Clayhaus Ruminations

Exploring The Gamble House

2011-10-26T23:51:00.001-06:00

Coming late to architecture, I had never heard of the Gamble House. But recently I was in the LA area for a quick architectural tour and my daughter suggested we check out this American Craftsman Style house of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Built in 1908 for David Gamble (of Proctor & Gamble fame) the house is outstanding from many perspectives. The architects – Greene & Greene – used an array of over 20 different woods. All of the furniture and finishings, including cabinets, picture frames and even a piano, were created in their millwork shop from original designs. Additionally, all of the lamps and wall sconces were individually designed. Throughout the entire house can be found an interesting interweaving of Japanese design and aesthetics with an American sense of spaciousness and the possible.

The only way to view the interior is via an hour long guided tour. It is worth it. The docent that led us was very well-versed in not only the minutiae of the Gamble family and their house, but he also knew much about the architect brothers. He also shared interesting details about life in the early 20^th century. For instance, there was a fear in the early days of electricity that direct exposure to light bulbs would be harmful. That is why all of the light bulbs are pointing upwards or otherwise shielded from direct view. Those deadly photons!

The house is essentially a working museum. The last Gamble lived there until 1966 and then the building and grounds were donated to the city of Pasadena. Through a special arrangement with USC, two senior architecture students live and study there every year. With little change, things are the way they were a 100 years ago.

From a photographic perspective, the interior is relatively low-lit, due to the pervasive light-dampening characteristics of all the dark woods. Some long exposures would be wonderful but photography is off-limits inside. When I was there it was mid-day and the light was pretty harsh. Nonetheless, I took a few color and infrared shots of the west-facing exterior. I believe the infrared converted to b/w images work the best. I took multiple exposures and blended them together which allowed for a rich depth of tones in the shadows and well-lit areas. The color images are less interesting to me, but I offer them as a juxtaposition.

If you love architecture and are in the LA area, you owe it to yourself to check out the Gamble House. If you have more time, there are several more Greene & Greene homes within walking distance, along the Arroyo Terrace. Discovering an architectural gem in the built environment can be almost as rewarding as exploring the wilderness. Almost.

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Return to Griffith Observatory

2011-10-18T23:10:00.001-06:00

Up until last week I had only two images of Griffith Observatory: one featuring James Dean, Sal Mineo, and Natalie Wood from 1955 and my own, a certainly less traumatic than Rebel Without a Cause sojourn to see the planetarium stars wheel to the kaleidoscope sounds of Pink Floyd, circa 1973. Instead of knife fights or psychedelic music, it was a pretty tame mid-morning occasion to photograph the observatory and perhaps even the un-smogged skies of Los Angeles.

It was a rare clear day in the land of angels and I primarily shot with my newly infrared-converted Pentax K10. I had ordered a non-standard 780nm filter from the gentleman – Clarence Spencer of Spencer’s Cameras – who had previously performed my Pentax DS conversion (to720nm) and my K100 conversion (to 830nm). Both of those are older 6mp cameras and I was looking forward to seeing more images from the 10mp Pentax. I had taken the K10 to the Greater Canyonlands area a few weeks back and was really stunned by one image in particular of the setting morning moon. This would be my first occasion to shoot architectural studies with the infrared camera and I was anticipating more stunning images.

The sun was bright, the shadows deep, the air (pretty) clear, and the observatory lines clean and sharp….perfect for infrared. There was much more to work there than I anticipated. Fortunately there also were not a lot of people at that time, so with a bit of patience, shooting unimpeded was easy. I particularly likely the stairs and archways that provided wonderfully strong and evocative compositions. Lots of lines to work with and the few thin, ethereal clouds provided the perfect foil to an otherwise featureless sky.

It was a good outing with I believe compelling results and I thank my patient family (whom I was visiting) for letting me shoot until I was finished…and, sending only one text, wondering where I was.

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There is more to Racetrack Valley than just Moving Rocks

2011-09-19T08:26:00.001-06:00

Racetrack Valley is justifiably famous for its moving rocks. The rocks are mainly scattered about the southern end of the playa and leave long gouges in the now-hard and caked mud. Some of these paths seem impossible with odd angles and strangely placed rocks in the middle of tracks. Theories abound from the silly (aliens and pranksters) to the scientific. Most of the credible theories revolve around a combination of wet, slick mud and high winds that push the rocks to and fro, in straight and sometimes varying directions. Some of the rocks are large and must weigh upwards of 50 pounds so the conditions must be just so. Of course, there is no record of anyone ever observing this behavior, hence the bit of mystery.

While we were there in April a Czech professor – Gunther Kletetschka – and his assistant were conducting research on the moving rocks. Their research adds a new set of wrinkles to the wind and water theories. I won’t reiterate the details as a fellow photographer I met out there has started a thread and done a very good job encapsulating the scientist’s thoughts. You can read about it here as well as see the photographer’s (Michael Kunitani) wonderful images.

I spent one morning and one evening working the moving rocks. There are a couple of obvious ways to approach the rocks from a photographic perspective: either low and centered on the rock or high with an ultra wide-angle capturing the rock and its trail. The previously referred to photographer has some very good examples of the low-approach, whilst most of my images are of the high-approach. Of course, in retrospect I wish I had at least shot a few as Michael did, but I guess I’ll work that approach when I return to the valley.

Unless you have cloud cover, shooting during the middle of the day will likely not produce a lot of successful images: the light is generally too harsh. Even if you like strong contrast and sharp shadows, stick to the extremes of the day where you can shoot very pronounced, elongated shadows. So, what to do during that late morning to mid-afternoon stretch? Well, I suppose you could sit in camp and drink beer, but frankly I didn’t drive 13 hours to sit in camp.

Like most of Death Valley, Racetrack Valley has seen its share of intrepid miners in the last century and a quarter. The mine sites vary from extensive and obvious to minuscule and difficult to find. In fact, at the south end of the valley there was even an optimistically named Ubehebe City supplied by weekly stagecoach service (hard to imagine how ‘pleasant’ that ride must have been!), but no trace of it exists today. The easiest to see and visit mine site is just a ½ mile or so from the campsites. The Lippincott mine features numerous mine tunnels and shafts as well as remnants of an old mill and a shot-up water tanker. Spelunkers have ventured into the tunnel complex, but for us a short 100 yards or so until it became pitch black was enough (bring a light!). A lead and silver mine Lippincott was in production until the early 1950’s. There is much to see here and a better part of an afternoon can be occupied poking around. You will also enjoy expansive views of not only Racetrack Valley but also of the much larger Saline Valley to the west.

From Racetrack Valley one could drop into Saline Valley via the infamous Lippincott Road. When I ventured down it years ago it was an incredibly nerve-wracking experience with huge boulders and ruts threatening to propel our vehicle into the chasm below. It appears much tamer now as it seems they periodically grade it. From where the road beings its rapid descent you can venture up the hillside due north for a good view of Saline Valley. Continuing on an old track the view opens up even more, exposing the western flank of the Last Chance Range and showing just how long Saline Valley is (~80 miles).

Returning to exploring Racetrack Valley, a less obvious mine is the Sally Ann Mine. Located in the steep mountainside southeast of the playa, I stumbled around there for the better part of an hour but never could find a trail much less the actually diggings. I did find however the foundation of a campsite with shards of colored glass and bits of crockery strewn about. I also found the old camp dump where the never-very-environmentally-conscious miners tossed their tin cans.

The most rewarding exploration in the valley was my sunset race up the Copper Queen Mine/Ubehebe Peak trail. It was our last evening before heading home the next day and I wanted something different. Fortunately, earlier in the trip, I had purchased Michel Digonnet’s informative and essential guidebook, “Hiking Death Valley.” (Since my return I have also acquired his companion book, “Hiking Western Death Valley National Park: Panamint, Saline, and Eureka Valleys. I cannot recommend too highly either of these books. The amount of detail Michel provides is nothing short of comprehensively staggering.) Though the trail is obvious – it begins at the Grandstand turnout – there is no sign and one could be forgiven for thinking it impossible to climb the seemingly sheer eastern escarpment below the towering Ubehebe Peak. But lo, if one squints upward north of the peak towards a quasi-obvious saddle you can see a series of frightening switchbacks. The book claims that this ascent is “one of the most spectacular hikes in this desert” and though my experience in this region is dwarfed by Mr. Digonnet’s, I would merely add that it was awe-inspiring.

The race was to beat the setting sun so that I could shoot the Last Chance Range’s advancing shadow across Racetrack Valley. It was late afternoon and the 2 mile and 1200’ elevation gain seemed daunting. For some reason I was pumped and though I stopped a couple of times and moved a bit slowly through the last few very steeply pitched switchbacks (there are a total of 36 of them!) I crested at the saddle in 45 minutes. The view below was stupendous. And, indeed, I was able to photograph the shadow to my heart’s content. To the west, Saline Valley was in shadow from the even taller Inyo Mountains. If the sunset had not been a concern I could have continued to climb south to the summit of Ubehebe Peak (another mile away and 800’ higher) or descended a 1000 plus feet to the Copper Queen Mines. But those will have to wait until another visit with more time.

Our final venture was to photograph the Grandstand in the day’s fading light, so I couldn’t tarry on the high divide and instead raced down the twelve hundred feet back to the playa. We brought lights to shine on the aptly named Grandstand (located in the middle of the north end of the dried lakebed) but for me the after-dark experiment of shooting infrared yielded startling and alien-esque images.

It had been 27 years since I last explored the vast desiccated world of Death Valley, but it was pretty clear that I would not wait another quarter century to return: Spring of 2012 can’t come too soon!

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28 Miles of Washboard Road

2011-08-11T23:46:00.001-06:00

It was 27 years ago that I had last traveled to Racetrack Valley. It was a bit rougher in those days: no GPS, no mobile phones, little in the way of signage, only topo maps and your own innate sense of direction (or not). We – my wife, our 9-year daughter, and our first golden retriever (Whiskey) – drove in through the northern ‘backdoor’ of Eureka Valley – not yet part of Death Valley National Park (in fact, the park was not yet a park, merely a monument) – via my old rattle-trap of a ’72 International Scout. That vehicle had a lot of character and the temperament to match. It could drive over anything…or break down trying. After a day and night of camping and climbing the Eureka Dunes we continued south past Ubehebe Crater and onto the Racetrack Valley road: 28 miles of mean washboard.

Back then, at the aptly named Teakettle Junction (mile marker 19), we took a detour on the Hunter Mountain Road, where we spent a night in the Cottonwood Mountains with a glorious view of Death Valley, before backtracking the next day to Racetrack Valley. Maybe I was just used to bumping along on stiff suspension back in those days, but I have no memories – negative or otherwise – of the Racetrack Valley Road being anything more than long. (Now, the Lippincott Mine Road is another story entirely, though one I’ll leave unsaid for now.) This time it really was a painful 3 hours of bumping and rattling and shimmying along.

But first, we made the mistake of asking at Park HQ in Furnace Creek how the road was. I proceeded to get the 3^rd degree from a young ranger: What kind of tires do you have? How many plys are they? What kind of vehicle are you driving? How many spares do you have? Etc. And then she started laying down the fear-factor: it’s a terrible road; lots of flat tires; big sharp rocks; you’re on your own; no tow service, ad nauseum. The road was rocky (small, not big rocks and they didn’t seem particularly sharp either) and washboarded, but beyond that her hyperbole does the Park Service a disservice. I understand that they have to deal with lots of boneheads who get themselves into stupid predicaments, but by deliberately inflating the risk of venturing out, they feed into the misguided mantra that the National Park system (read: the federal government) is just trying to “lock up the land.”

We also made the mistake of filling up at Furnace Creek: >$5/gallon! But, really, that and Stovepipe Wells are your only two choices for fresh petrol in the Park. (The latter is about a dollar cheaper so if you can, fill up there.) As we drove north, the air was still quite hazy from over 24 hours of high winds. Why hazy? The winds created a sandstorm in the Mesquite Flats area that basically completely blotted out Stovepipe Wells Village and the upper Death Valley basin for the better part of a day. When you want clean sand dunes with little to no tracks, post storm is the time to wander in the dunes.

If you venture this will you leave the pavement at Ubehebe Crater. But, before you do so, check out the crater and surrounding ash lands left over from what appear to be a dramatic series of eruptions some 2,000-7,000 years ago. A nice hour-plus long walk around the rim of the ½ mile wide, 777 feet deep crater is just what you need before the grind on Racetrack Valley Road.

Slowly we climbed the long alluvial fan to the high point of Tin Pass (4990’). This area is rich with Joshua Trees and if the light is right and you can afford the time, a break here to photograph the weirdly twisted and faintly anthropomorphic plants is a welcome reward.

A little less than an hour later and we arrive at Teakettle Junction. Legend states that over a hundred years ago a miner placed a teakettle at this fork in the bad road. Tradition has lead to hundreds of people doing the same over the last century. When I was last here there were but a few. Now? Perhaps 50.

In the distance, some 6 miles away, gleamed Racetrack Valley while just beyond reared the dark southern extremity of the Last Chance Range. This was all familiar to me now: like returning to a well-loved place after many years. Which, it is.

Next Post: Grandstanding and Moving Rocks

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Warning: Limited Vision Ahead

2011-08-09T16:46:00.008-06:00

I was browsing Facebook last week and one of the photography forums I follow posted an image and requested comments. This is quite often an occasion for the fanboys to come out and say how ‘awesome’ even the most mundane of subject matter and composition is. (Surely, ‘awesome’ is one of the most frequently used and least meaningful words in the current vernacular of English. Don’t believe me? Still like to use it in everyday usage? Go to Flickr and type the word in the search bar. You will have over 2 million images of various levels of awesomeness to browse. Have fun!) However, on this forum I have read insightful and constructive comments that someone actually put some thought into.
The particular image that caught my attention was of interesting subject matter and was converted to black and white, which generally piques my interest. The composition was nice but what I objected to was the existence of an over-large watermark placed in the lower third of the image. I’ve already written about the disease watermarkis blotis, which seems to be plaguing so many photographers today. In addition, the photographer had processed the image to the point where the sky featured prominent haloing. There is using techniques to complement an image and then there is using it to effect. Where one ends and the other begins is certainly subjective. I have seen completely grunged-out images that work because the processing is well suited to the subject matter. And, I’ve seen the opposite, many times over.
I left a short comment referencing the watermark and haloing and upon checking back 10-15 minutes later was surprised to see a small flame-war between one individual who liked the processing and another who only liked “real” photography. The former was of the ‘live-and-let-live’ mindset while the “real photographer” (we’ll call him Mr. RP for short) was condescending, patronizing, absolutist, and quite full of his self. His statements became sillier as the thread lengthened. For instance, did you know that: HDR is fake; real photographers never have to use Photoshop; unless you are a “real photographer” you are merely a hobbyist; you must have a big camera to be “real photographer” and not merely a ‘cookie-cutter’ camera; if you shoot raw and in manual mode your image will need ‘nearly no’ post processing; if you're not looking to capture the “real thing” you should just steal an image off the net and manipulate it in Photoshop; and only full time photographers have anything of value to say about photography. Really? I did not know all of this. But, good news! Now, I do!
In all seriousness, I thought “this guy has got to be kidding.” I mean, I know a number of full time, and I would say quite real, photographers and they all use Photoshop, Lightroom and various plugins and yes, even the dreaded HDR software. But this is all computer gimmickry of course and these folks – who have collectively sold thousands of images and published over 100 books – can clearly not be “real photographers!” At least according to Mr. RP. So, I wondered; who the hell is this Mr. RP? Though he did not list any websites on his public-facing Facebook profile (wouldn’t a real, full time photographer do that?), I was able to sleuth him out.

Navigating through his website galleries, some of his images were nicely composed and some were pretty journeyman-like, if not just plain boring. A few series featured nice colors, if somewhat standard compositions. Generally though many of them lacked pizzazz, interest or excitement and would have been greatly aided by the serious use of post-processing tools. Low-contrast, color-deprived images are not necessarily more “real.” They are just low-contrast and color-deprived. My goal is not to trash this unnamed photographer. After all, his images must be EXACTLY what he wants out of photography, no matter how limited in vision they seem to me. However, it is the visionaries in any creative field (be it art or science!) who push the bounds. If not for them, photographs would be strictly representational à la 1850’s and painting would not have moved off of the cave walls of Lascaux. I’ll leave it to Mr. RP to discuss with the ghosts of Messrs. Adams, Weston (all of them!), Brandt, Stieglitz and Steichen (amongst many others) the virtues of the wet chemistry equivalent to Photoshop. And, I’ll leave it to others to educate him that shooting in RAW is advantageous primarily because you have the most amount of information to “play with” (not because somehow that format is more ‘real’ in appearance than TIFF or JPEG).

No it wasn’t objectionable that Mr. RP’s vision seemed so limited but rather that he insisted others conform to his “wisdom.” Worse than parochialism is uninformed absolutism. Expressing oneself in such a fashion says much more about the critic than the criticized.

(Warning: below are Photoshop processed images. If offended, please avert your eyes.)

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The Allure of Sand

2011-08-04T07:34:00.001-06:00

There is something poetic, majestic, romantic and sensuous about sand dunes. I’m not talking about those scrubby little things dotted with dried-out fast food wrappers and sun-bleached soda bottles that you can find along most stretches of public beach. But rather, the isolated and austere, expansive and sometimes towering stretches of dunes that entice you to wander into their curving and hidden folds, that seduce you to continue venturing deeper, searching for the most glorious view, the untouched ripples, the perfect feminine roll of land meeting sky. These are the dunes of mystery and power that figure in Lawrence of Arabia, Edward Weston’s visions of Oceano, Wilfred Thesiger’s wandering through the Rub’ al Khalil, and Frank Herbert’s detailed and developed world of Arrakis.

In the large swath of desert and mountains that comprise Death Valley National Park there are a number of areas were dunes reside, if not reign. Saline Valley’s dunes are low but seldom visited. Panamint Valley features a relatively small set of dunes sitting forlorn, almost forgotten in the northern, unvisited end of the valley. Eureka Valley, isolated at the tail end of 45 miles of washboard road, boasts the highest dunes in the Great Basin, towering over 650 feet above the floor. Death Valley proper hosts the most popular dunes in the park. Located in the Mesquite Flat area just outside Stovepipe Wells, these are the dunes I visited this past April.

Rolling into the campground late in the afternoon the first week of April, the temperature hovered around 101°F. Stovepipe Wells really is the most pathetic excuse for a campground. It is essentially one large gravel parking lot for the RVers bounded on the north side by 20 or so anemic looking campsites for those that still pitch a tent. The only saving grace was the hummocky mesquite bush-topped, miniature dunes that I was able to set my tent behind in order to gain at least some privacy. Duty done, it was time to head to the dunes, located just a mile distant.

There really are two good times of the day for photographers to hang out on the dunes: dusk and dawn. (A case could be made for a moon and star drenched evening with some long exposure work… as long as you can find your way back to your vehicle/campsite.) Late afternoon was hot but we wandered quite a-ways out on the dunes, looking both for relatively untracked sand and the perfect place to catch the glow of sunset.

The Mesquite Sand Dunes feature one obvious high dune that acts as both a centerpiece and magnet for photographers and tourists alike. So, my goal became to position myself to have the central high dune clearly in the majority of compositions. I ascended one final ridge, exhausted after 9+ hours of driving, setting up camp and finally trudging through the hot sand and hotter air, and with the big dune in front of me, declared a victory of sorts by planting my tripod.

As the shadows grew, the sand began a transformation to gold and the faint wispy strands of cloud shifted to coral-pink. This was the time to shoot. Which, I did – see below. (My shooting partner captured just about the perfect late afternoon dune shot here.)

For me, this is very much ultra wide-angle country. I want to capture the ripples of sand inches from my feet and the blackened mountains on the distant horizon…and all must be sharp. So, I stop down close to or at the limit of the lens I have mounted. Can I do that AND have the image sharp throughout the frame? Not always, but often. It is a trade-off, but compromise is usually part of the equation in photography.

The next morning we were up before dawn and again trudged our way over the dunes. It was much cooler though and we were refreshed so the walk was pleasant rather than a “death march.” We deliberately hiked further out into the dunes to avoid the bulk of the human tracks. I eventually positioned myself above a sweep of virgin ripples and waited for the sun to rise. When it did, it provided intense side lighting and the sand ripples became topographically pronounced: perfect compositional fodder for my infrared cameras. I found myself laying on the dunes trying to get as low an angle as possible to capture the details and relief of the sand. I needed to shoot fast though as the landscape and shadows were changing rapidly.

Morning on the dunes is also a great time to look for tracks left by the various nocturnal creatures that wander at night. Beetle and small animal tracks were scattered here and there, but the highlight was when I found a sidewinder track and followed it for a 100 meters or so up and over the sharp crest of a dune.

By 9am we were pretty close to being finished shooting on the dunes. The light was turning quite harsh, though I was still getting some good images with my infrared cameras. (Infrared loves the strong contrast of mid-day and as long as you can maintain shadow detail and not blow out the sky, you can capture striking images.) It was time to move on other Death Valley treats and the sky promised another over 100° day…not really a time to be wandering the giant sand trap of Death Valley Sand Dunes.

