Photos from She Who Walks Among Graves..

[shadowkat]

These are the photos from the day I got lost - which was Wed, after the five hour negotiation from hell. I was sore for two days after this. The walk helped with the stress - up until the point that I got lost. Also there was more street traffic that day than on Friday for some reason, and less masks.

I'm kind of hoping the fact that the upstate region is starting to re-open - will grab some of the frustrated New Yorkers. The problem with going to the parks - or why they are more crowded than ever before - is there are no gyms, aerobic classes, boxing, tennis, basketball, soccer games, football, baseball, swimming pools, vacations, etc - so all people have is the parks.
There's no where else they can go - but the parks and the side-streets for exercise. Apparently they've opened up more streets now to pedestrians, and closed them to traffic. Also are creating more designated bike lanes. This should make walking about easier. I may start taking much longer walks. Who knows maybe I can walk to the doctor's office in June? The appointment is at 4:20 - if I start at 9 am, I might get there by then.

Anyhow, here's the pictures.

1.

Flowers:





2.




3. Sunlight with the Graves..











4.

Grave of the animal right's activist Henry Bergh who founded the ASPCA.




5.

Trees and sunlight




Walking through the woods in the cemetery



Monument and Trees





6. More trees, flowers, graves and sunlight on Lookout Hill or Mauseulum Hillside.











Reposting the heron, photographer for apto_omn

Comments

[atpo_onm]

Always pleasant to find someone who shares one of your fetishes, thus making you feel less of an oddball-- in this case my fascination with trees, and especially ones in the wintertime, usually without leaves.

I remember several decades ago in the early days of computer animation, there ware a number of skeptics who predicted that realistic depictions of some natural things like the complex movement of water, or the branches and leaves of trees could not be achieved because they were "obviously random". Then some clever soul devised the branch of mathematics subsequently known as fractals. Gosh, not random after all!

I suppose for some, knowing that there is math behind the way a tree grows takes the "magic" out of it, but for me it does just the opposite. But whatever their basis, methinks trees be cool. I'm working on posting some, as soon as I can get DW to co-operate. I did get a few uploaded so far.

You did have some extra righthand space on that heron shot, I see. I think that improves it a bit, but your opinion is what counts. I know one of the most frustrating jobs I run into with my own work is cropping. It's delightful when you get a full-frame shot that's perfect as is, but for me anyway that only happens occasionally. Some images, no matter what I do, I can never get exactly the way I like them, there's some discordant element that won't resolve.

Just yesterday I was restoring and printing a picture my sister gave me from one of her granddaughter's wedding. She asked if I could remove some parts of the picture, such as some people in the background, and I did. When I was done, I had a decent restoration that nicely fit an 8.5 x 11 inch frame. Problem was, the image tone called for a warm-toned wooden frame, and I only had an 8 x 10 inch frame. Trivial, right? No, no, nooo... Ach.

I finally got it, but ~sigh~ ... frustration, much?

Oh well, picky does have its rewards, since she was delighted with it, and that's what counts.

[cactuswatcher]

The beauty of preparing digital photos for the internet is that no one cares what shape they are. Cropping is a snap, when you don't have to fit a standard frame.

When it comes to physical prints, my sister's ex husband taught me about framing with the camera, film developing, and printing, but my sister, the artist, always knew better the tricky art of how to choose a frame and matte.

[shadowkat]

Well...that's not entirely true - some people care what shape the digital photos are in - see the atpo_omn who cares.;-)

[cactuswatcher]

Notice I was talking about cropping. Cropping of photos is a major part of getting the balance of a picture right. Like your redo of the pond photographer and Heron... ONM didn't like the way you cropped it the first time. (You could have cut off the stones above the lady reading in the background and I doubt he would have griped about the odd shape.)

[shadowkat]

Yeah, from my perspective - I was mostly concerned about getting the heron, less concerned about everything else. Ridiculously hard to get the heron. I had him and he moved, because the dumb phone refused to cooperate - it turns off and makes me punch in a password internittently. Sometimes - it will let me swipe to the camera, but it refused on this occasion, and the heron moved while I was trying to get in.

Then I thought - be cool to get heron and photographer with focus on the heron. While OMN cared more about the photographer, and you noticed the stones above the lady reading - who I attempted to cut out but couldn't.

People notice different things. Also, it's not my favorite shot - I had to photoshop it to death to get it to work. It's very hard to capture wildlife on a phone - because you could see it perfectly well with the naked eye and it could seem really close - but the phone for some reason makes it seem really far away. So you have to play with the picture on the phone until it appears as you saw it. Meanwhile - if you have a telescopic lense like the photographer had - not a problem. He was taking a lot of photos of the heron.

