This weekend found me taking several photographs near Freezeout Pass, on the edge of the Mallard-Larkin Wilderness. I was hoping the bear grass would be in bloom but it looks like it will be next weekend.

I finally have a plan for this website and blog. I’m moving the blog to willsimpson.org and the image bank to palousephotography.org. I couldn’t believe that palousephotography.org was still available. I think this change will make good sense as readers interested in me will go to willsimpson.org and those interested in photography of the palouse will go to palousephotography.org. I also plan to do something with kestrelcreek.com. I need to make it clear that kestrelcreek.com is dormant and that there is no new content available. I need to turn off the email and remove all references to the newsletter.

Stuff is bouncing around in our heads and causing untold stress and anxiety. Evaluation meetings, bar mitzvahs, empty rolls of toilet paper, broken lawn mowers, college applications, your big gut, tooth decay, dirty underwear and imminent jury duty all compete for prime attention in our poor, addled brains. Stuff has no “home” and, consequently, no place to go, so it just keeps rattling around.

This morning I got up extra early, the weather was great, no wind and lots of fluffy white clouds with dark undersides, picture taking opportunities looked inspiring. That noise you just heard was me screaming! You see, I forgot to look at the settings on the camera and the last time I used my camera I had the ASA set to 1600. Needless to say, all the images I took this morning were way too grainy/noisy. Lesson learned – I hope. 50 images lost but the experience wasn’t a total bust. I was able to scout out some great locations close to home.

Now I want to introduce you to Edward Burtynsky, who is a Canadian industrial photographer from Toronto. He has a compelling vision of the role industry and the environment in our world and has set out to document seldom photographed subjects. Below is a sample of his work. Quite inspiring.

Oil Fields No. 1,
© Edward Burtynsky,
Belridge, California 2002

ARTIST STATEMENT

Exploring the Residual Landscape

Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.

These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.

Edward Burtynsky

Over at mfworx.com “mF” has posted a Script-Fu action for Gimp 2.2, that will Lomo-lize an image. Here is my test drive. This image is part of a project I’m working on called “Commute” which will document my work commute. This is the Potlatch pulp and lumber mill in Lewiston Idaho. I use the “10 Rules of Lomography” below to grab this shot.

What is a “Lomo”?

From Wikipedia

“Lomography is a commercial trademark of Lomographische AG, Austria for products and services related to photography. The name is licensed from a former state-run optics company LOMO PLC in St. Petersburg, Russia. The 35 mm LOMO LC-A camera was promoted by enthusiasts from Austria with international gallery shows.

Lomography emphasizes shoot-from-the-hip photography. Over-saturated colors, lens artifacts, and exposure defects are used to produce artistic, abstract effects and are prized by practitioners. Others use the technique to document everyday life because the small camera size and ability to shoot in low light encourages candid photography, photo reportage and photo vérité.

The lomography credo “don’t think, just shoot” encourages spontaneity, close-ups, ubiquity, and randomness. Film cameras are used. Typically they are low-fidelity, and may be inexpensively constructed. Some of the cameras have multiple lenses, colored flashes or exhibit extreme optical distortions or even light leaks like the popular Chinese-made Holga.

Current models marketed by the company include: Lomo LC-A, Holga, Holga 35mm, Actionsampler, Frogeye, Pop-9, Oktomat, Fisheye, Colorsplash, Colorsplash Flash, SuperSampler, Horizon 202, and Seagull TLR, as well as modified Polaroids and Russian deadstock.”

The 10 Rules of Lomography

* 1. Take your LOMO everywhere you go.
* 2. Use it anytime - day or night.
* 3. Lomography is not an interference in your life, but a part of it.
* 4. Shoot from the hip.
* 5. Approach the objects of your lomographic desire as close as possible.
* 6. Don’t think.
* 7. Be fast.
* 8. You don’t have to know beforehand what you’ve captured on film.
* 9. You don’t have to know afterwards, either.
* 10. Don’t worry about the rules.

"Why create rough text? Well, it's a neat effect. You get a real "weathered" look to fonts. There are some rough-looking fonts available, but if you look at them, similar letters look exactly alike...not exactly random-looking. This effect produces some truly random rough text, and it's something that provides a good building block to apply other effects to...

Chris Marquardt has inspired me to document a process he outlined in show 19 of his great podcast “Tips from the Top Floor”. In show 19 he described how to add grain to your black and white images. This can add punch to your images and can make them look like they were shot on high ASA black and white film. I rememberwhen I first started in photography, buying and shooting a 33 meter bulk roll of Ilford HP5 film that gave this great grainy look. It was great fun to shoot in low light, high contrast situations and get very grain shots. Here’s how to reproduce that effect via post processing.

Here’s how Chris described it and I’ll show you using GIMP 2.2 .

1. Here is the original image. It is a close-up of a rusted farm
implement. The picture contains interesting patterns, shapes and colors.

2. Here I have desaturated the image. I used the Mode –> Grey Scale
found in the image menu. There are a variety of ways in which to convert
a color image to black and white and some of them are quite complicated
and allow tremendous control. That is a lesson for another day.

3. I added a new layer and set it to “Multiply”. Later I’ll try
different modes.

4. On this new layer I apply a grainy filter. In this particular
instance I used the “Random Hurl” filter and you can see the setting I
used. You defiantly could us other “Noise” filters or create a grainy
filer of your own. There is too much graininess in this image for my
taste so now I will tone it down. You might like this really grainy
effect.

5. Now I just move the “Opacity” slider to adjust this effect to my
liking. Because the grain is on a separate layer, I don’t have to worry
about mistakes. If I don’t like what I see I can delete the layer and
start again. Here I found 20.1% opacity to be about right.

6. Chris recommends experimenting with different filters and also
different modes. Here I have used a “Soft Focus” mode and I with a
different amount of opacity. I like this better. Try it out and see if
you can add this tip from the top floor to your arsenal of post processing skills.

If you like this, go to Chris’s “Tips from the Top Floor” and sign up for his podcast. There is a great conversation going on there.

Panoguide aims to promote panoramic imaging by encouraging everyone to create and display great panoramas...

These tutorials show step-by-step techniques for accomplishing a variety of photographic "digital darkroom" tasks using the GIMP image editor. Even if you use another image editing program such as Photoshop you will find that tutorials apply to that program with only slight modifications...

The GIMP is a multiplatform photo manipulation tool. GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. The GIMP is suitable for a variety of image manipulation tasks, including photo retouching, image composition, and image construction. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc. GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted...