Sarracenia leucophylla

I think I like the toning. But, in case I feel it is too daring in the morning:

I'm off to bed but I saw this and I had to say, wow!

I had to give you my two cents before I am on my way. I am totally in shock by this masterpiece.

 

I have been working all day on pictures without breathing. So.... you have been my breath of fresh air. :)

I do like the toned image over the original. Great job of isolating the single pitcher. The oof one behind almost looks like a negative image of the in focus pitcher's shadow and gives the blurred background a wonderful sense of depth. I can feel myself falling into the frame. The vignetting is also a nice touch. I know this was at a botanical garden but it is too bad you could not have been able to snip off that smaller pitcher.

I've been trying some new approaches and new directions in my floraland macro photography. This is one of my early attempts at a new anddeveloping style.

I'd appreciate almost any comment you might want to offer. I'mparticularly curious as to viewers emotional responses -- particularlyif you feel that your response differs between the blue/yellow or moresimple warm toned (posted below) versions. Any comments on the styleas a whole is also appreciated.

I have links to the work of some of the photographers I've mycurrently been inspired by on my bio page.

Thanks.

very saracella...

Interesting subject and a beautiful composition. Really like it.

 

Best regards.

Thank you all for your kind comments.

 

Gordon, you said: "I know this was at a botanical garden but it is too bad you could not have been able to snip off that smaller pitcher."

 

Really? I was going for the triad of shapes and that little one is my favourite of the three! I think it looks more clearly like a pitcher plant than the other OOF one and I felt it helped to make the OOF pitchers more readily understandable.

 

I also liked that each one presented at a different angle and I thought the back-view added to the overall grouping.

 

 

Hmm. . . Thank you so much for leaving that comment. Honest! Now I have to re-think this again; which is a good thing.

I do understand your reasoning as regards presenting another angle on the hood. For me it seems to add an unnecessary element which interferes with the illusion created by the larger OOF pitcher. There is an elegant simplicity to the image and having two rather than three pitcher would reinforce that. On the other hand the third smaller pitcher does help the image in terms of offering a mid point perspective wise between the fore and back ground and I can appreciate that you have dealt with it in a very deliberate fashion giving that small pitcher more light than the larger OOF pitcher and less than the main subject pitcher. Perhaps the aspect of a reverse shadow is not part of your intention or simply an illusion only I am enamored with? What is quite evident to me Ian is that after your recent trip to NYC there is a more intense level of care represented in these images. I get the impression something on a major scale has happened with your art and I am most impressed with this direction.

 

BTW I am still ploughing through the work of the photographers you sited as inspiration. It has been slow going as I've not been indoors much but I am having a great time with them and some of the work is certainly an " eye opener " for me. Thanks for that.

I have just now been clicking back and forth between the toned and un-tone version and it appears that when you toned the image you moved up the brightness of that third pitcher, either that or somehow the toning gives that impression. For whatever reason it looks more like it belongs in the composition in the un-toned version, the top side of the hood jumps out at me a little more than I would like in the toned version, to my eye at any rate.

"Perhaps the aspect of a reverse shadow is not part of your intention or simply an illusion only I am enamored with?"

 

No, I'm enamored with it. But, it wasn't part of the INITIAL intention. I only really saw that particular element after conversion to B&W and increased contrast and vignette. I do like it a lot now. It isn't apparent in colour nearly as much as here.

 

Truth be told, I have a LOT (30) of shots of these. You see, there were a bunch growing in the glass house (and I took some 15-20 shots to show family), but they were pressed against walls and in flat light -- I knew they were not going to work out artistically. When I found a patch of these growing in the rock-garden area by a pond I was elated. But, it was noon and in full sun and I had a hard time isolating the forms from the background. These were the only ones that I could get isolated by putting them in front of the shaded the water. I knew that one of the 3 shots I took of this triad would be what worked. I was guided mostly by trying to isolate them and then to isolate the main pitcher from the others.

 

As for the issue of tone and brightness. (SEE BELOW)

 

They are the same image in every way except the toning. (NO, I was wrong on that.)

 

The posted image is Blue darks/Yellow lights the attached one is a more classic warm sepia darks/cool-blue lights. The coolness of the blue seems to pull down the highlights a little. I'll have to take a closer look to see how I feel about what this does with the third pitcher. I might just pull down the highlight section of my curve a touch to compensate for the impression of greater brightness there. I'll have to see though.

 

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I also agree with you Gordon about my recent progress. But, I think it goes back to my shots from the Badlands. You see, I had just got some neutral density filters and they really encourage you to work on a tripod and to do so slowly. To use the hard edged ones, you need to be very careful in aligning them and use DOF preview to line them up correctly.

