Anybody who has followed my journals and photography will know that I am very keen on contrasts in photography, particularly those known as Itten contrasts. A quote from one of previous journals Contrasts of a Curious Mind #1 gives a summary:

"...some considerable time ago, a Swiss expressionist painter called Johanes Itten en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes… introduced to his students at the Bauhaus en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus the idea of another type of contrast - contrast between characteristics and properties of objects, such as rough and smooth, narrow and wide, horizontal and vertical, curved and linear - was just as important in image making as the concept of variable light values. I wrote a short forum article about this a few years ago. okavanga.deviantart.com/journa… Itten's idea can be taken even further; we can look for contrasts in style, content, intent, methods, media, and all such ideas are what these Features are going to be about - contrasts of a curious mind."

Having been house bound with a bad bout of sciatica for more than a month I have had little opportunity to make any photos, but I did manage last Sunday to drive out to one of my favourite areas and to capture a few shots. I have cobbled some of those together with a few from late last year to explore further contrasts in image making. Most of the following images are monochrome ones, colour being a bit of a distraction or totally unnecessary in grey, wet, cloudy conditions, as found in Scotland for much of winter. If you do venture down the black and white route of image making you will notice one aspect almost straight away if you are using a digital camera. The captured images don't really look like those from the good old days of monochrome film photography. They may be sharp with lots of detail and they may cover a good range of tonal values, but in many if not most cases black and white captures look very bland, tonal contrasts are muted. With old style film stock, however, normal glossy prints looked much more vibrant (even if the content and composition were not always interesting) and eye-catching. The reason is that film makers such as Agfa, Kodak and Ilford produced films that had a differential response to light in the dark, middle, and light tonal regions whereas with digital sensors the light response is linear across all tonal values. Thus, film photographers might use high contrast films such as the Kodak TMAX Pro range or the more gentle contrasts of Agfa's range. In order to overcome the linear blandness of digital sensors, editing software now offers film emulations such as those found with Silver Efex Pro, part of the Nik suite of editing programs , now owned and distributed by DxO. nikcollection.dxo.com/. In the examples I have used different emulations of films to try to enhance the nature of the image, mostly monochrome images but with one excursion into dual or split tones and one colour image; all these should be regarded in terms of contrasts both tonal and Itten.

The first shot is of a waterfall cutting through a rugged hillside on the moors above Lauriston Forset in Dumfries and Galloway, an area known locally as Grobdale. At first glance you may think nothing of this - a waterfall, so what. But, closer examination shows the water to have a silky smooth appearance compared to the rough terrain through which it tumbles. Ah-ha, you should be saying, that smart ass has used a long exposure shot to smooth the flow - quite correct - this smart ass simply set the camera for a longish Tv and rested the camera on the bridge over the stream before pressing the time delay shutter - simples.


 

Her's another waterfall shot, this time from Routin Bridge near Irongrey near Dumfries. Here, I have tried to emphasise the water as a chaotic tumble cascading out of the dark interior rocks and vegetation. Again, I have used a film emulation to give this moderately high contrast image with the random flow compared to the smooth rocks. There are some blown highlights, but I think that is acceptable in the context of the image.



Sticking with water, my third image is another long exposure shot, this time of the Big Water of Fleet (river Fleet) at Gatehouse of Fleet in Dumfries and Galloway. I used a longish exposure to smooth out the water turbulence so as to illustrate the standing waves as the river flows over underlying rock. Again a somewhat high contrast film emulation has been used to give greater tonal variation, but note the soft, rippling clouds as a counter to the river.



The name of the big hill in the next shot is, believe or not, White Top of Culreoch! Every time I have passed over these moors on Grobdale, the White Top stands out dark and menacing, even in sunlight. When I snapped this image, the rin ws pouring down and the sky leaden. . Even enhancing the contrast and using a contrasty film emulation gave a mediocre result. So, I've resorted to a split tone image with some modest success. The sky appears bright and some of the grasses in the foreground have been highlighted. The dark dead heather and berry vegetation has got some structure but remains with its ominous black menace.




