Wow. You must have a really great camera!

Happy 2019 to all my readers, their family and friends. 

If you want prosperity and success, I wish you that.

If you want recognition and a Nobel Prize or a Pulitzer, that too.

But mostly I wish you health and happiness and love, because if you have those, nothing else matters.

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You must have a really great camera

As some of you might know, I'm a moderator on the really fine and popular Facebook group, "Photoshop and Photography". The group has just passed 400,000 members and it takes the efforts of a crew of moderators and administrators to keep it a friendly and helpful place. There are some people who come out of the woodwork (especially on holidays: the admins call it "the squirrel cage" at those times), but for the most part, it's a positive learning experience. It is Social Media so there are some nutbars out there, you need to ignore them sometimes.

Search for "Photoshop and Photography" in Facebook and join. You'll meet some interesting people and see some awesome work; and generally someone in the group will have an answer to whatever question you may have.

But I'm writing this because one common question bugs me. "What kind of camera did you use for this shot? What lens?"

OK, sometimes the question might have meaning. Like, "how did you achieve such a shallow depth of field", or "when I shoot at such a high ISO I get much worse noise..." so they want to know if it's equipment based. But usually it has to do with the old saw, "that's a really great photo, you must have a wonderful camera!". "That's a really delicious dinner. You must have fantastic pots and pans!"

I know artists who could create meaningful paintings using dollar store paints, a stick they picked up off the ground and an old piece of wood. Or sketch with an old #2 pencil they scavenged from the back of a drawer, and a piece of typewriter paper. Just sayin'.

One comment I read there this week pointed out that all those photos that inspire you as a photographer — the ones with that incredible "wow" factor, the ones that make you wish you had taken them — were made with equipment FAR INFERIOR to whatever you're using today. The resolution on your iPhone is better than any digital camera from the last decade, maybe up to 2013 or 2014. It's not about the equipment.

You've heard it before: it's about what's in that space a couple of inches behind the viewfinder. It's about you and your vision. And you can work on that by taking more and more pictures, and looking at other people's work, and not giving up because you get better and better every day. Want proof? Go look at pictures you made 5 years ago. Are they as good as what you're doing today?

One thing that's hard to get past as a moderator (or as a teacher or a judge): approving (or critiquing or scoring) images that are REALLY bad. Obviously taken by a real novice, sometimes presented with pride, "my first attempt in Photoshop". But then you realize that we've all started somewhere! I'm reminded of when I proudly showed Rosa (a former girlfriend who was an artist) my first sketch, and she deflated me by saying, "yeah, like a kindergarten kid's first finger painting."

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What inspires me?

 I'm not going to write the long answer to that one, but I'd like to point you in one particular direction.

Turn on your TV. Watch any movie or show, or especially, any commercial. I get that it isn't still photography, but hit Pause. Marvel at the fact that there's NEVER a poorly exposed or badly focused shot, or badly lit scene. Look at the composition. It's all perfect.

Pick up a magazine. Look at the ads. Ditto. Any one of those pictures would get a 10 out of 10 in your club competitions. Analyse them and ask yourself "why" or "how"?

The people who make these pictures are professionals. REAL professionals. Yes they have huge equipment budgets and assistants and studios and... but give one of them an iPhone and I'll bet they'll create fantastic images with it. Learn from these people. Learn by studying their work.

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Bruce Peters.
R.I.P. 

The world lost a really good guy a few days ago. Regrettably, I didn't know Bruce really that well. Bruce was a member of the Mississauga club, he was up here on a workshop and we stayed in touch. He came back and we spent some time shooting together up here a while ago, he ended up staying here for a few days and I don't think a smile ever left his, or my face. He had recently lost his wife and he threw himself into his travel and his photography as a raison d'être.

I think he split his time between Mississauga and his property in Penetanguishene (or Port Severn?). He joined us up at the Gales of November workshop in 2017 and ended up willingly chauffeuring Karen Young and her broken leg around. He participated enthusiastically in all our activities.

He was probably one of the kindest, most generous people I've met and in talking with others of our mutual friends, that sentiment was echoed by all of us. That said, he was sometimes bull-headed and opinionated but that was Bruce. Everyone agrees on that one too, Hilarie said "the club will be very quiet without him".

Please excuse the really bad picture (I'm not good at people pictures, as everyone knows!)

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Thinking about Newfoundland again

I floated a thought about going to the Territories this summer, but I think that's not going to happen. However you know how much I love Newfoundland... so here's what I'm thinking.

Mid June through end of July?

Keys:

• I've never been to the Northern Peninsula nor to Labrador. That's where the icebergs are.
• I love the Twillingate area. Maybe more time on Fogo Island this time.
• Bonavista/Elliston. Whales and puffins. Maybe meet up with a friend from overseas
• St. John's, gateway to the Avalon peninsula, urban and other photooops, meet friends.

