by successfulbob | architectural photography, black & white, infrared photography, Lumix G6, photo walkabout, photography, photography creativity, photography gear
Wandering – Scottsdale, Arizona
Today is the start of a new feature here on the Successful-Photographer blog. Wandering will have images from a walk around a place with no other objective than to see what images might be gathered. Wandering is a way to keep your eye sharp and experiment with new ideas or test out new gear.
The first stop on the SP wandering tour is Downtown Scottsdale, Arizona. Scottsdale is a high-end community with lots of art galleries and interesting new architecture mixed with buildings built in the ’20’s. I was down in the Valley of the Sun for meetings that started in early morning and stretched into the night with some downtime in the middle of the day. With full sun basting the town I thought it would be fun to put the infrared camera through some paces. For convenience, I mounted the 14-140mm (28-280mm full frame equivalent) on the LifePixel converted IR and set off to see what I could capture.
Fountain on the central circle.
Working on the sign under the palms.
Glowing palms against the modern architecture.
‘Love is…’ bulletin-blackboard outside a restaurant. Even though there was no full sun the infrared capture renders this scene with lots of contrast.
Nordstroms tower architectural detail.
Always having a camera with you allows you to take downtime and turn it into a learning experience. With the light weight and quality of the micro four thirds cameras, it’s easier than ever to always have a reliable capture device with you.
It’s a great time to be a photographic artist.
Yours in creative Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | photography - art quote, photography education
Sunday Photo/Art Quote – Jill Davidson M.Photog., CPP
I never know what will be the inspiration for the Sunday Photo/Art Quotes here on Successful Photographer. Occasionally something will jump out at me and catch my attention like turning a corner and seeing a snake that makes the heart get to racing.
This week was like that.
And it wasn’t specifically an ‘ART’ quote. But one I believe that can help lead you to make good art. Today’s quote comes from photographer Jill Davidson. It was in a Facebook post. Just the quote and no elaboration. Those are the short quotes I find the most inspiring.
“Luck is hard work, dressed up for the prom.” Jill Davidson
This is a theme that runs pretty regularly here in the blog, and I’m always looking for new ways to express and remind myself that it takes work to become lucky. I know I am extremely fortunate. But I do (almost) always work hard to get there. Funny when I work less I don’t seem to be as lucky. Hmm. I think sometimes photographers come to programs and seminars to learn the quick and easy way to learn a technique. A shortcut if you will. If that is all, they come for they tend to miss the underlying depth and dimension fo the technique and it is a mere shadow of what the presenter was sharing. Please remember that continuing education is great and should be pursued all the time. Learning is a life-long adventure, but it is only the beginning of you being able to create more artistic images.
Are you dressed up for the prom and putting in the work? Or are you wearing your sweats and T-shirt?
You can check out Jill’s photography here.
Yours in creative Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | fine art photography, fine art portrait, photographer profile, photography, photography books, photography creativity, photography education, tuesday painterly photo art
Tuesday painterly Photo Art – Karen Sperling
Karen’s exquisite work speaks for itself. I’ll let her tell ‘the rest of the Story.’
“My mother was an artist and my father enjoyed photography, so I’ve been painting and taking photos for as long as I can remember. But I never actually finished anything because I was never encouraged to paint or take photos. So I majored in English in college and after graduating, I worked as a writer and an editor for newspapers, magazines and book publishers, including McGraw-Hill. But I never forgot about art and photography. I minored in art in college and continued to dabble in painting and photography through the years and spent a lot of time in museums and galleries.
© Karen Sperling – Photo © Kevin Kubota
“Little did I know that I was creating the perfect skill set for writing the first Painter manual, a gig I got through networking in the New York Mac Users Group in the late 1980s. And I’ve been writing about and teaching Painter ever since.
I never thought of myself as an artist and in the early days, I featured the work of other artists in my Painter tutorials, classes, and books. In 2001, after my talk at the national PPA convention, the editor of PEI, a magazine that was later folded into Professional Photographer Magazine, invited me to do an article about creating my art in Painter. When I said I didn’t paint, she said, “You could do it.” And I did! A little encouragement went a long way, and I use this experience daily teaching photographers to paint. I honestly believe if you think you can paint, you probably can, and I’m here to encourage you to try. It’s amazing how much you can do when someone whispers in your ear; you can do it.
© Karen Sperling -Photo © Karah Sambuco
“My involvement with Painter has opened doors that I would never have imagined. In 2003 I started to paint commissioned portraits directly for clients and photographers for their customers. And in 2007 I had my first gallery show in New York of my abstract art. More recently, I was named the exclusively commissioned painter for a TV cover manufacturer.
© Karen Sperling – Photo © Don Ling
“So I went from not thinking of myself as an artist to being paid for paintings, which is why I truly believe if I can do it, you can, with study and practice, and I encourage you to try.
Because of my many years teaching Painter, I have many different painting styles because I’m always interested in showing something new. One of the things I like about Painter is experimenting and inventing new looks and styles. I know having a lot of different styles goes against the grain of most photography experts who say you should promote one style, but I look to Picasso, who had many styles during his career. So we’ll call my style eclectic so that I can keep painting in any way I like at the moment.
© Karen Sperling – Photo © Felicia Tausig
“I find offering different styles helps sell commissioned portraits to a broader base of clients and photographers. I also offer a variety of styles in my books, videos, and classes. I encourage students to try all the different styles I teach. In this way, they can pick and choose elements to include in their own paintings to create their individual style. Too many times, students paint exactly like someone they studied with instead of finding their own voice and vision.
