Colorful Clouds from Black and White Photographs

B&W Cloud Photo with Color

One of my favorite things to photograph is clouds.  I have an ongoing series of mostly black and white photographs of clouds called Terra Nebulae, which (in my best Latin) means Earth Clouds.  I call it that because part of the inspiration for the photographs are NASA's amazing images of space clouds, which are called nebulae (nebula=singular).  Up until today I've been trying to reference these space photographs by turning my skies black and leaving out any Earthly objects like trees and airplanes.  I hadn't aded color, until TODAY!

This is the first real developmental shift in this series since I started three years ago, so that is really a big deal for me.  Where did the idea come from and how did I do it?  To explain that let me talk a little about how NASA takes those wonderful Hubble photographs.

When the Hubble Space Telescope takes its wonderful photos of nebulae it is actually taking black and white images.  It takes a series of exposures, each one sensitive to only a limited part of the light spectrum.  This allows them to look at infrared features which the human eye can't perceive, and to look at the different features that show up in the different spectra.  In order to give these photos the colors we all love, a computer program is used to layer and combine the photos.  The colors you see in these photos are usually not the same ones you would see if you were actually looking at it.

I've known about this for some time, but I didn't really know how that could help my work until I attended a NASA conference and saw a demonstration on how to use search, download, and develop your own Landsat data.  The Landsat program started in the 1970's.  It uses satellites to take close up images of the Earth.  Landsat data is the basis for Google Earth.  Well, Landsat satellites do the same thing as the Hubble Space Telescope.  When they photograph a section of the Earth's surface, they take multiple exposures using different wavelengths.  Fortunately, I found directions for how to take all these exposures and combine them to make different colored versions of Central New York.  After I started to get the hang of it, I thought, "Hey, would this work for my cloud photographs?"  It turns out that with a bit of creativity, you can utilize this process to help interesting colorful photos from black and white photos.

So what do you think?  Do you like the black and white photos better, or do you like the new direction?

Another Black & White cloud scene

I was having so much fun that I figured I would try the technique on a black and white photo I took out West.

Christmas Baby and the Miracle of Photoshop

Since I am now a proud uncle, and it is Hudson's first Christmas next month, the job of taking holiday photos fell to me today.  My sister, Lindsay, really wanted studio portraits taken, unfortunately I don't have a studio anymore.  Since I didn't want my sister taking the little guy to another photographer, we decided to just wing it at my parents house.  We cleared off the table, used the natural light from the dining room window, and had my mom hold up a sheet as a backdrop.  These conditions were pretty lousy for a photo shoot, but it was all we had to work with, and I gave it my best shot.  In the end, we got some photos I really like.  I always do some digital editing with my photos, but today's shoot was an extreme case.  I'm including a couple of the original shots, so you can see how different the final photos are.

 This one was underexposed, and needed a bit of work on the background, too.

I couldn't resist putting this sequence up.  After photographing on the kitchen table we dressed him up in a Santa outfit and brought him to the park.  He isn't old enough to sit up by himself yet, so we tried propping him against a fence.  He didn't last more than a second before plopping over.  Don't worry, he was fine.  I can't wait to show them to him when he gets older.

Beaver Dams, Birds, and Wasps oh my!

The weather this November keeps surprising me.  It keeps being so nice.  Lately I've been putting in a lot of extra hours at work, so yesterday I took off and went hiking instead.  If you've never been to Baltimore Woods in Marcellus, NY before, I definitely recommend it.  If you need big attractions like waterfalls or lakes, this isn't that kind of experience.  Instead, it provides a nice hike through fields and woods and offers a nature center with art shows, animal specimens, and a very friendly staff.

Every time I spend a few hours exploring nature I am always surprised by what I find.  The highlights of this trip included a beaver lodge and dam (that totally flooded out one of the trails), a flock of Red-winged Blackbirds, a cool beetle, some curious chipmunks, and a wasp's nest.

Washed out trail caused by Beaver Dam

Coming upon a large flock of Red-winged Blackbirds was a real treat.  I love watching and listening to red-winged Blackbirds whenever I'm near a marshy area.  During the Fall and Winter, however, this species changes their habits.  They start to build large flocks, some of which number in the thousands, and move to different types of habitats.  The flock yesterday had a few hundred (by my estimate) birds, and they were all hanging out and flying around in the trees above my head.  They were mostly Blackbirds, but there were Grackles in there, too.  My girlfriend and I thought it was so fantastic that we stopped for 10 minutes or so to photograph and watch and listen to the birds.  I took video showing the birds flying around the trees.  Please check it out if you are interested.

