May, 2009

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Suddenly I wish I lived closer to New York

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

My cousin in New York would doubtlessly wonder why I am just now coming to this conclusion. For my part, I like certain things about the west coast, and in particular about Alaska: you can find parking, there are still views unspoilt by power lines (although it’s getting tougher), there aren’t the crushes of people.

But the crowds are where the cool things are. Like Joe McNally: last year he resurrected the Dobbs Ferry workshops. This year he’s doing ‘em again: one day each, from June 22nd to July 1st. Read about it if you’d like.

I find the page interesting in that it’s the first time I’ve seen him use his blog for pure marketing: sign up for my seminar. Normally he’s more informational.

The seminar itself is no biggee – $350 a person, easy enough to cover. Flying from Alaska to New York, though? That’s a grand, or more.

I guess I’ll just dream about it…

Posted in Technique | No Responses »
Tags: Joe McNally, learning, New York, workshops

A Black and White image from Monday

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

I think this is Bradley Peak, on the far site of Turnagain arm

Monday, driving home: had spend dinner with my folks at the Bird Creek campground (it’s all of 20 minutes south of Anchorage).

It was about 9pm – golden hour was just beginning. For some reason, the color version came out extremely blue and flat, despite the angles and the shadows. So I dropped it into Photoshop and opened NIK Silver Efex. A basic conversion, but I added some noise, burned in the top edge a little, and slapped on a red lens conversion.

Instant drama.

It was interesting, this reminds me of Ansel Adam’s famous shot of the half-dome. In his book Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs, he mentions that he used a red filter on that image.

Posted in Photographs, Post Processing | 1 Response »
Tags: alaska, anchorage, B&W, mountains, photograph

Black and White conversions

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

Black and White view from our back yard. That's lichen on a branch.

I’m somewhat inspired to try Black and White again today. I read Trey’s review of NIK Software, and that reminded me of their Silver Efex Pro software (which he reviews on his new tutorial). I bought it last year at the NAPP expo, and loved it. The problem? I have absolutely no eye for B&W photography.

It’s not that I haven’t seen plenty, or don’t get the science behind it (although I’m a bit fuzzy). Something just doesn’t click upstairs. I think that’s going to be one of my next big pushes over the next few weeks. It’ll be tough, though – colors are finally here, and I really want to play with them.

The photo above: I was playing around with the macro setting on the sd500. It’s neat – you get a narrow depth of field. Converting to B&W has some neat parts – I like the muted background with the analog noise, but I’m not so sold on the overly bright foreground.

Posted in Photographs, Technique | No Responses »
Tags: B & W, photograph, sd500

Brilliant colors

Monday, May 18th, 2009

Anchorage in the evening, last Friday. 9:20pm. Still quite a ways from sunset.

The picture to the right is typical of Anchorage, this time of year. Or rather, the light is fairly typical. We’re not so far north that we get sunlight 24×7 (plus it’s too early yet), but we do have direct sunlight until nearly 11pm (officially, we already get over 20 hrs of sun per day). But due to the angle, we end up with relatively weak sunlight for large parts of that.

To a photographer, that gives us a few advantages. The golden hour, for example: it lasts well over an hour. None of the hurrying to take a shot in 15 minutes, like we see so often when we make it to Hawaii. The tradeoff on the golden hour: the light often isn’t as brilliant and saturated, like you see in places further south. So yesterday was an exception.

While on the topic of benefits of northern light, one of the things I’ve noticed: in more temperate areas, there is a definate period of time where the sun is directly overhead and light is either too harsh or just unflattering. You still get that here, but even in the middle of summer the sun isn’t directly overhead. No, it’s always at an angle, which means there’s very little time where you can’t do landscape photography. Or even outdoor portraits with natural light – the sun is that low most of the summer.

Posted in Photographs, Technique | No Responses »
Tags: alaska, anchorage, golden hour

Revisiting RAW vs. JPG

Sunday, May 17th, 2009

It seems that recently I’ve started moving back to using JPG formats for my images. Two months into this blog, and I’ve realized that (for the web, at least), I never start post-processing from the RAW image. That’s partly because the JPG conversion on the sd500 is excellent – it usually takes me much more work in Adobe RAW & Photoshop to get to the same point (which usually means tweaking the black point, adding some fill light, adjusting contrast, and adding sharpness).

RAW is still the far superior format and I should use it exclusively. I’m just finding that my actual use doesn’t require it.

