How I got the black

It's been several months since my last blog entry and i humbly beg the apology of all my fans, admirers, and enthralled readers!  Lots has transpired but little of true import and certainly nothing of lasting value.

Recently i had the honor of being part of the Durango Art Center's first inaugural "Who's New" art show.   The comments were  favorable and i felt that my latest work was well received.  Ego was thrilled and at the same time tortured .

This image was initially selected by my peerlessly supportive family and then by the jurists at the DAC.  The colors are quite strong and rich and made more so by the black background which gives the impression that the form was just sort of hanging there and thrust out from this inky darkness.  It was.  It is!   In my imagination I felt it thusly.  In the mind's eye i saw this  iris as lush, juicy, full, ripe.  A unique combination of color and shape, texture and  light.

i was surprised that the most commonly asked question was: "how did you get that black?"

i was surprised that no one asked: : "how did you get that depth of field and at the same time that dreamy softness?"

Below is the "original raw" image capture before the magic happened, before i went to work sculpting the shapes  and bringing forth the luminosity and creating the sense of mystery by painting in that black background. 

i guess its time to confess.  i use photoshop.  i try to practice photography as a contemplative and sacred art, but i use photoshop religiously.  However,  i prefer to think of it as being the case that photoshop gives me the tools and something else gives me guidance and vision.  

1) i cropped the image:   often when i compose what i see in the viewfinder is not what i see in my mind.  In the mind i see the image as it will be.

Here's a fun thing to try.  Practice composing your images horizontally in your mind while actually framing and taking the image in a vertical format.  Switch that around some times just for kicks.

Then, when you get down to working the other magic which is the craftship that goes into taking raw data and turning it into something else, my hope is that something nourishing will arise.  Leavened bread perhaps.  Food for soul known through the eyes.

2) i used selective color selectively.  Always do this using layers then play with the blend mode and of course the opacity settings.

3) A special yet to be announced prize to the first person who tells me what else i did.

doc rob

 

 

shooting through the heart

It was a day of judgement I reckon.    A bad day at work and i was caught up in the ancient drama of self-flaggelation for my "sins."  We all have those moments - moments that last, sometimes, for days.  i knew the story was old and i knew it was a lie.  But i could not shake the judge inside my mind and it was really fucking up my photography.  Ugg!  Nothing but wet limp black eye'd susan's.   Everywhere i looked i "saw" the "judge," the "critic," the "critical-mind" eager to find fault.

Clearly, it was time to take a second look!


"What the ##*%!" i thought glumly as i sank down to my knees onto the soft, moist grass and started to pry and peer at the life occuring before me.  in the garden.  on that day.  at that time.  "Hmmm....nothing but soft wet muted colors, so dank, depressing," i thought and then it hit me.  What i could "see" was a reflection of my own damp, down-in-the-mouth mood. So i knelt and set up tripod clamping down the 200mm Nikkor macro and i sat and i looked.  i observed.  i allowed curiosity to arise within.  i started to breathe and use the breath to anchor me, to still the mind racing inside, to come to some sort of screeching halt!  Feel the air on my face, know i need to get out the bug spray, feel the way-much-slower-pace of the place and the feel of the space, settle in and begin the work of getting out of my own way!

i started to see what i was not able to "see" before when the "judge" was behind my eye's.  Patterns emerge.  Raw shapes of color and light fill the lens.  i find it exciting to see what comes together in the mind when nothing is in focus in the viewfinder!   i find it challenging to try and find some blend of camera skill and technique with the randomly playful....the eternal "what-if" i like to playfully ask, and the mindfulness of "beginner's mind,"  and be given an image that delights!  An image that somehow opens the heart......

