The Sea of Tranquility

The sea of Tranquility. No, not the one on the moon. Just something that occurred to me in response when asked why I'm planning to spend the summer in Newfoundland. Scroll down to read more.

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My work is now protected under Creative Commons licensing.

People seem to get their panties in a knot about copyright and their online images getting stolen and copied. I can understand if you're making a living — or a business — out of selling pictures but I don't, really. I've decided that if someone likes my pictures enough to copy them to share on social media, to look at onscreen or even make small prints for their own use, why not? I should be honoured.

I do draw the line at people making large prints because I'd like to have some say about quality, and of course people selling or making money from my images.

I've decided to partially release copyright on the images or copy I post online, both here on the Blog and on Facebook. From now on, my pictures and text are licensed under Creative Commons rules.

Creative Commons

Attribution — NonCommercial — NoDerivs

What that basically means is people can share — copy and redistribute my images in any medium or format subject to the following:

• they must give appropriate credit to me when they do so
• they cannot use it for any commercial purpose whatsoever
• they cannot change the image or text in any way.

This is different from normal copyright rules in that people can use the pictures or text (following the rules above) without asking permission. For example, you can legally download a picture from the blog to share, maybe use it as background wallpaper on your computer or even print it for private non-commercial use (although I don't upload full high resolution images online). If it has a watermark on it like the one above, you can't edit it out. You can quote my writings but you have to say where you got it.

You can still contact me for permission to use my works commercially or for a high resolution print, for instance.

Creative Commons rules are on this page: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. Have a look.

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Time to upgrade the camera?

Not for this old codger. I wrote the following ramble in response to a thread in a Facebook Nikon group. I share it here because it eventually gets to the end message.

I love my D800. It's been frozen shooting pond hockey and dogsled racing, doused in salt water spray on a zodiac in the North Atlantic, drowned in a frog-strangling rainstorm... but like that Timex watch, it keeps on ticking.

Yes, I had it in for service a couple of times, the last time after those liquid events last summer in Newfoundland. There was some corrosion where water got in (apparently around the flash shoe) and the bayonet mount was replaced (too many heavy lenses). Does it ever fail to autofocus? Sure. Do I ever get unexplained exposure variances. Yep. Sometimes. 

The camera is a tool. It's a really fine one. BTW I'm at around 100,000 shutter actuations. Sure I'd love to have the latest and greatest but I'm an old retired guy and my limited funds are going into glass, if anything. And I'm debating a new tripod and gimbal head, my old one's getting a bit heavy for these old bones and arthritic knees.

I met a guy the other day with a slick D5 and a 600 f/4 on a pristine Jobu tripod and gimbal head. Did he get better shots than me? Yes, but part of that was because he's young and can still see through his eyes and can actually hike to where the better images are. And he's skilled.

I shoot birds with my 200-400 f/4. I shoot timelapse star shots and landscapes with my 17-35 f/2.8. I shoot macros and focus stacks with my 105 f/2.8. I shoot all kinds of everything with my 70-200 f/2.8. I love the 36Mp because I don't have to worry about precise framing, I can crop in post.

If I had the money, I'd replace it with a D850 and buy a D500 as a backup to replace the D5500. But for now, I'm really content with what I have and prefer to focus on the art instead of the hardware.

Thanks for putting up with my rambling.

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Newfoundland plans are coming together!

At this moment, the plan is to leave for Newfoundland by car in the last week of June, returning at the beginning of September. 

People have asked me, "Why Newfoundland"? It's one of the most spectacular places in the world if you like the idea of outports, small villages, birds, seascapes, stars... I can go there and still be covered by the Canadian medicare system in case anything happens. Although it's a lot of driving, I'm comfortable with that (besides, there's a new engine in my car!). 

What do I want to get out of it? The word, "Peace" comes to mind. I will pursue my photographic art and I hope to be able to accomplish more painting and sketching and writing. 

My friend Amin is travelling with me and will stay until about July 8th. He's coming back at the end of August and will travel back home with me too.

I've arranged to rent accommodations in the following areas:

• Change Islands, last week of June — focus on icebergs, landscapes, Fogo Island
• Twillingate, the month of July — focus on icebergs, landscapes, maybe whales, boat tours
• Bonavista, the first week of August — focus on Puffins, icebergs, whales, boat tours
• Torbay, the following 3 weeks in August — focus on whales, boat tours, landscapes, cityscapes

On the drive in, we'll be stopping at Peggy's Cove (just for the lobsters!) and once on the Rock, heading straight for Change Islands. From Torbay, I plan day trips including Cape St. Mary (Gannets). On the way home, we'll spend a couple of days on the West coast, a quick look at Gros Morne, the Port au Port peninsula and the bird sanctuaries around Codroy.

The only hole (at this writing) is the last few days of July. I've rented 2-bedroom or bigger houses with the intent of making space available for friends to come visit and join me in experiencing the beauty of this fabulous place.

