Distracted by the Shiny

Get the Shot

Posted on April 19, 2012 by C. Patrick

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I’ve been playing around with HDR shots. When I plan on doing this, I carry my tripod, because it’s hard to align the multiple exposures required by HDR when you’ve handheld the shot. However, sometimes a scene comes up and you just have to make a try for it. In this one, I steadied the camera as best I could, then took the shots, trying to keep everything lined up as best I could as I manually adjusted the exposure and then removed the ghosts with the HDR program (Photomatix Essentials) that I use. I like the result, but I’d also like to try it again with a tripod. But at the time, you can’t be sure about having another shot, so do what you can with what you have. Lesson 2: Always carry a tripod.

This HDR composite of Cherry Street in Springfield, Missouri, was done hand-held

Posted in Creativity | Tagged HDR, photography, Springfield MO, sunset, tripod | Leave a comment

A Kick to the Pants of Traditional Publishing

Posted on March 29, 2012 by C. Patrick

The world of publishing is changing. Although there will continue to be a place for traditional publishing models for a while yet (if only because we still believe in the idea of the ‘gatekeeper’ — an ‘expert’ who has the knowledge, and the power, to determine whether or not our work is ‘worthy’), non-traditional models are opening up avenues from author to reader that prove to be better for both. When an author’s work goes straight to the reader, it must flourish or falter on its own merits — word-of-mouth becomes all.

Paper or plastic?

Case in point: my friend Liam Watts has spent a great deal of time and ability on his novel, but has eschewed traditional publication methods in favor of e-publishing and self-publishing — not because he would be unable to get his book published through the gatekeepers of the traditional publishing world, but because these new routes allow him more freedom and, ultimately, allow him to garner more revenue from his craft. Many authors have chosen these less-traveled paths. I’ll be doing so myself soon (Support Your Local C. Patrick! 😉 ). But Liam has added a new curve to the backroad — a Kickstarter financing plan. Kickstarter is a website that allows anyone to put their product plans online and offer opportunities for people to engage in micro-financing that project at a variety of levels and with a variety of ‘rewards’.

Liam’s Kickstarter is at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1696794878/singularity-deferred-a-novel

Check it out, and if you like the look of it, help out a struggling (possibly starving. 🙂 ) artist with his project. And while you’re there, take a look at some of the other Kickstarter projects. There’s no reason why the gatekeepers and the financiers and the venture capitalists should have all the fun … or all the power.

And (shameless second plug for me), keep an eye out for my own books in the e-verse and maybe even on Kickstarter. Within the next few months, I’ll be offering e-version collections of these essays (going all the way back to 1999!) and the novels I’ve been working on and polishing the last few years.

Posted in Creativity | Tagged author, e-books, e-publishing, gatekeepers, kickstarter, Liam Watts, publishing, reader, self-publishing, writing | Leave a comment

Sometimes Mistakes Make Art

Posted on March 27, 2012 by C. Patrick

[Note: this essay originally appeared on the Creative Wandererwebsite]

Recently, I’ve begun experimenting with HDR photography. In HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography, you take several different exposures of a subject (a tripod is essential for this part) and then you merge them together in post production using a program like Photomatix (which has a good inexpensive version and thus is the one that I like). The program merges the images (up to five different exposures in the case of Photomatix), creating a layering of light and shadow and color that can’t be obtained through normal photographic techniques. There’s additional playing around you can do at that point, too — different effects that can be experimented with; different settings that can be tweaked.

However, sometimes the program glitches. This happened to me yesterday. I got a picture I’d taken in Missouri wine country just about right, so that it looked like Image 1.

HDR shot of the winery road as it was supposed to look

This is how the HDR shot was supposed to come out.

Pretty good. Very dramatic. So I saved it. But what I saved came out looking like Image 2.

This is what my HDR program did to the picture.

This is how the picture ended up coming out the other side of the HDR program's mixmaster.

A much different effect, but, in fact, one that I like considerably better. It has a haunted, Van Gogh-like feel to it that is very evocative of October days and Halloween moods.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to replicate that skewing in the future so that I can do it on purpose. Or, maybe, this is just a one-of-a-kind success by way of a mistake. In this way, it almost becomes ‘found’ art: art that wasn’t meant to be ‘artistic’ but rather utilitarian, like warning signs in subway stations that become poetry when the lines are re-arranged to appear more ‘poetic’, or the chance juxtaposition of a billboard and something going on below it that is either ironic or apt (Image 3).

In this 'found art' image, the billboard above the partiers creates an ironic juxtaposition, implying that 'Life After Meth' can be just as strange.

In either case, don’t be too upset when your photography program messes up your work, or when you spill a jar of paint on a nearly-completed canvas, or when the characters in a story you’re writing seem to refuse to do what you want them to do. Go with it. See what happens. It might turn out to be art.