View allAll Photos Tagged simplifies
Watercolour on 140 lb. Arches cold press.
This was done using only two colours, Quin Gold and Antwerp Blue. It was painted wet in wet and with heavier paint than usual, so it could be done all in one go. Shapes were simplified as much as possible and detail kept to a minimum.
This was my third workshop session with Merv Richardson. One more to go. I have really enjoyed my time with this wonderfully talented artist.
When we first arrived at Cam Loch the sun was directly above Suilven. Some half an hour later it finally dipped below the hill to the right casting an intense warm glow onto the mountain which was rendered in almost full silhouette due to the high dynamic range.
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.
Hans Hofmann
Please don't use my image's on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. © All rights reserved
This shot was taken on a weekend away at the Coast. It's my second attempt at a fine art peice and was shot using a 10 stop ND filter. This gave a long exposure of 51 seconds at F22 and ISO100. I hope you like the shot, please let me know if you do. Thanks and have a great weekeng, Graham.
"Our life is frittered away with detail. Simplify, Simplify."
~ Henry David Thoreau ~
Thank you French Kiss, For the text brush.
I have written about how Marc's changing needs have dictated a need to simplify our garden. Greater attention is needed to care for his declining health, which means less time in the garden and sadly, less desire by Marc to access it.
I have reduced our borders and the number of plants I grow and returned planting beds to lawns. Over 90 rolls laid. I have raised the canopy of many remaining shrubs and trees so Marc can see through them more easily from his vantage point.
There is much more to do, but gradually.
Thank you for your visit, comment or fave. All are much appreciated. Thank you also to all who invite my photos to their groups.
All photos and textures used are my own.
All rights reserved. This photo is not authorized for use on your blogs, pin boards, websites or use in any other way.
Complex simplification
Man I’ve struggled to write this text. It’s felt like digging a hole from England to Australia. The first few spades full were effortless as I enthusiastically threw them over my shoulder, but the hole quickly became very deep and then I hit ROCK. Now the task of finishing the job has become very daunting and if I’m to continue, it’s going to be slow and arduous. So…I’m going to start this with a paradoxical conclusion, then offer some alternative perspectives on digging …but first the conclusion, “simplicity turns out to be rather bloody complex!”
My messy mind
When photographing in a location, I’ve often observed how my ‘state of mind’ influences the way I see world and engage with it. Now this is a massive topic and I’d be foolish to attempt to cover it here, (man it looks very dark in the bottom of that hole). But more recently, I have observed whilst in the most peaceful locations, ‘self imposed artistic ideals’ creep into and distort my particular view of that reality. These thoughts can be very productive when wanted, but sometimes have become irritants when not, placing unattainable expectations of ‘perfection’ of light subject and composition over what is essentially reality.
To experience a ‘beautiful’ location in ‘perfect’ light is indeed, very special but, ‘the very act of photographing’ the location is further introducing complications on how one engage with any given scene. Often, (even without the camera), instead of enjoying the view, I have a sometimes (self diagnosed), irritating tendency to scout for locations, attempt to second-guess the weather, seek out detail, light and foreground interest. When I do have the camera (if I’m honest most of the time when in these locations) and feel inspired to take the tripod off my back, I’m often racing the fast moving conditions, setting up equipment and looking at the world through the viewfinder.
So why is this a problem you ask? Isn’t it your intention to seek out these locations and try to convey some of the feelings you have in a photographic representation? Well yes, but it’s those very ‘feelings’, that are being distorted by the process, that I want to experience as ‘pure’ in order to attempt to convey. I’ve noticed that often I actually ‘see’ and ‘feel’ more for a location when viewing the ‘image’ some time after its making, when I’ve have had time to reflect, things have slowed down and I’ve allowed my mind to dig deeper into the image and location. Unusually I see and feel things that I didn’t when I was making the image, which is bizarre, as you would think that being there in the flesh enables you to see more, but the opposite seems to be true. I would speculate that on location, our senses can become overloaded and the previously mentioned reasons, all influence the unique filtrated perception of the location.
I do believe that we in fact absorbed the overlooked information, somewhere deep in the subconscious mind, but it is only when reflecting on the imagery later that we begin to process the mechanical representations disentangling the thoughts, laden them with significance, and produce feelings. The photograph then seems not only to be historical record of the place we were. But actively catalyzing the emotions surrounding the experience, digging not only into the very place we were making the image, but deep into the recesses of our memory and dragging out past seemingly tenuously connected feelings.
