All work and no play makes Frank a dull boy. This is ART. Did I mention it’s art?. Viper Sky
But I really didn’t do that much to the original image which is a legit Sunset taken from my back yard. I typically can instantly visualize a sky that has been mirrored back on itself in the camera. This one, I saw the possibilities for mirror art before the camera is even involved lol. This is the same photo seamlessly folded back on itself like two mirrors at 45 degrees to each other. The left 1/2 was the original image.
In my Pareidolia infected mind, I see a large Snake with big fangs about to reach out and touch. Alternately there is a WONDERFUL Bearded Old Mans face dead center top frame. I never know what is going to magically appear at the “totem pole” that is usually formed at the “crease” where the two images are merged. I take great care to precisely align the center. Clouds and Trees are my favorite visual materials for this kind of photography and post click mirroring. I did very little to the image after the fact. If you have white clouds AND yellow/golden clouds in the same image. There isn’t much color manipulation that has occurred even though this is art and I have no rules.
This was a storm at sunset with rain falling but evaporating before it was hitting the ground. This is otherwise known as Virga. That would be a good google word for the morning … Have a great day all…
I sometimes HAVE to take a little time away from my daily serious photo-finishing work. The need is to play inside of the digital darkroom of course. All work and no play makes Frank a dull boy….. Leading off this AM with some Tile Art.
Inside my greater sphere of photographic/graphic arts interests are a few creative ones. This versus the photorealist my OCD normally requires lol.
One of my favorite play time activities is to put together what I call Mosaic Mirrors. This one I made 3 “Totem” poles in. Were ever mirror images meet, mind magic occurs. The totems either side of the center arch are a stack of Creatures great and small. For you Pariedoliacs out there, this is full of endless wanderings and imaginings. All of the imaging was taken from a photo of the sun setting over a fenceline next to a tree in the backcountry.
Often I’m doing this thinking of classic mid-evil architectural arches and will sometimes build a floor. Here I built a reflecting rippled water mirror under the sun. Technically this was fairly easy to do, I just enjoy the resultant bilateral symmetry that instantly pops into existence. More than just fun though are the amazing anthropomorphic shapes that always form from that symmetry. Those with the tendency terribly to see faces or animals in random data can get lost in either making or studying these. I’m the former. I could make these all day. Tree limbs are particularly are suitable as subjects. Plus you don’t have to get a signed model release. 😜
I actually saw this scene live real time resolving it easily with my eyes. To my knowledge, there is no way to photograph it using only one photograph. The difference of illumination between the reflection in the water and the brightness of the moon was too large for my gear to resolve. So I took an exposure of the moon properly followed by an image of the water properly exposed.. Merge the best parts of both photos and here you have a composite art work reconstructing the scene as I experienced it. The technology commonly in use today is inadequate to capture such a scene with this extreme dynamic range in a single frame.
In other words, I can take a good photo of the moon and see nothing in the water. I can take a photo of the ripples in the water but the moon is bright white. The only way to see the scene the way my eyes did, is to merge those digital images. Human eyes see a wider dynamic range than do cameras thus far in their development. I could see this very well except it was pretty far away. Technology is chasing the 21 F-stops the human eye can discern where as the best cameras I can afford will give you 15 F-stops dynamic range.
I figure in 5 or 6 years and as many generations of chips I will be able to do this in camera. It was very cool to have this all line up though. Getting topography and Celestial objects to cooperate is a once a year thing at best when weather cooperates. I was back about 400 yards for this from the wind driven choppy water. Because it’s a composite, technically this is ART imitating an actual scene. 600mm F-4 lens. At f-11.
If I go out for sunset to work the light with a box-o-cameras, I’m pretty much serious about the process. I maintain a high operational tempo all day but go into overdrive with cameras chasing fleeting light.
So I just spent a few hours out in the backcountry trying to work this sunset. I finally give up on the light and head back to the ranch. A few miles of two tracks later I get to our driveway. A few hundred feet of gravel to home to a reclining chair. But no, I saw this apparition backed by Alpenglow occurring before my eyes. Thusly the involvement of a photon trap in the capture. Picking the right gear for the situation is of course the “game here. The cowboys had T-rex’s tail totally held back by a lariat firmly set into the saddle (just off frame right), that line was sure holding back the T-rex’s charge. The helpless bird was clueless it was about to get eaten of course. The second ropin’ hand on the left was going for a leg to stretch him out.
