Pondering Photography

On a longish drive coming back from shooting today I was thinking about why I love photography so much.  I think it is a number of things, but the first that came to mind is that I am learning what I like (to shoot) and then gaining some understanding of myself from that.   I love reflections like water and windows but also love shadows, and I think they go together.  They both show something beyond what we notice in passing, the things we have to look deeper to find.  Often quite beautiful or surprising, and right there waiting to be found.

Everyone loves flowers, so I don't need to examine that one too closely.  Rust?  Here I'm not sure except that it really can be interesting and beautiful.

From this process I think I understand that taking photos helps me appreciate the subtle and amazing beauty all around us and to try my best to capture it to share.  Gosh, this sounds like I may have arrived at my philosophy!

So, to share one image from today.  Several years ago I found an old barn I love.   It's a long haul from here but I've visited it 3 times now - and each time am so happy to find it yet standing.  Today I thought that some of the structure of the 2nd floor looked like a pagoda.  I worked with this image to try to bring that out.

January mix

We've been having the first "real" (read "icky") winter since I arrived in Greenville 5 years ago.  Not a lot of tolerable sunshine or warmish cloudiness for taking pictures, so it's been a good time to learn some new techniques. I've been working on water and found a nice, quiet place to shoot when we've had some (too much?) rain.

Interestingly, there  is a stand of bamboo near the little falls and suddenly Greenville can look tropical even on a chilly, soft day.

Agua

I've been reading a lot about photo technique and trying to learn to slow down water to get that wonderful motion look. I've tried several times but was not happy with the results.  I never took the written instructions with me, so after a lot of trial and error, and error, I finally learned my lesson on Sunday.  We had MORE rain over the weekend and the rivers were raging, so we headed to a favorite spot (as yet mostly undiscovered) to try more shots of water.  I was a little dismayed when we arrived to see just how raging the river was, but we gave it a shot.  I still wasn't having any luck - tripod and all - when I looked at Wayne's picture and saw it was exactly what we were looking for.  After taking a look at his camera settings, I changed mine and instantly had more luck.  We spent the next several hours taking waterfall shots around the Greenville area.

I've got more to learn, but I'm so happy with the 1st days results.

painting a wall

We were in Clayton, GA for a few days and came out of the biting cold to have a delicious pizza at Zeppalins.  This is a wall that caught my eye.  The first shot is as I took it - hand held, no flash.

I've played around with it a lot but probably don't yet have the perfect finished product.  Most people prefer a very colorful version.  It's quite fun to work with something so basic and see what it becomes.

Transition

We have been getting requests to help people "fix" and/or "paint" their pictures.  You tell one person you can touch up something and word seems to spread.  Actually, and it's a secret, we enjoy doing it because we really have to tap into our creativity and learn new ways to apply tools....But don't tell.

Wayne is getting really good at adding sky to pictures - and it's amazing how many nice shots lack good sky - and I'm good at covering up all kinds of things, and this week managed to remove a hand from around a beautiful dog's neck - very detailed and painstaking work.
So, I thought I'd share a sample of our work.   This is a rather ordinary photo of a peach orchard early in the season.  The day was grey and the light not good.  
These pictures progress through just a few of the steps:  original photo, enhanced color and light with a more interesting sky added, and the final painted version.
The total time involved in this is probably 3 or 4 hours on and off.  Love the finished product.

Out for a walk

We have had A LOT of rain lately, and a lot just yesterday.  As I was walking the dog this a.m., I saw this hibiscus bush that clearly loved the rain more than I did.  The flowers were just beautiful, so dispite less than ideal light, I came back with my camera.  This is the reason we need to remember to always stop and smell the roses...

I have played with this a little to bring out the light as much as I could and this version has been "painted" with palette knife.

Wandering aimlessly all about.....

Saturday was another day to go exploring to see what we could see....in the end we wandered over to Saluda, NC, then Tryon and back into SC at Landrum.  It turned out to be the peak of color a couple of weeks earlier than normal so we had lots of scenery to enjoy and many pictures to take.
This is a view of the Saluda Grade - "the steepest rail line in America" but it is no longer running any trains :-(.   Wayne took this picture late in the day and then "painted" it with oils.

