karen maze photoblog

Last weekend, the two of us drove out to Joshua Tree. We’ve been talking about doing a “Painting With Light” project out there for a long time. If you’re not familiar with the technique, during a long exposure, you use a light source (usually a flashlight, strobe or speedlite) to add to the ambient exposure. You really get the feeling of “painting” when you use a flashlight, because you end up applying using a brushing motion to add light more to certain areas than others, according to your artistic license. It’s a really fun technique - and one I hadn’t done since taking photography classes at Santa Monica College about 8 years ago. We learned a lot on our first outing…

• We”ll be bringing additional flashlights on our next trip. As it was, only one of us could be painting.
• Also, a stop watch. Or just a watch…our “One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand” method of counting out the exposure length was woefully inaccurate, as the EXIF data later revealed.
• Gloves. It gets colder than you think out there.

The results of our efforts are below. I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as we enjoyed taking them. I can’t wait to get out there again soon.

We chose the exposure we wanted for the moonlight and sky, then selectively painted in the foreground with our flashlight. Some post production in Adobe Lightroom.

This was a much longer exposure than the photo above - almost 6 minutes. Just a kiss from the flashlight during the exposure adds extra detail in the tree.

Nothing fancy here. A straightforward silhouette against the desert sky.

It's hard to resist that desert sky.

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-km

Human population = 4 million

Sheep population = 40 million

I made a short photo trip to Fresno in July. It’s in the Central Valley (as in, San Joaquin Valley) of California, about 200 miles north of Los Angeles. I had never been there before and what I found was a hub of trade, transportation, and agriculture.

1) Fresno Train Station. This is the new facade, a revitalized version of the classic. 2) "Fresno" is the Spanish word for "ash tree". The leaf of the ash tree is featured on the county flag. 3) Marquee of the Tower Theater in downtown Fresno. 4) A veritable tree of forklifts.

Drive five minutes out of the bustling downtown and you’re suddenly surrounded by grape, apricot, corn and a host of other crops as far as the eye can see.  Along with several hundred photos, I came home with a car full of local produce, including grapes and pluots - fresh, organic and local - alive with flavor like I’d never tasted before.

1) Farmers Market peppers.2) Grapes grow along the side of a road in Fresno. 3) Fresh Fresno peppermint plant.

but it was an acquired taste.

Most of the time, I’m something of a sharpness freak. Soft images make me crazy…absolutely nutso! That’s because softness often robs what might otherwise be a great photo of its power, its “wow factor.” The eye hunts for the sharpest point in the photo. If it has to hunt too long, or isn’t satisfied when it gets there, it’s a fail. In some cases, another element in the photo can be so powerful that the softness is not a distraction. Phew! But squeaking by on what, to me, amounts to a technicality is not the goal. Unless, that is, I’m in a situation where I can embrace the blur.

For me, this idea was born of laziness. It had gotten dark and the tripod was all the way back in the trunk of my car. I’m no heart surgeon. There’s no way I am going to get sharp images hand-held at 1/30. So I blurred the heck out of the images. I spun. I shook. I practiced my triple toe loop. And I got some images I like a lot. So much, that I started doing it even when I didn’t have to.

There’s a bigger issue at play here: Intention. It’s probably the most important element of commercial and fine art. Did you mean to do that? Heck yes! Think about why you chose to do what you did. There’s a reason, even if you weren’t aware of it at the time.

Blur is just one of the tools available to communicate with your viewer. In the case of seascapes (#1 & #3), it emphasizes the line and color. Each element of the scene flows indistinguishably into the next, like the sound of waves lapping onto the shore. It’s peaceful, serene, other-worldly. Sometimes, as in photo #2, I like to make the image completely abstract (it’s sky and sunlit ocean peeking through through the pylons under Santa Monica Pier, btw) .

In the case of the beach with mountains photo (#5), I was interested in the mood and didn’t want to get caught up in the details that can keep our minds looking, guessing, racing (is that girl too deep in the water? Where is her mother? I hope she’s wearing sun screen. What’s up with that guy’s hat?). It’s not about the people as individuals, or even that moment in time. It’s about the feeling of spending time on a beautiful beach.

For Christmas is a Blur (#6), I broke out my Lensbabies 2.0. I was interested in capturing a unique Christmas image that captured what, for me, represents the spirit of the season without being too literal.

Do you blur? I’d love to see your intentionally blurry pics. Put links in your comments below.

Ebb & Flow

Light vs. Dark

Awash

Into the Light

Beautiful Day

Christmas is a Blur

-km

I get a major kick out of being published. It raises the stakes, focuses the mind, and makes everything way more fun. This month, I can point to  San Diego Magazine and say “I shot that cover.” (Are you still reading?? GO GET ONE!)

Ok, seriously…This was my first time working with San Diego Magazine. It came about because I sent an email to a former colleague who is now an art director there. I just wanted to remind her that I’m here and available for assignments. A few weeks later, my phone rang. After a few phone calls and emails back and forth, I was driving to San Diego to shoot the job.

The assignment was to photograph food and drink from at Ortega’s Mexican Bistro in the Hillcrest area of San Diego. The directive was that people should see the photo and say “I want THAT!”

Ortega’s had many different options available to us in terms of location, props, food and drink. We decided early on to concentrate on a couple of different margaritas and two locations within the restaurant and play with those. My main concern was that the background provide some interest without getting in the way of the subject or any text that the magazine might want to place on top of the image. The colored glass window you see on the cover fit the bill perfectly.

The shoot went very well and as fate would have it, the image they selected for the cover (a Rasperry Mint Margarita, yum!) is mine. I was eager to do the job cover or not, but I won’t deny being more than happy about how it turned out.

-km

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