• About
  • Jack!

S.Weber

~ Traveler / Artist / Photographer / Observer

S.Weber

Category Archives: Nature

Works In Progress…

04 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by Susana Weber in Art, Caribbean, Nature, Painting, Pastels, still life, Travel ~ Photography/Art/Food/Culture, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

art, arts, landscape, nature, outdoors, painting, Pastels, rain, reflections, special place, St Martin, travel, tropical

Aren’t we all?!

Who said something about standing in the spring rain?

Oh, yeah… that would be me.
And here, it happens every day… faithfully. Everything reflecting in the lovely Italian marble floor… so beautiful, so… dangerous. I brought an old box of pastels, broken and worn. I used them years and years ago…I think. I’m so used to my soft pastels in the big box there was no hope of bringing along. So… the old box would do, of course!

Mistake.

I used these? Seriously.

They are the hardest, most frustrating materials. And…they won’t be returning to New England… they’ll be used up or buried on the island where no one will ever think of looking for them. A mystery one day when unearthed.

Until then… a reflective pool after a spring rain.

A work in progress.

After the Rain

After the rain – Pastel work in progress – approx 20×15

Aftermath…

17 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by Susana Weber in Abstract Macro Photography, Art, Nature, Photography, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

abstract, art, hidden picture, macro, macro photo, nature, Nemo, outdoors, photography, sfterwards, snow, snowstorm, texture

Storm

Winter storm Nemo is just getting started at 7:30 on a Friday evening in New England.

A winter storm in New England… a Nor’easter as well, with its spiraling bands of snow overhead and gale winds whipping the tides… sigh. An all too familiar set of circumstances here. We deal… that’s what we do. It’s inconvenient at best, a true pain if the power is out for any substantial length of time… but for once, in the case of Nemo, we all seemed more than ready for the work it takes to move it all out of the way so life could go one… just go on for goodness sake. We endure…
it’s what we do. Afterwards… it’s a different world for those of us who like to look really, really close.

Even before it's over...

Even before it’s over…

The garden doesn’t see to mind the new white blanket.

Shadows and light in the aftermath of the storm...

Shadows and light in the aftermath of the storm…

... play tricks on the eye and mind.

… play tricks on the eye and mind.

And familiar things in the world look different… look like other things even… a man sitting watching birds, or a graphic ocean wave from a Japanese woodblock print.

A red-tail hawk on my kitchen window.

A red-tail hawk on my kitchen window.

Storm surge in miniature in the corner of the window.

Storm surge in miniature in a frosted corner.

Leading the eye…

26 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by Susana Weber in Art, Image Post Processing, Learning, Nature, Photography, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

arts, clouds, composition, cropping, inspiration, landscape, leading the eye, learning, nature, outdoors, photography, special place, sunset

I noticed something odd while I was editing a few recent images that I found interesting and thought I’d share… We’ve had some spectacular “cloudshows” lately and I stopped to capture one in the parking lot of my local grocery store. I liked the angle of the cloud formation and the overhead, umbrella of the massive formation on the left. While looking at it on the screen, I made a duplicate copy to try a different crop so I could look at them side by side. The two images aren’t that different but… it occurred to me that I was looking at images with two different subjects!

cropped version

In the cropped version above, the eye is moving down the dark column on the left and finally rests on the bright sun in the sunset at the bottom. To me, the subject  of this image is the sunset, the color and drama in the distance.

original version

In the original, it’s just the opposite… the eye is drawn down the thin clouds from the right and back up to the bright spot at the top. The eye is being lead in a completely different direction. (See the black and white images with the arrows.) The subject of this version of the image is the overwhelming scale of the scene, the height of the column of clouds, aided by the bright edge at the top and the tiny light poles at the bottom. A completely different feel. The actual sunset is secondary.

I’ve never seen as dramatic an example of the effects of knowing where the eye is being led and how much a simple edit can change the subject of an image. It’s important to know where the viewer’s eye is going in the composition of an image. You want the viewer to see what you see… to experience the impact of the scene as you did… or at least as close as you can assist them to see and feel.

Which image conveys what I wanted you to see? I’d have to pick the original. While I cropped the duplicate to make it a stronger composition, I lost the subject I wanted to present… the scale and feeling of being a tiny being on a beautiful planet… a very special place, even in the grocery store parking lot! :)

Agree? or Disagree? Your thoughts?