As on previous visits, stay in rental cottages for the most part.

So: anyone want to spend some time on the Rock? I can think of one or two already. I know enough now to do some informal guiding... and I have contact with people who are even more experienced at it. Contact me.

PS: in 5 visits to Newfoundland over the years, I've seen exactly two moose. Don't count on it! LOL

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An Oldie but a Goodie

This image of mine came up in an online discussion a few days ago so I thought I'd post it here again. A lot of work went into this image: would you believe I shot it in bright mid-day sunshine? Somehow I managed to make it look like what I had visualized.

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Parting Shot

Here's a composite image I worked on yesterday. It's from my Newfoundland trip last summer (mostly!). If I had to pick my favourite image from 2018, this would be right up there.

The star trails are about 140 images stacked in StarStaX. I wanted to remove some detail and make it look hand painted, so I used Topaz Impression. I THINK it was based on the Georgia O'Keeffe preset, applied more than once. The lighthouse is the one at Cape Spear, shot at dawn and extracted from the background. Again I used Topaz to enhance the light and smooth things... might have even been based on the same preset. There's some canvas background texture in there I'll have to remove when it gets printed. If you've been following me, you'd recognize that the girl was created on my Wacom Tablet from scratch, based on an image I shot at Peggy's Cove in 2017 and it was used in another image with a brilliant sunset (and a painting!), with the same title. 

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It ain't easy being green

OK, when I wrote the title of this post, I Googled it and as I expected, it was written for Kermit the Frog on Sesame Street. But did you know that this song was covered by such illustrious people as Ray Charles and Frank Sinatra? Google is your Friend!

So what this post is really about is that it isn't easy shooting stars. The key is planning.

The Stars they Come Stealing at the Close of the Day*
* from Gordon Lightfoot's "Railroad Trilogy"

Last week I spotted a post on Facebook in the "From Quarks to Quasars" group that mentioned that the "Camelopardalids" meteor shower expected  last Thursday night might be spectacular. A look at the "Clear Dark Sky" chart site (here) indicated that we might just get lucky and have a clear night so with some quick last minute plans, a few of us got together to try to capture the event. Easier said than done.

It turns out that the meteor shower wasn't that intense. I have to say, I did see quite a number of meteors in the time we were out there. Many of them were not streaks across the sky, they were just a momentary flash. I surmise that was from a small meteor that burned up almost instantly when it hit atmosphere.

Anyway, we were out from about 1 am through 4 am. I caught a grand total of ONE meteor on the camera. I saw at least a dozen.

And to top it off, this was only a test shot while I was setting up! 10 seconds at f/2.8, ISO 12,800. I was just trying to get the composition right, the camera level and pointed at the sky. I never saw this one until I got back to the computer. You can click on the picture to blow it up

I've shot stars before, as my faithful readers know. I even wrote a technical blog on how to do it here and I'm planning a workshop in a few weeks (send me an email if you're interested in the workshop). Trying to capture meteors is a whole other ball game. I've seen some outstanding photos of passels of meteors, I know they were composited together but so far I can't figure out how. And a time lapse video seems to be the way to go but that's even tougher.

One thing you need to do is focus. In the dark. On infinity. How? If you go by the marking on your lens, I guarantee you'll be wrong. And with the lens wide open and virtually no depth of field, well that's critical. How do you do it? Like this:

Send someone out in the field with a flashlight (thanks, Kathy!) Then give it a wee bit more. This is something better done the day before in the light and recorded or taped down. 

Stars and planets move in a predictable path. Well actually the Earth moves, we all know that... Want them rotating around a point? Include the North Star in your shot. Straighter lines? Shoot less wide angle. Point in another direction, preferably South. Long streaks? Take out a calculator and figure out the angle of view of your lens, divide it into 360°. The stars take 24 hours to travel through 360°, so they'd take 416 minutes to cover the full width of my 17mm FX lens (104°) so 2 hours to cover about 1/4 of the frame. Divide that by the number of degrees away from the North Star and... you see where I'm going with this? It ain't easy being green!

But meteors? We learned that the "radiant" – the direction they seem to come from – was in the constellation Camelopardalis, near the North Star. But they could appear all over the sky. So where to point the camera?

Anyway, we needed to find a dark spot. We did, but Mother Nature interfered by putting a lot of moisture in the air, so it wasn't as dark as we had hoped and there were some clouds. With a little planning, I got a few good images, without meteors, unfortunately.

Facing South, we see light pollution probably from Bobcaygeon (50 km) or Peterborough (100 km) away. This exposure was 30 seconds at f/2.8, ISO 800, F=17mm but I did a LOT of tweaking to get it to look like this. You can click on the picture to blow it up

Truth be told, the above image is actually a composite done in StarTrax but it only looks marginally better than a single image. Facing North, I did a more traditional composite, including the North Star:

This was a series of continuous 30 second exposures – about 40 of them – using StarStax and putting it in "Gap Filling Comet" mode. The ISO was a bit higher, at 1600, and in hindsight it shouldn't have been. The two yellow clouds are light from Carnarvon (left) and Haliburton (right). 