© Karen Sperling – Photo © Don Ling
“If you’ve been thinking about learning to paint, I encourage you to try, and if you’ve been thinking about offering paintings based on your photos to your clients, I urge you to try that, too. And I’m here to either paint for you or to show you how to do it yourself!”
Biography
Karen Sperling is an Elite Corel Painter Master and the original Painter expert—she wrote the first several Painter manuals when the software was first invented, and many published Painter books, including her newly published Painting for Photographers Volume 3, currently available at Amazon.
Karen wrote one of the Forewords and was a featured artist in Cecil Wiliams’ book, Painter Showcase.
Karen has been interviewed on radio and in many podcasts, including Michael Coy’s Cashtography.
Sperling has taught photographers to use Corel Painter at just about every venue there is, including the national Professional Photographers of America (PPA) and WPPI conventions, local PPA affiliates and PPA schools. Photographers travel to study with Karen in Los Angeles from as far away as the United Kingdom, New Zealand and South Africa, and from all around the United States, both in classes and individually.
Karen is known for taking complex art and software concepts and boiling them down into easy-to-follow, thorough steps. Her concise, complete books, tutorials, and classes have made painting accessible to photographers who never thought they could paint, but always wanted to try. Karen demystifies Painter’s mysteries and photographers who study with her report being able to sell their works of art to commissioned portrait clients and in galleries for tens of thousands of dollars.
Clients and photographers alike commission painted portraits by Karen Sperling, an artist in her own right who minored in art in college and who has exhibited her paintings in New York and Los Angeles and during Art Basel Miami Beach.
Karen’s fine art and commissioned portraits are held in private collections around the world.
To study with Karen or to commission her to paint portraits for your clients, visit her website:
http://www.artistrymag.com/ Email at karenlsperling@gmail.com
Karen’s books at Amazon
Connect with her on Facebook
Subscribe to her on youtube
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
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by successfulbob | inspiration, photography - art quote
Sunday Photo/Art Quote – Seth Goodin
Seth Goodin is an author of seventeen books and shares lots of ideas about marketing. I’m grabbing a quote from him that hits the heart of creators.
Art is not in the …eye of the beholder. It’s in the soul of the artist.” ― Seth Godin
Let’s go to the expanded version from which I pulled this quote.
“Art is what we call…the thing an artist does.
It’s not the medium or the oil or the price or whether it hangs on a wall or you eat it. What matters, what makes it art, is that the person who made it overcame the resistance, ignored the voice of doubt and made something worth making. Something risky. Something human.
Art is not in the …eye of the beholder. It’s in the soul of the artist.” ― Seth Godin
Show your soul.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – There is one other thought that I believe came from Dean Collins. “Beauty is in the eyes of the checkbook holder.” Hmmmm, maybe there’s a middle ground somewhere. You decide.
by successfulbob | Lumix GX85, Lumix Lounge, photography, photography gear, wildlife photography
Sedona Wetlands Photo Gear Testing
Well, I gotta tell ya it’s been very busy and I’ve been remiss in posting here for about a week. I photographed a four-day event coverage job with its attendant post-processing along with my regular work. There are only so many hours in a day so the blog had to wait.
I’m back!
And I got a lens I was lusting after to add to my quiver that I’ve started testing. The Lumix 100-400mm G Leica DG Vario-Elmar f 4.0-6.3 lens is as beautiful as I thought. I do not normally get too excited about glass for my cameras. I think of them as tools, and if they do their job as advertised, I’m cool with them. Occasionally, a lens tends to perform over-and-above That’s when I get excited. The 100-400mm is one of those lenses.
I went back out to the Sedona Wetlands for a quick test and here are some results.
Blue Dragonfly – I was unable to identify this dragonfly. Wonder if it’s because it’s a juvenile and the wings haven’t changed yet. Any ideas??!!
Even though there were quite a few of these critters darting in and out of the stalks of green I could barely see them. They are tiny. Tiny and almost transparent. With some patience, I was able to finally track one of the dragonflies down that took a moment to rest. Excellent detail of something I almost couldn’t see. Oh by-the-way, I was hand-holding the shot with the lens racked all the way out to the 800mm equivalent. As a matter of fact I handheld all the images in this post at the 800mm equivalent. The GX85 was the camera and was a help in this regard as it is using five-axis image stabilization.
Even at f6.3, there’s some beautiful separation from the background with this lens.
Mourning Dove – A bird capable of attaining flight speeds of 55 MPH hung around for a portrait. Sweet.
Not so much a beautiful photo, but a test to see the amount of detail that can be represented in the feathers. Sharpness is enhanced in this camera by the removal of the anti-alias filter. I might look to extract the bird from the background and use the pattern of the feathers in an art piece. We’ll see.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
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by successfulbob | black & white, cloud photography, infrared photography, Lumix G6, Lumix Lounge
Infrared Cloud Images
I enjoy the high-contrast look of clouds when photographed in infrared. I use a Lumix G6 with the filter changed out to infrared by LifePixel.
Processed in Adobe Camera RAW
Clouds can have lots of personality when paired with an infrared capture. The high contrast can be a lot of fun. I’m starting to collect IR cloud images just as I have for my regular work. Having a library of clouds can help add interest to art photo composites.
These were taken in Sedona.
I was cooking dinner and looked out of the window and saw the clouds starting to march through the area. They only showed this kind of depth for a few minutes. If you see cloud formations happening, take it ASAP. Usually, if you wait a little bit, or drive down the road a little ways you won’t get what you were looking for as clouds are an ever changing kaleidoscope of shape and form.
Yours in creative Photography, Bob
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