I didn’t stick around long enough to see the hog tie but I’m pretty sure those horses know what they are doing. The cowboys around these parts are versatile. Here at the Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, there have been dinosaur encounters of many kinds.😜 Here, the chapped ones saved the day yet again. 🤘
These are silhouettes from the Ranches Main Gate Entry. I did the art years ago and had a plasma table cut the design out. The bird was serendipity as of course is most opportunistic photography 📸 .
I spend a portion of the time spent examining scenes before me for candidates requiring a “Mirror/Mirror” treatment. As I suffer from Pareidolia badly. Seeing faces or familiar shapes in clouds or other random scenes is a genetic defect. I received this from both my parents. I have it so badly that I see 1/2 of a face. This controls compositions with the intent to use the 1/2 face to make a “whole’ face from. I have no control over this attribute of mine. This mental game was considered a psychosis historically. Not so much now… Honestly the tendency runs wild most of the time. I must admit. I’ve been known to cultivate such imaginings a time or two. 😜👀
SO, this is ART…. I re-emphasize the ART part…. If it wan’t ART I would have removed the dark blue (it’s a blue Monday post after all). I find that clouds are mostly grey expect near twilight lol. So I take a real photograph, and mirror it right to left (in this case). Color to taste and that’s all I did to this… 2 minutes maybe extra digital darkroom time over my normal 15 minutes. Nature comes up with the creatures that live in the “totem pole” that runs up the center where the mirrors merge. There are SEVERAL more faces buried in that area if you study it. Now if I could just figure out how to make a living with this
This is ART… Did I mention this is art? Sometimes I take a few moments to be something other than a photorealistic Landscape Photographer. It keeps Frank from Being a dull boy with all work and no play figuring into my world 😜📸 Well over a dozen faces in this easily…
Seeing faces in clouds or other natural scenes is termed: Pareidolia. Historically this tendency diagnosed one with psychotic symptoms/ “abnormal”. Now we are teaching computers to do it. It’s not just clouds of course. Any pattern the human mind creates out of literally random data is symptomatic. Of course the state of medical/psychological science has improved a tad from those early days. . Looking behind me to the eastern back show a bit after sunset on summers evening is a good habit.
Many photographers get tunnel vision and forget to glance around. The back shows are often better than the main sunset if your chasing light like I do. Taking many forms, these billowing clouds can be impressive. The shapes are random but usually fairly consistent in one way or another. I swear on a stack of geology books that I did Everything to this image in the digital darkroom lol. . It’s not a totally natural image.
However, If you look enough at clouds, you see some very odd things 🙂 I simply finished the faces of what I saw in this cloud system.
The hard part is being there with a camera (Rule 1 of Photography).
Totem Pole in the Sky . (ART, Did I mention this was art. Made by mirroring a real sky onto itself.)
The Spirits in the sky here in Wyotana linger and only show about 1/2 of themselves . So I help… 😜👻👀
From Top to Bottom: (A totem is the sum of it’s parts)
An Owl overlooks the scene on top.
Riding on a Swallow for speed,
standing on the Raven’s spirit for wisdom
The Raven relies on the Bat
to see things that other cannot perceive.
The Bat resides over the Cat
The Cheshire(is) cat as a base. Cats are widely regarded by many cultures past and present as fully capable of magic. Some consider it good magic, others not so much. All agree it’s magic…
All rely on the cat as the base of the totem of sky spirits in this capture. Of course there is the big snake face the whole image makes 😝
I find that I can see/visualize these results as I’m photographing skies. It’s not that I see shapes in clouds or anything. Certainly I do lolol. Habitually so… But I can fold the image back on itself inside of my head. I see these live as I examine the thousands of images that go past my computer desktop each week. I pretty much know as I’m taking the image that I’m “using this one for ART”.
So this image stood out to me It only took a bit over 100 clicks/clones to make this. It’s pretty photorealistic except for a few things. It is VERY close to the way I visualized it out in the field through the lens. It is art did I mention?👅 I did squeeze the image a tad as well. The left 1/2 of the image is a full 3×2 scale photo. Mirrored back on itself.
