Symmetry - Let's go digital for a change!

I've loved mandalas since i first set eyes on one. 

Incredibly detailed, psychedelically colorful, mind boggling, and entrancing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala

"A mandala (Sanskrit: मण्डल, lit, circle) is a spiritual and ritual symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism, representing the universe.[1] In common use, "mandala" has become a generic term for any diagram, chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically; a microcosm of the universe.

The basic form of most mandalas is a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point. Each gate is in the general shape of a T.[2][3] Mandalas often exhibit radial balance.[4]

The term appears in the Rigveda as the name of the sections of the work, but is also used in other religions and philosophies, particularly Buddhism.

In various spiritual traditions, mandalas may be employed for focusing attention of practitioners and adepts, as a spiritual guidance tool, for establishing a sacred space, and as an aid to meditation and trance induction".

A few years ago i started doing symmetrical images in Photoshop:

I have loads of sky photos, that was the starting point. Then I continued adding things to the images:

And reshaping them any which way that occurred to me.

I quote Robert Rauschenberg in my artist statement:

(http://www.bobbennettphoto.net/statemnt.html)

"I think it was Robert Rauschenberg (correct me, someone/anyone, if my attribution is wrong) who said it best - "It starts by YOU telling the picture what it will be -- in the end, THE PICTURE tells you what IT will be...".

I also have several boxes of things I've collected thru the years, from walks on the beach - stones, bones, shells, these are a small part of my 'visual library' so to speak.

I guess maybe i could call them 'modern mandalas.'

This takes you to a portfolio page of images:

http://www.bobbennettphoto.net/Symmetry/index.html

http://www.bobbennettphoto.net/SymmetryHowTo/index.html

This goes to a 'how to' page, showing how i built this image:

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And now a few words about my books:

(Check 'em out - i doubt you will be disappointed.)

After many years of making darkroom photomontage (since the late 80's), and not being able to get arrested for it except for a few appearances in competitive group shows, and some assignment illustrations in various magazines ....I am designing & publishing books I make at Blurb with 'Bookify' - two of them are on Amazon, one is at Blurb.

'California Beach Trip':

On Amazon:

www.amazon.com/dp/1364579138

'Desert Trip'

On Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1367900190

This includes an image i have recently posted, titled 'Desert Time'.

'Seeking the Vibe'

On Blurb:

http://www.blurb.com/b/6834807-seeking-the-vibe

Previews of all at:

http://www.bobbennettphoto.net/BB_Books/index.html

As the Terminator most famously said: "Ah'll be back"

Temporary shelter - more darkroom

A tent is a temporary shelter, I didn't know what event this was set up for, but it is obviously temporary.

A tent of some sort i shot somewhere in the Presidio in SF, dodged out the top and burned in a sky, with a line of clouds at the bottom that corresponded to the beginning of the top of the tent. Here's my crude photoshop sketch.

This is one where dodging/burning in *just the right way* is really important. Did three prints, all a bit different. Can't decide which is best. Did them all in less than 2 hrs.
In the sketch, you can't see the top of the pole that holds the rope, but for the print I decided to keep it. Don't know why, it just felt right, there needed to be that 'anchor' of sorts.

I guess this one asks a question - we erect shelters of various sorts, but how long-standing are they, any of them?
The sky? Why do i call that 'temporary'? Because it obviously is - sit down, cast your gaze up and watch it morph from moment to moment. At least it does where I live near the California coast where weather is constantly moving in from over the ocean.
Ah, but the sky is a shelter too. On the splash image header on my western skies blog:

http://californiasilverwizard-westernskies.blogspot.com/

......the text reads "we are protected by a thin skin of atmosphere that shields us from who knows what radiation/etc, and transports moisture, and produces rain around the globe - without it? we would be toast, like Mars.
And you've probably seen the images beamed back from NASA's great vehicle on Mars. The Mojave is most considerable hospitable compared to this. For one thing, it's got a (breathable for humans) atmosphere.
The sky is perhaps a much more important shelter than whatever we build will ever be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_Atmosphere
Our atmosphere now?
78% Nitrogen, 21% oxygen

I read somewhere that at 20 % oxygen? ...nothing would burn.
So much for cooking much of anything.