Walking up North Street

25 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by Susana Weber in Learning, Nature, Photography, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

abandoned house, accidental images, American flag, bark, bittersweet, blue sky, decorations, dog, faces, fall color, fall leaves, flag, found things, hidden pictures, house, jack, peeling paint, photography, poodle, stars and stripes, trees, walk, wreaths

On fine Autumn days like this we like to walk. Jack is the perfect excuse to walk and does so nicely for a 10 month old puppy, greeting people on the street without jumping and patient about being fussed over. Jack has one agenda during our walks and I have another. His is to smell anything and everything… and mine is to find something to capture in my camera. I don’t look for anything specific… just record what I find. Here’s what we found on our walk up North Street in Georgetown, Massachusetts: a spooky house, a ghost in a tree, several trees with faces, fall leaves, a dog in a birch tree, a flag in the breeze… among other things…

Shadow composition with red hydrant.

Ghost in the tree… a spooky figure in a hooded robe.

A spooky house appears abandoned… but, getting closer showed…

… a colorful object in the window suggests an unlikely resident.

A tree with a face.

A bittersweet wreath in the shadows.

A tree with a number of faces… a large one at the bottom looking left with a puffy cheek… a small face just below and to the right of the large one… a profile on the right side of the trunk (by the white cloud). At the top there appears to be a man standing with arms outstretched.

The beauty of the day reflecting in the water of a creek on North Street.

The true colors of fall leaves are revealed!

The most amazing found object… a complete dog in the bark of a birch tree.

Only days from an election… the American flags are everywhere.

Jack agrees that there are good smells on North Street. We’ll be back. :)

Blueberry Luminance

14 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by Susana Weber in Abstract Macro Photography, Art, Food, Nature, Photography, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

blue, blueberries, breakfast, food, luminance, noise, noise reduction, photography, smoothing

Blueberries for breakfast! What a great idea… yes, let’s plant some bushes just on the edge of the front yard… and we’ll have blueberries for our pancakes or waffles. Yes!! That was the conversation about 20 years ago when the front lawn went in and blueberry picking… and eating… was an anticipated pleasure. It didn’t exactly work out the way we thought.

As the bushes grew and the fruit production increased, so did the chipmunks and birds who enjoyed the harvest of the sweet little fruits!! I even tried bird netting… which the chipmunks could get under… and several times a day during the picking season had to rescue birds caught in the net. So, we rarely got more than 3 or 4 ripe berries at a time. But, early this morning out in the yard throwing the Frisbee with Jack, I realized that there was actually enough ripe fruit hanging for breakfast! I just had to see it as a competitive sport… and beat them to ’em!

Of course, I had to photograph my triumph over the critters and carried them back to the studio before I put them on my cereal. I love the variety of colors and the softness of the tones… and while I was processing the image, it occurred to me to  that the blueberries were a perfect example to show the effects of “noise” that occurs when using a sharpening tool in any of the processing programs… and also the way that the Adobe Lightroom “Luminance” tool can correct the “noise”. Noise is the grainy appearance the image has when it’s been sharpened. It actually looks like clumps of color have separated out from the smooth blend of tones you expect to see. The first image here has been over-sharpened to show a lot of noise. The second has the Lightroom Luminance applied at 100 on the scale. When overdone like this, the image starts to look like a painting with all the blending going on. With the right subject it’s kind of cool! Now… breakfast!

Blueberry over-sharpened… noise or a grainy look.

Blueberry over-smoothed with Luminance slider in Adobe Lightroom.

Recent Posts

  • Works In Progress…
  • Collecting time…
  • Unfinished but… delicious.
  • Waking…
  • Back on Earth

Archives

Categories

  • Abstract Macro Photography
  • Africa
  • Art
  • Caribbean
  • Food
  • History
  • Image Post Processing
  • Learning
  • Nature
  • Painting
  • Pastels
  • Photography
  • Sculpture
  • still life
  • Travel
  • Travel ~ Photography/Art/Food/Culture
  • Uncategorized
  • watercolor

Walk with me…

abstract accidental image accidental images art artful food arts blue caribbean blues chaos cherry blossoms cherry trees clouds crowds culture dark clouds dark mood different cultures earth fall color fall leaves flag food grafitti grunge heart hearts hidden picture home illustration inspiration intensity islands Italy jack landscape learning macro macro photo mermaid mermaids nature outdoors painting peeling paint Pennsylvania people photo editing photography Photoshop Pittsburgh plants rain real world Rome Saba sculpture sea Simpson Bay Lagoon sky special place still life St Martin storm sunset texture tile tile floor travel trees vacation walk Washington DC watercolor wax weather

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • S.Weber
    • Join 40 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • S.Weber
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...