We enjoyed our sunset and sunrise on the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes and captured a number of strong images, but I was already thinking about other ways to capture the forms, light and emotions of this austere but beautiful landscape. I was also thinking back twenty-plus years ago when I first rattled up to the towering Eureka Sand Dunes. What I could do photographically with those dunes today! It would have to wait though as other locations, Racetrack Valley included, were on our agenda this trip. However, the promise was made: Eureka or bust next Spring!

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No Skill Is Required (to turn your portrait into a personality-free mannequin)

2011-06-08T09:06:00.008-06:00

A lot of film photographers (read: old timers) give the practitioners of digital photography grief for becoming more computer technicians than camera craftsmen (much less, Artistes). There is, of course, a certain weight of truth that for a digital photographer to create anything more than SOOC (Straight-Out-Of-Camera) snapshots, he or she must become reasonably facile in (at the least) Photoshop. Add to this Lightroom, a plethora of presets, plugins, actions, and special purpose ancillary applications, and you can see the tip of the old timers complaint iceberg. Of course those of us who work in electrons as well as photons, also rightly claim that technical skill and artistic inclinations, leavened with judicious restraint, can come together to create wonderful digital photographs. But, while we strive to capture the light and master the digital darkroom, there are those out there who are fighting mightily to prove the old timers right.

Enter the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX78/77 with Cosmetic Mode and Beauty Retouch Mode. These camera modes will allow you to change skin tone (Want to be suntanned in the middle of an Alaskan winter while avoiding those pricey, skin-cancer producing tanning booths? No problem, there is a mode for that with the push of a button.), whiten your teeth (No need for those pesky yearly visits to the dentist!), remove your laugh lines and wrinkles (Why mar your face while smiling or aging!), enhance your lip color (Desirable for the teenage vampyre in all of us.), and numerous other facial “improvements” that I’m sure we all wish could be applied in-camera with the push of a button and a minimal of nuance. Anyone who knows me knows that I am no luddite. And, while I usually am not an early adopter of new technology (I’ll let others pay premium to hang out on the bleeding edge), I am a staunch advocate of process and technology improvement. But do a Google search for and look at some of the “retouched” examples. If your idea of improving upon the looks of the human race is to turn them into an army of plastic mannequins, well then this really is the camera for you!

Now I fully understand that cameras like this Panasonic (Casio has one as well, the EXILIM) are not targeted for pros but rather snapshooters (and perhaps insecure ones at that). So while you might see an advert for this camera in a teen magazine (or the websites that have seemed to replace most magazines), you would not expect to see it advertised in a photography magazine targeting professionals. Therefore, imagine my surprise — and dismay — to see in a magazine whose byline is “The Magazine for Professional Photographers” a product that claims to be the “fastest, easiest portrait touch-up software“ that can produce “magazine quality yet natural looking touch-up in minutes.” Sounds good as many of us find that we need speed and ease to help trim or streamline our digital workflows. And, the product may well be very good (though the ‘after’ image in the ad still looks over-processed to my eyes). No, my objection is not to the idea of expediting our processing time, but rather to the last line of the ad copy: “No skill is required.” We take the time and apply our well-earned skills to compose and light our subjects and yet in the end, no skill is required to produce wonderful images. This is progress? Something is not quite right with that concept.

There are two issues here for me. First, is the idea that we can — and apparently some need to — define beauty as over-smoothed plasticized skin, an absence of wrinkles and blemishes, and glowing-white teeth that belong in an Ultrabrite toothpaste commercial. I have no problem with touching up the acne of a teenager or the bruises of a some scrappy boy (or, tomboy). I also understand that brides want to look their best on their special day. And, I have myself slightly whitened the teeth of a client or two. But that is a far cry from the homogeneity I see in a of portraits being posted/printed. Much of this I suspect comes from aspiring shooters who believe that if a little skin smoothing is good, then a lot is better. But that doesn’t explain the professional portrait shot I saw in a magazine recently. Leading off a bio-piece on some actor (didn’t recognize his face nor his name, and it doesn't matter), the photographer (or Photoshop editor) chose to turn his face into a dark (he is an African-American) porcelain visage of banality while his gently folded hands remained untouched and expressive. It was an immediate and jarring juxtaposition. There was more character and personality in his creased hands than in his artificially created mask-like face. Be creative, browse the galleries at Flickrista for inspiration or ideas and remember that often, less is more.

Of course, my second issue is the notion that we — whether via software or hardware — would desire to create something with no skill involved. It almost seems oxymoronic, if not sacrilegious to our artistic sensibilities. Most of us are on a life-long struggle to improve and refine our skill set (among other attributes). Handing a camera to chimp and turning him loose may produce an interesting and serendipitous image or two (out of thousands), but that is likely not the path most of us are on. So yes, hardware and software developers, look for ways to augment and even streamline our workflows. But leave us the requirement to exercise skill and judgment, discretion and nuance in our work. Otherwise, the old timers are finally quite right.

Day Trips to the Danube Bend

2011-05-10T10:31:00.001-06:00

South of Bratislava, Slovakia, the Danube, generally a north-to-south flowing river, makes a wide sweeping eastward turn. For some 80 kilometers or so, the river flows in this fashion until forced by rising hills to make first a brief southward turn, then a turn north before rounding the final hills and heading back south, straightaway to Budapest, some 50 kilometers further downriver. This bit of U-turn is known as the Danube Bend, and it is a fine place to spend a few days, out of the hustle and bustle that is the capital of Hungary.

The guide books (in this case The Rough Guide and Bradt), state that there are three ‘must-see’ sites in this area. From upriver to downriver they are Esztergom, Visegrád, and Szentendre. Each one is a day trip from Budapest and since we did not have our car yet, were relying on public transportation, and only had two days to spend in this area, we selected the two closest destinations. That left Esztergom – the old ecclesiastical center of Hungarian Catholicism – for another trip and another time.

Szentendre, our first daytrip destination, is a mere 20-plus-change kilometers upriver from Budapest. We walked from our apartment on the lower Pest side of the city to a small HÉV commuter train station below the Buda castle. The ticket agent in the station complimented me on my Hungarian (she spoke quite good English) and wanted to know where I studied it. I pointed to my phrase book and we had a good laugh. The ride was a relatively quick 40 minutes and soon we exited the rather dismal station in Szentendre.

The Brandt guidebook, and to an even larger degree, The Rough Guide, were effusive in their praise of this small town. I could see the promise, but for me, the reality fell short. It all seemed rather tatty with massive amounts of graffiti adorning walls and buildings. It probably didn’t help that there was some sort of street ditch-digging that contributed a coating of dust to much of the town. The main town square – Fő Tér – was small, angular, sloping and seemed a singular place with its crowding of old burgher houses. We enjoyed a light lunch on a bench watching the tourists, but frankly I found nothing in the square to photograph. Wandering uphill we found two unique church yards that offered a study in contrasts. The Roman Catholic church, creamy yellow and dirty white, sat in a large, open flat hill upon Templon Tér partially surrounded by skeletal trees that made for some interesting compositions. The Belgrade Cathedral – a Baroque Serbian orthodox church – is located in a beautiful enclosed park crowded by bright green, tall trees. The church itself is painted in ochre and pale mustard and the grounds made for a nice cooling spot to sit out of the warm mid-day sun. Photographing the church through the dappled greenery made for some challenging fun, though the end results don’t quite live up to the initial promise.

Historically known for its large Serbian population (now almost extinct) and more recently as an artists’ colony, I do believe that Szentendre was once as charming as the guidebooks paint it. Perhaps it is the recession – signs of which are everywhere – perhaps it is the tagging – again, signs of which are everywhere – aided by the guidebook build-up – that now seems more hyperbole than fact – but, I was underwhelmed and even disappointed by Szentendre.

Two days later found us in the Gustave Eiffel designed (so we were proudly told by a Hungarian woman who also kindly pointed us in the right direction) Nyugati train station where, with seven minutes to spare, I ordered our tickets from a distinctly unfriendly non-English speaking agent. (Though I surprisingly found a high proportion of Hungarians speak quite good English, there were the occasional few who did not. In most cases they were very pleasant as we worked our way through our discussion, pointing, drawing, pantomiming as needed. Very rare was the rude Hungarian.) Tickets in hand, we rushed to our train and with the help of our ticket puncher, 45 minutes later we debouched at Nagymaros. On the east bank of Danube, we made our way through the sleepy village just in time to jump aboard a funky ferry for our brief ride across the river to Visegrád. The ferry consisted of one barge being pushed and pulled by a small tugboat. The barge could fit perhaps 8-10 cars (or, as we would find on our return trip, one large semi-truck!) and however many pedestrians.

The village of Visegrád is not much to write home about, but we weren’t there to tour the town. High up on a hill overlooking the Danube is a commanding point that has on-again, off-again been occupied as a fort since Roman times. Sometime in the distant past, Slavs named it Vyšehrad, or ‘high castle.’ The Hungarian spelling has stuck ever since. Below the perched fortress, a monastery was built in the 11^th century to be followed by a palace complex that was enlarged over the centuries. Surprisingly, the royal seat was moving from Buda in the 14^th century until the Ottomans occupied the lands in the mid-1500s. Over the years the palace disappeared and fell into an almost mythical status, until excavations in the mid-20^th century revealed the foundations of the once glorious complex. Much of what one now sees in both the castle and the palace are tastefully executed restorations.

Wandering through the partially restored Royal Palace, you can only get a hint of how large it once was. Apparently there were over 350 rooms in the 600 meter long complex, replete with gardens and fountains and courtyards. One of the later features a few stone benches and lovely shade trees: the perfect place for our picture lunch, with a view out to the Danube. Exiting the palace you continue on foot downriver until you reach the lower castle structure of Soloman’s Tower. It’s a very large Romanesque keep from the 13^th century but was unfortunately closed on this particular day. Now heading up a very steep – but fortunately well-shaded path – our destination was the high castle itself. Panting, the work was worth it as glorious views unfolded of the flowing Danube below us and the Bőrzsőny Hills distant. Enough of the castle has been reconstructed to not only afford views in all directions but also to give a visitor a good impression of the size and strength of this fortification. As a bonus, two rooms provide well-accoutered displays of the history and armaments of the castle and its occupants. Another trail through the woods brought us full-circle back to the little town of Visegrád where we awaited our return trip across the river and back to Budapest.

Where Szentendre disappointed, Visegrád exceeded. It’s clear that the Danube Bend offers variety: old history, quiet villages, dusty roads, steep trails, and through it all the flowing Danube. If you find yourself in busy Budapest for a few days, you should venture into the countryside around the Bend to experience a different kind of Hungary: slower, more gently paced, quieter and even peaceful. The old of the country not far from the modern of the city.

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Eleven Days in Hungary: Thoughts on Budapest

2011-04-29T19:13:00.002-06:00

I would be the first to admit that 11 days spent in a land is short by weeks – if not months – of the time adequate to give a fair, accurate, and complete assessment of a country and its people. Eleven days is little more that a snapshot. Agreed. But snapshots, if well seen and composed, can reveal a bit more that the mere superficial. Case in point is our recent visit to Hungary.

We confined our travels to Budapest, the Danube Bend and the Upland Hills area centered on the medieval town of Eger. So necessarily the Great Plains in the southeast as well as the whole of the country west of the capital, including the famous region of Lake Balaton, factor not in my comments.

Budapest reminds me in some ways of Paris. Yes, there is the river – the Danube – bisected by a number of bridges, each unique and with its own personality. But unlike the bridges of the Seine, which have not fully yielded the pedestrian experience to automobiles, in Budapest cars, and in some cases trams, own the crossings. Their presence cannot be ignored. Indeed, you would do so at your own peril. But whether modern and severely functional (the Elisabeth Bridge) or Edwardian of design (the Liberty Bridge) the bridges are best seen, crossed and photographed at the extremes of the day: in dawn’s light or after 10 at night when traffic has slowed and the bridges’ lights create magical reflections in the river.

Like Prague, the other European city that on occasion the Hungarian capital reminds me of, Budapest’s bridges don’t merely provide fords of a great river, but also join disparate parts of the whole. In the case of Prague, whilst the old and new town sit comfortably on the right side of the Vltava River, perhaps the most famous bridge in all of Europe – the Charles Bridge – provides an easy walk to both the royal heights of Castle Hill and the gentle neighborhoods of Mala Strana. Budapest’s primary four bridges – Liberty, Elisabeth, Chain and Margit – join the much older Hungarian royal seat of Buda with the thriving, chaotic bustle of business-minded Pest. In fact, they were two separate towns until the late 1800’s.

Also, like the aforementioned French and Czech capitals, Budapest has no shortage of historical and stunning architecture to beguile you with. Unlike both of those cities though, Budapest was severely hammered during WWII. The capital was caught in a series of brutal street-to-street battles as the retreating Germans did everything in their power to slow the relentless westward march of the Red Army. In between were caught the Hungarians and their city. What this means for the traveler is that much of what you see was rebuilt (shades of Warsaw) including all of the bridges. It also means that in between the glorious baroque and art deco buildings you will also see the utilitarian architecture that signaled the Stalinist aspiration of function over form. The transition can be jarring at times.

In addition to the bridges, one of the best ways to view the city is by walking along either bank on the Danube. Long since contained with concrete walls, both the right and left banks feature pedestrian-friendly sidewalks, as well as the ubiquitous roadways. Whether by day or night, walking along the river is a great way to view the palace complex on its hill, the Parliament Building, Margaret Island, and other sights. Of course, you need to venture into the city to really experience it and this is where differences between Paris/Prague and Budapest become more apparent to me.

Prague is relatively compact, very walkable and with pretty clearly delineated neighborhoods. The Old Town and Castle Hill are the main centers of interest. Paris is a big sprawl but there are so many unique areas with their own sense of self that the city at times seems less a metropolis and more a collection of villages. I never had that feeling in Budapest. Nor did I ever really sense where the center (or centers) was (were). For four days I wandered here and there, crossing the river a multitude of times in both day and night and never quite felt the intimate pulse of the city. Now it occurs to me that perhaps the ‘soul’ of Budapest is in fact the Danube itself. It certainly seemed the youth of the city – lovers and otherwise – could not get enough of walking along or over the river. So, rather than cloistered in some old neighborhood(s), the sense of city I was looking for was and is on display for all to see along the great river, the Danube! Perhaps.

In addition to the young love in the air – and there is a lot of it – Budapest has a surfeit of another form of youthful expression: graffiti. I’m not talking about the mural art form that some love to rally around. No, this is the paint-on-wall equivalent of dumping an ashtray on a bed of roses, or perhaps a night’s excessive drinking expelled on a floor of Roman tile mosaics. You pick your metaphor. For me it is one of the banes of our modern cities. Really, don’t try to read too much into it. This type of graffiti is no more than a pathetic expression of saying “look at me, here I was.” This is something I have seen pretty much everywhere in Europe, with some cities more greatly afflicted than others. In most countries, the taggers hit walls and non-descript modern buildings, but must hold a grudging respect for anything more ancient than their grandparents, as rarely would I see old buildings or monuments defaced. (With the notable exception of Bologna, Italy where the vandals spare no edifice their misguided attempt at self-expression.) Budapest’s vandals are more selective than Bologna’s: many monuments were surprisingly clean, but others were painted over beyond recognition or reading. I won’t spend time analyzing the whys of graffiti (though, I am sure that there are good sociological reasons to explain the apparently ballooning phenomena), let me just say that to this traveler and photographer, it uglifies (if, I can make up a word) an area and leaves the visual imprint of a greatly extended middle finger. The residents apparently look beyond the affront, I can’t.

Budapest, twenty years past the “change” that ended totalitarian socialism, was clearly on the fast track of neo-liberal success before the 2008 crash. The city has since suffered but certainly not equally. In between the beat-up, smoking 30-year old Trabants and Ladas, homeless wanderers, shuttered shops, and bicycle-bound students there are the sleek Audi’s, 3-piece suits, and tres-chic hotels that define the new elite. How this dichotomy plays out other travelers will have to record. For now, I will say that Budapest is a fascinating study in contrasts: modern and ancient, shiny and crumbling, the clean and the unwashed, beauty of form and severity of function. Much like elsewhere perhaps but with a special Magyar twist that is part of the Hungarian Way!

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Watermarks: the Good, the Bad and the Downright Ugly

2011-03-25T09:18:00.001-06:00

I’m not sure what is going on but seemingly suddenly I am seeing a plethora (I just love that word and am glad I can actually use it here) of watermarks on people’s online photos. I personally don’t think there is anything wrong with watermarking, per se. In fact, there are plenty of good reasons for doing so and few bad ones. If you are not sure, or want to explore the pros and cons, just do a Google search and you’ll find lots of discussion. For my part, I’m on the Good side of the conversation and feel that a subtle watermark can a) immediately identify that this image belongs to someone and at the same time b) act as a form of branding for you, the photographer.

The key for me though, is subtlety. The reason I am now noticing so many watermarks may have to do with increased awareness on the part of photographers of the value of watermarking; hence, I am seeing more of them, because there are more of them. That may be it, but I suspect the real reason is that many watermarks seem to now be on steroids. I commonly see huge marks across the middle of images – perhaps with some clever design motif – that shout MY IMAGE: HAND’S OFF BUCK-O! I don’t want to minimize the nefariousness of image thievery, but frankly a big old No Trespassing sign is just a turnoff.

If the very first thing I notice with an otherwise beautiful, compelling, striking (insert other adjectives here) image, is a large obtrusive watermark, then I feel you have done a disservice to your work. And, if the watermark is so gaudy that I can’t get past it to see the beauty, compelling nature, etc., of your work, and instead click away, well, that is generally not a good trend. Am I alone in this? I’m just one opinionated person, no? After all, I have no patience for commercials – Super Bowl or otherwise – and will deliberately go out of my way to not buy a product if the commercial or advert is just irritating enough to register with me. So I may be a bit off the bell curve with these kinds of things. Ask your friends and colleagues what they think. Do some research on the web. Here is a post from PhotoShelter that corroborates my gut feel. It is true that a giant watermark may discourage casual thievery, but it also appears that it may discourage a purchase.

From a purely aesthetic viewpoint, in my opinion (and, opinions I have) a watermark should not compete with the image. Perhaps I am aiding and abetting the thieves out there, as it certainly is simple to crop out or use content-aware fill on a subtle watermark…so be it. I am trying to share (and, yes, sell as well) my photos and I want the image to stand out. Competition from a watermark is unwanted.

There are some good guides out there as to what watermarks should look like and what elements should be in a watermark. Using the copyright symbol – © – or the word “copyright” is pretty much universal. I typically use the symbol and my business name. Some people recommend also putting in a date (year) while others think it is a good idea to also include a web or email address. Fancy logo designs might look nice, and can certainly be part of a branding exercise, but they may also be a distraction. Use at risk. Opacity of no greater than 50% is recommended with placement near, though not necessarily on an edge.

Check out what (inter-)nationally recognized photographers are posting with regards to watermarks:

Etc…Of course, there are notable exceptions to the way the above professionals watermark (or don’t) their images. Whether the exception is the rule, is up to you.

If you really want to protect your images from online theft, many experts recommend one of two paths. Either, 1) register your images with the US Copyright Office and only post low-resolution versions online, or 2) don’t upload them in the first place!

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George sez...

2011-03-18T11:32:00.001-06:00

The Wasatch Camera Club brought George Lepp to town for an all day presentation/lecture. Coincidently, a few days before the workshop the club had its bi-monthly competition and we asked George to act as the sole judge. He was happy to do so. For me, the highlight of any of the competitions is the critiquing. In this case, we were not disappointed. George gave some of the most pointed but even comments we have yet heard. He was helpful and suggestive, complimentary and questioning, and I saw several people taking notes. He can back up his statements and suggestions with decades of photography experience, not to mention his years on the editorial board of Outdoor Photographer. That does not mean we as photographers – aspiring and established – need to agree with, or incorporate every critique and suggestion he (or, any other pro) makes, but we do need to listen.

Two of my images he spent some time analyzing. I took mental notes and re-processed them accordingly. Not surprisingly, his suggestions do make both images stronger. Though, that is just my opinion and yours may vary.

First, Quail Creek: he overall liked this image and thought that it was a wonderful spot to photograph. However, he really objected to the whitish sky. Our eyes are drawn to bright, contrasty objects and he felt that the sky was exactly that culprit. I frankly never felt that way about the image and instead looked at the light reflection in the water leading to the sky as a natural leading line through the photo. Of course, the sky, lacking clouds or other features of interest, is pretty boring. But, I reasoned, it is a relatively small part of the image. You can see this in the ‘Before’ image. Taking his suggestion to heart I cropped the image but maintained the aspect ratio. See ‘After.’ A bit skeptical at first, I now feel that the ‘after’ shot is stronger. Instead of your eye wandering off the photo through the white sky, it now follows either the left curving wall or the light reflection to the waterfall, which is the natural center of the image. The Moki Steps on the right wall are even helped (despite cutting off the first two) by naturally entering into the image.

