Down and Around Upon a Leaf

Very strong flashback from a movie called "Evil Dead". One of the great ones in the horror section. Every time when i see something new from you i think this must be the best one, but still you manage to pull something even better the next time. The twirl is... beautiful... yes, that have to be the right adjective for this one. And the painting marks of the camera looks perfect. I have only managed to do this kind of shots with clear and sharp lines, but this rough style is much cooler. This would be just the right work to hang on top of my TV. Perfecto. Best rgs Tero.

I absolutely love this Gordon. Fantastic. I wouldn't necessarily know it was a photograph . . . But still, stunning! The purple and yellow colour scheme is particularly appealing to me -- as is the intensity of the dark and shadow areas which gives a great depth.

 

This is really, really, reminding me of something. My mind immediately went to Italian futurism and Balla's 'Street Light' -- but, now I'm not sure that's it. I'll let you know if this deja vu materializes into something more concrete.

 

EDIT (6/11/07): It has. There was/is a Toronto area painter who had very similar works on display at the Trias Gallery some 8-9 years back. They were glowing leaves and other natural elements within rough abstract tunnels and other geometric forms. No name has come to mind though and I might be quite delirious.

This reminds me of Arthur Dove, a contemporary of O'Keeffe. An amazing shot. I wish I had the time this morning for more thoughtful analysis and free association, as I love to do. I'll simply reiterate that this is gorgeous.

Wide angle shot -- slow shutter -- camera rotation and descent during

exposure. Thanks for comments/ ratings and your time.

I feel like I'm inside a haystack that has a tunnel and I'm working my way out to the sun. Better and more fun that interpreting ink spots :) Fabulous! Cheers -

Tero;

 

I have not seen that movie but I gather it is scary. Trying to jiggle the camera during the other motions is what I think make the lines less sharp.

 

Ian;

 

Funny you should mention Futurism. John Mac made reference to this a while back in regards to my motion work and I have been looking into this, as well as a branch of this school -- Plastic Dynamism. You can find some references and quotes in my "Maggie's budding career" folder under "My Girl Maggie 1" as well as "2" I believe.

As recently as yesterday I was looking into Otto Steinert's school of subjective photography in relation to some of my other shots. I took a look at Balla's street light and do see some small similarity. Thanks for that. In an odd twist of Jungian synchronicity, not that I necessarily buy into that particular brand of voodoo or not, thanks to you I came upon Balla's " Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash " today at the same time I had uploaded my latest shot of Maggie on a leash. A concept I still wish to drive to a closer conclusion than I have thus far achieved. I know there is a much better representation of Maggie's motion to be had!

 

I am finding that one of the interesting things about putting my work up here at PN is that I get great feed back as regards the artists or schools of art that my work seems to remind others of. I am rather poorly informed about most of these matters so it is helpful to have the references pointed out. For better or worse, I plan to make a concerted effort this winter to study both art and the history of photography in earnest. I am intrigued by the fact that ideas that spring from my ignorant mind end up being representative of notions I was not aware of. I guess this speaks to the limits of human imagination as well a the re-inventing the wheel motif which seems to keep resurfacing with me lately.

 

Jeff;

 

I looked up Arthur Dove and do see the relevance of your reference -- thanks for that. Ah yes TIME, the one thing which is always in short supply!! I sometimes think this is, in part, why I try to stack so much of it up in each of my frames :)

 

Alberta;

 

Move over Rorschach !! I do like images that let the spirit run free. I can see your haystack notion the leaf can easily become the sun.

 

Gordon ... this is amazing. It looks like something from a dream or a horror movie. Or ... considering my medical background ... from inside a body cavity and the bright light in the center is the light from the doctor's scope. It also looks like something I saw in an old Twilight Zone episode. Regardless of what I think it looks like, it certainly looks to be something other than a photograph. Now I need to stop looking at it. It has my imagination in overdrive and I'm afraid things will soon begin to short out.

Gordon, this is an awesome looking "painting". The movement of the camera has worked so well again, and it has inspired me further with my "Keyboard"!

Will post more over the weekend - it's been a very hectic week with work!

All the best

Pete

This is way cool. Did you rotate the camera in only one direction, or, for example 180 degrees one way, then back the other? I'm guessing you needed about 6 or 8 seconds for the exposure?

 

Evil Dead II is the better of the series. It's Three Stooges meets a Gore Fest, courtesy of Sam Raimi - and Bruce Campbell of course. This one is best enjoyed with friends and some cold beer.

 

MP

You are pushing your style to wonderful places. This is a damned fine shot! Beautiful. Regards, Joe

4 sec. @ f. 22. The motion was continuous and clockwise. I was also trying to introduce a jitter or vibration which adds to the wave pattern and I was lowering the camera towards the leaf on the ground as I was rotating. I took about half a dozens tries and this one was the best.

