Photography and lighting teaches you a lot about form and shape

 "Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography." ~George Eastman Kodak

"And if I were asked to choose one word which holds the key to my work I would select ‘light’ – for light is my language, and it is international, readily understood by any person of any race." ~Yousuf Karsh

I apologize in advance but this post is going to stray from photography just a little bit. George Eastman was wrong, not only will you know the key to photography but you will know the key to representational art. Yousuf Karsh an amazing portrait photographer understood this too and took to using stage lighting equipment to artificially light his subjects.

A few years back I picked up a better graphics tablet, an Intuos 4, my old Wacom Saphire was very old and I rarely used it at all except for the odd photo-retouching when I had tricky masking to do. I never used the graphics tablet to draw. I picked up the Intuos mainly because it had the buttons on it and I need to hit "undo" A LOT :)

Soon after getting the tablet I decided to try drawing with it because at this level of tablet not only did it have pressure sensitivity but also tilt and rotation. I grabbed one of the photos I had taken to use as reference and before I knew it I had a half decent sketch from it. This really surprised me because the last time I'd attempted a portrait or really any "traditional" drawing was in high school and the results were not very good.

Not exceptional but way better than I honestly expected, I actually kept looking at it thinking "where did that come from?". After thinking about it I realized that from years of doing photography, learning lighting, doing retouching, I'd come to understand form and light much better.

Since then I've been getting into drawing and painting, it's fun in the way photography used to be "more" fun when everything was new and there was so much to learn. Don't get me wrong, I still love photography and I am still learning everyday with that, but I reached a professional level with photography, with drawing and painting it's pure hobby at this point and I'm not doing it for money. As I've been getting more into it I've moved away from the Intuos line and up to the Cintiq (which I mentally justified as also being for my photography too :), I may do a post all about those later, they may be pricey but they are so worth it!

Ok back on topic, another aspect in common between photography and drawing/painting is composition. I like to think I have a good eye when it comes to photography and some of that makes it through to drawing, but not always. I'm finding myself doing a drawing and then in the end cropping it, cropping away parts that took a decent amount of time to make! It is reminding me of when I first started doing photography, I'd wind up cropping a lot in the edit suite, I made a point to get better at that and do as much "in camera" as possible so as not to waste image resolution. Same principles here except instead of wasting resolution (which you are if it's raster digital artwork) you are wasting time instead. If you're working with traditional media like a canvas I doubt artists start out doing a 3x4 foot canvas only to crop it down later to a 2x3 :)

One program I've been using a lot recently is called Mischief (www.madewithmischief.com), it's not super complicated like say Corel Painter, which is also a great program but you can spend hours or days in the menus tweaking brushes. No Mischief is almost beautifully simple and lets you focus more on the drawing. It's also an anomaly, it is some crazy hybrid between raster and vector so it has an infinite canvas. You could for example draw a portrait, zoom into the white reflection on the eyeball and then draw a whole new scene. I'm not affiliated with the makers at all, just a happy customer.

Here's some other work I've done, Mischief allows you to playback brushstrokes so I've done some timelapse videos as well.

I'll leave off by saying this, if you're a photographer and you haven't ever drawn or painted, you might want to try it or try it again if it's been years because who knows what your brain has absorbed during all those hours behind the lens :)

TLR Tree Timelapse Painting with Mischief from James Hildebrandt on Vimeo.

Drawing Clare with Mischief from James Hildebrandt on Vimeo.

  Portrait Drawing with Mischief from James Hildebrandt on Vimeo.

Surreal Infrared

Near Petrofka bridge on the way to Blaine Lake Saskatchewan

A little while back I snuck away for the day, grabbed my newly IR converted 10D, and hit the road with a friend to shoot some of cool views my Saskatchewan backyard has to offer. In my last post I talked mainly about the neat little pinhole camera I also took along but since I hadn't finished editing my IR shots I split it up into two posts. This is the second one.

For those who live elsewhere and aren't familiar with Saskatchewan, it's in a word ... huge. You could fit the entire UK within the province of Saskatchewan... twice over... and then some. Needless to say I've lived here all of my 30+ years and still have lots of different places I want to check out. One of those places I was able to check off my list during this trip, that was Saskatchewan's biggest tree (allegedly) but we'll get to that in a bit.

First and primary stop was the crooked trees, a very popular off-the-beaten-path attraction.

The Crooked Trees aka The Crooked Bush aka The Crooked Trees of Alticane

I encourage everyone that lives in or is travelling through Saskatchewan to try and visit these at some point. With how surreal they look under normal conditions I knew that as soon as I had a chance I was going to get some infrared photos of them. The results look like a fairytale.

If you stare long enough the tree on the right looks like a person

 

My good friend and flip-flop destroyer (thanks for driving Jackie!)

Just before we got to the crooked trees we had to stop in Hafford SK which is on the way. My friend's flipflop had broken so we were hoping to find a suitable replacement for her at the general store. The store had a "back in 10 minutes" sign up so we stopped by The Sword And Chalice restaurant next door, a very unique little restaurant with a reputation for good food of epic proportions. I suggest making a day trip of it and stopping by for lunch. Unfortunately while Hafford may have aweome Ukrainian street signs and a restaurant that serves a 16lb burger they do not sell flipflops. The search continued.

Crooked Trees directions (from Saskatoon): Head out highway 16, go past Langham and Borden, at Radisson turn north onto highway 340. Follow 340 until you reach Hafford, you'll know it by the street signs that are in both English and Ukrainian. Exit Hafford westbound on highway 40, at "Flint Road" turn right, there should also be a sign saying "Crooked Bush". Drive 16.5km north (seriously make note of your odometer) then turn right and go 2.5km east (there is a very tiny white sign at this turn). 

Initially our trip was only supposed to be the crooked trees but my friend hadn't seen the half buried trucks or Saskatchewan's biggest tree so we decided to keep exploring. Heading back on highway 40 we drove through Hafford and kept going to Blaine Lake, a town which I might add sells some very sturdy and reasonably priced flip-flops. With the footware situation fixed we exited Blaine Lake heading south on highway 12. Look for a sign on your left that says "Doukhobor Caves" and turn there onto Tree Road. You still have to drive for a bit but there are signs that will guide you, eventually you'll come upon this:

Saskatchewan's Biggest Tree Near Blaine Lake SK

I really kicked myself after for not getting one shot with someone or something in the frame to give a sense of scale. The circumference of the tree is ~5m (just over 16ft for you Americans) and it is apparently a cottonwood/balsam poplar hybrid. Earlier I referred to it as Saskatchewan's biggest tree with allegedly in brackets, that's because we have a boatload of trees and some pretty remote areas. Until someone contests the title though this is Saskatchewan's largest tree. 

In all honesty we actually drove right past Tree Road and wound up stopping at the Petrofka Bridge Orchard to ask directions. We came out with directions, picked carrots, jams etc. I highly recommend stopping in, whether its for directions or not. We also ran into some people that we'd ran into earlier at the crooked trees, for such a huge province its amazing how small it can get some days.

Back on highway 12 heading south, just after you cross the North Saskatchewan River you'll find the Blacktop Diner/Olive Tree Restaurant which is home to the half buried trucks. There should be a more grandiose name for them but there isn't. 

 Blacktop Diner by day, authentic Greek restaurant Olive Tree by night

I'd shot these trucks in the past but thought they might look pretty cool in infrared.

They also had a cool non-buried truck on their property. 

This trip proved to be one of my only summer getaways this vacation but it was definitely one of the highlights of my summer. If you're in the area be sure to check some of them out.

If you'd like to see all the shots from this trip and more of my Saskatchewan Scenes you can view them here.