Cody Redmon - Photoblog

Today’s image comes from a recent drive to northern Montana, near the small town of Fairfield.  Only miles from the day’s final destination, I drove past the scene and almost didn’t stop…but ultimately turned around to capture what I had visualized in my mind.  What might not be apparent from the photo is that the bales of hay are sitting on top of a small frozen lake.  Their insulative properties have resulted in small pedestals of snow and ice for them to rest upon, several inches above the surrounding surface as it melts away.  I’m not sure what purpose they serve out on the ice like this, but it was quite fun to compose.  The title comes from my impression of the trees as people, waiting at the shore’s edge to snatch up the elusive, remaining few.  Sadly, power lines run through the image near the horizon, and though I can’t say they’re discernible in this low resolution file, I would never produce or sell a print of the scene…pleasant as it is.

*Note - I’ve been rightly corrected; the bales are of straw, not hay. Thanks pa!

My thanks to everyone who participated in the poll or left a comment, the results have found me thinking on the matter for several weeks - as my absence has likely conveyed.  Many drafts of this post were started during that time, one of which reached nearly 1,200 words in length and was somehow both painfully technical and unnecessarily idealistic.  After hours of writing and re-writing I finally came to the conclusion that I’m a photographer and should stick to my talents.

Of 31 votes, 19 feel my images are too dark; either slightly, recently or otherwise.  Right at one-third, however, did feel the images look agreeable to them, which is encouraging.  I was also pleased to see two votes for “Lighter as of late” because I adjusted things slightly a few months back and it seems some folks did notice.  I haven’t made any further changes to my monitor or workflow since posting the poll, but I did decide to go ahead and purchase a screen calibration device in the near future.  If anyone has input regarding such hardware, I invite you to leave a comment…I need some convincing on these gadgets.

My plan is to post a number of images over the coming weeks, then offer up another poll to see what the consensus is.  For what it’s worth, I appreciate minute details in the darks and often employ pure black to convey mood or visual weight. At the other end of the spectrum…I have yet to post an image which contains pure white, or zero color information.  I underexpose every shot intentionally to retain details in even the most subtle highlights.  It is not my intention for every image I make to have ‘perfect’ light values across the entirety of the frame.  On the slightly technical front, all of my work is produced in a medium-lit room and is intended to be viewed on a dark background.  If you are viewing my images in a bright room, chances are that they’ll appear too dark and I’d recommend checking out the site in the evening sometime.  If you’re only viewing my work via my RSS feed, I encourage you to visit my site directly and view the enlargements on a darker background.  I can guarantee that you’ll find subtleties in the work which escaped prior scrutiny.  As a general rule, I would even go so far as to say RSS subscribers should click the post title vs. the image in the feed itself…

The truth about computer monitors and color/tone/brightness/contrast is that they are all quite different…all of them.  Brand to brand, model to model, there are very few standards in the way of keeping what we see on-screen consistent from user to user, and it just gets more involved when you take it from the screen to ink.  I spent years in the printing industry repeatedly explaining to people that what they see on their monitor (illuminated color) is different than how it will appear on paper (reflected color). I recently fell victim to this myself, sending a file off to my printer only to receive it back appearing about 20% too dark.  Although the process I choose for my photographs uses traditional light sensitive paper, the same principles apply.  I went about calibrating my monitor as a result and am now quite curious what my general readership thinks about the brightness of work I’ve been posting.  I’d ask that you take a moment to answer the poll question below so that I can continue in my efforts to make your visits here as enjoyable as possible.  If you have additional feedback beyond the options provided, please feel free to leave a comment on the post page.  Thank you!

I’ve been quite buried under a project recently, but have been able to get out on a few drives.  This image of last light comes from region of the state I just recently discovered…and it’s only about 30 minutes away from my home.  I’ve been crisscrossing the land in these parts for most of my life, it’s amazing to still find huge expanses of unknown roads and landscapes.  I love Montana…

It seems that the heaviest of days this winter came and went back in December.  It’s common for chinook winds to strip the fields of their snow this time of year, but while other parts of the country have experienced ‘true winter’, I can hardly say the same for Montana.  Nor can I say that really I miss the typical February weather in these parts - always the most bitter.  It snowed a few inches yesterday, but today is supposed to be nearly 50°F again…

**Site Updates - I updated the tag cloud in my homepage sidebar to reflect the Cumulus page; quite nifty… Unfortunately, at this time I can’t get the plugin to function on my ’single post’ pages and most ‘archive’ pages, but hopefully soon.

Well, I’m finally back in action…  As my previous post relates, I experienced a hard drive failure but was able to recover about 90-95% of my data through a variety of methods.  The issue in my case was hardware failure, not OS corruption like I’ve been through so many times before.  When the reader-arm in a drive seizes up, it doesn’t matter how healthy the platters are, you’re pretty much up-a-creek.  So in light of this I want to share with everyone a wealth of information put together by my friend and associate Brian Auer, who runs Epic Edits, a great site for the ‘aspiring hobbyist”.  He’s actually been writing on the topic for several months, culminating in a wrap-up post and a 42-page eBook called “Your Complete Guide to Photo Backups” (PDF, 2.5MB). I highly recommend downloading the file and learning about the various ways to protect your data…not just photographs, this guide can be applied to anything on your computer that you don’t want to lose. Don’t tempt fate on this one, it stings…

I’ve updated my Featured RSS in the sidebar to the site of Andreas Manessinger.  Both his urban and landscape work is great, and his series on bicycles and motorcycles is unique, yet universal.  Andreas lives in Austria and I’m glad to have gotten to know him through our participation in the Fine Art Photoblog.

Last item of discussion…my own RSS feed.  The service I use, Feedburner, was acquired quite a while ago by Google, but full integration into the Big-G’s ‘primary’ is just now taking place.  My old feed address should continue to work just fine, but if you experience any hiccups or are a new subscriber, please reference: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/CodyRedmon I’ve also updated the addresses for both the RSS and MAIL icons is my header, which help automate the process of subscribing.  If you’re not currently using RSS to follow your favorite blogs and websites, I can promise that it will save you hundreds of hours and countless mouse-clicks.  For more info, watch the video RSS in Plain English.  It’s a few years old, so I recommend Netvibes or iGoogle for reading feeds, but the explanation is still spot-on.

Just a quick note to let you know that I’ve experienced quite an epic hard drive failure and am trying to get things back up and running.  Luckily, my images were archived and I experience no loss on that front, but much of my other work was not so lucky.  I’ll be back to posting soon…