June Roses at Der Rosenmeister

Today we had a chance to visit Der Rosenmeister Roses in Ithaca. Having had my first tour of Leon Ginenthal's gardens only once before (when precious little was in bloom), I was not prepared for seeing his gardens today. Roses of every color, shape and size. Blooming in such a profusion! And the smell was intoxicating.

In addition to his roses, Leon also has beautiful raised perennial beds. His selection of cultivars is simply astonishing.

So... we took out our cameras and went to town! Aurora and I both were clicking away, while Nancy was greeted by Emma, their dog. Eventually the chickens made their way to the forefront. Talk about beautiful!




(Okay, I have used that word, "beautiful", waaaay too many times in this post. My apologies. You'll just need to see you for yourself!)

Fighting Back With What Little I Have Left

As anyone who has read this blog even once since September knows, my life has had its share of ups and downs. In the past week I have been poked, prodded, sampled, tested, wired,... all in the name of figuring out why I suffer from extreme fatigue during the day, and why I can't stay asleep at night.

After seeing my cardiologist 5 times in May, he (and my GP) suggested emphatically, that I get a sleep study done. They both were concerned about sleep apnea. Guess what? Sleep apnea kills. It can kill you quick by allowing you to fall asleep at the wheel (which I do almost everytime I drive into Ithaca) or it can do it slowly by trashing your blood pressure, adrenal system and your immune system.

I did the sleep study on Wednesday night. I won't share with you all that I have learned since then only because I am still processing it. None of it was good news. Yesterday my GP called me at home on a Saturday to let me know that my last round of blood-sugar tests came back. Looks like diabetes wants to play too.







I have tried to stay upbeat through this recovery. I have tried to keep my head up, focus on the healing and I have kept myself optimistic by reassuring myself that soon everything would be fine. I guess "soon" means different things now than it used to. So, we fix the sleep apnea (I hope to be fitted for a CPAP as early as next Thursday), then we deal with the huge weight gain since January. See if that kicks the shit out of the diabetes. If so, sometime in September, we re-run some of these heart tests and see if we can keep this body of mine from stroking out. Wish me luck till then! Here's hoping there is a night of solid sleep on my horizon. It's been seven months without a single solid night of sleep. I think they call this torture.



I guess the final question must be: What's with all the freakin' flowers if life sucks so bad? Well... if I can't jump in my kayak (abs are too destroyed and the hernia is too fragile), and I can't make pots in any serious manner... well... the options get fewer. I can sit around the house and dose myself with food, pain killers and boredom.... or I can find beauty around my yard. If I can catch even a glimpse of that gorgeous light once or twice a day, then it feels like something positive has come from the doing.

This weekend I had a chance to take pictures of Aurora with alternating grandparents. First her maternal grandmother on Friday and then Nancy's folks came over on Saturday. (That will likely be tomorrow's post.) I love working with portraiture. I find it extraordinarily difficult, but if I can make just one great image, I feel like it was worth the work. Anyone feel like they want to sit for a portrait anytime soon? Seriously. I need subjects who are willing to sit for 45min to an hour. If you're willing, I would love to give it a whirl. Location of your choosing. We can do it in the coffee shop, the gardens, the woods, the lakeside... just about anywhere you desire.

With that said... perhaps that explains a little more about why I shoot flowers. They are available when everyone else is either at school or at work. They will hold still for an hour so I can bend the light to catch just the right sparkle. And maybe, once in a while, they capture something human.

In Times of Green

In the past week, we have watched our garden race from the early Spring yellows and pinks, headlong into the heat of Summer with rich purples and thick greens. It got hot and humid all at once last week. We went from being able to work in the garden all day, straight into that time where even early in the morning it was just too sticky. So, when you can't be out weeding, the camera calls instead!

