Color or Black and White?

          

I'm getting to where I will also process an image in black and white to see if I also like it rendered that way. Many times I feel that both versions work and possibly for different reasons. This is an oddly shaped church that I spotted while driving around Dallas last week. I was perfectly happy to have clear blues skies when I stopped by the following day for some mid-day pictures. The quick scouting of the place the day before told me the light would work well at this time of day. As a photographer, I try to shoot a scene when I feel that the lighting will give me what I'm after.  It's not very often that lunchtime is my choice.
 The black and white version was easy to process where the sky was very dark, drawing attention to the design and shape of the building. The church's odd look is what attracted me to it in the first place. The color version works much the same way to emphasize the shape of the building. However, it does have the contrast of the deep blue with just a touch of brown in the pointed doorway. Which do you prefer and why?

The Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge

Recently, I have been making some photography trips to the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge that is being built in Dallas. The bridge which spans the Trinity River is scheduled to open on March 2, 2012. I think for the most part the bridge is finished but the road presently stops at its west end.  The road that connects to it is what they must finish in the next six weeks and from what I see they better start working some overtime.

Reunion Tower has been the stand out building in the Dallas skyline since it was built in 1978 but this Santiago Calatrava designed bridge is quickly becoming the hot subject for photographers. I saw the results from this years Trinity River Photo Contest last week and many of the winners were of the new bridge. I did not enter the contest but I might decide to next year.

The very top image was shot yesterday evening when I made my second visit of the weekend to the bridge. At the end of the bridge there has been a sign that says no-trespassing. I've never seen anyone on the bridge until yesterday. When I arrived there was people everywhere on the bridge. I decided that I would just head out on the bridge and take some pictures too. That was about the same time the sun broke through the clouds and the light was great. It was however hard to take a good shot of the road portion of the bridge because people were everywhere. After maybe ten minutes I decided to get off the bridge and go down the levee to where I had planned to shoot. Right after I got on the levee the cops arrived and made everyone get off the bridge anyway. The nice light also vanished for the day so the very first shot I took was the one I liked best. I did crop off the bottom pretty good but I like it.

 The bottom three images were all shot two days ago. A shallow pond in the Trinity River bottom made it possible to get a great reflection shot on the windless day. The last two are of the underneath portion of the bridge. They really have it lit up. That makes for some good night photography though.

I have a new web site!

This is my first post since 2011 and I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year and a prosperous 2012. I have also made some changes to the look and design of this blog. I really like it and I hope you do to. My web site has also had a total makeover and the design of the blog compliments it. The new web site now has e-commerce. You can purchase prints or license images directly from the web site. It also has a great image search feature using key words to help you find what you are looking for. I sure wish my web site had included all these features years ago. The links at the top of the page will link you to the new web site. I have also enabled web forwarding so the same URL you have previously used will still take you to my web site. www.clarkcrenshawphotography.com

My Best Images of 2011

I had a tough choice picking the 10 best this year. Several very good ones had to be left out but I think you will enjoy the images and the stories behind them.

School Days

This was shot at the Dallas Heritage Village. The Renner School is fixed up just like it was when being used as a one room schoolhouse. This has been a popular image at my art shows and it seems that a school teacher is usually the one that is interested.

Lake Martin Egret

When I traveled to my last show of the year in Covington, Louisiana, I stopped at Lake Martin. Both mornings had great conditions for photography and I made the most of it. I could have included more images from the trip than I have. Lake Martin Egret received so much positive response on Google+ and 500px that I had to include it. This day had started out much like the image below, but the fog had just lifted and was letting some sunlight in.

Moon Set on Lake Martin

The pre-dawn skies appeared to be clear while I was driving from my hotel to Lake Martin but things really changed when I got within a half mile of the lake. This was one of the first couple of images I took that day and the last one before the moon vanished in the fog. I spent the next hour shooting like a mad man and ended up with quite a collection of winners from this mornings shoot.