The second image, Pine Creek, was taken on a cold morning in Zion, this past January. I’ve always liked elements of this image, but at the same time there was something that bothered me a bit. What was it…? Oh, I know: busyness! This a very cluttered image and George basically intimated that it made him “back away” from it. Having Mr. Lepp back away from your composition is not a good thing! Simplify, simplify, he said. One way to do that, is to concentrate on the distant cliffs and their reflection by cropping the image. He also suggested toning down the bluish shadow tones in the snow. Finally, he was not terribly happy about the scrubby winter trees in the mid-distance. Accordingly, I cropped the image into a 8x10 format and removed some of the blue saturation from the snow. There wasn’t much I could do about the mid-distance scrub-trees, but I also felt that the re-crop actually opened them up a bit. The result? You can the differences in the ‘Before’ and ‘After’ images, and again – because of the reduction of busyness and concentration of subjects (red cliffs and their reflection) – the ‘after’ image appears stronger to me.

I realize that my tendency – especially with the use of ultra wide angle lenses (these were both shot at the widest extreme of my 10-20mm) – is to include too much and too many. Too much of the landscape is not always a good thing because often it will bring in too many subjects and/or too many undesired elements. Simplify, George sez and he is right. Strong, uncluttered compositions with one primary focus of interest can be the most effective type of image. Well expressed, consider well heeded.

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The Power of Suggestion

2011-03-16T08:20:00.001-06:00

It’s great when people critique your work. Especially if you have the opportunity to have real pros, who have been there and done that for x number of decades, review images with their finely-honed eye. There is much to learn and they can definitely give you that proverbial leg-up by pointing out composition issues, lighting troubles, and perhaps the stray element that detracts from the effectiveness of your image. “Watch your corners” and “Avoid bright spots” are two phrases that I have heard more often that I wish. Once voiced, the power of suggestion being what it is, an image so identified is marked for good...at least until the problem is rectified.

Case in point: a judge at a recent competition really liked my infrared image of Manhattan shot through the cabling of the Brooklyn Bridge. But, he also singled out a bright spot in the lower-right corner of the photo (caused by the afternoon sun shining directly on a building’s face). I had absolutely never paid any attention to it and in fact had never even noticed it...until he pointed it out. Then it became as a grain of sand in my eye, a pebble in my shoe. Every time I looked at what I had thought was a pretty good image, all I saw was that small bright square in the corner. Small it may have started; quickly it became the cyclopean eye of an oncoming train. Using Nik Software’s Viveza I burned in the offending area enough so that now I again see the bridge and not that Macbethean damned spot.

More recently, I posted a series of images from a portrait shoot onto the critiquing forum of Photography Review. A good group of folks ‘reside’ there who are diverse in their approach to photography and facile at critiquing images gently but accurately. To this end, they actually offer useful suggestions on your posted images (rather than the useless “awesome photo, dude!” you see in other online venues). One image I posted I really was quite happy about and generally the critiquers were complementary as well. However, a couple of them dinged me on two distracting highlights that for them subtracted from the image. I, of course, again, never noticed them until they were pointed out and then I couldn’t stop noticing them!

The ‘solution’ for these two episodes is to either not listen to people or become more vigilant at catching elements that can detract from your photographs before you snap the shutter. I think it is obvious which direction I’ll take. But what if the power of suggestion changes the way you see a photograph?

I posted an image online that I thought showed a very unique perspective. I was in southern Utah in February exploring some of the new wilderness areas around St. George. In particular there is a large swath of redrock desert that acts as a transition area of sorts between the Basin and Range expanse, the Colorado River Plateau and the Mojave Desert. Called Cottonwood Canyon Wilderness Area, it is generally dry but there is this one stream – Quail Creek – that flows from the Pine Valley Mountains and eventually joins the Virgin River downstream from Zion National Park. I spent the better part of a morning photographing the small pools and even smaller waterfalls against the soaring red walls. Over one particular short fall I positioned myself to capture the water as it flowed between the five legs of my tripod and me and out and over the rock wall. Using a 10mm at f/22 the angle is extreme capturing the scene literally inches in front of my toes, the tumbling water just beyond and below, the pool. Once posted on Flickr, I had several people comment that the perspective was very strange, to the point where they had a hard time figuring out what they were looking at. To them, it seemed that the water was flowing out of the pool (downward in the photo) and not the reverse. Once I understood what they were seeing, I of course started seeing the image that way as well. In fact, it is kind of like one of those optical illusions where you see a lamp stand then two people facing each other and then the lamp stand again and then…well, you get the idea. Of course there is no ‘fixing’ of the photo this time around, just the oscillating behind two ways of seeing it.

The power of suggestion is indeed mighty, which is why I often (but, not always) refrain from using anything other than purely descriptive titles on my work. But I’ll leave that discussion for another post.

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When to Break the Rules: Centering

2011-03-04T09:21:00.001-07:00

When first starting out with a camera, we are often admonished for placing a subject smack dab in the middle of a frame. For good reason: many centered compositions will look static, lifeless and boring. None of those attributes typically lend themselves to a successful image.

But, it seems so obvious. After all, when we look at something usually we are looking straight-on, not askance. But a photograph, no matter how all-encompassing, is a very small and contrived slice of the world. Even if you are the ‘straightest’ of photographers, when you snap that shutter you have altered the perception of the world via that image. That’s why photographs are different than seeing and this should be the first revelation that photography is not merely recording a scene, but instead presenting it.

Of course, it does depend upon what your intent is with the composition you are creating. Perhaps you want a static scene. Maybe even a boring one. I’ve certainly seen plenty of images that fit in that category and in some cases that may even have been the intent of the photographer. But, the composition with the subject matter plopped in the middle of the frame will often look unbalanced, bothersome, the result of a snap-shooter. But, sometimes it also works.

In my searching for lines, angles, and patterns, I will often shoot a scene straight on. Sometimes it makes perfect sense, intuitively. And, the images work. It wasn’t until an art professor stated the obvious, that it clicked why these compositions are successful: symmetry. Often we can create dynamic tension (usually a good thing!) in a photograph by shifting our composition to reflect the aesthetic logic of the Rule of Thirds or the Golden Ratio. But some subjects and scenes do well to be presented in a centered fashion. This works when symmetry is achieved and the centering is performed on a dominant subject with strong leading lines.

The concept of symmetry we can understand pretty readily, but the caveat of subject dominance is equally important. Imagine a rock spire or tall building viewed from afar. The scene might work quite well if composed with the subject (assuming the spire or building is the subject) off-center. But center the subject and even with a very symmetrical landscape, the image will likely appear static and uninteresting with the subject lost in panorama. Now, move in on the object and really make it the subject of interest and centering will work. This is especially the case if there are strong lines leading to and/or radiating out from the subject. Our eyes move into and out of and back into the scene. Dynamism is created!

Some subjects lend themselves naturally to this kind of treatment because they are imbued organically with that essence of symmetry. Trees, buildings, shadows, and even people can be perfect fodder for centering. However, a blanket straight-on approach to subjects will not work. You need to be able to see the symmetry that is unique to every subject and scene in order to express it via an image.

Bottom-line: don’t be afraid of creating centered compositions. Just know the ‘rules’ so you know when, and how, to successfully break them.

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21st Century Religious Wars

2011-03-01T08:47:00.001-07:00

A recent posting on a local photography forum I belong to prompted a flurry of posts that currently number around 120 plus a couple of spinoff threads. The discussion and exchanges were at times playful, petulant, passionate and opinionated, testy, boastful, once or twice borderline rude, sometimes fact-based and more often emotionally-driven. In the end — if there is an end — no ones’ minds were changed. Sound familiar? Scan backward 10 years or so and you know what the topic was: Film vs. digital. That poor horse was flogged to death, several times over. Like Lazarus, or some silly teen zombie movie, coming back to life long past when its pulse gave up the ghost.

We don’t hear much about analog versus digital anymore. Despite the fact that film shooters are still out there — as are a few of us vinyl record owners — digital photography and music has won the war. The topic of this recent post is nearly as old: Mac versus PC. The question was not quite phrased that way, but that is the path the conversation took. There were a few “it doesn’t matter” ... “whatever you are comfortable with/can afford” ... “I use Linux”, but generally it was all about “mine is better and here is why” with arguments that were neither new nor terribly convincing.

Half way through the thread it took a predictable detour: Nikon versus Canon. Then the knives came out. Well, not really, but the heat was raised.

I’m not sure why these types of discussions generally take on an argumentative Manichean flavor, but I assume we as humans are more comfortable with clearly black and white choices, when the world is of course poly-chromatic.

As a Mac-Linux-Windows computer user and a Pentax photographer I trod a different path. But, really...who cares? As others have pointed out, they are just tools; it’s what you do with them that counts. All of this us-versus-them arguments are the photographers’ version of the 16th century Wars of Religion, albeit without the bloodshed, mayhem and stake-burnings, fortunately. Some, of course, look at these ‘discussions’ as entertaining maybe even informative. Perhaps, but also some like to cook and others merely stir the pot (while the bulk wait impatiently to eat!). To me they seem like a monumental waste of time (see: here I am writing about them!) and in the end I fall back on the wisdom of the neo-street-philosopher and quasi-celebrity of the early 1990’s, Rodney King who said, “Can we all get along?” Amen.

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One Man's Liberation is Another's Limitation

2011-02-24T08:25:00.001-07:00

On the drive south for a several day trip to the sandstone lands of Utah and northern Arizona, a fellow photographer asked me what gear I had with me. My normal field kit, I declaimed, comprised of two straight DSLRs, two converted infrared DSLRs, a panorama film camera, and lenses ranging from 10mm to 500mm. Politely he asked if all that equipment wasn’t a burden. Au contraire, I said, I find it liberating.

For the next 25 miles or so, we discussed the different, and quite contrary viewpoints. He, with one film SLR and a couple of lenses, felt that it was the essence of liberation as he didn’t need to worry about, much less lug around, a lot of equipment. I understand that perspective and employ it when I am strolling around downtown or perhaps in a small village in Provence. But, for me, photography is also about possibilities and I feel those increase if I have the camera gear to extend and capture my vision. That does not mean that I carry – or hire a Sherpa to carry – all my equipment in the field. Whether traveling overseas or to southern Utah, I can easily leave in the hotel or the vehicle, what I feel I don’t need on a given day. Decisions are made based on locale, likely subject matter, lighting, time of day, and my mood. I don’t always make a perfect decision, but I usually have a range of equipment to closely match the conditions and my inclinations. Limit the gear, limit the decisions, but also limit the possible outcomes. So I believe.

The range of focal lenses probably makes sense to most photographers, but why so many camera bodies? Though never a Boy Scout, being prepared is not only a motto…it makes a lot of sense. I’ve had equipment stolen as well as damaged on trips. Back-ups saved me from being merely a camera-less tourist. There are also times – especially in urban environments replete with the micro and macro details – where having one body mounted with a telephoto and another with a medium or wide-angle zoom lens, allows me to capture a wide range of subject matter, from gothic gargoyles looming high above to panoramas of narrow medieval streets.

Photography is as much about possibilities as it is actualities…perhaps even more so. After all, we strive to match on paper (or screen) what we see in our mind’s eye. We don’t always realize that ideal, but the pursuit keeps us motivated. How you achieve that goal is your liberation.

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Icy Serendipity

2011-02-21T07:44:00.001-07:00

“Stuff happens” and “it is what it is” are both tired but true aphorisms. Yes, things do happen that may not be in our immediate control, but decisions are always at our fingertips. To quote another tired, and it this case slightly goofy saying, “when at a fork in the road, take it.” I was presented, on a recent trip to Zion National Park, with both the ‘stuff’ and the ‘fork.’

It was mid-January and though relatively warm in the sun, there was still plenty of snow – and more to the point – ice in the shady, shadowy, north-facing parts of the canyon. The first morning there I caught sunrise at the Zion Canyon overlook just past the tunnel on the Mt. Carmel/East Canyon road and then spent another hour or so working Pine Creek near the bridge past Canyon Junction. By the time I made it to the Angel’s Landing trailhead it was around noon and the thick sandstone column that the landing rests upon was fully in the sun. But the Wiggles weren’t.

Walter’s Wiggles are a set of 21 narrow, short, steep switchbacks carved in the sandstone some 90 years ago. It was originally designed for pack horse trains but now the only lines it sees are tourists at high season making the trudge to Angel’s landing, some 1500 feet above the valley floor. This was not high season and my goal was not the landing per se but rather Scout’s Lookout which is just beyond the top of the Wiggles but well-short, height and length wise, from the top.

It had been almost 30 years since I last clambered up Angel’s Landing and I had completely forgotten about the Wiggles (how could I have!?). They may well get light in summer ,but at this time of year with the sun further south in the sky, they were in deep icy, shadow. Despite my vibram-soled boots, by half way up I was slipping more than not. Steeper and slicker the Wiggles got until at switchback 14 I went down fast, blooding my nose and banging my shoulder-born camera on the ice so hard that the batteries ejected like mini-missiles. After gathering up the slithering batteries and ensuring that the camera sustained no damage, I realized that “stuff” just happened and I was at a “fork.”

It was disappointing but a pretty easy call to bail at this point. The prospect of attempting another 7 switchbacks going up and, even worse, the prospect of trying to descend them, was unappealing to say the least. So, I slid and slipped back to the bottom of the Wiggles and cursed myself for not bringing my YakTrax.

But, as ‘stuff’ happens, so does occasionally, serendipity. And the decision I made after my icy face-plant afforded me that bit of luck. As it turned out a large California Condor was seated on a ledge on the lower part of the landing and though I didn’t have my 500mm telephoto lens with me, my 80-200mm afforded me enough range to photograph him/her as she/he took flight. Watching and photographing the languid ascent of the large bird as it climbed a thousand feet above me, I was quite content to have taken that ‘fork’ and be rewarded with this bit of serendipity.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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The Yin and Yang of The Wave and White Pocket (part II)

2010-12-15T23:54:00.001-07:00

Trudging a 100 meters or so through the soft sand, one has no idea what’s on the other side of the low hill. Even if you have seen photos of White Pocket, you cannot really be prepared for it. Trust me.

Bold, expansive, riotous, chaotic, contorted and complex, bright white and popsicle orange, weathered and eroded, weird, strange and otherworldly. While all true, these adjectives only go so far to describe the pleasant insanity that is White Pocket. Even photographs — no matter how beautiful and stunning — can only give you snapshots of the craziness. Macroscopically compelling and microscopically arresting, you can spend hours working just one small area, following twisty-turny lines of strata with eye and camera, or sit perched on the elephant hide-like back of the highest point that acts as both a viewpoint and a visual reference point for this otherwise easy-to-get-lost-in-landscape. Bring your panoramic camera (and/or ultra-wide lens) but don’t forget your 105mm macro: you’ll want them both.

It’s easy to imagine spending days here exploring the various nooks and crannies and since camping is still permitted, White Pocket really deserves at least an overnighter. I spent two afternoons extending into and past sunset both days, and perhaps had covered maybe half of the exposed sandstone. A mile or so away rises the bulk of White Pocket Butte and that would certainly afford many more exploring and photo opportunities. While visually cacophonous, the arduous drive into White Pocket assures you of quiet, tourist-free time.

Though I had seen many photos, I was not prepared for The Wave. After scaling the last steep and deep sandy hill, you enter The Wave through what appears to be a hollowed out sandstone hall with no roof. Smooth lines flow sonorously through and around The Wave. Serene, graceful, and harmonious, this is the Yin to White Pocket’s Yang. Very compact (another surprise as most photos can’t really reveal its scale), The Wave proper could easily be explored and photographed in a half of a day. If you had more time, you could try to find the Second Wave and and a small arch nearby. No camping is permitted, so get out there early and maximize your time.

The Wave has become the latest in a long-list of must-see/must-photograph landscape icons. Shooting them is a challenge, if you want to say something new, rather than just replicate what others have done. In the case of The Wave, I initially shot from what has become the standard, central position, but then I crawled high up on the bowl edges in several places as well as chose low angles inches from the sandstone. I also used infrared and panorama cameras. There are always ways to put a unique spin on a familiar setting.

Upon my return I was asked which I liked better: The Wave or White Pocket. The facile answer is “they are different” but it also happens to be very true. They are both sides of a (sandstone) coin. It would be like saying you like ‘heads’ better than ‘tales,’ when really you can’t have one, without the other.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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At the Court of Chaos and the Hall of Harmony: White Pocket and The Wave (Part I)

2010-12-09T23:26:00.001-07:00

I can think of no greater example of extreme difference in ostensibly similar landforms — with commonality in base components, age, agents of erosion, and location — than White Pocket and The Wave. Both are located in the Paria Canyon-Vermillion Cliffs wilderness, now newly designated as a National Monument, in a remote section of northern Arizona bounded by the Paria and the Colorado Rivers. Both are formations of primordial sand dunes long since petrified and frozen in time, when dinosaurs wandered ancestral seashores occasionally leaving tracks for us to find. Sandstone of muted reds, brilliant oranges, bright whites and golden yellows, the ever-present building blocks of the Southwest, shaped by water and wind (but mostly water), provide the foundation for both landscapes, as well as an exercise in the study of contrasts.

Separated by less than 20 miles as the raven flies, White Pocket and The Wave offer completely different experiences. Since its “discovery” some 15+ years ago, The Wave has become, for the growing legions of aspiring landscape photographers, a “must-see/must-have.” Relatively easy access — 10 miles of the usually very well-graded House Rock Road, followed by a 3 mile, basically level hike over sand and slickrock — would normally contribute to a steady stream of visitors and your classic outdoor Disney experience. So much so that the BLM has implemented a contentious permitting process that allows for only 20 visitors per day. This has been frustrating for those without open-ended dates but pretty much guarantees that once you get a permit you will have, if not a solitary experience, a quiet one.

Access to White Pocket is quite a bit different. Another 5 or so miles down the aforementioned road leads to you the first possible turnoff. This will lead up and over Paw Hole which can be nasty-deep with orange sand in the dry season. Further south is another unmarked turnoff in Corral Valley that will bypass the Paw Hole sandtrap but is longer and quite rough in some stretches. Both tracks (really, calling them ‘roads’ imparts a bit more dignity than they warrant) meet up in the middle of nowhere otherwise known as Poverty Flat. At this point, if you are not lost, it’s a good thing, as there are a number of spur tracks that seem designed to lead you astray. The land rises in such a way that only very occasionally will you catch a glimpse of the large white sandstone butte to the east which is labeled White Pocket on the map, but is not exactly the White Pocket you want to explore. Assuming you end up on the right track after Poverty Flat, you still have almost another hour of negotiating sand and rock (but mostly sand) before the “road” leads south around and past White Pocket Butte to end at a wooden fence that seems designed to keep ATVers off of the brittle sandstone but permits desiccated cows access to crap where they please.

Having survived the sandy and at times bone-rattling 2 hour drive from the nearest pavement, now would be time to set up camp and pop a cold beer, or, better yet, go exploring with cameras in tow.

(Part II: the Yin and Yang of White Pocket and The Wave)

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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I see in Infrared...even better now

2010-10-28T23:55:00.001-06:00

In early 2009 – a year after I purchased my infrared-sensitive Fuji IS-1 – I stumbled (online, so it really didn’t hurt) across someone local to me that performs IR-conversions on cameras other than Nikon and Canon. Well, actually I found two people who would do it but one guy is less than an hour from where I live and the other I would have had to ship the camera out of state.

Clarence Spencer of Spencer’s Cameras will perform IR-conversion on just about any DSLR so I gathered up my circa 2005 *istDS (yeah, I know: stupid model name…Pentax left it behind some time ago) and paid a visit to Mr. Spencer. There are three basic ways you can have the conversion performed: 1) remove the IR blocking filter and place a 720nm filter over the sensor, 2) remove the IR blocking filter and place an 830nm filter over the sensor, or 3) remove the IR blocking filter and place a clear glass over the sensor and use IR filters on your lenses. I opted for option #1.

Yes, this renders the camera useless for visible light photography (you can, btw, always have this conversion reversed) but this was an older camera that sat on the shelf and didn’t even act as a backup anymore. Additionally, with the IR filter over the sensor, I can now hand-hold for most of my shots. But option #3 seems more flexible, non? Actually, non. While ostensibly you could use the camera for visible light photography, you would need to buy a “hot filter” for your lens to counteract the negative color cast of the infrared bandwidth. And, for IR work, you will generally need to focus without the IR filter, then mount the filter on the lens, then take the shot. And, you’ll need that tripod again…and a set of IR filters for your different lens diameters (or at least step-up rings). I call none of this very flexible.

Pretty quickly this converted DSLR became my new go-to IR camera. It is only 6mp but being an APS-sized sensor meant that compared to the Fuji I should have much less noise in my images. And, I do. I very rarely ever have to run Neat Image and the clarity and sharpness of the images I am capturing amazes me. As I mentioned before, 99+% of the time I convert my IR images to B/W and the converted camera combined with post-processing via Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro really became a winning combination for me.

I was having so much fun with this camera that pretty quickly I decided to take another sitting-on-the-shelf DSLR – my Pentax K100 – and have it converted with the deeper IR filter of 830nm. I was hoping for richer blacks and whites to pop even more. For various reasons it took me longer to have the conversion made but this summer I started shooting with the 830nm converted K100. This model Pentax was the first with built-in (the body) Shake Reduction technology and because the sensor is now getting no visible light and is much deeper in the IR bandwidth, the Shake Reduction is giving me a much-needed extra 2-4 stops hand-held.