Flowers, i realize are not what i seem to be seeing as i look through the lens.  i start with the energy or the mood of "suzan,"  then "her" shape and shapes lending to a pleasant composition i like things with a little flow.  Color and colors against colors are next on the the run-down-list and here one must experiment, often widely,  to happen upon that exposure where the colors work together. And sometimes they just don't.  i don't know why but when thats the case one can only absorb with their heart and forego the memory card. And finally, how to  take all those ingredients and combine them in some self-pleasing way! WHEW!  That makes me tired just typing it....  and as always one must allow room for the "More."

These are both multiple-exposures.  The one above was conceived of as a "time" shot.  9 exposures taken in some sequence allowing for the wind to blow and drops of water to carress and then fall.  This one here is also 9 exposures and conceived of as more a "movement" shot.  The neat thing about both is that both subjects choose me,  on separate days, and even cooler is that even though the pics are not "killers!" i experienced them both as wonderous gifts.  As i knelt, eye glued to the back of the camera,  i heard a voice whispering:  "this is love."  i remember experiencing a big ole smile both when i clicked and when i looked at what had returned to me.  i laughed and danced a little there in that garden and understod it all as evidence of the "dharma of god" of the "dance of life,"  and i felt blessed.
doc rob

Iris Bob's

For about the last 15 years give or take a year hear or there, i've been going to Iris Bob's every Memorial day.  Bob grows "Tall Bearded Iris," and he does it smack in the middle of Denver and he has become a Master at it.  Bob is the national president of the "Tall Bearded Iris" society.  Most of all though, Bob and his family are as gentle as the blossoms of beauty and joy they grow.  And every year they are gorgous and every year they are totally different.  Day to day they change.  Minute to minute if you can find the sun dancing on a lady's beard.

i don't know why exactly and to be honest, i find myself not caring one whit to find out,  why it is, that i go back to the same place and the same life form year and season time after time.   Initially,when i first step into the Iris patch,  i am blind.  i look bu† do not see. Initially, the Iris all look the same and will continue to do so for as long as i hold onto "seeing" "Iris" as concept rather than as a uniquely beautiful manifestation of life's joy happening right frigging in front ot me! Sometimes its a bitch stepping back and out of my "expert photographer mind" and jumping into the unknown waters of a "beginners mind,"  of seeing with a childs heart and eyes instead.  Instead of the know-it-all-seen-it-all-ain't-nothing-new-under-the-sun-been-there-done-that eyes of a curmudgeonly old coot.

Let me explain.  You see, Iris' only bloom once a year so its a big deal when they do.  When they do, i immerse myself in their arising.  Their aroma, their colors and many subtle hues, their lines and edges, their flutterings and muted whispers as they dance in the sun and wind.  Each time i sink down to the ground having found or felt or been drawn to a particular grouping, or color (s) and i give full concentration to the art and the craft of image making.  This concentration is built upon excitement and interest and on awe and wonder.  As it deepens, serenity and joy often arise.  The image is always surprizing........But this does not happen until i have worked through the images in my mind's-eye of the "way it was before."   And this takes time.  It takes awareness.  Awareness which blossoms from the roots of mindfulness.

i was sitting....hiding really.  From the noisy crowds milling about the Denver Botanic Gardens.  it was a hot day and i was lamenting and moaning, i was complaining and judging left right up and down. Nothing was right!  Blah Blah Blah.  i watched ego do its bitter complaint of "oh poor me" i watched as ego shot slings and arrows of "how bad it all was," the old refrain of victimization.  A song with no tune and little rhythm.  i felt my body scrunch down, my heart turn inwards, and i knew there was simply no way i was going to be able to have any fun much less photograph a blooming thing until i could!!

So i found some shade and began to practice mindfulness.  Paying attention to sounds.  Bird song (most pleasant) construction sounds - not!  Leaning back i let go and focused instead on love.   i remembered recent experiences of sitting in love with people i love and my heart opened a bit more.  In that opening i saw that i could not possibly see what was present and available to me in the here n now (the there n then) as long as my memories of before continued to cloud my mind.  Had to let go of the past.  Let go of the judging mind which could not see what it refused to accept.  That nothing stays the same - that everything changes.  The "garden-in-my-mind" simply was not and never would be the "garden-before-my-eyes."  i understood.

