Tuesday Painterly Photo Art
Karen Nakamura – M.Photog.,M.Artist
Judging gets you exposed to a lot of imagery. You can be critically thinking and talking about thousands of photographs over the course of a year. What is interesting is that there are some artists whose work seems to jump out from the rest showing something different. Judging is blind as far as knowing who the maker may be during the competition. At a later date a maker’s work may be seen with a name attached and I really enjoy talking with the maker and Karen was one of those people.
That’s why I asked her to join us on Successful-Photographer in this post. Here’s Karen!
How Karen learned
“I’ve been creating art pretty much as far back as I can remember. I’ve taken art classes since the 3rd grade. I’m really lucky because my mom would give us art projects throughout the year when I was little. I’ve taken everything from painting, drawing, sculpting, 2 and 3-dimensional design, photography, photoshop and industrial arts.”
The Perfect Perch – I’ve been wanting to add birds to my floral images. I went to the San Diego zoo and photographed a beautiful White-necked Jacobin hummingbird. I then photographed the tulips to match the light on the bird and then photographed the vase.
The vase wasn’t exactly what I wanted so I decided to stretch it. The hummingbird was shot natural light at f13 1/160 800ISO Tulips and vase were shot with natural light with reflector. F11 1/60 160ISO
Words of wisdom on learning and/or thoughts on creating art
“Anyone can create art. Just follow your heart. Don’t compare yourself to others and don’t care what others think. Create art that makes you happy because that’s what it’s all about. The more you create, the better you will become. Eventully you will develop your own style.”
Orchid Bloom – I’ve had this orchid for about five years. The plant sits on my kitchen cabinet and when the window light hits the flowers, the colors are so striking. The orchid spray wasn’t perfect so I added one more flower to the stem. The leaves were taken from another orchid image to complete my piece.
The orchid spray was shot in a studio setting with one main light and one reflector. @ f16 1/125 100 ISO The orchid plant was natural window light with a reflector. F11 1/60 400ISO
“To be inspired look at other peoples art, look at art history books and go onto social media sites like pinterst and instagram. Follow artists that inspire you. To learn how to create art, watch videos on Youtube or watch videos on site like Creative Live. Hands on classes and workshops are one of the best ways to learn a techique.”
Delicate Beauty – The freesia is one of the first flowers I photographed back in 2012. I really didn’t like how it came out, so I set it aside until I went to the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles and photographed a Swallowtail hovering over flowers. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my butterfly images until I went back into my library of flowers and came across the freesias again. Visually the light matched so I decided to play around with the three subjects until I created this art piece.
The butterflies were shot in diffused sunlight f8 1/1600 800 ISO. The freesia was studio lit with one main light, one reflector and a backlight. f16 1/125 100ISO
Karen Nakamura Bio
PPA Master Photographer and Master Artist, Karen Nakamura, is widely acclaimed for her signature style images of flowers. She is gifted with a unique take on them that evolves with each new blossom she shoots. Some of her inspiration and creativity comes from an adoration of orchids, which she tended to as a hobby.
Karen also has a fine art background, attaining her Bachelor’s of Fine Art from Cal State Long Beach.
Karen has earned the Professional Photographers of America’s Photographer of the Year awards every year since she first entered the PPA International Photographic Competition back in 2010.
Professional Photographers of America honored Karen with its 2013 Diamond Photographer of the Year and 2014 Artist Diamond Photographer of the Year. Diamond Photographers of the Year had all four competition images accepted into the prestigious PPA Loan Collection. Karen has won the coveted Canon Par Excellence Award, representing the pinnacle of achievement at the Professional Photographers of America regional level. She is one of the first photographers to earn the California Masters Degree from Professional Photographers of California.
You can learn from Karen! Her PPA Super 1 Day Class
Floral Photography and Compositing Course Date: Thursday, October 6, 2016
My wife says the great blue herons all run for the hills when they see our car pull up as I have been stalking them on this property for years. I love those big birds.
Was visiting my mother-in-law this past week with my wife on our annual visit the family trip. It’s a great time to work on my wildlife skills. I thought I’d try pairing the Lumix GX8 with the 100-300mm Lumix Vario G f4.0-5.6 lens and boy I was happy. The GX8 has a fast capture rate which was great for sequences. I enjoy capturing birds with different behavior rather than just beauty portraits. As my MIL’s home is on the point with surrounding marsh there’s lots of wildlife on display for my camera.