Protective of the Sun by Frank Bliss (This is an ART/PHOTO Hybrid)
Do you see things in Clouds? 👀📸 What do you imagine here?
Now that I mentioned this is art, I would point out that only 1/4 of it actually is art, the rest of it is a 100 percent real image. All work and no play make photorealistic Frank a Dull Boy. I like to follow up on the potential for this kind of work on a particular image if I get the time/chance. I usually have to make the time in the middle of an otherwise photorealism filled day. In the world of the digital darkroom, I get to play a bit. This is a slightly modified Wyotana borderland sunset from last week. One week is my turn around time now from taking an image to possibly posting it.
To create this, I took the original image which just didn’t have the left side eye. The nose is a real lens flare which I carefully lined up in the camera to the 12 o’clock position. The flare was in the original capture. So I mirrored the right eye and the clouds onto his left cheep from the original side. Then up high I mirrored the outline of the head right to left. So the left eye/cheek, part of the clouds up high. Nothing else was messed with other than color a bit. But this is art and all rules go out the window. As I was taking this, the possibilities were obvious to me in the composition stage of this capture. Long before the click.
I’ve mentioned several times in previous narratives, that I got lucky on an e-bay auction. I managed to acquire the original “Way Back Machine” from the 1959 cartoon of “Peabody’s Improbable History”. That nifty show was embedded within the larger “Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. I enjoyed each and every episode after school each day. Any precocious child would thrive with all the imagining. We had 3 channels on the TV at that time… 🤔
So, I won the auction, 6 days later, unpacked, dusted off…. IT was functioning after an initial clean up. I had to replace some vacuum tubes and solder on some replacement electrolytic capacitors into it’s build. After all it’s a 70 year old time travel machine. Electronic components “dry out “over the years.
So every now and then I turn it on. When you see your lights dim, it’s probably me.
Here I picked April 1805as a time to travel to. Late in that afternoon when off in the distance over that far ridge, Lewis and Clark were canoeing up the Missouri into the Yellowstone River just north of here. A time before fences, telephone lines, electric wires and buildings. Landscape before European Man. I only allow myself a few moments to click a little bit and then I head back. Don’t want to take the chance of stepping on a cockroach and changing history into the future as a result. I figure a few photons captures then carried through time won’t effect the universes time line too much. Such things can have cascading consequences.
Owning such a machine is a great responsibility of course. Imagine going back into the Paleozoic and changing the course of things from then on because you swatted at a 6 foot dragon fly. 🙂
I did say it was satire: 😜😜
This if you like layered landscapes… Boy are those long shadows and remember green season? 📸
The chill of the upcoming winter was in the air. I captured an old soldier of a wildlife tree. Heavily used by Wood Peckers and Flickers to hunt in for grubs. It oversees/overllows all on it’s high backcountry ridge redoubt. A safe nest for a dozen creatures. Within is a rest from the relentless high ground wind. A rest here for this Great Horned Owl while the rising moon lights up the scene. While dark to our eyes, the extraordinary night vision of the hunting raptor (and my Sony Alpha 7RIV) pierce the darkness. 😜 📸
Did I mention the above is art. The moon just by itself is a 16 image composite. I own the owl silhouette and the snag/twilight photo. Took me a bit to do this well. 🤔👀 (Landscape up to 3×2 feet)
Now the Science:
The owls perception of the night world and need to detect the smallest movement a trait of the species. This would be a real world nocturnal and uncommon encounter. I’m ignoring the limitations of physics and gear to get an image like this require it’s construction in the digital dark room. This scene has happened millions of times however. They would be REALLY hard to catch in the real world. It’d take a heck of a lens to do this at maybe 500 yards out. Having said that, if this ever unveiled in front me in the real world, I could certainly capture the image. That is, if I were given about 5 minutes to get into position/set up lolol.
While active during the day at times, they habituate the darkness and are totally apex predators in this environment. Just to stress the point, none of this would be happening without the moon. (Morning citizen scientist assignment, please google “moon formation”).