So was it worth it? For me, yes. I got a few good shots, learned a lot, and got to shoot with Dave and Kathy and Amanda. Here's one more image I liked:

Another test shot at ISO 12,800. You can see the mist building up in the field to the North in front of the vehicles. 

Oh by the way: we saw a number of airplanes, but best of all, we saw the International Space Station make a pass across most of the sky. It was really bright! Unfortunately, that was about 5 minutes after we had packed everything up and were getting ready to go back!

Meanwhile, back at the Whitewater...

I dropped by there yesterday, it was a nice day and I figured I'd see kayaks. Too late, I guess,  but I took out the camera and tripod anyway. I was setting up for a little slo-mo water shot (which I didn't like in the end) when a guy and his girlfriend showed up and she sat down on the rocks where I was preparing to shoot, posing for his iPhone shot. Far be it from me to pass up an opportunity like that...

A little photoshop here... just a bit of skin smoothing and hair enhancing and teeth whitening and radial filter exposure enhancement. Not much... 

But you know I'm a "rocks & trees" guy, so here she is again, with rocks & trees!

I did an HDR of the trail, then composited her in sitting on a rock. If I hadn't told you, would you have known? 

Until next time!

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Inspiration

I love music.

Not all kinds, mostly blues and jazz and, it occurs to me, most of the artists I listen to are dead. Oscar Peterson, Janis Joplin, Moe Koffman, Jimmy Smith, Paul Butterfield... and SRV.

There are exceptions, of course: Barbra Streisand, Eric Clapton, Gordie Lightfoot, the Eagles, Leonard Cohen, Rhoda Scott, lots of others, of course. Almost nobody contemporary, though. The nearest I come to that is Casey Abrams (and Haley Reinhart). I love their rendition of "Hit the Road, Jack" and "Moanin'". I have about 10 different versions of that last song by various artists.

I consider all the artists I've mentioned to be virtuosi. Not just lucky accidents, people who have skill and talent and have taken them to the pinnacle. Yesterday there was a Labour Day event at the Inn across the road and they had live music going all afternoon. Sitting here, I suddenly heard what sounded like a B3 (the Hammond organ I'd kill for) so I wandered over. The keyboard player was "just OK", as was the group he was in. 10 minutes later I was home, put on some Rhoda Scott and some Tony Monaco...

I'm writing this because this morning, a thread about Stevie Ray Vaughn showed up on Facebook and of course I had to fire up iTunes and play some tunes. I listened to "Pride and Joy" and "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and as I'm typing this, "Voodoo Child". Sometimes I listen to a cut and want to try to learn to play it on the keyboard or guitar or harp. Lately I just listen and enjoy, recognizing I'll never be able to play like that, even if I had a hundred more years to practice.

What's this got to do with photography? It occurred to me that you get your inspiration from experiencing what others have done. When I see images that move me, I think one of three things: (a) I wish I could do pictures like that, (b) what a good idea, I think I'm going to try to use that technique, and (c) I can do and have done better.

The other day, Lance Gitter, a photographer I met about 10 years ago at the Richmond Hill Camera Club, posted a new book he created, called "Gitterized". More about it down further. As I viewed it, thoughts (a) and (b) went through my mind. Lance inspires me to try harder and do better.

PS: iTunes, in its infinite wisdom, picked a random track from my library to play next. How is it possible that I forgot to mention Ray Charles. "Georgia on my Mind" is playing now...

In my next life, I want to come back as a musician. I think that's the best medium in which to express and share your emotions. Sounds odd, from a left-brained person but as I approach my 67th birthday in a few days, I realize that my priorities have changed. My goal in photography is the same: to express emotion and mood, not just technically correct images. Thanks for those who have inspired me in that direction.

Maybe this has inspired you to think about what you're trying to accomplish with your photography. Or painting. Or music. Or writing. Or...

Here's a story with emotion in it

I rode over to the MWWP yesterday. I was actually going to shoot some landscapes enroute but forgot my polarizing filter and Xume adapter at home, so I just shot some kayakers. One caught my eye: different from the usual bearded old guys and grungy characters, she was young and blond and cute and very photogenic.

At first, I couldn't figure out why she was sitting for such a long time off to the side, concentrating on the Otter Slide (a feature in the MWWP waterway). She'd get partway in, then turn around and back out. Another kayaker would be coming down the river but well above, and not actually going to enter the slide yet... it reminded me of a motorcyclist I knew years ago who wouldn't come out of a gas station because she was afraid of the traffic, even though it was light... I figure that she's not that experienced a kayaker and was not confident she could actually do it.

