New Beginnings

Canada's new anti-spam legislation came in force today — I'm writing this on July 1, Happy Canada Day to all my Canuckistanian readers, and Happy Independence Day to my American Friends — and it is forcing a big re-think by everyone who maintains a mailing list. Those who are located in Canada, anyway: most of my spam comes from more obscure places who aren't going to pay attention to our laws.

In the past, I added names to my mailing list of people whom I thought MIGHT be interested in reading my blog, friends and acquaintances and people I met or had dealings or communications with. You can't do that any more. All I can do is send them an invitation to subscribe, and the link to the subscription form (if you're reading this, and you're not a subscriber, PLEASE click the "Newsletter" link at upper right. The newsletter is simply an alert that there's a new post on the blog and a hint as to what it contains. One email a week).

So as I write this, my list is only 1/10 of what it was: I'm only a couple of hours in, people are away and haven't read their email yet, there's this whole world of apathetic people out there, and lots of people who are inundated with email and don't want more. On a positive note, that means that everyone who is reading this is doing so because they want to! (update: it's July 3 and I'm up to 25%)

I'd really like to build it back up again, so please forward this to your friends and colleagues, whom you think would enjoy this weekly blog.

Something else new...

Is the header picture. As my loyal longer-term readers know, when I replace the blog header, the old one is gone forever, so I take a second to post it here.

This is the previous header, posted in May 2014. I like to keep them seasonal. Not looking forward to putting next year's winter one up! 

So a note about the new header: the background picture is a composite of 50 exposures, married using StarStaX (it's a free software utility, available here, that's designed to merge images to create star trails). It works on clouds too!

The bear was a photo I took at the Landfill (OK, the "Garbage Dump"!). The background was really ugly, to say the least. So I thought I'd try the new "Focus area selection tool" in Photoshop CC 2014 and it really works! After using the refine edge dialogue, it really rendered even the hairs of the bear! So after a little tweaking (and a flip, I like him facing this way), I composited him into the shot.

Here's the original bear picture, after I selected him and applied a heavy Gaussian Blur to the ugly background! 

This is the original cloud shot. After I merged the 50 images in StarStaX (I actually had 135 images but after 50 the effect seemed to downgtrade), I laid a masked version of the tree on the left on top because the wind was blowing and the moving trees didn't render well. 

New Toy

For starters, those following the blog should know the Sigma 120-400 lens has found a new home, someone who will enjoy it as much as I did. I find myself these days trying to travel a little bit lighter and I found I left this lens at home a lot. Just too many lenses to carry! So I decided to give it up and acquire a Nikon TC-17e II teleconverter. It only gets me 340mm focal length, at a slightly bigger aperture (f/4.8) but it fits easily into the bag. I haven't shot much with it yet — the bear above was one example — but I'm quite pleased with its performance. Here are a few more shots:

Nice and sharp, good bokeh (I suppose that comes from the lens) 

A different approach! I came in close for this one, then I used the new version of the Paper Texture Pro extension in Photoshop CC 2014 for the textured background.  I'll bet this will make a gorgeous print! Contact me.

Good Canadian source for the teleconverter? Amazon.ca. In the US, B&H Photo. By the way, it only works on selected lenses like the Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 VR, so be careful.

Speaking of long lenses

There's a phenomenal deal out there. The 600mm f/4 is arguably the best long lens Nikon has ever made. The only problem was the price tag: over $12,000. Dr. Ron had one trashed by an elk (here's a link to the story in case you missed it) and although in the end it was repaired, it isn't perfect. The autofocus is working, but more slowly than it should. Optically it's perfect. He wants to get rid of it, insurance has replaced it, and is asking an unbelievable $1800 for it. If you're interested, drop me a note and I'll put you in touch. Move quick!

Another friend has gone over to the dark side. He has a bunch of immaculate Nikon gear for sale, including two D800 bodies, a 70-200 f/2.8, a 300mm f/2.8, a 400mm f/2.8 and a bunch of other stuff. These are NOT going at fire sale prices, they are spotless but I'm sure you can make a deal. Again, I'll put you together if you write me. Where's the lottery fairy when you need her? If you want to know what to buy me for my birthday, well I'd find a way to cart around that 300 or 400 f/2.8!

