Wednesday, October 26, 2016

No, YOU'RE the puppet!!!

It's about the right time of year to re-visit some images from Vent Haven, the world's only museum dedicated to ventriloquial figures in Ft. Mitchell, KY. 
For some these are the things of nightmares and there certainly is an unsettling spark of life that can be glimpsed in the eyes of these remarkable creations. They are also things of incredible beauty. 

(please click on images for and enlarged gallery view)









Monday, October 17, 2016

More Miscellaneous Maritimes

I'll be heading back to Nova Scotia next month so i thought i should finish digging through this past summer's files and get the last of the miscellaneous images out there. Some are outtakes from previous themed posts, others are images that just didn't fit into the topics of those posts. Anyway, i'm sure i will still find few more strays down the line, but at least now i won't feel bad moving on to the next batch i am likely to shoot come November.

(please click on images for an enlarged gallery view)

Nova Scotia; Dogwood

Nova Scotia; Nut; Stump

Nova Scotia; Flower; Lupine

Nova Scotia; Flower

Nova Scotia; Flower; Lupine

Nova Scotia; The Ovens; Grass

Nova Scotia; Flower; Lupine

Nova Scotia; The Ovens

Nova Scotia; The Ovens

Nova Scotia; The Ovens

Nova Scotia; Sunrise; Inlet; Dawn; Martimes

Nova Scotia; Gaff Point; Trees

Nova Scotia; Inlet; Maritimes

Nova Scotia; reflection; Dawn; Sunrise; Window

Nova Scotia; Canoe

Nova Scotia; Corkum Island; Seafood; Mussels

Nova Scotia; Corkum Island; Seafood; Mussels

Nova Scotia; LaHave River; LaHave Bakery; Cage; Bird Cage; Bird; Barber Chair

Nova Scotia; Corkum Island; Seafood; Mussels

Nova Scotia; Yard; garden, Inlet

Nova Scotia; Gaff Point; Crab; Shell

Nova Scotia

All Photos ©David Sorcher 2016
All Rights Reserved




Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Chick Likes Black & White

I have always loved black & white photography, but often i resist converting my digital color files on principle alone. Take this shoot of Jazz legend Chick Corea. I shoot a lot of live music under all different kinds of circumstances. Sometimes the light show is as much a feature of a concert as the artist. I like to be able to present that in all of its colorful glory. However, this show, in the relative small theater (350 seats) of the Gallagher Student Center was not one of the better lit shows i have shot. Let me clarify that this is purely a photographer's problem. If you had attended this show for the musical experience alone i am sure you would not have walked out of the theater saying, "Yeah, the music was great, but that lighting sure sucked!" The lights in a show like this would have been the furthest thing from your mind. But from my perspective, with my ISO cranked up to 4000, it creates problems for digital noise and color rendition that is of absolutely no concern to the general music fan. I like to think that my abilities would allow me to overcome such problems and for the most part they do, but the quality of the stage lights made my job difficult and no matter how i tweaked my RAW files ugly color tints persisted and skin tones looked odd. I had converted a couple to B&W just for an "artsy" alternative and those images took on a completely different character. The nasty yellow skin tones were gone, the digital "grain" was smoother and somehow the rich, chocolaty, dark brown tonality i chose in my conversion seemed to resonate really well with the somewhat retro subject matter of this classic acoustic Jazz trio. So one by one i kept converting them until eventually i decided that the entire group should really just be represented in black & white. I'm not going to show you the color versions here for comparison. If you check out my social media pages you might find them. But this is my final vision for this show so you'll can just take my word for it, Chick likes black & white.

(please click on images for an enlarged gallery view)

Chick Corea Trio

Chick Corea Trio; Chick Corea; Eddie Gomez; Brian Blade

Chick Corea Trio

Chick Corea Trio; Brian Blade

Chick Corea Trio; Eddie Gomez

Chick Corea Trio; Eddie Gomez; Brian Blade

Chick Corea Trio

Chick Corea Trio; Chick Corea; Eddie Gomez; Brian Blade

All Photos ©David Sorcher 2016
All Rights Reserved