My birthday came early this year as my camera gear bag increased by way of a Hoodman Loupe. If you have ever despaired from having assumed you had the perfect exposure while looking down into your LCD on the back of your camera in full daylight only to get home and realize you blew it. Your highlights are big splotchy white blobs and your shadows are clumpy. Yeah, and nothing's in focus. Shit happens right? Well.... this loupe allows you to block out almost all the light hitting your LCD so you can focus on the image at hand. You can see the detail of focus. You can zoom in and really look at pixels if need be. Most importantly though is that you can really examine the image without trying to block incoming light from driving you nuts with glare. I had a blast playing with it today. TOO much fun. Built to last a long while.

Having been clued into their website by numerous photographers, I took a gander at their right-angle viewfinder. Yeah, I would be able to simply look down and not have to crane my neck when shooting below my waist or off a tripod when shooting plants and such. I guess this will have to wait till we see sales pick up in a few more weeks. Here's hoping Memorial Day weekend is wonderful, busy and fun.

Quick Tutorial - photoshop and Nik Silver Efex Pro

We've had quite a few people asking what I'm doing in post processing on my images. Back in the days of wet darkrooms it would have been dodging and burning, multiple exposures, etc. Now it's Photoshop and other plugins.

Here's the original image. Color is pretty good, but needs some pop. Some zing!

Original Image: nothing changed or altered... straight from the camera.



In this image, I have used Nik Color Efex Pro, using the Tonal Enhance setting. By adding some punch via tonal enhancement and cranking the color saturation just a bit, this starts to pop.
But I want more.


This is a typical black and white image made in Photoshop by desaturating the image. You could also achieve this by choosing just one color channel. Not enough depth for me (and I want this quick and fun!)



Enter Nik Silver Efex. I love this software. Lots of settings to work with. You can adjust just about everything you can imagine. From contrast, brightness, density, grain, vignetting, etc... it's all in there. Plus you can adjust the toning of the image for silver tone effects, or cyanotype or sepiatone. FUN FUN FUN.




At this point, I have two or three images to work with... so I layer them. In this case, I have the second image (tonal enhance) on top of the original, and then the Silver Efex image on top of it all. By dialing back the opacity I can keep some of the vignetting, which I love, add some richness and texture to the image, retain the color and still get some POP!

Hope this helps folks who were asking me how I was post-processing my images sometimes. I definitely dont do this for everything (too much time invested)... but now and then, it really helps make the image something closer to what I see in my head.

Color, but no pots

Yeah, I know.... I should be glazing like a fiend, so why are there pics of flowers instead of pots?

Well, y'know... it was a sunny day out, not too hot, the studio wasn't hopping with customers... perfect day for a quick photoshoot in the yard.

Snow in August

No, not really, but it has only just this week started feeling like Summer. Another week or two, and this will be over. Thereafter begins that sudden slide into Fall and then Winter.

This image is of the Queen Anne's Lace that has popped up in Aurora's bed near the road. I Love this stuff. I know it's a weed, but it sure is a pretty weed.






Nancy said she wants to print this one out. To her this is Summer. Bright, yellow and cheery!

The studio has been going FULL-TILT this week. Sorry for the lack of blog updates but by the time the day is done, I am just wiped out.

In hopes of catching up a bit, here are a few images from the studio today.


The shelves are starting to fill back up with bisque-ware. Today was canisters. Tomorrow soupmugs. Then hopefully more teabowls and small serving bowls. I love making these two forms in the same run. It really helps me tie the two forms together. My decoration flows and the tautness of the forms seems to feed eachother.

Canisters, canisters, and more canisters

Do you own one of these? If you dont have a Talisman seive, my heart goes out to you. As our apprentice Hannah, found out today, these seives make life MUCH easier. Today was just a 10Kg batch of clear (5gal), but it still took 10 minutes of rotary seiving. She would have been there all afternoon with a regular seive and brush.





More bisqueware staring me in the face first thing in the morning! That means tomorrow, first thing, I am glazing. Hopefully we can get two more glaze firings through the kiln before Sunday.

