Water, Rocks, and Moss
The textures and shapes of this little stream against moss-covered rocks caught my eye. I blurred the flow of the water to capture the soft feeling of this little stream. Color was not important, in fact, it detracted from the feeling I had. Converting to black and white made the image for me.
Flowing Grass Abstract
I saw some soft flowing grass with different colors and shades. I thought it would make a good abstract. I did a diagonal pan along the shape of the flowing grass. In post processing, I added a little contrast and softened the image.
Sagebrush Swirl
As I look at things, an urge to play sometimes comes over me. I couldn’t resist, the devil made me do it. I simply did a slow shutter speed circular swirl to capture this interesting abstract. I tend to see these abstracts when I notice an object with at clear center point and things radiation out from the center. This sagebrush provided an interesting opportunity. The following is the sagebrush from a normal perspective.
Sagebrush – Normal Perspective
I enjoy play!
Grass Clump Abstract
Walking along I spotted this interesting clump of grass. I immediately thought that it would make a great subject for a hand-held circular pan. It did. Sometimes things just pop out in front of me. These usually turn out to be some of my favorite images.
For reference, below is the grass clump with out the pan. I like the abstract better.
Just a Clump of Grass
Colorado Blue Spruce Abstract 1
Sometimes it is just fun to play around with images. I knew that I would use various ways of post processing when I first took the image. Here is one version. Playing around a little more, I came up with the following abstract :
Colorado Blue Spruce Abstract 2
Colorado Blue Spruce Tip – New Growth
As I was walking around my yard, I was just looking for images to pop into my sight. I have photographed new growth on evergreens more times than I can imagine. However, I have never made an image on new growth taken from a head on perspective. A tip of new growth from a Colorado Blue Spruce just jumped out in front of my eyes. So I looked around more to try to get one that was the most symmetrical. My mind started to think what I could do with this from an abstract point of view. I plan to apply some creative alternatives in a future post.
Like my friend John Barclay (www.johnbarclayphotography.com) emphasizes. Do not force a photograph, let the image come to you. This one did …
Basalt, Yaklma River Canyon
These pieces of basalt (approximately 18 inches in length) caught my as I was exploring road cuts in the Yakima River Canyon. They seemed to be accented by an artists brush. Different patterns and different colors abounded in adjacent rocks. Since the rocks were adjacent and seem to be part of the same basalt flow, why are they so different in surface color and pattern. I need to do a little research on what factors determine the color and patterns.
Multiple Exposure: Dogwood Blooms and Asphalt Pavement
I got a little bored shooting in the garden. Nothing was “Popping” for me. So I thought I would have a little fun with multiple exposures. This image is a combination of a Pink Dogwood branch and a texture photo of a section of asphalt pavement. Magic happens.
To finish it off I decided to experiment a little with Topaz Impression. Here I used the Impasto I preset. Something a little different.
Canon 5D MkII, EF24-70mm f/2.8L @ 60mm, f/11, 1/20 sec, ISO 200
Fallen cherry blossoms covered the ground beneath the trees. I was able to get a few images before the lawn mowing gang cut the grass and swept away the beautiful blooms. The past few weeks are typically my favorite weeks in the garden each year. For a few days we are lucky to have the flowering pears, flowering plum, flowering crab apple, and flowering cherries all in bloom at the same time. It is peaceful and beautiful in the garden.
The image below is a new perspective using multiple exposures while zooming out.
A different look is achieved by a long exposure and a zoom pan as seen below.
Which one catches your eye? I like them all.
Impressionistic Cherry Blossoms.
I was having a lot of fun creating multiple exposures and just experimenting with various artistic ways of processing images when I came up with this combination. I first started out taking individual images of fallen cherry blossoms. I then experimented with multiple exposures (5 exposures in this case). I then further experimented with different artistic presets in Topaz Impression (Georgia O’Keefe II) to arrive at this image.
For reference, below is the 5 image multiple exposure:
Canon 5D MkIII, EF24-70mm f/2.8L @ 70mm, f/8, 1/30 sec, ISO 200 (5 exposures)
Lesson Learned: Enjoy experimenting, you can never tell what you can come up with!