Photography – Page 20

evening reflections

Posted on May 15, 2011 by Tim McMurdo

I have a weakness for good silhouettes and good reflections. Combine them together and I am one happy photographer. In this image, I like the way the colors go from subtle pinks on the left to vivid blues on the right. However, never one to leave good enough alone, I also wondered if the image would make a good black and white. Is this an image about interesting colors or is this an image about light and luminance?

The good news is that the switch from color to B&W is something that can be done in moments. Better yet, the conversion does not have to be permanent and you can just as easily switch back. When faced by curiosity, let yourself go. Even if you prefer the previous image (as I do here), try it out. You have nothing to loose and you might find that your instincts were right.

our fountain

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Tim McMurdo

On our back patio, we have the most wonderful fountain. My father made it by mounting an old hand pump to half of a wooden barrel. It has been a fixture on our patio for years. What I love most about the fountain is the sound of the water pouring into the barrel below.

The sound relaxes me. I can hear it from anyplace in the house when quiet descends on our home. You can read to that sound and you can think to that sound.

To do right by the fountain, I waited until the sun began to set and got on my hands and knees to shoot toward the light. I shot about a dozen shots until I had it just the way I wanted it. I hope you find the image as soothing as the flowing water has been to our lives.

the perfect model

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Tim McMurdo

I have found the perfect model. Giant big saucer like eyes, blond hair, nice tail, four breasts. Four Breasts? Yup, four breasts or at least one big breast and four teats. Her name is Sue and she bats her big brown eyes when you talk to her. She can pose in the same position for hours and never has an attitude. Ok, almost never. Sometimes she flicks her tail at you when you use too much flash.

Work it Sue! And it is not just Sue. Her daughter Lilly has a lot of potential. Have you ever seen such ginormous eyes?

Lilly likes to be scratched behind the ears and she has a raspy grey tongue. Sue and Lilly are happy cows & live a good life at Carriage Hill farm. We all wish that we had it so good.

Keep up the good work girls. I am sure that we will see you up on a billboard selling milk and ice cream in no time. I'm just glad that I can say that I knew you when…

inspired

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Tim McMurdo

These images are inspired by my favorite young photographer, Milla. You can see her image of a gerbera here: Milla's Gerbera.

Milla is a wonderful and fearless photographer. I've been following her for quite some time and her creativity and ability to tackle just about any subject is fantastic.

Coincidently, these are the first images from my camera after dropping it and ruining my 70-300mm long glass. The images appear to be a bit soft and I am concerned that I may have a focus problem with the camera body. I will print out a target pattern today and shoot some test images. I'll let you know how that goes.

Update: Took the camera into the local shop and it was pronounced dead on arrival. The flash shoe was in operative, the focus lock was out and trying to use the on camera flash shorted out the electronics. She was a good camera and will be missed.

the boat house

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Tim McMurdo

Here in Springfield, Ohio USA, we have a very nice park that winds along the river. The park is dotted with ponds full of geese and ducks as well as an occasional old victorian building. The boat house is just one example.

This image is an example of how an overcast sky allows you to shoot in the middle of the day, long after the golden hour has passed you by.

kaylee rae

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Tim McMurdo

This little girl is the lovely granddaughter of one of our good friends and only the second baby that I have had the joy to shoot in a formal setting. She was a delight and did not fuss until the very end of the shoot. Both of her parents were present and made the difference for me. They interacted with Kaylee, keeping her focused and happy. I have heard a lot about the horrors of shooting babies, but this shoot was really a lot of fun. I enjoyed getting on the floor and crawling around with her.

This is a single light set up using an off camera flash through an umbrella.

I hope that you enjoy the image as much as I enjoyed creating it,

Tim

pass it forward

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Tim McMurdo

You may be a writer, baker, painter, or even a photographer. If you have a talent or skill, it is your duty to pass it on to others that are interested. I find that teaching others is very rewarding. I feel good and often, I learn something interesting a long the way.

Here, I am teaching my friend Cindy (a wonderful photographer in her own right) how to use an ND filter when shooting water falls. She had never used one and we were lucky to find that mine would fit on her camera.

This image was taken Cindy's boy friend and my good friend Gerd.

feeling a photograph

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Tim McMurdo

This past weekend I participated in a photography challenge over at light stalking (if you are a photographer, you should check them out). The topic was texture… no other explanation, just texture. The subject got me to thinking about how I could make the viewer feel the the subject of the photograph just using his/her eyes. There are a lot of ways to make us feel the emotion in a photo. That is not what I was after. I wanted the viewer to know exactly what the object would feel like, by just looking at the image.

I am visiting my parent's home in Atlanta this week and they are collectors of antiques and have a wonderful yard filled with plants and stone walls and ponds, so finding a subject would be a process of narrowing down the great candidates that are available.

In the end, after trying out several shots, I settled on this image of my grandfather's whistle sitting on a stone path. I liked the way the texture of the stone path contrasted with the rusted chrome of the whistle.

The image is certainly interesting with its shallow depth of field and the vibrant color of the rust. But can you feel the rust in your mind after seeing the image? I wanted to experiment a little further and to be honest, I thought that the color of the rust was just a little to close to the color of some of the stones and the similarity was a little too distracting for the image I wanted.

When I need to have my subject stand out from a busy background or one that has similar colors, I have a couple of options at my disposal. I could use a shallow depth of field or blurring the background in post processing to make the subject stand out. The DOF is already pretty shallow and about right for what I wanted, so I opted for another solution and switched to black and white, hoping that the resulting contrast between light and dark would make my subject pop and place the focus not so much on the whistle, but on the rust itself. The final result is the following B&W conversion.

I adjusted the color channels to filter out most of the blues in the image to create the final contrast. I think the result is successful. The texture of the whistle really seems to pop, giving a really grainy feel. What do you think?

Tim