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There are times when this blog almost writes itself. And then there are times when if fights being written at all ...
It is the same with making images. There are times when the images almost make themselves, times when there is little or no effort required in selecting a location, grabbing a camera and going out to enjoy the process of creating images. Then there are times when the creative spirit fights to stay bottled up, times lacking the motivation to pick a subject or location and just go, make some images ...
With this weeks blog to be written, motivation to get out and photograph lacking, finding inspiration and a trip through the archive seemed the only answer.
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| a tree over a canal |
Even though I may not make images every day, or even every week, seldom if ever a week goes by when I don't browse images online in magazines or in books on photography. So while I "wasn't feeling it" this past weekend, I was watching my social media stream and an image from Venice by another photographer caught my attention.
The canal scene reminded me of images I had made during a trip several years ago and instead of getting out to make some new images, I chose to use the time to work on one from the archive. Initially I set out to emulate the look of the photo from the media stream. Eventually that gave way to exploring my own vision, my own creativity, and a much different result ... a very satisfying experience.
DJE
A "good old fashion Canadian winter storm" resulted in the closure of many highways and county roads in Southwestern Ontario this weekend. Included among them, Hwy 6. The section of 6 from Wiarton to Tobermory was closed by 11:00 am on Friday and my plans to leave for the the cottage after work were reluctantly scrapped in exchange for an uneventful weekend at home. Two amigos that would normally accompany me on a photo outing were down, each with their own afflictions, so I decided to stay very close to home. Actually I barely went out, except for clearing the accumulating snow, occasional walking of the dog and dinner at a new restaurant with Lynn Saturday night. I spent most of my time reading or working on photo projects in process.
One such photo project was experimenting in Photoshop with watercolour effects on some of my images from Italy. Recent discussions with the aforementioned amigos about sketching, pen and ink and watercolours had stirred my interest in creating both conventional and digital versions of select images. This weekend was the time to work digitally.
There is a seemingly unlimited amount if material online for just about anything and watercolour effects in Photoshop are no different. The challenge like everything else on the interwebs is sorting through
the crap to get to the useful stuff. I selected a few links and investigated, eventually ending up using one from a UK photographer. His approach was not complicated and after some trial and error, I was able to produce something decent. I'm not sure that I'm completely done with the work on this image yet. It still needs a few tweaks and perhaps a complete re-do from scratch to see if how much I can refine the end result.
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| morning canal |
All in all, it was a great learning exercise and it distracted me from the frustration of not being able to get up north.
DJE
Well, I finally made it through the basic selection and initial processing of the images I made while in Italy. Selecting candidates for a book to be published with Blurb as a single copy, a keepsake from the trip, was an enjoyable, if not so easy task. So many of the images cannot be separated from the emotions of being there sharing the moments with Lynn.
I have posted almost 200 images to a flickr set titled Italy 2013. Most of these will make it into the book, some, upon further scrutiny, will be replaced by alternates and still others will wriggle their way into the final selections.
It has been fun recalling the experiences from the trip through review of the images. Now to the work of laying out a book worthy of being printed ...
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| canal chase |
DJE
