In the bleak mid-autumn.

It's interesting, keeping up with photography trends. Back when I first decided to really focus on my own photography, around 2010, it was ultra-trendy to give pics of people and places a vintage look in post-processing. By 2014 the look was closer to matte in vintage tones; now we have an emergence of the film look imposed onto digital photos. I've enjoyed it all!

I will note the heinous HDR fad, in full force by 2010, which placed a high emphasis on bringing up the shadows so that the entire photo had essentially the same exposure level. The problem with HDR processing (which, in basic form, requires taking at least two photos (but up to six or seven) of the exact same scene using different exposure levels, and then blending them together in post-proc) was that it so often gave the finished product a painterly look at very best, and a hellish cartoon appearance at very worst.

And photogs loved it. The weirder the HDR, the better for some of them. It was about doing something new (as all fashion is), rather than faithfully rendering a scene. No true scene - especially in nature where the majority of HDR work was focused - is without shadows. And as time wore on, the fad wore out; full-frame DSLR cameras became sophisticated enough to capture enough detail in the highlights and shadows of a scene that you can now simply adjust them in Lightroom or Photoshop (without the shitty HDR look). And, as fashion always does, the trend swung back to including both light and shadow in photos once again, but this time using new processing techniques to an overall greater effect.

But this post isn't about HDR; I just had to bash it real quick because I hated it so much and I'm glad it met its demise.

Mingo Falls

Since I mostly follow professional photographers on Instagram, I've noticed the film trend for about a year now. The funny thing about vintage and matte and film presets is that until very recently, I think it was pretty much frowned upon to use them on nature photography. But the influencers will not be silenced. And though I'm usually in favor of just processing the photo to where it looks the way it did with the naked eye, I can't help but be drawn to using the film look on my own recent stuff...

High Falls

Last month I road-tripped to Asheville, NC to photograph the fall color in the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains. Alas, the foliage schedule was completely off due to a rainy summer and very warm September, but since I know Murphy's Law is real, I planned to visit mostly waterfalls so that it wouldn't matter if the leaves had turned (and they hadn't).

So, I've been post-processing away on them for a few weeks now, and in that time stumbled upon a small photo company whose film presets package was at like a 90% discount so I bought it. The preset used in the photos in this post is called 'Aged Grit.' As you can see, its defining feature is taking the color green and turning it to the color yellow. *evil laugh*

Near Glen Falls

But I also will always say when I've processed a photo beyond the point that someone could achieve on their own without a preset or some other trick. I actually was hard at work figuring out the tone tweaking necessary to get the 'look' I was seeing on Instagram, till I realized they are using presets like the rest of us (even if they made the preset themselves, which I super respect).

Qualla, NC

That's enough unasked-for rambling from me. :)

Them's the breaks.

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying."

~ Robert Herrick, British poet, from "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time"

In three-part harmony.

You are my sunshine
My only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You'll never know dear
How much I love you
So please don't take my sunshine away

****

The other night, dear
While I was sleeping
I dreamt I held you in my arms
When I awoke, dear, I was mistaken
So I hung
My head
And cried

Becoming...a better photog?

I'm excited. I'm about to share with you all some photographs I took during college. These actually were also a part of an art exhibit I did sophomore year (don't be fooled, I lived in a fine arts dorm and they had a little room...)

I've been thinking recently about if and how my camera skills have gotten better over the years. The pictures below are those I considered some of the best I'd ever taken--by the time I was 20. I had a Kodak Advantix camera, which, if you'll recall, was a big deal because of the "drop and load" function for film canisters. (Easier to load - harder to develop, trust me!) It could do crazy things like turn black and white photography into a study in history. But, as basically the point-and-shoot of yesteryear, it had its limitations also.

Now, they have a slightly grainy quality (which you may or may not be able to see) because they're actually scans of the real thing that I had put on a CD so that I could work with them online. But that kind of makes them even cooler, because there's an age attached to them, unlike purely digital photography. I did adjust the color saturation a bit since you always lose something in the transfer.





















I upgraded in 2005 to a 35mm Minolta, getting it for about $170 on overstock.com instead of at its regular price of almost $450. I got a digital Canon Powershot in 2006 (on a whim, as I was out of town and without my Minolta), and as you all know just purchased my latest one, a Fujifilm Finepix that I love to death. I ordered prints online at Walgreens yesterday for about fifty of my favorite photos from my NC vacation, and could not be more thrilled. The quality is sublime, and the detail, especially around edges, is ridiculous.

Anyway, I decided that I've always had a pretty good eye for photography. There were a few clunkers in that long-ago exhibit that I can only see now as "not that great." But mostly for me, it's just a matter of progressing in terms of camera quality and really cracking the whip and learning the fundamentals.