Category: Technique

The Eyes Have It

I cannot believe that I have not yet blogged about the thing that first got me into photography… the detail you can see in the eyes of animals.

Way back when, armed with our first digital 30D camera, I became obsessed with the quality of the camera and the amount of detail it would render. The one image that firmly lead me on the road to this obsession was this image (above) taken by my husband, Alistair Knock  during a husky sledding holiday in Sweden.  I loved the clarity of his reflection in the pupil of the husky. It showed the relationship we had built up with the animal and how close it allowed us to get to him. This got me thinking – what relationships could I build up with other animals and how could I reflect this in photography? This spawned many years of work where I strove hard to spend time with my subjects, allowing them to be curious of me and for us to get close to each other.

Below I showcase a few of my successful images. Hopefully more are yet to come.

The World As Seen Through The Eyes Of A Springbok

 

Mr Chips is a captive Brown Wood Asian Owl who captured my heart during a falconry session
Mr Chips is a captive Brown Wood Asian Owl who captured my heart during a falconry session

 

 

My reflection in a husky's eye
My reflection in a husky’s eye

 

A close up of my reflection in a horse's eye
A close up of my reflection in a horse’s eye

Further experiments in infrared…

York Cityscene in infrared

I’ve been out and about again, experimenting with infrared photography. This was before the snow arrived in England, and I was keen to see what kind of shots I could get without the incredibly reflective shiny surface of the freshly fallen snow I’d become accustomed too in Lapland.

I quite literally ‘painted the town red’ when I headed off into York city centre with my infrared lens in search of inspiration last weekend.

The results aren’t astounding, because I am still becoming accustomed to the compact and it’s features, but I was inspired by the skies I managed to capture and I will keep trying… as they say, onwards and upwards. Mid in infrared

Infrared Clifford Tower, York

A Return To Form

A pheasant running

At 2012’s Wild Photos conference  there was a lot of discussion about ‘returning to form’. At least three of the speakers (professional photographers like Charlie Hamilton James,  Britta Jaschinski and Klaus Nigge) exhibited photography portfolios where they had foregone the sharpness of digital in the urge to produce textured (grainy) shots representative of bygone eras. Britta, herself shoots only with black and white film cameras, Klauss favors the slow approach to photography – spending time with the subject an using slow shutter speeds and high very high ISO to capture the subject in an unconventional way, and Charlie has recently returned to Africa using a high ISO and infrared photography to capture shots that would not look out of place in years gone by.

It struck me that the kind of photos they were displaying are the kind that I would normally toss into the trash because they are not sharp or perfect enough. That was, until last year, when I started to try and capture movement in photography and I have had to look at things differently. In previous blog posts (like ‘Less perfect, more reality‘ and’ movement‘)  I have explored the notion that maybe pin sharp images are not always required, but that this requires a deliberate and somewhat bold shift in mindset and approach to photography.

This has urged me to do 3 things :

  1. share some of my movement shots with you of a pheasant (top), a kingfisher diving, geese flying, gannets flying and a captive tiger (bottom).
  2. explore my archive of discarded images to see what else I can find and resurrect in support of this differing photography style. Watch this space…
  3. Try infrared photography… my first attempt at this was in Lapland courtesy of Santa (AKA my Hubby’s Christmas present to me). But I anticipate the real test being Kruger in March. Again, watch this space whilst I start to review the images.

In the meantime, further photographs in a similar style are available in the TarajiBlue movement gallery.
A Kingfisher dives to catch a fish

Geese fly monochrome fly through the air

 

blurred shots of gannets flying over the ocean

Tiger in captivity in a good (?!) UK zoo. I am so unsure how I feel about this.

 

Blurring The Lines Between Art & Photography

Sunset in the Arctic, Abstract

At the 2012 Wild Photos conference many of the speakers and photographers inspired me by blurring the lines between art and photography. There was strong evidence of a desire to use photography in an artistic way, to provide a different  perspective on the beauty of the natural world and raise awareness of conservation requirements and efforts.  No where was this more apparent than in the work of Patricio Roubles Gil and his body painting. 

This inspired me to reconsider and re-share some of the more artistic images that Taraji Blue has taken over the past 10 years. For me, our photographs of the Arctic sunset are those which blur the lines between art and photography the most. No work has been done on these photos in post processing – these images are straight out of the camera and they convey the real beauty of the incredible Arctic light. I feel they are Rothko-esque in the their nature.
The Arctic sunset reflected in the ocean

The light and beauty of the Arctic inspired me so much that I started painting interpretations of these images.  Now, I am by no means a decent painter, but I thought I’d share a few of the paintings I have attempted (below) based on these images and the incredible light of the Arctic. I won’t give up the day job based on these paintings, that’s for sure, but it keeps me out of mischief.

An interpretative painting of the Arctic Sunset by Marie Knock of TarajiBlue
Interpretative paintings of the Arctic Sunset by Marie Knock of TarajiBlue
A second interpretative painting of the Arctic Sunset by Marie Knock of TarajiBlue
Arctic Sunset III A painting by Tarajiblue

An Odd Fascination

Ever since my husband bought me my first macro lens I have had a strange and curious fascination with photographing flies. I think they are a subject often overlooked, but one that can be so fascinating.

They are so commonplace that they are easy subject to spend time with – the trick is to get them in the right setting to give them a beauty that people otherwise don’t see. I love the iridescence of their wings, their holographic eyes and the fine hairs on their face.

This first shot, below, is by far my favourite and it was the one that sparked my fascination with this subject. I found a dead fly on our window one hot summer day and, opposed to discard it, I thought it’d be a great opportunity to get to grips with my new macro lens on an inanimate object. I took the opportunity to grab a blue glass brick and some petals falling from my nearby vase and set about creating a set where I could test different lights, angles and settings for the fly. I had to carefully use a pair of tweezers to move the fly, and I used a combination of LED torchlight and natural daylight to front and back light the shot.  This is how I captured the shot below.

A housefly on a petal

Over time, and as I have become more confident with my macro lens and newly acquired macro extension tubes, I have moved onto photographing flies in their natural habitat. But I still take care to ensure that I capture them on a variety of backgrounds to display them in different styles and highlight different elements of their beauty.

This photo below was taken in our local museum gardens. I saw the fly purposefully striding across the leaf and realized how ridiculous this looked for an insect so mobile and able to fly. I took the opportunity to capture the moment on film. I love how determined his stride is… as if he has made a conscious decision to abandon flying for a nice Sunday afternoon stroll in the park.

A fly walks across a leaf

As this particular fly was being so accommodating I took the opportunity to capture an image of him from an alternate angle – from above. I love the detail this new angle gave me…you can see how large the fly is, and see the finer detail in his eyes, on his back and on his beautiful wings.  You certainly don’t see this level of detail when swatting them away from your beer on a warm summer’s afternoon in the garden!

A close up of a fly from above

Another angle on a similar fly provided the opportunity to capture the colours of the insect captured against the texture of the leaf whilst it fed…

A fly on a leaf - close up

The next image (below) was taken more recently in the grounds of The University of York. The sharpness of the fly’s wings against the soft dandelion really caught my eye so I swooped in with my Canon EF100mm lens to capture this image. I like the softness of the background against the ugly beauty of the fly. I would hesitate to say that he is a stunner… but there is something about him that I find strangely attractive. Do I need help?!

A close up of a fly on a dandelion

More macro photography is available in the TarajiBlue photo gallery.