As much as I...

like to work on my club and website, it takes a fair amount of time away from shooting, for a one man operation that is. Time to get back to what makes me happy, making images.

War Memorial

Last year I photographed a local showing of the Vietnam War Memorial. It was incredibly moving. Here are a few of my thoughts.

Bravery is a reaction to fear. Some people run and others stand and fight.

These are images of a touring memory of those brave soldiers, sailors, marines and air force personal who died in Vietnam.

I have been to the Alamo which had the feel of a church. There were tourists inside yet no one spoke.

I have been to Japanese cemeteries where the head stones were so close to each other that it was hard to avoid stopping on them. People had come to the cemetery and left gifts for their departed loved ones.

The churches in Paris where large and only had an alter. There were fold up chairs for the worshipers and an occasional homeless person sleeping on the floor. It somehow seemed to hold its people in its arms.

Russia's places of worship are large and ornate, there was a spirit of worship there.

Never have I seen what was in this little town in NH with the Vietnam War Memorial. So many people reaching out, touching the names of their friends, brothers and fathers. I remembered my Dad, he was a Korean War Vet and he past away in 1990. I sat in the grass and cried. God bless the USA and those that keep us.

The First Photograph

The first permanent photograph was taken by French Inventor Nicephore Niepce in 18226. It needed 8 hours of exposure time!

Capturing, Taking and Making Images

We have all heard someone say, "let's make an image." You do everything you need to create beautiful imagery, you think about the shot, assemble the items you need to enhance the shot, take images from different angles and then at the end you have created an amazing art that you had seen only in your mind.

Don't forget that you can capture images also by simply putting yourself in a situation where there is life happening. Where there is chaos and all you have time to do is see the shot and react to get the image (just be familiar enough with your equipment to make it look good).

You can also take the shots that your family and friends present you by by being there, a portrait of your son or daughter playing, or a beautiful flower on the side of the road.

Photography can be all encompassing, enjoy it.

Books

I have just posted a link on my site that brings you to one of the books I have on photography. Published in 2009 it reflects my thoughts. These images are a way for me to look inside and find out more about myself. I hope you enjoy them and get to know a bit about who I am. www.gremmonsphotography.com.

Your Network of People

Aside from the importance of viewing images (paintings, photography, and whatever you can get your hands on) to help you become more creative, it is extremely important to develop a network of people you can talk to about photography. Seek out photographers that you believe to be on the same level or better than you, look for people that have a passion for photography and build a network of individuals that you can talk to for help and inspiration. They can be very helpful to be the flame of your inspiration.

A couple of things + A Gift for You

I am teaching CS5 tonight, this is the one thing I love to do as much as photography. It's a great way to reach out to people and help.

My Gift:
As my birthday approaches, I would like to donate a few things. I will be giving away a class on CS5 and I will be donating any image from my website http://www.gremmonsphotography.com.

For the class, just be located in the Seacoast area of New Hampshire. The class can contain 4 people. Simply send my an email, gremmons@gremmonsphotography.com, telling me why you would like the class and I will chose someone by August 15th.

For the image, matted and framed, just be located in the continental US, send an email to me telling me why you like photography and I will chose someone by August 15th.

Pretty Simple, huh?
George

Cataloging Your Images

I'm a bit embarrassed, simply because I have been so far behind on cataloging my images. The good news is I have just caught up!
The interesting thing about doing this is that you really find out what kind of images interest you, simply by the sheer count of the images.
I use Adobe Bridge, because I find it fast and it does what I need it to do.
Take some time and catalog your images and see what interests you.

Image Size

Just a quick question for those of you who read this blog - If you were buying an image to hang on your wall, what size would it be 8x10, 11x12, 13x19 or 16x20. Send an email with your answer to gremmons@gremmonsphotography.com.

Thanks

Organized

I have just finished organizing my Portfolio section on www.gremmonsphotography.com so you aren't overwhelmed with images. They are all broken down into sections, so you can chose what you'd like to see.

Later on today, I should have some of the images up from my trip to Cannon Mountain.

To the Mountains

Off to the mountains of NH to get some good landscapes. Will be posting them later on tomorrow.

Sunflower Image

I have come to appreciate flowers over the last year. The image on my home page www.gremmonsphotography.com was the first image taken of a Sunflower.

