Month: March 2011

When I reflected on my first images I discovered that I was photographing beauty in “mother nature.” Therefore I decided to find beauty in something man-made. I focused on my wooden fence and got the above image.

Enjoy and happy photographing!

These weeds which are are growing in my back-yard, can look beautiful. It is the job of the photographer to do just that. I used my 70-200 lens and open it up to blur the background. The blurred background let’s you focus on the plant.

Enjoy and happy photographing!

My rose bushes are starting to grow and I photographed the new leaves early in the morning. It was foggy meaning the light was very soft. In post production I increased the contrast in a new adjustment layer and used the overlay mode to create this image.

Enjoy and happy photographing!

I was once told that Ruth Bernhard, a San Franciscan photographer, once said that “if you can’t find beauty around your house within 30 feet (10 meters roughly) you are living at the wrong place.” I believe there is a lot of truth to this statement and I challenge you to find beauty around your home and photograph it.

The peach tree in my back yard just started to blossom. I love the curved line and the blossoms in the corners. The background is a rose bush which is totally thrown out of focus.

Enjoy and happy photographing!

In 2002 I purchased the new Sony Cybershot F707 which was considered at the time a “lens with a camera attached.” This five mega-pixel camera was quite decent and for the first time I printed 11X17 images that looked quite good. Even today this camera could be used for some website photography.

Enjoy and happy week-end!

This image required a little bit of preparation. I used a white card board as background which I put on the ground. Then I used a small strobe which I laid on the cardboard at around 12 o’clock outside the picture frame. Then I put a “gobo” between the strobe and and camera to block out all unnecessary light that would give me a “silhouette effect” of my subject. Then I used a second strobe with a honeycomb filter to illuminate the camera and the trigger finger. At the end I converted the image to black and white. 

Enjoy and happy photographing!

I used two strobe lights to create this image. The first strobe light I raises up and pointed to the ceiling to get a white background. Then I put a silver reflector to the ground and pointed the second strobe down to reflect the light from the bottom straight up. The I focused the camera at about 1.5 meters, using f.8 and setting the timer to ten seconds.  Then I mounted the camera on a tripod on top of the silver reflector. Now I took the second camera and pretended to photograph.

Enjoy and be creative with your photography! 

I bought this old  4X5 for a photo class. Learning to photograph with one of these beauty means slowing down and preparing your shot very carefully. Everything is manual and in this image I am opening the lens. Later I bought a connector to my DLSR and I still use this camera for macro photography.

Enjoy and happy photographing!

The camera is your tool to create images. Ansel Adams even wrote a book about the camera. People create and destroy with their hands. During this week I want to create images that reflect on my cameras and  hands. 

This is my first digital camera. I bought this Agfa ePhoto 1280 camera in 1997 for $700. If I was lucky I got 15 images out of a set of four AA batteries and the shutter lag was horrible, but it opened up my mind to digital photography.

In this image the original subject is not visible anymore. The viewer wonders what he he/she sees. Shadows can have the aspect of being mysterious and therefore interesting. In this case the subject is an orange with two leaves still attached to it.

I hope you enjoyed this exercise and come up with your own images. It would be nice if you would shre them with me. my email is frgolz@yahoo.com