These two IR cameras are now always with me and there have even been days (two most recently in NYC for instance) where I never even pulled my K20 (visible light) camera out of the bag. I still use Sliver Efex pro for many of the 720nm images but have developed a taste for duo- or tri-tones with the images the 830nm camera produces. This combination yields some very nice slightly blue-cast photos that are subtle color-wise but feel different from a typical B&W. I’m very much liking where I am IR-wise, but it’s not all roses though…

Hot spots have been greatly reduced and are now easily managed, but I have found that wide-angle zoom lenses are anathema to these conversions. Focus and image smearing are real issues with three zooms that I like for landscapes (or cityscapes for that matter): the Sigma 10-20mm, Sigma 12-24mm and even my 18mm-50mm (that latter is only a problem at the widest focal length). Whether manual or auto focusing the images are soft at best and smeared at worst. And, not just on the edges, but side to side, top to bottom. After a bit of research, it does appear that super wide angle zooms can be prone to this problem when shooting IR. I have three primes: a Pentax 20mm, a Sigma 14mm and Sigma 15mm Fisheye that yield nice, sharp images. (All three of these lenses are designed for full-frame cameras so the edges might be soft but I just wouldn’t know it.)

Even with those limitations, discovering digital infrared photography has added a new dimension to my portfolios. People can’t always tell what is different about an image but they know something is. It feels unique, mysterious even, black and white but not quite. When I tell them, as I always do, that they are infrared images, there is often an ‘aha’ moment. Then, perhaps, the question comes: but how do you know what exactly will look good in infrared? That’s easy, I tell them…I see in infrared!

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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I See in Infrared: The Next Phase

2010-10-22T00:16:00.002-06:00

Per my previous post, I had been taking a number of infrared images with a variety of point-and-shoots for quite happily for several years. Then in early 2008 I got wind of a new, infrared-sensitive camera just out on the market: the Fuji IS-1. This camera was a follow-up to Fuji’s much-acclaimed, but discontinued and hard as a four-leaf clover to find S3 Pro UVIR. (The S3 Pro UVIR was a DSLR that was not only IR sensitive but also sensitive in the ultra-violet bandwidth – a real rarity.) Fuji called the IS-1 a ‘neo-SLR’ and it looks like a miniature plastic DSLR but with an integral 28-300mm zoom lens. Like the S3 Pro UVIR, it was not targeted for professional photographers, but rather the forensic and scientific community. Unlike its predecessor the IS-1 sacrificed one critical component to go into that smaller and lighter package…can you guess?
Sensor size. The IS-1 uses essentially a point-and-shoot CCD sensor while the S3 (and most other digital SLRs that are not full-frame) has an APS sized sensor. Here are some sensor size numbers to chew on: Canon G1 (my previous IR camera) = 0.38cm²; Fuji IS-1 = 0.45cm²; Pentax K10 (APS sensor) = 3.68cm². There is an 8-fold difference between the sensor size of the IS-1 and my K10. Yet, the IS-1 is rated at 9 megapixels and the K10 is at 10mp. How is this possible? The pixel densities on the two sensors are quite different: 2.7 MP/cm² for the Pentax and a whopping 19 MP/cm² for the IS-1. So what and why am I spending all this time on this? Bear with me.
Flashback to February 2008 and I was seduced by the thought of shooting IR hand-held using a variety of infrared filters and working with a 9mp RAW file. I plunked the dough down and couldn’t wait for it to arrive along with my Hoya 720nm, Tiffen 780nm and B+W 830nm infrared filters.
One of the first images I took was of our golden retriever, Hannah. “Cool shot” I thought, but was struck immediately by the grain in the 400 ISO image. This – and one other aspect – are the major demerit points of the IS-1. The grain – let’s call it what it is: noise – is a consequence of cramming so many pixels into such a small sensor. I have managed the noise via two methodologies: try to shoot no higher than 200 ISO and certainly not above 400 ISO; and use noise reduction software in post-processing. This combination has permitted me to shoot lots of great images and print them up to around 13x19 size.
The different IR-depths of the three filters allowed me to be able to shoot hand-held in generally most types of light, while also realizing some subtle differences between the wavelength captures. But I also came to experience pretty quickly the other downside to this camera: persistent hot spot at f5 and above. In bright sun this becomes a major annoyance, especially if I want maximum depth of field. Why Fuji did not design an IR-sensitive camera to inherently baffle these stray, bouncing IR waves is beyond me. Depending upon subject matter sometimes I can tone down the hot spot via spot adjustments in post-processing. But if the spot is in the sky, well, as the New Yorkers say: fegitabowtit.
Despite all this, the flexibility and generally superior image of my IS-1 relegated the Canon G1 (not to mention the previously mentioned Olympus and Nikon point and shoots) quickly to retirement on my shelf. For a year, I shot infrared exclusively with the Fuji. Until, that is, I made the next leap…

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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I See in Infrared, Part I

2010-10-15T11:29:00.002-06:00

My first foray into infrared photography (IR, for short) was ‘some’ years back in the film days. I tried a few rolls of Kodak’s b/w negative and color transparency films. The results were, well, interesting and as a budding hobbyist I found handling and usage quirky. Not an auspicious beginning.
Fast forward 25 years and by 2005 I had been shooting DSLRs for a little over a year. I remember cruising some online photo forums and seeing these completely captivating false-color landscape images and wondering what in Hades these were. They were odd, strange even, but still compelling. Further digging yielded that they were in fact digital IR photos. I started searching on the web how to get into this and found a number of very good sites. Do a Google search for “digital infrared photography” and many of these sites are still there offering the same great advice on digital IR. (In particular, the Eric Cheng and Andrzej Wrotniak sites were a big help to me.)

First, a very brief IR primer. What we call infrared photography is really near-IR imaging. The distinction is important. Many folks think of infrared in terms of giving off heat. Thermal imaging is in fact long-wave infrared and is not of interest in our photographic explorations (there is a very good article on Wikipedia that discusses the different types of infrared radiation.) What we are capturing with near-IR cameras is a narrow part of the electromagnetic spectrum just beyond visible light. This corresponds to the wavelength range of 700 nanometers (nm) to 1400 nm. (Compared to the visible light range of 390 nm to 750 nm, and ultraviolet range of 10 nm to 400 nm.) Most digital camera sensors are sensitive in varying degrees to UV, visible and IR light. To control the usually undesirable effects of infrared radiation, manufacturers will install IR blocking filters over the camera sensor while UV effects are controlled via lens coating and the addition of after-market UV/haze filters. In order to photograph in infrared we need to circumvent that IR-blocking filter somehow. Or, do we…?

Many early digital point-and-shoot cameras were to some degree sensitive to the IR spectrum. After some research (check out Jen Roesner’s site) I picked up my first Canon G1 (3.3 megapixels!) – which was by then quite long in the tooth (manufactured in 2000) – a lens adapter and a Hoya R72 (720 nm) filter. Because the IR-blocking filter was still in place a tripod was still necessary as even on super bright days, exposures were still measured in the low tenths of a second (at best). But what a world was opened up!

At first, what I call false-color IR imaging was of interest to me and my IR images mainly featured muted magentas and blues as I tried swapping channels and performing other feats of IR wizardry. But soon the pureness of B/W became the way I saw my infrared world. During this period of exploration I purchased a number of used IR-sensitive point-and-shoots including the very sensitive Olympus C-2020-Z (2.1 mp!) and the Nikon Coolpix 950, as well as deeper 780 nm and 830 nm filters. The Olympus produced a few really stunning images (one of which I still sell and is included with this post: the white reeds and water shot), while I was never happy with the performance of the Nikon. But, my go-to IR camera was the G1 and it traveled everywhere with me including trips overseas to France, Japan, Czech Republic, Scotland, Italy, and Iceland, where stunning images of landscapes and cityscapes were created.

Of the three filters I carried with me – a Hoya 720 nm, a Tiffen 780 nm, and a B+W 830 nm – the Hoya was the easiest to work with, as it included the lower end of near-IR waves as well as a bit of the high-end of visible light (in the red channel). On bright days though the deepest filter, the B+W, could and did produce truly startling images. The downsides to this mode of IR exploration – older point and shoot cameras coupled with lens-mounted filters – was that I always needed a tripod and just about any shots with motion, were going to produce blurs. And, of course, there was also the in-camera limitation of small sensor size + few megapixels = low resolution output + greater chance of noise.

Of course I knew about IR-conversions (wherein the internal blocking filter is removed from the sensor) for Nikon and Canon DSLRs, but being a lone-wolf Pentax shooter I was out of luck. Fuji (temporarily) saved the day for me and elevated my IR photography to the next level. More on that, in The Next Phase post.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from the clayhaus photoblog

Work versus Play

2010-10-07T16:55:00.001-06:00

We humans love the apparent dichotomy that surrounds us. We love the yin and yang of things: black and white, male and female, dog people and cat people, square peg or round hole, right and wrong, good and evil, work and play. But note I wrote 'apparent' because in fact these dichotomies -- plus many more -- really only exist in our minds.

It's not that black and white or good and evil don't exist. The falsehood is the concept that ONLY those two extremes exist. Take black and white...as a photographer do you truly not believe that there are shades of rich grey in between the purest white and the deepest black? Of course, just as there are many shades of behavior -- whatever your moral compass -- between right and wrong. (Absolutists may argue with me, but they are wrong ;->). Even the seemingly clear line between the sexes is not so distinct. Never mind overt behaviors or trans-gender migrations, most experts acknowledge a clear difference between biological sex (one chromosomal difference out of 46) and social gender. Mars and Venus are much closer than their respective orbits would imply.

Those were some of the thoughts buzzing about my brain whilst I was scrambling through a stand of fall-tinged aspens this past Sunday. I was working my way through that particular swath of orange and red, looking for lines, interesting tree formations, shadows, and leaves against sky patterns. I was in fact 'working' that grove and yes I was enjoying myself but I was not playing at it. So, my mind started noodling at the difference between Work and Play.

We are all familiar with the equations: work = drudgery and play = fun! But ask anyone who truly likes their job and they will admit to some non-glamorous aspects of their work but they will mostly talk of satisfaction and enjoyment. Play is of course fun and you can derive real enjoyment from it. But, in my mind, what really separates work and play is seriousness. Seriousness is the grey between the black and white of work and play. How seriously you are pursuing a particular activity determines where you are in that particular spectrum. I was seriously working that grove (for almost two hours!), and not playing around.

Is this important? Perhaps only to a quasi-semanticist like me, but I do use the term 'work' often as in that grove of aspens or when I am working an image on my computer, much as a film developer would be doing the same in the darkroom. This is distinct from when I am playing with some new software before getting down to the business of really using it.

Also for me, when someone asks "Are you going to ________ for work or play?" the flippant answer is 'yes,' while the true answer is 'work.' I am going to that country, state, city, location to work it. Yes, I will be enjoying myself, but I also expect to come away with a body of work for my efforts. So, if you stumble across me 'working' with camera(s) in hand, you may see a serious expression on my face, but rest assured, the smile is in my mind.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from the clayhaus photoblog

Life after Drowning

2010-10-04T20:38:00.001-06:00

Is it possible? In the case of cameras, apparently it is.

A couple of weeks ago I was checking out the early (too early as it turned out) fall colors up one of the local Wasatch Mountain canyons. Coming down from the long hike I was not a little tired and fording a small stream slipped. I often hike with a tripod-mounted camera in one hand and, and, depending upon the scenery, an infrared camera in the other with the rest of the gear in my Lowe Pro back pack. This was not the first time I have fallen with no hands free to protect myself, so you’d think, to paraphrase my understanding wife, that I’d learn. Evidently, not so.

At any rate, down I went into the stream, my right hand holding aloft the tripod and my Pentax K-20 mounted with a Sigma 10-20mm. Approximately $2000 worth of non-water proof gear. I got wet but not that gear. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for my infrared-converted Pentax DS: it flew out of my hand and into a pool of water. The pained squawking noise I was making had less to do with my bruised posterior than with the fact that I was watching my out-of-reach camera (mounted with a prime Pentax 20mm f/2.8 lens) slowly sink to the bottom of the shallow pool. I felt like the proverbial turtle on its back: in an awkward position, struggling to right myself and reach my submerged camera. It didn’t help that the backpack and muscle cramp in my left calf was conspiring to keep me ground-bound and my camera submerged.

Finally I was able to pull myself up and grab the camera strap to lift my dripping camera out of the water. It seemed like it had been under for several minutes but in reality it was certainly no more than 10-20 seconds. Time enough! Even the weather seals on my K10 and K20 would have been hard-pressed to resist the cold, flowing stream water.

I pulled the batteries out -- if ever in a similar situation, don’t turn on a wet camera as you run a good chance of shorting out the electronics -- and opened up the various doors, pulled the SD card out and twisted the lens off. Water ran out of every orifice. “Toast!” I thought, “Perhaps the camera docs can breathe life back into it.”

Once home I opened all the camera’s doors and left the lens off in the hopes that our dry Utah climate would work its magic on the camera. The lens itself was fine. If I had had a cheap plastic lens perhaps I would not have fared so well, but this 20mm is a fine prime and apparently well-sealed.

After a couple of days, I dropped some batteries in and turned on the camera. All seemed well at first as I reset the date but then all of a sudden the LCD panel began displaying characters that looked to be a cross between Cyrillic and Klingon. Looking at the LCD monitor I could clearly see water behind the glass. I quickly pulled the batteries out and gave it another day. Returning to it a day later I popped the batteries in, set the date and Lo and Behold (imagine trumpets and angels), it lives!

Perhaps life after drowning is not as rare as I had imagined. I found several posts online discussing just this and also advanced some additional treatments such as the use of white rice (uncooked, to be sure) and silica packs to help absorb water. These would likely help in more humid environs than the Southwest. I’m a happy infrared camper once again and I swear that the dowsing even took care of three annoying spots on the sensor I could not seem to remove by more reasonable measures. Of course, I can’t recommend to everyone sensor cleaning via drowning, but it seems to have worked for me!

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Travels with Non-Photographers

2010-09-21T18:31:00.001-06:00

Generally, I take three types of photography trips: solo, with one or more photographers, or with my patient and long-suffering wife (who is decidedly not a photographer).

The first type of travel is easy: I do what I want, when I want and take as much or little time as I wish doing it. The down-side is that if you are rut-prone, you may stay in it longer than think, not even realizing you have a wheel or two in the ditch.

Traveling with other photographers can introduce compromise into your schedule and subject matter. But that is often leavened with the opportunity to sound new ideas, bounce concepts off of each other and try things you might never have thought about. In other words, you may find yourself pulling out of that rut. Good traveling companions are important though. Stubbornness is rarely a virtue in a group. Patience is though, as photographers understand each other at least enough to know that good image making takes time and perseverance.

My wife...what can I say? She is the ever-patient photo-widow one could only wish for. She understands that I need the time and space to make my images. She also understands that sometimes it may be best for her to not venture out for those late evening Provençal village strolls or a sunrise on the Charles Bridge. She knows that I will be taking just a bit more time than she wants to give, and I understand that. During the day she slowly sight-sees and I slowly capture my scenes. Occasionally she'll swap a camera out of my pack or hold my tripod for me. I will occasionally say, yep, that's a nice ceramic plate...buy it. It's a good partnership.

But what about traveling with a mass of non-photographers? Sounds like a recipe for frustration, non? It can be but like most things, it is all in how you manage it. I got a full dose of that recently when my wife and I traveled to Provence to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary with 19 other people...non-photographers mind you. Oh sure, there were a lot of cameras, and even two other DSLR users, but no one else (crazy enough) trying to make a living at photography!

So, did it work out? Did I get frustrated? Yes and almost never. The trick was to let them do their thing and I would do mine and we'll meet in another hour or two (or more). C'est parfait! I got to wander narrow medieval cobblestone alleys or shadow-ridden Roman corridors with my only constraint being to meet the others at a certain time. I can work with that. The time allotted was not always enough, but usually that had to do with the overall day agenda that I (fortuitously) set. Often I was a bit aggressive in estimating what we would be able to cover in full, busy day. But, we made adjustments as needed. Waiting for folks does try one's patience, but I can honestly say that I waited for others as seldom as they waited for me. A reasonable approach and attitude begets a satisfactory outcome...n'cest pas?

See the full gallery on posterous

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Lessons from an Art Festival: Saying "Thanks" and Meaning it

2010-08-31T23:26:00.005-06:00

Believe me, it may not seem like it to those of you popping in and out of our booths, but it is hard work to stand around for 5-10 hours, greeting you, the interested and perhaps even buying patron, with a smile and a “Hello.” And then when you compliment us on our work – as you often do and usually upon exiting empty handed from our booth – I must say “Thank you!” and mean it.

So what is so tough about that you ask? For some, perhaps many, it is no biggie. The jeweler women on either side of us at the Farmer’s Market always seem warm and chipper. I’m not. On the other end of the art festival spectrum there are those booths occupied by GDAs (Grumpy Dudes with an Attitude). Not a role model. My goal is to be engaging and open and truthful. And, that is at times Work!

I don’t mean to imply that being deceitful, obtuse or disinterested comes naturally. But, sometimes it is easier to be lazy, to not rise to meet people, to not greet people, to say “thanks” and not mean it. It’s obvious that this not what one should be doing, but after a long day – or a couple of even longer days – laziness sometimes comes a-knocking. Don’t answer the door!

How you interact – or don’t – with your potential customers is extremely important. To facilitate this you must become adept at reading those who enter your booth. Some clearly don’t want an interaction: lack of eye contact and mumbled response when you say “Hi!” are your sure give-aways. I try to always greet folks and I find “How are you?” is a better gauge of their willingness to connect than a mere “Hello.” If they don’t want to talk, leave them alone and perhaps say “thank you” when they depart. To those that do seem warm to my presence I will usually add, “Let me know if you have any questions” as a sign that I too am willing to engage.

Many of the questions I get are of the “what kind of cameras do you use” or “do you have any photos of whales (or planes or beaches in Oregon or ashrams in India…you get the idea).” The trick is to answer each questioner as if I have both never heard it before and it is one of the most interesting things ever uttered. They don’t know that I have already told the 3 previous people that I shoot with Pentax DSLRs and a Hasselblad XPan II nor can they assume that just because I don’t have any images of eagles hanging in my booth I might have some matted in the bins. Each person is unique and should be treated thusly, and so I tell myself.

Occasionally pros or semi-pros as well as real tyros will ask good questions (often about my infrared work) and a full-on conversation/discussion unfolds. These are great. I love sharing information (I said I was open didn’t I?) and think it is funny that others “hide” their methodologies and techniques. Fortunately there are few of those folks and the photog community is genuinely quite willing to share their “secrets.” The only problem is that sometimes we get so wrapped in the discussion that I fail to see the other people in the booth. I try my best to acknowledge them without sacrificing an interesting conversation that may grow to an even more interesting connection.

When compliments are spoken they should be treated as gold. Perhaps not a currency that can purchase anything (I have several tens of thousands of dollars worth of compliments safely banked in my imaginary safe deposit box) but they do mean something. After all, a visitor does not have to utter anything (and many don’t) so I take it as GENUINE when someone says “I like your stuff” (I know: “stuff?”) or “great images” (better) or “you really have an eye for composition” (plus better) or “this is so unique” (Bingo! Ding Ding Ding! You’ve hit the jackpot!).

So I promise, if you come into my booth late in the day, perhaps even while we are breaking everything down, I will do my best to say “hi” and maybe even chat. It’s the least I can do since you have taken the time and effort to look at my work. And if you pay me a compliment, truly I will say thank you and truly I will mean it (and my account grows!). But if you ask me if I have any duotone photos of dolphins jumping out of the water off the coast of Maine with a submarine in the background and a falcon soaring overhead whilst holding a rabbit, well, I just might have to tell you that I’m working on that...when I actually am not.

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Lessons From an Art Festival: Booth Matters

2010-08-24T23:34:00.001-06:00

At the Salt Lake Farmer’s Market -- where I have a booth every Saturday -- we have 3-5 feet of space to the right and left and plenty of storage room behind the booth. We don’t normally put the sides down on the canopy (though the back we do because the sun shines in during the morning). There are 12 white grids around the perimeter upon which hang about 50 framed color and B&W images. In the center of the booth is a long table that holds several bins for matted images. Traffic flows in a U shape through the booth and usually with little congestion. My wife and I normally site outside the booth with a small table, which operates as our “office.” So, the Clayhaus Photography booth is relatively open and airy with a spacious feeling conducive to image viewing and discussion, or so I feel.

We arrived early for our designated set-up time at the art festival, and were in for a bit of a shock. The other vendor booths to our aft, port and starboard side were firmly in place and we were supposed to squeeze our 10’ x 10’ booth into a, yes, you guessed it, 10’ square space. We should have thought through the ramifications of that. Yes, I perseverated for a week or two wondering how I was going to fit all my 5‘ x 8’ trailer’s worth of gear into a nice box like our spot, but no real conclusions were reached. Because we were sorting through these issues whilst erecting the booth, set-up took twice as long and more importantly, compromises were required. Other than setting up our “office” ten feet away on the sidewalk (like others were doing), we had no spillage to any sides. That box was tight. I still needed to maintain the U flow though so I cut down on a few other items (a 2^nd card spinner and a 2^nd matted prints artist easel). The tight feeling was compounded by all the canopy walls needing to be in place. The light was therefore reduced (though it also kept out the rain!). Definitely a compromise of sorts was achieved.

