DAVID PERRY PHOTOGRAPHER

. . . well, if you must eat a rainbow,

Fri, 3 Jul 2009 09:33:10 -0700

. . . ya’ might as well study it a bit, first, eh? Or is it just me who likes to study my food at leisure?

I’ve got chard and chard and chard. I’m practically overrun by chard. And I’m completely open to creative new recipes for it. Got any fun ones that you feel like sharing?

Hmmmmmm, wonder if one could pickle those stems, like one would green beans, or asparagus. Now wouldn’t that look groovy in a jar? Or sticking up, ever so enticingly from a martini? Sigh . . .

Think they’d hold their color?

A snippet of summer memory

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 21:39:27 -0700

“In the potholed alley at dusk, children appeared and disappeared among the shadows. Squeals of laughter and delight. The hollow ‘clank-clank-clank’ of an empty bouncing can . . .“

Cherries vs Pits

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:54:43 -0700

So, what will it be?
focus on cherries today,
or lean more toward pits?

Doctor Kruckeberg I Presume

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:13:21 -0700

Imagine wandering for hours through a wilding maze of botanical amazement known as the Kruckeberg Botanic Garden up in Shoreline, wandering and chatting with new, plant-savvy friends whose common thread is a series of initials taken from their comically named group, Seattle Garden Bloggers United To Talk, which boils down acronymically to SAGBUTT.
Yes, friends, I spent my Saturday afternoon this past weekend hanging out with a delightful bunch of crazy garden bloggers, each of them . . . with Sagbutt.
It didn’t hurt one bit. And actually, I liked it!
I liked Molly and Daniel, and Michael, and Karen, and both Wing Nut and Curmudgeon of the Weed Whackin’ Wenches.
I liked the Caucasian Wingnut tree (immediately below). Think of all the people you know who could use one of these growing in their gardens, simply because they are pretty much wingnuts themselves. (The garden’s nursery has them for sale, BTW.)

Tuck it in and let them discover it . . .

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:36:31 -0700

When my daughters were little there was always a temptation to lead them around at Easter and show them each and every perfect egg hiding place I’d managed to find and utilize . . . the temptation to make it somehow about me, rather than about them, and those little, unfolding hits of joy that would come from each of their squealing, scurrying, basket-toting discoveries.
Finding a way to hide an egg in plain sight was my part of the equation. Allowing their eyes to find it was theirs.
When they were very young, they missed many of my best hiding places, often running right past them, which arguably meant that they weren’t all that great as hiding places after all . . . at least not given my audience, their attention span, and the playful goals of the Easter egg finding game.
As they grew older and better at seeing beneath and between, and beside, I was able to dial up my hiding finesse to match their growing desires to be challenged, their increasingly sophisticated eyes. I liked hiding the eggs we’d dyed and painted even more as they grew older.
***
I certainly don’t consider myself much of a garden ‘designer’. Not having seen what real masters can achieve. My problem is that I’m still too overwhelmed by spatial arrangements, senses of scale, ‘the big picture’ thematic thing, and eyes that can only just barely see into the future. But I do love it when, after finding a fascinating new plant friend and bringing it home, I am then able to find a place for it that actually makes sense on a number of levels. I like finding ways to tuck them in, to give the impression that they have always lived there, and to then allow visitors to ‘find’ them within the larger whole, all on their own.
When I photograph in my own garden, or in the gardens of others, there will inevitably be those moments of discovery, when my eyes first ‘discover’ that beautiful ‘Easter egg’ of a plant or bloom that someone (here in my garden, that someone is usually forgetful me), had decided to place there . . . you know, that “Oh, my!” moment of seeing what just begs to be seen. And then, having seen it, having relished that satisfying little jolt of discovery, my assignment photographer’s mind inevitably turns to the creative problem of sharing it. How can I capture some part of that sense of discovery in a photograph that other eyes will want to tarry within, want to study and peer more deeply into?
It is simple human nature to want to hone in, to make sure that everyone can see the “it” of the picture you’ve decided to ‘take’. Which means that, as often as not, we camera-toting garden lovers tend toward “bullseye-ing” those things we’ve just seen, as we raise our cameras to shoot our pictures of them. We want to be darned sure that others will know precisely what we’ve found and recorded for them. Problem is, “bullseyed” pictures are about as interesting to our magazine, billboard and TV sophisticated eyes as Easter eggs laying right out in the open are to ten-year old Easter revelers (as opposed to two and three year-olds). There is no sense of drama or mystery, and hence, no age-appropriate sense of discovery. Sure they’ll look, but they probably won’t see what you saw, or care half as much. And in about a half-second their minds will be wandering and they’ll be turning the page.
Check out the image directly below. Disregard the fact that having already seen the image above, your eye will readily know to wander back, past those sharply focused Astilbe blooms to find that deliciously curved Jack-in-the-pulpit behind them, even though it isn’t even in focus in this image. But, had you just been walking from the front of my side-yard toward the back, you would almost certainly have noticed those Astilbe first. I’d bet good money on it.

