Just before I headed out into the roughly 15 below weather, I cleaned my UV filter. I inadvertently left some residual humidity in between and on taking my first picture realized that I had an organic pseudo soft focus edge effect. After considering rectifying it, I decided to leave it and work with that limitation/filter for the walk.

Petee about sums it up around here.  It’s only the first day of winter snow but already we’re bored with it!  (Actually I like the snow – it makes for some interesting photographs but the dogs hate having to do their business in -10 degree weather AND WHO CAN BLAME THEM???)

So here’s the Peetster, the Sweet Pete, the Pete-zeria, the evil twin brother of my sweet beloved Gracie right before he fell to sleep and started snoring like a buzz saw.

This beautiful kitten-cat of mine, he’s a very clean kitten with very long whiskers and a little pink tongue.  He let me spend at least ten minutes taking photos yesterday evening: that’s about a zillion times his usual attention span.

Lunch today found me chopping up one of my limited supply of sun-dried habaneros. I know that they are sun-dried because it was me that left them in the sun to dry.

Wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. The plant that grew on was sold to us by local farmers as an Okinawa Chilli… but it’s obviously habanero, and not 島唐辛子 (never noticed that kanji before… how strange). It’s also the first time that i’ve used dried habaneros…

The sensible thing to do was obviously to chop one up into relatively small chunks, stir fry with plenty of garlic, ginger, tasai, tofu, and black beans, then eat it and see if it killed me.

Guess what? It didn’t! In fact it was remarkably good. Drying did seem to have turned the heat down a little, but i’d say it had also concentrated the flavour, making it more earthy and rich.

Needless to say this was celebrated by taking a picture of the remaining chillies. First with the 10D and then a polaroid (above). No need to post the digital one: it’s mundanely in focus.

I took this photo of Joe while he was feeding David back in September, using a Canon 50mm fixed length lens, and came across it when I was looking for another picture in Aperture today.  I love the way the colours work together in this picture, the way that Joe looks down at David…  My boys are truly, truly awesome, and for that I am thankful.

Dear Readers,

I am still a Busy-Bradley and have been quite productive recently. I am taking the time to write another blog post to keep you updated. There is news about my music projects, as well as the graphic design tutorials I have been working on.

MUSIC NEWS

In addition to my loads of duties around the studio (and the Art of the Carolinas rush), I have been working on the “jazz album” off and on since around August. There were about 25 songs or so written for it, some good, some not so good. Over the past 2 weeks I have found the time to buckle down and actually record the final versions of these tunes. Doing all the instruments is challenging, so for this album, I decided to use only guitars, bass, drums, and pianos (with the occasional surprise). The result is a more raw and realistic album than the Somewhere South of Houston CD, and a more groovy/jammy album than the Organic Melodies CD. In the album’s 13 tracks are a range of upbeat grooves, slower/lounge music, and whimsical jams. We decided to title the album “The Road To Groove Town,” and it should be available within the next couple weeks as a digital download on CD Baby, and then on iTunes, Amazon mp3, etc. Three of the new tracks are available for streaming on my MySpace page for now, so please do visit and I hope you enjoy.

GD/TUTORIAL NEWS

In other news, I have been working on a series of video tutorials involving graphic design techniques in Photoshop. I hope to branch out to different programs in the near future. I have ideas in mind for various motion graphics tutorials with Motion and After Effects. The tutorials can be found in the side bar to the right, along with some commercials I have edited. You can also visit my YouTube Channel to find the rest of them. So far I have tutorials covering Reflective Text, Soft Focus, Depth of Field, and Making a 3-D Cube. These should be available on the Burning Oak Studios website in the near future as well.

So in my attempt to get my macro mojo back, I found myself diving off the deep end into a year’s worth of water reflection photos.  I recently purchased the Nik Color Efex set of filters and have been playing around with it throughout these images and wow, what a difference a filter can make!

This one started off as a very muted blue reflection with almost no detail to it.  I sculpted and polished.  I cloned and filtered.  I burned and dodged.  You name it…I pretty much did it on this last image of the evening.  Whereas all the other reflection photos came out full of color and contrast, this one went in another direction and what do you know…I liked it best. 

Click here to read today’s Blog…*Love* vol 2

Hello,

izm.rjmega@gmail.com wanted to share this video with you.

Click the link below to check it out:
http://www.vbs.tv/watch/soft-focus-at-atp/jon-spencer

See you around,

VBS.TV
http://www.vbs.tv

I wrote this a long time ago. Short and simple. It has a nice piano part with a very simple but pretty solo between the verses.

Do It Again

I sent some roses to you my friend

For all the roses that I’ve never sent

I’ve always seen you thru a soft focus lense

The good times we’ve had

Let’s do it again  (3 times)

I think about time and where my cigarettes go

A half page of scribbled lines but nothing to show

Ten bucks for a bottle and the way that life goes

One night of glory for two weeks in the hole, but

Lets do it again  ( 3 times)

So as we all know, we’ve been testing our shoot based around a really soft, subtle, beautifully grainy look that we get from film, with an overall light blue tone.  We’ve also been looking at authenticity and being true to oneself so I thought it might just be a good idea to post a few artists that have influenced these looks.

