Random Photos

Some people hear voices.. Some see invisible people.. Others have no imagination whatsoever.





The Moon


The full-orbed moon with unchanged ray
Mounts up the eastern sky,
Not doomed to these short nights for aye,
But shining steadily.


She does not wane, but my fortune,
Which her rays do not bless,
My wayward path declineth soon,
But she shines not the less.


And if she faintly glimmers here,
And paled is her light,
Yet always in her proper sphere
She's mistress of the night.


Henry David Thoreau


Tawney Marie, my goddaughter, the most precious thing in my life!

A red-tailed honey bee

At Del Mar California, My First Ocean Sunset

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The Power of Music - Story in 5 Frames

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Violation of a Photographers Rights

I awoke choking from the smoke. I thought my house was on fire! I jumped out of bed and slid my pants on as fast as I could. I realized then the smoke was pine. Not my house, thats good, but why was the smoke so thick? It was 3 in the morning, I looked outside and the whole neighborhood was wrapped in a smokey blanket. I swiftly got dressed grabbed my little Kodak point n shoot and left the house to investigate.


Fire Trucks at Work

It only took a few minutes to find the source of the smoke. A pile of fire wood next to a shed had caught fire. Naturally I started taking shots. I set my camera on fence posts, stone walls, even on the sidewalk to hold it steady. I made sure to keep my distance never crossing the street even though the fire was out before I arrived. I know better than to get in the way and I did not want to endanger myself.


Protect and serve

The officer sitting in his car must have been bored cause he got out and approached me. Shine his light and asked were do you live? "Just down the street" I answer. "Well I think its time for you to go home. Its all over here", He sneared at me "And photo time is done!"


Cop shines Light

I then proceeded to tell him what my rights truly are which he didn't like. He detained me taking my camera until backup arrived. The backup was a Sargent that is commenly around my area a fellow that I have spoken with a number of times and a very nice guy. He agreed with me that I wasn't braking any laws and that the other cop was just a rookie that didn't know any better. I got my camera back and went home.

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What are your rights as a photographer? Since 9/11 people have come up with some very strange ideas. Photogs are being harassed in many places they were left alone before. Photos being deleted from memory cards, cameras being taken. NPR has a story you can listen to here.

Have a look here to read The Photographers Rights by Bert P. Krages, Attorney at Law.

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Moon Dance

Genevieve dances with the moon.

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Film Noir - Experiments in Low-Key Lighting

This Is What It Sounds Like...


Associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style, film noir (French for black film) has roots that stretch back all the way to the 15th and 16th century. The low-key lighting creates moods reminiscent of 15th century chiaroscuro (Italian for clear-dark) and 16th century tenebrism from the Italian tenebroso ("murky"), techniques using high contrasts of light and dark to create moody and darkly foreboding art.



Piper Walks Down Art Alley


The Seven Deadly Sins - Lust


Film Noir is a term coined in the 1940's by French critic Nino Frank. Used primarily to describe Hollywood's crime dramas made through out the 1940's and 50's using the Low-Key German Expressionist cinematography style from the 1920's. However the term is rather ambiguous and it is hard to pin down a specific genera of film. As over the years many films from crime, drama, horror, sci-fi, and even westerns have used the lighting elements of low-key film noir. That is the one thing that makes a picture or movie Film Noir, the dark and contrasty lighting.



Young Mother


The Kickback


Leah - Noir

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Art Alley - Up Close and Personal

The fallowing photos are a study in textures and colors. All are photographed with a 90mm Macro lens approximetly 1/2 inch away from the piece of art.

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HDR a basic overview

HDR

High dynamic range (HDR) imaging is a set of techniques that allows a photographer to capture and display a greater range of exposure than can be captured in traditional film or digital imaging techniques. The consept of exposure range to a photographer represents the values between light and dark areas in the scene being photographed. Factors effecting the range which a photographer can capture is a function of the medium being used; the sesitivity of the film, paper, and digital sensors. HDR has been recognised for decades but its use was limited due to a lack of computer processing power. However with todays powerful computers HDR is now emerging into the general population.

HDR images contain digital information which corasponds to the physical luminance that can be obsevered in the real world. This is differant than traditional digital images which represent information as it should appear on a monitor or papaer. Thus the data stored in an HDR image is often called scene-referred and the data stored in traditional digital images is called device-referred.

The human eye can see a much greater range of lumanace than a camera can. For an image to come close to this range the photographer must make a minimum of 3 exposures of the scene to collect all the data neaded. A photo to record the bright areas one to record the dark areas and one the records inbetween the two. The more exposures made the higher the dynamic range.

in this example we see that 4 images were used with exposure values of -5, -2, +2, and +5.

These exposures are then blended together using computer softwere such as photoshop or photomatrix. However there is one problem, that is in viewing the image. CRT, LCD, prints, and other ways of viewing images have a limited dynamic range. There are however various methods that have been developed to convert the HDR image into a viewable format, the most common of which is called Tone Mapping.

Tone mapping is a technique which employs a computer to map one set of colors to another with the result of approximating the appearance of HDR images. When an HDR image is displayed on a non-HDR display it has a strong loss of contrast, tone mapping adds contrast to the image while retaining the image details and color appearance.


here we see the above images blened together and tone mapped.

Here are the other HRD images I have made.

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Color, How We See Light

this was originally published on my webpage 3 years ago, enjoy =)

Introduction

Light is a form of radiant electromagnetic energy which, for our purposes, travels as a wave. While this is not exactly correct it is all we need to concern ourselves with to understand color.
The color we see is dependant on the wave length of the light that reaches our eyes.
Visible light is a range of electromagnetic wave lengths that the human eye is sensitive to. The range is about 400 to 700 nm (nanometers). Below 400nm we find ultraviolet radiation, X-rays and Gamma-rays. Above 700nm we encounter infrared radiation, radar, television, and radio.
White light is a combination of all visible wave lengths. Black is an absence of light.

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Bending the Light
If you take a beam of white light and shine it into a prism the prism will bend the light. The shorter wave lenths will bend more than the longer wave lengths thus the white light will be spread out into a visible spectrum.


By placeing filters in the path of the light we will only see the light waves that are passed by the filter. A red filter will only pass red light. Green passes green. Blue passes blue.

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The Additive Property
The next step in our understanding of color is called the additive property. Imagine if you would the next image being created by three projectors projecting white light. Projector 1 has a red filter, 2 has a green filter and 3 has a blue filter on it. When the lights are arranged so they overlap the colors will blend into new colors. Red and green blend to create yellow, green and blue create cyan, blue and red blend to create magenta.

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Subtractive Property
Now again we are going to imagine the three images below are a white light with red, green, and blue filters on it and we are going to hold a different color filter over the red, green, blue.


Much like Red Green and Blue light can be added we can use Yellow, Cyan and Magenta light subtractivly.


Think about it like this, white is all the light together. Printers subtract colors from the white paper using yellow, cyan, and magenta pigments.
We create images on our black (lightless) computer screens by adding red, green and blue light.

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