The Watcher/ Agent Provocateur

The watcher, was a big surprise to me. I was photographing down in the Big Pine creek floodplane on a early fall day looking for interesting bugs, it turned into a very good day. This shot is of the end of a log that was once probably a 200 year old Red Oak, and with the amount of fungus growing on it in various places it was cut down a long time ago. Red Oak of that size takes a long time to return from whence it came, so there is plenty of time for many of the local Flora and Fauna to find and make a home of it.

I saw all these wonderful colors of various fungi adorning the cut, that still had the marks of the chain saw that had ended its grandure, and the mushroom/Toadstools that were busy trying to return it to the soil, so I set my tripod up and determined to get the best image I could.

When finally I got home to process the days images, I looked at this image and saw that while I was shooting I was being sized up, by the local predator. I was delightedly surprised, this spider was about 2-1/2 inches leg to leg. A formidable hunter. And did not appear to be retreating from me, quit the contrary,Whatcher he looked . . . interested.

I would like to add that there is a lighter, well not lighter version but one that clears up some of the darker areas in this image, I thought about putting that image on the blog instead, but decided to go which what I like better, mystery. I think this image is just a bit more mysterious , and so in my mind more "interesting", if less clear, and clean. Oh well, we sacrifice, for what we love.

James Longster, © 2014

The Watcher

I was here: remember me.

On the same day that I took “Ice Cave: light is everything” I took this image of a red clay hand print on an old sandstone boulder that had fallen out of the cliff face centuries, or eons ago. This was a very cold (for Indiana) day and the handprint flashed me back to the Paleolithic art in the Lascaux Caves of SouthWestern France.

It was like this century just evaporated, and I was left waiting for a mammoth or a Cave Bear to come trundling around the canyon bend. Though the hand print was new, at most a month or so old, being slightly protected from the rain by the cliff faces, It was my transport to a different age, where men were men, and cave bears cleaned their teeth with our bones.

It is the traditional ageless calling card, the handprint saying I was here, I was/am alive. I love it, it calls me. Jim

James Longster, © 2014

HAND

Cubist's House

This image, on the face of it, is an Architectural shot, but to me is is more about shapes and contrasts. It almost feels “Cubistic” to me, with the juxtaposed angles, and shapes that seem to have no relationship to each other. But to see that you have to separate yourself from the idea that this is a room in a house, and just see the shapes.

I spent almost 2 years photographing Homes for Caldwell Banker, a very large high end reality company, and every once in a while I saw something in a room that said: “Look at me, I am art, waiting to be made.” So, I would then shoot and see what happened to it. The colors are mine except for the blue sky in the arched window, the rest is Desaturated and color changed, till I got what I wanted.

James Longster, © 2014

And He Built a Crooked House

Three Tones of Winter

“Horizon,” is still one of my favorite images from the past. It is a stark image, a lonely image, but so beautiful in its simplicity.

This is one of those images that you have to look at for a while to appreciate it, at lest that is the response I have gotten in the past. It absolutely does not follow the rules of Photography, but it works (for me) as it is.

I don’t expect much in the way of comments on this image, I guess because it is a very personal, and very stark image. Besides, what are you going to say? Nice tonality, it is just a 3 tone grey image. with little or no detail except in the center. I like it though.

James Longster, © 2014

Horizon2

Basement in the Dark

Well, I thought that the background image to my blog header should be shown to you at some time, and I suppose that now is as good a time as any, and it is the "poster child" for the darker image concept, more or less, so here it is.

This image is a moderately manipulated image, well moderately is a total lie, it is heavily modified, with many combined and modified layers. It was no where near as dark an image in the original CR2, but it turned into this DarkerImage, after some time.

When I took this image I almost threw it away, but for some reason I kept it, and it languished on my hard drive until I rediscovered it and started playing with it.

It seems to me that most Photographers do not spend a lot of time in manipulation. They may clean the colors up, sharpen the image, but that seems to be as far as most of them go. I do not sit down and whip out an image I am satisfied with at one shot, as the image intent may change in the middle as I see some other concept, emotional potential, in it. In this case, I don't remember how many sessions it took to get what I wanted, but get it I did, at least to my satisfaction.

James Longster, © 2014

Shadows Hide things

Ice Cave: Light is Everything.

This is something that most people do not know about Indiana, winter can be beautiful . . . if you know where to look; I do and Roger and I went to look for one of those places, and Turkey Run State Park is where we found it on this occasion.

We drove down on the first day, got to the location, after dragging our tripods, cameras, and lenses up inside the canyons of Turkey Run. It was beautiful all through the walk to the site, we got set up and started shooting, and then the light just went away, just gone. we had had to walk over some iffy ice (shallow water underneath) to get to our spot so it was not an easy location to get to, so the loss of the light was pretty disappointing. We decided then and there that we would be more careful about our timing and come back the next day, hoping that nature would be nicer to us.