Cabbage Heart: The Movie

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:09:16 -0700

You have just been hired to write the press release/synopsis for an upcoming blockbuster movie, “Cabbage Heart”, starring the two, very famous Brassica pictured in the inset boxes above. Eighty words or less. Tell us, is this an action movie, a children’s movie, a naughty, steamy romance, a road movie, a bank heist movie, a coming of age memoir? Or is it a horror flick? Perhaps a slapstick comedy? A martial arts extravaganza . . . or a sauerkraut (spaghetti) western?
Who are the two stars of this film, and where is it set?
What is its most memorable line?
This is your chance to let it all hang out. Put on your most tattered, summer by the poolside propeller-beanie, and give me a glimpse of the kind of crazy that will sell out theatre after multiplex theatre.
The winner will receive a matching set of seven empty, Italian, Bibicaffe bottles, postage paid, which have each been carefully washed and their labels removed, so that you can put a cut-flower in each of them (as seen in the picture below).
The second prize winner will receive a matching set of five of these same, very classy bottles, postage paid.
You have until Saturday morning (9 am PST), to come up with an appropriately dreamy, goofball, original, offensive, childlike, steamy, or macho scenario, to then write your synopsis in eighty words or less, and post it as a comment below.
Ultimately, you must impress the judge (me), to win the fancy-schmantzy, imported, crystal-like vase set of your dreams.

Ready, set, go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PS: If some secret little inner voice in you is worried about what your peers might think if you show up for this and write something foolish-sounding, fuggetaboutit! Ridiculous, over-tired cliches may in fact be worth extra points, especially if they are so bad that they make me and others laugh. The worse, the better. The point of this is to do something, if only for a few moments of respite from the weighty realities of these troubled days that is playful, goofball and a little over the top. It is essential for our health to step out of the angst and fear, to turn our minds to the silly. It is good for the soul to laugh. I know I could use a good chuckle or three. Will you help me?

Pssssst . . .

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:23:47 -0700

Today, my garden is energy being stored,
promises fulfilled,
promises waiting to be kept,
colors dancing madly,
muted shades within the shade,
dreams floating upward . . .

The Museum of False Starts

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:09:01 -0700

It is incredibly
beautiful but
unfinished--
actually hardly
more than imagined.
There are the beginnings
of a gallery of
ribbon-lovely thoughts
that vanish,
shadowy gardens
briefly visible
at shifting angles,
and, caught
in an ancient ash,
the single spiraling
horn of an otherwise
unfashioned animal.

Kay Ryan from her book, ‘Say Uncle’
Grove Press, 1991

Fun with other people’s roses . . . Part One

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:57:58 -0700

I could downplay how much fun this is for me, but what really would be the point?
You see, my dear friend, Mike entrusted me with the keys to his garden for a few days, and then offered explicit encouragement to cut all the roses I want. Can you imagine???
I call it selective, premature deadheading. ;>) And I’ve gotta say, it was a very sweet offer for a guy with my rose lust and visual sensibilities.
Mary went over with me last evening to check on things and to cut some of his garden’s fragrant bounty for ‘the vase’, and as we snipped and deadheaded, we kept shooting guilty glances at one another and giggling nervously, feeling even a little lightheaded as the bucket began to fill. Ultimately we returned home with two big clutches of pure rose heavenliness, for which I then dutifully carved out a bit of play time this morn. (You’re not really buying into the ‘duty’ part, are you???)
Truth is, I did think some of you might enjoy a few glimpses, and I certainly didn’t want these beauties to have come and gone without first giving them their proper due.
The red ones are Rosa ‘Europeana’, a stunning floribunda that delivers lots of eye candy, but amazingly little scent. And the blue chair above, upon which they sit, well that is the chair where my dear grandfather took a nap nearly every day after lunch while he was still here on Earth with us. He’s been gone a long time now, but the blue chair is a little piece of him, of his energy, that continues to grace my home and give it layered meaning. The same bouquet is pictured below in the red, “Womb Room” where my visiting guests tell me they sleep like a baby. And finally, at bottom are one’s and two’s of seven different roses, including Europeana, French Lace, Charles de Mills, Golden Celebration, Madamé Plantiér, and if memory serves correctly but probably doesn’t, Eden.

