Perry Watson's Photography Blog

I posted this image on my Facebook page last night and it seems to have drawn a little bit of attention, so I thought I would write a blog post about how it came about. I was passing by the Brewton City Park a couple of nights ago and decided I would take a few night time shots of the park and nearby areas, all the while trying avoid looking like ……uh, a fool carrying around a tripod with a camera attached at 8:30 on deserted city streets. At least I wasn’t questioned by the local authorities or reported as a bigfoot sighting.

Now to a bit of technical stuff. I set up for this shot across the street from the park with the camera mounted on a tripod and the self timer set for 10 seconds. I had the aperture set to 16, which is the best way to get the starburst effect from the lights without using a filter. The camera was set to record 3 exposures of the same image, a normal exposure, a 2 stop over exposure, and a 2 stop under exposure. I ended up using the over exposure for this image and discarding the other two.

The first thing I did was remove a utility pole that was in the center of the image and a couple of lens flares. It gets really deep at this point, but I will say I ended up using 4 different software programs and finished with a 7 layer, 256 MB PSD file. The total processing time on the computer was about 80-90 minutes.

This is the starting image straight out of the camera:

Until next time

I had the opportunity to get out early this past Saturday and hit the streets of Auburn before the 11:00 kickoff of the Auburn vs Lousianna Monroe football game. Things get started pretty early around town on gamedays like this. I stopped at one of the art galleries downtown just as this young lady was hanging a few works outside. After a brief conversation I asked if she would mind if I took a few images of her in front of the shop and she asked if it would be alright to get one of her and her coworker together. Why not, the more the merrier, especially when I’ve already had my morning coffee.

Next I spotted Wayne and Darsey sitting outside of University Barber Shop waiting on the next customer and enjoying the early morning air. I really love this place, not only can you get a great hair cut, but the conversations are always amazing.

I followed a similar routine on Sunday morning, but just walked around the campus watching the cleanup effort from all the activities of the previous day. One thing that caught my eye was the striking colors of the new AU logo on the east side of the stadium and the beautiful early morning sky. I set the tripod up and did a series of 3 different exposures that I later turned in to this HDR image.

Later I stopped and remenienced in front of Thach Hall, remembering that my very first pharmacy class was in this building. I guess it may be fitting that my official introduction to pharmacy occurred in the Business School building. I didn’t linger very long for fear that I might still hear Dr. Hocking’s voice mumbling about leaves, bark, roots, twigs and all other things related to Pharmacognosy.

Street photography is a sport as much as it is anything else. To walk around with a camera, photographing interesting people, places, and things opens ones eyes to the everyday world that surrounds us, a world in which we often ignore the obvious. The thrill of capturing a special moment in someones life and preserving it forever is hard to describe if you’ve never tried it.

Yesterday I was in Destin, walking around looking for something interesting to photograph and there’s no shortage of interesting subjects in Destin. I soon encountered a young lady named Miranda down by the harbor and a short conversation led to a quick 3 minute photo session. It’s really fun when you find someone who is not only very photogenic, but also comfortable in front of the lens.

The thing that I find really amazing about these three images is her eye contact with the lens. It’s very intimate, as if there’s nothing else in the world but her and the camera. That’s a very rare dance between the model and the camera that would even get a 10 from Len Goodman.

By the way, all of these images were shot over a period of 2-3 minutes in direct sunlight at 2:40 PM beside the harbor. I asked her to turn away from the sun and just let the wind work with her hair. I love the way the sun highlights her hair and I always love a windblown, natural look.

Until next time……..Peace and Love

What a Saturday this was. I’m nursing an cold and decided to just take it easy this weekend, not stress myself to much, and certainly not get outside and do something foolish like yard work. Sounds like a great plan for any weekend, especially a Saturday filled with great college football games.

