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Expressing my vision

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Expressing my vision

Tag Archives: learning

How much rain?

02 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by Karen in 30DaysWild, 5 Minute Project, Just because....

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

children, learning, photoaday, Photography, science, weather

“Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.” – Langston Hughes

It’s raining it’s pouring…….

Well I saw the weather this morning as I dropped my son off to school and then drove into work and knew immediately what we would start doing this afternoon. I found some great ideas online for building a weather station, so we are going to make a few instruments needed to start observing the weather over the next few days. Today it is a rain gauge, for this we followed the instructions on the Met Office website (a fantastic informative site for all things weather related).

As the rain had stopped by the time we returned home at 3.45pm we decided to sit outside and make the rain gauge. It was quite breezy and chilly, so my son decided he needed a small blanket to cover his legs as he sat on the patio 🙂

What you will need:

  • An empty plastic bottle (2 litre fizzy drink bottle would be ideal)
  • Scissors
  • Sticky tape
  • Ruler
  • Paper
  • Pencil
  1. Cut around the plastic bottle about two thirds of the way up.

2. Turn the top part of the bottle upside down and place it inside the bottom part – fix it in place using the tape.

3.  Make a scale in centimetres on a piece of tape, using a ruler, and fix it to the side of your bottle.

4.  Find a place outside to put your rain gauge. It must be open and away from trees.

We now need to check it every day at the same time, measure the amount of rain collected, and empty then bottle.

Photographer research: Ray Metzker

26 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by Karen in Artists, Photographer research

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

art, black and white, fine art, learning, Photography, Ray Metzker

I had slightly mixed emotions about some of Trent Parke’s work so I wanted to look at other artists who are known for their use of light and shadow.

Ray K. Metzker (September 10, 1931 – October 9, 2014) was a major American photographer known for both his work in cityscape and landscape photography and for his large “multiples”, assemblages of printed strips and single frames.

He described the power of light in an image in a very similar way to Trent explaining that it can “transform the ordinary into a visual delight”. He repeatedly pushed an idea or a technique to the extreme, discovering its limits and its potential.

Many of his street photographs exhibit what Henri Cartier-Bresson refers to as the “Decisive Moment” — that moment in which all the subjects and details in a scene come together just perfectly in your viewfinder.

I find that there is something more appealing and intriguing about Ray’s images despite the similarities in their work and the darkness of some of his images, which surprised me as I usually like much lighter and airier images.

I feel that possibly Trent is trying to show the sometimes gritty truth about life whereas Ray’s work seems to be more about the beauty of the everyday caused by the way the light falls in a moment of time on the subject.

Ray’s work was earlier than that of Trent. Trent’s work, as shown in my previous post on famous photographers, were all taken between 1998 and 2004, these though, to me they appear timeless although they were taken during the 1950s and 1960s. Perhaps Ray Metzker may have had an influence on the work of Trent Parke?

Here’s a short biography on Metzker by the New York City-based Laurence Miller Gallery:

“Ray K. Metzker has quietly been making extraordinary photographs for the better part of six decades. Today, he is recognized as one of the great masters of American photography, a virtuoso who has pursued his chosen medium passionately for fifty years. 

Metzker was born in 1931 in Milwaukee and attended the Institute of Design, Chicago–a renowned school that had a few years earlier been dubbed the New Bauhaus– from 1956 to 1959. He was thus an heir to the avant-garde photography that had developed in Europe in the 1920’s. Early in his career, his work was marked by unusual intensity. Composites, multiple-exposure, superimposition of negatives, juxtapositions of two images, solarization and other formal means were part and parcel of his vocabulary.  He was committed to discovering the potential of black and white photography during the shooting and the printing, and has shown consummate skill in each stage of the photographic process. Ray Metzker’s unique and continually evolving mastery of light, shadow and line transform the ordinary in the realm of pure visual delight.

Major American museums began showing an interest in Metzker’s work in the 1960’s. Cementing his reputation as a master photographer, the museum of Modern Art in New York gave him his first one-man show in 1967. Retrospectives were organized in 1978 by the International Center of Photography in New York, and in 1984 by the Museum of fine Arts in Houston. The Houston exhibit was subsequently shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, the International Museum of Photography, Rochester, and the National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC.”

Head on over to the Laurence Miller Gallery website (the link can be found below) to see many more of Metzker’s photographs, you will not be disappointed.

————————————————————————————————

All the above images and quotes were taken from the following websites:

– Getty

 – Laurence Miller Gallery

– Wikipedia

– Jackson Fine Art

To stand out from the crowd

16 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by Karen in courses, Practice

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

art, daily, fine art, learning, photo101, Photography

Stand out from the crowd

Todays Photo101 prompt is all about colour. “The colours in our photographs are evocative and rouse emotions within us. Colour can elevate a mundane image into something intriguing and meaningful, and can tell a particular story within the frame.”

