Wallace Koopmans Artlog

Just a couple of images, one of which was the last on a roll of film as I walked to Lens and Shutter to drop it off for processing.  In the second image I love how the shrubs appear to be recoiling from the lone one on the other side of the line.  Sometimes to see possible images like this you need to envision the world as it might look in a photograph.  This is made easier when the subject is simple and appears to be in a single plane like this one, but really a photograph is ultimately shapes on paper.  Looking out in our three dimensional world and assessing it in two is hard work but the camera does not choose for you, it’s just the tool you use to do the conversion you can share.

“I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.” – Garry Winogrand

I received my painting that will be part of the Fraser Valley Biennale at the Reach Gallery back from Abbotsford Art Gallery where they did an excellent job of framing.  I really like the subtle highlights from the metal edges and the matt look of the black. Great work and thank you.

I went to Clayburn Village to see the Old School Market which had a fun mix of antiques and new craft items from many different vendors.  I picked up a couple things myself and took a few pictures.

The circle in a square of the laundromat dryer came to mind when I saw this hub on an old loader.  It’s obviously been painted several different colours as well as the dark staining of dirt encrusted grease.  Up close there is actually a lot of interesting textures and I took a few digital images for a possible  future painting.  The filmwas a fresh pack from the fridge and you can see that it didn’t develop evenly on the bottom, I’ll have to wait until next week to find out if that is how all of them will now be.

I took both these pictures this week with my Sony digital camera and as I was importing them into Lightroom it just struck me how different they were, that’s the great thing about digital cameras.  I think that it’s easy to forget how much creative power we have through technology.   This trend will continue as new features are added to cameras and I for one look forward to it.   On a side note anyone who has seen enough of my images will realize I often take pictures of whatever catches my eye whether it something people consider a traditional subject for photography or not.

Everything that can turn green around here seems to have.  And chlorophyll reflects infrared light very well resulting in a bright white pseudo snow when recorded with my camera in night shot mode.  I exaggerated the grain in Lightroom but see that it didn’t translate that well when down sampled to web size.

The Konica I from the late 1940’s has an interesting feature or lack of one depending on your perspective.  Because the shutter is on the lens and has no linkage to the body there is no film advance lock out.  What this means is that the advancing of the film is entirely independent of the taking of the picture.  I’ve experimented on this roll of film by partially advancing the film and panning so that the two or more exposures overlap.  I’m pleased with the first effort but now I want to do it again with my new knowledge and see if I can’t get some more interesting results. 

I’ve been working on this painting all this week and aside from several minor corrections, that will really just be a stroke here and there, it’s done.  It’s my daughter Charlotte’s birthday so I asked here to name it and she called it “Daffodil Time”.  I’m hoping to submit it to “Hooves, Ploughs and Planted Fields.” a juried show that will be held at the Langley Centennial Museum.  I don’t usually do that or work under such a tight deadline but I’m pleased with the result.

Some of the most effective infrared images I’ve seen have been of reflections on water.  I hadn’t really thought too much about it but it became clear to me when I took these pictures.   The top one is an infrared shot while the bottom one is a regular capture converted to black and white.  You can see that for the infrared image the water behaves like a mirror with little from below the surface showing.  I will use this enlightenment to try to capture some better images if the opportunity presents itself.

Well that worked out.  I performed the little trick with the Spectra camera where you take a picture and don’t release the shutter.  Then you open the camera up release the shutter and close it again.  At this point you can take a second exposure on the film.  I imagine you could continue to do this as long as you don’t over expose it into whiteness.  Now I need to come up with another idea to use this technique on.