The moon is our planets protector. It’s mass around the earth keeps the earths rotation stable. Research reveals that less than 10 percent of terrestrial planets may have a satellite large enough to provide the stability life needs to develop. (This is a big deal and where some genuine magic occurs)
The Mass and resultant gravity is necessary for stabilizing the Tilt of our planet like a huge slow motion gyroscope. Scientists say Earth’s “obliquity”, as this tilt is known, is important to remain stable. Changes in Obliquity have huge repercussions from the resultant environmental reactions. Should Earth’s obliquity wander over hundreds of thousands of years, it would cause environmental chaos by creating a climate too variable for complex life to develop in relative peace. Imagine obliquity such that the South Pole is all daylight 100 percent of the time and the North Pole in 100 percent night sky. Our lunar neighbor has literally made it possible for you to read this as a sequence of events set up in the flow of Space and Time. 🤔📸
In this kind of work, I will take a photo I deem appropriate and digitally mirror it inside of the digital darkroom. This wonderful spotlit sunset was a real image but I instantly saw the possibilities. My web gallery contains the original image. There is a phenomena that occurs with human eyes seeing bilateral symmetry. We seemingly recognize the resultant shapes as anthropomorphic forms, mystical creatures and even familiar faces. This tendency in the human mind to make order out of random shapes, we are teaching to computers for facial recognition.
Along the center of the image is what I call the “Totem Pole”. I see at least a dozen different faces, shapes, noses, eyes, teeth, flames. A host of magical mythical creatures contained within await your study. All of these emerge one at a time as you study the shape. Relax your stare and let your imagination rip with this creation. The main one I see is a dark dragon face with fangs and flames. It’s probably just me lolol.
I did take some liberty with the hue/saturation control with this images. These shapes were natural and are un-edited in their entirety. I love finding these images. All work and no play makes Frank a dull boy and this is one of my Creative outlets. My main focus in photography (pun intended) is to catch landscapes and creatures as photorealistically as I can. These ART/Photo hybrids are a release lol.
I went into the 800 year old Gothic Cathedral (Like at King’s Crossing). we have up here on the Bliss Dinosaur Ranch to contemplate the sunset. Or is that watching the sunset to contemplate a cathedral,,,. I am easily confused 😙. I have an imagination that starts to work with certain images that lends themselves toward this genre. When I go into the world of no holds barred photo manipulation, I certainly didn’t follow my self-imposed photorealism rules on this one for sure lolol. All work and no play makes Frank a dull boy….🤓
My goal in this art work was to give a sense of standing on the cold marble floor of a darkened massive stone structure of a Gothic Cathedral. . You can hear the echo of your steps on the highly polished surface. The climax of the day is fast approaching outside the sanctuary/ rectory with the scattered light through the window leaving the shadows of the show outside to pass through the stained glass portal in the distance. Movement of the shadows / light show inside the quietude of the building was obvious to the casual observer.
Image Source:
The original image I used for this was a reflection off a lake. Cottonwood trees filter the light. I turned the image on it’s side, mirrored it, then adjusted it according to my goal of light through a cathedral window. There are many overtones of subject matter in this work. I took some time with this one. Result, A 3D perspective out of a 2D flat image.
Location: In my Graphics Workstation at the Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands. (Wyotana)
ART…. THIS IS ART. Well unless you take just the right or the left side by itself. Then it is just photography. Each is one photo next to itself flipped horizonally. The Magic is different people imagine different things with such a presentation. Your tendency to see anthropomorphic shapes in random data we are teaching to computers doing facial recognition. This is of course is a brilliantly bright setting sun breaking through a crack in the clouds over a ridge 40 miles out.
Some sunsets are limited to a very little spot of the sky. To look deeply into them when no human eye could is a spiff of using good equipment. It requires one to pretty much turn off your camera to light
This is an image I didn’t know what to do with thus the obvious choice…. The clouds were absolutely ROILING like a boiling pot live real time. I don’t do video. I’m not a videographer so I need to explain what I was seeing in this viewfinder.
When I look at a scene it can instantly transformed into a vision in my mind. In this case I saw a mask I was looking to. Some childhood memory of a Halloween costume no doubt. The best images bring back memories long forgotten. I find.
Mirroring scenes is a mental exercise I do pretty much with every sunset somewhere in any extended session. It’s just a check box for me to fill if I have the time. I always look for natural body parts in clouds so a set of eyes are welcome to the parts collection. 😜😜📷
When my name is included in the Title, the image is ART, usually taken from real photos . I disclose when I screw with images to any significant degree. I had fun with this one.
