the water as far as editing new photos go (hence the feeling of panic, or at least helplessness) so I dug up some older images that I had kind of held in reserve when the POTD at the time took off on a different tangent before I got them posted. I actually found a workaround to the Photoshop problem yesterday, using an older version, but since I’m in the mood, I’ll go ahead with the older photos for a while anyway. This shot was from earlier this year, another in my series featuring the growing pains of aspen and related trees.]]>

discussion about the effects of the drip and the blog on the composition of the image Color Field #4 from two days ago peaked my interest enough I sat down and tried all the suggestions. The results are shown below. The voting lines are now open, i.e., let me know what you think. Original image: Image without the drip: Image with the shadows removed: Image with angled drip: Cropped image: ]]>

Double Barrel Idaho Falls, Idaho 2013

Staring down the barrels of a couple of manhole (personhole?) covers.

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Color Field #4 Idaho Falls, Idaho 2013

Anybody think the drip actually adds to the composition in this photo? I find it (and that chunk of junk in the gray area on the right) quite distracting. Should I take it out? What would Mark Rothko do if he let Jackson Pollock with one of his dripping paintbrushes too close to one of his own paintings?]]>

Color Field #3 Idaho Falls, Idaho 2013

Creating these kind of images seems like a slam dunk at first blush as the pattern and colors are already there and all you have to do is push the shutter button. A significant amount of creativity doesn’t seem necessary. Or it doesn’t seem that way until you consider there are almost an infinite number of ways of lining things up in the viewfinder; move the camera a little to the left, a little to the right, zoom in, zoom out, etc. I guess though that process is not unique to these found compositions, it’s true of any subject from abstract to landscapes. For some reason it just seems like it should be easier for this type of shot, in spite of the proof I have to the contrary. (I took probably ten or twelve very similar shots to this one and then had to sift through them agonizing about which one had the best composition. I spent quite a bit of time on that and am still not sure I got it right.)]]>

Color Field #2 Idaho Falls, Idaho 2013 2013

I was thinking this shot with the lines in it wasn’t a pure color field image but then decided it fits the genre fine when I remembered reading that Mondrian is considered by some to have been a color field painter (although his work and death preceded the coining of the term as a genre I believe).]]>

Color Field #1 Idaho Falls, Idaho 2013

A couple of weeks ago we went back to our old haunts in Idaho Falls, Idaho to attend a reception for a photography show at the Art Museum of Eastern Idaho that I was juror for. (They also let me hang a few pieces of my own.) While there I wandered some of the old routes I took on my daily walks when we lived there. In the downtown alleys I was shooting some texture shots on the sides of the buildings for possible use in some of the composite images I work on from time to time when I came across some areas where graffiti on the walls had been painted over. It’s common in many cities to collect unwanted paint from residents and rather than dispose of it all, use it for such things as covering up graffiti, so the colors vary over time depending on what is available. In areas where more graffiti is continually added, multiple color patterns appear over time, an example which you see here. Besides the photographs in the downtown alleys, I also collected some in the underpasses on the greenbelt path along the Snake River. These abstract patterns of color remind me of mid-twentieth century color field paintings. I’ll have more comments on that genre in subsequent posts.]]>

Latent Potential #13 Bozeman, Montana 2013

These seed heads are doing a very convincing imitation of chains of gold and silver jewelry.]]>

Latent Potential #12 Bozeman, Montana 2013

This was a shot I took part way through the process of laying out the seed pods for yesterday’s photo. I thought it had an interesting pattern of it’s own; a different overall impression than the full piece.]]>

Latent Potential #11 Bozeman, Montana 2013

Seed pods from another plant I know the name of, the flax plant who’s pale blue flowers line our road in the summer.]]>