Unfortunately I was unable to attend the Bradner flower show this year, but I did start this painting yesterday from reference photos I took previously. While a large field of daffodils is attractive, I think that when there are different varieties being cultivated it is all the more beautiful.
As a break from what I have been primarily working on and as an excercise I painted this today.
“I’m so young and you’re so old”-Paul Anka
No not that Diana, the made in Hong Kong plastic nearly everything camera of the early 1960’s. I spotted this camera in an antique store. It was absolutely the worst camera I have ever seen, so I bought it. It really can be distilled down to this, it is a semi light tight box with a single element plastic lens that produces an assortment of distortion and yields images with less contrast than Banff in a blizzard. So what is the appeal? Some people claim it allows the freedom to just create images. I claim it allows you to blame the camera when you don’t. Yes a distinctive look can be achieved with this camera but at what cost. For me I believe using it was a one time deal. I would rather use a Zeiss Ikon or a Voigtlander Bessa, if I want to shoot 120 on an old camera, I at least might have a chance of predicting the results and I’m sure I’ll still retain artistic freedom.
These images where taken the same day as the last DA35 post and have been re-sized but are otherwise processed in the camera.
I needed to wait around for a few hours so I took my Pentax K-7 and only one lens, the DA35 ltd. These pictures are directly from the camera but re sized.
As I was sorting through some resent shots, I started to think about what made one similar shot better than another. Both images present the viewer with a single point of interest on a blank background, in fact they are the same subject. So what are the defining differences? If we ignore for the moment the difference of shading of the background, I accredit the main difference to be the size of the subject relative to the ground. The first image gives a greater sense of scale while the second is a more direct representation, here is a lady bird beetle no more no less.
Here is an example of another one of the processing tools built into the Pentax K-7. You can select a particular color to remain while all the other hues are desaturated to shades of grey.