It would have been exciting to have ridden this line and been able to climb the grade during peak colors!!

Inside the shed

It sounds like a horror movie, but instead it was pretty neat in the shed on the farm we stopped at last weekend.  I just stuck my head in to see what was there, and this is what I saw....bat chairs!
This farm had days worth of photo ops..every door, every hinge, inside and outside of each building, the old fence.....The only thing missing was really good light, but unless you can come back, you take what you have and work with it.  Since this was shot inside a shed, lighting wasn't an issue anyway.

Here they are - the world's first bat chairs.....Inverted and hue adjusted.

An American Beauty

An American Beauty for those of us who were young and crazy in the 50's. Perhaps the cream of the crop: 1955 Chevy! This one sits with its friends in a yard along Hwy 55 in the upstate South Carolina just south of the NC line. Still proudly flying the stars and stripes!

It has been digitally painted and has reclaimed some of it's past glory, and, in fact, may have gained some with age (like the rest/rust of us)

It turns out that old cars lend themselves to photography and give us a chance to preserve their charm and nostalgia for a few more generations. Enjoy!

This and any other photograph you see on our site are available for purchase. We will soon have an internet site, but in the meantime, we can be contacted at backroadsandaliways@gmail.com

Nice folk

I wrote the other day about all the great pictures we were able to take on our way home from Wake Forest. I haven't had a chance to do much, but Wayne has "painted" a few. He also borrowed a sky to add to the drama. Enjoy.

Oh, this is at an old farm along a road we took by mistake. When we got to the "entering NC" sign we turned around and got to stop here and shoot to our hearts content. More to follow.

Wrong tag

If I'd been paying close attention, I would have discovered that I had reversed the tags on the photos I submitted to the last juried show. So, the one I posted of the single flower may be a nice photo, but it was not the one that was selected.

This turns out to be good because I like the other one better and could not understand why it didn't make the jury cut.

So, this is a photo of the reflection in the window of an antique store in Athens, Ga one winter morning. There was a mirror in the window and other glass objects. I love how the window and the mirror reflect the building across the street! You may notice the the two pictures that have been accepted into the juried shows are both reflections.....I see a pattern here!

The only adjustments were slight ones to the lighting and saturation of the sky.

This is what I love about photography...it teaches you to look more closely at things and what you are actually seeing. I could have just walked down the street and taken a cursory glance at the antiques in the window, but by really looking, I saw more. With a camera attached, I could grab the image and keep it.

Juried shows

Part of finding one's way into a new field is just trying things. I think if we had done more research and some reading, we might have scared ourselves off entering juried shows, but we were naive and gave it a shot. We've entered two local juried shows so far and had one photograph selected for each. This turns out to feel really good!

The first is a photo taken of a vase in the window of a downtown restaurant on a nice sunny morning. I played with the levels and then inverted the original and adjusted the hue and saturation. I love all the little things that show up in the reflections.

The second is the photo that inspired me to try doing this professionally. It was the result of taking a professionally led field trip to beautiful DuPont Forest in NC. A lone flower on the shore of a little lake on a pretty fall day.

We are excited and encouraged to try more things and play more with our art. Photography is a great medium for exploration.

Public Art

One of our missions is to find the art that's all around us every day. I've been passing this sign for years and always meant to stop and take a few pictures. The other day I had my camera, blue skies and puffy clouds. Instead of a beautiful sign standing in an abandoned diner parking lot (the diner was torn down about 2 years after it was built) along a busy road, it's now a hangable work of art.

I adjusted the light a little and then posterized to get the mix of colors in the sky. Not sure of the title yet....Hop in Heaven?

News and views

One of my photographs was accepted into the juried art show at Upstate Visual Arts. Making the cut turned out to be nerve racking, but now I'm in. Results of the judging are tonite. It will be interesting to see what kind of art wins. I feel very honored to have been selected, and no, I'm not just saying that.

