Friday, October 18, 2013

Moose Island, October 12, 2013

I joined the MDI Photo Club a couple of months ago, and it has been such a treat to hang out with other camera-obsessed people. I've learned a lot from my fellow members! For example, last weekend we went on a field trip to Moose Island, a privately-owned island just off Seal Cove. (We had permission from the owners, don't worry!) It was overcast and a little cool, with the kind of grey skies that look empty and white in photos. Weather like that is dreadful for landscape photos, because everything looked washed out, flat, and uniformly grey. Grey sky, grey water, grey stones, even weathered grey shingles.
So I focused on beachcombing and exploring and threw away most of my photos in despair when I got home. A few days later we had our club meeting and I got to see everyone else's work. Well! Number one lesson I got was that washed-out grey days make for fabulous black and white photography. Number two lesson was that if I want to work in black-and-white I really need to get Nik's Silver Effects software for black-and-white conversion, as all the photos I liked had been adjusted with it. (Mine above were done in Adobe Elements.) But am I interested in black-and-white? Enough to learn yet another program? Is that how I see the world? Not so sure about that, but it is always good to know how to improve if I decide to pursue it.
I spent a lot of time watching the periwinkles crawl around between barnacles.

There was a surprising amount of beach glass, and some pretty feathers, which may be just the push I need to get my studio put back together so I can do a fresh Beachcombing series photo. I haven't been able to use my light box since June!

2 comments:

  1. I love the black and white photos! I hope you got some nice sea glass!AriadnefromGreece!

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    1. Thanks, Ariadne, I did find some pretty pieces. Hope to get them photographed soon.

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