 Playing is essential.  A child's heart is a heart inclined, among other things, towards play. it's a heart inclined towards curiosity and joy, wonderment and delight.

Last year it would not have occured to me to take four exposures and find compositions in which i could kinda "walk my way into the flower" using very careful and precise focusing.  A kind of intense concentration building upon mindfulness and contemplation and employing the best Nikon has to offer and the kind of patience that seems to only grow out of a realization that everything is perfect as it is.  In the moment.

This is a 4-stop multiple exposure.  Al, a guy i know told me he was "a 4 stop man."  So i decided to try and be like Al.   Can't say that i know how to fully utilize the windows it opens up just yet...........BUT.

A cool thing is that you can play with pre-visualization.  Blurring and defocusing in different ways to creat color washes, hints of depth and of the "more."  Plus, there is simply no way in hell you could get edges on three or four distinct focal planes in any other way.  Stopping down would eliminate the mystery and shatter the softness of the image.  True!  Its not sharp.  Its not about sharpness as much as its about feeling and mood.  About trying to wor out, work past, and see through the clouds of our memories.

These last years, seem to find me perceiving a juxtaposition of old and new, of form and energy changing from one stage / form to an other.  i am sure this is a reflection of my mortality. i see and feel the bones inside me.  "Dead man walking."  i am finding freedom from letting go.  Peace in not knowing, and joy in the widening and the opening of my heart. 

doc rob

On Being 7 yrs old with a Nikon

Of late.  when photographing.  I often imagine "seeing" with the eye' s of a child.  By experimenting with this kind of mind-tone, I work on being open to the world around me as deeply and as mindfully as I can.   I think of child-like qualities, of curiosity and wonderment, of merriment, and delight.  More often then not, at some point I start to experience flashes of awakening and instances of deep joy.

This image is about imagining looking at the world through eyes connected to the heart qualities of a child.  In my mind I am 7 years old.

Its a Saturday.  The day is warm, my belly is full, I feel happy and content and am on my way to visit a friend.  My heart is open to the world and life is joyful.

The technique is a combination of multiple exposures, focus, and exposure.  The "art" is maybe something along the lines with what William James meant by  "the more."




This image to the left, was taken after a delightful hour or so in a garden.  I was standing on the driveway, looking up into this beautiful glowing tree and wondering if i could somehow manage to record this moment in some way that might do the experience of being there and seeing it, justice?

So I just stood there looking up in wonderment and kept dialing until I  managed to dialed in the focus and the exposure until the camera and the spirit were in synch.  This is an example of a two-shot multiple exposure image.  When doing these kinds of images one frame is always in focus and one is not.  How much it is not in focus is, it seems, always an unknown factor.  Its that element of time, of chance, of serendipity, that comes to one every now and then.  Its that experience of "the more," I think.
                                                               




 This was taken in the worst possible light in the best possible way.  This image in Greenmont  is also a two frame multiple exposure.   Among several  things I have learned from using this technique are: 1) constrasty lighting conditions  become softened and 2) compositions that utilize space tend to lend themselves to this kind of photographic play.

Colors of the Mind

                                 Buddha says "consciousness is colored by the states that visit it."  

 
When I am with a subject its my intention to connect  on some level.  To do so requires a certain investment, of time, patience, curiosity, and suspension of judgment.

In my experience beauty and stillness tends to create states of gratitude and joy.  Which got me to wondering what if the colors we see reveal (and hide) the feeling tone and the mental-states of our experience?  If so, what can we learn to see about ourselves through our subjects?  I've been photographing flowers for a long time and over time the colors I am drawn too have changed.  The flowers I am drawn too, have not changed,  But the  compositions and the color juxtapositions  of fore and background has changed not inconsiderably over the years.

