Wallpaper Wednesday - White on Black

Download 4x3 Format

This week's wallpaper is a stark black and white of three leaves from a clematis plant. Both the 16x9 and 4x3 formats are available for download. Enjoy!

Download 16x9 Format

The Land of Macro

Welcome to the land of macro. This is where busy backgrounds go to die.

Milk and honey meet pink petals of sensual delight.

Drew drops become little diamonds on the pink flesh of a delicate flower.

The closer one gets, the more intimate the portrait becomes.

Welcome to the land of macro. Where the viewer might just ask, "What the Fuck?"

Free Texture Friday - Rising Color

This week's free texture is a lemon yellow gradient.

You can download the full-res version below.

This photograph was captured in my backyard.




Download the full res image.

Free Wallpaper Wednesday - Purple Macro

Download 16x9

This week's free Wallpaper is a stunning macro of a flower. There are two versions offered, one is a standard 4x3 for monitors (800x600, 1024x768 and 1280x1024) and the other is for 16x9 widescreen monitors (1600x900).

Download Standard 4x3

Free Texture Friday - Mellow Yellow

This week's free texture is a lemon yellow gradient.

You can download the full-res version below.

This photograph was captured in my backyard.




Download the full res image.

Free Texture Friday -

This week's free texture is a red abstract floral image.

You can download the full-res version below.

This photograph was captured at the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm in Oregon.




Download the full res image.

Old is new again; old is revitalized

Color Abstraction

I am always amazed where a journey can lead me. Even a painful journey through thorns and thistles can lead to a beautiful meadow of wondrous delight.
 
I have officially left Posterous. And while I won't shut it down for technical reasons, I won't post new content there any longer.

I moved my site to Posterous almost two years ago, for two reasons; as a part of my brand re-imaging and because of the native social media plugins for marketing. It was commonly believed, by me at least, that a professional photographer couldn't market him or herself using a free blogging tool with such limited capacity. So I made the switch to a free blogging tool with more capacity in some aspect and more limited in others.

Well, I am not marketing myself any longer, at least not for the wedding/portrait/product photography business plan I was planning two years ago. In the course of the last two years I learned several profound things, well at least profound to me. First; I am an artist. I am not just a photographer. I am a painter. I am a poet. I am a writer. I am a photographer. I am an artist. Second; I can't market myself to save a fledgling career. There was a lot of self sabotage in the marketing arena, a huge chip on my shoulder that prevented me from excelling and a Titanic quantity of baggage from my past left buried that surfaced. There was some obstacles I was unable to overcome by myself, such as how to get past the local market's desire to get everything they can for free, or next at least next to nothing as well.

Oregon Summer

So after much postulating, I posed myself this question; Why are you staying with Posterous? I didn't have an answer. Rather than beat Posterous about the head and shoulders let me explain my move back to Google's blog engine in a positive manner. I have more creative control over the content, layout and general look and feel of the site using the Google blogging engine. Notice the varying alignment of the images in this posting? I wasn't able to figure out how to do that using Posterous without editing the HTML of each post and wanted to focus more on content than writing HTML code to make it work. Google makes layout so simple. A click here, a click there and boom; done.  

To be honest, I have missed Google since leaving, which is why I never shut this down. I am a control freak when it comes to displaying my work and Google lets my freak fly like no other.

Another change that has happened recently is that my 300mm macro lens bit the dust. I was sad as hell about that. But, never fear. Mike out at Focal Point in Dallas, Oregon hooked a brother up. I got this old, heavy, 100% metal Vivitar lens that is 100% manual (focus and aperture), but I could not be happier with the lens or the service Mike always gives. Thank Mike for being simply the best!

The lens is a 70-200mm macro. And just to prove it's image quality, the three images in this post were made with this lens tonight. Photographed at 6:20 PM in the waning, overcast light of a dreary day (hence the raindrops over everything).

So there you have it; old is new again. My blogging site of choice is Goggle and it is good to be back home. Old is revitalized. My new-to-me 1980s Vivitar lens is finding new life after being stored in a bin for who knows how long.

It is good to be home again, making art like I did in the old days; circa 2010.

Memorial Day Photo Adventure

Our friend and fellow photographer, Liz Smith, picked my wife and I up at 2:00 PM Memorial Day afternoon. We didn't stop moving until 8:00 that night. Exhausted, sick (still) and hungry enough to eat and horse and chase the rider, the photos were left unprocessed until now. 

Well, I am still sick, although after going to the doctors yesterday and this morning I am finally on Antibiotics and cough syrup with codiene so I can sleep at night. Today was my first and only down day this week and I plowed through the images both my wife and I captured.

First up is mine from the Iris Farm, which was our first stop.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Next up is a sample of my wife's photos from the Iris Farm.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Now some samples images from me on our stop in at Dayton. 

See the full gallery on Posterous

Here is the images from my wife from our stop in Dayton.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Now, I get really angry with my wife, because she has a natural gift for photography and doesn't do much with it and it frustrates the hell out of me because she has a natural eye for it, but not the passion that I do. But I love her. When she does grab the camera and use it BAM!!!. She can't tell you the difference between an ISO and an F-Stop (she tells everyone that), but she has no problem putting the camera in Aperture priority and finding some of the most beautiful subjects to photograph.

 

Thanks Liz for getting out there. If it wasn't for you, we would have stayed home all day. 

 

Directing the Viewer

The thing I find interesting to do is t subconciously direct the viewer through the image.

By removing the color from the background (in Lightroom 3) and using the shallowest depth of field (f/1.4) the viewer has no choice, subconciously, but to look at the beauty of the flower. The image may look noisy, but that was intential grain added to enhance my pleasure of the image.