Daniel Ruf

Snatching A Few

"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."

John Muir

In between the printing, mounting and framing of images I've managed to sneak out for some quick trips to keep the wheels greased.  The upper capture is from Ft. Defiance State Park and was taken after the previous post.  Obviously the bright red leaves were a major draw considering the rest of the forest was brown and settling in for winter.  It occurred to me that this might be a good time to work with my Lensbaby to separate the main subject while rendering the rest of the world in a soft painterly fashion.  The lighting was soft with some light shafts showing in the background so I positioned myself on the forest floor with the shafts a part of the composition.

The bottom capture was from a quick morning jaunt with some favorable cloud formations.  Add a few old farm structures and some harvested fields with sunrise lighting and the rest fell into place at the computer.  The image is an HDR that was processed with the Nik HDR software and then primped with Nik's Color Efex Pro 4, which I'm really enjoying.

The Fall season is quickly drawing to a close and I'm still waiting for our first snowfall, in fact I'm still waiting for ice to form on some of the local lakes and ponds.  It seems like just yesterday that I was standing on a field lane shooting puffy summer clouds with fields full of corn surrounding me.  Time flies when you're having fun.

Late braking news for me is the selection of my portfolio submission in B&W + Color magazines December issue and a merit award selection for their Color Special Issue due out in December.  It was a nice way to cap off a productive year and I'm appreciative of their consideration.

Thank you for visiting this site and please feel free to comment.

My book "Places I've Been, Things I've Seen" and new book "Take What's Given" can be purchased online at-  http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1868649

For more views of my work visit;

"A Piece Of Work", Spirit Lake, Iowa  http://www.apieceofworkinc.com

Lanesboro Art Center, Lanesboro, Minnesota   www.lanesboroarts.org

BetterPhoto.com   http://www.betterphoto.com/Premium/Default.aspx?id=251674&mp=V

Sometimes...

  

"Passion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavors."

W. Eugene Smith

...you just have to turn around to see the image you have been looking for and in this case, on an extremely hot day at Ft. Defiance State Park, such was the case when I turned from the actual coneflowers I was shooting and found this window view staring at me.  Sometimes it's a no brainer...even if the brain is in sleep mode.

The original capture, actually two of them are below and due to the low light conditions it was 

necessary to make two captures with specific focus for the window frame and the flowers.  During the editing process the two were merged as combined layers and the flowers were then painted into the window frame areas.  After some adjustments in Photoshop CS5 for brightness and contrast the next step was to go into Nik Color Efex Pro to make additional adjustment in tonal contrast and foliage color.

The last steps included some color work in Nik Viveza using their fantastic "U-Point" technology and then doing a little "copy and paste" to rid the window frame of the obnoxious chip in the lower left.

Finally some work was done in Alien Skin's "Topaz" to give the scene a slight painterly effect for the final blog image at the top.

As I remind participants of my local workshops most subjects have at least 6 sides to explore which can give you at least 6 different lighting scenario's.  In this case, though, it was necessary for a 180 degree turn from the subject to see what was behind both me and the camera. 

Move your feet and take the time to investigate all the possibilities.

Thank you for stopping and feel free to comment.

My book "Places I've Been, Things I've Seen" can be purchased online at-

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1868649

For more views of my work visit;

"A Piece Of Work", Spirit Lake, Iowa  http://www.apieceofworkinc.com

Lanesboro Art Center, Lanesboro, Minnesota   www.lanesboroarts.org

BetterPhoto.com   http://www.betterphoto.com/Premium/Default.aspx?id=251674&mp=V

Shifting Gears

"What a caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly."  Richard Bach

Shifting gears is what the weather seems to be all about for the past few weeks.  We've gone from highs in the extreme 80's down to frost laden mornings and everything in between.  A couple of weeks ago, when I got the blog picture for last weeks post, I only had to turn around to my four old friends, known to me as the Butler Brothers, for a "wet" sky and another opportunity.  It was an HDR three image composition and required some perspective adjustments in Photoshop CS5 to undo the harsh converging lines due to the use of a wide zoom set up very close to the bins.  The thing that first attracted me to this possible capture, outside the fact that I'm bent on collecting images of grain bins, was the rain showers in the lower right that provided some nice texture to the background.

A week of rain and cold followed which found me back at the computer editing some more of the work from my Smoky's experience until, quite suddenly, the sun came out and the vertical water ended.  I grabbed bags and headed for Ft. Defiance and Spring Creek to see if I couldn't find a flower or two doing the Spring thing.  I crawled among the ferns to find a show of Nodding Trilliums along with several Jack-In-The_Pulpits and Bloodworts.  It came to me to use my Lensbaby lens for a little more creative viewpoint and I wanted not only a sharp area on the flower, but also a sharp leaf edge that would work as a diagonal into the scene.  Of course, when you have all these "wants" a simple shot it becomes a little more compicated to find the right natural elements that will comply. 

The nice thing about laying on one's belly for this type of low level shooting is the aromatic earth that is right under your nose.  I'm not sure that the elevated stature of us hominid's was ever a great idea since there are so many things that humans miss in their effort to tromp to their next destination.

Enjoy the fresh Spring days and thanks for visiting.  Feel free to post on any blog page of your choosing.

Thanks for visiting.

My new book "Places I've Been, Things I've Seen" can be purchased online at-

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1868649

For more views of my work visit;

"A Piece Of Work", Spirit Lake, Iowa  http://www.apieceofworkinc.com

Lanesboro Art Center, Lanesboro, Minnesota   www.lanesboroarts.org

BetterPhoto.com   http://www.betterphoto.com/Premium/Default.aspx?id=251674&mp=V1