Black and White

I like black and white images in various media. In photography especially, there is a wide rage of techniques you can use to realize your own unique vision. Below are a few I did from some of my London photos.

I was pleased with the above shot after I retouched some junk out and color corrected it. Then after awhile I realized that if I did this up in black and white it would go from good, to much better. The focal point is now Big Ben  instead of all those reds and pinks.

Black and white photos have a timeless elegance to them. It works better on some images than others. Here are a couple more black and whites that I did.

In Photoshop, one of the best ways to go from color to black and white is to duplicate the image layer, convert to RGB (if not already) and use the Image, Adjustments, Black and White command.

Then play with the color sliders that come up to get the desired look.

Way more control this way than just automatically converting to black and white.

Postcard From Britain - Downton Abbey Art

To prime you for the big Downton Abbey film, I am featuring some digital art I created from the loads of images I shot while on a recent trip to Highclere Castle (aka Downton Abbey) in Hampshire England.

Here is my processed JPG. Most glaring need is for a decent sky. Way too many tourists cluttering up my shot as well.

Below is the same shot with a slightly different crop. I found a nice sky from my bank of shots I took in the Cotswolds just the day before and merged it into this shot for some interest. Next I retouched out many of those pesky tourists. Lastly, I punched up the overall color and sharpened the image to taste.

Below is the latest version of a digital watercolor painting I did using the above shot.

Using textures and brushes is fun. I could play with this image for months if I choose and experiment with different looks. Very soon however I will stop and make available for you the final painting in all its high resolution glory in my Fine Art America store.

Stay tuned for more England inspired art. Cheers!

The Royal Retouch

Come down from your royal wedding high yet? Me neither. I have been processing and uploading my Windsor Castle images to my Pixels and Flickr sites for the past few days.

Fun stuff, but the one problem with digital images (especially highly valued vacation ones) is that the creative options for visually bringing them to life can be a bit overwhelming.

For instance, my raw shot below has potential to be decent photo.

Then, below is the shot after I processed and retouched it - removing people, security barriers and some other stuff.

Below is just one final version of the image. The effects involved were basically pumping up the volume on the color, selective blurring, selective darkening, and finally selective sharpening then cropping it.

See more of my photography on my Flickr page, and fine art on my Pixels page.

Royal Wedding

In celebration of the mania surrounding the Royal wedding (as opposed to the wedding itself), I have decided to make available fine art prints of my best shots of Windsor Castle. They are available now on my Fine Art America galleries by clicking here. Below is one sample.

Postcards from Britain - National Gallery Part 2

I took loads of photos inside the National Gallery, London - All without flash of course and only where allowed.

There is something thrilling about being surrounded by original masterpieces some of which I have been studying in books for years. Yes you can see some of this stuff on the web, but that experience only goes so far.

Below are a few of my shots from inside the National Gallery.

The Toilet of Venus by Diego Velazquez

The Immaculate Conception by Diego Velazquez

A wall of Velazquez paintings

Detail of Philip IV hunting Wild Boar by Diego Velazquez

I rather like Diego Velazquez!

A wall of Rembrandt paintings

The National Gallery is open late on Friday nights, but gets too crowded and a bit too dark to see properly in places.

The National Gallery London on a Friday evening.

Of course you cannot go to the National Gallery London without marveling at (for the better part of an hour) some of the quintessentially British paintings in the collection:

The Fighting Temeraire by JMW Turner

Detail of The Fighting Temeraire by JMW Turner

Dido building Carthage by JMW Turner

The Hay Wain by John Constable

I have been to my share of art museums both large and small. Of what I consider to be the "big three" that I have visited, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the National Gallery in Washington D.C. and the National Gallery in London, the National Gallery London is my favorite.

Whenever I am in one of these places I always fantasize about living in there for a week straight. I would have all the basic necessities of life - superior fine art, food, clothing, shelter and wash rooms. What could be better?

Postcards from Britain - National Gallery Part 1

On a recent, first time holiday to Britain I went to the National Gallery London. Twice. For multiple hours. And it was not long enough!

As you could see we had fantastic weather, which surprised me no end. The National Gallery sprawls across one end of Trafalgar Square. In fact the main collection is housed on one floor, so it kind of has to sprawl I suppose. Sure makes it easy to get around without climbing stairs.

You may want (or need) to go down stairs in the main part of the building for lunch and the water closets. On your way down, do not miss the great view of Trafalgar Square with Big Ben in the background seen out the front window.

Photography tip - When shooting through glass, put your lens right up against the window pane and cup your hand around the lens if need be, to cut way down on unwanted reflections.

