memory & place

Summer night in Weekhawken

One summer night friends hosted a dinner party at Paula at Rigoletto in Weehawken, New Jersey.  My friends' daughter and her friend were outside entertaining themselves waiting for their parents to finish dinner. I went out and photographed them with my Canon G10. While the G10 performs amazingly well during the day it doesn't do that well in low light. To get any sort of image I had to increase the ISO and use a slow shutter speed. I came away with some good images but as I worked with them in Lightroom and Photoshop I realized I had to do something to reduce the digital noise.

Digital noise, the modern equivalent of grainy film, is an artifact produced by using a high ISO to shoot in low light with a small digital camera which can have a very tiny sensor. Small digital cameras address this by automatically firing the camera's built in flash if the camera is set to automatic. I usually don't shoot with the camera set on automatic. So I can get some interesting results and problems to solve.

I came across Imagenomic Noiseware a software plug-ins which only job is to reduce digital noise. It did a pretty good job of eliminating a lot of the noise. One comment about Noiseware was that it can make a person's skin look like plastic. I discovered that this is less likely to happen if the entire image is blurry. Since I was shooting at a slow shutter speed all of the images were blurry. The above image doesn't seem to show signs of the skin being overly modeled. This might have to do with the flat light, the color of the light and the overall softness of the image.

I also took some photos of the restaurant's chef and owner Paula Frazier who is a wonderful cook. Paula had finished cooking when I asked if I could take a few photos of her. As tired as she must have been she graciously said yes and then quickly posed herself in the kitchen. The kitchen had low light from mixed sources. The image on the left shows noise. The image on the right had the noise filtered out. Click image for a larger version. The skin does start to look soft but not plastic. Seeing these results got me thinking about other applications for this filter.

 Why not use the built in camera flash?  Because I don't like built in flash and up till now would rather take my changes hand holding the camera at a high ISO and slow shutter speed because you can get some interesting results. 

Photographing on this summer night with the G10 made me realize that I'll never travel light again. Camera light that is. I'll be taking my Canon 50D (with its large sensor which works amazingly well under low light conditions), a small flash (use it off camera with a long cord) and my G10 because I really like the G10 and there's always Noiseware.

Jubliee collard greens

Late October I was visiting the Jubliee Farm in Carnation. Families were picking pumpkins and watching their kids ride the ponies. I walked through dew covered fields looking for late winter vegetables and found beautiful rows of collard greens. I admit I got caught up capturing the droplets of dew on these hardy leaves. I never made it to the pumpkin fields content to walk along the rows of collard greens.

South Korean folk village

Ted and I dismissed warnings from our Korean friends that the taxi ride from Bucheon to Suwon would be too long and expensive and set out for Suwon to visit a South Korea folk village. An anthropologist we met warned us that this particular folk village was a stage set, a theme park and not a 'living village'. Further south near Busan, villages are maintained as they were before South Korea was industrialized. People live and work in these villages. But our schedule didn't leave us the time needed to visit the area around Busan.

The taxi ride to Suwon was neither long or expensive. This particular village was a 20 minute bus ride from the Suwon train station and was definitely not a destination location for an anthropologist. Situated along a river the village was made up of small huts and farmhouses connected by well trodden dirt paths. There were cows and chickens, ducks, dogs and kittens. The indigenous architecture was beautifully maintained. The farm houses had been moved from other parts of South Korea.

There were just a few actors working that day and the village did have the feeling of a stage set. But for the first time western visitor it was a wonderful introduction to how Koreans lived when they were farmers. 

The day we visited the sky was overcast producing some of the most beautiful light I've ever photographed under. All the textures and earth colors on this over cast day were lovely.

The unfired pots were set outside on a path between two huts. Inside potters were working.

South Koreans impressed me with their practicality so I wasn't too surprised to see an electric kiln being loaded in one of the pottery huts. The pots were hand thrown but the hand fired kiln had fallen out of favor.

Even through the village was a staged theme park it was a great place to wander around. There was even a Buddhist temple tuck deep in the woods which I'll leave for another post.

Thrangu Monastery Richmond BC

This year I attended Thrangu Rinpoche's teachings in Richmond BC and went on a tour of the monastery that the Vancouver Vajra Vidhya Assocation is building. This amazing complex is scheduled to be completed summer of 2010. Located on Temple Row it will be an example of Tibetan temple architecture and also the devotion of Thrangu Rinpoche's students here in North America.

The Monastery floor plan follows traditional Tibetan design. Arranged for large gatherings it will also provide housing for monks and retreat-ants. As the building is completed Lamas continue their work painting the hair and faces of hundreds of buddha statues while the sangha works on finishing the interior painting.

Very little of the imagery in a Buddhist temple is purely for decoration. The well defined iconography of Tibetan Buddhism art illustrate aspects of enlightenment. Artists employ symbols and visual aspects of the Buddha and other enlighten beings to create archetypal images which aid in contemplation and act as a support to stabilize one's meditation.