Emma Rugg: musical genius

Emma Rugg: genius. What else can I say except, maybe, lithographs...so satisfying...hmm... Watch this space for my first technical 'How to' guide...

...I've created a macro to mock up the lithographs now and so it's just a question of touching a button if I want one... So, I had a go at zipping other things through them, including this second little picture, from a wee three-year old that I bought an Olympus C-160 for a little while back (well, it was either that or Mattel's Barbie Photo Designer camera - which was the same price, had 0.2 megapixels, a fixed focus plastic lens, fixed aperture, and a (non-expandable) memory that could hold 6 pictures...oh, did I mention it was pink with a flower on it? yes, of course there's a place for pink and flowers...but not one's camera, that's all...)

Again the results are fantastic! but then I remembered that this particular three-year old is really quite talented... Back to uncertainty...gimmick or art?

Uncertain...

Now, I'm a little uncertain as to whether these "lithographs" as I like to call them are, actually, really edgy - or whether they're just slightly different from what I'm used to. Do they make pictures look good in the 'Add some contrast, add some grain, and call it art' school of thought?

Catharsis

Wow, these digital lithographs are cathartic... I've been toying with them all day, so much so that I've now got pixel eyes... Still trying to come up with the best way of achieving a selective focus effect... This giraffe, the baby of a giraffe seen earlier in this blog, is possibly one of the cutest. I like giraffes.

But then...

A cat came back after all... (for her dinner)

Green tomatoes will have to do...

...because there were no cats,
Or hippopatmuses,
At the bottom of my garden
this afternoon.

Digital Lithographs

Don't post for a few days and then I post twice in 12 hours or so... don't I just spoil you rotten. Here's a lovely picture of me, posing outside a cathedral. Ordinarily, no doubt this would be delightful in itself but, look closely, and you'll see it also has all the key features of a traditional lithograph: exaggerated highlights, grainy shadows, warm rusty colour tones... If you'd like to see some more examples of lithographed animals, you can do much worse than Nick Brandt's excellent 'On this Earth: Photographs from East Africa' (Chronicle Books, 2005).

Cats

Okay, so, technically, since the dawn of time &c. &c. dogs (like me) are supposed to not be overly fond of cats... But, you know, I actually like cats - two of my best friends are cats and, after this weekend, when I attended a local housing fair hosted by Cats Protection, I really think that those of us who talk about having a 'dog's life' are, really, being a little blinkered. The cats depicted above certainly look as if they're down on their luck. Look how small they are! and how furry! how can any of them not get loving homes to snuggle in? This week, I'm plotting my entry for CP's annual cat photography competition for a number of reasons, not least because there's a £250 photographic equipment voucher up for grabs. Sadly, this picture's not being entered. Unlike the Drink Driving campaign, I don't think animal charities do edgy shock tactics yet...Imagine the caption, though: 'Home this cat - or else it has no home'.

More 800ASA RAW experiments... but, also, a fond look at the Nikon F3 and its detachable viewfinder prism... This camera's built like a tank, - it has a lot in common with my beautiful, beautiful Olympus E-1 in that respect (both cameras have a viewfinder shutter for astronomy)-- but this tank's one you want to bury in a sandpit, so you can dig it up again and pretend you're an Egyptologist, discovering the secrets of Hiram for the first time... It actually feels like a really, really heavy Corgi vehicle (toy car, not dog) and you almost feel the more you throw it down stairs, the better it gets... More on this later... Oh, and, yes, that is an 50mm f1.4...

Shooting RAW at 800ASA in low light conditions

Okay, okay - I know it's a nerdy title - but I read this cool article today Tony Spore's excellent www.fourthirdsphoto.com, all about how 800ASA on an E-1 wasn't so noisy if you got the exposure spot-on. They only experimented with the big-memory RAW files and I've only ever done JPEG... and I could see that their results were better than mine... So what better way to pass an evening than playing with my camera (and then sitting down to Spooks/MI-5 which starts in twenty minutes?) Results... still visible noise on the RAW file, but Kodak's Digital GEM Pro seemed to handle the noise with much more aplomb than usual. As always, the black and white conversion was done with TheImagingFactory's excellent Black and White convertor...

Renaissance Puppy! Actually, it's just me ponsing about in my phd robes which have been lying around the house for a long while now... and, yes, there is a little, embroidered hole for my tail... don't I look like a very, very clever little dog?

The trick with sniffing roses...

...is not to put your hands on the thorns and press really hard when you do... John Waterhouses's Soul of the Rose: do be careful!