By the way, look closely at the base of Nelson’s column highlighted below. Those relief sculptures at the base were created using melted down French cannon balls. The British love to celebrate their historic victories over the French - a theme I will illustrate in future posts.

Lastly for now, here is a sculpture out in front of the National Gallery that was unveiled earlier the same day I shot this image. It is a representation of thumb I suppose. But it reminds some people of something else apparently. Cannot imagine what…

Summer Photography Break

As often happens in early July, I took a little break from the fine art projects to do some spots photography. I love tennis anyway, but I had extra incentive to attend this years USTA pro event at the Mt. Lebanon Tennis Center in Pittsburgh’s south hills - an opportunity to learn my new Sony A6000 camera.

I purchased my Sony A6000 earlier this year. I was going to simply upgrade to the newest version of my Canon Rebel (which I think was the XTi) but when I saw that the Canon shoots around 3 frames per second in burst mode while the Sony A6000 shoots a robust 11 frames per second, I quickly decided to go with the Sony.

Playing around in photoshop putting 3 shots together from that sweet burst mode.

For me this camera is all I need. Body is really light, shoots a nice image and if I ever want to, I can get an adapter to use my Canon lenses. Plus theres tons more features I will be learning for years to come.

Take Your Best Shot - Part 2

Here are images I created and used for my 2014 Mpix calendar for the months from July to December:

July - A montage using my sketches and backgrounds from my Gettysburg 150  tribute.

August - One of the three Sandals resorts on the island of St. Lucia.

September - Pittsburgh, city of bridges.

October - Montage of shots from our Venetian holiday.

 November - The “Rubber Duck Project” in Pittsburgh.

 December - Holiday tea display in the family kitchen

Take Your Best Shot - Part One

Do you love to take photos all year long? Me too!

One gift that is sure to please your loved ones around the holidays is a calendar with the best photos you've shot during the year. Here is the cover one I did for 2014:

The Caribbean Sea

It's been a couple years since I put together one of these. This year I thought I would try ordering them through Mpix.com (since that's where Scott Kelby and all the best pros in the business go).

I was happy with the results, and everyone I gave my calendars to just loved them.
Here are the first six images I created from my shots for the 2014 calendar.

January - A montage of our cat Lilly doing what she does best - nuthin’!

 February - A view of my hometown - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

 March - The Colosseum with images from a Roman holiday.

 April - A montage of images from three different Pittsburgh Pirate baseball games.

May - Baby birds in the backyard.

 June - The Piton Mountains in St. Lucia, in the Lesser Antilles.

I got my calendars printed on the Pearl finish paper that Mpix offers.
They looked fantastic! 

Tennis Photo Fun

Since the Australian Open is in full swing, and Roger Federer is (at the time of this writing) still in it, I wanted to show the raw, unprocessed shots I took of him at last year’s Western and Southern Open.

These are what I used to create the quick little montage I posted a few days ago, and am re-posting today.

Shot this after a practice session the morning of his semi-final. Kinda' dark:

This was during the final. I tend to underexpose a lot:

And this was the entrance to the grounds, from which I captured the W&S logo:

Roger ended up winning the tournament, so here is the quick finished montage I had fun doing recently:

This and OH-so much more can be seen on my Flickr Galleries by clicking HERE.

JoeWinklerArt.com

Italy Photos and a Good Problem

Between getting delayed in my return from Italy and not having my computer back from the tech guy who was updating it - it isn't until now and the next few days (weeks?) that I'm beginning to process up all the many photos I shot.

Here is the start of those:

St. Peter's Square, from day one of our trip.

I enjoy shooting into the sun and getting a nice silhouette of the subject as well as a dramatic sky. As you can see, I didn't follow the recent and very popular look of an "HDR" image however. HDR means "high dynamic range". In an HDR shot, the silhouette of buildings and obelisk would be destroyed and all the detail of those buildings would be as visible, and as brilliant, as the sky, which in my opinion would ruin the shot.

I'm not really a big fan of HDR photography. Much of it looks fake to me. However it is the look that has been hot for the past few years now. You do see a lot of it in the media today - movie posters and such.

A Swiss guard ready to kick some butt!

Anyway, normally I do shoot in RAW mode, but when there is the volume of shots to be taken as there was in this trip (well over one thousand) I just shoot JPGs. The good thing is that any version of Adobe Camera Raw after CS2 (I think) lets you open JPGs. Not to mention the fact that loads more JPGs can fit on a memory card than true RAW files.

Shooting digital is great, but the one problem with it is that there are just so many shots to work with after getting back. But I'm not complaining. It's a good problem to have!

JoeWinklerArt.com