Archive for January, 2010
Sunday, January 31st, 2010
As much as I hate to admit it, yesterday was the first day I have been out photographing this year. Website redesign, processing older images, and filling orders has simply kept me indoors quite a bit. Still, I could not let January pass with not having been out at all.
Standing on "thin ice"?
I went out to one of my favorite spots on Lake St. Clair to see how the ice was forming up. We had an unusual patch of warm weather here, then some bitter cold. Some of the lake ice melted, sheets flowed, and froze over the top again creating some interesting layers. I updated my Facebook photos with some snapshots from my iPhone.
Unfortunately yesterday the light was pretty drab. Twilight was completely grey. The sun only poke through the cloud cover briefly. It did give me some time to scout around a little though. The ice close to shore was about 1.0 – 1.5 inches thick or so. It certainly seemed like plenty enough to support my weight. There were some fish swimming underneath. Although slippery as a wet walrus butt, I didn’t feel too threatened of going through. Worst case I would have sank only calf deep and froze in place there for someone to walk by and notice some tall statue with a tripod.
I did find a really cool ice sheet that had what appeared like frozen waves on top of it. It was a square sheet, and no other sheets around had the same frozen waves. I figured it must have been floating during the warm week we had, and froze again in this spot. This is just the kind of thing I look for in my compositions. With the light sort of ho-hum, it was worth trying another day. (more…)
Tags: cool and warm, frozen lake, icescape, Lake St. Clair, landscape photography, landscape photos, Michigan, winter, winter landscape pictures
Posted in Great Lakes, Michigan, composition, landscape, nature photography | 22 Comments »
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Apple iPad
Unless you have been comfortably tucked away yesterday reading one of those old fashioned, bound paper things or simply refused to listen to any one of 10,000 different media sources – you probably know that Apple unveiled their latest gizmo today called the iPad. The hype has been building for months and the rumors can finally be squashed.
For photographers, no doubt there will be interest in portfolio displays, book publishing, and access to more tools to share our work. As consumers, some will embrace, some will drool, and of course pundits will take their shots. What I find most amazing is the transformation digital media and tools are shaping the way we communicate and interact with the world around us. Apple presented this as the “gap filler” to fill what is between a device like the iPhone and a full blown computer. Our lives are pelleted with so many data streams, from so many different sources, do we need every little gap filled with yet another device?
The iPad looks like it can do a lot of very cool things – games and movies stand out to me, as well as possible new methods for distributing photographs, and possibly eliminating the piles of magazines I rarely have time to read anyway. I am certainly running out of space for them. I do wonder however, when does it become enough?
I love technology and gadgets, but lately I am finding myself just wanting to sit by a tree in my woods and listen to the birds sing, even if I may need my iPhone to identify them occasionally. 
How do you think this new gadget will fit in with photographers?
Tags: Apple, iPad
Posted in Equipment notes, publication, technostress | 19 Comments »
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
Bear and river
Hard to believe months have already gone by and I am still digging out favorites from my trip to Katmai National Park in Alaska. Bears are such amazing animals, I still feel quite privileged to have had the experiences with them. Each time I move through my editing process, I encounter a gem or two, and this is one I particularly liked.
I liked the graphical interplay between the bear and river in this image. The curvature of the river in combination with the bear’s stride give a bit of a dynamic feel I think. You can see some remnants of salmon heads in the rocks, and I always dig a little rim light. These bears would quite frequently hunt along the sides of the river watching for salmon activity. Did I mention Bears rock?!
I learned about a new film in the works by PBS’s NATURE program while searching for some info about a show that was just on.
The film is intended to be a portrait of three bear species; brown bears, black bears, and polar bears – all filmed in Alaska, featuring bear biologist Chris Morgan. He will be exploring Alaska mostly by motorcycle supposedly, with the film due out in 2011. There is a pretty cool blog with videos following his journey that you can check out here: The Bear Blog with Chris Morgan . It looks like it could be pretty good from what I have read and watched so far. I don’t know much more than that, but will start following it more closely. Check it out if interested.
This bear photo was captured near a river feeding Kinak Bay in Katmai National Park, Alaska, using a Nikon D700 and 200-400 f4 VR lens at ISO 1250. It was post-processed in Adobe Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS3 on a Mac. More bear pictures from my trip can be found in my gallery here.
Tags: Alaska, bear pictures, Chris Morgan, coastal brown bears, Grizzly bear photos, Katmai National Park, PBS, river, salmon stream
Posted in nature photography | 20 Comments »
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
Five Mile Point
Every time I work up an image for a client, I find I am going back into its depths and re-evaluating the processing I have already done on it. Depending on how long it has been since I prepared a particular image for print (or perhaps not even at all), I may have found a new tool or way of doing things that would make a particular shot better than before. More often than not I think the changes are quite subtle, but I still view it as “better.”
On many of my earlier landscapes, I never knew about luminosity masking. Most of the time it improves on what was done before with basic curves or levels adjustments. Over the past year I found the plugins Topaz Detail and Topaz Adjust that sometimes take the image in directions I had never considered. Each new skill or tool that I adopt has the potential of evolving an earlier image to something different at minimum, or an entirely new look at the other extreme. Sometimes it is simply my own internal vision has moved along a different path. There always seems to be data within a file we may have never known was there.
So I suppose all of the images in my archive could be considered in a state of flux. It is only a matter of time when the next image comes due for its next evolutionary stage.
This landscape photograph was captured using a Nikon D2X and Nikon 12-24 f4 lens at ISO 200 at Five Mile Point, a coastal sandstone area on the southern shores of Lake Superior. I just recently reprocessed it for a 36×48 inch print intended for a client using luminosity masks and Topaz Detail. The plugin particularly helped bring out more of the texture of the sandstone. (Hard to tell in a small JPEG, but quite obvious when viewing a 36×48 print size at 50%)
Tags: Five Mile Point, Lake Superior, landscape photography, luminosity masking, Michigan, nature photography, nature pictures, shoreline
Posted in art, artistry, landscape, nature photography, processing | 19 Comments »
Saturday, January 16th, 2010
Burning questions
One key aspect of my approach to my nature subjects usually originates from a question, or series of them. While one may wish to be all knowing, it is quite hard to accomplish in actual practice. Shocking I know.
This particularly applies to the interesting patterns I may find in the woods that I enjoy making abstract photographs from. Sometimes after I photograph something, the answers come later on, leading to a bit of education. More often (much more than I like to admit!), the photograph remains as a reminder of those questions.
In the case with this photograph, I came across a burnt pile of wood in the middle of the woods near my home. Aside from wondering how the wood was burned to begin with (kids? lightning? meteor? magic staff blast?), I was quite curious about the pattern formed. It was hardly uniform, and I really didn’t know what type of wood it was. For sure it has something to do with the thermal decomposition of the cellulose in the wood. So questions about this pattern lead me down the path of learning about cellular structures in wood and the interaction with temperature.
I don’t always get the specific answers I am looking for. The pursuit and appreciation of the unknown are part of the journey. I suppose once I no longer have any questions left, I can stop photographing.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. – Albert Einstein
This macro photograph was made in the woods along the Clinton River, Sterling Heights, Michigan. The photograph was captured by a Nikon D700, 14 bit RAW file, Nikon 200mm f4 macro lens, and post processed using luminosity masks in Photoshop CS3, and the plugin Topaz Adjust on a Mac Pro.
Tags: abstract photography, art, curiosity, macro, wood
Posted in Michigan, inspiration, macro, my woods, nature, nature photography | 17 Comments »
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
As we enter a new decade, I am sure it will bring just as many revolutionary changes in the technology of photography, as well as in my own development as a photographer as the previous one. Photography has so many facets now beyond the photographer, camera, and lens. As a trip down nostalgia lane, I thought it would be interesting for a quick look back on the top 10 things that affected me, and probably many other photographers, in the last decade. Some things have changed, some surprisingly not so much. In fact, when I pull up some of these images taken nearly 10 years ago, it is hard to believe it was that long ago now.