My booth looked “good” but in scouting other booths I came to several conclusions that would help me improve my presence. One, the booth should be attractive, inviting, and professional looking. Two, flow-through is muy importante. And, three, the actual booth location matters.

It is a matter of degrees, of course. After all, I do consider that my booth looks attractive and inviting and has at least a modicum of professionalism. However, there is no doubt that some upgrading would help. For instance, grids are okay but panels such as ProPanels look soooo much nicer and more professional. Enough to spring for the buggers? Not sure yet. Also, I have an assortment of singular framed images that vary in size from around 11”x14” to 24”x30”. I saw many other photographers concentrate on less variety in images and produced much larger prints. Something to consider.

Fortunately I figured out early on that if my booth had a dead end, it would result in a Sargasso Sea effect of potential customers milling about, bumping into each other, whilst trying to escape. Not good for people wanting to look at your work and certainly not good for business. I saw the best flow in corner booths where the artist really worked that position resulting in customers entering and departing relatively seamlessly. Would I pay the extra cash for a corner? In a word, ‘yes!’.

Finally, in some festivals you can request the actual position of your booth. If you know the venue it may be well worth the extra cash outlay to secure a somewhat centralized position. Being relegated to the extremities of a festival is definitely not good. Nor, necessarily, would I want to be next to the band stand. (Unless of course if Jeff Beck or John McLaughlin were playing.)

There is no doubt in my mind that come next year’s festival season, the Clayhaus Booth will have undergone some upgrades.

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Lessons From an Art Festival: Talking to Other Vendors

2010-08-23T10:25:00.001-06:00

Other artists -- especially if you are a relative newbie like me -- can be valuable resources in your quest on the art festival circuit. You can learn from them and most of them -- once they see your “Artist” badge -- are happy to offer suggestions and advice.

From a pure courtesy standpoint, I got to know our neighbors. One had been attending the festival since the 90’s, so he certainly had the logistics locked down. But, beyond the near-by rock-workers, potters, jewelers, and organo-metallic mixed-media artists, I sought out other photographers. What did I what to know?

For one, I am always appraising the way others set up their booths. I want to see how traffic flows, what kinds of materials and display products they are using and beyond that, the sizes and types of images they are framing and how, and what they are offering as matted work. (In another post I’ll have some comments on booth set-up and location.) In short, I’m looking for ideas on how to improve my presence. Questions such as “how do you like those display panels?” or “ where did you get that bin?” are standard I-need-to-upgrade-my-booth queries.

I am also interested in other people’s work and will consequently engage the photographer, asking questions about location, time of day, camera format and perhaps focal length (though rarely camera make, as it matters little to me), framing (if unique), and other types of questions. It’s a conversation not an interrogation and most artists are happy to discuss various aspects of their work.

I can speak from experience when I say that photographers want to know that their work is appreciated, even if the comments are coming from another photographer that has no intention of buying anything. So I will find pieces that really appeal to me -- normally not a difficult task -- and complement him/her on them. Not just, “that’s nice” but WHAT is nice about it. It means a lot to me when others engage me like that, so I must assume it matters to them as well.

If it hasn’t already, inevitably the conversation will turn to how the show is going. This is good and you will be able to validate -- or not -- your own sense of the festival. What is not cool is getting into specifics. I frankly don’t want to know that Mr. A has moved x number of framed images or that Ms. B has netted y number of dollars. You open yourself up to either disappointment or elation at someone else’s’ expense. Neither is good. It is important for me to have a good show, not a better show than Mr. A or Ms. B.

From my mere three days at the show, I sense that the art festival circuit is a community: cooperative, not competitive. Of course in a way we are all competing for a finite pool of dollars and even more so within categories of art. But my sense is that generally the artists understand that while there will be relative differences between people’s receipts, a good show will benefit all. This fosters a sense of trust and community that we could perhaps look for in other areas of our life, I do believe.

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Lessons from an Arts Festival: Que Sera, Sera

2010-08-12T13:00:00.001-06:00

This, and the following related posts, are take-aways from my first multi-day, regional arts festival. For the past couple of years, I have been showing & selling my photographs at weekly “farmer’s markets” as well as a couple of strictly local, one day festivals. So, I am a relative newbie to the art festival circuit and my comments and discussions should be considered in that light. Besides, they really are MY lessons learned. For you folks who may have been on the art circuit for years, decades perhaps, I would surely love to hear your lessons!

Now I’m not a huge fan of Doris Day, even if she is iconic of a (ridiculously) idealized time and place (think squeaky-clean 1950’s TV-era America and you’re arrived in nirvana). But her singing of the pivotal tune Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) in the 1956 Hitchcock film The Man Who Knew Too Much has always stuck with me. Whatever will be, will be. Is it a call to complacency, even existential immobility? I don’t think so. The key is in the third line: The future's not ours, to see. I interpret this as: do what you can, perhaps even all you can, then the rest, the results and outcomes, lie in the future, with fate.

Now what in tarnation does all this have to do with an arts festival you might be asking yourself! Well, the title of this post could also have been “Managing Expectations.” A number of people asked me prior to the festival what my expectations were. I would answer philosophically, “I really don’t have any.” That of course was partly true. Never having attended a festival of this magnitude, I was just glad to be invited. At least initially. Once I started preparing for the festival – printing cards, matting prints, etc. – I began harboring hopes for a really big show, all the while telling myself to manage expectations!

How good of a job did I do managing those expectations? As the French would say, “comme ci comme ça.” So-so. I never got into the numbers game: expecting to sell x number of pieces while making y number of dollars. Slip into that and you are ripe for disappointment. Nonetheless, the word on the street was that this was shaping up to be a slow show, meaning lower than usual attendance and lower than expected receipts. So, I began to actively manage those expectations and try to chase away any thoughts of disappointment.

In the end – though I have no empirical attendance and sales data for the overall show – for me, it was a fine experience and a festival I would happily attend again. I did well, and really all you can do is give it your best shot and trust that what will be, will be. Que Sera, Sera.

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Cards, Part II

2010-08-11T23:48:00.001-06:00

As a follow-on to my previous post about creating and selling cards, for any of you interested in doing the same, I thought I’d take a moment or two to detail the cards and suppliers I use.

First, I purchase most of my papers through a local Utah distributor, Ink Jet Art. Their prices are very competitive and they have an extensive supply of glossy, luster, satin, matte art and photo papers from such manufacturers as Moab, Harman, Ilford, Hahnemuhle, Illuminata, and Epson. They also carry inks, printers (Epson and Canon), and various manufacturers of canvas (I guess I should try printing on that someday). Ink Jet Art also carries two lines of cards and various paper and glassine envelopes for the cards. One line of cards that I occasionally use is Crane Museo. This stock is 100% cotton and really holds nice detail on its matte and lightly textured surface. It comes in various sizes from 4.5” x 6” to 5.25” square to one of my favorites, the panoramic 4” x 9”. Ink Jet Art also carries what has been my go-to matte stock for the creation of 5” x 7” cards: Moab La Sal. This paper is a very smooth, matte-finish alpha cellulose 235 gsm weight stock. As with the Crane Museo, this stock is pre-scored and double-sided for printing. Unlike the Crane products you will need to order separate envelopes, which Ink Jet Art carries as well. They ship nationally and of course if you are in the Beehive State, you can will call as well.

I’m a big fan of matte and luster papers, but not so much glossy papers. However, my wife kept insisting that my cards would “pop” more if I found a glossy, pre-scored card stock to print them on. After searching, lo and behold, I found the stock that I have been using for over a year now: Red River Papers. They carry both glossy and matte cards stock, as well as linen and 100% cotton. I’ve used two different weights of the glossy stock and wife claims they look great (and I’m not arguing!). They also recently starting carrying a 100% recycled content matte finish card stock and after testing, it looks very good next to my Moab La Sal cards. Red River is not local to Utah but they deliver very quickly.

If you have some other paper sources out there for printing cards, let me know…I’m always keeping my eyes out for new and different ideas and products.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Cards Sell

2010-08-09T22:38:00.002-06:00

I’ve heard a comment from other photographers that creating photo-cards to sell was not worth their time. They have a point. Though the markup percentage may look good on paper really we are only talking 2 or 3 dollars per sale. Factor in the time to order stock, create the card in Illustrator (or wherever you do that kind of work) and print it out and are you really making that much? Probably not. So why do I still do it?
Basically three reasons. The first is pretty obvious: there are days when cards are THE primary salable products. It’s not what you want, but it is what it is. There are other days when I may unload a card or three but matted prints are what’s hot. Go figure, because I can’t. So, cards are the fall-back.
They are also very easy to make, once you have a template. I do mine in Illustrator. Replenishing stock is as simple as just opening the file and print. I’m doing it while writing this post. Creating new cards is also pretty simple. With Photoshop, I just create a border effect on the image I want to place in the Illustrator template, drop it in and re-number the card. Done.
Finally, cards are a marketing tool. Assuming you have your company and contact info on the back, there are at least two people who will receive the message that you are a talented photographer: the person who buys the card and the person who receives it in the mail. For a buck or two outlay, that’s not bad.

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Tips from Tom II

2010-07-21T17:27:00.001-06:00

Day two of our workshop with Tom Till and Jon Fuller found us heading out early on the Potash Road. The Gooseneck was our sunrise destination, but that didn’t mean much to me. The last time I had been on that bouncy dirt road was some 27 years before in a beat-up late-70’s model Datsun. But that’s another story for another time. As it was, our little convoy arrived yet again in the nick of time to capture the effects of the rising sun. (I have since affectionately taken to calling just in time arrivals, “Tom Till Time.”) Our location was off of a little spur road directly below the massive Dead Horse Point lookout, some 1600 feet above us. I’m sure that anyone up there had a nice view, but we were IN it. The reddish-orange glow of the huge gooseneck butte loomed before us, the Colorado River turning to flame as sunrise began to claim the day. We only had fifteen minutes or so of shooting before the canyon walls turned hotter and the magical glow left the river.

Tom and Jon quickly gathered us up (me lingering as usual) for a short drive back along the Potash Road to a location which Jon dubbed Crinoid Corners, because of the large amount of fossilized Jurassic-era sea plants found here and there. Interesting, but not being paleontologists we were more motivated to see and shoot the pillow rock formations below us, the blazing red cliff walls receding westward towards the Shafer Trail, the silhouetted La Sal Mountains to the East, and southward a series of ramparts – the Canyon Rim area – partially framing Lockhart Basin. Tom and Jon brought us here to shoot every direction including into the sun. Doing the latter – especially with a long telephoto lens – will give you that nice layered look and I thought the B&W conversions worked particularly well. (Shooting at an acute angle to the sun will often yield those nasty lens flares. Using a hat is helpful to block them but I also usualy carry my trusty Flare Buster.)

Back in Moab we went our separate ways for lunch. Not wanting to waste time in a restaurant, I drove south with my sandwich to photograph some early Fall colors in dry washes and Wilson Arch, alongside Hwy 191. Post lunch, Tom had put aside a couple of hours to critique images we had selected from our respective portfolios. This time was incredibly valuable from a number of perspectives. There is of course the ego factor if he happens to say something nice about one of your pieces, but let’s put that aside and discuss constructive points. Looking through a pro’s eyes while he dissects images opens your eyes to what can be seen. As untrained critics (I submit that we are ALL critics, trained or not, knowledgeable or nay) we may well miss composition details for the whole, or not understand what exactly it is about an image that does not work. Whilst reviewing your work, what we want to hear is that you are on track, or if not, what it would take to put you on back on track. Look for the common threads, the “too much empty space” or “too centered” “need to get closer” or in my case the “interesting compositions…I have never seen this shot like that...that gives me ideas!” For me, this was validation that I am on the right path and that I am developing a unique vision.

Our sunset location was a Zeus mallet of a hoodoo called Elvis’ Hammer. Also called Olympic Torch, this rock structure is located east of Moab with no obvious trail leading to it. We took the “scenic route” and hiked past some other smaller hoodoos. There are many sandstone shelves around the Hammer so we were able to creatively set ourselves up in plenty of time for dusk. I positioned myself on a lower remnant of what must have once been Elvis’ Fin and proceeded to document the waning light. I frankly didn’t think the sunset was going to be all that dramatic, but Tom kept saying that it was going to be “nice.” As the sun dipped below the horizon, it was more than nice…high, wispy clouds slowly ignited into a Duraflame kaleidoscope that stretched across the sky. As the light continued to descend – and we packed up our gear – a soft magenta glow around the Hammer became our swan song. I wisely choose not to put away my camera and tripod and shot well past the others, even while exiting in the growing dark. My motto became: never pack it away, or something to that effect.

Sound business advice, exposure to quasi-unknown locations, technical tips with the voice of experience, encouraging and helpful critiquing stirred in with two days of shooting … what is not to like about taking a workshop from a pro? Thanks Tom and Jon and see you next time!

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Tips from Tom, Part I

2010-07-06T22:56:00.001-06:00

If you haven’t taken a photo workshop from a pro, consider it. Yes, you can learn a lot on your own, from books, the copious Internet resources available, and your friends and peers. All those arrows should be in your quiver, but there is something special about learning from a pro. Actually there are many things special it.

I took a 2 day workshop from Tom Till and Jon Fuller last October and several advantages became immediately apparent. There are the technical tips and instruction; the professional and business related advice; the revelation of special, if not just plain secret, places; and, if you are fortunate enough, time well-spent having your work critiqued.

The 12 or so Wasatch Camera Club members met that first morning, an hour before dawn, and we drove to a location between Dead Horse Point and Island-in-the-Sky. Called (informally) Marlboro Point – for a cigarette commercial that was once shot there – we arrived just before sunrise and quickly captured the shadows departing as the wall of sunlight fell upon the buttes and cliffs. The view itself was worth the price of admission for the workshop. We’ve all seen images from Dead Horse Point, but though that park was relatively close, and Island-in-the-Sky seemingly a stone’s throw away, Marlboro Point offered up a unique view and opportunity. Tom and Jon knew the way…certainly none of the rest of us did, and probably not many others do as well!

While shooting that first morning, they both helped where needed, made suggestions, and would scout tripod locations. All, pretty much as expected, but it was clear that some folks really benefited from the technical guidance. (Key concept of the morning: hyperfocal distance.)

Prior to lunch we toured Tom’s gallery which afforded us a good Q&A opportunity. Questions about printing, paper, what sells, what doesn’t, books and more, were asked. I’m less interested in paper details but a few business-related nuggets have stuck with me: “local sells local” “the website is for non-buyer’s remorse” “one image really turned the corner for my business” “you have to open a gallery.” These are paraphrased, but you get the drift.

During lunch we talked more business: how things have changed, how stock has dried up, how microstock is killing the golden goose, how tough it really is. I was pretty discouraged and asked Tom straight out: should we just pack it in and not kid ourselves about making a career of this? He emphatically shook his head ‘no’ and I thank him for that.

We ended the day at Faux Falls south of Moab. Though not far off the main highway, having the pros show us the general location at the right time of day was invaluable. The rest was up to us.

Next Post: Day Two with Tom and Jon….

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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That's Not Your Style!?

2010-06-21T10:34:00.001-06:00

I have a booth in the Arts & Crafts section of Salt Lake City’s weekly Farmer’s Market. In the booth I there are hanging perhaps 40 framed images. They vary from iconic redrock images to West Desert landscapes, vivid color shots of sunsets on the Great Salt Lake to black & white renderings of abandoned shacks. I also have four bins filled with matted prints of varying sizes. The matted prints are more diverse in offering a number of travel images from Japan, Iceland, Italy and other destinations.

This past Saturday a young woman – an illustrator by trade – was very complementary of my framed landscapes. We chatted and while flipping through one of my bins she exclaimed, ”This isn’t your style, is it!?” It really was more of statement than a question. The image in question was one I had taken in Corsica, a large retriever lazily laying in the doorway of a restaurant. One of those serendipity travel shots that you just happen upon, I’ve sold both prints and photocards of the image and have it hanging in our home.

I was surprised by the statement, though perhaps I shouldn’t have been. We certainly seem to readily pigeon-hole people, whether in the Arts or in the Professional world. I would like to resist that. Travel Photography is one of my favorite genres to explore. But in my mind it can rest easily beside my landscape work and my developing architectural work. I am a generalist by proclivity and my photographic naturally and organically tends to mirror that. Having said that, there are clearly subjects that have little photographic appeal to me, so while my interests are diverse, they are also fairly well-defined. This is good because, the real trick is to bring a certain excellence to whatever you do, not necessarily become a stylist. Not to name names, but we all know some of those stylists and some are making Big Bucks. More power to them and their success.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to explore what is of interest to me even if they may seem far afield from Utah landscapes. I’ll look to past masters such as Edward Weston and Bill Brandt whose interests and pursuits varied from decade to decade, but who always strived to define excellence in their own unique fashion. I like that.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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An Interesting Tree Does Not a Successful Image Necessarily Make

2010-04-22T16:25:00.001-06:00

A few weeks back I was in the far-flung southwest region of Utah’s West Desert taking photos for The Wilderness Society. They wanted a pictorial documentation of a rather unassuming line of mountains along the Nevada border called the Mountain Home Range. They are not the most picturesque of Basin and Range peaks, but really beauty can be found just about anywhere in nature, if one has a mind to look.

Sometime late in the afternoon, long after gassing up for the last time in Baker, Nevada and driving umpteen miles on dirt roads, I found myself a very nice campsite on a spur of the Mountain Home Range, near a minor peak called The Toad. I had a prime view over the Pine Valley to the Wah Wah Mountains, and after setting up camp I clambered up a ridge for some photo ops. In addition to a grand Pine Valley/Wah Wah Mtns. panorama there were some interesting trees. Trees with what I call ‘personality.’

One pinyon pine in particular was striking: not overly large, it made two 90 degree turns before ending in a tuft of bushy pine needles. Protruding from the top was one lone arm of a branch, reaching to the sky. This guy needed his photo taken. I set up my tripod first for a horizontal shot and bracketed several exposures. Nice, but I decided to focus more on the tree and the dramatic sky (snow was threatening). With the tripod low, I took several vertical exposures, merely trying to keep the thatch of pine needles separate from the hilly background. (As an FYI, I usually bracket with the idea that I may utilize exposure fusion or HDR, or some other methodology to expand the dynamic range of the final image.) I then finished with several hand-held vertical exposures with my infrared-converted DSLR.

Once home I posted the horizontal and a B&W conversion of my favorite vertical HDR image (below) on Flickr. The B&W image in particular received a number of complimentary comments. I then posted what I am calling the “Initial Version” on a Photo Critique forum a site called Photography Review. This is a great site where people actually take the time to review and critique your images in intelligent and thoughtful ways (unlike the usual “awesome shot, dude!” you get on Flickr).

The main criticism of my images was that there was not enough separation between the tree trunk and the busy background. I didn’t disagree because as I shot the series of images at f/32, pretty much from the pebble in front of me to the distant peak a mile or so away was in focus. I do a lot of shooting in this mode: extremely long DOF (depth of field). I like it that way, usually. In this case, the background does compete a bit with the foreground (tree trunk), though it didn’t bother me that much. Nonetheless, using curves and local tonal/contrast adjustments, I attempted to separate the tree even more from the background and that yielded the “Mid Version.” The critiques were still not singing the praises, so in the “Final Version” I actually cloned-out some of the background details that were competing with the edges of the tree trunk. That version was to me, the most successful of the vertical shots (though I must admit being partial to the Infrared Version as well).

Is the moral “You can’t please everyone.” No, though that is of course true. In the end it is not about pleasing anyone (though one should be pleased with one’s own images now and then). Rather, it should be about creating better compositions that work. Perhaps that tree would be much more of a successful image if I had shot it at f/5.6 instead. I should have thought of that and bracketed at that f-stop as well as at f/32. Will I make a trip back out to that particular spot to re-shoot? Unlikely. But, I guarantee you that I will think about this process the next time I have a foreground landscape object of interest against a potentially competing background. And though post-processing can work wonders, getting it as close to right as one can in the field, is the best plan.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Learning to SEE

2010-03-24T09:25:00.001-06:00

“I am teaching you how to see as opposed to merely looking.” – Carlos Castaneda

Whether one buys the premise that Carlos Castaneda was a powerful acolyte on the Yaqui Warrior’s Path of the Nagual or was instead a New Age hoax that bewitched a generation of dreamy-eyed, latter-day hippies, there are some interesting philosophical concepts bandied about in his ten books. One that has always stuck with me and seems apropos to the world of photography is the Art of Seeing.

In the Castaneda books seeing is the ability to look beyond our current, facile reality into the realm of magical entities and pure energy. This, as opposed to merely looking, as in “to look at something” which implies a superficial glance. Fine-art photographers don’t have to wax metaphysical to understand the requirement to see things differently than others. Bill Brandt – the preeminent British photographer of the 20^th century – said it best when he wrote: “It is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country.”

As photographers, our visual antennae must be all-aquiver, attentive, and receptive to see the artistic possibilities that abound around us. Often that also means getting out of our comfort zone. Comfort zones are just that and we hang out in them quite a bit because they are, well, comfortable (read: non-challenging). But they are also constricting us to what we allow ourselves to know and see. That, I believe, is why photowalking outings can be so interesting. It forces you to deal with (see) subject matter you normally might merely glance at and saunter past with little thought or appreciation. I was at a recent club-organized photowalk in an old train station. It was fascinating to watch how the many photographers would approach differently the subject matter of four walls, tiled floor, and high windows and ceiling. It was also interesting to see how the passers-by would stop and look – perhaps even SEE – the station details because people with cameras were doing the same.

