Favorites

It's getting close to the end.  In celebration and thanks, I'm sharing some of my favorite photos that I've taken over the years.  It's a rare opportunity to share some moments of great light - and just plain great timing.  I've tried to keep an eye out for interesting lighting scenes.  Please comment and share your thoughts:

I chose this photo because, in a way, it tells a story of light.  Mike appears almost as a ghost.

This is also Mike.  Hi, Mike.  This was taken before I really understood concepts like digital noise, but, at the time, I was struck by the redness of the photo and the lonely feeling it evokes.

An example of what I might call "creative lens flare," this was taken in the Adirondacks of upstate New York.

This picture really shows a separated light spectrum, and it's obviously a happy mistake.

A cool stage design by Daniel Hiudt, a Full Sail graduate and successful lighting designer now working for Papadosio on tour.

Who wouldn't love this picture?  A lot of color.  And there're Teletubbies in the background.

A friend of mine and her sun, this, to me, shows that color isn't needed to evoke happiness and warmth in a photo.

Whoa.  Adorable.

The world is calling.

I almost died getting this photo, but since I didn't I'll say it was worth it.  Not so sure it would have been worth dying for, though.

A foreboding scene, this picture of Blueberry Hill in Rockport, Maine could be framed a bit better, but, I think, it almost asks the viewer to reframe it and pulls in by doing so.

A nice sunrise in Fort Myers, Florida.  The light was just right.

Three AM in Naples, FL on a moonlit night.  It doesn't make much light to get a decent photo.

A summer afternoon in Naples.  Although this couple is kayaking, only darker colors are visible, giving the kayakers the appearance of floating.

A cool shot of a laser at a rave.  Or something like a rave.  I was just there to take pictures.

 I like the way the shadows unfold behind these friends of mine.  Picture was taken from a tree, and the photos make the contours of the rock really stark.

When I said earlier that some photos are really just about great timing, this is what I meant.  This photo, while relatively unremarkable in its lighting, captures the sculptor and sculpture in almost the same pose.  The picture wasn't set-up - the sculptor was giving a speech about his work and I happened to snap a photo when he accidentally happened to give us a glimpse into his mind.  This picture really shows how the mind and spirit of an artist is captured in his or her work.

A change in the light...

       As this class comes to an end, I've been thinking about some of my past pictures in a new light (puns are fun, hehe).  This picture has always caught my eye…..it's not so much that I like it as I'm stuck by the difference between the scene as it was translated in my eye versus how it translated in the lens of the camera.  When I took this photo, I was relatively unimpressed with the view before me; the light was dull and dreary, it was raining lightly, and the building that takes center stage is abandoned and dilapidated.  The picture, though, seems to be well balanced.  I'm not sure why this picture stands out so much to me; I think it was an "ah-hah!" moment, a moment when I realized all that a lens can do for a scene.  The end result with this picture is a scene of relative calm and balance….the light seems to be more vibrant than I remember, and the building has lost its sense of foreboding.  In my next post I'm going to post some of my all-time favorite pictures and hopefully they will demonstrate an eye for more interesting subjects and landscapes.  This picture, though, is a reminder of how light can change the feelings and emotions evoked by a scene.
      Of course, it could be my memory that has been changed by the light as with the mice in my previous post.  Hmm….

Light and Memory

      I'm not sure if this qualifies as "observing light," but there's an interesting article in today's (August 31st, 2014) Naples Daily News (NDN) about using light to change memory - i.e, to make a good memory a negative one, or vise versa.  "The findings in the journal Nature," says NDN, "show that memories can potentially be modified without drugs or extra training - simply, if that's the word, by breaking the memory into its components in the brain and rewiring the faulty connection."
      Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) exposed two separate groups of mice to either a positive experience (spending time with female mice), or a negative experience (light electrical shocks to the feet).  After exposure to these good and and bad experiences, researchers would expose the mice to a bright blue light.  The mice who received the electrical shocks ran and cowered from the light, apparently fleeing memories triggered by the blue hue. Conversely, the male mice exposed to the female population (a good memory) basked in the light, again seemingly reminded of their experience by the strange-colored light.
      Here's where it gets cool: now that our mice have an association with blue light and either a positive or negative memory, can we switch or reverse their reaction to the blue light?  The answer seems to be "yes."  Using the mice exposed to the females, researchers now exposed the mice to electrical shocks and blue light simultaneously.  The result was somewhat expected, and very-thought provoking: the mice started to associate the blue light with their new, negative experiences, despite being exposed to the light for roughly the same amount of time in both positive and negative situations.  The researchers could then reverse the memory a third time, a fourth, a fifth, and in each group equally.
      The implications, then, are that memory is malleable.  We can, at one point in time, positively associate something in our lives that, at another time, might terrify or enrage us.  This suggests that our memory is not linear, like a movie, but is rather like a lump of clay that can be reshaped and remade over, and over again.

For Show Pro Mafia News, I'm Aaron Golly.