ETA: Trees and statues and mausoleums are so much easier - they don't move. I can take multiple pics, from various angles. Same with the sky, sunshine and flowers. People and birds and animals - unfortunately do move and don't want their picture taken.

[cactuswatcher]

Just to be clear. The heron, the photographer, the lady, the lake/pond, the sweep of green grass? It's a darn fine photograph! Good work!

[shadowkat]

I'm less picky - or I tend to go with my gut, what works, what doesn't is a gut level thing regarding art. I'm an intuitive thinker or feeling when it comes to art. Which is why it's so relaxing - it's an area in which I don't analyze at all. I don't analyze while cooking either - completely intuitive - which works to an extent. (Not very well with baking or anything requiring precise measurements and cooking times. I'd never make the Great American Baking Show or Great British one for that matter.) Same deal with photography - I'm intuitive - I can see the frame that works, before I take the shot. Then sometimes I have to crop it to make it work for me. But I suck at measurement. I can't frame or matte to save my life - but I can pick the right frame and matte that I want - if I felt the need (less is more in my opinion - or no frame or matte at all - let the picture speak for itself on canvas or in a frame with no edges.

So, none of what your doing above enters my head when I shoot a photograph. And the reason I enjoy it - is it doesn't. I'm truly mindful of it. I see, I shoot it, I move on. No stress, no analysis, just...being. I draw, sketch, and paint in a similar fashion. Also cook in that fashion...a kind of minimalist, simple, non-analytical style.

That said, I find your process fascinating. What camera are you using? Because it sounds like you take great care when you take photographs.

[atpo_onm]

I'm less picky - or I tend to go with my gut, what works, what doesn't is a gut level thing regarding art. I'm an intuitive thinker or feeling when it comes to art.

And that's absolutely fine. I'm one of those types who is very leery of telling someone that whatever artistic craft they practice, that somehow what they're doing isn't right or proper. The way people see the world is so vastly different that it strikes me as ridiculous that there should only be one valid methodology of artistic expression.

I liked your photo of the heron as it was, but it's also not possible for me to instinctively not analyze it in the way my brain would if I had taken it. In fact, I also usually try to intuit what the photographer saw when he/she took the shot.

It is possible, for example, that by crowding the photographer in to the right frame and by partially cutting him off you were making a statement as to his intrusiveness in photographing the bird (from the bird's perspective), a perfectly valid artistic choice, IMO.

But what caught my eye was, as I mentioned, the sweep of the stone border around the lake, which passed by the photographer and ended up at the bird. There is also a reflection of a tree in the lake that tends to point toward the bird. Is the bird's current environment making a statement as to man's intrusion upon it?

As to my method, it's very technically fussy in some things and less so in others. The camera itself may be surprisingly basic-- it's an approximately 12-15 year old Nikon Coolpix L6. That's right-- a little digital point-n-shoot, pretty much all automatic. It replaced a much-beloved Honeywell Pentax 35mm SLR, with only a light meter built in, no automatic anything, purchased in 1972. I have a bunch of lenses, filters and other accessories for the Pentax, all of which have now been setting unused for quite a while now, essentially since digital got good enough to compete with film.

For an amateur, the huge benefit with digital is not really the medium itself so much as the ability to process/improve your images with software and then print them out yourself instead of sending them off to a photo store to do so-- the ability to have full control throughout the process.

The photo software I use is quite old at this point, from 2005-- it's called Paint Shop Pro 10, originally a graphics program that evolved into primarily photo work. The current versions are here:

https://www.paintshoppro.com/en/

... but I'm not fond of the versions after the one I own, so I keep on with the oldie, which I run on a Windows XP desktop machine. Printers are currently an Epson 8-1/2 x 11 inch basic office type machine and a "Pro-sumer" level Canon wide format that can do up to 13 x 19 inch prints.

I tend to be very careful framing the shot in the viewscreen, since that makes the subsequent efforts in software far easier. Sometimes, as you've mentioned, the subject may not stay still, or the light may change, whathaveyou, then grab as you can and hope is all you can do.

In the film days-- that meant not being able to save some shots. Software-- oh my, even with the low-cost one I'm using, the stuff you can do is amazing.

What you can do these days with a product that's supposedly mainly a telephone is remarkable, but whether you're an instinctive or technical photographer has far less to do with the camera than the person using it, advice given to me by a college student photographer friend waaaay back in '72, and still very true today.