Wasp's nest

I couldn't resist photographing this leaf after I noticed the lighting on it.

I love chipmunks!

Chimney Bluffs State Park in Wolcott New York

My first view of Chimney Bluffs.  Check out the Oswego power plant in the bottom left.

View from the beach looking up.

Today I spent a half day on a trip to Chimney Bluffs State Park in Wolcott, NY.  I had never heard of the park before, and in fact I was taken there as a surprise.  My girlfriend had been there once before, and knew I would be impressed.  She certainly was right.  It is amazing how much natural beauty and variety there is within a couple hours of driving from Syracuse, NY.  This trip took about an hour and was well worth it.  When we first arrived I assumed she had just brought me to some nice hiking trails along the shore of Lake Ontario, but when I looked up the coast and saw the "chimney bluffs" I was shocked.  At first I didn't know if I was looking at something man-made or natural.  As we hiked closer it became apparent that we were seeing incredible geologic features made from erosion.  The view reminded me of photos I've seen of places like Bryce Canyon, and yet they were only made from the eroding hillside of a drumlin.  How these spires continue to stand is beyond me, as it looks like a single storm would take them out.  What was obvious was that the erosion of the bluffs is ongoing.  There were many downed trees lying at the bottom of the hill having apparently fallen from the cliff edge.  The hiking itself wasn't very hard, but the trails take you right alongside the cliff edges.  I don't recommend this for your children or anyone who isn't surefooted.

This view was probably my favorite.

I bumped up the contrast in this one to make it a little more dramatic.

Sweet Chariot Music Festival

Kahlil Sabbagh

A few years back I was visiting a bed and breakfast in St. Albans, Vermont.  In this small town, practically in Canada, I happened to meet Douglas Day.  His family was on a road trip through the US from California on there way to Maine.  I had no idea that when I started showing Doug my sketchbook of photos and drawings during breakfast that he would invite me to photograph at his music festival, which was just a few weeks later.  In August I finished my third year photographing the Sweet Chariot Music Festival on Swans Island, Maine (I missed 2010).  Every year has been an incredible experiance of fantastic music, great people, sea shanties, and a gorgeous setting. I had posted photos from this event before on my old website, but I am happy to announce that I have now finished a new public gallery of some of my favorite photos.  You can check them out at www.dustinangell.me/chariot  If your interested in the festival, here is the official site: www.sweetchariotmusicfestival.com 

To give you an idea of what its like to be a part of the festival, I'm also including on the blog a video I shot of an impromptu jam.

Moira Smiley, 2009

Denny Williams, 2011

Photo one of National Geographic Favorites

Last year I entered some of my photography in a National Geographic competition.  I never heard back from them, but today I just found out that one of my photos ended up being a popular one.  The website www.demortalz.com posted it as one of their top 50 photos from the competition.  Check it out along with a lot of other great photos: 

http://www.demortalz.com/2011/08/29/top-50-pictures-from-national-geographic-latest-photo-contest/ 

Photos used in Bella Gaia perfromance sponsored by NASA

Cranberry Lake, NY

Last week was busy and exciting.  Over the last year I have been working as part of a NASA grant to help organize an event at the the MOST (http://www.most.org/) that involves music, NASA Earth visualizations, scientints and consultants from accross the country, educational activities, and the Onondaga Nation School and community.  Usually I'm writing and performing my own educational performances, so this was a BIG challenge and commitment.  Not only did everything work out pretty well, but Kenji Williams ended up using some of my photography in his Bella Gaia (http://www.bellagaia.com/) performance.  What he does is work with NASA to put together a 30 min. video that starts out above the galaxy and flies in to Earth.  While it runs, he plays live electric violin over a digital track.  The view in the video takes the audience flying around the Earth looking at all kinds of cool satellite data.  Since the event was designed to be localized for the Onondaga Nation, the video zooms in to Central New York.  And when it does, all the photos that represent the aboriginal land of the Onandoga People are my nature photographs.  This wasn't part of the original plan for the grant, so I was very thankful that Kenji decided to do this.  His whole performance was beautiful and emotionaly moving.  What made everything even better was that an Oneida man, named Heath Hill started the day out by recited the "Thanksgiving Address" in his native language.  This may have been the highlight of the whole day.  I feel very honored to have been a part of this.




 

Green Lakes State Park, NY