We are going to be in three upcoming events - and maybe more. Sept 19 & 20 at the Riverside show outside of Commerce - details when I get them.

Oct 3 we will be in the Trillium art fair in Travelers Rest, SC

Oct 10 at the Downtown Wake Forest Autumn Arts Fair in Wake Forest, NC.

We will probably also enter at least 2 more juried shows this fall.

We have come so far in less than a year and find we are looking at things very differently than we did and using our photoshop and painting techniques more selectively.

Here is one of Wayne's most recent works. We were on an errand and came around a curve to see this beautiful tree standing alone in a farm yard. Light and sky were about perfect.

...to the ridiculous

Disc Crow

This guy and his 2 friends are standing in a little, old corn field in Mauldin, SC. Someone put a lot of work into them, and now time, weather and morning glories have gotten the best of them. Still a little work to do on this, but it make me realize that I'd rather see this than another gas station or McD.

Double Exposure

It was a good weekend of visiting galleries, a small art fair and talking with a multi-media artist. It's great to feel a part of the local arts community.

After absorbing so much art, Wayne thought he wanted to learn how to make double exposures digitally: either get a book or info online or just stay up really late and play with it.

There may be some fine tuning to learn, but the results show great promise. Watch for more in the future.

This is a double exposure of a longhorn and the Vet School at UGA.

fun with photoshop

I went exploring the far northwest corner of South Carolina last week and discovered a nice park in Oconee County: Chau Ram outside of Westminister. I got a few nice shots of my grandsons kicking the water and played with this one in particular. No real trick to it and I really like the results.
I merely isolate the legs and feet then accented the edges of the water and saturated it.

Around every corner

While taking a hike across the campus of UGA on Sunday morning - and it is an uphill hike - we wandered into a little courtyard and discovered a coi pond full of turtles and a few beautiful koi. It's a cute little spot and both the turtles and the fish hurried to gather in front of us. Clearly someone has been feeding them though we eventually came across a sign hidden from view that says "Don't feed the fish!"

Reflections create very interesting photographs. Here is one of my early favorites - "Koi in the sky"

Learning history

As usual, we headed out on the backroads this weekend to see what was new and interesting. There was a lot to see, but for me the most interesting was a beautiful farm south of Colbert, GA. We came to a very rural intersection and right ahead of us was an amazing spread with rolling hay fields, a huge brick barn, a small lake, horses and all framed by a brown fence that ran as far as we could see. As we explored a little further, we came to an old brick house next to a huge white frame plantation-style home with a brick silo. There was a gated drive onto part of the property and a sign that said "Tucker Plantation."

The 3 brick horse barns and the brick house all had large iron S on them. On the map this area is called Smithsonia as is one of the roads that runs by.

One would think I could look up Tucker Plantation or Smithsonia on Google and learn about the area. Not so fast. The plantation site has a short website about weddings on the grounds and mentions that the farm once belonged to Kenny Rogers. Smithsonia, GA shows up as being near Atlanta and nowhere near Colbert (as in Steven, we claim).

Clearly there has been a huge and impressive farm here for some time, but at this point it's history remains obscure. And Cindy and Jewett Tucker, the current owners, seem to be strangers to Google.

Next stop is the GA historical society, I think.

But, this is why backroads and alleyways are so much fun. There is fodder here for hundreds of great pictures as well as historical research.

This picture is of the first sight we had of the farm as we approached. More to follow.

Color

Again, on the subject of color change: some pictures adapt well to "messing with color" and others don't. These two pictures are another example of what happens when you experiment a little.

These were taken at our latest county park, Cedar Falls. This tract of land lies along the Reedy River in the southern part of the county, west of Simpsonville. It's the site of an old mill and dam that has been overrun, abused and misused for years. It's taken many years for the county to acquire the site, but now the process of cleaning and restoring is under way. The river is quite wide at this spot and there are a few small rapids.

This shot was taken along the shore where the water was running fast. I call the second picture "Maxfield Parrish" after the painter who created the more amazing colors and blues in his work.

Enjoy!