It's been a busy few weeks. I've been averaging two to three shoots a week and then the editing on top of that. I don't think I really understood the time that editing can add to the shoot. I also get why it's so good to do as much editing in camera as you can. I think I may need to reduce the number of photos in my final cut to twenty or so to make it more manageable.
Digital Camera World has interviewed some of the best and most famous photographers in its time. Martin Parr, Rankin, David Doubilet, Jill Furmanovsky, Bryan Adams (yes, that Bryan Adams)… it’s an impressive roster of talented lensmen and lenswomen.
The Saturday before Halloween I took my 8 year old daughter out on full "goth fairy" costume for a photo shoot. Here's the best of what I captured.
Yesterday was our big family apple picking and cider pressing. While everyone else was busy picking apples and pouring cider I was roaming around with my camera. I ended up with a lot of great images. These are a few of my favorites.
Had a great time on Friday photographing Kenya up at the capitol. She is a beautiful, fun, and very patient model. Here are some of my favorite images from the shoot.
Posing Guide: Sample poses for photographing Women Part 1
Posing Guide: Sample posees for photographing Women Part 2
Posing Guide: Sample poses for photographing Men
Posing Guide: Sample Poses for photographing Children
Posing Guide: Sample Poses for Photographing Couples
Posing Guide: Sample Poses for Photographing Groups of People
I like this a lot. It fits nicely with opinions from other sources I've been listening to lately.
I took another trip out to the Bear River Bird Refuge. The water is back and so are the carp. Kind of surprising how fast they repopulate. Saw lots of herons and other water birds but no pelicans this time. I'm wondering if they have moved on already,
I've also treated myself to a new computer, I found a really good deal on a good, slightly used laptop. editing my photos is much faster and the screen even works so I'm mobile once again.
Last month I took a trip out to Bear River Bird Refuge for a bit of wildlife photography. A lot of water had evaporated, stranding the invasive carp and making them easy pickings for the birds and other predators. There were fish skeletons scattered all over the dry stream beds.
These are some wonderful images as well as excellent advice.
http://mediacdn.reuters.com/trustorg/7_Photojournalism_Tips_1.ogg
A couple of weeks ago we took a road trip to see the Devil's Slide. It's an interesting geological curiosity and a good enough excuse to get out with a destination. Unfortunately lighting wasn't that good and viewing angles are limited I don't think I got very good shots of it. However while out I did come across some really nice train bridges and I had more photographic success with them. I've always liked train bridges with all the interesting girder angles and the play of light and shadow. I pulled out my infrared and got some nice shots.
I havn't been posting as much as I shoud be this week. I've been watching a workshop by Sue Bryce on glamor and portrate photography at creative live. It's been amazing. But between it and my day job, I havn't had much spare time.
this is an excellent introduction to the zone system by Gavin Seim.
I recently found this interview on This Week in Photography with a the founders of www.everythingmicrostock.com. After doing some additional research I've decided to give it a try, after all, it's free.
So I've created an account with Fotolia and submitted a few photos. I'm taking it slow to try to get an idea of what they are looking for. It took about two days for them to get reviewed and four our of the five images got rejected. It's a bit of a blow to a persons ego when some of the images you consider your best get rejected. Oddly enough the one photo I thought had the least chance was accepted. I guess my ideas of what makes a good commercial image are a little skewed. This photo...
I really like the idea of not being an assignment photographer. Of shooting what, where, and when I like. However I am starting to wonder if stock photography offers that much more freedom.
Today was the anual family reuion (on my mothers side). We had a good time catching up with each other. everyone brought food and there were some fun events like guess the number of jelly beans in the jar, and auction, and sling shotting candy for the kids. However there were a lot of people with a lot of loud voices and being the introvert I am, I took a couple of opportunities to slip away from the general chaos and recharge. Of course I had several cameras with me. I was a good bright day for infrared with lots of green vegetation around and interesting textures. My converted casio worked wonderfully after a late night fix-it session yesterday. I am very happy with it and I don't expect to open it up again.
I went out to watch the Perseids meteor shower on Saturday. While I tried another set of star trails with considerably more success. Definatly not professional quality yet, but a good start.
This was made from seven 10 minute exposures at f/8 at 400iso. I believe the purple on the left side is lens flair from passing cars. Long exposure noise reduction was turned off so I need to figure out how to remove the noise in post processing. I am also wondering if shorter exposures would decrease the noise as well. Unfortunately we havn't had many clear nights since so I havn't had much chance to experiment.
I've fixed the focus on the casio. I was right it was the auto focus. When I removed the hot mirror it threw off the auto focus. Last night I picked up an old frame from a thrift store for a buck and cut the glass roughly to the size of the hot mirror and installed that in my camera. Now everything is very crisp and clear. Unfortunately the zoom no longer functions. This isn't a big concern, I intend to use it mostly for landscapes. Another day I may open it up again and try to fix it.
I recently found a casio qv-r40 camera at a local thrift shop for $5. I turns out it's a pretty good camera and I managed an infrared conversion with it. It was very easy to open and replace the hot mirrir with a piece of 35mm unexposed, developed film that works quite well for an infrared filter. Unfortunatly I've found the majority of the photos I've taken turn out blurry while a few look just fine. As far as I can tell from my notes it's pretty random two shots with nearly identacal setting come out diffrently. All I can figure is it must have something to do with the auto focus, except that setting the focus to infinity seems to have no effect nor does manual focus.
I made it out to the Knolls last Friday night to attempt a couple of star trail photos. Unfortunately I didn't take into account a nearly full moon. The moon ended up washing out most of the stars in the sky. In addition I had difficulty with my remote shutter release which doesn't seem to work most of the time now. I've ordered a timer remote from amazon. I hope it will make these kind of shoots easier. Aside from the moon there seemed to be very little light pollution in the area. I'm planning to head back there for the Perseids meteor shower. I'll be making sure to test my equipment closer to home beforehand.
I did take a few shots of the moon over the sand dunes with the intention of merging them into a HDR image. I'm pleased with the results,. The experience wasn't a total loss. 
During a trip up American Fork Canyon on my way to Cascade Springs I came across this guy on a old burnt tree next to the road. He was considerate enough to pose for several minutes before flying off.
Found this great article by Harold Davis on how to create star trail photos. I tried a few last year during the Perseids metor shower with varying results. (Didn't happen to capture any metors either.) I found that the long exposures drained my battery incredably quickly. I will probably head out to the salt flats or the sand dunes this weekend to try this out.
I've decided it's time to regester a domain name. The only problem is that finding a good available domain name is harder then finding an available name for a World of Warcraft Character. And so I am sending out a plea for help into the ocean that is the internet. If anyone has any ideas for a name that might work, I'd love to hear from you. Here's a couple of ground rules...
1. It should be easy to remember.
2. I should be easy to spell.
3. It should end in .com
4. It has to be avaiable (kind of a no brainer) you can check availibilty here.
5. I'd like it to represent what I do in some way.
What do I do? I'm a photographer. I tend to lean toward wild life and landscape photography but not exclusivly. What I really enjoy is to explore and discover new places and things (or new ways of seeing old places and things), and then sharing what I find. Some of my work can be found at my Google+ account to get a better idea.
If I should happen to use your idea you will be rewarded with near imortality (Your name in a blog post) and my gratitude.
Most of the photo websites i've been visiting say that I should start a blog and since there's not much point in waiting, here I am. I'm still trying to find the right domain name, one that's clever, yet easy to remember and spell. Eventually it will come to me.