 

I'll have to grab some beer, some friends and a DVD and check it out. How far wrong can a person go with a three stooges gorefest ?

Thanks guys for the support. It's real nice to know some people get what I'm doing here, as I continue to go farther out on a limb with these experiments.

I've always wondered if using a steadicam rig with a still camera might be worth experimenting with. I've used one with an Arriflex super 16mm motion picture camera and the Canon XL1 and have had a sneaky suspicion that they could be used to interesting effect with a still camera.

 

B&H sells a fairly inexpensive basic Steadicam rig. I forget the mfg, but I think it was only a couple hundred dollars. Who knows, with long shutter speeds, a little creativity and some patience, I think it could work.

 

 

This is an intriguing idea, I am going to get out my B&H catalogue and see what they have to offer. This would certainly help with making these shots repeatable and could have many other benefits. Thanks for the suggestion.

Steadicam rig does sound interesting. BUT.....I wonder how repeatable these images should be? For me, a lot of the enjoyment comes from knowing that the images will be different. It's possible to 'roughly' repeat by going through the same motions, and I'm finding the more of this sort of thing I do, the more easily I can gauge what sort of image will appear from what sort of motion, and what shutter speed and so on. To make it repeatable you could just copy and paste.

 

Of course there are other movements that could be achieved with the steadicam like big wide smooth swings which would give other possibilities.

 

 

Yeah I agree. The point is not to reproduce exactly what you have done, however I am thinking that the steady cam idea could be used in a lot of different ways to control one aspect of motion. I did some shots with my 70 - 200 mm zoom, (one of a water lily flower is up on this site ) and I used a tripod and slackened off the lens bracket to allow the camera to rotate evenly upon an axis. It created an effect that I could not have achieved hand held.

 

Once I worked out the time and motion needed for the shot above, I have repeated this technique several times and they do come out remarkable close to each other. It becomes another trick in the bag :)

I don't think I had repeatability in mind in bringing up the steadicam. It was more of just an idea on how that tool from the motion picture side of things could be applied to a still camera and what effects could be created with it. I was wondering more about the fluidity of steadicam tracking shots and how that could be applied to a still camera and used in ways such as Gordon's zoom/descent/zoom business. Like, for example horizontal or vertical tracks with both still objects and objects in motion. I think repeatability on the kind of image above would defeat the purpose a bit. I don't think you'd want to get another shot to be identical - unless of course you deleted a file of an image you really liked.

That is what I took from your suggestion not the idea of repeating a shot specifically more being able to repeat a process or at least this was more what I meant with my original comment. The notion of having fluid motion is very appealing as something to experiment with. I have played around in other ways with the idea of controlled motion in combination with random motion. My shot of dried flowers with a vibrator elastic banded to the lens to create controlled motion/vibration, with the camera hand held and in random motion would be an example of this idea. A steady cam would add more options to the mix.

 

BTW I had taken a look in the B&H catalogue but did not find anything reasonable in the stedicam section. I will ask a couple of friends in the video industry and see what they suggest.

Try this. I think this is the one I was thinking about.

 

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/193812-REG/Glidecam_GL2000_Glidecam_2000_PRO_Camcorder.html

 

 

Thanks for that information. I had been looking in their physical catalogue and should have looked on the web. I have to confess to knowing nothing about stedi-cams so I'll have to figure out the practicalities. The one you mention is somewhere around 16 inches high so I would either need to mount it to something else or purchase the waist level attachment. This entire line of thought has me thinking about all possibilities involving mecahnical stability. I am going to let these notions bounce about within my skull for a bit and see what comes of it. Again Marc, thanks for the original notion and for following up with me on it.

 

 

Cheers

 

Gord

 

How about using some type of lazy susan to put your subject matter on and get the rotation you're looking for while zooming and moving the camera. Could be another technique to explore. Maybe fastening a 4x4 sheet of plywood to something with a rotating base? If nothing else, it could be a good reason to spend a few hours (and a few beers)in the garage puttering around.

I do see possibilities with that notion. With a bit of tinkering, which just happens to be one of my favourite pastimes right up there with drinking beer :) I can see using a belt to drive a platform and a variable speed motor, ( an old power drill would most likely work fine ) and you could tripod mount the camera and move the subject rather than the camera and the zoom of course would not destabilized the image so you should wind up with a smooth shot. This is now on my rather long list of weekend tinkering projects for those long winter days.

Really amazing, this looks like a painting to me. Wall worthy(my wall) without hesitation.

 

Take care

Shayne

 

Like a glowing sun the leaf is sparkling.

Very well done! Love the structure and the light. Very inspiring!!

Best regards // Carola

Thanks for the compliment . I have been finding myself being more inclined towards this painterly look as time passes.