Taking a break

A funny thing happened on my way through the garden yesterday. It rained.

Sideways.

With near-clockwork precision, just as we closed up shop, a HUGE summer storm came wailing through. Ten minutes later everything was wet and blown down. As the water started shedding and plants regained their upright posture, there was just enough light to catch a few images before dark.

ExpoDisc testing and Aurora's Flowers

For my birthday, my wife and daughter bought me an ExpoDisc. You need to bear in mind, we've been on rationed-spending for months now. This is our dry season in the studio. Summer is still just out of earshot. So spending money on un-necessaries is verboten. Well, they did it anyways. I have complained about my frustrations at getting tight color with my Nikon D80. I just think that the sensor tends to be a bit on the blue-heavy side of things generally. Even with custom white balance it still seemed off.

Here's the proof ... (where's the pudding?)

My results: this little gadget couldn't be more awesome. You put it in front of the lens, aim at the light source you're working from, hit your white balance, and done. Shoot, rinse, repeat.
I LOVE IT. I think the image above demonstrates how significant the difference is. Mind you, I dont think that the left hand image is "bad" but the right hand image is definitely as close to dead-on color fidelity as I have ever seen with this camera.

Ironically, my 8 yr old Olympus that Aurora has recently taken ownership of... has the best color fidelity of any of our family's collection of digital cameras. It may have ultra-sluggish shutter response, weird lens range, annoying quirks.. but the color out of that camera rocks!

Having toyed briefly with a D90 at Christmas, I think Nikon has definitely upgraded their processor engine. I think I'll hold out for an upgrade till the economy takes a bit of an upswing though. Heck, I am still finding out what some of the features buried in my camera do!

Here are a few images Aurora shot over at Schaeffer Yarns (and IRISES!) a couple weeks back.

Rain finally

We have been waiting for rain for weeks. It is very unusual for spring to be this dry. This morning there was a light mist and mega-humidity. Always a good time to try to catch the morning's new blooms!

More Irises

We took a lot of pictures over the long weekend. Most of them were of flowers. Usually Memorial Day is cold and wet... perfect conditions for Cornell's graduation ceremonies. This weekend was just as sunny and warm as one could hope for.

Memorial Day picnic in the sun

One of our irises from Schaefer Irises. I'm going to really miss Cheryl's iris sales every year.

Aurora and I had a chance to get out and enjoy the sun today. No visitors to the studio so by 2pm we were ready to call it a day and get outta Dodge. We had been invited over to a friend's Memorial Day party/picnic, we brought along a wicked good silken tofu chocolate pudding pie. Won first place in the dessert catagory competition. There's something ironic about having a party centered around Tofu... in Ithaca.

After tossing the Frisbee around for a couple hours and enjoying massive quantities of tofu of every imaginable permutation, it was time to hit the road home. Along the way back we stopped at Robert Treman State Park. I love the way the gorge was cut at this park. Hard to know exactly when the light will be ideal, but sometime we catch a few shots that sing.

Quiet winds, Quiet minds and the kiln is down

Last night I got ready to fire up our kiln, Ursa Arctos... and was, for the first time ever, greeted with the LCD saying FAIL. What? Fail? That's not very optimistic. So I pulled the owner's manual that hasn't seen the light of day in over four years. Guess what? Thermocouple had died. Okay, easy enough. Now we have some on order, but it means this bisque gets to wait till mid-week to be fired off.

In the meantime, way too many flowers are in full bloom or just getting ready to pop!

So after trying to work my way around our kiln delay, I found myself lens-to-bug out in the budding peonies. Caught this ant doing his duty to his colony. Made me sympathize; working around all this beauty, but someone has to collect the sap.




Then I found this allium bloom with a silver maple winged-seed caught in it. Tossed by the almost constant breezes we get this time of year, this maple seed could have ended up just about anywhere.