BH Neely's Photography

Darth Vader by Gehry, Seattle, USA

As I was shooting up the back wall of the EMP, I turned and saw this giant, silver Darth Vader helmet. When the museum started, it didn't have the Science Fiction Museum component, but anyone who knows Paul Allen (or has read an article about him) knows he's a huge sci-fi fan (his company is called Vulcan), so it didn't surprise me to see this.

In my beginning efforts to make HDR that doesn't look like bad fake photography, I've had some struggles. Subtlety has been difficult to achieve, but this one worked out beautifully. You'll see the Photomatix watermark all over it, because I haven't purchased a full professional license yet. I was waiting to see if I'd like what I could do. I think I'm there.

EMP Reflection, Seattle, USA

Frank Gehry designs some incredible buildings. The EMP in Seattle is one of those. Because it's a museum dedicated to rock music, and centers on a shrine to Hendrix, Gehry began his design process by sawing up a bunch of Stratocasters with wildly different paint jobs and piling them together until he arrived at something he liked. The building has no straight walls, and every I-beam had to be custom-crafted. I love this building.

Walking around it a couple weeks ago, I saw this reflection of the Space Needle and knew I had to come back. This particularly shot is a rough draft, the base for an HDR image I'm going to make. In fact, over the course of 90 minutes, I filled a 4gb card with components for as many as 50 HDR images. The more I learn about making them, the more I love working in digital.

Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, USA

I love Frank Gehry.

It was raining the day I went to see the Disney Concert Hall, so this photo is in color. I spent about a half hour shooting and walking around the building in the rain. If it were sunny, and I didn't have other people waiting on me, it might have been two or three hours.

Orchids, Studio, Los Angeles, USA

Well, not exactly studio...Friend's Dining Room would be more accurate. I was shooting with available light and on-camera flash. Neither quite got me where I wanted to go, but I like this one. It echoes Dilophosaurus, one of the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park, the little one that flares out flaps next to his mouth and spits poison (if I remember right).

There's something very sexy about orchids. From this angle, the lower petal looks like a tongue. From other angles they look like ... well ... other human parts.

Washington Park Arboretum, Seattle, USA

My favorite place in the Arboretum is the beautiful, simple, vaguely bucolic entrance from Madison St. The stone gateway feels like a call to a quieter place, almost an alternate universe, like crossing the threshold from Spare Oom to War Drobe.

Steel Reflection, Seattle, USA

I started this post over 12 hours ago, and forgot what I was going to say about it. Now it's bedtime.

Future Cedar Trees, Seattle, USA

I was at the Washington Park Arboretum the other day, enjoying the sunshine, playing with a new (used) lens that I have since returned (it couldn't focus past about 60 feet), when I noticed that in macro, these cedar seed pods look like ... vampire bats? ... weird little alien monsters? ... In processing, I desaturated yellow and green to concentrate attention on the seed pods themselves. I didn't have a tripod, so the photo isn't as sharp as I'd like, but it's fun enough for the blog.

Untitled, Studio, Seattle, USA

Just a nice abstract bit of abstractness. If you want to guess at what it is, there are clues within the photo that might lead you to it.

Rose II, Studio, Seattle, USA

"There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter to paint than a rose, because before he can do so, he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted." - Matisse

I like the color and contrast the 105mm produces. I have a 135mm that's about the same age as the 105mm, but it's a much, much softer lens that tends to shoot a little yellowish. The corrections are slight, but worth doing. With the 105mm, though, the colors are good and only need adjusting for saturation.

I think I'm going to like working with this new lens. This weekend I'll be shooting some portraits, and will probably test it out as a mild telephoto for that application. Should be fun.

Rose, Studio, Seattle, USA

I went looking for a new Nikon 60mm Micro lens. They were out, but for $400 less, I could get a 105mm f/4 Micro lens. This is from my first shoot with it. It'll take a little work to get good with it, but I'm satisfied with the start.

Central Market, Athens, Greece

Amongst the many things I'm going to miss in Athens is the Central Market or Kentriki Agora (or Κεντρική Αγορά). It's the place to go for all your meat needs, whether you're hungry for beef, pork, lamb, chicken, rabbit, salmon, smelt, anchovy, skate, squid, octopus, sturgeon, swordfish...oh yeah, you can find it all there. Across Athinas Street from the Kentriki Agora is a group of shops and vegetable stands, and one of the shops has a staggering collection of cured meats as well as Slavic foods - bacon, ham, sausages, basturma, buckwheat, pelmeni...man, what a place.

Graffiti, Athens, Greece

There are a pair of schools near the apartment where we lived in Athens. (Makes me sad to say that in the past tense.) They were covered in graffiti. The way the sun and the shadow from the building across the street played across this wall of one of the schools helped make the graffiti look more interesting. I also like the roughness of the paint job from previous efforts to cover up older graffiti. It's a common practice in Greece, but they almost always use a paint-covering primer, and then fail to go back with a matching color to the rest of the wall, so you get these huge gray patches that don't look any better than the tagging.

Leda II, Studio, Athens, Greece

  This shot of Leda is obviously very similar to yesterday's, but it represents an extra couple days of working with the results of the shoot, and some experiments with colors and other treatments. My goal is to mimic the effect of a very subtle use of post development treatments such as selenium on a black & white print. I think I arrived where I wanted to.

I hope your 2010 is as beautiful as Leda. Happy New Year.