Monday, November 30, 2009

Ferry...


A shot off the stern of the ferry from Lewes, DE to Cape May, NJ. An amazingly beautiful day for late November...

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Magnitized frost...


One milestone of Fall here in Vermont is the day that I line the driveway with stakes so that when there is three or four feet of snow covering it, we know where it is. Some of the lucky ones get a strip of reflective tape; most of them do not.

We've had a couple of frosty mornings lately; just the right conditions to create this sort of frost.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Mini Portfolio: Hope Cemetery




I've been working over the past couple of weeks putting together the first of what I hope will be a number of mini-portfolios. I decided that the first one would include black and white pictures from our recent trip to Hope Cemetery in Barre, VT.

My goal in putting together a portfolio - if only 10 images - was to bring some focus to my work and avoid what Cole Thompson has referred to as grazing. Like most very simple things, I found this to be surprisingly difficult. I also found it difficult to try to keep it simple; something I seem to learn repeatedly at my day job.

It also brought up the issue of converting my color images to black and white. I've done quite a bit of this over the past couple of years but much of my effort has been put forth combining black and white with color in the same photo to create a new, fun, and somewhat unreal effect.





But of course what I was after here was a much different thing. I did a bit of searching on the web to see what people have to say about converting color images to black and white. What I found was a tremendous number of techniques but very little discussion of the aesthetics of the process. 

So I made it up. Most of these images were converted in Photoshop with some noise reduction (blue sky can cause some real problems!), some channel tweaking and a bit of sharpening.

I've posted these ten images here alongside other images. I'd love constructive feedback; I have a lot to learn!

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Chipmunk...



This guy has a condo within this old stump. He was chatting up a storm today, getting ready for the long winter I suppose...