This Image became ART by removing 2 inches of the center hombre’s rope loop to give the illusion of it going behind the moon. The gate that provided me the photons for this capture, is our front gate. (albeit slightly re-arranged for this art work). When I screw with images I really can do anything I want but this is actually pretty true to what happened. Just a bit a rope, a little movement of the horses from their real positions and I end up with this illusion. I do like to occasionally put some art up. As I’ve said before, “all work and no play makes Frank a dull boy”.
The metal work is my original design but I did have it professionally cut with a computer controlled plasma table. We put this gate up 15 years ago at the front entrance to the Dinosaur Ranch. . There is also a T-rex on this gate but I excluded him for this particular illusion. This is ART remember :). With no rules I impose on myself to be photorealistic, I get to move, remove, replace, resize, recolor or pretty much do anything else I want to ART work. There are no limitations in the digital world. lololol (laughing maniacially). 👀😜😜
This is ART done from a photograph (I did mention this is ART didn’t I?) Oh the moon was real and the cow was real but she wasn’t exactly pointing her head upward. Simply speaking I drew her head in for the moo pose within the digital darkroom. . I’m sorry, I had to cheat to get this with her “mooing”. Everything was going well except you can never get a cow to look up at the moon when your in the right position for this otherwise silly hard technical image. Getting a long uphill slope to a ridge, a cow and the waxing gibbous moon rising in enough light to get a grassy slope in focus…. lots of things to go right.. .
She was 300 yards uphill easy. 800 mm lens. The moon is out a bit further than her. Of course high f-stop numbers are in play here.
The decidedly blue color cast is my doing of course since this is art. Blue Moo and all that. A little time in the digital darkroom makes almost anything possible. No question I try to be a photorealist at ALMOST all times. I have found that all work and no play makes Frank a dull boy 😜🤘📸
Have a great evening as this posts at 7:30 Wednesday the 19th February. This is a written one week before it posted on social media.
Poll: Which Side do you prefer? Left or Right. I may change the way I do photography based on your answer…… Just saying.
Filed under “Education”, no insult meant to ANY artist as art get’s a free ride if so declared. SO… When an electric colorized image is presented as a Photo. I call foul. Disclosure in all things art versus photo.
One side of this image is photorealistic (what I try REALLY HARD to do investing years in my process), the other is…. well not photorealistic. This split screen is a CLASSIC example of the issue as I see it. Hold your hand up if you thought the left side is a real image. (go sit in the corner)….😜
I’ve seen various “Electric Blue Snow” photos lately on several forums… . (shaking head side to side and grimacing) . It totally drives me crazy that those images usually do quite well and are silly easy to do (ruin) on an otherwise good capture. I must be wasting my time trying to be a photorealist…..??
Artists make images electric. Photographers don’t. Perhaps I’m just Sharpening a pencil…. 👀😜
2 WAYS to “electric out” an image…. (make it art).
*Photographers, as a general practice, you should at least once for each photo session, set your “White Balance? (google this) to the appropriate setting (Shade/sun etc). Setting your White Bance (menu item in most cameras) to the sunny setting and taking picture of snow in shade will lead to really BLUE SNOW (Cyan Snow too). I’ve looked at this very carefully…. Blue Snow doesn’t actually exist in the real world 99.999 percent of the time. I’ve seen it like 3 times in 20 years with a colorcast in VERY early twilight.
I consider Blue snow USUALLY is either really omissive, bad technical photography or excessive color saturation control use in the digital darkroom. Usually these images I’m referring to are posted without comment. Often posted as actual photographs and as “an amazing” morning of electric blue snow/sky”. These images should NOT be presented as photography but as “Abstract heavily colorized art”. The left side of this image was done in the digital darkroom to the original image as I experienced the scene.
The skill that needs to be developed here is actually NOT to have blue snow in your image. . 🤔👀📷 Hey, I’m all for art. I just prefer artists that don’t claim their work is a photograph but it’s been tweeked beyond reality. How you get to reality is irrelevant as long as it’s real. A personal preference I suspect, you may feel different.
Gripe over. If you have blue snow problems and don’t want to be an electric blue landscape artist, PM me and I’ll help you work through it. I try hard to live in a blue snow free zone.
This image is NOT on my web gallery lolol…. Not For Sale I’m only posting this on my personal FB page on Facebook. Some other social media will get it too.
