This is the second in my black and white series from the Good Night Inn property. Where you see the lighter toned fence in the distance is where the fire burned the fence and it has been replaced. My neighborhood is on the other side of the fence. My house is just off the frame to the left.
Our quote for today is from Franz Kafka:
Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within.
And now for something completely different. I was feeling like I wasn’t being very creative, falling back on my usual flowers and macro photos. So, I went out with an eye toward black and white. This led me over to the grounds of the Good Night Inn which has still not been cleaned up after the Almeda Fire and which is directly behind my house. It turned out to be a rich environment for black and white and I was so pleased with the results that I’m going to do a week long series. The images were all taken with the Lensbaby Sweet 50 mounted on the Canon M3 handheld. They were all processed using Nik Silver Efex Pro software, a plugin to Photoshop. Today’s image is an intrepid little weed growing up in the cracks in the parking lot.
Today’s quote is from Annie Dillard:
The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way. To locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse.
My photography generally trends toward the beautiful and serene but occasionally I come across something too poignant to pass by. Yesterday in my quest for poppies I crossed the street to the Autumn Ridge neighborhood which was devastated by the Almeda fire. In front of one lot which has been cleared but is probably waiting for a permit to begin rebuilding, the poppies and Irises are blooming away. As I worked my way around to try and capture the purple Irises and orange poppies in one shot (I failed) I came across these glasses that someone had gently laid on a rock as a reminder of the depth of personal loss engendered by the fire. I thought a monochrome treatment was appropriate.
Here is another profound thought from Taoist philosopher Chuang-tzu:
If the Way is made clear, it is not the Way.
So, yes, I was getting pretty bored with the neighborhood. I took a drive out through the orchards and into the Applegate Valley where I found a few interesting things to photograph, including this farm equipment. I started out with the standard shot of the whole thing but then started zooming in further and further looking for interesting shapes and lines. I rendered this as a black and white but then lowered the opacity on that layer to bring back just enough color to keep it interesting.
Robert Louis Stevenson is the author of today’s quote:
To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.
The challenge with daffodils is trying to get a unique look and to get around how overwhelmingly yellow they are. I think I succeeded with this image though I might wish for just a little more depth of field. I processed it as a black and white with high structure and contrast then added an ambrotype tone to bring back a hint of the yellow.
Today’s quote is from Gabrielle Roth:
We have to be able to be gods, lovers and artists, we have to be soulful if we’re goin to be happy, if we wnat peace – and the soul is the part of us that is the creative process.
It was another busy day and I came home from my volunteer work at the Genealogy Library with no idea what I would post tonight. then I took the dog for a walk and felt like I was entering the film set for The Birds. I exchanged the dog for a camera and got to work. I love the one bird flying off and I wanted to include the ones in the tree to keep it from being too symmetrical. Processed it as a black and white with some blue toning and high structure to bring out the clouds.
Today, I turned to Matthew Fox for my quote because I knew it would not take long to find something suitable and Cody wants to go to bed.
Creativity is intimate because it is us most truly, spontaneously, and totally.
The first Echinecea of the season. The colors were a little pale so I decided to go with black and white to emphasize the shapes of the petals.
From John O’Donohue:
Beauty touches and renews our hope when it takes us out of the grid of ordinary time and brings us to another place, a place where history ceases and the weight of memory relents, a place ever ancient and ever new.
So, I have nearly 15,000 images in my file for 2019. Is it time to do some culling? Yes. Is this the best image I made this year? Probably not. But when I tried to think of stand out images this one came to mind. I like the subject, I like the pop of color, I like that it represents dabbling in experimental and artistic photography, I like that it was made on my birthday in Arles, France on a magical, wonderful morning camera walk. For me, photography is about creating art and enjoying the process, not about competition or perfection. This image makes me feel good on many levels because I so enjoyed the process of creating it and everything that went into getting me to a point where I could create it.
Well, thank goodness there are only 8 more days in this project. I had my second day of training at the genealogy library today and totally spaced out doing an image for today. That is until I was just getting snuggled into bed. So, I randomly dipped into the archives and ran across some images captured with the Trio 28 back in September at an antiques show. I thought this sax might look good in black and white and, oh yes, I think it does. Besides the conversion I just added a high pass filter to bring out more of the detail on the bell of the sax. Now, I can go back to bed.
Finding a new angle or treatment for a lighthouse is always a challenge. I liked what I was able to do with the Sweet 50 on this one. I processed it as a monochrome with a blue tone, then added a frame.