The color combinations of purples and greens has a soothing, tranquil feeling tone about it for me.  When I work with those feeling-tones I often notice my mind grows still, the focus of my concentration narrows yet paradoxically I sense a widening of spaciousness, i become energized, my curiosity and inquiry fully engaged.  The photographic experience often becomes either a series of moments or a single eventful moment gifting me with a certified "Hallmark Movie Moment."  I am trying to show  the mood of my mind, and the rootedness of my opening to life.  Am I being grateful or greedy, wise or wise-assed?  In short, as Minor White once asked of his work: "does it feed the soul and if so, how?"

I wonder how and if this image feeds and nurtures others, if at all?  As for how it nurishes me, I am still exploring.  The original image of this image was taken at the Denver Botanical Gardens, hand held with a Tamron 90mm macro lens.  It selected me in that its coloration combinations acts as a magnet of the eye so of course, I keep coming back.  But this particular image holds a secret.

One day  I was out photographing and it was one of those occasions on which "nothing" seemed to rouse my eyes or my curiosity.  It so happened that I had some work prints with me and one was this morning glory.    It occured to me that I had brought my own "subject" with me.  I laid the print down under  a tree and watched how the light flickered and danced across the print, how the light re-illuminated various parts of the image and it occured to me.  Why not?

I like the idea and will continue to re-photograph photographs in which the subject truely is purely the light.  Light Dancing.

As for the colors, see colors of tranquility.

doc rob

Playing with Photoshop #1

The wife is gone.  The dog asleep on the upstairs couch.  It is so silent here!  So peaceful and serene, and I am restless.  I need a photoshop fix.

I can spend  several hours messing with photoshop.  I know there are those who are think the less photoshop the better and I used to think that too.  But conditions change.  I've changed and now I firmly believe that the ability to capture photons of light digitally and then to manipulate those photons via one's imagination in combination with the tools of photoshop is, a unique form of art! 

Of late, I've been messing with hue/saturation controls.  Exaggerating them wildly just to see what will hapen - just as I often will take a photograph of something or photograph something in some odd way just to see what it will look like photographed (that way), so too, will I play with the range of tools offered byphotoshop and see what occurs.   Play and see what arises and now and then  just as magic occurs with the camera in hand, so too does magic occur with a mouse in hand!   Digital capture allows one a great deal of range and lattitude of effects to play with before showing your creations to the mass public.  And there are considerable skills and artistic decisions involved in the applications of these tools to our images.

On the left is the way this scene "really was" on the day it was taken with the wims of the Nikon metering system, the play of light and shadow on the soft adobe of this historic catholic church across from the park in Durango.  I go there often.  The trees offer many moods as does the sun as its arc moves further north and warmer.  In general I tend to overexpose the images 1 - 3 stops or more. 




 

In my mind's eye the image on the right is every bit as "real," as "it" "really was" on the day it was taken.  The image on the right is as believable as the one above.  All I did here was play with color and specifically with saturation and a little hue.   I am finding that one can  enhance the feeling of depth through the judacious use of color and how each layer is blended one with the other.  When one plays with light - consciousness is effected.

Ditto the image below and to the left (of center).  Its the exact same scene but instead of it being a tired, sleepy, little tree beside an old church suddenly it can be late August evening with hints of a firey heavenly or Alpine glow...........OR..........An early morning awakening from the ice and a  storm.  Pale purples and pinks falling on the soft, old walls.  The tree clearly showing early signs of coming out of its slumber but not quite there yet.  Almost, but not quite.  Again in my mind's eye this last image is also equally "real" and equally true to the moment and to the heart of my spirit.

Inside / Outside an image

Winter time has never been a time when images please me. Oh!  I love the romantic idea of trudging off into snowy fields and forests, breathing in the sharp clarity of vision, with a camera and enough provisions to keep me alive till I  might manage to slog back to the car.  I love that idea!  I just hate the act of it!.