Hiding

The wall of orange

7165917523_f143441850_o

Isolation

It’s a Wonderful Wonderful World

11 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by Karen in courses, Practice

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

art, blogging101, fine art, learning, macro, photo101, Photography, poem, Postaday

The Photo101 theme for today is the “Natural World”, which is one of my favourite subjects to shoot, as I find it so relaxing and it takes me away from the hustle and bustle of my daily life.

From the moon at night……

Fly me to the moon

to mountains and views beyond……..

Above the couds

Above the couds

from calm and quiet lakes……..

3335763815_560955f875_o

Lake of tranquility

to the busy rivers full of activity………

Racing along the Thames

I never forget the smaller things though, from the leaves on the trees

Its all in the detail

to the bees on the flowers as it is the small details that really makes us stop and look. I am often surprised at what can be seen when I just take five to ten minutes wondering round my garden. In the spring to summer months it is a hive of activity just waiting to be photographed!

Nectar collector

I Love A Lonely Winding Road

I love a lonely winding road
That takes me where I cannot see
Until each softly rounded hill
Reveals its landscaped mystery.
Where nature’s stage creates the plot,
What ever the scene may be.

I love the crocus call in spring,
The first to wake from winter’s sleep.
Translucent bits of ivory joy,
So patient under snow banks deep,
‘Til they can lift each star like face
And proudly nature’s rhythm keep.

I love the fiery autumn hues,
Too harsh to bear in gentle spring
But welcomed by the strident wind
That makes the mighty pine tree sing,
Freeing the crimson leaves that dance
Like bright birds, high on wing.

I love the wonders of this world,
The secrets nature guards so well
From those who have no time to spend,
Who will not lift the ocean’s shell
And listen to the murmured tale
That each one has to tell.

by Alora M Knight

Blogging 101 is all about comments so off I go to check out some new blogs and start networking on here to get to know my neighbours 😊

As an aside, I am not sure what I did when posting this but I pressed schedule to post this in half an hour (today 11th March) and it posted it as if I had done it yesterday……I double checked the date and time just now and all ok, so not sure what happened, has anyone else experienced anything similar?

Texture Tuesday – the grass edition

10 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by Karen in Before and after, courses, Editing, Kim Klassen, Texture Tuesday

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

art, blogging101, fine art, garden, learning, photigraphy101, photo101, Photography, Postaday

The theme for today on Photo101 is big and scale, well to a small insect a blade of grass looks big! So using my macro lens and lying on the floor I shot from an ants perspective looking up in the blades, what a difference this can give to something so ordinary. 

In blogging101 today is all about personalising our blogs, today I will be looking through a few of my archives for a few more header images so that I can change it, so watch this space!

Kim Klassen’s Texture Tuesday again, where has this week gone?

Well what I did was as follows:

  1. Cropped the photo slightly in Lightroom 5 (I just find it so much easier straightening and cropping photos in Lightroom!).
  2. Added a little fill light (8%) in Lightroom 5.
  3. Adjusted the clarity slightly (15%) in Lightroom 5.
  4. Adjusted the white balance slightly to add some warmth, in Lightroom 5.
  5. Increased the vibrance slightly (+7) in Lightroom 5.
  6. Decreased the saturation slightly (-14) in Lightroom 5.
  7. Transfered to Photoshop CC
  8. kk_plastersquared, multiply @ 75% opacity
  9. Text layer and watermark added.

The pre straight out of camera shot is here below

I would love to know what you think?

The art of visualisation

07 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by Karen in Practice

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

art, black and white, blogging101, fine art, journal, learning, Photography, Postaday, reflection

Going down

Photography is a creative medium. One fundamental that’s not often talked about is the “Art of Visualization”… A concept that originated from one of my favourite photographers the well-known landscape photographer Ansel Adams.

Ansel Adams is well known for his use of visualisation.  He would look at a scene and then visualise  in “his minds eye” the image before making the photograph.  This process can be harder than it seems. To do do this with a scene you need to be in-tune with your inner emotions and how you feel about a scene.  Then you need to know how to manipulate your camera to show your emotional response of the scene in the image on your film or sensor.  Once that is done the next step is to bring that out in your image in post processing.

I am far from being a great photographer, I am just a hobbyist, who enjoys the art and creativity that photography allows me. I do know though that all my favourite images and the ones that get the most positive responses from others have been ones that I have visualised prior to taking and now I do try to do this with most of my shots, although some days especially when I feel I have to take a shot for my 365, I know I slack and it definitely shows!