At 25% oxygen? EVERYthing would burn.
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I like birds. Use 'em in my montage work from time to time.

I grew up in Maine, in a small town. In winter i would wander down to the end of my street, which opened into farmland - there were only a few colors - white=snow, green = pine trees, blue = sky.
And also black = crows.
So I saw this in the NYT Science section, I definitely clicked on the link to the article.
"When Birds Squawk, Other Species Seem to Listen"

By CHRISTOPHER SOLOMONMAY 18, 2015
'Inside' -  NYTimes

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/19/science/decoding-the-cacophony-of-birds-warning-calls.html

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Here's some awesome improvisation/ temporary art from a guy I've mentioned in this blog before:

http://abc7news.com/hobbies/sand-artist-creates-impressive-display-in-sf/704533/

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"Click Here for the Beach"
By John Guida and Sara Barrett
May 5, 2015 2:39 pm

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/click-here-for-the-beach/?_r=0

In his book “The Mysterious Opacity of Other Beings,” the photographer Richard Misrach offers a unique beach experience. The bird’s-eye images of swimmers, sunbathers and expanses of beach and ocean were taken by Mr. Misrach on a digital camera from a hotel balcony in Honolulu.

How 'bout some mo' Digital?

Gotta keep blowing my own horn for a while about my book.
Here's a preview:
http://www.blurb.com/books/5470637-a-walk-on-the-california-coast 
Or take a look at the B&W montage images done 16 yrs ago that are the foundation for the booK: 
www.californiabeachtrip.com

Time for some more digital. I am still having fun with symmetry, let's look at two of those. But I also have an occasional montage that's not symmetrical, we'll check that out too.

First the symmetry.

I took a walk along a road that follows a bay in San Rafael into a neighborhood I had not visited before, it had a completely different feel from the downtown area I usually spend my time. There were lots of very nice houses on the waterfront, with some colorful exotic plants next to the sidewalk, and many marine/boating businesses. Climbing up the hills are various funky places, to my eastern sensibilities, very amusing, lots of character. It's been 22 years since i moved here, i am still getting used to it, and enjoying the surprises of 'west coast' style.

I'm not usually one for flowers, but I do really like succulents, palms, other plants that I never saw on the east coast, where i spent my first 40 years.

So here's how one image came about, I started w/ a simple shot of a flower:

I cropped it with the idea that the leaf at top left would be at the center...

... and duplicated that 3 times to come up with this 'kaleidiscope' image. 

It could use another layer of something... i chose a succulent, but used a cropped version to fill 2 quadrants of the image, flopped that to cover the other two. Set that layer at less than 100% transparency...  Then added a sunburst in the center. 

I called it 'done'.

Second one was a bit more complicated, but it's more of the same thing.

I suggest you go to the page at my website at the bottom of the post to get all the down and dirty details. I like to keep these posts a bit lean so that anyone can read easily no matter how slow their web connection is, and if you want to explore further, you can, but it's optional, I don't want to clog your browser.

Last but not least? China Beach Pier.

Funny how intuition and that 'sixth sense' can work. I visited a place called China Camp, east of San Rafael proper, juts out into the bay. It's a state park that has been fitfully maintained, the camp the Chinese made is poorly kept up. But being Chinese? it survives in spite of all..... I took a few frames.

One of the pier from inside a building, the other of sunlit hi-lites on the water through openings in the building wall. Yes, a star-cross filter got into the act on that one, i just held it in front of the lense.  I sandwiched just two frames, on a whim. They *flew*. I like that. I think perhaps what this montage says is.. there is 'light at the end of the tunnel'. Find it, it's there.

As always, larger images at a page on my website:

www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_2014/WheresTheDigital/3.html

The 'whatever catches my eye' file has been lean lately, but this one is worth it:

Duane Michals

(My browser had trouble w/ both the pages below - web designers are getting too full of themselves, too fancy, and the code they write sometimes goes awry. i hope you can get to the meat of this w/ out too much BS. As a copywriter i used to work with just outside Wash. DC would say about his parties in Baltimore - 'it's worth the schlep'. Some things are. Yup.)