Go on your own photowalking jaunt, or pick themed projects to occasionally work on. Venture from your comfort zone on occasion and look for challenges that do just that. My personal goal is not to stop looking around, but to start seeing more.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Burgers as a Metaphor

2010-03-08T23:04:00.001-07:00

I admit it: I’m biased...but so are you. Don’t deny it, it’s just one of those human failings we must struggle against.

I see a photo of a subject I’m not in the remotest interested in — let’s say (in my case) rodeo or perhaps snowmobiles doing barrel rolls to the squeals of a thousand fist-pumping fans — and my GSU (Gut Sensory Unit) begins sending warning signals to my brain: “BORing, not for you, wander ye eyes somewhere else,” etc. But, if the photo is good, I mean really good, something different happens: the brain kicks in and the GSU is quieted by a simple: “huh!...interesting...that is well done!” Our (well, perhaps only MY, but I seriously doubt it) initial Gut reaction is often to the subject matter. Not always, mind you, but often enough the bias gets in the way and says “yuck...wha?...stoopid!” before we let the composition and intrinsic beauty settle in. Is it Gut versus Brain? Not really, I just think we are hard-wired to react before analyzing. That we can eventually analyze (I’m speaking again for myself here) is a VGT (Very Good Thing). We can — if we permit/push ourselves — move beyond first glance, our gut feel, to an analytical level that can be equally valid as the intuitive. Are those tensions in competition or collaboration? There is visceral and there is intellectual and then there is the vast greyness in betwixt. We choose where to hang out.

With that in mind, can a vegetarian appreciate a good burger? Can she or he look at a well-crafted photo of a hunk of cooked animal and say: “well done!” (No pun intended.) Can they go beyond the utterly visceral (and repugnant) impact of that image to applaud the skill and aplomb of the photographer? It may never be appealing on a gut-level but can the brain give it a passing score?

I’ll ask my wife...

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from the clayhaus photoblog

It's a god-forsaken desert!

2010-03-03T10:07:00.001-07:00

“It's a god-forsaken desert!” … was one individual’s dismissive and all-encompassing comment about Utah’s West Desert. A rallying cry of sorts, in this particular case to dump nuclear waste, but really this is of the extractive/exploitive mindset that really can’t imagine a land that exists for its own sake. I won’t get into a deconstructivist mode that examines how he presumes to know what God (if he/she/it exists) does or does not forsake, nor will I explore the irony behind what was once a horrid barrier to avoid or cross at one’s peril becomes a place of attraction and renewal (think Manly in 1849 struggling to lead a wagon train through a valley now known as Death). Instead, these images – all shot within ~50 miles of the “forsaken” location and hence presumably “forsaken” as well – speak for themselves. In the end, even though as a wise person once opined, “One man’s heavy metal is another woman’s opera,” it is also true that actions – and inactions – have consequences. Let decisions be guided by both maxims.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from the clayhaus photoblog

When is an Apple not an Apple?

2010-02-24T08:48:00.001-07:00

When it is a 32-bit HDR file and not a tone-mapped file.

In my last post I attempted an apples-to-apples comparison of tone-mapped output from several High Dynamic Range (HDR) applications. The goal was to utilize the ‘default’ tone-mapping setting in each of the apps and present those outputs. I got it about ½ right.

Both Photomatix Pro and HDR Essentials do in fact have default settings so I believe those comparisons are valid. However, in the case of Photoshop’s Merge to HDR tool and Unified Color’s PhotoStudio 2, neither really have a “default” setting for tonemapping. In fact the images I output from those programs were essentially tiff conversions of the 32-bit HDR file. Most monitors cannot adequately display those files so they don’t look quite right. In the case of PhotoStudio 2 after merging the files you are presented with the HDR file and expected to begin your dynamic-range editing there either manually with the various controls or by applying pre-sets (or ‘recipes’) if you have any loaded. With the Merge to HDR function in Photoshop, once the 32-bit file is created you may output it tone-mapped in a number of ways, none of which can really be considered ‘default.’

Both of the above models are different than the mechanisms either Photomatix or HDR Essentials utilize in preparing your file for output. In Photomatix, after merging the files you are presented with a 32-bit HDR image that you may save (as a Radiance file for instance) before selecting the Tonemapping button which takes you to that section of the workflow where default values (as set by the developer) may be applied in either the Details Enhancer or Tone Compressor modes. HDR Essentials does not show you the 32-bit file (though you may save it as a Radiance file and open it in Photoshop) but instead jumps you directly to the default, ‘factory-settings’ for tone-mapping as specified in preferences.

A more true comparison would have been to show all of the HDR (32-bit) file outputs but since our monitors can’t display them properly, nothing of value would have been gained from that. As it was, showing default tone-mapped files aside HDR files was confusing at best. To correct this (to some degree anyway) I have output a tone-mapped file from both Photoshop (using the Local Adaptation method) and PhotoStudio (with various local and global adjustments manually applied). Neither of these files are meant to represent the full capabilities of the applications or methodologies applied. But instead I include them here to show you how far from a 32-bit HDR file you can go via their various tone-mapping schemes and tools. Unified Color’s product in particular has very granular controls to permit potentially endless fine-tuning.

In the end, the best bet is download and try the various apps for yourself. Use the same set of files and see how easy and how long it is before you get output you are satisfied with. Time, interface ease, and final output should all be calculated into your final application decision.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from the clayhaus photoblog

Default HDR Output Examples

2010-02-20T18:41:00.001-07:00

I thought this was an interesting comparison, though by no means totally decisive as to which High Dynamic Range application one should purchase and use. I ran the same three exposures through three different HDR programs plus Photoshop CS3’s Merge to HDR function. I used the default settings on all of these apps, so as to keep the comparison as close to “apples-to-apples” as possible. Obviously, changing the parameters in the various programs could/would/should improve the output. Nonetheless, the default results are telling, though the story may be up for interpretation.

My original RAW exposures are at EV 0, EV+2 & EV-2. These then where processed accordingly:

- Photoshop CS3’s Merge to HDR function: one HDR output

- Unified Color’s HDR PhotoStudio 2: one HDR output

- Essential HDR, version 1: two outputs, one using the Details Revealed mode and the other using the Fast Tone Balancer mode

- Photomatix 3: three outputs using Tone Compressor, Details Enhancer and the non-HDR blending mode of Exposure Fusion

Looking at the original 3 exposures and then the Photomatix HDR outputs (all three!) it seems pretty clear to me that out of the proverbial starting gate Photomatix better positions your images. They have richer colors, more details, believable contrasts and less strange “HDR-like” artifacts. This is not to say that the other apps presented useless images (well, the Photoshop output was just plain terrible), but all of them would require more work in Photoshop to bring them into the same league with the Photomatix images.

Mind you: This was just one test. Other images with different contrast ratios and color schemes should be tried with the other applications (though not with Photoshop’s Merge to HDR…I’m done with that!) before one could definitively say who the winner would be of this HDR shootout. I’ll continue to explore the other apps and perhaps new ones as well. But I must say, for my HDR work, currently I’ll just be clicking on the Photomatix icon.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from the clayhaus photoblog

I Hate HDR! (A Subjective Analysis)

2010-02-12T18:52:00.003-07:00

I Hate HDR! If you know my photography, you know that statement is not true. But researching and putting together an HDR presentation/tutorial I will be giving next week, I came across a number of posts, blogs, discussion groups, etc., that professed extreme distaste for all things HDR. It made for some amusing reading and has provided me with enough juicy quotes to populate one of my slides (my favorite: "It's like a bad acid trip!"). Reading deeper, of course, revealed a number of interesting insights:

1) It's a "religious war!" As most heated, opinionated discourses are. Film versus digital, Mac versus PC (versus Linux), reformation versus counter-reformation, deedle-dem versus dweedle-rep, ad infinitum. It's usually the chatter of the extremists who drown out the commonsensical discussion of the middle-ground.

2) In one corner the Absolutists and the other the Relativists!...or, if you prefer, the purists against the whatever-floats-yer-boaters. I certainly am not a purist (in the 'old days' it was frowned upon to crop an image) but neither am I an all-things-are-equal. To me there is a qualitative difference between a Caravaggio and the doodlings of my nephew (whom I nonetheless love dearly).

3) It's a tool, folks! Just like the proverbially pen or sword, imbued with neither intelligence nor intent. What the individual uses those tools for or even how they use them determines it's subjective value.

4) There be luddites! Amongst the chatter you could still read the anti-digital and/or anti-Photoshop sentiment of some. In the "good old days" (defined by whomever parrots that phrase) people created Real Art with hard work and painstaking hours in the darkroom. Yes, I am in agreement: very good Art was created in the past. But the democratization (and, that is what it is) of digital and the Internet has spawned a multi-order-of-magnitude outpouring of images that we can waste our days clicking through. This has fundamentally changed the way we perceive photography. I can just as easily view the work of incredibly talented photographers on Flickr whilst I am also just one link away from gawd-awful dreck. C'est le nouvelle vie!

5) When the technique gets in the way of the image, it's not art! I'm sure Monet, Renoir, Rodin, van Gogh, Munch, Picasso, Pollock, etc., etc., heard the same thing. This does not in any way equate my over-cooked HDR image in this post with The Scream, mind you, rather, we should be very wary of condemning a technique or methodology because of the technique or methodology.

6) Well, really it's just the over-cooked images I'm objecting to.Okay, now we are getting somewhere. Not necessarily because those images suck (which they may well), but because we are now reasonably recognizing that it is NOT the technique that's at fault but rather we just don't like
SOME of the output. Breakthrough!

Many photographers DO recognize that HDR and its related techniques are a breakthrough of sorts. For these photographers subtlety is the key (sHDR?): tamed skies, no halos, contrast and some shadows. You will find their postings far more frequently than the shrill cries of anti-HDR people. It really is a tool to use or abuse or ignore. The choice is yours. I wouldn't campaign one way t'other. I just know that it is an important technique for me but I also recognize that my tastes and proclivities will change over time (thank Buddha). I hope people will appreciate my images for WHAT they are and not obsess over how I created them. Hope is a good thing.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from the clayhaus photoblog

Look at your feet...occasionally

2010-02-10T23:58:00.001-07:00

A fellow photographer friend (let’s call him Will) was telling me a story about a group photo shoot at the SLC Main Library (http://www.flickr.com/photos/clayhaus/3955090258/in/set-72157613429118501/). (If you don’t know this building it is an award winning modern structure with enough movement and interest that it won over this die-hard lover of Romanesque and Gothic architecture.) While the other photographers were scattered about getting the best angle on the sweep and flowing lines of glass, concrete and metal, Will was aiming his camera at a puddle. Someone came up to him and said: “With this beautiful building in front of you, you shoot a puddle?!” Will said something to the effect of: “There are plenty of others to shoot the building…no one is capturing this puddle.” Now, whether this puddle was ‘worth’ capturing is not the point (and perhaps a subject for another post).

Another example: Ansel Adams was shooting with his friend Brett Weston. In those days Brett was carting around a 11 x 14 field camera while Ansel ‘only’ had an 8 x 10. So there is Ansel setting up for one of his gorgeous zone-system-to-the-max landscapes and he looks over at Brett and starts laughing. Weston had his massive camera pointed at a pile of leaves some 5 feet away. If you have ever seen any of Weston’s foliage shots, you know THEY were worth it.

The photos in this post show 3 different examples of looking at a scene. All were shot at about the same vantage point at Cardiff Creek, just below Donut Falls. However, each photo has a very different feel. I’m not saying which is “best” – though I have my favorite – just that as landscape photographers we shouldn’t always keep our eyes fixed on the horizon. Scan the skies…then look at your feet!

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Posted via email from the clayhaus photoblog

Bryce Canyon in Winter

2010-01-21T13:19:00.002-07:00

Bryce in winter is sublime. Red and orange hoodoos draped and dappled with white snow present a fantasy land of forms and shapes, patterns and abstracts. Stark trees framed against undulating snow coax compositions impossible in warmer months. Cloudy, cold skies force a different photographic approach to the landscape, as well as briskly encourage you to keep moving and generate some heat. Serendipity is with you ... or not. Having just returned from Bryce Canyon National Park I can share some tips.

To start with, Ruby's Inn is really your best choice for lodging. They offer special, very low winter rates and have the only open restaurant "in town" during that season. The rooms are nice, spacious, feature a refrigerator and microwave and have free Internet for those interested in immediately sharing images (as I was).

One of the beauties of Ruby's Inn is that it is but 5 minutes from the park entrance with perhaps another 5 minutes to the first two prime viewpoints: Sunrise and Sunset. These two viewpoints coupled with Inspiration and Bryce, comprise the quadriad of viewpoints over the main amphitheater. For our two mornings in Bryce we chose Sunset and Inspiration, though you really can't go wrong setting up in any of the 4 viewpoints. The lowest of the points, Sunset puts you closer into the amphitheater with views both north (to Sunrise) and south (to Inspiration and Bryce, in order). You can also drop down a few meters or so on the Navajo Loop trail and catch first light on Thor's Hammer. It is a small viewpoint so with a lot of photographers I would find it untenable to maneuver (I like to shoot sunrises/sunsets with two bodies with different focal length lens on two tripods). I really liked Inspiration Point. There are three main "platform" viewpoints separated by a long ridge line. I actually choose the ridge line about 15 meters above the mid-platform. It afforded me an incredible panoramic view of the amphitheater but also allowed me to shoot south towards Bryce Point. I also loved the fact that I had a few tall pines that I could use as framing objects. Finally, not being bound by platform railing permitted to shift my tripods at will. Oh yes: did I mention that no one intruded upon my space!

We arrived at the viewpoints each morning about a half hour before the sun rose. This allowed setup time, but more importantly, I love shooting the pre-dawn light and both mornings it was sublime.

(A word about clothing: bring plenty and layer. Cover your head and hands as well. I love my pair of REI mitten/gloves that allow the mitten part to slip up just exposing the finger tips for working with the camera controls. Even then, my hands got cold at times.)

After sunrise, the place to be is down in hoodoos. The morning light (as well as the late afternoon) glows amongst the tall red rock spires. You want to capture that. The Navajo Loop is very nice but I really enjoyed the varying landscape and compositional possibilities along the Queen's Garden Trail. I used a variety of focal lengths -- 12-70mm -- as well as my infrared cameras. I was able to obtain some very effective images with the use of the latter. There are times when the stark contrast provided by IR produces far more striking photographs than conventional cameras. Additionally, we had one day of near-total overcast. It was a flat, non-colourful, "B&W day" and I chose to explore it predominately with IR.

There is more to the park than the 4 main viewpoints and the amphitheater below them. The road extends another 15 miles south ending at the 1000 foot higher viewpoints of Rainbow and Yovimpa. The view south to Arizona from these points is amazing though unfortunately Navajo Mountain was shrouded in some bilious coal plant plumes. I was surprised and disappointed to see that.

There are numerous view spots to stop at on the drive south, but frankly if you are time-limited, you'll be better served (photographically-speaking) by staying north. In fact just north of the main amphitheater is another fascinating area: the Fairyland Trail. During the summer the 8+ mile trail can be completed in 3-4 hours but with snow the going is slo-o-o-o-w. We hiked the short section to Tower Bridge from Sunrise Point. The destination was a wee bit underwhelming but the journey was incredible. You quickly descend into a fantasy land of strange walls and pillars separated by silent fields of snow. We saw not a soul.

Before dropping into the various basins inquire at the park ranger station as to the condition of the trails. I brought my snowshoes (they weren't needed where we went) but unfortunately left my Yak-Tracks at home. I really could have used the latter as there were quite a few icy patches with a steep pitch down-slope if you were not mindful. Since the last snow had been 10 days or so before our arrival, the trails were relatively well-packed and easy to follow. I would not want to be breaking trail or route-finding in fresh snow, however.

Sunsets are somewhat of a non-event in Bryce. The amphitheater is in shadow, though the light on the Aquarius Plateau to the east can be stunning. I chose to be below Sunrise Point both evenings and the light was photogenically soft though there was no super dramatic sunset ops. The ranger informed as that a lot of photographers go to Red Canyon (west on Hwy 12, some 10 miles or so) for sunset shots. It seems the angle is better-suited for the sundown...next time perhaps.

One suggestion: for the early-to-mid-morning and the mid-to-late afternoon wanderings through the hoodoos, you will encounter deep shadows. If you have never tried HDR photography, this would be a good time. Three-to-five shot brackets of 1.5EV will provide you with a wealth of dynamic range to play with. Even if you don't do HDR, think about bracketing. More often than not I found that the snow threw my internal meter off and I needed to shoot between +0.5 and +1.5EV.

Finally, whether tangled up in the hoodoos, or high above surveying them from a viewpoint, think about pan shots. Whether you stitch or have a dedicated panoramic camera Bryce is a pan-maven's paradise. I brought our my now-discontinued Hasselblad XPan II and shot a whole roll between 8 and 10 am.

I've always wanted to see and shoot Bryce in the winter. The weather gods treated us well and we were thusly rewarded. Hopefully you will be also.

Avoiding the Cliché

2010-01-14T14:32:00.001-07:00

There are many beautiful photographs of the world's icons, be they natural or man-made. How many gorgeous shots of the Eiffel Tower or Taj Mahal or Machu Picchu have you seen? Closer to (my) home, how about sumptuous images of a Mesa Arch sunrise (upper-left) or Delicate Arch at sunset (lower-left)? As an aspiring (emerging, struggling -- yes, they all apply!) photographer, there are times when I look at some of the masters' works and despair (see Ansel Adams' Yosemite collection for just one obvious example). But, you have to fight that "why bother" mentality and continue to try and create something striking, meaningful, well-executed and yes, perhaps even unique (while avoiding the well-trod clichés).

Those adjectives do not always seem to be in congruence. Intent must be factored in. Understand why you are shooting this particular landmark. Is it for fine art purposes, stock agency, your portfolio or a personal project, editorial or marketing assignment, etc.? What are the requirements? What do you hope the outcomes will be? If you are on assignment the client may have provided a clear idea of what she wants and your creative tendencies may be necessarily constrained. Or maybe you are "just shooting" and don't know what the end use of the images will be. Regardless, try and bring those four adjectives into one image: striking (attractive, compelling, makes someone stop and say "wow" or maybe even "huh?"), meaningful (a pretty picture is just that, but a meaningful image will resonate at a deeper level, even if it only means something to you, the artist), well-executed (the technical part: composition, lighting, post-processing...does it all add up? Do the pieces work together?), and unique (Have you avoided the standard view? Are you being creative or repetitive?).

For every nugget of wheat, a field of chaff. So too with iconic images. Avoid snap-shooting, take the time to "read" the location and work at it. There will be occasions when the first three elements may come together easier while you struggle for that sense of uniqueness. In those cases, shoot the standard, "money" shot: at the least you may have something that is salable. But, you also may find that uniqueness is the child of post-processing.

Ansel Adams too spent a long time in his darkroom.

If Mr. Claus was Fully Employed in 2009...

2009-12-24T08:54:00.009-07:00

Let's imagine the various agents (titans and minions alike) that run (and are run by) our financial empire were able to control their greed, perspective and the genie that was let out of the regulatory bottle. Let's suppose the Great Recession didn't happen and the fully and gainly employed numbers were increased by just one. Let's pretend that money is (almost) no object and that Santa was feeling especially generous this Christmas. Let my imagination run amok and daydream about what would be most cool to find under the tree tomorrow? Yes, photo gear no doubt would rate highly.

Being an avid Pentax user (are there any more of us out there?) I would love to find a K-7 waiting for me, especially now that Mrs. Claus can buy it at a reduced price at B&H Photo. Based on what I've read, this body is a significant improvement in a number of ways on the K20 which was a quantum jump over the previous K10. I own both of the latter but would like to have both of my primary shooters as similar in resolution as the K7 and K20 are (both 14.6 mp).

I have a pretty complete flight of lens for my Pentaxes but there are a few gaps that are begging to be filled. One of those is a fast, "normal," auto-focus prime lens that is a super portrait performer and allows creative opportunities for compositional and bokeh wing-stretching. Either the Pentax 55mm f/1.4 or the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 would make this photo-camper oh so happy. Another lens I have been eying for some time is Sigma's 10-20 f/3.5. Yes, I know I have Sigma's 12-24mm and it is a very nice lens with an incredible sweep of perspective. But the 10-20 is faster with a fixed aperture and importantly permits the use of filters on the end of the objective. All good reasons for Santa to drop one under my drooping tree.

I would also love a lens to cover the range 18-135mm or even 18-250mm. For Pentax photographers the choices are pretty much relegated to Sigma: either the 18-125mm f/3.8-5.6 or perhaps the 18-250mm f/3.5-6.3. Either of these lens -- and especially the latter -- would allow me to walk-about with one one or two less lenses. That counts when traveling abroad or hiking in the desert.

There is finally a point-and-shoot for photographers: the Leica D-Lux 4 and yes, it is high on my list. It's not cheap, but it is a Leica and based on everything I have seen and read, it is a mighty tiny camera.