Here she came halfway across, figured she couldn't make it, and struggled to get back to safe water. She did this a few times while I watched.

Finally, she gave it a shot. Here's the sequence I shot as a burst

Check out the facial expressions from left to right! You can click on the image to enlarge it. From 'worried', to 'OK, I can do this', to 'I'm doing it!' to 'yesss!' to 'Yahoo!'  Can you tell from the last two shots below if she was having fun?

I heard her talking with her mom afterwards, it was the first time she actually managed to negotiate that white water (and by the way, the water flow was quite high yesterday, the Otter Slide was wild!). I sent her dad a copy of this image, I know his name is Keith, but I don't know her name...

Fun story. I'm glad I caught it!

Speaking of Inspiration

I remembered a video that I had watched a few years ago and even embedded in my blog (with permission) in 2011. When I went to revisit it, it comes up as "Forbidden". I looked a little further and found it again on a different site. So I thought I'd post a link to it here (not embedding it, just linking to it so copyright isn't an issue).

Possibilities: "Celebrate What's Right with the World" by DeWitt Jones, former National Geographic photographer. It's worth watching again (although the image quality is lacking but the message is still there).

OK, Adobé. NOW you got my attention.

Adobe just announced that the price of Photoshop CC + Lightroom 5 will be an ONGOING $9.99 per month. John Nack specifically said on his blog,,

To reiterate: the intention is not to get you in at $9.99/mo., then crank up the price after a year. $9.99 is the expected ongoing price.

NOW you got me. No hurry to sign up, you have until the end of 2013. This offer is for those who own CS3 or up. I'll give you the link later, you can't do it yet anyway.

Topaz deal available on Monday

REMINDER: I got an email from Topaz Labs that they're putting Topaz Adjust 5 on sale for 50% off ($24.99) from September 9 to September 30th. It's very rarely on sale, so mark your calendars and jump on it next week! Topaz Adjust 5 is my go-to plugin in Photoshop and in Lightroom, it's absolutely my favourite. Go to this link, and enter the promo code "septadjust" (without the quote marks) when ordering.

'tis the season to be jolly! Fa la la la la... never mind!

Get Gitterized

There's an outstanding book available, written by my friend Lance Gitter. It's titled, "Gitterized". Here's what Lance says about it:

This is a collection of my creative images from the last number of years. I have finally accomplished the goal of putting them together in a format where I can share my creativity, who and what inspired me to make some of my photos and what tools and/or techniques I used to come up with these creations.

Lance's work is incredibly creative. Here (with permission) are two images from the book:

Shot on the Rideau Canal last winter 

This montage is a self-portrait. What vision! 

Whenever I see Lance's work, I'm inspired. And not only do these images appear in the book, but also some of the thinking and techniques that went into their creation.

Lance has generously made the entire book available for viewing on-screen but you would be remiss if you didn't buy the book and enjoy the full experience of seeing these images in print. The link for viewing or buying the book is here.

Sometimes you win

And sometimes you don't.

I spent the better part of an hour at the landfill (polite way of saying "garbage dump") this afternoon. They had the giant chipper going — technically I was told it wasn't called a chipper, but that's what it does. It turns big pieces of garbage into small pieces of garbage. This was construction material, so what they do is to bury the wet waste, the household garbage, and cover it with this stuff. Eventually the deep stuff composts, but I learned that they dug up a Sears catalog from 1950 and it was still readable. "That shiny paper takes a long time to decompose".

Where was I? Oh yeah. I tried my damnedest to "isolate the subject". I wanted to make sense out of the chaos that was there. And I couldn't. So these pictures are failures, but a valiant attempt, don't you think?

They dump big garbage in the top of the chipper and little stuff comes out the conveyor belt to the left. Mountains of it. Then they move the big orange thing (the operator of the big excavator has a remote control) and build another mountain.  

Another attempt to isolate it. Here I did three things:  I put the Neutral Density filter on and shot long exposures (around 2 seconds) to give it a sense of motion, I combined about 4 exposures as layers in Photoshop using "darken" as the blending mode between layers, and I ran Silver Efex Pro 2 and put in a bunch of control points for selective colorization.

You win some, you lose some. I gave it the ole college try.

This is Leonard. He works there. He spent part of the day trying to keep the people dropping off garbage and the bears apart. There were two males there today, but not the big one-eyed boar they often see. f/2.8 on the 200mm and Nik HDR Efex Pro 2 (one image only) helped to separate him from the background.

This is Big John. He drives the tractor that makes mountains out of mole hills. Captured his character, I think. He told me his beard used to be down to "here" but it kept getting caught in the tattoo gun. Tough guy. But a pussycat deep down, I think (don't tell him I said that!).

TTFN!

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