This is a blog about Images, "The Darker Image" refers not to the content so much (though it is there), but to my use of Dark Space to create tension, or emotional content.
I may remove that post in the future, if I become less pleased with it. I do have a traditional bug shot of this baby. But it is not really an interesting bug, the leaf underlit was. So I guess it is up to you, good , bad, or just not well done.
James Longster, © 2014
Subject Matter
The last post and this post were both shot at the same place: The “Celery Bog”, the last remnants of a huge inland wetlands that used to cover about four counties North of Lafayette, IN. This wetlands has about 200 recorded bird species that have been spotted there, unfortunately with my largest lens being a 200mm I have not been able to get any really good shots of these birds,
Bugs and flowers, now that is a different tail. Plenty of all of those. I saw today the largest Mantis I have ever seen, 100% of my sensor at 3 feet with a 100mm macro, but he/she was losing so fast from plant to plant and the wind was buffeting the plant life so badly that I never did get a good shot of it . . . . DAMN.
So here is the spider I caught, for your enjoyment, or not, personally i like spiders, as long as they stay outside! Not my idea of an Ideal bed mate, if you get my drift . . . .
James Longster, © 2014
Aracnide Transparency
NEW BODY: The 5Ds R was the first step, increase the pixels available, get a deeper crop (larger subject that is). Got it! It IS worth the money, and that is a fact. Either one of them is a monster of tries in a small(ish) bag.
NEW TRIPOD HEAD Next, my tripod: the legs are good strong enough and ridged enough, the head, well that was another matter, hard to use, sags with my 70-200mm Zoom on it, and just generally lame. So, more money 22lb Monfrotto ball head, smooth and ridged, an absolute necessity for macro work.
RAIL FOCUSER: I did a bit of studying, as my macro work is a self taught thing, Were there any tricks out there that Roger had not showed me, or that even he did not know? Enter the rail focuser, I did not buy the most expensive, but I bought a decent one. Why a rail focus tool? Well I found that under certain kinds of conditions a rail focuser can really bring the tack sharp aspects of an image. The trick is to set our camera at the 1 to 1 ratio that the lens is capable of, then go manual focus and use the rail to move the camera in and out to adjust the sharpness of the exact part of the object that you are shooting. For instance you know that the “In focuser plane is approximately 1/3 in front of the plane of focus, and 2/3rds behind. so you focus on the eyes of the bug and you wast part of your DOF on air in front of your subject. With the rail focuser you can take the focus point and move it a mm behind the eyes and get the eyes AND more of the body behind. It is also an excellent tool for precise Focus Staking.
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM Lens: L glass, always a good bet. Well, one of the few exceptions to that IS the 100mm Macro standard lens, that is an awesome lens, if you did not get a bad copy, like I did. So, anyway, I got the new lens to replace the old lens, and in this case the “New Boss is NOT the same as the old Boss” looking good so far.
The weather has been way to windy and I was not going to go out after work and try to do some good work, fighting for the last of the good light, and hoping to to get a lull in the wind. So I went out today: Lousy light VERY overcast, and still 15+ mile per hour winds, but hey I had the time to sit there and just shoot (Live view), so I did.
All of this is by way of introduction to the first Macro shot I am putting up for your viewing pleasure, it defiantly qualifies as a Darker Image. Called simply, “Purple Haze”.
James Longster, © 2014
Purple Haze:
This is supposed to be a pro level camera, yet to a large degree it appears that Canon wanted to “Dumb Down” the skill necessary to make a good image. This camera, I own the 5DS R, has so many “auto modes” on it it took me two days to figure out how to run this monster in full manual. Now to give them their due, most of these special setting are very much for dedicated special uses. For instance there is an Auto focus setting in the menu that is spacific to accelerating/decelerating objects. You say so, my camera does that, but does it? tracking a car going 170mph around a track is NOT tracking an accelerating or decorating object, one is steady state and is very easy for software to anticipate where an object will be .75sec in the future, most decent cameras can do this. This feature is trying to extrapolate acceleration. For instance a car comes out of a corner at110mph, by the time he passes you at midfield he is pushing 200mph, the processor in the camera is focusing in microseconds from point to point trying to figure out what the constantly increasing speed will be so that it can at anytime you want hit the shutter release and the camera has anticipated the location and will pop the shutter. This is calculus in you camera.