Of course any digital photographer these days needs post-processing power. I drum my fingers waiting for my old (last year's model) PC running XP to process my 40MB HDR files, not to mention my 120MB TIFF scans. So, yes, I would also like an Apple Mac Pro...preferably the 3GHz 8-core model with 12GB RAM...please...oh and maybe the 30" A pple Cinema Monitor?

I think I just tipped the balance with that last request and I don't want to be on Santa's Bad Karma list. It's easy to daydream but some of the above will indeed creep into my kit bags. For this Christmas I'll make due just fine with my current gear and computers and the lot and just settle for one little old thing under the tree...

Return to Zion National Park, Part IV

2009-12-07T18:42:00.006-07:00

We had already captured two sunrises that were beautiful, but essentially very similar: gray-purple pre-dawn glow
giving way suddenly to a glorious orangish glow followed by the bright white of day. No clouds to give a brilliant pyrotechnic orgy of color with harkened angels singing hallelujah. The forecast was the same (no clouds) so that, coupled with Dan's overworked knee, persuaded us to sleep in. Relatively speaking...

We had one destination this last morning in Zion: return to the Horseshoe bend and photograph the beauty of the riparian curve prior to the harsh light dropping upon it. Fortunately that deep swath of the Virgin River -- below Angel's Landing -- stays in shadow long after the sun has officially risen. We pulled into the large parking lot just after 8:30 took separate paths down to the river and consequently worked the river individually and in our own private fashion. For me, I wandered upstream and with the aid of my (almost) knee-high mud boots crossed to an island (of sorts) and was able to set up for some very nice shots of both the upriver cliffs in golden light and the deeper shadows down river toward the Great White Throne.

Eventually I worked my way to where Dan was: shooting an old fallen tree that we had "discovered" two days earlier, when we had first visited this area. It is a scenic beauty of a downed giant, with whitened trunk and branches reaching plaintively to the far cliffs, or so it seemed to me. Regardless, the tree made a wonderful subject to work around and photograph from various angles, some images and angles more interesting than others. The sun continued to creep down the high cliff walls and we felt that we had played out this certain bit of heaven on earth as much as we could: it was time for our 'ritual' of real coffee at the Mean Bean Coffee House before checking out of both our motel and Zion National Park.

For a final photo op, we stop at what remains of the Mormon ghost town of Grafton. Of the 4 buildings still extant, the schoolhouse-cum-church and the Alonzo and Nancy Russell Home -- the latter a two-story ranch house with quite a bit of square footage for a town of this size -- are in the best condition. Across from the Russell home is a more ramshackle structure identified as the Louisa Foster Russell Home. It would be forgettable but for the original adobe fireplace that still stands. A last stop at the graveyard on the way out of town reminds me of just how tenuous life was a mere century and a quarter ago: killed by Indians, taken by diphtheria, drowning, a swing accident (!) that killed two teenage girls, etc. A lot of tragedy for such a small town, but hopefully leavened with a fair dose of happiness and the simple pleasures that were unique to Western frontier life.

Dan spins some classic 70's rock on our way home (Supertrtamp, Steely Dan, Lee Michaels, Malo) and I ponder why it took me so long to return to Zion. Twenty-seven years between visits is a bit much. I could say that it has something to do with the NPS' anti-dog policy. Or the fact that the Parks can be incredibly overrun with tourists. Or, that I had been seeking a more primitive experience that is better sought and realized in Wilderness Areas. Or maybe that we have been having too much of good time exploring Europe. Or, I could just say "stuff happens," leave go of over-analyzing, and promise to return NEXT year. Yeah, that works.

Return to Zion National Park, Part III

2009-12-03T05:51:00.025-07:00

Another early morning, another bad pot of coffee. Regardless, we're out the door by 6:15 with our destination just 10 minutes up the road: Courtyard of the Patriarchs.

I was set to scramble down to the river for what I thought would be some nice valley-and-river sunrise shots, but Dan gently suggested that we head up the hill behind us for a grander view of the Patriarchs. And, yes: he was right. A short asphalt 'trail' leads to a viewpoint -- already manned by a photographer -- so we clambered up higher and higher. We finally reached a glorious spot probably 100 meters higher than the road, unobstructed by trees (no mean feat) with almost a 180° view of the ramparts in front of us. We had again arrived in time to capture the pre-dawn glow I so like. Soon the sun's rays hit the top of the cliffs and how quickly the light changed. From a soft, warm, orange-ish fuzz to bright yellow and quickly (too quickly!) -- once the shadow curtain has completely fallen -- to a harsh white light. I capture the progression of the sun's path on the far walls in both color and IR, before we and the dawn quit.

Down the hill and to the Virgin River we go, as I originally wanted. Good thing that Dan suggested uphill for the sunrise: the view of the Patriarchs was significantly blocked from the river side. I capture a few nice reflections in the rapidly flowing river and manage to lose one of my tripod's rubber foots in the soft, enveloping mud. (Note to tripod manufacturers: do something about this. Do I have to super glue all of those rubber buggers?)

Next stops, the ranger station to pick up a permit for The Subway and then some real coffee again at Mean Bean Coffee House. The Subway has become one of those iconic locations that we so love to discovery and then love to death. What Delicate Arch is to Arches National Park, The Subway is becoming to Zion, or so I submit. In its favor, it is a slog of a hike from the Left Fork trail head, as I find our fairly quickly. This and the permitting system which limits the number of people in the canyon on a daily basis, prevents hoards of casual hikers from cluttering up the view and experience. A short 15 minutes from the trailhead we start the steep 250 meter descent to the Left Fork of North Creek. The guidebooks suggest you wander upstream looking for trails on either side of the fortunately low creek. We do this and it is a slow 4 mile hike to the first set of miniature falls that mark the near-beginning of The Subway proper.

The creek itself is beautiful with high sandstone walls on either side that keep us almost perpetually in the shade. We see occasion rockfalls that look quite recent and I am reminded how nothing is static; that this landscape is dynamic, just on a scale difficult for us to appreciate. We encounter a fellow explorer/photographer at the first set of small cascading falls. Up until this point the solitude was sublime. Proceeding a bit further upstream we encounter another photographer who has lugged a heavy 8 x 10 large format camera and has it positioned with his almost equally heavy tripod over a joint in the sandstone that is overflowing with rushing water.

Around the corner lies The Subway, certainly one of the most amazing canyons I have seen. The approach to the narrow funnel is long and I can only wonder at the force of water that courses through during flash floods. Dan tells me that the log in in this image was further upstream the last time he was here.

The pools coupled with the strangely warm glow of the Subway itself make extremely compelling photographic subjects. I spend well over an hour within a 10 meter square area composing and shooting long exposures, trying to capture the unique nature of this space. The rock is wet, slick and tricky to walk on and soon my feet are chilled to the bone (as they say) and I need to seek the sun of the outer canyon while Dan works his 4 x 5. The day grows long and based on Dan's previous experience (best left to him to tell) and advice, you don't want to be caught in the canyon after dusk, so we begin to head downstream.

Some of the cascades are still partially in the sun and make interesting visual compositions but the dappled nature of the water and rock don't translate well via a camera.
However, the sun continues to drop and we reach a stretch of shaded creek that is absolutely gorgeous and amazingly rich with copper tones. Dan has to practically drag me away from the scenes and the logical part of my brain says "go, fly with the light!" or some such poetic nonsense.

The slog out is long but our way is helped by the discovery that the main section of the unmaintained trail stays pretty much on the right-side (faced downstream) of the creek and so our journey is quicker than our way in. Nonetheless, the sun has already set by the time we reach the base of the cliffs and the steep climb out of the canyon. Up, up, up we go.

I pass a young man sitting on a rock who asks for water (which I give, having drank little of it myself) and wonders aloud whether he can make it. I tell him that he is less than 45 minutes from the trailhead and victory will surely be his soon. (The drill sergeant in me wants to add: "if you stop complaining, get off yer arse and start putting one foot in front of the other!" - but, I refrain.)

Once on top, the last 1/2 hour goes quickly but not without a wee bit of confusion. In the gloom of post-dusk, my night-adjusted eyes can follow the trail through the junipers with no problem until I reach a wash where tracks go in every which direction. I can't really recall the wash when we hiked in some 6 hours earlier, but I make a decision to continue out of the wash on the now faint and fading trail, which of course turns out to be the correct decision. At the trailhead, wishing for a beer (ALWAYS pack a cooler with beer for trail's end, dude!) I watch the moonrise and capture a last night shot.

Dan's knee is killing him (2 weeks shy of surgery) and so it's an early night and dinner back at the motel restaurant, the Switchback Grill. Not bad at all and the beer is cold.

Return to Zion National Park, Part II

2009-11-11T06:17:00.021-07:00

The time change (fall back!) contributed to the early morning freshness I was feeling when the alarm rang at 5:15 (O'dark-thirty!). The terrible in-room coffee left the proverbial bitter taste in my mouth but did the trick, further contributing to my wakefulness. (Note to hotels: not all Americans prefer the stale, acrid but thin brew you so quaintly label Coffee!)

Out the door at 6:15, the goal was to capture the early light and sunrise on the Towers of the Virgin, just behind the old Visitor's Center (now administrative offices and a museum). Dan warned me that other photographers would likely be there and he was right. The meadow was large and the tripodists but a handful, so no one appeared in anyone else's viewfinder, that I was aware of anyway. The pre-dawn light was smooth, soft and cast a warm glow on the mammoth rock face before us. I'm always amazed at the amount of light that can be gathered before the sun rises or after it has set. Don't wait for the sunbeams...the light is already there! As evidenced by this 4 second exposure.

In fact, though the sun elicited an a-ha effect when finally its rays shone on the sandstone ramparts, the quiet, even early light is what I favor. Nonetheless, as the light curtain continued to crawl down the canyon walls we kept shooting, documenting the growing dramatic contrast between bright, orange-ish cliffs and the dark foreground.

I process most of these shots to reveal some foreground detail, so contrast is dialed back a bit. Infrared images, however, have no such latitude. Deep, inky blacks and brightly lit rock produce chiaroscuro drama unrivaled in color.
Once the orange light began turning to a more prosaic white, we packed up our gear and headed to the Mean Bean Coffee House for some REAL coffee and an apricot scone.

Replenished our next photo stop was back up the canyon, where the river makes a large horseshoe around Angel's Landing. Called the Big Bend, the Virgin has cut a graceful river bottom ripe with cottonwoods. Longish exposures and the use of HDR photography allow me to capture bright, high cliffs and their reflections in the smoothly flowing but dark waters. We find an old uprooted tree that has much character. These are the kinds of "props" that you find, without knowing that you are looking for them.

Morning moves on and so must we: to the Narrows we go...Wandering up the short Riverside Walk -- the 'civilized' stroll path that leads to the Narrows proper -- we look in vain for a stray red maple or two. Instead we stop to photograph a rich -- in texture and contrast -- weeping wall. This is perfect fodder for B&W photography and Dan begins the arduous, 20 minute process of setting up his 4x5 field camera for a shot, or perhaps two. He draws many comments from passersby and being the patient and pleasant guy that he is, happily answers questions that I'm sure he's answered countless times before. As he is fielding questions and setting up for his shot (or two, mayhaps), I blithely click away with both my Pentax K20D DSLR and my infrared-sensitive Fuji IS-1. Both smallish cameras, I feel like the little kid with a cheap plastic toy truck standing next to his older sibling with his solid die-cast monster Tonka dump truck. A slight feeling of inadequacy that would be called. I get over it and am relatively happy with a shot.

Just before the Narrows we find a wonderful stretch of the river that offers multiple opportunities to capture water crashing through a rollicking tumble of boulders. It's amazing how the proverbial time flies: we easily spend 45 minutes in a 15 square meter space shooting the river from different angles and directions. Non-photographers may not "get it," (though certainly their spouses have had to put up with it!), but if the light is good (to be defined at the time and place), hours can be spent in one relatively small space exploring lines, shapes, colors and contrasts.

The intention is not to explore the confines of the Narrows-- we'll leave that for another day, another trip. Instead, after a quick lunch, we back to what I now call the Glowing Wall ravine, off of the road to Checkerboard Mesa. Once there, Dan has in mind a series of B&W compositions with his 4x5 of a large dead tree. That occupies him for the better part of an hour as I wander up above the ravine and look for lines, angles and shapes.

Since we know what to expect now for sunset: glorious dying sun colors and the silver dollar orb of a luminous full moon, by later afternoon we are again set up in 'our' Checkerboard Mesa spot. In time to catch some glowing light reflecting off of the etched sandstone edifices...just before the moon begins its westward rise and journey.

We are further rewarded when shortly Earth's satellite begins its arc. I quickly realize that my Sigma 18-50mm is not going to yield the images I want and grab my Pentax K10D which I fortuitously had pre-mounted with my Sigma 50-500mm on a separate tripod (really, you can never have too many camera bodies, lenses or tripods!).

The moon is stunning in its size and clarity and I shoot well past the fading golden glow.

We are both looking forward to that first beer and meal, whatever it may be. But before heading back into Springdale, I convince Dan to pull off the road just past Canyon Junction so that we can do some moon-washed photography. Never having done this before, I help Dan with some settings on his camera (always good to help a pro!), and we take some shots of canyon walls just before the moon crests over the east ridge (such as this purplish 30-second exposure) followed by some shots of the west walls when the moon is finally bathing them in its reflected light and the stars are shining in the deepening skies. The results are always stunning and Dan is amazed that his sensor can yield such images, in such diffused light.

It's finally time for that aforementioned beer and tasty dinner at the top-notch (but not terribly expensive) Flangan's Inn & Restaurant. It's been a long, but rewarding day. I don't know it yet, but tomorrow will be even richer.

Return to Zion National Park, Part I

2009-11-08T08:54:00.014-07:00

It had been 27 years since I last gazed firsthand at the towering sandstone monoliths and ramparts that define our 16th National Park, Zion. Too long. Invited by Dan Hendriksen -- a local semi-professional photographer who primarily shoots large-format (4 x 5) -- to accompany him on his yearly Fall colors trip to canyons and plateaus of the Virgin River, I jumped at the opportunity.

The weather portended to be optimal for touring and hiking (cool mornings, warm afternoons, no rain), if imperfect for shooting (we photographers love glorious, billowy clouds and indirect sunlight!). We arrived Halloween Day, after a seemingly short 4 hour drive from Salt Lake, in the mid-afternoon and immediately headed up Scenic Drive to the end of the road, at the Temple of Sinawava, and the entrance to the famed Narrows of the Virgin River. Our goal was to shoot lots of Fall foliage: the brilliant flame-reds of the slope-side maples and the shimmery, bright yellows of the river bottom cottonwoods. We got half the equation: most of the maples had already dropped their leaves and we were lefty with a smattering of burgundy here and there and many yellow plus green-to-yellow transitional cottonwoods. Dan was severely disappointed and though I knew not exactly what I was missing (I was last here in summer: the height of green), the occasional maple that had not lost all gave me a teasing taste of what it must have been like, several weeks before.

Photographers have no more control over the environment than other mortals, so we adjusted and began shooting the river as it was. The light was leaving the deepening canyon but some nice shots could still be had. With some foresight, I had brought my below-the-knee boots that I use on muddy days out at the Great Salt Lake. Wearing these boots, the water in the river was not so deep that I could not -- with some judicious foot placement -- wade into the river for a few waters' eye view photos.

With the tight canyon coils now in ever-lengthening shadow, Dan decided to take us up the Zion-Mount Carmel highway and into the light of a side ravine off that road and on the way to Checkerboard Mesa. In this cleft we found a small patch of red maples in front of an incredibly glowing, high sandstone wall. The reflected late afternoon sunlight appeared to gave the sheer, brick-red sandstone a warmth from within. Hard to capture with a camera it was a treat nonetheless to gaze at.

Easier to photograph were the few deep pools with the high sandstone buttresses still in the sun, reflecting in the dark pools. Our last photo stop of the day was off the highway and in front of the aforementioned Checkerboard Mesa. We scrambled to catch the dying light AND the rising of the almost-full moon. Though there were no clouds to give us a glorious burst of color, we committed to arriving at this spot again earlier the next night to better prepare and capture the dual beauties of sunset and moonrise.

After checking in at the Best Western Canyonlands (recommended: quiet, convenient and reasonable) and a nice Mexican dinner at Oscar's (also recommended...the flautas were quite tasty) washed down with the local suds (Zion Brewery), we were ready for a night's sleep and an early sunrise at the Towers of the Virgin.

Do you want a Netbook...Do you NEED a Netbook?

2009-10-05T09:29:00.004-06:00

In the past couple of months I've been asked, "My computer is getting long-in-the-tooth (well, really not many people use that expression much anymore, but you know what I mean) and I was wondering if I should pick up one of those new ultra-light laptops...wadda you think?" I don't follow all the techno-trends and am certainly not an early adopter of new gizmos for the sake of being an early adopter (evidence: I was late to the CD revolution and I still have a boat-load of vinyl and cassettes; I still own VHS tapes -- sorry no betamax -- in addition to my extensive DVD collection, and have no intention of jumping to BlueRay anytime in the foreseeable future; and while I have a BlackBerry and two iPods, I have no interest in an iPhone or iTouch, etc., etc.). I prefer to move to new and/or improved technology devices when there is a demonstrable need to make such a move. That is why I recently picked up a Netbook even though I have a perfectly fine MacBook Pro.

I love my MacBook. With a 300GB hard drive loading with graphics' apps, Windows via Parallels, the Office suite, etc. and 4GB of RAM powering a dual-core 2.4GHz Intel processor, it has plenty of umph to compete with my Windows desktop computer. (True, it "only" has the 15" screen, but I didn't want to buy all new carrying bags and just try opening one of the 17" laptops in coach class!) The downside is that battery life is poor and it weighs over 5 pounds. Drag a couple of extra batteries along and we are now around 9lbs! The final limitation is size. Open that beautiful 1440 x 900 pixel resolution screen in coach class and all is fine until the gent in front of you puts his seat back. If you happen to be "fortunate" enough to fly in one of the upgraded planes that have TV screens on the back of every seat, you have lost several more precious inches. I briefly thought of adding a MacBook Air to my computing arsenal. Elegant but its small hard drive and dearth of ports coupled with its high price make it a non-starter make for me. Then I heard about a minor phenom in the computing world called Netbooks. Really, this is nothing new: people have been downsizing laptops for decades. The problem was that you always gave up something essential when going small: screen size, screen resolution, keyboard, trackpad, power, flexibility, versatility, etc. And, frankly, that's still the case. The big difference is that our computing needs and purchasing expectations are now more in sync with each other.

What dost that mean? The Netbook concept fills the need (for some) to have a light-weight computer for travel that can act as foundation for three activities: email, browsing the Internet, and light-duty work. It is not suitable for processor intensive computing, watching movies (no internal DVD drive and though you can buy an external drive, generally the anemic processor found in most Netbooks cannot play the movie seamlessly) and gaming. It is a great second computer for the person on-the-go. It is a terrible choice for a primary computer. Match your needs with the true expectations for the device. My needs were a platform that was light and compact, with ample storage space for image files. I wanted long battery life without dragging along multiple batteries and I needed to be able to open it in coach class, where I now consistently find myself when I flying overseas. It had to be sufficiently powerful enough (coupled with enough RAM) to open and run PhotoShop for the occasional image I might want to edit, but I did not expect to engage in any heavy-duty processing of multiple images, like I do on either my desktop or my MacBook Pro. The screen resolution had to sufficiently large enough that when I opened up a RAW file in Adobe Camera Raw I could access the controls without scrolling. And, it had to have video, audio and multiple USB ports. Finally, it needed to be less than $500.

As of this writing really only one netbook fit those needs: the Gateway (yes, GATEWAY!) LT3103u (catchy, huh?). Sporting a 11.6" screen coupled with HD resolution, 2GB Memory, an AMD Athlon 64 Processor and a 250GB hard drive. Battery life? On a return trip from Slovenia, I was able to use this little guy for almost 2/3's of a 10.5 hour flight from Paris to SLC. I was pretty amazed by that. I just checked on the Best Buy site and can no longer find that model. Yes, I did buy it in August but really that is only 2 months ago. My how time flys...

The chase: Netbooks are not for primary computers, but potentially perfect if you know what you are going to use it for. This one -- while certainly slower than my MacBook -- will be in my bag when venturing overseas.

Traveling Light(er), Part II

2009-09-18T22:42:00.006-06:00

If you plan on shooting a range of subjects from landscapes to intimate village scenes, you will obviously need an equally wide range of focal lengths. I usually cover from 12-200mm with three relatively fast lenses: a 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6, a 18-50mm f/2.8 and a 70-200mm f/2.8, all Sigma lenses. Fast is good. Slow lenses are lighter but suffer not only in their poorer light gathering capabilities but usually the optics are not of the same quality as an equal focal length sized fast lens. Do you really need a sub f/3.5 lens? Again, if you are not planning on shooting a variety of subjects, then perhaps not. But I have often found that the extra stop or two, coupled with image stabilization and medium-to-high ISO will land you acceptable shots in those dim churches and dusky dark labyrinthial alley ways of ancient villages. What about primes? With some exceptions (below paragraph) leave them home. Great for one mode of shooting, they are too limited for most travel photography.