My next image relies on textures, composition, particularly the lead line into the distance, and the curiosity that despite pouring rain I felt absolutely compelled to take the shot, and got soaked in the process. I pass this spot on days when I visit Castle Douglas, one of our near towns. It has no geographical name on maps, but it shows a major drainage channel for surrounding fields. I find it fascinating, the geometry, the grasses and other vegetation, the pools of water... Really compelling for me. The fence is the obvious man-made contrast, but the realisation that the whole channel, straight as can be,  is also fashioned by hand (well, JCB probably) gives a slightly odd feeling.



The penultimate image in this tour of contrasts and monochrome presentations is a tribute to the work of my friend Steven, thewolfcreek whose dark, dour monochromes of decaying farm buildings never cease to impress. This double barn structure is near Castle Douglas. I think it is still in use, but clearly from the state of repair its days may be numbered. Again, this was shot in inclement weather and a lack lustre shot was the immediate result. However, a highish contrast film emulation was used to bring out a good tonal range and, thanks to the lens, there is very good definition now seen, even into the "black" windows in the upper story - zoom in if you can't see. There are lots of contrasting textures and structures and even a nice thorny hedge in front, a la Steven. The one extra thing I have done here is to give the  image a matte feel to it. Matte images were common in the days of film photography, often more appealing than the usual glossy finish. There has been some post-processing work done recently to emulate matte finishes, a point drawn to my attention by Carolyn, Sparkle-Photography I have used a very simple method of emulation here, details upon request, and iy just flattens the image slightly. 



Finally, and in complete contrast, a colour image! Taken on a sunny day in autumn with blue sky, fluffy clouds, beautiful green fields, trees and hedge rows and two cows, this would be classed as a typical picturesque photo of our green and pleasant land. The low Sun provides some nice contrasting shadows and the hedges act as lead lines taking the eye up through the trees to the further lead line of an old grassed over dyke and so up to the skyline. The major contrast is with the other photos in this series, but also to point out that the greens and blues/whites are visually contrasting. One without the other would not work.




That's all for now, folks. I hope you have enjoyed this exploration of contrasts, colour, monochrome, tonal and Itten in this edition of Contrasts of a Curious Mind.

Cheers

David aka Okavanga

Previous journals in this series:

Contrasts of a Curious Mind #1I'm introducing an occasional series on the idea of contrast in images by looking at the work of two most excellent photographers here on Deviant Art: thewolfcreek and metalbender. Talk to most photographers about contrast and you will here all about light and shade, the zone system, local versus global contrast and much much more. We photographers like to think of contrast in terms of variations and differences in the light values of adjacent parts of an image - pure black versus pure white being the ultimate photographic contrast. However, some considerable time ago, a Swiss expressionist painter called Johanes Itten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Itten introduced to his students at the Bauhaus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus the idea of another type of contrast - contrast between characteristics and properties of objects, such as rough and smooth, narrow and wide, horizontal and vertical, curved and linear - was just as important in image making as   Contrasts of a Curious Mind #1I'm introducing an occasional series on the idea of contrast in images by looking at the work of two most excellent photographers here on Deviant Art: thewolfcreek and metalbender. Talk to most photographers about contrast and you will here all about light and shade, the zone system, local versus global contrast and much much more. We photographers like to think of contrast in terms of variations and differences in the light values of adjacent parts of an image - pure black versus pure white being the ultimate photographic contrast. However, some considerable time ago, a Swiss expressionist painter called Johanes Itten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Itten introduced to his students at the Bauhaus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus the idea of another type of contrast - contrast between characteristics and properties of objects, such as rough and smooth, narrow and wide, horizontal and vertical, curved and linear - was just as important in image making as   Contrasts of a Curious Mind #3:iconinfrared-club::iconinfrared-club::iconinfrared-club::iconinfrared-club::iconinfrared-club:
Incorporating Best of February 2016
By way of a slight change to the normal Best of Feature, I thought I'd add a third volume to my Contrasts of a Curious Mind series.  (See here and here for the previous two volumes ==> Contrasts of a Curious Mind #1 Contrasts of a Curious Mind #2) Readers of this series will be familiar with the thesis that contrasts as in the photographic world extend into counterparts in form, shape, qualities in images, views held by the famous artist and teacher at the Bauhaus, Johannes Itten. The Wikipedia entry ==> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Itten is a fair summary, and I wrote a short piece about Itten contrasts some time ago   Contrasts of a Curious Mind #4Previous Features in this series: Contrasts of a Curious Mind #1  Contrasts of a Curious Mind #2  Contrasts of a Curious Mind #3
Contrasts of a Curious Mind #4
Contrasting Post-Processing Techniques.
Having covered aspects of Itten contrasts, contrasts within Features, and contrasts within infrared photographic styles, I am continuing with my occasional series about contrasts in image making with a detailed look at how different post-processing methods and filters tools can sometimes radically change not only the look of an image, but also its mood and "feel". My ideas were triggered, in part, by an image from vanndra depicting a charcoal sketch of a creek lined with trees and ve

