Monthly Archives: January 2011
1/21/2011: Vegas Segment 4, Shadows
Shadows also speak of Vegas, or speak in Vegas. This is from the colonnade at the Venetian, where the stone screen casts shapes against the marble facade of the building itself. I totally confused about 50 tourists while attempting to shoot this. They could not figure out what I was doing, but they were polite enough not to walk into my camera line.
Canon SX20IS at 40mm equivalent, f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 100. Programmed auto.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.
1/20/2011: Vegas segment 3: curves
Vegas is a totally fabricated experience, and one in which each new fabricator feels the need to play with what everyone who passed that way before has done…adding effect to effect…until every juxtaposition is rich with intention. Or at least that is the way it can look. To me. I have the feeling that a trained eye should be able to trace the elaboration of form and light back to some essential center, to the original conjunction of two designing minds from which all this, over time, has sprung. Maybe somewhere around the Monte Carlo? I am certain it is all more random than that…but, being human, I will project order wherever possible, even if wildly unlikely.
This juncture of curves…and what the sun is doing with them on an early Vegas evening…arrested my eye long enough to record it with the little camera I had in my pocket, just in case.
Canon SD4000IS at about 105mm equivalent, f5.3 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 250. Programmed Auto.
Processed in Lighroom for intensity and clarity, and cropped slightly for composition.
1/19/2011: Vegas segment 2, reflections
Vegas is a city of illusions, and reflections are the stuff of illusions…as in smoke and mirrors…the stuff of Vegas. The architects who designed the newest hotels were obviously well aware of the power. The color contrasts and textures are no accident.
Canon SX20IS at about 240mm, f5 @ 1/320th @ ISO 200. Programmed auto.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.
1/18/2011: Las Vegas in Segments (small) 1
Okay, I will admit it…I can only take Las Vegas in tiny segments…little isolated segments, taken out of context, and capturing intentional or accidental beauty (or at least some kind of striking pattern or texture or light effect). So, since I am in Vegas, over the next few days you will be seeing a collection of such small segments…of Vegas…Vegas in Segments.
This is part of the facade of the Venetian Hotel, taken from Las Vegas Blvd. I like the pattern of stone and carving…but I like the play of light across the façade even more.
Canon SX20IS at 190mm, f5 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80. Programmed Auto.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom, and cropped for composition.
1/17/2011: Mountains for Carol
My wife Carol asked for pics of mountains from my trip to Vegas…but the views from Vegas are not so much…so this is truly a snapshot, with the iPhone 4, out the window of the airplane. But it is mountains…and it is for Carol. 😉
I am not even sure what mountains these are…somewhere about 45 minutes short of Vegas. You can see the stripes of my shirt reflected in the window. Color is always problematic out the window of a plane, as the mulitple layers of Plexiglas do strange things. This is B&W conversion using the high-contrast blue filter effect.
iPhone 4.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity, and converted to B&W.
1/16/2011: Venice?
When you read this I will staying at the Venetian Hotel, and walking by this scene every day on my way to and from the Sands Convention Hall…deep in the elaborate fantasy that is Las Vegas, Nevada. The expensive fantasy, designed specifically to separate folks from their hard earned cash, by promises of cash unearned, and pleasures without price. Not a place for Sunday thoughts, but I am always amazed that if you look kind of sideways at Vegas, determined to overlook the whole “sin city” thing, there is a considerable amount of beauty there. Take the scene above. Consider the creative energy and the love of form and color…the attention to detail and design…that went into manufacturing this little slice of Venice inside a hotel. Extravagant? Certainly. Fantastic? Absolutely. But then consider…where this stands is a short helicopter ride from the north rim of the Grand Canon. If you want to talk about extravagance and fantasy, that is.
Wonder is wonder…it all belongs to the creator, no matter how deeply the hand of man is in it…what has beauty proclaims the spirit at its root. Or that is what I think anyway. And maybe thinking that will keep me more or less sane for a week in “sin city.”
Sony H50 and Sanyo GC10. Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.
1/15/2011: boardwalk in the snow
When this first posts tomorrow morning, I will be, most likely, at Newark Airport, between flights, on my way to Las Vegas (working trip…which is the only way you will ever get to Las Vegas!).
This is Saco Heath again…the boardwalk under snow. There is as much snow on either side, but the blueberry and rhodora bushes hide it well. We got another 16 inches or so the day before yesterday, so it might look different now. :).
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent, f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 80. Snow Mode. The camera was resting on my glove on the snow and I used the flip out LCD to frame.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.
1/14/2011: You can’t keep a good moss down!
The boggy fir forest that surrounds Saco Heath is always an interesting place. The water there must be on the warm side, perhaps from the peat decomposition, because despite several inches of snow covering the forest floor, there were these little bare patches of moist moss showing in odd spots. The contrast of bright green with the snow and old oak leaves is what caught my eye here. Then it was just a matter of framing it.
Canon SX20IS at 360mm equivalent, f5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 160. Snow Mode.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.
1/13/2011: Trailing Pine in Snow
Another from our short visit to Saco Heath last Sunday. We always called this trailing pine, but a look to Google identifies it as Ground Pine, a clubmoss, and a member of the fern family. It has a long horizontal growth below ground, and sends up these vertical branches every 6 to 12 inches. Here a single vertical is isolated against the snow.
I have put the B&W version first today, but this is another case where I am not certain which one I like best. The B&W is processed in Lightroom, using the B&W Look 3 filter.
The B&W emphasizes, of course, form. The color plays on contrast. I like them both, but in this case I lean toward the color version. Color processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.
Canon SX20IS at about 400mm equivalent, f5.0 @ 1/200th @ ISO 200. Snow Mode.
1/12/2011: macro flora of the Heath
Certainly this is the only plant flowering in January at Saco Heath, and you have to look down in the cracks between the broken boards of the boardwalk to find it. Not that it is hard to find. That red really stands out, especially against the dusting of snow down there in the crack.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent and Super Macro, f2.8 @ 1/400th @ ISO 160, Programmed auto.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.