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Existing-light art & photography
Click picture for Now What? portfolio
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 07 Feb '10: Long time since my last addition to this site, but I haven't been goofing off – honest! Instead, I've put in unnumbered hours working on a major upgrade to my unsung masterpiece, Some Masterpieces from the Public Domain (which I should probably rename to Looting the Wikipedia Commons). I've now nearly doubled the number of painting reproductions available to 41, including a "new" Rembrandt, a page of miscellaneous paintings from the Rennaissance through the 1700s, and a page on the Pre-Raphaelites and other 19th century masters of realism. In all, a feast for the eyes.
 02 Jan '10: Time to put a bit of closure on the old Yuletide spirit. Here's my 20 favourite Christmas party shots as an art portfolio: Friendly Snaps 2: Christmas 2009 (Director's Cut.
01 Jan '10: Today starts a new year and a new decade, so perhaps a good time to go back to digital photography kindergarten. If you're a little hazy on the basics or know someone who's just getting started, check out my latest tutorial: Digital Photography 001. As always it's chock-full of colorful illustrations.
31 Dec '09: Have I inadvertently invented a new art form? The Marathon Verité Slide Show? It started with An Afternoon Commute last month, now here's another:
Friendly Snaps 2: Christmas 2009
In this case at the time I hadn't the slightest idea that the frames I was taking would be used in this manner. In fact, I often deliberately employed slow shutter speeds and often deliberately moved the camera during an exposure to create motion blur. Nevertheless, I shot 323 frames and thanks to in-body image stabilization the vast majority of them were either entirely crisp or contained just enough blur to suggest movement. Once again, I used the Olympus E-P1 on full-manual throughout, at ISOs ranging from 200 to 3200, and just couldn't be more happy the results. This is a camera that takes to people, candids, and low light work like the summer souse takes to lager.
The event recorded is the annual Christmas day feast and party hosted by close friends of mine and to which I've been privileged to attend for several years running. The hosts and most attendees (including my own son) are active Baptists, so my own un-baptized presence is more by way of charitable outreach than of natural fit. ;)
I pared down the original 323 frames to a mere 150 by cutting out near-duplicates and the more radical experiments. If the shooting was sheer joy, the post-processing was at least a dozen hours of drudgery. But if you turn on slide show mode (which works at an unchangeable 5 seconds per frame), the whole thing will go by in only 12.5 minutes. So turn off your mind, relax, and float down stream... ;)
30 Dec '09: To help close out the New Year here's Part 3: Capturing Colour of Colour 101.
22 Dec '09: Getting close to Christmas; many of us are rushing about to buy presents, some of which may even be pictures. I've just added what I think is a pretty nifty hand-coded mat and frame colour selection tool to page 4 of the Matting and Framing Crash Course. Should be useful whether you're buying custom framing or doing it yourself. Scroll down a bit then click on some buttons to get the idea.
16 Dec '09: The big boys of art photography print big. 30 by 40 inches, 4 feet by 5 feet – it's the new norm. My take is: You've Been Framed.
14 Dec '09: On a roll here, folks: yet another new portfolio by guest artists, and this time by a husband/wife team: Dennis & Carol Bartlett: Phone Snaps 2009. This is unique in several ways; one of which is that these are cell phone snapshots, something that's becoming the Brownie or Polaroid medium of digital, so they're intended for monitor display, not printing (unlike every other picture on this site). Another is that these pictures were not created or intended as art but purely as documentary snapshots. Yet another way they're unique/unusual I'll explain at a future date. Some of these images will look like "ordinary" snaps; while others will remind you of the sort of raw, in-your-face post-beat stuff that graces the pages of Aperture magazine. Enjoy.
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As we all realize the human species has pretty much taken over the planet, marginalizing other species. This is a small bit of compensation but every loaf of bread I buy has two heels that rarely get eaten. It costs a few seconds to dice or tear them up, put them back in the empty bag, then take that outdoors to scatter where birds and/or squirrels are likely to find them. Caveats: no white bread, please: only whole grain; and only distribute in human-inhabited areas, not in forests, nature preserves, etc.
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"My feathered acquaintances dine twice weekly on Pumpernickel Heels a la carte. This is a practice I have kept for many decades." – Richard Flake. Check out Richard's excellent photos at Birds, Butterflies, Bees, & Bugs.
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