The Prodigal Father

"In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion." (Albert Camus)

as seen in Flickr and RB

Breathe (Pink Floyd Tribute)

"... all you touch and all you see

Is all your life will ever be"
(Breathe, Pink Floyd)

Using the Pinhole Blender Mini 35, these are just samples as my tribute to one of my my fave Pink Floyd songs... see Lomo for the entire album. 

Inside Linda's Mind (iii, ii, i)

"If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool. ” (Carl G. Jung)

I posted all three images of Linda to show various depths of Linda's consciousness. These were taken in a span of a few seconds.  I was glad that she allowed me to photograph her. She is a very interesting lady in that her emotions will quickly change unexpectedly.

seen also in Flickr, DA, LB and RB 

 

Dreaming Your Dream

-- i didn't particularly liked the original image's color so i converted it to bw, which i thought made it bland... i added the colored textured to give it some life.. i felt like a make up artist airbrushing the face to get it where i want it to look like... hmm, maybe i'm in the wrong profession (LOL)..

seen in Flicker and DA

yteixnaanxiety

I recently started this project with a working title of "Angst, Optimism and Uncertainty" but I realized that I don't have that many images depicting optimism and uncertainty.  I may have to change the title to "Anxiety: Yteixnaanxiety".  Here's a collage of the images I was considering to include in what would be some kind of a picture book -- somewhat appropriate for coffee table or door stopper.  See more of the images here.

There Goes the Sun

I'm usually the last to leave the office... so I had this opportunity to catch the sunset last week. I'm still learning how to use the Lensbaby Muse coupled with the plastic optic.  I had been shooting at f2, which produced less than desirable results. This image was shot at f8.  With my novice skill, I think for plastic the f8 seems to work better.  Next time I might experiment with f16.  For now I'm content to use f8.

I find the Muse is also a bit harder to use compared to the Original (LBO) and the Composer... partly because the Muse's bellow is firmer than the LBO.  I suppose some people prefer that.  I prefer the LBO as it has a lighter feel.  It's like playing guitar on on nylon strings as opposed to steel.  The composer is the easiest to use but a bit limiting as far as doing extreme bending.  All LBs are operated manually so that adds to the challenge, but when used appropriately the results can be rewarding.

I wasn't sure about this image as I felt there was so much space -- about half of the frame is mostly sky. Capturing landscape is imo the hardest as there are so many possibilities. For this subject, I shot it with both "portrait" orientation and landscape. I opted for this as the portrait was bit cramped on the horizon and lots of black foreground. Cropping it would have made it worse. Also I was shooting at about 50mm focal length so the sun was really small. Maybe the combination of the small sun and the wide expanse provided for creative imagination --   as my friend Phyllis told me about this pic, "the sun oh so small and powerless in the background."  Maybe it was being consumed by the dark land. Whoa, that is heavy... excuse while I kiss the sky.

Comments also in Lensbaby
Flickr

Soul on Ice

"Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful." (Albert Camus)

Seen in Lensbaby  Flicker and DA

For the longest time I've resisted using the latest photo enhancing softwares.  Not because I'm such a technological Ludite.  I am not even a purist.  I'm just cheap. 

I've been using one of the earliest version of Photoshop Elements, which I got as a freebie when we acquired our PC decades ago.  It worked fine.  It still does.  I used it for tweaking the saturation and the levels.  But the PC I was using was on its last legs.  So when I got a new Dell Studio, I decided to load it up with the bundle I got from Wacom tablet. It came with the Color Efex Pro and the Silver Efex Pro.  I used the softwares as plug-ins for the Corel Paintshop Pro X2 -- which imo is the poor man's Photoshop CS3.  More on Corel later -- I'll reserve it for my next blog.  

Upon using the Silver Efex Pro, I realized what I was missing.  Below is the same image used with the early Elements.  The difference is huge.  I have tried the Color Efex and will post my comment later.