Stand in one place and keep looking

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 09:50:47 -0700

We’ve developed some really bad habits. Habits that rob us, diminishing what visual magic is available to us, daily.
In letting ours minds and lives grow ever more busy they have also grown ever more restless, maybe even lazy. And so we have learned to skim rather than really look. It seems we are nearly always in a hurry to get somewhere else. To be where we are not instead of where we are. To hurry of toward where we think we should be. Or to where someone else told us we really must visit.
We have learned to peruse, to graze, visually, which is immeasurably different from really seeing. Really seeing often involves really looking . . . and then contemplating what one has seen.
Look how very many different views there were of this one rose and rose bud this morning. I bet I didn’t move the camera more than a foot in any direction from where I set it down originally. But look at all of the variety there was for my eyes to see, if only I allowed them time. And in this case, that was only maybe ten minutes. Not so much, really. Imagine if I left the camera there all day and kept going back as the sun moved, and the temperature rose and my eyes burrowed deeper and deeper into the scene. Notice that the chewed off leaves disappeared after the top two frames below. It took me the first five minutes to even see them there in my picture. And having shot the rose with them on, I then gave myself permission to shoot it without them, and so, carefully removed them.
Is it better for that effort? I don’t know. It’s certainly less true as far as what was there naturally. But it is also a bit less distracting. The point is, I spent long enough to see. And then I allowed myself permission to see it without. I gave myself the gift of time, of peering deeply enough to even allow myself that option. How many times do you look at your pictures later on and experience that sinking feeling that comes from realizing that you didn’t see something in your hurry to snap and move on that really diminishes your picture. You raised the camera, clicked , lowered the camera and immediately started looking for the next thing to snap. And in that process, you missed something that with just a few more moments of viewing would have become glaringly apparent. Doh!!!
Think about it. Ten minutes looking at just one rose little rose. Shifting your perspective ever so slightly to see how it changes the background, the play of light, the focal point. “But, but, are you completely nuts???”, some may be mumbling about now.
Hmmmmmmmmm . . . Could be.

And yet, look, look what my eyes saw . . . after that.

Never try to explain . . .

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:19:43 -0700

Opulent Wealth Now on Display

Fri, 5 Jun 2009 13:20:46 -0700

I’m feeling rich.
Even as clients drop around me like flies,
and others grow ever more cautious,
and the safety net thins
. . . to a mere shadow of its former self.

You can’t buy that feeling.
Nor could I give it to you,
even if I wanted to.
You must grow it.

Imagine it, an entire blue jar full of yellow roses.
Imagine the opulent feeling of cutting that many,
of being able to,
. . . from your own little garden.
Imagine the ambrosia of smells that accompany such a trove.

No, you cannot buy this particular sort of wealth.
Nor could you inherit it,
not in the way a lawyer would understand.
You couldn’t extract it through torture, either,
. . . or steal it.

This sort of wealth requires eyes and a heart that see,
hands that know the soil . . .
time that has come,
. . . and gone on.

This sort of wealth
. . . one must grow.

The Japanese Maples alone are worth the trip

Mon, 1 Jun 2009 21:58:30 -0700

Washington Park Arboretum: Seattle.
These from just the other day. No Kidding. Almost like autumn in May (now June). And admission is free. As in no charge. As in a pretty amazing place to walk and sit and contemplate, both the grand and the seemingly insignificant.
These Japanese Maples are planted across a ravine to capitalize on the stacking visual effects and color variations, and they alone would be worth the trip this time of year. But there is so very much more to see than just maples.

Just in case that was too subtle an example . . .

Thu, 28 May 2009 21:45:41 -0700

As I walked Mary out to her car a just half-hour ago we both stopped in our tracks for a few moments, needing to soak in the quiet, emotional depth of color in these dusk-illumined Siberian Iris. For with just a bit of light remaining in the western sky, they literally seemed to glow within the gloaming. And given that there was no perceptable breeze and knowing that tomorrow everything might have changed, I hurried inside to grab a camera, a tripod and a cable release as Mary drove away.
I knew I needed to hurry. The light was dropping fast.
By the time I could get set up, exposures required five and six seconds length at f5.0, and at ISO 100. I purposely underexposed the scene by one full stop in the camera, wanting the image ultimately to feel as dark and moody as it appeared while I knelt in the middle of the street looking upon it, but also knowing that the camera would record it much lighter than it seemed, even after I had dialed in that full stop of underexposure.
This is what I got (see below), straight out of the camera, without cropping, tweaking or any adjustments whatsoever. Rather uninspiring isn’t it? Especially when compared to what really was there . . . to what stopped us in our tracks.
All of the colors in the scene as recorded by the camera seem faded out and off-color. These iris aren’t some shade of royal blue in real life, no matter what the time of day. They are a deep, deep purple with perhaps the very slightest indigo tint. Scroll back up to the image above and you’ll see that the upward facing petals do appear a bit lighter and a bit more bluish than those facing the camera, but that is because they are reflecting the faint, bluish light in the sky above them. The image above is not so far off from what my eyes were seeing. It really was that dark, and they really were that surreally glowing. But the camera doesn’t understand that. It has no way to know that it’s nearly nighttime and that we might actually want pictures taken at night to look like they were taken at night. It simply plays the law of averages and tries to leverage the overall exposure to fall into that frustrating, but safe mid-range of values. And there you have the crux of the problem with so many pictures, but this time illustrated in a rather extreme case.
I’d say that unless you are consistently a high noon in the shade sort of guy or gal, at least half of the time, if you want your pictures to resemble the world that your eyes have fallen in love with, or if you want them to resemble one that your mind simply imagines in some quirky, funky, romantic way, you will need to cross over that threshold of wanting to merely click the shutter and be done with it. You will need to begin to take ownership of the entire process of making pictures, including what you do with those images once your camera has done what it can.
My offer still stands from my earlier post today. Send me a pic that needs some help to get it to look like your eyes saw it and I’ll plug the first few in and show you what’s possible with a few basic software tools.

