Orange House Photos

How to Design the Color Image: What I Learned from Monte Hartman

Monte Hartman is a photography teacher who had a graphic design background before he started his photography work. Monte's framework for critiquing a color image is more consistent and useful than those I heard from camera club judges. Monte's class, "Designing the Color Image," was sponsored by PhotoCentral, a program and facility of the Hayward Area Recreation District.

2008 Alameda on Camera

The Frank Bette Center for the Arts will have an opening reception for the 2008 Alameda on Camera exhibit on April 4, 2008, at 7 p.m.. 48 artists were selected to participate in this juried event. I submitted three prints for the application and was chosen. A map of Alameda was divided into 48 parts; we drew our individual areas by lot. We were to take pictures of our areas any time from 9 p.m. Friday, February 22, until 9 p.m. Sunday, February 24. There were no restrictions on the photos or on what we would like to exhibit.

Artist's Statement

The problem of taking pictures within a specific time frame and location was difficult. I was used to choosing the location, time, and event for my photography. That meant that I could easily slip into a comfort zone where content and technique were familiar. I decided to approach the Alameda project as an opportunity to try out new content and techniques.

How to Design the Color Image: Notes

Link to The Color Image: Projects

Consider cropping an image to obtain the real vision of the image.

Eliminate extraneous or irrelevant material from an image. Get closer to the focal point of the image and try to fill the whole frame.

Look for a dominant element in the image. Think about where the eye rests. Avoid busy parts of the image. Avoid having equal parts in an image.

Dominant and subordinate elements can also be connected to form and shape and light.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser and the Spitteleau Heating Plant

Friedrich Stowasser was born in Vienna on December 15, 1928. In succeeding years, Stowasser changed his name, in stages, to Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser.

Friedensreich = abundance of peace

Regentag = rainy day

Dunkelbunt = dark-colorful

Hundertwasser = hundred waters

My Sooper Dooper, Very Fast Computer

For over a year I had been complaining about my Windows XP computer and its performance when I use Photoshop. Although I had increased the RAM to 2 GB, I had also included some Photoshop plug-ins, and some of their functions were excruciatingly slow. I would have to pause for the computer to catch up with a brush swipe. The grand plan was to have a new computer built just for Photoshop, but since everything was working, albeit slowly, the new system was left for the future. 

PhotoCentral Spring Show 2007: March 30 - May 14, 2007

Artist’s Statement

For eighteen weeks I drove down Broadway in Oakland, turned left at 7th Street, parked in the Laney College parking lot, and walked through the campus to the Art Building.

I looked up as I drove and walked and saw the three images in this exhibit.*

These three prints are interpretations of Oakland.

Twisted: Convoluted city politics

Twisted

The Red Lantern: The under-the-surface beauty of a different culture

The Red Lantern

Red Sky: The importance of educational resources

The Red Sky

Basketball

Basketball is a fast paced sport.

The photographer needs move around from one end of the court to the other as the ball changes hands.

Photojournalism 2006

Finding events to attend for taking photojournalism pictures was not a problem. I have chosen to include images from four events: the San Francisco prologue the Amgen Tour of California bicycle race, the California Classic Alpaca Show in Pleasanton, the Woodside Spring Preview hunter/jumper competition, and the Richmond/San Pablo Cinco de Mayo Parade. Going to these events allowed me to practice taking pictures in public and to practice learning how to move in a crowd to position myself for different points of view.

Color Theory and Digital Photography

As I became more proficient with my digital camera and Photoshop CS2, I realized that I didn’t know much about using color in digital photography. I did learn a few things from listening to judges in camera club competitions.

Portraits

Taking images of people and cats has always been fun for me. I took my camera along on a trip to Sacramento and found two fat cats in a used bookstore. One cat was quite willing to pose while the other cat wanted to be petted. The picture of the Main Coon Kitten was luck. I was able to get close enough to her and had a good neutral color for the background. Light from a window shown in so the lighting was bright enough for a sharp indoor shot. I had never been up close to an Alpaca so I wanted to take a sharp picture of the features of the head.

Macrophotography

In order to become more familiar with my 100mm macro lens, I decided to photograph small things.  The wet spring in California provided me with some images of an inch work and a salamander.  I had to work to get all of the image in focus quickly and learned the problems of an aperture setting of 2.8 vs. one of 32.

Thoroughbred Horse Racing at Golden Gate Fields

I went to Golden Gate Fields five times to take horse racing pictures.  I must have taken nearly 5 GBs of RAW images each time.  I learned some horse racing terminology and began to read the racing news on the Golden Gate Fields web site.  I began to recognize some of the jockeys and learned their names. 

Victorian Architectural Details

I don't know very much about architecture, but looking at houses from an art history point of view has always fascinated me.  Since there are so many Victorian houses in the Bay Area, I decided to learn more about this architecture.

Portraits

I really enjoy taking pictures of people and cats, but I think that my most successful images are not posed images.  I haven't practiced with my 100mm lens for portrait images, and that is an area I plan to work on.

Photojournalism: Solano Stroll, Berkeley Veterans Day

Photojournalism intrigues me.  I am shy about taking pictures in public, so I thought going to public events would help me overcome that.  The 2005 Solano Stroll, "Don't Rain on My Parade," was my first public event. 

Horse Show Notes

Horse Show Album I went to the Pebble Beach Equestrian Championships primarily to shoot stop-action shots of horses in competition and to take portraits of riders.  Since I could get a burst of 23 shots with jpgs, I decided to shoot jpgs rather than RAW (only a burst of 6 shots).  I realized that I wasn't going to be able to adjust white balance so easily with the jpgs, so I used a white balance filter.