Newsflash

Here's a deal from B&H Photo: If you've been meaning to get a calibration device for your monitor, they have the Datacolor Spyder4PRO on sale for $70 off! It's for July the 4th, so I don't know how long the discount is on, but here's the link. And Elements 12 is $60 here. 

Here's a sad picture

Other people get great pictures of beautiful wildlife. I'm not so lucky. Neither is this mangy, emaciated fox who has obviously seen better days. I think he was injured, somehow, or sick. He limped, and likely wasn't able to hunt. I'm guessing he didn't have long to live and I wish I had been carrying so I could have put him down. This is not a happy shot, so don't click to blow it up if you don't want to. 

On another note...

Candid Camera

I caught this shot at the Minden Wildwater Preserve. These were campers on the Preserve side who had come down to the river to bathe. This young lady was washing her hair and did this to rinse the shampoo out:

This was entirely candid: if she knew I was there, she was ignoring me. I enhanced the contrast and motion using some Photoshop filters but this is how it looked! 

FWIW, I cropped this out of a bigger shot. Her boyfriend was in the background doing the "pants on the ground" thing but without underwear and I didn't think it belonged in the picture. Here:

Kind of on the edge of "PG"... 

So that's it for the first post in my new generation blog. Not a ton of change in style or content, I like sharing pictures and stories and giving an insight into goings on in my world and up here, linking up to interesting things and events. Stay tuned!

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A trip down memory lane

I started writing about how my sources of inspiration have changed but I got caught up in thinking about my early forays into photography, so I changed the topic. I still want to talk about inspiration, but bear with me as I take a longish trip down memory lane.

Everyone's photography evolves. Some people don't get beyond capturing events and people as they pass in front of them. I can say that I have been shooting pictures for over 50 years, on and off: and the early days were exactly that. I remember my friend Gary's darkroom, where I first saw the magic of an image appearing on a print in a developer tray under a red safelight. I was hooked. The first image of my own I remember printing was a full frame shot of an Air Canada plane coming in for a landing at Dorval Airport. I think I may still have that print somewhere. It was marvellous: perfectly crisp and in focus, an 8x10 that showed every detail of the airplane. Doubly hooked.

Next came my own darkroom, but it wasn't a real one. Just a temporary setup in a bathroom and to develop the film, I had to take it out of the 35mm can and wind it onto a stainless steel spool and into a light-tight can, working in a black bag. Mostly I shot Plus-X Pan, 125 ASA. There was a slower, finer grain film but I can't dredge up the name: Pan-X? Sometimes I shot Tri-X (ASA 400) and there were some Ilford films (FP4? Does that ring a bell? Google is your friend!).

In all those early years, I don't think I ever took a picture of anything soft. Even the still-life's I shot were of objects on my desk: pens and slide rules and chess pieces and I remember a seashell. I learned lighting with desklamps and bedsheets for diffusers. I had a Metz flash with a battery pack you hung around your shoulder and a Nikkormat FTn camera with a 50mm lens. I was studying mathematics and theoretical physics at McGill University in those days and the word "ART" had no place in my life.

I graduated to colour in the late '60s but I never actually (successfully) processed any colour film or made any colour prints. I shot slide film (Kodachrome 25 and occasionally 64) and any prints were made by going out to a commercial lab where they made an internegative. In 1971, I documented a 3-week trip across the continent in a VW Beetle with, if I recall 80 rolls of Kodachrome. That trip was my early education in landscape photography.

In the mid-70's, I got more serious. A friend (Danny) and I bought the photo lab and equipment from Northern Electric (Nortel) and rented the facility and turned it into a studio. It had the best of the best: all stainless steel darkrooms, 20' ceilings, lots of lights and cameras like Hasselblads and and  Kodak 8x10 with an Ektagraphic lens on a crank-up antique wooden stand (wish I still had that!) and tons of other stuff. My favourite working camera was a Plaubel 4x5, and my back still hurts thinking about all the time under a black hood with a loupe trying to focus an upside-down image on a ground glass screen. I learned something about studio lighting there, but mostly we shot tabletop shots of hard stuff: electronics, and jewellery and once, a food series for a restaurant chain that resulted in some 16x20 transparencies in their locations. I did some portraits of my daughter, and I remember a series with a male model for an Italian custom suit maker.

We sold that studio and I lost interest in photography other than documenting my kids and the occasional trip. Life, and my work, had a way of getting in the way. Skip forward to the '90s and the advent of digital... I'll save that for another essay.