The meaning and symbolism of the Sunflower: It is the third wedding anniversary flower and the state flower of Kansas, sunflowers also turn to follow the sun. They symbolize the sun, conveying warmth and happiness, adoration and longevity.

The thing that interested me the most about this image was how it's leaf was reaching out and holding onto another leaf from another plant. That raised all kinds of questions about flowers for me.

Do they feel?
Do they need company?
Do they think?

Study the images you take, find out what they say to you.

George

More Flowers

I have posted three more images from the Florest shoot on www.gremmonsphotography.com
Doesn't the image on my home page remind you of PacMan?

Flowers, Flowers everywhere

There are a few images from today's session posted in the Portfolio section at http://www.gremmonsphotography.com Please feel free to leave any comments.

You Just May Get What You Ask For!

Tomorrow I am let loose in a nursury to shoot flowers! The place is huge and it's all mine and the only reason I can do this is because I asked! Don't be afraid to ask if you want to shoot something. Don't assume that "those" people won't let you shoot. You may be surprised how many people will be happy to let you capture images in their place of business, home or family outing.

Take a Walk

If you are having a little trouble trying to figure out what to photograph, talk a walk, look around you. You will see an unbelievable amount of beautiful things to photograph. Flowers, statues animals will all jump out, hopefully not the animals, and ask you to photograph them. Capture what interests you, whatever it is.

Look at some of the images that well known photographers have taken. Are they the perfect image? No! They are capturing what is important to them, they are telling people a little bit about themselves. Some people will think they are artists others will not think very highly of the image, but that is OK. Shoot, shoot, shoot! Tell everyone what interests you!

Places To Go

I like to read about Photography, it's that simple. I typically will look at http://www.dpreview.com/ mostly because I trust their reviews. They also have a great forum section with all kinds of info from users, some of it good and some of it not so good. For the best reviews around, check out DPreview.com.

The other suggestion is to set up a reader, like Google Reader and subscribe to Photography listings that interest you. You will be able to read everything you could hope for on a daily basis.

Aside from reading, also look. Look at images from the web and it will give you ideas for your future shoots. A friend, a graphic designer, once told me that he needed to get out of his office. He would never get better if he didn't look at other peoples work!

Keep Shooting!

Softening an Image in Photoshop

Here is a great way to add softness to any image:

Open the image you want to apply softness to in Photoshop.

1. Duplicate that layer.
2. Invert the top layer.
3. While you are on the top layer, you will see a drop down window that says normal, change that to Vivid Light.
4. Here is where the fun starts - open up Filter - Other - High Pass - and set it to around 10. This normally sharpens the image, except we inverted it and it softens it.
5. Go to blur and open Gausian Blur, adjust it to the softness level you want in your image.

Not bad!

Meat Loaf - the day after

The concert was amazing, Meat owned the audience. It was interesting to see all the camera phones in the air trying to get a picture of him.

I'll be back to photography on this blog tomorrow - in the meantime have a great 4th.

Meatloaf

Going to a Meatloaf Concert tonight and the only camera allowed is a camera with a zoom less than 2 inches long. The best camera is always the one you have with you, thanks Chase. It should be fun!!

Just a thought!

It's not a bad thing to have a day where we realize - "Hey, that was stupid" It's very humbling.

CS5 Content-Aware

I have been using Photoshop since 1993 and I am more pleased with this upgrade than many of the previous upgrades. CS5 gives us a few incredibly powerful tools. One is Content Aware.

It works very well by removing things you don't want in the image and replacing them with the proper pixels.

Photoshop is wonderfully redundant, it gives you a number of tools to accomplish the same result, some are faster than others, some work in different situations better and some you use out of habit. Content Aware is a great situational tool, as long as you can select around a blemish you want removed, leaving some pixels of the surrounding area that will accurately create a replacement image for the removed blemish, this tool works wonders.

Creases on a model's face, street signs, trees will all disappear when you go to Edit-Fill-Content-Aware to create the corrected image. Touch up is a fact of life, so when and if this tool doesn't completely remove the item you want to disappear, use the healing brush or the clone tool and your project will look just the way you want it.

If you have any questions, please email me at gremmons@gremmonsphotography.com

Keep Shooting

http://www.gremmonsphotography.com