The Lady in Granite

All of these pictures are from Penn Yan Cemetery in Penn Yan, New York.  This tombstone, or rather the entity inside the tombstone, is known as the "Lady in Granite."  The face-like blemish on the granite appeared several years after the tombstone was placed over a female murder victim and her husband-turned-murderer as they lay side by side.  As a result of the "eyesore" created by the blemish, the tombstone was replaced with a new piece of rock.  This rock, complete with blemish just as it's always been, is the new tombstone.  It took about two years for the blemish to reappear.  In exactly the same place as the old one.  

Although the sky looks orange in these pictures, it was actually a moonless night.  The shutter had to be open for several minutes to capture these images, and we used a little help from our flashlights.

 Here she is: the Lady in Granite!  Most say her mouth is open, as if screaming, and can be seen in the bottom left area of the blemish.  Do you see the face in the light?

 A very bright star-lit shot.  The shutter was open for over 4 minutes!

This is the one where I turned into a zombie and took pictures of myself.  The light went right through me.  Literally.  

Hehe. Lights and Laughs.

A 450 nanometer photon walks into a bar.  The bartender says, "hey chum, why so blue?"

A Photon walks into a bar.  The bartender says "what'll it be, sir?"  The Photon says, "light beer, please."

A photon in a hurry takes a second to read the sign on the door of a bar.  It reads: NO LIGHTSPEED TRAVEL.  A photon walks into a bar….

Showing movement

I really like using light to show movement.  In the first picture here, Steph is apparently really interested in Mike's face and is examining it.  And, thanks to a few trapped photons (really, trapped LEDs that give us the illusion of a trapped photon) we can see her story of curiosity laid out behind her.

In this second pic, Steph has jumped into Mike's arms, and we can see most of the action.  The low light coming from the visible lamp in the picture allowed the lighting conditions around us to use some ambient light in capturing these short long-exposure shots (1 - 2 seconds, I believe).

Laughin' at Photons. Silly Photon.

A Photon checks into a hotel.  The bellhop walks to the Photon and asks, "do you have any bags, sir?  The Photon replies, "No. I'm traveling light."  HA!

Some Strange Pictures of Aliens (I think)

      So, once again, I was going back through old photos and found these little guys.  They caught my eye in relation to a discussion on light for several reasons: first and foremost, they were taken with a different camera than the one I use now.  I currently shoot a Nikon D5200, but these were shot with my 'training wheels' camera, a Sony A330.  The Sony's aperture settings were not as robust as the Nikon's, requiring that I open the aperture pretty far to let enough light into the lens for a night shot.  That, combined with a long shutter speed, gives us this somewhat blurry, somewhat washed-out image that is somehow intriguing.

      Immediately I am struck by the bands of purple light radiating from where our headlamps sit atop our heads.  The light that is emitted from these lights is, by all accounts, a bright white light.  However, I believe because they operate with an LED bulb, the camera is able to explain to us that we're actually seeing blue and/or purple at a very high temperature.

      If you scroll to the second picture, you may notice the white lines crisscrossing the tread of my boot.  Here, we see white light reflected back from the snow.  Some of the light must mix with the red light from the fire, as the soles of my boots appear red, but are actually black.

      The light trail created by James' cup as he takes a sip of whiskey is also cool.  It tells a story of light.  It's the story of a photon who got mixed up with the wrong crowd and couldn't shake the bottle.  I haven't seen that photon in a while, but I hope he got his act together.  Photons should be free, I think, to float about time and space.  They should not be forever stuck in a whiskey glass.  I guess the world is a dangerous place for photons.

Temporary Irony

      This is a pretty cool shot.  The sun is behind me, causing the greens, reds, and yellows of the picture to really "pop" at us.  A lone light is seen lower right center standing as an ode to temporary irony and our country's flag blows gently in the wind as if to say, "yeah, it's storming over that way, but look how pleasant, sunny, and lightly breezy it is here.  Let's just chill here, guys."  The trees are lit in such a way that we feel as though the sky should be blue, but, obviously, it's gloomy and grey.  All in all, there's a good amount going on in this shot that at first glance looks very dull and uneventful.

Ghost Palm

      The only difference between these pictures is the shutter speed and aperture settings (except the one that looks like a sketch which I've included because….well, because it's pretty awesome and came directly from my camera, no photoshop [which would be cheating]).   My favorite here is the first, where a small aperture setting and slow shutter speed give us a wide range of focus, while still filtering enough light to give a sense of the time of day.  

        The reflections coming from the palm tree add some diffuse light rays to the shot.  You might notice, though, that the ghost palm (I'm calling the reflected palm tree the ghost palm) is growing a real, live coconut!  We're all very happy for it.

Wow!

Wow.

This picture was taken at 3:00am about twelve miles south of Naples.  The yellow light above the kayak is light pollution from Naples, the white light in the sky is moonlight, and the boat is illuminated by a flashlight while the shutter is open.  The light on the boat really draws one's eye to the kayak as its main object of interest.  This is in contrast to an earlier post with a picture from the same place in which the sky is the object of focus because the kayak is not illuminated.