I found this video on youtube of Ansel Adams talking briefly about the subject.

So next time your out and about with your camera, before you press the shutter, visualise the photo, you might just be surprised with the results.

Solitude

06 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by Karen in courses, Practice

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

art, black and white, fine art, learning, photo101, Photography

Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature. – Albert Einstein

My Teddy and I

Today’s theme on Photography101 is solitude. We were asked to also consider the placement of the subject in our shot. How can we interpret the state of being alone, or a lonely and uninhabited place? I often as I mentioned previously use the “rule of thirds” and have the grid set on my camera when I take the photo, not that I always stick to it though!

Solitude

This image of the lone barren tree just did not feel right to me unless it was central, after all rules are meant to be bent and broken, especially since each image is different!

Texture Tuesday: The Watercolour edition!

03 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by Karen in Before and after, Editing, Kim Klassen, Texture Tuesday

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

art, fine art, learning, Photography

In the Pink

Today being Tuesday I have edited another photo for Kim Klassen’s Texture Tuesday.

Well what I did was as follows:

  1. Sharpened in Lightroom 5 slightly.
  2. Transfered to Photoshop CC 2014
  3. Duplicated the background layer, multiply @ 35% opacity.
  4. kk_ohMy, multiply @ 65% opacity
  5. Created a Layer mask and reduced the effect of the  texture on the centre of the flower.
  6. kk_letgo, soft light @ 38% opacity
  7. Created a Layer mask and reduced the effect of the  texture on the centre of the flower.
  8. Text layer

For now the pre shot is here below (until I sort out the rollover, which I got to work in a test site I set up on blogger, but not here on WordPress…..SIGH)!

BEFORE

Looking at it now, I actually prefer the original, sometimes it is best to leave as is, but as I have spent the time playing with the shot I might as well post!

I would love to know what you think? Which one, before or After?

Further into the shadows

20 Friday Feb 2015

Posted by Karen in Learning, P52, Playing with Light

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

art, fine art, journal, learning, Photography, shadow

“Never fear shadows. They simply mean there’s a light shining somewhere nearby.” – Ruth E Renkel

Sitting around

Into the shadows

Until next time……………………………………………..

In pursuit of a style………………………….

21 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by Karen in Reflections

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

blogging101, journal, learning, Photography

Photography for me is a passion.

My name is Karen and am based in Surrey in England and I just LOVE to take pictures, capturing my family to document our lives together has been a passion of mine since my two children were born. Up until 2009 I tended to just snap shots, now I feel I am a photographer and enjoy the art of creating a photo. I love to look back and use my photography and digital scrapbooking as memories.

A camera comes around with me everywhere, if it is not my Canon 6D or 7D, it is my Canon 400D, a little Canon Ixus or my trusty iphone! I do not want to miss any of my families special moments.I love capturing them going about their normal lives, exploring, reading, playing, cooking, eating……….I think you get the idea, you name it I shoot it.

My main occupation is that of a Financial Director, but would LOVE to do more with my photography one day (probably when I retire!). At the moment I have a few stock photos available for sale through Getty and I do a few “natural light” shoots for family and close friends (basically anyone I know who asks).

I am predominantly self taught, but in 2009 I took the Open University Course T189, which luckily I passed with a very high mark. Since then I have undertaken a few courses with Kim Klassen (Photoshop & Lightroom) and a couple of Clickinmom courses. Lately though I feel that I am stuck in a rut photography wise and feel that I need to go back to basics as they say and find my way back! I have looked at undertaking a degree in photography, but as I already have a degree and a professional qualification feel that this would be a waste, especially as I never plan to pursue a career in photography.

For this blog I plan to:

1. Go back to the basics and document my progress and findings.

2.  Read a lot of photography books, go through any exercises they provide and review them, starting with the ones I already have.

3. Re visit some of the courses I have undertaken

4. Study some of the famous photographers and painters and analyse what I like about their work.

5.  Attend any photographic exhibitions that I can and review them.

I am doing all of this in the hope that this will consolidate my understanding and make my photography better and somewhere along the line it will enable me to FIND MY STYLE. This blog I have set up as my learning log to document my journey and findings. I hope that without the pressure of deadlines as on a standard course as well as being less structured or time constrained I will reach my goal no matter how long it takes, after all this is something just for me.

I recently saw this short video by the photographer David DuChemin, such inspiring words which really resonated with how I feel about photography.

I would really like some feedback, so please feel free to comment whether good or bad, as long as it is constructive that is…after all it’s the only way to get better.

Until next time…………………………………………………………

About Me

I am just an amateur photography enthusiast who enjoys experimenting with different genres in my quest to find my style. This blog is all about me sharing my photos and my love of photography.
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