Photo ABCs

L is for Lensbaby

The picture in the previous post was shot with a Lensbaby. A Lensbaby is a lens which makes your $2000 camera take pictures like a $15 camera! Seriously, it's a lens on a plastic bellows which you move with your fingers which causes your image to have areas in focus and out of focus in unique ways.

The Queen of the Lensbaby is my friend Lisa Smith. Here's a video where she explains how the Lensbaby helps her boundless creativity and imagination.

Here's a gallery of shots I have taken over the years on Route 66 with my Lensbaby. I often add considerable vignetting and grain in Photoshop to achieve the effect I want.

Burger at the Rock Cafe, Stroud, Oklahoma:

M is for Mood

A rainy evening in New Mexico.

L is for Light

Marcos Baghdatis at this week's Pacific Life Open, Indian Wells, California.

S is for Shadows

Lindsay Davenport, at this week's Pacific Life Open, Indian Wells, California.

M is for Museum

I have always said that to improve your photography, visit an art museum!

If you are a landscape photographer, you have a special reason to visit the San Diego Museum of Art. Kindred Spirits: Asher B. Durand and the American Landscape will be on display until April 27, 2008. I visited last weekend-- it's well worth it!

Kindred Spirits, Asher Durand, 1849

What can a landscape photographer learn from Asher Durand? Plenty! Durand was a founding member of the Hudson River School, a group of artists whose idealized, Romantic, but realistic portrayals of nature still resonate today. Aside from the considerable enjoyment gained by looking at the pictures, a photographer can take away plenty of pearls.

Durand's use of light is exceptional. Most of his works are painted in mixed light, sunshine mixed with clouds. Many photographers are disappointed when it's not a cloudless, sunny day. Study Durand's work, how he uses the play of light on the landscape, how he leads the eye with his use of light and shadow. Be humbled!

If there ever was a painter who could paint trees better than Durand, I'm not aware of it. It is remarkable. Photographers should study his work to see just how a forest can be rendered.

Durand was after my own photographic heart with his use of the color red! In many of his landscapes, he deliberately included a small detail of bright red, to catch the viewers eye. It could be a piece of clothing on a settler or an Indian, or even a tiny head of a woodpecker in the forest!

Study his portrait of Andrew Jackson to see mastery of light in a portrait.

The San Diego Museum of Art is one of my refuges that I head to when I need inspiration. This exhibit, along with its companion: Plein Air Past and Present, is one that you can return to many times for inspiration, and, if needed, instruction.

B is for Blurb

I recently posted on my experience making a photo book with Blurb.com.

I learned from my mistakes and tried it again, this time making an 8x10 hardbound book. I needed some sample books to send to publishers for my Route 66 book project, so gave it another go.

This time I used their templates, and for text I used text within their templates. (Last time I made the mistake of making text in a Photoshop document, which did not reproduce well.) For pages with photographs, I sized and sharpened my photos to exactly match the openings in their templates. They have many templates for photo pages. Most often I simply centered the photo within the page and made a small caption, but sometimes I used a photo full-bleed (using the entire page to the edges), and three or four times I used a "double-truck" format, (using a horizontal photo to completely fill two pages).

I must say that the quality of reproduction was superb. I used many photos with dark shadows, many of which I have difficulty printing even with custom profiles. The book had no trouble with any image. All shadows kept all of their detail, and no highlights were blown. I have shown the book to many exacting photographers and all have been uniformly impressed with the quality. It has the quality of a very expensive photography book.

I was most impressed with the reproduction of the full-bleed and double-truck pages. For some reason I expected the quality to decrease as the size increased, but I was wrong, the quality increased! The fine details were superbly reproduced.

The software was pretty straightforward to use after getting used to it, though there was an occasional glitch were it did not repaginate on the correct side of the page after I added a page.

As you can tell, I am pleased with the result. I will make some minor additions and corrections, and then use the books to try to find a publisher!