Admins let me know if you want me to run this past your forum.
Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch (right side) and alternative universe (left side). Montana/Wyoming border (EXACTLY).
(ART… Did I mention this is ART?? ). a mirror/mirror reflection.
All work and no play makes frank a dull boy. So Every once in a while I will do create one of these works. One needs to have just the right image. I actually look for scenes that lend themselves to this. But I often don’t take the time to do the work being busy with photorealism instead.
Dramatic sunset through the eyes of a all seeing creature? Perhaps a Butterfly with two yellow spots on it’s orange wings. The original photo was a good image to say the least. I figured two image for the price of one would be an appropriate response. Some may see a malevolent eyes here. Rorschach would be jealous of this one. A nearly 3 dimensional Ink blot in full color courtesy of mother nature is a lot of fun to create.
I always like to enlarge / zoom in to the image to look at the “totem pole’ that runs up the center of the image. There are always a host of creatures that develop as a result of the mirroring. Human brains associate bi-lateral symmetry with creatures of all kings. We see two glowing dots in the dark, our mind fills in the blanks. Seeing patterns in random data is called Pareidolia. 100 years ago such tendencies might get you put in an asylum as a psychotic. Now we are training computers to do facial recognition all over the globe.
A little moon Magic from exactly the Montana/Wyoming border. OK, that is 45 degrees north Latitude. Exactly 1/2 way between the equator and the north pole. It’s exactly 2700 nautical miles to either from here. One of the prime meridians. Might be some symbolism here. ☯
All taken in the month of December 2019 for the Full Cold Moon surrounded by waxing and waning crescents. The full moon on December 12, 2019 is known as Cold Moon, Open Moon or Big Winter Moon.
IT was a frigid morning at 14 below out on the backroads of Wyotana. I’m driving around in twilight before the sun comes up 20 or 30 miles from my homestead with a box o cameras next to me. I ran across this local landmark where I had to stop and stare.
OK, In full disclaimer mode, this is ART, I “assisted” the cow upstairs within the confines of the digital darkroom . That arena has no such rules of reality to control what I do. All work and no play makes Frank a very dull boy 😜😜😀📸📸 The moon was actually there I point out. ONLY the upstairs window has been messes with. I swear lolol Did I mention that this is actually ART? LOLOL.
There were about a half dozen cattle on the first floor. I’m pretty sure this building is a bit past the “basic fixer upper” moniker. The wood floor inside certainly has become soaked / covered by a rich bacterial mix. Any port in a storm I suppose. It would definitely be warmer inside than outside. It is also about the only wind block anywhere within easy walking distance in this snow. Cattle have a tough time in the winter during the really cold periods like the one we just had. Even the cattle outside are on the sheltered side of the house mostly out of the wind.
Location: near the Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands, (Wyotana)
Hybrid Art but I still offer you the sun and the moon…. now where are those stars lolol.
Just playing with various images. All work and no play makes Frank a dull boy….. The glow is from around the sun, the rising moon cut out was put on top. It’s interesting that the moon and the sun appear at exactly the same size taken with the same fixed lens. This is why we have solar eclipses. The do appear exactly the same size. Sometimes when the moon is really far away we have annular eclipses where you can see the sun around the edge of the moon. Only posted on my personal FB page but it is in my gallery.
Shortest narrative ever as I didn’t get into the fact that the moon was WAY closer in the prehistoric past and is slowly moving away. That discussion is saved for another day lol.
Trail Camera Lens Flare is a capture of light bouncing around in the lens of the gadget. Camera lenses are dull black inside for a reason. It keeps reflections down. I normally treat these as artifacts (which they are) on an image. If there was a subject on this frame, the lens flare would be a problem. Here I’m pretty sure it is the subject of the frame lolol. I consider this as such as ART but it’s all done in the camera..
Light bouncing around and making intricate patterns like this I have found to occur more inside of Game Trail Cameras. Plastic lenses are the rule or a plastic guard in front of a glass lens is a prime causation of this effect. The Sony Alpha E mount lenses are pretty well made by Zeiss for Sony. I deal with lens flare but it’s usually not pronounced in those optics. The cheaper game trail cameras are sensitive to bright light obviously.
