BH Neely's Photography

Leda, Studio, Athens, Greece

Zeus was so taken with Leda's beauty that he turned himself into a swan to seduce her. From their union came Helen, Clytemnestra, Pollux & Castor. Helen, of course, was so beautiful that after she ran off with Paris to Troy, Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon got the Greeks together to cross the Aegean to storm Troy. It's easy to see why, if her mother looked like this.

In the modern world, I was so taken with Leda's beauty that I approached at an event at the ambassador's residence, and asked if she'd be a model for my Faces of Aphrodite project. She agreed, though it took 6 months and two intercontinental flights to make it happen. But I'm very happy with the results.

Self-portrait, Athens, Greece

A friend needed to check out some fireplace gear. The shop was too small for two people, so I stood out on the street and did a self-portrait in the reflection of a spinning chimney guard. The guys who ran the shop were highly amused by my getting up close to the device and shooting, checking, shooting, checking. Pedestrians were also amused. As you might imagine, I'm used to that.

Mast, Nafplio, Greece

Masts against the sky are such beautiful, graphic images. Add some gorgeous orange/red/purple clouds of sunset and you can't help but get a great photo. This was in Nafplio last January.

Hoary Old Olive Tree, Peleponneses, Greece

Olive trees are beautiful, gnarly things, some of which can grow large enough to hide an SUV. They also grow very, very old, some may be 2500-3000 years old. I often stop the car to try and get photos of the gnarliness, which Anne says isn't as irritating as it used to be, since I'm much quicker with my DSLR than I ever was with the Hasselblad, but I haven't been as successful as I'd like to be.

I think this is the best photo I have of one, and I'm fairly satisfies with it, but I'd like there to be enough to make a gallery. Guess we'll just have to live in the Mediterranean again someday.

Sunrise, Christmas Eve, Athens, Greece

While I was processing and uploading yesterday's pictures, Anne said I had to look at the sunrise. She was right.

Evzones, Athens, Greece

The great thing about being an early-morning runner is that you get to see the world in a way that others don't. When you're on your way to work or home from the party at 5:30 or 6, you are consumed with thoughts of the papers that need pushing or of the consumption you've just experienced. But when you're running, even with Megadeth yelling in your ears about the alien lifeforms at Hangar 18, you have a chance to look at things. And if you wear a groove in the sidewalk from running the same path repeatedly, you get a chance to pay attention.

This silhouette of the Evzones at the Tomb of the Unknowns is one such moment. An hour or two later, and the square is filled with tourists and pigeons. During peak season you can easily forget that the Evzones are even there. But at 6 am, you get to see this. The reflections from a light drizzle that had fallen earlier in the morning was a huge bonus.

There's a set of these at my facebook page.

Sarakiniko II, Milos, Greece

I'm working on a magazine submission and in revisiting the photos from Sarakiniko, I came across this one. I like the way the shapes of the main cliff and the bit that's across the little channel show the pattern of the water as it spent 10s of thousands or maybe even millions of years separating the two.

More of Sarakiniko (including a color version of this one) in the Geology album at www.facebook.com/bhneely.

Clouds Over Igoumenitsa, Greece

I've been working on this picture, off and on, for months. It has so many possibilities that needed exploring. I think I could probably find a few more variations than the ones I've already done, but I'll go with this one. For now.

Jenara, Studio, Athens, Greece

They go by their individual names - Jen & Barb. They will accept, with a strained smile, combinations such as Jenandbarb or Barbandjen. Their favorite is Jenara, though I keep trying to force Barbifer on them. Whatever we call them, my beautiful friends let me shoot their portraits yesterday. They've seen the initial cut of shots good enough for a second look, but this will be the first time they've seen one of the processed photos.

More to come.

Squashed Orange, Athens, Greece

Walking in the rain with a borrowed IR-enabled DSLR (see how much you've learned since yesterday's post), I saw this flattened orange in the gutter. It needed shootin'. I spent a couple minutes trying variations of composition and exposure before getting this one.

The Great Garbage Strike of '09, Athens, Greece

Democracy, or the appearance of it at any rate, is alive and well and messy in Greece. Unlike in the US, where we apathetically take whatever information is funneled to us from the various administrations through the various information-funneling organizations (don't even think about calling them "news" networks), Greeks demonstrate and march and protest and hold strikes. I don't think they get much more real change than we do, but it makes life extremely interesting. This past weekend, for example, I had to take a different route than I had planned for my run, because the anarchists and the police were having a potentially violent conversation in front of the Vouli (parliament) building.

Anyway, right now, there's a garbage strike on. It was supposed to be a 5-day walk out (yes, they tell you how long you'll be without services usually), but it's gone past that. So garbage is piling out into the street. As one friend says, she hopes the strike ends soon, because she can't find parking near her apartment.

My friend Brad lent me his infrared (IR) enabled DSLR to play around with, and the garbage strike seemed like a good subject for the strange focus and color effects it gives. I kinda like it. I might eventually get my damaged-sensor camera converted to IR for those times when I'm already shooting all the way up and need to go that one more bit to take me over the edge. (C'mon, you know you want to finish the quote. I'll wait.)

More at www.facebook.com/bhneely.

