HDR photography

As my regular followers will know, my other main passion aside from art is photography. Today, while having a good rest following a few days back-breaking work moving a concrete path, I decided to mess with my camera and took a fairly poor shot of a flowering cactus on our kitchen window sill. Knowing that the light coming through  the window would make exposure difficult I took 3 shots, one under exposed by 1 stop, one over exposed by 1 stop, and one exposed normally.

As you can see from the first three photo's, if the cactus was correctly exposed, the outside was too bright, and if the outside was correct, the cactus was in shade. Even the third shot - the middle route - doesn't show much of the detail on the cactus.

It's at this point that I remembered that my digital imaging software of choice (Paintshop Pro) has an HDR facility. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and what that means in plain English is the ability to display exposures at either end of the scale.

HDR effectively merges these 3 photo's to get the best of all worlds and as you can see from the result in the fourth photo, the outside is properly exposed whilst the detail of the cactus has been retained. This isn't the best of examples and it certainly isn't the best of photo's, but it shows how effective HDR can be at making a good photo from poor conditions.

Fishing Boat

When in Torbay last year I came across this small boat laden with fishing paraphernalia. With grapling hooks and harpoons, I can't imagine what sort of fish it's owner tries to catch.

Watercolour - 12"x9"

Irish Church

It's been a while since I last did a serious pencil drawing so I decided to put that right. I've always believed that Drawing helps us tremendously with our painting. Not only does it help us to outline our subject before picking up our brushes, but it teaches us a lot about tonal values. I also have to admit that I am much more 'at home' with a pencil in my hand, than a brush. I enjoy painting, but I always feel more satisfied with my drawings than my watercolours.

I found this ruined church as we drove along the narrow country lanes of County Kerry in Ireland. Looking through the open window revealed the pews still in place and the graveyard was still in reasonable order. It was an odd discovery.

Comfort Zone

I'm not sure I have a 'comfort zone' when it comes to watercolours, but if I do this painting certainly isn't in it. I've again decided to tackle something I've never tried before. I wanted to use what I learned making the heat and steam clouds in my Steel Worker painting, but in a different scenario, so I decided to create a war scene with troops deploying from a helicopter in a swirling cloud of desert sand.

Just like my previous painting, I didn't know where to start nor how to get the effects I was looking for. I had a significant problem with scaling part way through and the final painting is the result of a 'rescue' job. I'm not thrilled with it, but I'm not disappointed either given the learning curve I was on. And I certainly did learn a lot from doing it.

Having fun as a group!!

How's that for a subject title ... I wonder what you thought I meant. LOL.

It's been a while since my Art Forum ran what we call the 'Picture Puzzle' but we are again pooling our resources to contribute to another painting.

None of the artists have seen the photograph that the painting will be taken from. They have each been sent a small portion of the photo, which they will paint in their own way. Each painted segment will then be slotted into place on a blank template, and the complete painting will gradually take shape.

Although the main purpose of the 'puzzle' is to have some fun with our art, there is a serious side to it. The sides of each segment must be accuratey reproduced or the portion won't fit very well with it's neighbours. It's also a great way of appreciating the particular style of each artist. On this occassion we've thrown the picture open to any medium, including Digital Imaging, so the final result will be even more varied than it usually is. This image links to my main site so it will update automatically as new squares are completed.

Great fun!!!

Steel Worker - Mark 2

Though being very pleased with the painting of the Steel Worker, my eye was continually being drawn to those horrible stark white lines in the bottom right hand corner. They were caused by my extremely poor application of candle wax, which I thought would be a good way to generate some highlights for the wet factory floor. I didn't think it through properly and hadn't appreciated just how bold white highlights would look against such a dark background.

Anyway, though trying to resist the temptation to 'fiddle', and despite my wife's protestations that I would ruin the picture, I eventually gave in and tackled the problem. It took several layers of muddy watercolour applied thickly and dried with a hairdrier between coats to finally cover the wax. Then I added a little texture by use of some greys and oranges mixed with a little white gouache. Though I'm not at all pleased with that corner of the painting, it is an improvement on what was there before.

Steel Worker

Here is something radically different for me. I wanted to experiment with lights and darks, in fact, I wanted to try and create 'dazzle'. This subject fitted the bill perfectly, though I usually back away from painting people. So this one proved to be a double challenge.

I have to say that I'm quite pleased with it in general. As always, there are things that didn't work quite as well as I'd hoped, and there are things I'd do different next time. But I guess that's the nature of our art. Are we ever totally satisfied? We certainly never stop learning.