This winter has been different any than other I recall.   As my friend Branson Reynolds says:   "The colors are there.  The trick is to enhance them in your mind before you snap the shuttter."  www.bransonreynolds.com 

 Snow light can be quite subtle while conditions can simultaneously be quite brutal.   Dense white-out conditions, cold thick fogs hovering over the landscape.  Sparse trees. clusters of scrub oak, sage,  grasses, and rabbit ears sticking through  pristine snow.   And the fences! Gotta love those fences!    Steve Immel  is a Taos, NM based artist who recently had a showing at the Open Shutter.  Steve,  I think, imagines the world as being desolate, lonely space with a hint of quietude.  Thats what I see.   The image of 4 fence posts sticking through the cold endless snow, the fields themselves a multitude of subtle - subtle variations in color in shadow in shape and in the mind's eye.   The ephiphany came after seeing his work as I walked the dog and imagined seeing myself standing in one of his photographs looking both around deeper into that reality and at the same time looking out of the frame at the world of eyes and eye's peering in at me.  

This image above was pre-visualized.  I  I saw this shot in the mind's eye of being compressed by the tele-photo and composed it as though it was.  Then I waited for the right conditions to arise as I knew they would and when they did.  I was there for it.

Technically speaking I over exposed the hell out of it - exposure which I am sure would blow most histogram-displays right off the charts.  But then, I tend to over-expose just about everything as if both eye and my camera need to absorb as much light as possible and still record whats essential.  What can be latter processed for consumption of some sort down the road.

doc rob

When the subject calls

"So what do you mean when you say: the subject selects you! Anyway?"  Some one asked.  "Well ..... I say,"  I simply walk around,  trying to be as mindful of the moment as I can relaxing into the experience of simply being here.  Often simply being aware that i am alive, invites and encourages  gratitude and receptivity.   I walk with purpose but no direction, listening to bird song and wind, feeling warmth of the sun and slight movement of thebreeze, smelling what this old nose still can smell and being mindful of my breath or maybe my feet and the earth beneath until a subject catches my attention.

That subjec† could and can be anything.  When something does catch my attention then from then on my intention is to explore with a beginners mind.  To be in a "what if" mindstate.

On this day I was near the river.  Walking about when the dappled sun shining on this bush caugh† my eye.  Green.  Nothing but green. At the time nothing but green didn't exactly scream-out as a great subject.  But I knelt all the same in the field of green and after saying "hello" I started to dream.   There was a tree behind this particular mass of green and the light was very contrasty.  As you can see, black to the left and muted but luminous green to the right.   Being a "macro-guy"  I like to get in close and personal....being a curious type I like to observe, I like to notice.   Macro photography, concentration practices, mindfulness, and the "construction of reality" or as some perfer to say - the "deconstruction of reality," flow well together.   Personally, I find that the phenomenological descriptions of "reality" offered through Buddhism is a good fit for me.  That said, I was "religiously constructed" in Christianity and realize how deeply those roots extend within.  I play.

Here I played by first becoming aware of the contrast extremes.  That seemed to naturally lead to finding some compostion that could take advantage of the light condition.  Doing that is not well served if done exclusively or even primarily through the lens.  It helps to sit back and observe.  See the whole as well as the part(s).  Taking time.  Noticing the play of light.  How it changes and how perception deepens as the mind quiets and mind energy is concentrated on just experiencing this moment as it unfolds. 

Here I imagined that  I was kneeling in the cool lush greenery of a land forgotten.  Nearby rushing water gurrgled and laughed as it ran by, the call of birds, rustle of spruce in the wind and peering through some secret space while catching a glimpse of something fleeting and magical.  I felt joy and delight.  Laughing as I clicked the shutter.  Giving thanks to green and to the universe.  Imagining being the light? 

I like this simple image.  It seems to be kinda "koan-ish" to me.  A symbol or a simple gesture of some gentle green truth.

Comments are welcome as are your (build it and they will come)images and reflections.

all denominations accepted!

doc Rob