Jul
30
2010
Have you ever taken a stack of photos then wondered about how much energy your digital camera takes to power up ?
Even felt slightly guilty ?
Wouldn’t you like to reduce your carbon footprint just a teensy weensy bit and get free solar energy ?
There is now a way to take all the pix you want and stay green – its to do with this “graphene photovoltaics” thingammy, which is basically a fancy pants way of saying you can solar charge your camera battery and still feel cool about your carbon footprint.
Apparently this “graphene whatsit” is a highly conductive material that will charge up the gadget of your choice and makes it easier for you and I to keep taking photos, keep charging up and keep going !
If you could use free energy and still keep clicking then that’s got to be fantastic for us and for the planet. So if we could get our hands on a solar charger for our cameras it’d be faaaaantastic. How good would it be ?
It’d be a bit like having your cake and eating it too wouldn’t it ?
Now,I know nothing about all of this but someone who does know is Sophia Walker who writes for the http://solarcharger.org.uk/“>solar charger</a> blog, her personal hobby web site centered on tips to help individuals save electricity using solar power for small devices.
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Jul
24
2010
Macro shot of section of Flax Leaf – called Harakeke in NZ
See how a macro detailed image shows the variety of hues to the best advantage and cuts out distractions. Now I could have edited out the rust “splotches” but I kind of like seeing nature warts and all and I think it adds to the photo. What do you think ?
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Jul
21
2010
How cool is this ? Just attended a horticulture course on soil and composition and this was part of the exercise to see how different soils would bind together and spotted this face that looked like an native carving – even the hair is there !
For more images go to blog at http://artblogphotos.blogspot.com/
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Jul
15
2010
Photographers – painters of light.
Ever noticed the light ?
I mean really noticed the light.
How it changes constantly, how it shifts and moves, comes and goes ever so slightly.
How it slides to one side then the next in a subtle dance of light.
Because our eyes adjust to the light shifts automatically and instantly we don’t even really notice it until we start to take photographs.
Ever start clicking and thinking you have the perfect shot and then take a look at the display to find you have a shadow over half of your photo that you didn’t even spot when you took it ?
Digital will force you to take note !
You will suddenly become very aware of light shifts.
You need to be if you don’t want to find all your photos have come out in various shades and depths of stripes 
Once you take note of it it becomes pretty obvious but just try this as an experiment:
- Place an object you want to photograph half in and half out of bright sunlight and click the shutter.
- Check your display screen
- What do you see ?
- You will notice your photo is separated into two distinct halves, one very dark and one very light.
- Now try this adding another shade source, like a window pane or plant and see where the light and shade start and finish.
- Leave your subject in the same place and photograph it again in half an hour
- Take another half hour later again and notice how the light has changed dramatically
- Go on, do it now – you can always delete them, who will ever know you have taken such lousy shots, half black and the other half looking like a ghost has just been blasted through it.
You will notice in the photos above that light plays a big part, good and bad ! The top photo shows the distortion where the camera is too close to the lens but the composition is good and the light and shadow improves the photo and the second photo is completely ruined by the fall of the shadow and you will also see the power lines in this photo. OK, you can edit them out but why go to all that effort when if you walk around to the other side and wait for the shadow to shift you can get a far better shot.
Now you have lift off – the importance of where the light source is and where it highlights is one of the most important things to bear in mind if you want amazing and incredible photos.
Ask yourself where you want the light to come from, where you want it to reflect on your subject, what you want to highlight and what you want to overshadow and you will find it makes a huge difference to your photographs.
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Jul
2
2010
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- Use this as a starting point and see what you can find :)
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- Who know what lurks inside the stems of plants ?
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- Look closely and see what jumps out at you
Found these cool faces within the interior of an old dried up seedpod stem the other day. It was a kind of flax type stem and when I split it open it looked interesting enough to haul out the camera and see what came up.
When I was editing it I spotted all sorts of things including the “Devils Face” that you can see here in this shot which I picked out of the other photo you can see here. Look closely at the other photo and you will see where the “Devil Face” is located.
The piece of string reminded me of some of the line drawings like Matisse and others have done but really it could be anything. Try it yourself from different angles, take a look at doing some shots of things lying around and use some creative cropping to see what sort of interesting images and abstracts you end up with.
Lots of new photos loaded at new blog – you can find it here
http://artblogphotos.blogspot.com/
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Jun
6
2010
Paint Effects captured from peeling paint from the corner of an old door and “tweaked” and re-emerged as a paint mosaic. I spotted this amazing color combination when building a small hen house out of scrap materials and the corner of an old door had some “interesting colors”
Taken with the trusty Nikon Coolpix again !
There is no limit to how far you could go with this theme
Some Ideas to get you thinking :
- Use as the basis for an abstract painting
- Print out to cover journals
- Use for fabric design,
- Make your own cards, postcards
- Enlarge and use each individual mosaic to paint something else in and then re-edit and transform again.
- Use as a background for a piece of artwork
- Print off for collage
- Redo the colors for a new image
- Overpaint the mosaic then rub out some areas for a distressed finish
- use in “tile” sizes for sections of cubboard doors
- The list goes on ……
- Make your own and give it a whirl
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Jun
5
2010
Took this photo as part of a series I did from an old skull hanging on the fence at a place we stayed at and was playing around with it when this weird “face” thing came up in front of me on the screen in the editing process and was fascinated with it – it seemed to be a pictorial representation of what had happened to it so I called it The Screaming Skull ……
Just shows what you can do with things literally hanging around the place !
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