Confined, once again, to the house, this time with a painful sciatica, I was listening to a Beethoven symphony, the First as I recall, when I realised that I never could work out why classical music (classical in the widest sense from Baroque to modern era) sounds quite the way it does; complexity has much to do with it but in what way. Thus, with Google at hand in my Smart Phone I rummaged through the Web and came up with the answer, one I'm sure you know, but one of those pieces of information that has long escaped me. The answer is: counterpoint. I had come across the word before but had always thought it meant something to do with beats in a bar (musically speaking - not beatniks supping ale in a public house). If you have not come across the idea before although you will have, but just didn't know it, counterpoint involves the composer thinking of a powerful musical theme which can be developed in lots of ways for lots of instrument and which could well stand on its own as a substantial piece of music; then the said composer thinks of another powerful theme, directly or indirectly related to the first one, such that when both themes are played together the resulting music is better than either of the original themes. The reason I say that you will have come across the idea but didn't know its fancy name is that counterpoint is the basis of many simple songs known as rounds such as Three Blind Mice and Frere Jaques. While musing upon my sudden understanding of contrapuntal arrangements (contrapuntal being a posh way of saying counterpoint) I realised that flame fractals could be developed in the same way. You discover or develop a powerful fractal then try to find another of similar theme which when added to the first gives a finished product more stylish than either of its two parents. It turns out that with JWildfire ==> jwildfire.org/ there is an easy route to devising such counterpoint fractals - the software allows for layers such that you can design and develop one fractal, add another layer and develop a second fractal, seeing the impact upon the first in real time. Of course, to keep to the music analogy the second fractal should bear some resemblance to the first, either in use of the same or similar transforms, or in the use of a common development procedure. Finally, in order to present the counterpoint product it is helpful to have the two (or more) components in different palettes (gradients) also preferably in counterpoint (complementary) colours, so that the two or more components can be seen as distinct. I expect this idea has been around for a long time in the fractal world and I don't claim any novel insight here, but simply that listening to Beethoven with a very sore leg leads the mind down strange alleys. Here are some examples, the first of which show thew two counterpoint fractals and their combination; the other examples being the completed works. I've given them a musical title which you may or may not feel is apt, the first being something from Haydn's Strum und Drang symphonies, say, No 39 - Storm at Sea.


 Plus  ==> 


  

Storm at Sea




Stravinsky - Rite of Spring, perhaps




Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, perhaps, The Pastoral.




Belioz - Symphonie Fantastique, perhaps.




A Three Part Jazz Invention - after Bach's three part inventions.


That's all for now!


Any other ideas, names or comments are most welcome.

David aka Okavanga