Personally I like the flares as a subject unto themselves. There is an “art” to making them, working them and otherwise manipulating flares inside of lenses as you are taking photos. Tilting your camera a certain way, positioning the sun in a way as to not have them is typical for the work I do. I find I compose pretty quickly in the eyepiece but these crop up and complicate what should be an easy shot.
Changing focal length on a zoom lens can minimize the effect, holding away from the sun and a good sunshade. These are the best things to do in a hostile light environment. Centering the sun in the frame will eliminate a LOT of the flare problems pointing into the sun.
Adding years of Evolution, this image (ART) is a computer generated “future” possibility for Pronghorn . Instead of being the meek and skiddish prey, they evolve into a predator hunting the great plains for meat. Similar to the saber-tooth cats and other lions of the last Ice Age, this predator is not only fast as heck but lethal. I took it through a few million years of evolution digitally in about an hour.
Hey, it’s the future, Who’s to say it won’t happen and it really might lololol.
Did I mention this is ART? This really did start out as a Pronghorn Doe. I have to get away from photorealism now and then just to keep from going nut’s with all these ideas I have for images lol. This one is a little complicated but I hope you enjoy it here on a late Thursday night in November.
Musings of the Morning:
As I type this, sunrise calls but it’s WAYYY to muddy to go up on the ridges. I don’t like tearing up ground and at 41 degrees with all the snow melt, it’s going to be sticky and soft. We have “Gumbo” here and there which will stick a bulldozer if you drive over it wet. I spent about 1/2 an hour cleaning off my Jeep last night of hundreds of pounds of mud from driving a Montana backcountry pass working sunset last night. . I was sideways in a well proven Jeep Grand Cherokee on a county road numerous times. I’ve been in way worse but this is a “County” road that hopefully some tourists GPS doesn’t take them down lololol. We call it “Death by GPS”. I don’t ever use one unless I’m looking at land ownership data.
Here is a Bliss Ranch Snowflake Compilation that I pulled out of a series of photos where the lighting was all the same and the flakes were transparent in the lighting. I pulled each one of them out of the back ground and placed them on this parchment for an antique look. This could have come out of an 1800’s book stone etching of the same topic. It didn’t, it came out of mother nature and my digital dark room.
Generating this image of a Polarized Orb Weaver Web, In a rare play time moment, I’m using 3 filters.. A big polarized sheet behind the web, a linear polarized (not circular) glass filter for my lens, finally an Orb Weavers Web to reduce the amount of light coming into the camera placed between the two filters.. The two”crossed” filters were adjusted/rotated so that I still got some sun through and the colors as well.
Two polarizing sheet filters at 90 degrees to each other cancels all light coming through. Black. Slightly rotate one or the other polarizing filter and some direct light as from the sun will come through. But when you have something between the two polarizing sheets, they change the way light is polarized so it makes it through the second sheet not blocked by it. That is the web you see here. .
This is sort of like a really big petrographic microscope (which I’ve spent months on) but in Large scale. You can try this by crossing at right angles 2 pairs of polaroid sunglasses. Put something like a thin quartz pebble between them and shine bright light through the crossed assembly.
Of course the play of light is like that with polaroid sunglasses and automobile windows. . It all was very faint of course and I “brought it out” but the result is self explanatory. Cool stuff Orb Weaver Spider Webs….
If you want to learn more about this phenomena, research optical mineralogy or petrographic microscope on google. Same application here more or less the same physics involved.
Halloween Satire: Crystal Ball Back Country Sunset…… I found this _other Worldly Muli-Dimensional Portal (wormhole)” floating in the backcountry after the snows. I considered driving into it and popping up somewhere on the other side of the universe but decided to stick it out here instead. After all, I had images to finish in the camera and can’t miss tax time….😜 After all, during Halloween strange magical things happen up here in the remote backcountry of Montana/Wyoming. (both states in this image). (Nobody ever watch “StarGate SG-1 before lolol).