So, it is a complex, piece of equipment, but does it do the job? Well that depends I suppose on what you are expecting it to do. I do just a little bit of just about everything. Weddings (I stay away from them as much as I can, but that is one of the places where you can make contacts, and money), Nature, Fine art, documentaries, Edgy Fine Art, Portraiture, architecture, and anything else that hits my fancy bone. I will probably even shoot one race this year for my step daughter, just to try out that anticipatory focus this wonderful monster has built into it, to see how well it works.
But . . . . When conditions are the way that they should be and this assumes that you are using at least L-glass Lenses, personally I find that with Photoshop CC2015, a “Prime” lens is no longer an absolute necessity. one caveat, then it comes to 300mm+ telephotos NOTHING beats a Prime lens. Fo anything else Canon’s L-Glass lenses do an excellent job. When I open a file in Camera RAW it is automatically posted to 12,000 x 8,000px and 300dpi. As long as the light was good CR and Noiseware get rid of all the color noise I could want leaving me with a Huge Printable image. I would not be scared to have Image Wizards
All I can really say for sure is that when the camera is sooting at an ISO of 400 or less, it is easy cheese to get a huge perfect image, beyond that number be prepared to work a little more for your image, but it is still quite doable.
Would I recommend this to a friend? YES, if you are willing to buy all the other equipment that is necessary to get a good image, including the post processing that is inevitable.
James Longster, © 2014
Lone Star
This image is called simply “Colors17” the other versions carry the name “colors17.x.x, depending on where they were in the process. I am not completely sure that I am done with the “17” series or not, we shall see.
This image is currently out to “Image Wizards” being printed, using the Aluminum Dye Sublimation process, and should be here by 4/29/2016. I am truly excited!
James Longster, © 2014
Digital Art: Colors17
As I believe I have mentioned in several other places, I have been documenting, as best and safely as I can, the final Death throws of the American family farm. What I mean is, the people are long gone now, but in some, out-of-the-way places, the building (homes) that housed these laughing generations of children and parents still stand as mute testimony to what we have allowed to die, in the name of MORE.
In this case it was a set shot, doe as part of a project for one of my classes at Herron, so this is a scan of the 200ASA B&W negative. so some grain is to be expected, and to my belief, adds rather than detracts for the emotional impact of the image. I think that all over the country sciens pretty much like this happened at some point need the end.
I have several, pretty sad and depressing images I could show you, but That would lead me down a road I would rather not take this blog, at least not at this time. So, instead, I will use a B&W image taken while documenting this afrontery to humanity, but not as dark as they come, just a bit, it is in B&W, and B&W carries emotions like water carries fish.
The link below is the link on youtube for the video if you don’t like Rock or Bob Dylan don’t look at it.
Jim
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfxf4navWaE
James Longster, © 2014
Dead Dreams
So in 2004 My wife and I went and spent a month on an Island called Tancook, NS about 7 miles off the coast of Nova Scotia out in the last of the Gulf Stream (before it turns into the North Atlantic Current) the island is only 3 miles long, and one and a half wide, but it is very unique in its climate, the East coast has the same zone as Tennessee, USA, and the West coast 1.5 miles away has the same zone as costal Maine. In other words Basil will grow well on the East coast, but not a chance on the West. Strange Huh?
This is a shot I took with that E-10 so I’m sorry it is not as large as the other images I have shown you but it is still a good one I think. It was taken in the Middle of the island, just across from the islands cemetery. If any of you want a place that is in North America yet at times feels European, this is one place you could go, Isolated yet still connected. Sadly it is changing rapidly. I am not going to go into what is happening there, but time is short for them.
So sad; Roger I wish we had been able to go together this time, instead of so many years later, after the changes had started.
