Blue flowers

by Posted in Flowers, Nature Leave a comment
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I came across these blue flowers (weeds?) almost directly across the road from my house. Something about them reminded me of old autochrome images I had seen and loved in the Metropolitan Museum, NY.

According to the National Gallery of Art:

The Autochrome, a positive color transparency on glass, was invented by Auguste and Louis Lumière in 1907 and manufactured by them until 1933. Autochromes were made by coating a glass plate with a sticky varnish and dusting it with a layer of randomly distributed, translucent potato-starch grains. These grains, which were dyed red-orange, violet, and green, were then interspersed with fine black carbon dust, and again varnished. The plates were next coated with a light-sensitive gelatin silver-bromide or silver-iodide emulsion. When the plate was inserted into a camera, the light from the lens passed through the dyed starch grains, which acted as color filters before reaching the emulsion. After exposure, the plate was processed to make a unique, full-color, positive silver image.

Autochromes have a hazy, ethereal-looking quality, like a painting that isn’t actually a painting that is (at least in my experience) impossible to duplicate in digital photography, although the picture above comes close.

Incidentally isn’t “Lumière”, the name of the creators of the process a wonderful name in this context. If you don’t understand French the word means “light”.

Taken with a Sony A77II and Minolta 50mm f2.8 Macro lens

Around the Neighborhood – All Saints Episcopal Church Interior

by Posted in Buildings/Structures Leave a comment
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I’ve already done a couple of posts (see here and here) showing the exterior of this church. Unfortunately that’s usually all that I get as the churches are generally closed when I go by. On this occasion, however, I was sitting with my dog in the very pleasant garden when a man came out of the church. He came over to pet Harley and and we got talking. His name is Ken and he’s the church sexton so I asked him if it would be possible for me to go inside the church and take some pictures. Unfortunately I had the wrong camera/lens combination so I went home (which is luckily only about a five minute walk away) and got another camera and lens. Returning to the church I discovered that I’d left the SD card from this camera in the card reader so I didn’t have a memory card. I didn’t want to go home again so I told him I’d come back another day. And that’s what I did.

The church has a nice warm feel to it and the stained glass windows are nice, particularly the rose window by Tiffany.

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Taken with a Fuji X-E1, Fuji XC 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 OSS II and Fuji XF 35mm f1.4 R

The Photographic Eye

by Posted in Photographers, Photography Leave a comment

A while back I bumped into this photographer on Youtube. His name is Alex Kilbee and his channel is rather different. Most photography related channels focus on gear. Camera reviews, what’s the best camera, best lens etc. He describes his channel as follows:

A channel dedicated to helping you discover more about the art and history of photography, so you can become a better photographer.

I am Alex, and I’ve been fortunate to be a professional photographer now for around 30 years.

Having a wider appreciation of the art of photography is the key to creating photographs that stand out from the crowd and speak with your own unique voice. Think of this channel as a free course in learning how to speak visually through your photography.

This recent video (above) is a good example. In it he considers why it is that Youtube tends to largely show the gear related content. He provides information on other photographers who provide other photographic content (some of which I already knew, a number I didn’t). Then, based on his knowledge of the Youtube algorithm he explains how you can get Youtube to show you more non-gear related content.

Great stuff! Take a look at his other videos.