First of all we have the Realist Gustave Courbet -

I find the colours and overall idea of capturing the everyday in this piece really relevant to our idea.  The soft shadows and blue light blue of the daylight are really beautiful and take it from just the everyday into something worth our observing.

The two above I am interested in due to the poses (obviously not the crazy eyes of above) but the idea of playing with hair, messing it up a bit, and generally making the focus about the hair through pose.

Walter Sickert:

Once again, I really like the blue overtones represented in Walter Sickert’s work but the aspect of his work that I like most is the slightly blurred, out of focus look.  I think that this idea represented in photography – the soft blue against the red crimped hair and the soft focus should have a really beautiful painterly effect, which again will reference all the artists work that we have been researching.

Adobe Photoshop the market-leading image editor has released a native photo editor and up loader for iPhone/Android/Windows. It’s a very handy application for fixing and offloading images where ever when ever you want.

Multiple effects can be done and undone easily, besides that photos can be cropped, rotated, re sized and adjusted for saturation, exposure and tint as well as have a black & white effect applied or soft focus. All version are best and do a really good job for correcting the images not good in first place.

It’s a free application that can be easily downloaded from Photoshop.com

Fall is having its last hurrah this weekend.  We’ve had temperatures between 75-80 degrees all weekend long and it’s put me in the best possible mood.  Besides the beautiful weather and how it affects my attitude is the way it affects my photography – the lighting has been superb! 

Despite the still warmer temperatures the traffic at my feeders has really picked up in the last week.  Maybe the birds know something I can’t yet face – that the warm days of autumn are almost over and winter is getting ready to blow into town.  Oh well, if it must, it must.  At least I have the images from this weekend to keep me warm.

Quite the opposite, actually. In June, Andrea and I put our home in SE Portland up for sale, and began the constant cleaning and searching for a new home that has kept me busy most of the summer. With all the home maintenance, and my renewed interest in road cycling, the last thing I’ve wanted to was photography, and I rarely had time to get out camping or hiking.
Additionally, Andrea and I bought a new iMac, and now I’m without Photoshop to process photos anyway. Despite this, I did manage to take a great trip with my Dad in August. For a couple years now, I’ve wanted to visit Mount Jefferson….specifically the Jefferson Park Area and Bays Lake. I’ve heard that the area has one of the most amazing displays of wildflowers in Oregon, with spectacular views of the mountain. When my Dad said he had time to go up there for a weekend trip, I was definitely game.
We arrived at the Whitewater trailhead a little later than we wanted, Noon, and started up the steep 1.5mile initial climb. By the time we reached the ridge above, the heat was pretty bad, and hiking on the ridge is open an unprotected from the sun. I recommend everyone avoid summer afternoon hiking on this stretch. The views from the trail are downright amazing though, with views of valleys to the south, and Mt. Jefferson to the East.
After about 6 miles, you reach flower-filled meadows with Jefferson in full view. The first grouping of lakes is Scout Lake and Bays Lake. Bays Lake is a little hidden, but we managed to link up with a friend there. We had slightly overcast skies, but at sunset, the sky was illuminated with the most brilliant orange and pink color bouncing off the cloud cover. Here is the view of the mountain from our camp that night.

TECHNICALS:

POST PROCESS:

The color was breath-taking, but not a lot of detail in the sky.  For the most part, we just sat by the lake and enjoyed the view.

The next morning, I got up and was given the same drab conditions at sunrise.  I had a portrait-type photograph of the mountain in mind, and began composing the shot.  As I did, some clouds to the north began to open up just enough for sunlight to come in, and give a little contrast and color.  This image I exposed and processed to capture the calm feeling of the lake in the quiet morning, and give a sense of the scene.  There are a series of rocky island inlets…very rugged….on the lake.  I used a portrait-type focal length to try and set up this foreground island against the soft mountain in the background.  Total silence, fish jumping, and very soft light coming in…. I felt very lucky to be at such a place.

TECHNICALS:

POST PROCESS:

After having breakfast, we headed out to explore the wildflower meadows around us.  The light was really harsh, and we were anxious to get back on the trail before it got too hot, but I managed to take these quick shots that are just a small sample of what you can find there.  Lupine…..paintbrush…..and Aster, among others are everywhere.  It’s amazing, really.

TECHNICALS:

Jefferson Park and Bays Lake are easily my favorite summer campsite I’ve been to.  The mountain is very photogenic, and the wildflower fields surrounding it have so much variety, you could spend 2 to 3 days there and enjoy yourself immensely.  The lake are also crystal clear, and warm enough for a morning swim.  Nothing beats a morning swim with a mountain like this in view.