I’m amazed “Sneaky Pete” the Windmill didn’t try to get in on this but I think the 0 degree temps probably kept him from moving very fast. Fortunately the wind was fairly calm up on that high ridge. This was me driving places I’ve been a few times but most wouldn’t drive there in this kind of snow. I had to plow about a mile of two track road with my Skid Steer Loader to get close to this spot where I walked up the ridge to get this shot. I get to use the roads I build up on the ridges between blowy storms in this country. It takes several hours of pushing snow to get up here and once a week it shuts me down. By late to mid winter, I’m about done pushing snow. I get locked out of the backcountry and stuck on backcountry County Roads where I also get some amazing images…. more on that later this winter 😎
Actual photo short the support for the spherical optical quality lens ball removed in the digital Darkroom but don’t tell the kids that 🎃. So this is ART not a pure photo. I removed a small support under the sphere in Full Disclosure. This is VERY wide angle and a 2:1 aspect. 10mm lens.
“Halloween Sky: Who Do You See” …… was done off a pretty impressive sky to start with (still have the original still in the raw timeline somewhere. But I instantly saw the possibilities in the image. Lore from our Pagan (pre-christian) past works it’s way into the present with this holiday mixing with christian practice in the middle ages through out Europe. Much of Halloween Lore is handed down over countless generations from parents to their children along with the handed down/cut out witches on brooms and cardboard pumpkins from many childhoods ago 😀🎃🎃
So in the pursuit of this image result…. all attempts at being photorealistic went out the window and this turned very quickly into an ART/Photo Hybrid project lolol… . Did I mention this is ART for Halloween?? (Pssst, Don’t tell the kids”. ) I will always tell you when I totally mess with an image lol.
Personally I imagine the Cartoon Character “Tigger™” in this capture (its about 95 percent real and 5 percent art, just a tweek here and there really ….a little mirroring selectively. Certainly not the whole image). I would bet some dragons and devils come out of this “Rorschach Test”.
Geeky Musings: So what is the tendency to see faces in clouds (random data) called? Pareidolia is a type of apophenia, which is a more generalized term for seeing patterns in random data. I am horribly Apophenic and anthropomorphize virtually every scene I see more or less automatically.
This tendency to “see things in clouds” was once considered a symptom of psychosis…. (Let that sink in for a second and go figure lololol) but now is considered absolutely normal. (probably not by some 😜). Humans have even taught computers how to see faces from random data. (Facial recognition and all that). There are also those poor folks that have no ability or interest in such folly but I consider it a sign of artistic talent perhaps hidden away in the rooms of your mind just looking for the door. :).
At any rate: HAPPY HALLOWEEN ! Share freely to a few special ones that just don’t look but actually see. 🙂
Location, overhead plus in my workstation, Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands
It’s getting close to Halloween. I better get this published. Don’t tell the kids it’s ART done by using an original image and mirroring it left and right. ITs a real image seamless with it’s mirror from a few minutes in the digital darkroom. Did I mention this is ART? 😂
It’s scary but I actually imagine and evaluate stuff like this live when I’m looking at a scene and consider it or not for this kind of manipulation art. I take the photo appropriately for the desired face I see. I usually dismiss it but this one was so cool I had to finish it. I’m fascinated by the “totem Pole” creatures that usually appear up the middle of works like this… The human eye tends to pick up bilateral symmetry and assigns it to creatures instantly. You have to zoom in though to see a lot of it and some people have more “imagination” than others. Sort of a high tech ink blot test lolol.
Enjoy and share freely for Halloween.
Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch in my workstation. Montana/Wyoming borderlands.
(Satire): For me to get the image of Cowboys and Dinosaurs. I bought the old original 1950’s “Way Back Machine on Ebay. (Classical Reference to “Mr Peabody and Sherman” but the 1950’s original). It’s a time travel device, took some tinkering… So we here at the Bliss Dinosaur Ranch sent some cowboys back to the Cretaceous to collect some samples. Here’s a quick snap of some of the action 65 million years ago here in the soon to be borderlands of Wyoming/Montana. We have many such stories here on the ranch (and lots of fossils). One of my boys lost his right spur while ropin’ on that t-rex… I hoping to dig it up some day…🤣 Halloween Madness lololololol (laughing maniacally)
ART, pure and simple…
Location: In my workstation, Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.
Fire and Ice is an image I captured last winter that I converted to Black and White, then colorized it appropriate to the piece. Often looking into the sun will give me an UMBER coloration and this was no exception so I brought it back into the level of reality that I recall at the time. I really messed with this so it is indeed a hybrid ART/Photo Image.
The Halloweens Season is upon us and here is a contribution called the “Great Pumpkin in the Sky” (ART). shhh. Don’t tell the kids… Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands
