Nature photography, art, environment
I came across this site recently through a reference in a magazine, and found it fascinating. This site features video interviews with many well-known photographers. I am watching the engaging interviews with Eddie Adams and Graham Nash right now, and looking forward to seeing all the others.
Prepare to lose some time here.
My wife shared this story with me, and I just felt the need to pass it on as it is simply fascinating to contemplate where this will head. Granting rights to a non-human species just opens up so many things to think about. This will be very interesting in how it develops in Spain, and how it may apply to other species.
Here is the link.
Along with some more info here.
About two years ago now, my wife gave me an acoustic guitar for an anniversary present, which started me into a whole new art form that I had very little knowledge about. I played around a little with music and a keyboard while in college, but never really put any dedication into it. A friend of mine and I thought it was the coolest thing to replicate a passage of a Depeche Mode song. Since shortly after getting the guitar, I have been taking lessons regularly and probably not practicing as much as I should. All along the way I constantly remind myself just how darn difficult this is, yet I enjoy it very much. My fingers are constantly stumbling over each other, trying to remember this cord shape and trying to come close to a smooth transition to another cord shape. Then above all, trying to learn to develop some sense of rhythm. To date, I am still pretty much focused on just trying to replicate (in a very poor rendition typically) something another musician has already done. Much of it I am sure sounds pretty mechanical at times.
I think learning about photography takes a lot less physical coordination than learning guitar, but I often think about the similar development PROCESS in learning them both. For example; consider these possible phases;
These are just a few to reflect upon. I have noticed many similarities between trying to learn a musical instrument and phases I have been through with photography.Â. Â. Â. My fingers just never ached this much while pressing the shutter.
As I have written about before, from time to time I go skimming through my old folders of images. Sometimes a few get put aside during the editing process and time gets away from me. Here are a couple I really liked, I’ll probably turn the frosty one into a nice large print. These aren’t too old, from my fall color trip to the Smokies last year. Given the humid, hot weather around Michigan lately, I found the frost image quite refreshing!
Quite nice in Dryden!
There are quite a few wildflowers around Michigan that I would consider ‘rare finds,’ such as these showy lady slipper orchids that I shot this weekend.Â. Â. In fact, it is even rarer that you would happen to stumble upon these by yourself just ‘walking in the woods.’Â. Â. A friend happened to take me to one location that had quite a few of these around, but it was somewhere not many would venture into to look for “flower pictures.”Â. Â. They perhaps can be found more commonly in Northern Michigan, but around here in Southeast Michigan, wild orchids are just not in every woodlot.
So once you are in this ‘hard to get to’ spot, you want to make the most of it.Â. After shooting some documentary type portraits of these beautiful flowers, I was looking for something different. Â. We were fortunate enough to discover some unique situations of backlighting, doubled up orchids and some other unique settings – so it paid off not allocate all of your time on the first bloom you saw.Â. Â. Â. I still find these flowers hard to do a lot of unique compositions with, they either just don’t lend themselves to a lot of creative portrayals, or my creative juices just weren’t flowing enough.Â. Â. I do happen to like unopened buds of flowers though, I think sometimes they can be as nice as the flower in full bloom from a graphical standpoint.Â. Â. So here is a Showy in ‘partial bloom’ – but I liked the way the leaves and the bud formed a graphical arrangement.
What a strange spring, everything this year seems to be about 2 weeks early.Â. Went to shoot Lupines this weekend that were in full bloom at the same time last year, and all were past.
I have expressed my love/hate relationship with technology a few times in this blog and in some of my articles. A few recent events just emphasize this relationship in my mind. Unfortunately, once you jump into processing your images on a computer, you can’t completely turn a blind eye to all the jargon and gadgets you need to get used to. This week I have a RMA to send a hard drive back, and a new lens to begin putting through the paces.
The Hate Part..As for the drive, I noticed my hard drive where I keep all of my programs and basic data files was getting a bit low on free space. Ok, so a bit of browsing on Newegg.com turned up a 300 GB hard drive for a reasonable price that seemed to be compatible with my system. The new drive arrives – strangely wrapped in bubble wrap and an anti-stat bag – and that’s it! No box, no instructions – a pretty bare bones package. From an environmental standpoint, I suppose it was good there wasn’t all that extra packaging anyway. I think they should have at least put a sticker on it stating “for those who better know what they are doing..” Well, to wrap up this drive saga, I downloaded some ‘transfer software’ from the manufacturer that allows you to setup partitions and transfer the data from your old drive to your new one, supposedly making it ‘bootable.’ After about 4 tries of trying to get through the transfer, multiple reboots, and having it crash about 90% the way through – I had had it. The drive will be returned, and I am tempted to just wrap it in some newspaper and duct tape for its ride back.
The love part..one thing you can be certain of – just when you think you have enough lenses, there is always seems to be a new one you thought you could do without. Well, I caved into picking up one of the new Nikon 105mm f2.8 VR AFS macro lenses, which will probably replace my 105 f2.8 AF macro lens. Although the VR (vibration reduction) feature will not likely help me much for macro work, the lens has some other nice features that I thought I could use. For one, it works with teleconverters – so I will be able to increase magnification further by using my 1.4 and 1.7 teleconverters with ease, something I could not do with the older lens. It also has some other nice perks of having a redesigned aperture for better ‘bokeh’ (out of focus element quality), and one of the first Nikon lenses I have seen with a dust seal gasket. It also does not extend in length while focusing, something that bugged me occasionally with the older 105. I am looking forward to seeing what this new lens is capable of.
I still have to decide what to do with my drive space situation. But instead, I think I will ignore it for awhile and spend the time with the new lens.