We arrived an hour, or maybe a little earlier the next day, and found COLOR, color everywhere, we went mad, and the shutters echoed down the canyons. Even when the sun is in the right location shooting in a canyon is tricky business, with trees up to the edge on top that could block the light at any moment. With the sun moving slowly, going away for a few seconds to a few minutes, and with only a narrow angle down inside the canyon that would work for us, we shot like the mad men we were, but this day Everything was right. We got image, after image of unbelievable color, and light.

So with fat, full CF cards, we came home to see what we had gotten; Ice Cave, is but one of many we got that day.

NOTE: There is very little that was done to this image, other than some sharpening, and the stiching needed to combine two images, these colors were there just as you see them. The colors are caused by minerals leaching through the soil over the millennia. We were just witnesses to one of the many places, that nature seems to have made for Photographers . . . we were just there at the right time.

James Longster, © 2014

Ice Cave: Light is Everything.

The American family farm: death of.

Well, as the title says, this image is about one of my own I guess you could call it a photographic Documentary.  I have been documenting (photographically the end of the single family farm (in Indiana) for about the last 10 years. It hurts me to see what used to be so many vibrant small farms bought by the big corporations, and then the homes bulldozed to make room for one more hectare of Corn, or Soybeans. This house, has been gone now for about 10 years, just before Roger G. and I could go and tandem shoot, we do that so well I think. I wish we could have gone to this Home too.

James Longster, © 2014

TITLE

Curl

This time I have two images treated in two different ways, Both have been "Tonemapped," but with different post processing and different "Mapping" Techniques. I would love any opinions, and also would like to know your preferred image.

This was taken several years ago in "Union Pier MI," at the town Jetty/Harbor. there had been a storm out on Lake Michigan the night before and the wind was still quit up.

I am going to be adding the ability to look at my images at a much larger resolution in the very near future. but the larger images will carry a larger watermark. But I am not fully decided on doing this yet, the water mark that is, so I would like opinions on this from other Photographers/artists. The question is: do I watermark heavily, or just look for abuses of, copyright infringement and then contact the offender? Opinions open.

Colors of the stream on a summer day.

This image was taken in 2009, in the back yard of my friend Roger Gauthier, just love how the sky is so broken up in the reflection, took just a bit of work. The colors, ah the colors!

The Dark Sword of Justice

This was taken several years ago at the chapel on the campus of the University of Chicago, while visiting a friend at his book signing. He was a very gentle man, and a Gentleman of historic Virginia's Southern Aristocracy. A kind man and a poet, I may post the "Signing" at a later date, though image is nothing special, except to me. This image, however, cried out to me, the bright colors needed the blacks of the shadows of the history of this period of Christianity, so I put them there.

I and Catholicism, don't really see eye to eye, being the longest lived Corporation, with no laws, except their own, governing them, they have done and gathered the wealth of a world. They will tell no one what they have, how much of it they have, but we all know how they got it, for most of the 1,400 or so years of its existence. Sorry to any of you who may see this who are of that sect, it is nothing personal against the current "Mother Church" but this image cried out for darkness.

The Oncoming Storm

This image was taken in 2004, with my Olympus E-10, on my first visit to Tancook Island, Nova Scotia. Tancook is a six mile ferry ride out into the Mahone Bay off the eastern coast of NS past most of the other 100 islands in that bay. This is taken looking towards Chester, on a very stormy day, before our Digital cameras were very water worthy, so I was taking chances with a very expensive camera, but you can't get the shot if you aren't out there to take it.

I generally do not follow the "rules" of photography, as far as framing and the like, because the "rules" are intended to give a comfortable feel to an image, and some of us don't always intend on a image being comfortable. So, you can make an image more "edgy" just by how you frame the elements that make up your image. I consider this to be one of those.

It is called: "Oncoming Storm."

Lillies, of the field.

Well, as an introductory image, I decided to use a recent image, taken with my friend Roger Gauthier <http://artphotokebek.blogspot.com>, this past summer at Jasper Pulaski Nature Preserve in Northern Indiana. We did not know it at the time, but I was becoming pretty ill, and not at the top of my game so to speak. I did get this image to play with however, and this HAS been played with, a lot.

I have waffled over whether or not to give all the processes I go through on the different images I  post, to let you see into my processes, I decided that it would be boring to most people, so unless someone specifically asks, I will withhold this information other than to mention specifics about a particular image.

So in keeping with this plan, the simple statement "( LIGHT IS EVERYTHING)", is just that. We had a strong thunderstorm to the North of us going at the time of this shot, that added some interesting light to these shots, even though the sun was behind us, I had picked this place carefully, so as to have the light (hopefully) in the correct orientation at the time we were planning to be there, this planning for light works sometimes, sometimes it does not, nature determines this for us. So in short, we got lucky.

Another note: I am new to Blogger, so the layout and image size will change as I learn how to link to a larger image.

P.S. All these images are the property of myself under the guise of iSightDigitalStudios.com, and may be used for personal use only, unless a specific request is made to me via this blog. If you want you may make a personal wall paper, or even use it in a piece of you own work, as long as I am fully credited.

Thank you, enjoy.