The birds that gave me the most opportunity to study during this trip were snowy egrets. Most of the time it was raining and blustery winds coming from the northeast.
I enjoy how this egret appears to be dancing in this image. ISO 800 1/3200 sec. +1 exposure compensation Aperture Proiity f5.6 300mm (600mm 35mm equivalent)
This combination of lens, ISO and camera lend itself to a slightly grainy (aka noise) look. Because this is a small piece of the overall image I’ve pushed it here to emulate tri-x push process. The processors have given the noise in an image more of a film grain feel. ISO 800 1/1600 sec. Aperture Priority f5.6 300mm (600mm 35mm equivalent) Processed in NIK Silver FX Pro 2 (which you can now download fro free if you hadn’t heard the news!)
Geese are another ever-present bird on the marsh. ISO 800 1/3200 sec. +1 exposure compensation Aperture Priority f5.6 246mm (492mm 35mm equivalent)
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – You’ll notice that there are no great blue herons among my captures. That has nothing to do with me but a hawk family moved into the neighborhood and chased all the nesting herons from the area a couple weeks before my arrival.
If you look at yesterday’s post you’ll see the capture and processing of an orangutan photographed through a dirty plate glass window which pushed capture and processing skills. Today I want to share an artistic rendition of our countries’ symbol of freedom, the bald eagle.
While we’re looking at this image let’s go back in time with the Steve Miller Band’s Fly Like an Eagle for a little musical accompaniment…
The theme here is to practice skills of photography. What did I get/learn while photographing the eagle that I can carry with me to my regular photography gigs??
Number one – People were moving through on a regular basis, so there were distractions to manage. awareness of surroundings while concentrating of my subject.
Number two – Patience. I wanted the eagle’s beak to be closed and there were only fractions of moments when this was the case. I had to learn this behavior and movement and time it to get the position I wanted.
Number three – The eagle was caged so there was the fencing to account for which meant shooting at a shallow Depth of field and focusing on the eagle and not the fence.
Finally, number four – Processing the image into an art piece that is more than the sum of the parts. Always working on these techniques to improve them. As they say, practice makes perfect…
Original photograph. Captured with Lumix FZ1000 1/400th sec f4 ISO 200 at 420mm (35mm equivilent)
A process through NIK Silver FX Pro 2 gave a very gritty black & white rendition of the eagle. I like the idea of the eagle in a square crop portrait style but not all the cage elements and distracting background.
I wanted a larger portrait rendition so I choose a larger crop and started adding my art embellishments.
The artwork is accomplished using photographs of textures and colors combined together using layers and Blend Modes. Utilizing Layer Masks on the texture layers allows for control of specific effects in certain areas of the image.
I thought the eagle was just holding it’s wing up when I photographed it, but it was bothering me. Then my eagle-eyed wife Holly came in and liked the art treatment but also spotted that the eagle’s wing was probably broken hence the residence at the zoo. I did a little plastic surgery for the final image you see below.
The last bit of work was accomplished with Adobe Photoshop. I copied the broken wing onto its own layer. Then repositioned it as if it was folded in its normal place. Using a layer mask to blend it into place.
I do! I always try to improve my skills by pushing out of my comfort zone and create different images from different places.
I always try to improve my skills by pushing out of my comfort zone and create different images from different places.
So how do you do it? One of the best ways is to continually practice and expand your skillset. Anyone who is at the top of their game in any sport, yes I consider photography a sport as well as an art form, practice daily. Why do I consider it a sport? Depending on your photographic genre you need coordination, timing, and stamina. This goes for shooting sports, weddings, wildlife or other fast moving situations. Why art? Art because you need to create or recognize wonderful lighting in order to have your images rise above the ordinary. Both the ‘art and sport’ parts of your work can be improved by working on your muscle memory. And, you guessed it, that takes practice.
Guess what? Your composition gets better when you practice too.
You also need to practice your post production as well… And the more you do it, well you get the idea.
I always try to improve my skills by putting myself in different situations and today I’ll share some images from the Phoenix zoo. For a little accompaniment push the button to listen to Paul Simon’s song ‘At the Zoo’.
Paul Simon with Garfunkle “At the Zoo’ from around 1967. (am I showing my age here??)
Orangatang at Phoenix Zoo. Captured with Lumix FZ1000 1/40th sec f4 ISO 200 – With a range of 25-400mm the FZ1000 is a very handy lens covering a wide variety of situations.
