Fig 1 “Church and Mosque: Don Valley”, Photograph, Canon 1d mkiii with 28-300mm telephoto
Some further thoughts, painting ideas and developments after wandering around the Don Valley and taking some more photos.
Fig 2 “Long Shadows”; Photograph, Canon 1d mkiii with 28-300mm telephoto
Using the Canon 1d mkiii with the 28 to 300mm telephoto gave me a bit more scope than the iphone 6.
I originally intended to follow up the bridge idea previously mentioned and in a sense I am doing. However, not quite as expected.
I drive past the view of the Church and the Mosque often (fig 1) but this is the first time recently that the light has been favourable. The bridge picture is thirty yards further along than the railway bridge in the previous post.
So I got some pictures of the Church and Mosque and then went wandering to discover that the bridge over the river that I’d just been standing on to take the “long shadow” image (fig2) had this written across it:-
Fig 3 “Imagine Waking”; Photograph, Canon 1d mkiii with 28-300mm telephoto
So I suddenly felt that I had a whole load of ideas competing for attention with my “time travel” memories from the previous post.
At this point I went off, downloaded all the pictures and started Tweeting some of them in one form or another. The unintended consequence of this was that I found a photo filtering app called “Prism” and came up with the following set of images:-
Fig 4 “Bridge and St Johns” Prisma filter
Fig 5 “24 grid filters for St Johns”
It is a really neat filter effect app for mobile phone that produced some striking outcomes. The grid effects like the one above and this one below where also very pleasing:-
Fig 6 “Church and Mosque”; prisma filter
Fig 7 “24 grid filters for Church and Mosque”
Fig 8 “Church and Mosque”; Photoshop from 30 imported Prisma filter layers
At this point I have still got half an eye on the background oil painting canvas (fig 9) that I showed in the previous post:-
Fig 9 “Underpainting”; oil on canvas, ready to kick start one of the ideas
My intention had been to paint my first bridge ideas over it, but this idea kind of moved on over the last few days.
Eventually I decided that it seemed to fit better with the Church and Mosque above. I’m pretty sure I have two or three paintings taking shape now anyway and I just need to start working them through.
Finally though, the last Church and Mosque picture above was made by importing all 30 filtered versions of the image into one Photoshop file over 30 layers (fig 8). The process was then to work on the top layer and remove everything that I didn’t want (which could mean almost everything) and then move it to the back of all the other layers. Then repeat the process with all the other layers in turn. The final outcome is of course much more subtle, whilst each subsequent new layer offers me the option of its own character and energy in whatever wuantity I like.
These are a couple of other photos of mine that I gave filter treatment to along the way. You can see the importance of lighting on the circuit board one in particular:-
Fig 10 “Signpost” Screenshot of initial Prisma app experiments
Fig 11 “Circuit Board”; Just for fun Prisma filter from iphone photo
So I’m ready to move on to a new stage in this precess and now intend to start drawing and painting to produce a small body of work around this whole theme.