I wrote this because... well I was travelling down that old mental pathway. But the message I'm trying to communicate is that I was into the technical side of photography in those days. As I said earlier, ART did not enter into anything I did: my favourite picture from those days was a velvety black image of that 8x10 camera that showed every detail. And another one of the Hasselblad, if I recall. Everything was from the left side of my brain: I was a physicist, for heaven's sake!

When did art and design enter my life? It was in the early 80's. As Director of a division at Siemens, I was involved in our advertising campaigns and was on the periphery when some very creative people designed some killer full-page colour ads. These were the days when VW did a full page newspaper ad with a small car on an otherwise completely white page and everyone was trying to outdo them creatively. Then along came a young advertising manager who carried a sketchpad with him everywhere and used to make notes with bubble letters and drop shadows, and I was hooked.

I actually gave up my job and started a desktop publishing and graphic design company. That was my first exposure to Photoshop: we actually used version 1.0 on our Macs in 1990 or so.

So finally back to my original topic. The word "inspiration" did not apply to my photography until then. I think "Inspiration" and "Left Brain" can't coexist in the same sentence (well they just did! LOL). Skipping over lots and lots of stuff, I think my first real inspiration came after I joined the Richmond Hill Camera Club and saw some of the work other members presented. I joined the club, by the way, when I bought my D70 and realized I knew nothing about composition. I knew how to take technical pictures...

So here's the thing about inspiration:
Some time ago I came across this video by Dewitt Jones from National Geographic. I've watched it frequently. More recently, Scott Kelby did a workshop called "Crush the Composition" (link) which had more to do with other stuff than composition. It's an hour long but it's compelling and worth watching. Kelby's a great teacher. Two things stood out for me: "Work the Scene", and the concept that SOMETHING made you stop to take a picture. Keep looking for it.

Want to learn about composition?
Turn on your TV. Watch ads. Watch movies. Watch shows. Pay attention to what those OUTSTANDING photographers and videographers are doing.

Lately I've hooked up with a lady who is a trained classical artist. For a while, I looked at art with her but my mind was still in the technical mode. You know: "Rule of Thirds", "Leading Lines", etc. I couldn't understand what she was trying to tell me (and still don't, mostly), but she has definitely influenced my direction now. Sure, I'm still enthralled by technical things — playing with macros shot with a bellows, and waiting for that D800 I crave — and yes, you're going to see some tekkie type pictures here, but my goal is to let my right brain loose. We'll see how that goes.

Here's an effort along those lines. Admittedly I use the technical tools available to me in Photoshop CS6 and some plugins and HDR techniques, but it's the end image, not how you get there, right?

This is cropped from a larger image (below). I shot it at the Trent-Severn Waterway, between Balsam Lake and Mitchell Lake, where I was shooting ospreys. As I passed over the canal, the scene below caught my eye. Then I thought it would make a wonderful 'painting'. 

Here's the full scene. It's an HDR, processed with Nik HDR Efex Pro 2, then brought into CS6, using Topaz Adjust and the oil paint filter to achieve the effect I wanted. The textures in the crop above do it for me!

I said I was shooting Ospreys. I couldn't get close enough — as I approached the nest the adult bird flew off after angrily peeping at me and wouldn't come back until I stepped away. So the best I could do was a long telephoto shot which I cropped and added texture to.

Do you think s/he knew I was there?? 

Yesterday, I dropped off some garbage at the local landfill. They have a HUGE bear problem, caused by the ban on the spring bear hunt imposed some years ago by the politicians. Last year there was a family of black bears — a boar and sow and a couple of cubs: now it's grown. There were at least 3 large bears and 4 cubs there yesterday.

This boar (I think. I wasn't going to get close enough to check its reproductive equipment!) took an interest in me  and headed in my direction. As he got closer, I moved around behind my car and left the door open for quick access. The background in this image is really ugly: it's the dump, of course. I might crop him out and layer him into a different composite at some point. The picture was badly overexposed, by the way: a testament to how much information you can recover when you shoot in RAW. Shot with my 400mm lens and only slightly cropped.

Same bear, MUCH closer, different treatment. I scooted into my car after taking this shot: he was about  20 feet away and coming towards me. Still overexposed, so I could get rid of most of the background.

See you next week. I'm going to take out the bellows and try for some macro shots later, if I can find some time and some inspiration!

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