Posted in Post Processing, Technique | No Responses »
Tags: Post Processing, RAW

Self Portrait (sorta)

Saturday, May 16th, 2009

This was taken years ago, on an older camera that was (sadly) stolen. The predecessor to my sd500, I took it everywhere. In this case, it was a semi-cloudy day (foggy, when up high), where my old man & I went hiking. I handed off the camera, hoping for the best.

In this case, it came out well. The ambient light was bright enough to not fire off the flash, and the fog came out beautifully. The view from the peak wasn’t obscured at all, either.

Semi-self portrait at the base of Ptarmigan peak. 7 years ago and 20 pounds lighter.

Posted in Photographs | No Responses »
Tags: alaska, anchorage, fog, hiking, ptarmigan peak

Bill Jay’s End Note

Friday, May 15th, 2009

I just heard that Bill Jay passed away. If you’re a casual enthusiast of photography, you may not know who he is. Most of the pros know him and think quite fondly of him.

I had only recently heard of him, after my wife gave me a gift subscription to LensWork last year (link currently has a memorial to him). He wrote a column called “End Notes” that I found fantastic – often the most interesting part of the magazine. Most months, I would start with his column and work my way back.

Embracing writing style, wonderful observations. It was like a family reunion, at dinner.

Now I will never have a chance to meet him in person. I think I’ll be spending some time downloading all of his articles and reading them.

Much better writings than this:

Posted in Authors | 1 Response »
Tags: Authors, bill jay, death

A note on abstracts

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

Indian Pass - a hike to the south of Anchorage on the New Seward Hwy

When I originally started this blog, I had a stated purpose. I believe it’s on my “about” page right now: to learn. Well, I’m learning. For example, I’ve learned that I like to take abstracts. I never really thought about it before, but they’re always there. Even when I take landscape photos, it’s not about the obvious subject, but the way the subjects trace lines in the picture frame.

For example, when I took the photo to the right (in hindsight), I was seeing the sloping lines to the sides of the photo. Blame it on my (old, long in the past) background in economics. I like graphs, and I saw one in this photo.

I just didn’t know it until I started this blog.

Posted in Meta, Photographs | No Responses »
Tags: abstract, alaska, hiking, Indian Pass, mountains, photograph, sky

Photography and Style

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

I suppose this is a symptom of having read too much, but over the years I’ve read thousands of posts, hundreds (well, over one hundred to be sure) of books, and attended dozens of lectures. Paid out of my own pocket for a few one-day lessons/seminars, even.

A subject that keeps coming up is “know your style”. This is similar, in my mind, to the phrase “find your voice” that I heard so often in writing classes.

And just like in writing classes, I think it’s utter hogwash.

Yeah, you’re probably not convinced – there isn’t a wide range of photographic styles really shown on this site. Mostly environmental landscapes with a few abstracts. Well, that’s what I show here. I’m not interested (right now, at least) in showing my portaits, or my experiments, or my higher-end photos. This blog is mostly about my experiments.

Look , my “style” depends completely on my mood. Wintertime? I’m in a dark mood. Lots of dark photos, heavy on the shadows. On vacation in a warm place in the cold, Alaskan winter? You’ll see bright, almost overly-saturated photos. I’m loving the respite from daily grayscale (and that’s really what Anchorage is like in the winter!), and I focus on that. In-between? Anything goes. Alaskan summers I can get into strange grains, or lose myself in odd effects. Having a bad day? You’ll see textures creeping in to my images. Strong emotions of any sort? I start getting into abstracts. Around family? Suddenly I go all photojournalist on you.

“Know your style” indeed. Photographic style is deeply personal, and depends deeply on the person.

Posted in Meta, Technique | No Responses »
Tags: about, philosophy, thoughts

For posterity – changing the “About” page

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

Just for posterity, I’m leaving the original content of the “About” page here:

This is really selfish in a way: the only reason this site was built was for personal self-improvement. If you’ve ever taught before, you quickly realize that one of the quickest ways to learn is to teach, and that’s what we’re here for. So that’s it: we’re here to learn, and you get to learn along with us. Or laugh at us – we won’t hold it against you.

Licensing and Photo rights

Unless otherwise stated, all photographs on this site are the sole property of Me. No permission, implicit or otherwise, is given to anyone for any use whatsoever. If you wish to purchase pictures, either for personal, republishing, or commercial use, please contact us and we will give you our rates.

Effective last Sunday, it has been updated. Barely two months in & critical self-reflection has forced me to change the contents.

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Tags: about

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