“OK Bob, so how is this zoo practice good for practicing other types of photography?
I’m fighting crowds to get the angle I want. Looking to capture expression which happens very quickly. In this instance, I am also going to be working hard in my post processing because this image was made in less than ideal lighting conditions through a thick, colored, and dirty pane of glass.
Did I say it wasn’t an ideal situation? That never happens on a regular photo shoot… (cue the laughter bouncing off the walls!)
Here is the final image I was able to pull from the original capture.
A couple of post processing tips I picked up from working on this photo of the orangutan. Adobe Camera RAW has a feature called DeHaze. This was quite helpful in getting a lot of the reflections and dirt on the glass to disappear. Did a much better job than I thought it would!It was designed to help with scenics to take some of the blue out of a landscape image but it worked very much like a Polarizing filter in this situation. I will be revisiting this filter more in the future. I love how tools and setting designed for one thing can be leveraged to do more.
After the initial processing in Photoshop I moved over to my favorite black and white conversion tool NIK Silver FX Pro 2. I made my black and white selections in the filter. These process out onto their own layer, and with a Mask, additional adjustments can be made. One more time back into Silver FX Pro 2 (it’s free now!) and I made some adjustments to the Structure, dialing in very strong enhancements to the mid tones and the fine structure. I changed the Mode of that new layer to Luminosity and filled the mask with black. Then I was able to paint with white on the mask to selectively sharpen specific areas of the image.
Last on the list was a Soft Light Mode Layer to dodge and burn.
I was excited to receive a call while on vacation with my wife in New Mexico from PPA headquarters. They were calling to share the news that I was named to the Top Ten in the Illustrative Category. I learned I was eligible for a Grand Imaging Award. Unfortunately, I did not earn a GIA Award but I was named to the World Photographic Cup – Team USA It was quite and honor to have an image be recognized at that level.
A photo taken by a friend as I headed across the stage during the Grand Imaging Awards at the PPA Convention in Atlanta, Georgia last week.
Here’s a better look at the image. It was created using a macaw that I photographed at Sarasota Jungle Gardens in Florida. The bird was extracted from the scene and duplicated numerous times into a spiral nautilus composition. Texture, smoke, shadows and color layers were added to add more depth and dimension.
This is the final image.
Here is an earlier version on the way to the final.
Original capture – Tech info from original capture Lumix GX7Lumix Vario 35-100mm f2.8 1/250 sec f2.8 ISO 400
For infrared conversion of my cameras I use LifePixel. Infrared allows you to put an older camera to use and opens up a new time time of day for productive image creation.
Fotopro tripods are well worth checking out. You can learn about the ones I use and recommend by clicking on the Fotopro Tripods link at the top of this page. If you want to see what other tripods might fit your needs check out the Fotopro.com website. Check back with me before you buy as a Fotopro Ambassador I’m able to get you discounted pricing including complementary continental USA shipping for my followers that you won’t find through retail outlets.
Learn Photoshop in a fun environment. Aaron Nace applies the right amount of fun with easy to understand and follow tutorials. Actions and brushes are included with lessons!
Lightning, waterdroplets, sound, time-lapse, HDR sequences, smiles and much more control for your camera!
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The vase wasn’t exactly what I wanted so I decided to stretch it. The hummingbird was shot natural light at f13 1/160 800ISO Tulips and vase were shot with natural light with reflector. F11 1/60 160ISO
Orchid Bloom – I’ve had this orchid for about five years. The plant sits on my kitchen cabinet and when the window light hits the flowers, the colors are so striking. The orchid spray wasn’t perfect so I added one more flower to the stem. The leaves were taken from another orchid image to complete my piece.
The orchid spray was shot in a studio setting with one main light and one reflector. @ f16 1/125 100 ISO The orchid plant was natural window light with a reflector. F11 1/60 400ISO
Delicate Beauty – The freesia is one of the first flowers I photographed back in 2012. I really didn’t like how it came out, so I set it aside until I went to the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles and photographed a Swallowtail hovering over flowers. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my butterfly images until I went back into my library of flowers and came across the freesias again. Visually the light matched so I decided to play around with the three subjects until I created this art piece.
The butterflies were shot in diffused sunlight f8 1/1600 800 ISO. The freesia was studio lit with one main light, one reflector and a backlight. f16 1/125 100ISO
