There are lots of articles on-line that suggest you develop your unique style - which is probably good advice if you want to make your living from photography, you want to gain some form of notoriety (aka lots of likes, subscribers, etc.) or a specific style just speaks to you.
The thing is I am just a hobbyist, a retired hobbyist at that. I just like the adventure of making photographs and am less inclined to discover a specific style and more concerned with the question of whether or not I am enjoying myself.
This gallery may seem random and somewhat chaotic because it contains photos of subjects that simply caught my interest and I set about figuring out how to make the photograph. The hope is along the way I had fun and maybe learned something about photography or myself.
In search of Oz
It is curious how some photo composites take form. This one started with the small child with the blue backpack and grew from there. I liked the colour scheme of the desert, which seemed like a logical place to put a rocket and launch pad. The child needed some friends to travel with, so a short trip to the NASA site for the moon walker, Unsplash for the elephant and Adobe Stock for the young girl. Not a yellow brick road but a likely enough place to find "The Oz".
The unrewarded
Every once in a while I will spot a photo challenge that catches my interest. Haven't caught the eye of the judges yet but they were fun to make.
15 minutes earlier ...
15 minutes earlier....
Did he throw her off the bridge?
Did she give him something to throw off the bridge?
Are they reluctant partners in crime or are they sworn enemies?
This project all started when I was experimenting with lookup tables (LUT's). Blame it on all the P. D. James novels I have read.
From baseball to infinity
I have a friend who is a baseball fan(atic ). Over coffee he will sometimes wax eloquent about how baseball is a superior game compared to other sports and will occasionally share his metaphysical thoughts on the game. One such thought is if you extend the baselines out to infinity they will never cross. Deep - I know, but is besides the point. He loves the game and is the inspiration for this composite of Rogers Stadium in Toronto - home of the Blue Jays. My thanks to Marcelo Cidrack on Unsplash for the stadium background photo.
Light a Leaf
This exercise was an attempt to improve my lighting skills. The self-imposed rule was one light however any combination of light modifiers, reflectors, gobo's or gels were allowed. The Photoshop work was pretty much confined to clean-up (dirt specks) and a light dodge and burn. The more saturated orange color is from a CTO gel.
Bubbles
Started out as a learning exercise in lighting. Was a huge amount of fun - blowing bubbles - go figure!!
Same photo - different treatments
Classic
Soft and Warm
Cool and Crisp
Blocks
My stay at home project. Took an old photo of an amaryllis flower and gave it different treatments: classic, soft and warm, crisp and cool, special effects (blocks).
The blocks effect is inspired by a similar project in Practical Photoshop Jan/2020.
Flower Landscapes
The inspiration for these came first from an old Adobe magazine ad (photo on the right) and secondly from seeing the dune photograph on Pixabay. This was followed by some idle time and a desire to improve my compositing skills. In the end it was just fun.
Hand Portraits
Relaxed
Thoughtful
Sharing
Irritation
Impatience
Anxiety
I think hands can be very expressive, sometime literally a.k.a sign language. The objective of this little photographic adventure was to capture an emotion with just the hands. The captions just suggest what the emotion might be to me - you may see something entirely different.
Loyal Friends
B&W
Grunge
Texture
These boots and gloves currently reside in my garage. They typically only get used when there is a dirty job that needs doing but they have been loyal friends throughout their time with me. The boots have walked countless trails in Alberta, British Columbia, Montana and the Yukon. The gloves have saved my hands from slivers, scratches and all kinds of abuse. Sadly they are indeed nearing the end of our mutual journey.
Red Sky at Morning
The challenge was to pick a book and build a photographic story around it. I have an dog-eared copy of the fourth edition of “Royce’s sailing illustrated” published in 1968. The first edition was published in 1956 and the twelfth (and last edition) was published in 1997. The photo story was built around the red sky sailing mantra but I wanted to combine the prairie and maritime environments ergo the ship wrecks, seagulls, lighthouse etc. on a prairie landscape which I shot during the Rocketry launch event. The final image is a composite of 10 images – the self-portrait and grassland background were taken by me and the rest are from an on-line stock photo site. The self-portrait was shot in my little office studio.
For you non America Cup fans the Alinghi hat (a well-worn gift from a friend) is the Swiss based sailing team that won the America Cup in 2003 and 2007.
