Hello from Liquid Image

[liquidimage]

Hello fellow photo geeks...

High time I did an official introduction. I'm a photographer living in Santa Monica, CA. Grew up in Minnesota and lived in Seattle for a number of years. Been down here in LA for about five now. I'm almost entire self-taught, save for a darkroom class I took at one point. These days I'm shooting mostly digital, though I still take out a film body on a fairly regular basis for B&W work.

I'm influenced stylistically by organic pattern and aberration, embracing heavily the idea of disparate elements combining by chance to create the perception of organization. Ultimately it ends up being a pretty eclectic mix of imagery that covers landscape, abstract and whatever else happens to come out.

Done a few gallery shows here and there, though I have work in private collections within the US and abroad.

Swing on by let me know what you think of my work. I've just done a bit of remodeling to my online gallery that includes some new work: www.liquidimagephotography.com

Cheers,
Walt

[Hikin' Mike]

Welcome to CPF! I browsed through your website and some of your work. Very nice!

[FerrisPhoto]

Welcome Walt, I grew up in Omaha, NE. I've been here gong on 5 too. Enjoy CPF...

[Abel]

welcome to the forum walt... congrats in having 2 photos in the finals for POY

[windrivermaiden]

Welcome to the forum...

[liquidimage]

Happy to be here. 'Bout time we had a place like this that's geographically-specific.

Lots of good work in the POY. Good competition amongst the entries...

[imported_xseption]

Welcome to the club, Walt!

~ edd

[mendopix]

I'm totally wowed by your jelly pics. Care to share what you used at what settings to get those amazing shots?

Welcome to CPF

[liquidimage]

Shooting jellyfish has always proved to be a challenge. Lighting levels are pretty low and there's enough movement to make getting a sharp image somewhat difficult. The majority of my jellyfish images were taken with a Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 lens wide open at ISO 200. Shutter speeds were typically between 1/15 and 1/30. In many cases I purposefully underexposed the images to try and keep my shutter speeds higher and then push the exposures in post. It's essentially akin to what I do with film where I'll purposefully underexpose the image by a stop in the name of getting a sharper image.

At the end of the day, however, those shots were really about taking a lot of pictures since my success rate of getting a sharp image was still pretty low. A faster ISO would have increased the success rate quite a bit, but the grain wouldn't have been acceptable for my tastes.

[mendopix]

I'm in. i'll give it a shot next time I'm down south. Thanks for the info. I imagine shooting in Raw may also help.

again, great shots.

zz

[liquidimage]

Yes... that's one bit I left out. I pretty much always shoot RAW since it gives you so much more flexibility in post and is the most direct analogue to film in the digital world. I come from a darkroom background where I fully assume that at least half work will happen after the shutter closes. Shooting JPEG or TIFF for me would be like taking your film to the corner 1-hour photo place and having those physical prints be the only thing you ever get for a given shot. Having the exposure latitude of the RAW format in a non-linear colorspace for all the "lab" work after you get back from the shoot is pretty key.

[mendopix]

We were taught in school to shoot for the darkroom. We would zone, Push and pull our film, knowing ahead what sort of paper we were going to use and what our favorite "look" was. All that pre-planning made the darkroom experience WAY more enjoyable and controllable.

I'm hoping I can use some of the same concepts in the Raw format.

zz

[cyphoto]

Hi
I really enjoyed you photos keep up the great work !!!
cheryl

Originally Posted by liquidimage

Hello fellow photo geeks...

High time I did an official introduction. I'm a photographer living in Santa Monica, CA. Grew up in Minnesota and lived in Seattle for a number of years. Been down here in LA for about five now. I'm almost entire self-taught, save for a darkroom class I took at one point. These days I'm shooting mostly digital, though I still take out a film body on a fairly regular basis for B&W work.

I'm influenced stylistically by organic pattern and aberration, embracing heavily the idea of disparate elements combining by chance to create the perception of organization. Ultimately it ends up being a pretty eclectic mix of imagery that covers landscape, abstract and whatever else happens to come out.

Done a few gallery shows here and there, though I have work in private collections within the US and abroad.

Swing on by let me know what you think of my work. I've just done a bit of remodeling to my online gallery that includes some new work: www.liquidimagephotography.com

Cheers,
Walt

[liquidimage]

Thanks, Cheryl!

Mendopix - you can absolutely use many of the same "darkroom" concepts when shooting RAW. It's not a direct analogue, but the whole idea of landing your exposure in a place where you can yank it around when "developing" and "printing" still holds. You don't get as much latitude with RAW as you do with film, so you can't really push things more than about a stop or two in either direction before you run into issues with noise, chromatic inconsistencies or banding. CCD sensors saturate pretty quickly and do so differently for red, green and blue. Software is way better and wrangling this stuff than it was a few years ago, but you still end up with a lot of wackiness with your highlights and darker shadows if you start pushing things around a lot.

[mendopix]

I remember the big debate in school between the two lead professors in the photo department. One, Chris Johnson thought Photoshop was the next natural step for photography, and he was a traditional zone photographer. The other, a non-conformist with little technical focus, Larry Sultan. He thought Photoshop should have no part in photography.

I'm still trying to find my way around black and white in digital though. I haven't tried digital printing on silver paper yet. I think that's the next step.