But it didn’t look that way when I shot it . . .

Thu, 28 May 2009 10:30:53 -0700

Photographically speaking, some colors are just tough. Breathtakingly beautiful, but tough. . As in difficult to capture accurately, tough. As in good luck ever getting that to look true in a magazine or book, tough. And at some frustrating level, that’s just going to have to be OK.
There are however things that you can do to get your pictures to look more like your eye saw them, if you’re willing to invest a bit of time learning and playing. And OK, lets be real, you will need a bit of software.
First though, you can adopt this software-free mantra: “I know better than my camera.” Repeat this mantra over and over. Caress it with your tongue. Say it like you mean it, even if you’re convinced that the camera is way smarter than you, and that it is actually out to get you.
A corollary to this mantra goes like this: “My camera is a freaking, pea-brained idiot.” , which inevitably you will be tempted to use from time to time ( or scream???), when you need someone to blame for your pictures not turning out, but not terribly productive beyond giving your mouth something to do. C’mon, you and I both know that admitting you’ve got a problem is the first step toward overcoming it.
Truth is, although your camera probably does have an electronic brain about the size of a pea, it is also your friend, and it is doing its very best to capture what you see, which is a pretty tall order. Besides, I find it hard to do good work with almost any friend while calling him/her or it, insulting names. Don’t you?
So try saying this new mantra again: “I know better than my camera.” Are you beginning to feel it? A little?
Now there’s no way to cover the universe of image adjustment in one, scrawny little blog post, so I’m not even going to try. But I can show you an example from this morning, and maybe in the process, help you to understand one goofball garden guy’s thought process just a bit better. Take it for what it’s worth.
In the picture above, the image #16, on the left (#15 is on the right.), shows the photo as it came straight from the camera (but for the fact that I’ve flipped it for playful symmetry). Notice how the overall image has a slight cyan (bluish green) cast to it, and how the rebar upon which the golden hops is climbing, is so dark that you can scarcely see any detail? Well, since a part of my reason for making the pictures was to show interesting ways to use rebar in the garden, I’m kinda not too impressed that the rebar nearly disappears visually. Make sense?
So what do I do?
Well, look below at the two screen captures I’ve made of those two images above, each residing within that groovy Adobe program, Lightroom. Notice that image #16, as it came straight from the camera, with the camera set on ‘automatic white balance’, has decided mathematically, somehow that the scene needed 38 points of magenta tinting to counteract all that green in the shot. Which is just plain dumb. It’s supposed to be that green, silly camera!
Scroll down to see what a difference dialing out that magenta tinting and warming up the overall light a bit (from 4350k to 4813k) has on the color of the foliage. ( Notice that I bumped the saturation by 10 points too). It’s still not quite like my eye saw those chartreuse leaves in that warm, shady light this morning, but it is closer. I mean, in real life those leaves look as if they’d glow in the dark, which is part of why I’m so drawn to this utter bully of a plant, despite its bullying.
So now my foliage looks more radioactively true, but I still can’t see the rebar for diddle, and in real life, I could. I could see detail in the patterned surface, I could see the brilliance of the rusted iron. I could feel the rough surface of its skin with my eyes.
If you’ll scroll back and forth between the two screen captures, you’ll see that I’ve added 20 points of fill light, backed off the blacks from 5 to 4, brightened the image from a value of 50 to 72 and then gone in and tweaked the tone curve values, to open up the darks and tone down the highlights. And now, I can actually see all that textural detail in the rebar, which was actually a very important part of the shot’s initial goal.

Obviously, if I were prepping this image for offset reproduction, I’d still work with it for a while, wanting to pull the colors into a range that a printing press could actually handle. And if/when someone calls for that shot for a story, I’ll do exactly that. For now, I’ve taken just a couple of minutes to move the image much closer to what I wanted it to look like when I shot it, and I’ve done it while my memory of how the scene actually looked was fresh in my mind.
As I postulated earlier: “I know better than my camera!” It’s the truth, you know, and you too can become a believer.