The above is my basic and essential lens kit. With these 3 lenses I will usually shoot around 90+% of a trip’s worth of images. With these lens, I could easily and happily “get by” but instead I typically weigh myself down a bit more. Depending upon my destination, I may pack a variety of special purpose glass. In this category I would include fisheyes. My Sigma 15mm f/2.8 yields great architectural effects and is a lot of fun in dense forests. Rounding out my “essential plus” lens kit I will often have a macro -- in my case a Sigma 105mm f/2.8 -- and more recently I also pack a Lensbaby 3G selective focus lens. All three of these lenses lend themselves to pretty specialized types of shooting, so more often than not they sit in my hotel room and only come out to play when I am in the mode for some extra creative (okay, some might say gimmicky) photography. Is it worth bringing the extra weight and bulk for a relatively small percentage of images? Perhaps not, but they are fun lens in their unique ways and sometimes that overrules the more prosaic of concerns like comfort. However, for future trips where mobility is essential (think a train ride to Lhasa), these will be the first three to stay home.

In an entirely different class, on a few trips I have lugged one of two super zooms I own. Either a heavy Sigma 50-500mm f/4-6.3 or a lighter (but still massive) Sigma 170-500mm f/5-6.3. The range of both lens is exceptional: both in terms of sheer reach and in terms of limited subject applicability. One can also imagine that the weight/size of these lenses exact a comfortable-carrying penalty that further limits their consideration for trips, and you would be correct. Finally, lenses of this size require a very rigid tripod foundation (more on that later) for blur-free images. So, these big boys only travel overseas when my research tells me that there are going to be some very good photo ops for them. Wildlife is obvious -- such as these extreme close-ups of puffins in Iceland -- but less intuitive may be the capture of architectural elements such as gargoyles on the St. Vitus cathedral in Prague.

Speaking of telephotos, a word on teleconverters. Love the concept: a lightweight and compact method for gaining between 50% and 100% more focal length. Downside? Expect not only a loss in available light but more importantly you will take a hit in image quality. Notwithstanding this, I currently always pack a 2x teleconverter on my trips. It is rarely used, but it is so compact that I can bring it and be assured of the extra focal length with little penalty to my bag (or back). Ideally, I would love to find a fast (defined as <=f/3.5) 100-300mm (or even better 100-400mm) and leave the teleconverter AND my 80-200mm f/2.8 home.

Bodies? I pack two DSLRs: currently the 14MP Pentax K20 and the older 10MP Pentax K10. I’m Boy Scoutesque in always being prepared, so the K10 acts as a spare in case of damage to my primary shooter, the K20, or -- worse case scenario -- in case of loss, theft or otherwise. (This scenario actually played out -- unfortunately -- in southern France where our car was broken into and I lost approx $2000 in camera gear. The upside was that a) I had a spare and a couple of lens with me, b) I lost only one roll of exposed film and c) it finally convinced me to migrate to digital.) However, the 2nd body doesn’t always sit lonely in the hotel room. Often I will mount another lens and go armed into the streets of a mediaeval village with a super wide zoom (say, the 12-24mm) and my 80-200mm. This allows me to easily and quickly capture a wide variety of scenes and shots without having to change lenses. I also pack two other cameras. I do a lot of infrared digital photography and have recently converted an older Pentax DSLR (the *istDS) to an IR-only camera, courtesy of Spencer’s Camera. Subject of a future post, suffice it to say now, that this camera is my black & white vehicle of choice, so it travels with me always (usually with a Sigma 28-70 f/2.8 mounted). The other camera is the only film camera I still regularly use: a Hasselblad XPan II with a 45mm f/4 lens. I shoot transparencies with this 35mm panoramic camera and scan the film which yields an incredible amount of detail.

So, there you have it…well, not quite. Add a range of neutral density filters, various polarizers, a soft-shoe mountable flash, spare cards and batteries, and now we are set, right? Almost. Ever had a dirty sensor in the field, on a trip? I certainly have and for those hopefully fairly rare occasions, I pack a small blower, the Arctic Butterfly and some sensor swaps with solution. Finally? Nope. Remember that mention of a tripod? Until recently I have packed the relatively heavy and bulky Manfrotto 440 Carbon One with a hydrostatic ball head. It’s a great carbon-fiber tripod that is incredibly sturdy but I found that -- due to its weight -- I was either leaving it home or, if it made the long voyage over an ocean, propped in the corner of my hotel room. Before this most recent trip (to Slovenia) I dropped a pretty penny for the sub 3lb. Gitzo Traveler. Wow. Unbelievably light, compact AND sturdy. For a change I found myself carrying it almost everywhere. It’s relatively unobtrusive and incredibly quick to set up, both attributes missing from the Manfrotto. Most positively, I found myself setting up for more deliberate shots, longer shots, using more of the light. Only complaint (other than the price!) is that the head is pretty weak. But at least it comes with one! I also pack the Gitzo Mountaineer monopod with a small Manfrotto ball head which at less than one pound also subs as a hiking staff. What’s left? Image storage and a good camera bag.

Like with their cameras, photographers get very personal/passionate about their bags. They also go through a lot of them trying to find the Perfect ONE. It doesn’t exist, but we try to get close to it anyway. For over 7 years I have been using Lowepro’s Rover II bag for both my local day hikes and multi-week travels. After suffering damage to a lens that was bag-checked, I now carry all cameras and lens in my Rover for my flights. Yes, all four bodies, and up to 8 lenses have been (over-)stuffed in that bag. Security invariably wants to peak, poke and prod, but once they see that I am merely a scruffy photographer with a boat load of gear, they are happy to send me on my way. (Cleaning accessories, the flash, filters, chargers, spare batteries and cards, and the tripod/monopod are well packed in checked luggage. The goal should be that if your checked luggage is mis-routed, you should be able to shoot for at least a day or two with what you have carried on.) The shoulder pads on this bag are completely packed out so I am considering the CompuRover so that I can stuff my laptop in as well (instead of packing it in a 2nd carry-on, as we currently are doing).

Image storage could and probably should be a whole post in and of itself. Did I say that I was paranoid about image loss? Do you back your images up at home (or your office, or wherever you do your photo work)? If you don't, then never mind. But if you are careful at home to ensure at least 2 copies of each image stored on separate computers/media perhaps even in different rooms or (gasp!) off site, then you should be equally diligent (read: paranoid) when traveling. For this reason, at the end of the day, I copy all images off of the media cards onto my laptop, then copy that day's worth of shooting onto an external drive. If you are REALLY paranoid, you will then physically separate that external drive so that if something happens to the laptop your drive will be safe (or vice versa). I especially do this when traveling (by whatever mode). If I had had all my exposed film in my camera bag when my car was broken into I would have lost over a week's worth of images. Gear can be replaced. What you've captured with that gear cannot.

If you have made it this far in my post, you have probably figured out why I call this: Traveling Light(er). I am not yet traveling light, in my estimation, but certainly doing better in some ways than before. It is in my nature to always want to take more gear because there may be that ONE shot that requires that ONE piece of equipment I just happened to leave home. No doubt my mind playing tricks on me and one of these days I will get it under control. Until then, I'm the guy you are stuck behind at airport security as TSA (or the overseas equivalent) proceeds to re-empty and re-run my bag for the nth time. Sorry.

Traveling Light(er), Part I

2009-09-16T07:00:00.017-06:00

It's pretty obvious that with the 21st century concerns of security constraints, weight limits, and the high incidence of lost/delayed luggage, traveling light(er) generally means traveling easier. Easy (a relative term) however, comes at a cost: making decisions about clothes (no biggie for most of us) and photo equipment (muy biggie for photographers who use anything more than a point-n-shoot or their iPhone) are two considerations that must be weighed (no pun intended).

Gone are the "glorious" days of slow travel via ship and coach with teams of porters or horses (or both) carting steamer trunks full of clothing (one must simply have a dinner jacket, shooting coat, smoking jacket, shoes and boots for every eventuality, and various caps and hats to complement every outfit!) and other sundry "necessities."

Assuming, in the 21st century, that on your travels you don’t need formal wear nor are bringing your great-grandfather’s favorite meerschaum pipe, super light-weight, synthetic quick-dry clothes can easily replace the cotton and wool wear of yore. For a two week trip, we have gone from 14 pair of underwear, 14 pairs of socks, 5 pair of pants and an equal number of shirts to essentially 3 of every category of clothing. Yes, we have to do laundry every other day or so and some hotels actually still frown on using your bathroom as a drying rack, but even more provide clotheslines and if you stay in an apartment, you’ll often find a clothes rack. Do we get tired of seeing each other wearing the same outfits? We make jokes about it but it beats schlepping those heavy bags up the stairs of medieval-era hotels.

What about guide books? Leave the pretty, glossy, picture-surfeit versions, such as Insight and Eyewitness, home. Those are fine for your initial trip research, but are heavy (glossy stock) and short on needed details. I like fact-rich guides with copiously detailed, well-drawn maps. Cadogan, Rough Guide, Blue Guide and Brandt (no order implied) are good examples of these. Generally, despite their reputation, I find the Lonely Planet Guides info-light. Both Michelin Green Guides' and Baedeker's alphabetical organization is not conducive to exploring by region and the Fodors/Frommers books are for the organized group tour crowd. There was a time not to long ago when I brought multiple guides in my burgeoning suitcase: I was more worried about the gaps than the overlaps. Now, I just perform a careful review and even though I will likely use multiple guides for my research, I bring only one book. One basic tour book that is. Since we hike a lot on our trips I often also bring specialty books with titles such as Trekking in Corsica and Walking in Sicily. There are several really good publishers of international hiking/trekking/walking guides and I count Cicerone Press, Trailblazer Guides and Rother Walking Guides among my favorites. An interesting series for those that are interested in pre-planned car touring itineraries is Thomas Cook's Signpost Guides. Finally, Sunflower Landscapes produces a hybrid series that features walks and car tours.

I also believe in having a minimal grounding in the local language, so I will always have a pocket phrase book and sometimes even a pocket dictionary. Finally, If you are driving (highly recommended for European trips, at the least), you will need a detailed road map. Rental car agency maps are terrible. The larger the scale (meaning you see more detail on the map) the more chance you will have finding that gem of a ruined castle off some isolated country road. Scale -- like many things -- is relative. For most mid-sized European countries, 1:250000 or 1:300000 should suffice. Avoid small scale maps (1:1000000) such as multi-country maps. Not only will roads be missing, but that perfect 12th century Romanesque chapel will also be mysteriously gone. As far as more detailed maps for trekking or hiking, plan on buying those super detailed maps in country.

If you are not a photographer, you are finished packing! For the rest of use, the real challenge now begins.

In Part II of this blog, I will detail what camera gear I bring and why.

Govorim zeno malo Slovensko!

2009-09-07T15:52:00.002-06:00

Seriously...I do speak VERY little Slovene. But, I ALWAYS make an effort to learn some of the language of whatever country I visit. It isn't always easy. French, Italian, German and Japanese were a piece of cake compared to Irish, Czech, Polish, Slovak and now Slovene. I dread (from a learn-the-language perspective) visits to Turkey, Rajasthan, Bhutan and Hungary. Nonetheless, when it comes time to travel to the lands of the Magyars, Hittites and Rajas, or when I finally do set my eyes on the fabled Hidden Kingdom, you can be sure that I will also have a fist-full of phrases in the local patois. Why bother, some might ask? Three reasons, two pretty obvious and one, less apparent and more personal. Let's start with the obvious: First, I ascribe to the thought that my traveling is not a god-given right to see the world on my terms but rather a by-product of my natural curiosity to explore the world around me crossed with the fortunate set of circumstances that lead to my birth in an affluent country where such desires can be pursued. I am traveling not just as an American, but as a citizen of the world; an ambassador from my land to theirs. Would it not be the height of arrogant presumptiveness of ME to assume that those in Ljubljana speak English?! Locals really do appreciate if you make an effort to discourse (or at least ask a few questions) in their language. Not only may they be impressed (read: minor ego boost!), but more importantly, they may feel more inclined to communicate with you. Reason two (dva, as they say in Slovene): a bit of self-preservation. If I can ask, Where are the toilets, please? or Do you speak English? or Do you have red wine? travel-life can become so much satisfying, if not just plain survivable. Indeed, a base requirement for travels with Bonnie, is the obligatory "Moja žena vegetarianski." Can you imagine being a vegetarian and traveling to Germanic and (worse for her!) Slavic countries!? (Me, I eat everything, her...well, not so much.) An ambassador with self-preservation on his mind...not so difficult to understand, ja? Believe it or nay, I actually also enjoy learning other languages. (Learning…well, that perhaps may be a stretch of the verb. I don't speak fluently, but I try to speak with the proper accent and intonations. I also have difficulty understanding the natives' responses, but that's also partially a result of my creeping deafness!) I find language learning a (fun) challenge but importantly (pay attention here!)I also find it a way to gain a deeper understanding of the people and culture. Language, literature, history and geography: this is the four-legged stool upon which a greater understanding of a people sits. And, I like the view from this particular perch.

Searching for Max's Hat

2009-08-20T13:14:00.005-06:00

Many moons ago (by my rough count around 445...but who's counting?) a friend's father gave me his hat. Max was his name (the father, that is) and his hat was one of those classic pork pie jobs seen in Steve McQueen movies of the 60's. Bluish black in color with a dark maroon and blue striped band, it added a jauntiness to my usual attire of bell bottom jeans, colorful (read: loud) print shirts and square-toed harness boots. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, watch Easy Rider and you'll get it.)

I have always had a penchant for hats and in my teenage years the affection blew into an affectation. In search of myself -- the definition of being a teenager, essentially -- a hat was a necessary part of my persona, the final dotting of the "I" that I was. My real fantasy was to find a slightly dented stovepipe hat...I'm sure it had nothing to do with me being below average in height. But Max's pork pie was eminently more practical and one day, when Max learned that I secretly desired his hat, he impulsively gave it to me. Never mind that he thought that I and his son were going to hell in a hand-basket, he was that kind of guy.

I loved that hat: it looked spiffy and it fit real good. (Can't imagine wearing some old guy's hat? These were the pre Puricell, pre sani-wipes placed strategically near shopping carts, elevator buttons and toilets near you days. The days when sharing a smoke -- tobacco or otherwise -- was a rite of sorts. Or, so I'm told.) Unfortunately, Max's hat and I parted ways a few short days later.

Less than a week after first donning the hat, Max's son and I were taking a late night drive up Ortega Highway. For us, that road was what separated us from the sterile sobriety of suburbia and the misty mountain fantasies of the unknown. There were the forbidden hot springs, a thriving party spot for those willing to hike in the dark, bathe naked with other souls, and occasionally head for higher ground when the sheriffs would decide to end the party early. There was the semi-mythical nudist colony that we had long heard about, half-heartedly searched for and in the end left as legend. There were the divide roads. Bumpy, rutted tracks, one heading south through the Elsinore Mountains and affording sterling views of the same-named lake and another heading north to the summit of the Santa Ana Mountains, Santiago Peak. Along its way, this north divide road afforded access to the hiking and camping wonderlands of Trabuco, Holy Jim and Horsethief Canyons.

Those were the mountains that we were heading into when we stopped for the proverbial bio-break (though that term had not yet been invented). To this day I don't know why I removed Max's hat and put it on the roof of my friend's Datsun. It's normally not necessary to doff one's hat when "visiting nature" but there it was: on the roof. And there it stayed -- for a second or two, perhaps -- as we drove off.

It was maybe five or so minutes later that I realized I was hatless...it may as well have been five years. We searched and searched but the hat was not to be found. I KNEW where we had stopped but I knew not where the hat had gone. The next day, fully confident that the sun would reveal what the night had stolen, I went back and searched again. To no avail. I was desolate (well, perhaps that is too melodramatic a word) and disappointed in myself. I felt embarrassed around Max and hoped he would never ask "Where's my hat?" He never did. His son was very supportive: "I can't believe you lost Max's hat!" And so it went. Eventually the memory of Max's hat faded into the sleepy past like a paisley shirt long exposed to the sun. Only to be re-woken last week.

In southern California for my yearly family visit and my mother's impromptu suggestion to sample the wines of the Temecula Valley led us to drive up the Ortega Highway once again. My last sojourn up this road was probably some 27 years ago, long before the housing tracks encroach as they do, long before mountain bikes tamed many of the trails that were little better than game tracks, before the hot springs resort opened and closed yet again, pre-Google and pre-GPS, when the 20-year old maps and a compass were your best and only way to find your way.

Driving up the canyon again brought back a flood of mostly warm memories: the hot springs turnout (where I chatted with an amicable young ranger about the old days); the divide roads stretching left and right beckoning to explore yet again; the windy, dangerous hairpins where a friend was side-swiped not once, but twice in an evening; the long straight-aways where my hair streamed behind me, in the hitch-hiked ride of a convertible sports car; the approximate location where Max's hat was last seen.

It was the virulent and ultimately stupid political message posted on a store marque at the summit that brought me back to the 21st century. Memories are good things and we all indulge in them now and then. Take them out, shake off the dust, gaze fondly for a bit and then put them back in their box. Leave them out too long and they take on the rosy sheen of nostalgia. That sheen quickly turns to the self-indulgent, and highly memory-selective patina of "it was a durn-sight better in our days!"

Try as you might, you can't really go home again. Search all that you can, Max's hat still remains lost. As it should be.

Do you need a Portal?

2009-08-03T17:44:00.009-06:00

No, I'm not talking about some Stargatesque gateway to shuttle you along the wormholes of the universe nor am I speaking of the Guardian of Forever from which with a short step you can relive your childhood, or perhaps your children's children's children's childhood. As interesting as those particular portals sound (and to me, a science /
scifi / history / philosophy geek, they sound pretty damn fascinating) I am writing of the much more prosaic (and much less speculative) web portal.

I built one. Here's the why, the whats and the how.

The Why. I've had a photo website for quite a few years. It's grown long in the tooth, is difficult to update in any kind of easy, timely workflow fashion, is comprised of static pages, is irredeemably not optimized for search engines, and has no connection to the rest of my life. All of the above but the last statement was enough of a reason to rebuild the photo site from the proverbial ground up. But since embarking upon this new phase of my life last year in this so-called gig economy (already commented upon in a previous post) I found that trying to manage and maintain multiple online presences as well as businesses was a challenge. Clayhaus Consulting, Clayhaus Photography, a Twitter page, my Flickr photostream, Facebook (both personally and professionally), this blog, microstock photography accounts, my published book and more! Yikes! There was no easy way to gain access to, Clayhaus.net, the "brand." Until a friend (thank you Cory!) planted a seed, or perhaps more accurately watered the nut of the notion that I needed ONE access point to the Clayhaus.net online world. A portal.

The What. The timing was perfect. I had been (still am, actually) dithering on making a decision around my photo site: open source or compiled code solutions. At the same time I was consulting for a startup non-profit, RERSLC, and they elected to retain a local web developer (Third Sun) who builds sites on the open source content management system called Joomla. In the open source CMS world there are two heavy-weights: Joomla and Drupal. They both have their advocates and they both essentially do the same thing: once setup and initially configured, updating websites' content (they are after all, content management systems!) becomes trivial (well, pretty close to that anyways). No HTML programming is necessary as plenty of templates, documentation, robust help forums, and extensible modules and components exist to help you through the forest. A piece of cake? A walk on the sunny beach at low tide with a lollipop? No, not quite. I'm a reasonably savvy IT guy with some Logic (yes: capital L) education, but with little in the way of true programming training or skills. I went with Joomla because that was what my client was implementing because that was what the developer was most skilled in (that's the way these things work). (The logic being that what I learned on my own, would help support my client as well.)

The How. I started by installing XAMPP on my Windows box. What is that? Straight from their page...XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing My SQL, PHP and Perl. If that is all Greek (or, perhaps Geek) to you -- and yet you want to learn more -- go to the Joomla pages that discuss installation on a local system. Other sources? VEOH or Miguel Sanchez. At any rate, make yourself very familiar with the Joomla installation pages...please. The bottom line is that I wanted to build a site offline -- meaning on a local system -- and then upload to the shared hosting at my Internet provider. So after installing XAMPP I then downloaded the latest version of Joomla 1.5 and began learning and configuring at the same time. You have the option of loading sample content into your new site and that is exactly what I did. I was able to reverse engineer some of the installation and eventually added my own templates and components and modules. It was an iterative learning process. This included the eventual upload to my ISP, XMission. After they set up the MySQL database, I FTPed the Joomla files and a new configuration file (a must!) and the site went live. I few more permissions tweaks and I was also able to administrate my site. Add metadata and voila! The hoards will be banging at my virtual door! Naaah, but that is the subject of another post.

I succeeded: the Clayhaus.net portal is live. I still have to maintain and manage all the other Clayhaus accounts and pages and sets and sites, but that's my job. You the Internet Traveler, do not have to bookmark, write down on a post-it, request an email link, etc. any of those pages. Just remember Clayhaus.net, and you are good as gold. (Don't believe me? Enter clayhaus.net in Google or the Yahoo search engine...see?)

The site is live, but not static. With a CMS, change can always be afoot. I will add a forum and some other features and functions shortly. Now though, I must turn my attention to...the photo site...it will morph soon and you will hear about it. Lucky you.