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/duane-michals-looking-back-moving-forward/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/duane-michals-looking-back-moving-forward/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1&#slideshow/100000003204912/100000003204968

It's the sequential images that 'zoom out' so to speak that struck me - #9-17

this one is pretty good too, a dedicated darkroom dude:

http://laurentgirard.blogspot.com/

I'll be back in a month w/ some darkroom, unless i am dead.

Another digital montage post

There will be a link to a page on my website at the end of the post that will have larger images, screen shots of the PSD files showing the layer palette and small PSD files you can download.
The first 2 images to discuss are digital shots of the sun, which i liked for the starcross thing (didn't need a filter to do this - dig camera lenses suck, and do this with no help), but needed to change them a bit so i could drop it into anything else with mucho flexbility. I wanted a light one, and a dark one.
For the light one the capture had a major flaw, there were some palm tree leaves in one image at the edge of the frame.

So I copied part of the image, flipped it horizontally and merged the two. Then i copied that layer, flipped it vertically and that finished it off - almost. Then i used a white circular gradient ( from transparent to 100%) and it was done.

The other one, similar technique - copy, flip, merge, copy and flip again. 

Here's the starting point:

Here's where i ended up:

(I also hit this one w/ a severe 'Hue/Saturation' layer to play up
all the wierd things these cheap digital camera lenses do.
Whatever lands in your lap, do something with it, ya know?)

So now that I had some nice 'suns' what did i do with them?

Added one of them to a rather dark and somewhat ominous sky symmetry... with some waves dropped in and copied and flipped symmetrically. The 'icing' on the cake was one of the suns.
I used the same approach as other 'symmetry' images, copying layers, flipping horizontal and vertical, lining them all up (use 'guides' in P'shop, and make the 'snap to guides' option active, (it's in the 'view' menu choice on the top of the menu bar) they are very handy :-) ) They ain't perfect, so enlarge image to 100% in the navigator, and push the layer back and forth until the seam is purrr-fect.

Larger images, and screen shots of the psd files with the layers palette, and downloads of psd files at:
www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_2014/WheresTheDigital/2.html

In the 'whatever catches my eye' file this month:

www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2014/04/09/robert_adams_the_place_we_live_is_a_retrospective_of_adams_s_work_that_covers.html

In other beach and ocean related news:

http://blog.sfgate.com/stienstra/2014/04/26/orcas-attack-gray-whales-in-monterey-bay-11-pics

https://travel.yahoo.com/photos/america-s-most-scenic-waterside-drives-1397785187-slideshow/

While we are exploring the ocean depths w/ incredible new technology:
http://news.yahoo.com/deep-expedition-seeks-life-ocean-trench-135005336.html


.....sometimes something amazing just 'falls into our hands', so to speak:

Scientists amazed by accidental Gulf catch of second-ever goblin shark
Heather Alexander, Houston Chronicle

Updated 11:05 am, Friday, May 2, 2014

http://www.sfgate.com/news/nation-world/article/Scientists-amazed-by-accidental-Gulf-catch-of-5448545.php

But some news ain't good at all:

 http://www.slate.com/articles/video/science/2014/05/human_trash_on_the_ocean_floor_garbage_patch_in_the_pacific_is_only_the.html

And last but not least one small nugget of wisdom:

Enjoy life - this is not a rehearsal.

...and 'trashing the planet' (as noted above) is not a rehearsal at all.

In fact it is the first act in a tragedy, still unfolding.
I don't think we have a clue. Dinosaurs lasted for millions of  years.
We won't even come close.

 

Where's the digital part of this photo blog?

If you've read the top of the sidebar to the right, i claim to alternate post topics between film/darkroom and digital. But I haven't kept that promise lately and you may well be asking: "Yo! blog writer, photo guy, DUDE! - Have you thrown digital under the bus or what?"