Now all this mental clutter isn’t necessarily a problem, I suppose it depends on how you choose to look at why you were there in the first place. I do however wonder why we naturally filter out that information? I wonder if we simplify it because we cannot possibly process it all to satisfactory levels whilst there (it that just me?) maybe I need a few more slots of ram, or a better fan on my processor.
But seriously I feel analysis of the seemingly natural way our brains simplify any given experience into manageable chunks, offers us some incite as to a method of improving the ‘power’ in our photography.
A compositional tool that distills meaningful elements
The world is a complex place and the act of photographing it has a tendency to simplify our view on it. By choosing to narrow down the subjects, condensing the third and fourth dimension into two and directing the viewers attention onto a particular representation, is offering us an illusion on reality. A distorted view that has been manipulated by the photographer’s actions and thoughts, in a vague representation on a perceived, often overlooked reality. There is a common misinformed perception that photography is truth, but I digress.
If you use landscape painting as a convenient comparison and I’m thinking of artist such as (turner), the simplification of any given perception on reality, enables the artist an ability to distil the multitude of sensory data coming into the mind and focus on presenting only the ones that communicate the desired message/feelings they want to convey. The very act of rejecting elements is in fact paradoxically focusing deeper ones attention on the remaining.
When a shot is simplified, to clear compositional elements, the smallest details can possess greater power. A simple curve can become an overriding factor in the way your eye moves around the presented landscape. The shape and flow of that line, then has to be of impeccable clarity to retain its power. We as viewers linger longer on smaller elements, expecting and actually extracting more from them. The accomplished photographer, then, has primed the work for the viewer, without them even noticing. The ability for a photographer to expose us to the simplified view is then showing us that they are able to creatively distil the elements; it revels to us that we are looking at a skilled practitioner.
When looking at a successfully simplified photograph, I often get some sense of my eye moving over the scene in a controlled manor. It’s almost slowing the viewing process down and highlighting subtle nuances. The experience forces me to really LOOK at the image and draws my attention to normally overlooked elements. Playing with the juxtaposition of these simplified elements has in it hints of ambiguous purity, and when successfully accomplished it’s a powerful viewing experience.
It is also catalyzing a meditative state
We all seem to lead busy lives these days, attempting to squeeze multitudes of tasks and experiences in. Don’t get me wrong I’m the first to admit cramming my free time full of the things I want to do, places I want to photograph, (doesn’t the weekend wiz by), but are we not missing something along the way? It seems to me trying to reach out to wider and wider locations doesn’t necessarily mean greater rewards, as the essence of each place is being overpowered by its very complexity. Slowing down, concentrating on the elemental, gives the experience more depth. Letting your senses see, taste, smell, feel what it is that you’re doing enriches the experience. (For me that is).
Please don’t make the assumption that I’m arrogantly stating this is the only way to enjoy photography, because extracting pleasure in whatever form, is a respectable goal. But it is my intention, no, ‘need’ to dig deep, push my mind into new and uncharted territory, because I thrive on the unpredictable, and looking into oneself through the implementation and reflection of my photography, it’s definitely not simple but incredibly rewarding.
Taken from below at Butchart Gardens, where the subtle backlight emphasized the red of the maple seeds against the leaves. Simplified with Topaz to help bring out shapes and depth of what was a somewhat chaotic image.
Smile on Saturday "Seasonal Flora"
(Vancouver Island Trip 2018)
Glassblowing experience was one of the highlights of a family visit this week. This was one of the bowls. The joy was further extended by placing this on a light table and photographing it.
Ebey Landing State Park and Beach Fisherman in the late afternoon sun about an hour before sundown. Slight Topaz Simplify applied.
Actually there were wonderfully healthy looking Cormorants down there. But only one in this photograph.
There's a trick I use to check my long exposure quickly. Once the dark ND filters are on the lens I set the ISO to 6400 and make a shot (in this instance the exposure time was half a second). Have a look. Exposure ok? Focus fine? If good, then turn your seconds into minutes; return ISO to base; and let it go. So the next shot, at ISO100, could be 0.5 x 6400/100 (basically just simplify it to 0.5 x 60) = 30s (basically half a second turns into half a minute*).
But sometimes I discover I quite like the shot at ISO6400. Here I caught a nice wave rolling through and half a second worked quite well. That sucks because ISO6400 is noisy, isn't it. Or, maybe it doesn't suck that much these days. The noise isn't as serious as it used to be. And the pic next door was shot at ISO64 and ended up looking ancient since I've added noise in "to taste"!
* assuming your cameras base ISO is 100 or close enough to that. If your base ISO is 200 then, in this example, 0.5s would turn into 15s, not 30s. Or to make it sound so confusing, each second would turn into half a minute.
