Monday, January 18, 2010

English Ivy On An Icy Day

The storm should be moving out within a couple of hours. There's been lots of rain and little bits of snow and sleet, just enough to slush it up here. Earlier this morning the temps slipped to freeze up the crabapple branches.




I recently tuned my zoom telephoto autofocus and I'm noticing an improvement. Some Canon cameras have a micro adjust for individual lenses that allow for correcting front and back focus--that is, when the lens autofocuses slightly off true. I'm pleased with the new found crispness, even if this isn't my finest lens. (Click to enlarge and see the feather detail.)




I was up into the early morning hours with this piece...lots of experimentation on those small veins. Still not sure where I'm going here but it's awfully entertaining regardless. :-) I've been scanning my drawings exclusively so today's camera shot of the ivy drawing was surprisingly adequate. Some lighting issues to be addressed but not bad at all. I've been counseled by a professional photographer (thanks, Bob!) that these kind of shots in daylight shade will come out very nicely. This could be a useful alternative for when my canvas size exceeds my scanner bed and I don't feel like stitching together a bunch of scans in Photoshop.



2 comments:

  1. Beautiful photos. The detail of the jay's feathers is indeed tack sharp; and what a sweet pose he did for you!
    I must say, your art work appears more vibrant and with better contrast in this post- maybe photographing it vs. scanning works better for a blog?
    ~gretchen

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  2. Thanks, Gretchen. :-)

    Hmm... I'll need to look at this... I'm getting this feeling that I'm losing the richness of the middle values in the scans. Sometime soon I'll work with a little card I have here, one of those gray scale & value finder cards. I appreciate that observation. I can see that this is something that I want to better understand and nail down. Thanks! :-)

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