No I haven't, i just work on it rather fitfully, a love/hate relationship. There are some great things about digital, but do they outweigh the negative effects? I dunno.
Being an old fashioned analog film guy, it should come as no surprise that i think digital has just ruined photography as i knew it. 'Image quality'?... out the fucking window. I work at a place that does digital printing and we hear from people who think you can take an iPhone photo and print it 16x20" to look good, they think there's some magic in digital that will make that happen. Nope. Garbage in, garbage out.
Film cameras? the lense is the most important part. Digital cameras?...it seems to be an afterthought, a piece of cheap plastic. Focus? traditional cameras you can actually see it... digital cameras? you have to rely on an 'auto-focus' thing, sometimes it works fine, but occasionally, it's wacked out. You are helpless here...

In spite of the aforementioned complaints, the next few posts will be 'digital'.

When i work on digital montage, i slam something together, just to get the ball rolling, and it takes off. Other times, it just doesn't happen at all, it dies on the vine. But you gotta keep slamming something together to see what happens and not let it bother you if it dies. Some ideas 'have wings' & some don't. Learn to know the difference. Don't throw away the one's that don't immediately have wings, you never know what you might see in the future.
As for looking back over what you have done before, whatever state it is/was in? Here's a thought to consider:

A photography teacher a long time ago (in 1975-ish) suggested to all his students, me among them, that we should always look back over our contacts sheets, many times, that we would find images we had overlooked before, that were worth more then we originally thought.
Amen, brother, it is indeed true. But i don't take the same approach with film anymore.
When i am shooting film, i am hesitant, wary, not to waste a frame. I've developed a really good sense of what is darkroom montage material.
With digital? i totally take the opposite approach, i am flagrantly wasteful, shoot anything that strikes my fancy, there's no film or development cost whatsoever.
So i have many frames I shot wildly, that come back and sneak up on me.

Some of the more recent pix have taken on a life of their own, and landed in a collection i call 'symmetry'. Which after i reflect on it, reminds me of an old fashioned thing called a kaleidoscope.

"A kaleidoscope is a cylinder with mirrors containing loose, colored objects such as beads or pebbles and bits of glass. As the viewer looks into one end, light entering the other creates a colorful pattern, due to the reflection off of the mirrors. Coined in 1817 by Scottish inventor Sir David Brewster,[1] "kaleidoscope" is derived from the Ancient Greek καλός (kalos), "beautiful, beauty",[2] εἶδος (eidos), "that which is seen: form, shape"[3] and σκοπέω (skopeō), "to look to, to examine",[4] hence "observation of beautiful forms." [5]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleidoscope

Another theme I play/work on is the beach, some sand, or small pebbles and some clouds, along with something else, something brought in by the waves.

Then there are some images that just 'happen', don't fit into these two themes.
I like to play with all the layer options and opacity, you find them at the very top of the layers palette. 'Normal' is the default, but click on that tab and check out the 20+ variations in the drop down menu, and 'party down', as they say :-)

So here's three images, and what went into them.

#1 - This one falls into the symmetry collection, I call it 'Koi Pond', the pond being on the Jack London estate that is now a historical park in No. California. Starting from the bottom: I selected an area, copied it to a new layer ( command+J). flipped it horizontally and moved it 'til it butted up to it's mirror image. I merged that onto another new layer - in the layers palette, choose 'merge visible' while holding down the option key so as not to lose the layers below. I flipped the layer vertically, moved it to be a 'mirror', and then added a layer mask that blended it out to white/nothing.
Then i added some sky, with the same 'copy and flip' routine, and added a layer mask that blended it into the pond below. Got that? If you're confused, have no fear, there's a link at the bottom of the post to a page at my site w/ larger images, and a link to download a small PSD file.

#2 - This falls into the 'beach' theme, it's some rather coarse sand at the bottom ( more like small pebbles burnished by the constant waves), then some waves, then some cirrus sky at the top. Overlaid on that, is a piece of driftwood, a marvelous sculpture, look at all the twists and turns goin' on! Once again, numerous layer masks to blend it all together.

#3 - "Rainy night" - a 'one-off' improvisation. I live in an apt. on the 4th floor, in downtown San Rafael, CA. the view is part urban, and part California hills, At night the lights sparkle, on & off, i have been trying to use 'motion' to create some blurry effects. Alotta frames didn't make it, but this one (below) did.

Then I added some rain, also shot at night, lit by the streetlamp.

Larger images and small PSD files you can download at:
www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_2014/WheresTheDigital/index.html

Next month?... three more montage images.