10. Cameras
Tri-colored Heron c.2000
Back in 2000, I was photographing mostly with a Nikon F5 35 mm film camera, considered top of the line at the time, and probably one of the all time classic 35mm film bodies now. It fetched a pretty penny back then, I can remember saving and saving for it. A recent check on Ebay has them selling from anywhere from $59 – $200.
Of course now with DSLRS – their value seems to plummet after 2-3 years when the next generation comes along. I am hoping the F5 will someday be a classic collectors item since I never sold mine. Throwing out images doesn’t cost me anything now, but keeping more of them does in hard drives, backups, etc, etc.
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Tags: DSLR, High ISO, nostalgia
Posted in art, artistry, inspiration, landscape, nature photography, processing, switch to mac, underwater photography, wildlife, wonder | 23 Comments »
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
Wandering the Geographic
I have read a lot of articles and writeups about folks who advocate shooting only RAW file formats and those who shoot JPEGs only. For the most part, I say – to each his own. It doesn’t really matter to me what others shoot with. There is one aspect however, beyond the number crunching, beyond the print comparisons, that is often overlooked – the future. I think that beginners and experienced alike need to be conscious of what the implications of their file format choice not only means to them today, but also 10, 15, 20 years down the road. I believe the current albatrosses that hang around RAW capture’s neck are the limitations on the technology of output devices – print publications, monitors, and most printers can barely touch reproducing all of the possible data that a RAW file captures.
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Tags: brown bear photos, coastal brown bears, raw capture
Posted in Equipment notes, nature photography, processing, publication, technique | 34 Comments »
Saturday, January 2nd, 2010
Just as I did for 2007 and 2008, I suppose it is only fitting for me to take on looking back at the year of images I made in 2009. Most of them can be considered as favorites, but mostly they represent some significant direction I took with my photography or hold some special significance. Sometimes it is quite hard narrowing the list down to a manageable number or picking between two images of a particular trip or outing. Looking back on these images helps me solidify where I may want to go with future projects, and also it may give you (and me! ) some insight on where I am headed with my photography.
Lightroom categories
With my images now scattered across multiple hard drives, it is quite convenient to have them all available in a central catalog in Lightroom. I am pretty certain that database management of images will become more commonplace (if not already) as people outgrow their storage volumes and have images scattered across all of these digital shoeboxes. It is much easier to group similar images and to look for patterns for special projects or arrangements. The process of selecting them was next, so I created a special collection for 2009 just as I did for 2007 and 2008.
My unprocessed images are RAW files stored by date, so they are quite easy to find everything for 2009. However, once I process and file them, they become organized by subject independent of dates. So I needed to use a metadata filter for 2009 to pick up all of the unprocessed and processed images that were made in that year. I then sorted that by images that were already flagged as “picks” to narrow the hunt down further and dragged candidates into the collection set for 2009. Then I weeded through those until I had 10 remaining.
Over time as I accumulate these lists, I suppose it will be interesting in how they compare. I am hard pressed to see any major shifts in what I like over the past 3 years. If I would have assembled a list say 15 years ago and compared, I am sure there would be a lot of differences. Over a greater period of time, picking “favorite top 10s” is kind of like asking someone their top 10 favorite songs when they are 16 years old, and then when they are 40. Chances are those lists are nothing alike. So enough of this process gibberish – let me move on to sharing my favorites of 2009. They are presented in the order in which they were exposed during the year.
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Tags: Alaska, best of 2009, brown bear photos, gray wolf pictures, Katmai National Park, leaf pictures, macro, yearly favorites
Posted in Lightroom, Michigan, abstracts, composition, creativity, favorite moments, inspiration, landscape, my woods, nature photography, organization | 40 Comments »