Jim
James Longster, © 2014
Lupin In The Fog
What it had to do with, was that we were in Mass, and one of my wife’s school friends lived in Worcester, Mass and this is her front room of the time. It was a bright day and I was using my 20D with no tripod, it seems that that is my standard affaire, Roger Gauthier would agree I think. But with some manipulation I came up with a usable image, as a treatment all I did was B&W mask and let the colored layer come through where I wanted it to.
Oh, yea, and it’s dark.
Jim
James Longster, © 2014
A room for the Arts
Anyway, this was taken some years ago with my 20D and a 300mm L glass tele, luckily it was not windy, and the sun was in just the right place, to get this beauty. The green ones are relatively rare in comparison to others, at least around the area I was shooting that day.
I like dragon flies, They are Very old, and very successful as a species, and as part of the dominant phylum, at least by total weight on this planet, they are among the most successful. You want to not have Mosquitos, get some dragonfly eggs and inoculate your local pond. They eat them, the blood suckers, in the water when young and in the air when they earn their wings.
I have had varying success shooting these insects, the smaller dragonflies are not too bad to shoot, the bigger ones don’t land often and several types roost high in trees, making it a real issue getting to them. This one is of the smaller variety, the big ones that I have had little success with are in the swampy areas of Massachusetts and are easily 3 inches long. Man I want a couple of those to eat my “bad” bugs.
Jim
James Longster, © 2014
Chameleon of the Air
I Don’t Like War For MONEY! It is that simple. World War II, was necessary, everything else has been for Money, in some cases well disguised, in most, Blatant. The big problem is that our government and the Money behind it has pulled the wool over the eyes of a large, way too large, portion of the American peoples eyes. They have made most people believe that there is a real moral basis for these wars in the far East, when in reality there is only one reason for being there in the first place: OIL! If it were not for our gluttonous need for gasoline we would not give a damn about the sand over there. But there are real moral reasons for being there some say. BS I say.
The world is full of problems: Aids, Human trafficking, Environmental destruction on a world wide scale, Climate change (it does exist, FACT), ongoing continual prejudice based on every difference between peoples you can imagine. Yet here we are, in a big sandbox spending Lives and money to just continue keeping our heads in the sand instead of facing the real reason for spending those lives and money, and that reason is MONEY. War is money. Money to burn, because we have "roads to drive.”
So, I took and image of human death and destruction and tiled it, then put it behind her head so she could completely ignore what is going on around her and continue to have a pleasant float, and lunch.
So we do what the lady in the images does, we put blinders on, and go about our daily lives of not seeing the truth of things. Or maybe it’s just because we don’t want to get rid of our nice comfortable Escalade . . . . . .
Jim
James Longster, © 2014
Our Heads In The Sand
This image talks to me about the ways in which we chose to perceive our aging. As I looked at these women I saw a group that had chosen to “Be in the moment,” bright, alive, active and exuberant! They could have been at home doing mundane things around the house, but instead that chose to be ‘Out There” living, living with Joy, Laughter, and Movement.
The image itself is, I guess, just a photo of some people with a colorful background, other than the name I gave the shot and this post, it is just a photo. I could have cropped down to just above the curb to get rid of that shallow diagonal, But in doing that I would have be doing more of what I don’t truly like to do, follow the rules. In this case the curb angle detracts, some would say, from the subjects of the image, because it does draw the eye, but then the colors and the expressions draw you back to the people. so it is a back and forth thing, I like that. I like things that pull your eye from one thing to another, even when it is a WTF kind of thing.
I like images that in some way, to some people, don’t work as a whole. In my view your looking at this image makes you, the observer, the current owner (once “you” are looking at this image I no longer have control and you put your perceptions onto this image) kind of a 'Schrodinger's Cat' scenario. when you look at this image you change it from the image I took to the image you see. “It’s all in your head” they say, and of course that is an absolute truth, it is ALL IN YOUR HEAD.
Jim
James Longster, © 2014
Never Done, Ever Young: an Ode to Joy