Red (Wine) River, Athens, Greece

I was making pasta sauce the other day, and as I poured some wine into it, I was struck by the beauty of the river of wine wending its way through the thick, bog-like pasta sauce.

Jodi II, Studio, Athens, Greece

  As promised, Dirty Harriet. Jodi warned me that she was much better at smiling than at not. And she has a great sense of humor about it. If this is a non-expression, I would be utterly terrified to see her angry.

Jodi, Studio, Athens, Greece

Jodi jumped at the chance to do a shoot with me. The day of the shoot turned out to be mildly disastrous for both of us.

I discovered that due to user stupidity, one of my flash heads was dead. I have the Hensel Integra 500 watt heads, which I like very much. They cycle fast enough for my style of shooting, I can trigger them by cord or by flash...and I'm sure I could look for an adapter to trigger them by radio. They're light, they pack away easily, and they aren't very expensive. And, for a traveling photographer, they can shoot at 110 or 220 volts. All you have to do is flip a switch, change a fuse and change a modeling lamp. For most of the past year or so, I've been moderately frustrated, because the modeling lamps have been cycling on and off, and the heads have been tripping the circuit breaker. I blamed it on the electricity, because Greek apartments are notoriously under-served...for example, we can't run two high-wattage items simultaneously - the dryer, the vacuum, the microwave, a hair dryer...pick one. It turns out, I still had my lights set for 110V. Idiot. Luckily, nothing bad happened, and hopefully all that the dead light needs is a new internal fuse. Send it back to Hensel for repair. No big deal.

But that means shooting with just one light for a while. C'est la vie, at least it didn't explode or catch fire or blow out the circuit board.

Jodi's difficult morning is her own story to tell, but frankly, I was impressed that she showed up after the morning she had. She had previously warned me that she doesn't do good non-expression photos, which is what I like to shoot. I like the intensity, the quietness, of a calm stare, a set mouth, a relaxed forehead. I think it makes you look at the eyes more. After a bunch of no-smile portraits, I realized that I had a remarkably self-aware subject, and that she did indeed have challenges with the no-smile look. So I asked her to smile, and BOOM the studio lit up.

There are more of these at www.facebook.com/bhneely, and tomorrow I'm going to put up a Dirty Harriet portrait of Jodi.

Funky Sky, Athens, Greece

I was making my oatmeal and looked out the window to see the clouds looking like this. It was bizarre. And then we got crazy wind...whistling between buildings, whipping the pine trees around. And then it rained several days in a row. But man, what a cool looking sky.

Bourtzi, Nafplio, Greece

For once, I'm soliciting opinions on this one. It's what you might call a hand-crafted HDR project. There's an arbitrary line that I drew when I bought my D200 to start shooting digitally. That line was "things I can do in the darkroom or with film choice will be called photography, all other digital trickery shall be known as digital art." At the time, digital art (in my mind, anyway) included things such as removing poles, wires, trees, etc. from an otherwise pleasing composition. It grew to include changing eye color, excessive skin blending and pimple removal. Photography would include the use of grain effects, vignetting, burning and dodging, color saturation and contrast control.

Over the course of the summer, I began creating digital art portraits by fixing skin problems, removing pimples and the like. Layers and Gaussian blur and the eraser tool and the spot healing brush became my friend. And as with all offers by the Dark One, it was so easy, so sweet...just a tweak here or a bit there. (No, I don't really believe there's a Dark One, but it's a nice metaphor.)

But then, I started to look at HDR. If you don't know, HDR involves combining a few exposures into one to create a look that matches what you saw at the scene, so that a building and the sky can have equal intensity, even if they don't on the base exposure that you shot. Most often, though, you notice it in ridiculously unreal photos. I haven't found a program that's simple for me to use (I'm on my 3rd or 4th program), so I thought I'd make this one by hand in Photoshop Elements.

I combined three exposures shot just after sunset - one to get the sky a nice, rich color, one to make the hills and the fortress well exposed and one to get just the right color in the sea. All the colors you see are as they were...enhanced with a bit of saturation, but less enhanced than if I'd used a tobacco filter with film. In the process of making layer upon layer of parts, erasing some bits, blurring lines so they aren't too sharp, but not blurring them so much that it's obvious, I stepped across my line. Everything that you see in the piece was there...and nothing was removed from the photo...but I have a sick feeling in my heart as I stand up and say, "Hello, my name is Brian N., and I have committed digital art."

Now, if you're still with me, was it worth my soul, my integrity, my moral collapse? (Yes, I do think of it in such dramatic terms.) Do you, my audience, enjoy it? You can validate me or not, complain about the technique, the skills employed. But I do want to hear what others think. I'll tell you what I think...I like it. It's rough around the edges, but for a first serious effort it's not bad. And I can see where, once I get better at the process and work more cleanly, it might be worth my soul, my integrity, my moral compass.

Umbrella, Athens, Greece

It was raining. We had umbrellas. I like the simple, graphic look of this.

Monastiraki in the Rain, Athens, Greece

We've had an insane amount of rain this year. I've heard Greeks say that we got as much as 15 years worth of rain in September and October. I don't think it was that much, but we did get enough that though it didn't rain in November, the entire country is still green. It's weird.

So here we are in mid-October in Monastiraki Square, the newly-laid marble looking fresh and beautiful.