Sunrise on the Laratinga trail. A willow tree in a small creek. A touch of Color Efex glow and Topaz Simplify added in post.
Willows are not a native tree species to Australia but do often make a great .photo.
Like a great poet, Nature knows how to produce
the greatest effects with the most limited means.
~ Heinrich Heine
"Le persone dovrebbero mettere altrettanto ardore nel semplificare la loro vita quanto ce ne mettono a complicarla." Henri Louis Bergson
Saremmo tutti molto più felici se mettessimo in pratica questa idea... :)
Nella foto, dal mio archivio, una composizione minimal, con un cielo screziato di bianco ed un ramo. Che altro? :)
Buona giornata
©2010 João Paglione - All Rights Reserved
Visit my webpage www.joaopaglione.de to view images in larger resolution (full screen) or license them for editorial, commercial, or personal usage. Or e-mail me.
Any way you look at it, the S is a complicated letter. Not only is it one of the more challenging characters to draw, but the story of its evolution has more twists, turns, and reverses than its shape.
The serpentine saga of our 19th letter gets its first false start with the early Egyptians and their hieroglyph for the ‘s’ sound, which was a drawing of a sword. Later, in the Egyptians’ hieratic writing, the sword was simplified until it looked more like a short piece of barbed wire than a weapon of war. When the Phoenicians built their alphabet on the Egyptian model, they rotated the piece of barbed wire 90 degrees and called it “sameth,” which meant a post. The Greeks adopted this letter but not as a true ‘s’ sound. Consider this a major reversal in the evolutionary road.
At the same time that the Egyptians were using the symbol of a sword to represent the ‘s’ sound, they also used a drawing that represented a field of land to represent the ‘sh’ sound. Like other hieroglyphs, the field symbol was simplified during the transition to hieratic writing. But unfortunately for the Egyptian scribes, the symbol’s usage became more complex. The reason? The Egyptians allowed as many as nine different versions of the symbol to exist at the same time. There were so many, in fact, that one wonders how they kept track.
The Phoenicians dropped most of these Egyptian ‘sh’ characters and settled on something that looked like our W to represent the ‘sh’ sound in their language (the symbol, aptly, represented teeth). The Phoenicians called their version of the letter “shin” or “sin.”
The Greeks borrowed the shin from the Phoenicians but drew it with three, four, and sometimes even five strokes. In some cases it hardly resembled the original Phoenician symbol, but in each the basic zigzag shape of the letter was maintained. In its final Greek form the character became the sigma, which resembles our present capital M lying on its side.
The Romans used a form of the sigma, which omitted the lower horizontal stroke of the character and made it look a little like a backward Z. Over time, the Romans changed the sharp angles of the sigma into softer, rounded forms and finalized the letter into its current graceful shape.
Does the story of the S end here, with the ancient Romans? Not quite; there are still a few twists and turns left. In English manuscripts of the 17th century, a lowercase version of the letter was modified to look remarkably like our lowercase f and stood for the long ‘s’ sound. Even today, the German language uses a letter which resembles a capital B (probably made up of a long and a short s), to represent the double lowercase s in words like “Strasse” and “weiss.”
Te Aute, Hawke's Bay, New Zealand
I was watching a video today by a well know photographer showing how mist and fog can simplify an image by blocking out the distractions, and it reminded me that I have a whole lot of photos that I took in the mist one mid-winters morning that I have never shown, or even finished processing. So I thought I would finish one
The Brahmaputra is one of the major rivers of Asia, a trans-boundary river which flows through China, India and Bangladesh. It is known by various names in the region i.e. In India: Brahmaputra, and simplified Chinese: pinyin. It is the tenth largest river in the world by discharge, and the 29th longest.
This picture was captured in Guwahati during Brahmputra Festival.
The National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) (simplified Chinese: 国家大剧院; traditional Chinese: 國家大劇院; pinyin: Guójiā dà jùyuàn; literally: National Grand Theatre), and colloquially described as The Giant Egg (巨蛋), is an opera house in Beijing, People's Republic of China. The Centre, an ellipsoid dome of titanium and glass surrounded by an artificial lake, seats 5,452 people in three halls and is almost 12,000 m² in size. It was designed by French architect Paul Andreu. Construction started in December 2001 and the inaugural concert was held in December 2007.
This was taken from one of the trails in Killarney Park, I can't remember the trail name, but it was the one focused on Georgian Bay. This is the sun's last light hitting the landscape from a nice viewpoint on the trail. I was a bit late to do the entire trail before sunset, and the rocks on the trail were a bit hazardous and, added to that, it would be easy to get lost on this trail in the dark, so I headed back to the car after the sun went down. 75 second exposure.