Lightning Over Dallas

Summer had been hot and dry in Dallas but late September brought some rain and lightning. Actually, it was much more lightning than rain and was pretty scary when it moved in. I headed to White Rock Lake and felt it  was much safer to get out of the car now that the storm was moving away from me. I took many exposures and combined several of the better lighting strikes to create this image.

San Miguel Mission

The San Miguel Mission is in Socorro, New Mexico. I had spent sunrise shooting at  nearby Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge. It was still fairly early in the morning when I headed back to town and wanted to shoot the mission. Normally, I would want some clouds in the sky but in this case the clear blue skies contrasted nicely with the warm adobe walls of the mission. The shadow fell in just the right place too.

View From the Winspear

On this evening I was anxious to try out a new wide angle lens that I had bought. I was hoping to shoot the reflection pond in front of the Winspear Opera House but a large Christmas tree was sitting in the middle of it. That forced me to look for something else to shoot and this is what I found. The new lens at 16mm did very well.

Reflection of Mammoth Mountain

In late August I spent a week in California. A large forest fire near Yosemite National Park had us changing our schedule but we managed to survive. I got this nice reflection one morning in Yosemite near the Tioga Road.

Jellyfish

On Sunday morning before the Rockport Art Festival I went down to the marina and shot a few pictures. I took a few shots of a jellyfish that was swimming near the surface. It didn't have the bright colors of some of the jellyfish photos I've seen but worked very well when converted to black and white.

Zion Tree

I may be fudging a little on this one. I shot it a couple of years ago but only recently did I process it as a black and white. It was OK in color but I really like it in black and white.

Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge Reflection

This is a new bridge that is being built over the Trinity River in Dallas, Texas. It has been designed by Santiago Calatrava and is scheduled to open around March of 2012. I was walking back to the car after taking some pictures of the bridge and noticed a large pool of water in the river bottom. I got a little muddy getting this last shot but it was worth it.

I wish everyone a Happy Holiday and Great 2012!

So that's what happened to those images!

Last year I was at the Denny's in Avon, Colorado having some breakfast before heading to the art show at the Beaver Creek Resort. While turning through the Vail newspaper I was stopped by an ad for tree trimming. That's one of my photos on that ad! I assume they acquired the image honestly. This was one of 8 images that a company had purchased some of the rights to about 10 years ago. This was the first time I had seen one of them used but it got me to thinking...how often have those images been used? It occurred to me that I could use TinEye to search the web for these images. TinEye is a web site that does a reverse search on an image that you upload. It's really amazing. As soon as the image is uploaded it grinds away for a few seconds and then tells you something like...

10 Results

Searched over 1.8627 billion images in 0.111 seconds.

Wow! That is some fast moving stuff there! When I did a search on the image from the tree trimming ad this cover on the National Geographic Guide to Trees was one of the 10 results that came up. Cool!

I decided to try a search on another very similar aspen photo that was part of the submission. Damned if I don't have another book cover show up. One of the other results was a Chinese web site which is probably selling the image illegally unless they are the Chinese version of Getty Images. Maybe someone that understands Chinese can tell me what this web site is about. Most of the other images I sold rights to are also on this Chinese web site but not much else showed up when I TinEyed them. Just the occasional web site use. However, all the images had been distributed world wide so who knows how many other times they sold for print and wouldn't show up on an internet search.

I guess at this point I should give some background on what was sold to who and how this all came about. Back in 2000 I wasn't selling my work at art shows yet. Some of my work had been published and I had sold a few framed prints of my work but I was still at a stage where I was trying to figure out how to sell my work and begin earning a living with my photography. I submitted about 100 of my images to a company called Digital Vision. Another photographer that I knew had licensed some work to them. They made a CD of his images and whenever it sold  or usage of an individual image was sold a royalty was paid. I was hoping for the same. The letter I received back was disappointing. They were only interested in 8 of the images I submitted. That obviously wasn't enough for a full CD so their offer was a one time payment of $150 per image. Even though $1200 immediately sounded good at the time I wish I had said no to the deal. I would also not receive any photo credits. Like so many new photographers trying to earn a living today I didn't think about the long term consequences. I was giving them the right to sell usage of these images until the end of time with no further compensation. What if one or several of the images became really big sellers? Some types of image usage could also be worth much more than what my one time payment was. I should have stood firm and insisted that either I receive future royalties or no deal.  The photographer should always get a percentage when someone has paid to use one of their images. Always!

 Five of the eight images!

In the past decade several of the big stock photo agencies have bought up most of the small agencies. Digital Vision was purchased by Getty, one of the biggest stock agencies on the planet. If you get on the Getty web site and do a search for "aspen trees"  my book cover images will show up on the first couple of pages. They don't have my name on them but say Digital Vision.

I think its neat that several of my images have been put on book covers. I think its BS that I didn't get a photo credit for them. I also feel that I left some money on the table when I agreed to the Digital Vision deal.  As the late Paul Harvey used to say "and now you know the rest of the story".

My work on display at the Gardan Cafe!

On Monday I set up a display of my work at the Garden Cafe. This East Dallas eatery is open 6 days a week for breakfast and lunch. My work will showcased until March.

One of the my new images shown will be "Five Clay Pots". Instead of presenting this on canvas without a frame I have printed this one on a heavy photo paper. The paper was mounted to gator board, given a clear UV coating, and then put in a classy walnut burl frame with linen liner. I really like this look and will do other images this way.

 Five Clay Pots

 

 I also have five pastels on display.When I was 6 years old I took some pastel lessons from an artist that lived down the street from our house. Over the years I haven't worked with them very much but recently I have picked them back up. I think its a talent that I need to spend a little more time on and give it a chance to mature. What do you think?

 Sea Oats and Sand Dunes

Pastel on sanded paper!

A few more from my California trip!

Some more images from my recent California trip.

Tahoe Reflections

 Tufa Morning

 Tufa Panorama

Zabriski Point

Some of my favorite images from 2010!

For my final blog post of 2010 I decided to look through the images I took during the year and pick out some of my favorites. Sometimes at art shows people ask me what is my favorite image. Usually I mention  one of the better images that has been taken on my most recent trip. I've looked at the older images quite a bit and the initial thrill has worn off. My choices here were probably influenced in much the same fashion. The first three are from my recent trip to California. I photographed Lake Tahoe, Mono Lake, the Alabama Hills and Death Valley. The weather was a little questionable at times but I did get a few nice ones.

Dusk at the Tufas

Mono Lake Sunset

 Tahoe Fog

 Badwater Salt Flats

The next three images were created while spending some time in Alabama and Florida between my two November shows. The Little River Canyon is definitely worth another visit because better timing would have given me a lot more good shots. It wasn't really a good year for the fall color and I was also about a week late. Because of this I decided to spend several days at Pensacola Beach. It is a great area to photograph and I could have chosen more images from my time there.

 Sea Oat Sunset

Fence and Dunes

 Little River Falls

The next two images were created while I was in the Lincoln, Nebraska area while participating in several art shows. Did mention that I love Google Earth. That's how I found the "Old Nebraska Church".

 Barn and Storm Clouds

 Old Nebraska Church

For the first time in several years there was a great display of wildflowers in the Texas hill country. I was able to spend several days there and had good conditions to shoot in. I could have chosen more than I did from that trip.

 Fish Hatchery Fence

 Hill Country Spring

Reunion Tower is a favorite area in downtown Dallas to shoot. The NBA banners put on the buildings for the all-star game made a great image. The reflections of the tower is an angle I have never seen in any other photos.

 Reunion Tower and NBA All-Star Banners

 Reunion Tower Reflections

 A record 12 inches of snow! Turtle Creek and the Dallas area may never look this way again. Almost had a tree limb break and fall on my truck while shooting at this location.

 Snow at Turtle Creek

 Gary, Dan, and myself drove up to the Tishomingo Wildlife Refuge near Lake Texoma in Oklahoma for this last shot. I had several variations of this which were also nice. Special thanks to Dan who was running around in the dark structure firing off different flashes with colored gels attached.

 Tishomingo Deserted Building

Everyone Have a Great 2011!