Photography news and tips for the hobbyist or seasoned pro
Summer is here and most things are in full bloom. I captured this image while shooting for Astral Harvest Music & Arts Festival. Astral Harvest asked us to capture the spirit and essence of their festival and I happily accepted. My good friend Chris was there to help me with lighting. Thanks Chris! To see more pictures of the festival check out my Photoshelter album of the weekend or scroll down.
I am a bit glad July is over since it was a very hectic month. I had two exhibits showing at the same time. The Calgary Stampede Western Showcase and a group show at Britannia Wine Merchants with Vincent T. Joachim. This month’s wallpaper is entitled Identity. I’ve never had to struggle with identity as often as I do now. More and more I am reminded that being a first generation Canadian, my sense of identity teeters between two groups. I clearly do not appear Caucasian and I don’t have the exact features of a typical Filipino. Almost all Filipinos I meet and greet stare at me wondering why I am able to speak their language. I always get the response, “oh I didn’t know you were Filipino.” My identity as an artist is continuously challenged. Being a photographer that does both commercial and fine art I am fighting an uphill battle to get photography recognized as an original art form. I won’t get into that here, you’ll just have to read the post if you want to know more.
Obviously this image was edited in Photoshop. To all those that think cameras do all the work these days: 1) I found an inspiration 2) captured the image technically 3) processed my vision using Photoshop by adding curve adjustments, colour balance corrections, running it in Lab colour mode, added a motion blur layer, cut out the motion blur layer to expose the sharp dandelion, burned the edges 4) started over a few times and went back to step 3 until I got it just right 5) processed the final image to share it with you. Isn’t the ARTistic process beautiful? When they make a camera that can do all that without any artistic intervention then please let me know so I can die knowing there is nothing else in this world left to learn.
Click on image and save the full sized image onto your computer.
Field Notes:
Nikon D800 / Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 @ 200mm – f2.8 / 1/200 second exposure / ISO 100
Click here for more photos from the JCFA collection.
Click here for more free desktop wallpaper.
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