 

Moreover, my images looked awful when they come out of the camera! The blues are horridly over-saturated and the edges of the filter inevitably showed a bit. But, I knew what I had been after and I knew what I wanted. When I was done with the images I had gone from being crushed by them being so unsuccessful to elated at how much the expressed my vision entirely. I had already started to take fewer images and pay more attention to what I wanted to achieve before taking the image. But, this really forced that behaviour upon me.

 

I have now begun shooting for what I want to achieve rather than for the best image out of the camera. For example, I might under expose a little to get the mid tones in the right place so that increasing contrast will separate the image as I want. In other words, I have finally adopted some form of Adams' idea of previsualising the finished product.

 

This also means that I now take way fewer images than before. From these, I now I cull the vast majority before doing any processing and before getting 'invested' in the image. I shot 180 images at the NYC Botanical Gardens (150 if you don't count plant tags). I have edited that down to well under 50 files I have kept and some 10 I am working on. I would have previously worked most of them and then been confused as to what I wanted to keep. This change is possible only because I now know what it is that I want to achieve and I what I need in the image to be able to do that.

 

These changes should have come out in my Algonquin images. But, we had such awful weather and the days I had set aside for photos were the worst. I guess it did come through in that work a bit though -- I've only posted four images and 2 of them are among my strongest IMO. I have a few more I want to work though.

 

So, that leaves the NYC images to really show the progress. The discovery of this new direction while in NYC only heightened this new rigour all the more and allowed the return to fields of interest that I had abandoned since the badlands work: namely florals and macro. I had decided to set these largely aside (leaving exceptions for any spectacular specimens) since I felt I didn't know what I wanted to say through my images in these fields.

 

Plus a week all on your own can really help focus your mind and thoughts. I really did love NYC too -- particularly Greenwich.

Oh, and you don't know how glad I am that you liked/found interest in the work I linked to. Whenever you have time please leave a line or two about any specific thoughts you might have. I know your maximizing your time out in the woods (as I would be if I could), so no rush.

It turns out I had used a curve to boast mid-tone contrast in one version and used the contrast control in the other. This created the difference. I have re-touched the Blue/Yellow version and attached it here. Let me know if it handles the issue for you. It does bring down the OOF pitchers a touch without affecting the in-focus one.

 

I'm fairly indifferent but marginally like this version better (and will probably swap it for the one above soon. I think the change though is less than the difference between some monitors and less than the difference between the white point on screen here and what the white point on any of the papers I like to print on would be.

The difference between the first toned image and the secods is quite subtle yet it does IMO make a considerable difference in how that pitcher fits into the scheme of things. It no longer intrudes to the extent it had. I still would have loved to see a shot without that third pitcher, for curiosity sake. I am no master at PP but I have always been amazed at what large impact small adjustments can have. I recall back in the days when I worked regularly in a wet darkroom I could go through hours and untold sheets of paper making the tinniest tweaks to get things just right. If I went back to the first few sheets and took a look at the difference between sheet no. 1 and the final paper maybe no. 21, the difference was not all that large in terms of basic exposure and contrast but the little tweaks made a world of difference to the feel of the final image. Of course with viewing on a monitor even though both are calibrated regularly the differences can make either one of our observations inaccurate. In the end the print hung on the wall is what matters as regards the processing. I'm still not anywhere near were I want to be with B&W work in PS. Perhaps the cold dark days that are about to be upon us will change that.

 

You are of course correct that your badlands images marked a turning point. I do now recall thinking at the time that your images from that series looked more studied.To me there is a huge difference in terms of approach between using the tools to capture an image and using them to interpret. For the former to succeed you need to understand the tools and how they function, which is of course mandatory if you intend on taking quality photographs. For the latter you have to make some basic decisions about what you want the image to say and set the circumstances up to get your intentions across and this goes above and beyond the former considerations. I agree that the bulk of this work must go on before you press that shutter button. The extra time and consideration do end up coming across in the final product. I think that this is what I rather clumsily tried to get across during a previous exchange you and I had regarding one of my Amanita photos. Those shots took hours to get and much time and preparation before hand, before even getting out the camera time was spent considering what I wanted to achieve and how to go about getting that end result.I have heard it said that with the advent of digital you can just take a huge over abundance of shots and you are bound to get a good one. There is some small truth in this and it can be liberating to get instant feedback and no processing costs. I would still stake my money on a single carefully considered shot over fifty fired off rapidly.

 

I do have some thoughts on the work of the two influences you had quoted on your snail photo, some good some otherwise but I will leaves them for another time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great reply Gordon.

 

"I would still stake my money on a single carefully considered shot over fifty fired of rapidly."

 

I'd take those stakes! I think it is more like 100 to 1. While I may not fully agree with the rating system here or think that the best photos get the best ratings, still, getting above 6 on both figures does mean that the image achieved something. Now, think, how many above 6/6 shots have you seen that belonged to a photographer whose portfolio wasn't filled with other very strong images? I can think of only one time that I ever found that.

Original toned image is posted here for the purpose of archiving. The new re-curved image is posted above replacing the original.