I. Am. Kayak.

      This is one of my favorite pictures.  Although the moon looks round in this picture, it was actually quite slim when it was taken.  Because the light levels were so low around us we had to leave the shutter open for over a minute to get this result.  The result, though, is quite pleasing.  Geoff's stance captures the essence of night kayaking, his shadow in the moonlight is very well defined, and he seems to be paying homage to the light (because without that little sliver of moonlight, we'd have to use our headlamps which would both ruin our vision over distance as the beam fades, and hinder the ability of our rods to see through the dark.

Happy Accidents...

      With the exception of the first of the following pictures, these pictures were mostly happy mistakes. Number 5, for example, is the head of a friend who danced away from my picture quickly, but not before giving me the weird image you see here.  We can also see some red lens flare coming from the photo that works to contrast the green.  Ultimately, it's probably good the shot was a happy mistake because I don't think Lauren would have appreciated being lit in green.

        I have included the first picture (directly below) to demonstrate how light movement can either increase or decrease color temperature.  The dancer on the left has kept his LED's in a tighter circle than the dancer on the right, resulting in a higher color temperature in the photo as a result of more direct light coming through the lens.  His head, you will notice, is very hilarious-looking.

      The last (sixth) picture is a good example of contrast.  The blue is broken up and offset by red and green, creating a more interesting image than if we had a blue wash.

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Changing lighting environments without changing light on the ground….

      These pictures were taken outside of my apartment a few nights ago.  The light, in my opinion, demonstrates some interesting points.  As we move from a monochrome setting on the Nikon to a more colorful, realistic image, we see that the tone (or mood) of the pictures change from almost nostalgic and sad, to a more sinister feel.  

The greyscale palette of this first picture makes it seem very out-of-place; the camo hat and modern t-shirt tell us that it was either taken recently or that Joe was a hundred years ahead of popular clothing styles for his day.  Barring the second option, we can see how modern photography can manipulate time and place settings, even creating paradoxes between miss-en-scene and camera settings.

In this second picture some warmth comes back into the image as yellow and white, albeit dull, light becomes visible….

In this third picture, we see the color temperature increase across the red spectrum which, as we know from class, will cause our heart rate to rise, the hairs on the back of neck to stand up, and our minds to become more alert.  The sharp lines between light and shadow gives this picture a sense of wonder, as well.  The subject looks "boxed-in" by the wall of darkness behind him.  Lines of light can be seen in the background that act almost as sentinels (or maybe monsters) guarding the line between light and dark.    

Initially with these photos I was trying to make my shadow look as though it were swinging in the shadow of the hanging chain between the two posts in front of- and behind me.  The picture doesn't work as well artistically as I had hoped, but we have still successfully captured a variety of lighting environments without actually changing the light on the ground or moving the camera.  Neat!

Fishing for Pitch Black (almost had it. Darn! Lol)

      Some friends and I went fishing recently and I fought some cool images of complete blackness behind a subject:

In theses, we obviously see the subject as the flash illuminates the foreground, but the lighted area quickly gives way to complete blackness as the Gulf of Mexico unfolds in the background.

In this slightly out-of-focus picture, Ryan holds a baby shark (that we made of him relentlessly for), while blackness again is the dominating feature of the background.

      In order to capture a crisp foreground, it was important to use the flash and sacrifice what would have been an otherwise beautiful stars cape behind my subjects,  Alas, a lengthy shutter speed would have meant blurred subjects, and who wants that?

Fishing for Reflections...

I thought I'd play around a bit with reflections of light, and wound up with these pictures after a day of fishing with a friend of mine:

Obviously these are black and white, but you can see the ocean waves hitting the shore behind the photographer.  They also bend around the convex lens, giving them "coming at you" feeling.

In this picture there is less emphasis on the ocean in the background, and more on the trees to the right of the picture.  The lens bend light from the subject's immediate left (right of the photographer), and capture a part of the scene that would not normally be there.

Any electricians in the house? Sue, you'd be good at fixing this, right?

This isn't exactly a lighting-specific post, but I thought I'd share another country's interpretations of acceptable electrical wiring:

Stunning, isn't it?  I wouldn't want to be the electrician in charge of this mess.  Picture was taken in New Delhi, India.

Mountains like Candlesticks…Just Add Sun

So, once again, I thought I'd go back through some old pictures that I thought had some interesting light characteristics….

In this picture we can see the sun on its way over the horizon, but it hasn't quite poked over the top yet….

A minute or two later, though, we see the sun beginning to hit the peaks behind us, creating a very distinct line between light and shadow on the far peak.

      The overall effect is somewhat surprising to me.  Despite the fact that the pictures were taken at near the same moment in time, the second of the two looks very bright as the sun's rays hit the rubble immediately in front of us.  However, in the second pic, 

the suns shadows block out almost detail looking East.