Here’s an interpretive version of the Helleborus on White. I think the effect is like a glowing, stained glass flower: exciting, even if realistic rendering has gone by the boards.
Related story: Trio of Hellebores.
Related link: my Flowers on Black set on Flickr.
The original photo of this triad (immediately below) is a double hellebore blossom. It’s one of the first blossoms from the second year blooms of these special hellebore plants, hybridized by Barry Glick of Sunshine Farm and Garden, the self-styled “Hellebore King.”
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The more or less accurate colors of this flower (above), photographed in my studio, are pretty nice I think. But Harold being Harold, I couldn’t resist playing in the digital darkroom. Here is the capture info for the photo: 200mm f/4 macro lens (300mm in 35mm terms), 1 second at f/36 and ISO 100, tripod mounted using a Kirk Mighty Low Boy.
I often get asked about the techniques I use to get effects like these (top and bottom). I’ve no desire to be mysterious about it. But the precise steps I use are different every time. It’s a process, when it’s working right, that feels like the image is calling out to me, and revealing the steps as I go along necessary to reveal the inner image. You could say that I am the image’s therapist.
There is some commonality in the techniques I usually use. I start by photographing (or scanning) for high depth-of-field and transparency. I then work on the image in Photoshop using a variety of blending modes with duplicated inversions of LAB channels.
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By popular request, here’s a predominantly green version of the third dragonfly photogram.
Related images: Dragonfly; Dragonfly Variation; The Third Dragonfly.
Mint grows wild in our garden, particularly at the edges of the few grassy areas. I photographed this sprig of mint to emphasize the patterns in the leaves, and for transparency, then added color in Photoshop.
This coleoptera (beetle) looks like stained glass to me, and is definitely more abstract than the previous coleoptera in this series (which was kind of a pop art affair).
Obviously, when you look at images like those in this series (which I am doing as part of a commissioned project) you are looking at a hybrid between photography and digital painting.
The extent to which my training lies more towards painting than photography was brought home to me in my answer to a question recently from a photography student:
Q: I now have to do an oral presentation on a photographer for one of my classes and I chose to do it on you. I pretty much have all the information I need from your blog and interview but do need to know what education in photography you have such as degrees or years completed at school. Also what years were you a professional photographer in New York? Are there any photos you could send me or I could find online of your work in New York? I only need maybe one or two shots from your New York stuff. Any help you give me would be greatly appreciated.
A: I have relatively little formal education in photography, although I did take a course in photography with Neil Rappaport at Bennington College. I also studied photography privately with Lilo Raymond.
I studied painting (also at Bennington) with Pat Adams and Philip Wofford, and at the Art Students League with teachers including Bruce Dorfman and William Pachner.
For what it’s worth, I have a degree from New York University in Computer Science and Math, and a law degree from Rutgers.
I worked out of a studio at 18th Street and Broadway in New York from 1978 through about 1990. Some of my photos of the World Trade Towers from the years I worked in NYC can be found here, here, here, and here.
All goes to show, painting, photography, or whatever: all knowledge and training is worth having in the end. On the other hand, things may be simpler than all that. As the 17th century Japanese poet Basho put it, “The first task for each artist…is to become one with nature.”
This dragonfly seems to be reclining in mid-air, arms clasped behind its head!
Related stories: Dragonfly, Dragonfly Variation.
This is a variation of the previous dragonfly image.
This is a digital photogram of a dragonfly, rendered in the digital darkroom using masking, channel operations, and cross processing to create an effect that owes as much to painting as it does to photography.
This was a beetle from the Cameroons, Stephanorrhina gaffata. I post-processed it in somewhat the same style as my Butterfly 2.
Here’s a simpler version of the white rose on a black background. I think it might work better without the blue border effect.
This is a white Simplicity rose from my garden, captured as a photogram, cross-processed, and experimented on in Photoshop, all for the sake of a special project.
I found this digital photogram of a Gaillardia flower in my files, and am posting it as part of research for a new project I am working on.
I’ve never blogged this photogram of a Peruvian Lily (Alstromeria), and looking at it again I think it’s worthy.
I realize I never blogged this white anemone from about eight months ago. So here it is. White. Simple.
