Sunday, November 8, 2020

Red Maple, Silver Maple




Every house must have come with a silver maple tree in the front yard.  It was the 1960's, and silver maples were cheap and grew quickly.

But they make horrible yard trees because their wood is weak and they grow to be humongous.  There are very few silvers left, but the tree on the right is one of those. In nature, they typically have yellow leaves in the fall.

Many of the silver maples have been replaced by smaller cultivars of red maple, many of which have bright crimson leaves in Autumn.  

This image captures a bit of the past, and a bit of the present, all playing out in our neighbor's front yard.

-Tom

Saturday, October 24, 2020

Autumn Sidewalk


 

Does this work?  Or is it too obtuse?  I can't decide if I like it or hate it.  Ultimately my eye just can't settle on anything pleasing, and it just keeps wandering.  But when I back up, and look at the photo from afar, I like it much better.  What do you think?

-Tom

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Finding the Photo: Red Maple

How hard to you work to find a photograph?  Do you ever feel that you just can't find it? 


We made a quick trip to Munroe Falls Metropark last Saturday afternoon.  It was an opportunity to get out of the house, enjoy a sunny warm day, and take in the sights.  I spotted a brilliant red maple tree and wanted to make a photograph.  I had about 10 minutes while the kids were on the playground and/or patiently waiting in the van gobbling up Pokemon on their devices.

The image above is what I saw first. A nice red tree, with plenty of interesting contrast present in the yellows and greens.  I think this is where 99% of phone photographers would stop. But what does it tell us? Does it make us feel anything?  We see colored leaves, but not much else.

From experience, I really like to shoot fall colors with backlighting streaming through the now translucent leaves after the chlorophyll has broken down. I moved closer to the tree, and underneath it, and this was the result:


Not very exciting, but we're getting somewhere.  The contrast between the red and blue is nice, but most of the photograph is just blah, because I was under multiple layers of leaves. And it's just leaves.  This photo doesn't tell the story of the tree. I needed to keep exploring.



I stepped closer to the tree, and now i've left the mowed grass and stepped into the woods. I really liked this image, it's pleasant, calm, and peaceful, but not very bold.  I wanted a stronger image.


Bam! Now we are getting somewhere.  This is a photo of a tree, not just leaves.  It tells a story.  But in this angle, the tree looks ugly.  There's little symmetry, the left fork branches off oddly, and it's lacking balance.  I needed to adjust my view to find a composition that would be pleasant and not remind me of a an Ent from Lord of the Rings



About ten steps to my left, as I crouched down on one knee, I found the shot. The two forks now complement each other while the limbs pleasantly radiate out in all directions. It's hard to believe this is the same tree. The contrasting blue sky and red leaves dominate the image, but are balanced by patches of yellow and green.

And by this point, I was being called out of the woods, with the boys ready to head home.  In just 10 minutes of deliberate picture seeking, I found my photograph.

-Tom




Saturday, October 29, 2016

Canon EOS IX Advanced Photo System Camera

Alum Creek Reservoir, October 201.  Canon EOS IX, Sigma 15mm fisheye.

Sometime during the first half of 2015, I was cruising around YouTube and found a very intriguing video created by Michael Raso.  First impressions?  Well, I was kinda like "who is THIS guy"!?!?!  Well, after finding and listening to the podcast he created, the Film Photography Project podcast, I have become hooked on film photography.



The "FPP" runs as a film photography collaborative, not only hosting a podcast, but by providing knowledge and expertise to the film shooting community across the globe.  They are constantly accepting donations of cameras that they then send to film photography students just learning about the medium.  It's being part of that community that has endeared me to Michael and his collaborators.



Last fall, I was the lucky winner of an FPP sponsored contest.  The prize?  The mid 1990's Canon EOS IX, an interchangeable lens camera that used Advanced Photo System film.  Designed to be the next big thing, the format quickly died as the century came to a close.  The marketing behind the system stressed three possible print sizes for each frame. The native format, the shape of today's HDTV screens yields a 4x6" print, the C for classic generated a 4x6" print, and P for panorama resulted in a super wide 4x11" print! What I didn't understand until recently is that the "C" and "P" size prints were just taken from crops of the "H" or high definition print. 



Since I wasn't going to be making prints, I shot all images with the intent on showing their final wide or "HD" format.  Loving this extra wide framing, I decided to shoot most of my images with a Sigma 15mm fisheye lens.  My wife and I took our boys out for a fall drive around the Alum Creek Reservoir near Delaware Ohio last fall to give the camera and lens a try.  I was using FUJIFILM Nexia 200, but since it was expired, Michael suggested I shoot the film at 100 iso.  After sitting on the film for an entire year, I wasn't expecting much.  But after processing and scanning by The Darkroom, I'm really impressed with the results.


This may have been Kodak and Fuji's last ditch effort to save film.  In the end, it didn't work, but creating a native format in what would become our standard framing for HD televisions and computer monitors was about 10 years ahead of its time.  I really enjoyed shooting with the Canon EOS IX.  I'm off to go snag more APS film from the FPP store 
-Tom



Monday, January 4, 2016

Snow Squalls



Now this is street photography. Very brief snow squalls rolled in strangely form the northeast across the city today.  The snow was just enough to barely register as a lighter tone on the asphalt surface of Morse Road.

-Tom