Behind the Lens

The early crisp February sun screams through the packed houses on Oxford Street in Rochester. What lies before me but a toy car, frosted from the frigid night. No visible owner, it sits lonely, desolate, and questionable in the median for the morning commuters to ignore. I take the moment to capture. These things I find intriguing, and I ask questions, or create scenarios as to how this car ended up here, who left it, why it was left, etc.... You can see things out of place all the time along side a road, most people ignore them as white noise and a eye sore, but I see curiosity and imagination.

To process I decided to make a "Bleach Bypass". This is done by making a copy of your background and making the blending mode "overlay" (makes it super contrasty) and turning the opacity down to about 30%. Then you make a channel mixer adjustment layer, click monochrome and play with the three sliders to get desired tone, then turning that opacity down to 30% as well. It might take some fooling around but you can make your own changes as needed.

This Past weekend I had an assignment for the Ganondagan Native American Winter Games & Sports. Upon arrival I could hear the excited yelp of dogs, overwhelming my somewhat loud car. I watched as the handler Jo Lynn Stresing, took each Siberian Husky out from their kennels in the bed of her truck. They were so amped to get out and just "do". When you see an animal like that you wish to yourself that you had one iota of that energy. She took them out individually to do their business, and then strapped them to the rigged line she had strung from her truck. Each one impatiently waiting the next to emerge from the travel kennels. After getting all the nerves out they started to partially relax, I'm sure its hard considering they are conditioned to run miles pulling a sled with a full grown human on it. They were all naturally curious about the camera, how it smelled, tasted, was it a toy?, did I have treats?, etc. Then there came the calm, before other people came to pet and get them all hopped up again. That was my chance to snap a few pics of Lolita, who seemed to be the most relaxed of them all. Above, is a byproduct of that moment. It makes you wander exactly what is going on in a dogs brain, most would say nothing more than food, water, attention. I'm not buying, I think that there is more than that. Judge for yourself, but there is real potential there.

Once and a while you have to just take pictures of something that seems mundane. Seagulls, potentially mundane. Beach, seen one, seen'em all.

I went to the pier in Sea Breeze to see if I could catch some of those crazy Rochester Surf Club folk out there in the water (seriously, winter surfers on Lake Ontario, keep your eye peeled for an article by Linda Quinlan next week). What do I have when I arrive? Muddy, practically flat, seagull ridden water.....what shall I do but chase those pesky vermin and snap pictures of their getaway! Ironically they kept flying from one spot to my left, then back to my right, it was a fun game but I was getting cold (and I'm sure your not reading this to hear tales of my childish humor).

So when I got back and looked at the pictures, I could tell I wasn't a big fan. I had to go black and white! I opened my adjustment layers and selected "Black and White". This is the quick and easy way to turn your picture from color to B&W in Photoshop. You can see the difference in the before and after as I provided above. The muddy waters, flat sky, and those crazy gulls...then as B&W its more dramatic, it breaths more life into it. I also threw a contrast curves layer, and a teeny tiny vignette just to pop.