After much anticipation I settled down to watch the Auburn vs Georgia game. Well at least we played one good quarter of football before our youth and lack of experience took it’s toll and we experienced a beat down like nothing since Custer decided to visit Sitting Bull. What can I say, aside from throwing toilet paper in trees, we Auburn fans win with dignity and lose with dignity. Tomorrow is another day.

Having quickly satisfied my thirst for football on a Saturday afternoon, I started looking at old picture files and found some prom pictures I had shot a few years back. After looking over the file I decided to rework a few of the images and choose to start on one of Jessica.

I remember the day I shot this one quite well. As we were shooting the images at the local college before the prom, my sister introduced me to Jessica and informed me that she is one of my neighbors. She lives about a mile from us and there are two houses in between. I just love the coziness of country living. At least you can’t hear the neighbors dog bark at 4:00 in the morning.

Jessica is currently a Pharmacy student with a bright future ahead of her in what I’ve been told is a very noble profession. I’m sure she’ll do very well and will probably be able to provide excellent health care to old dirt clod kickers like me in the future.

Ok, back to the picture. The original was shot from the waist up and was a bit flat looking, although 3-4 years ago, I thought it looked pretty good. That’s what improvement in your work flow will do, you begin have higher expectations for your results. I decided to do an extreme crop and use some of the newer processing techniques I’ve developed over the last year to enhance the color, add some contrast and a little selective sharpening. I hope you enjoy the results.

We’ve really enjoyed some perfect weather, friendship, good food, and great football on the last few weekend trips to Auburn. I love these night games much better than the early games we started the season with. It gives you much more time to socialize and enjoy these wonderful fall afternoons. Enjoy the images.

This is an image of the very beautiful Chyna Roman which I shot in 2007 at a Super Shoots workshop in Nashville. I stumbled upon it earlier tonight and thought I’d try a little something drastic like a rather unique black & white conversion with an extreme crop. I hope you like it. Here is the original straight out of the camera image.

BTW, if you ever get a chance to attend one of J. T. Smith’s Super Shoots workshops, jump at the chance. You’ll learn a lot about photography and have a great time in the process. Until the next time, here’s a toast to peace and love.

War Eagle

It’s been awhile since I’ve tried to post on this blog due to the fact that for the last two years I’ve been spending a lot of time traveling to work. Now that I’m working back closer to home I should have much more time for little things I like such as photography and writing. I’m looking forward to some really exciting projects in the coming months.

The above image is one I shot of Lucy a little over two years ago after our grandson’s Baptism and just before a family dinner.  She was going up and down those stairs that morning and having a grand time turning the lights on and off after being told not to. I’ve been going through the image files on my computer to organize them in a more logical system and stumbled upon this one in the process. It kind of appealed to me for some reason, maybe due to the fact that I didn’t didn’t spend hours doing layers and adjusting this and that on it like some of the more colorful images I’ve processed in the past few months. Maybe I’ll do a future blog post giving the basic outline of my rather colorful Jerry Garcia processing workflow, but then maybe I’ll do like Col. Sanders and keep those 11 herbs and spices to my self. Just a note, those should not be confused with any of the herbs and spices the real Jerry Garcia was fond of.

Well, I don’t just write about photography here. This is not even a new image, just one I found on the hard drive of our bike. It was a very pleasant weekend in South Alabama, which often means we may hop on the Harley at some point and take a ride. Our first ride of the new year was two weeks ago to Destin and resulted in a broken connector on the battery ground cable about 25 miles from home on the return trip. After nursing the bike home, repairs were in order.

I got a new cable this week and installed it on Saturday after several yard projects…..ugh. This afternoon we rode to Brewton to print some images and visit my mother. After leaving her house we rode to Berrydale, Florida and down Hwy 4 to Baker, Fl. From there we traveled to Wing, Al. and Pleasant Home, before returning to Damascus and home sweet home. It was nice to get out and enjoy the spring like weather, see the sites, see a lot of other bikers doing the same.

Until next time…..