Except for a few days in Bonavista, where some friends are planning to spend some time with me, I have space available. I'm happy to act as a tour guide and I have help, especially in the St. John's area where Ray Mackey is available. Best photographer/tour guide in Newfoundland!

A previously unedited image. I have LOTS of images from last summer that I haven't gotten around to working on.
Shot in the harbour at Twillingate, sky textures added. 

If you always wanted to come to Newfoundland, this is your chance! My suggestion would be a 2-week visit, one week with me and one week exploring on your own. You need to contact me soon, though, I need to plan! Email me — that's the best way. photography@faczen.com.

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Images

Let's move on to some pictures, shall we? After all that's why most of you read this blog. This issue has an eclectic mix of images taken in the past couple of weeks, a hodge-podge of venues and styles. Where shall I start...

I went to Algonquin Park twice so far in February. The animals seem to be avoiding me but the landscape and the birds can't escape my itchy shutter finger.

At Mew Lake, the snow on the trees was awesome. Now this image won't stand up to a close scrutiny because I edited it very roughly, but if you can ignore the little errors (for instance that branch top centre shouldn't be 'hazed out').  The scene was majestic and beautiful. I added the haze to give it atmospheric perspective and make it more 3-dimensional. I also converted it to black and white, although it wasn't really necessary, there wasn't any colour there anyway! 

On my second visit, the icicles hanging on this rock wall on Highway 60 called to me. I wanted to highlight the details and textures in the rocks and the ice. By the way, both this and the trees image are large-pixel-count panoramic merges of multiple frames. Extremely high resolution. 

Then there were the birds. I'm really pleased with the performance of the 200-400mm f/4 Nikon lens, a whole level better than I was able to do before.

American Goldfinch in winter plumage

Female purple finch. 

Male red crossbill. First time I've seen these birds and they're rampant in the park. This one was on a tree behind the visitor's centre. The hard part is the exposure: they sit right up at the top of the trees and when I was there, the sun was directly behind the bird! The magic of Photoshop and Lightroom... 

Next was the pond hockey tournament and the dogsled racing at Pinestone. Some great photo ops!

I just came out to shoot some pictures of Cheryl Hamilton's team, the "Finest Things". On their uniforms, the individual players were identified with big badges, "Thing 1" and "Thing 2" and... I loved their coach, the Cat in the Hat. Some fanciful editing with Topaz Impression to make this whimsical picture. 

I got there late for the dogsled races. I missed everything except the closing 8-dog race. Again lots more shots to edit, but these are a couple of my favourites. The weather was ugly: freezing rain, although it wasn't frigid. 

It was a rainy day in Pizzaville... so I shot indoors for a bit instead of going out there. In an effort to begin decluttering, I put some items up online to sell and did some quick pictures to go with the listings.

These are pieces from a beautiful anodized aluminium chess set I had acquired in the late '60s in New York. I thought I'd get rid of it in an effort to declutter, but I'm just as glad nobody bought it. I shot this in the light tent which provides such even, soft lighting that there's not a shadow to be seen! Each of the pieces is represented in this picture (plus an extra pawn for balance.  

And now, as my closing picture, here's a macro shot of a spider. Since purchasing Helicon Focus software last month, I haven't seen a single bug to photograph. Not one. Then I came across this dead spider and said, "Aha"!

This little guy was about 1cm across. This picture is a composite of 88 stacked images. I was trying to get a picture showing the spider's eyes. Hidden by the hair? Nah. Guess which end of the spider this is! Like one of those little dogs where you can't tell front from back. No wonder I couldn't find them!  

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À prochaine!

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The Stories of Kensington Market

Got that macro lens!

As I mentioned last week, I'm really loving macro. The extension tubes are OK but they force you to choose between macro and regular distances (so when a hummingbird hovered nearby, I couldn't shoot it). I decided to bite the bullet and I bought the Nikon 105mm f/2.8 VR macro lens. Took delivery on Monday, and have only had a chance to shoot a couple of images with it. Here's one:

This image is straight out of the camera. I didn't do ANYTHING to it beyond my normal RAW file import preset in Lightroom, not even crop it.  Well, except for 'spot removing' a couple of blemishes in the flower. 

Did you notice there's a wee spider lurking in the centre of the flower? I didn't, until I looked at it onscreen!

Rogers Wireless. First they refused to admit they had (have) a problem with their tower up here despite the fact that at least a dozen of us have the same symptoms: the audio on incoming calls is breaking up even with 5 full bars of signal strength. Admittedly my iPhone 4s is getting old but I'm not the only one.

Then they offered to charge me almost $400 to upgrade the phone to the iPhone 5s. They tried to sell me on an Android phone. But they couldn't convince me that it would sync with my Outlook calendar and addressbook and sure enough, my own research revealed that it will NOT without third party software, which I would have to purchase.

In the end, they said they'd discount me $75 because I've been a loyal customer for 12 years. Whoopee.

Costco and the good folks at Bell. After waiting hours in Rogers stores with staff who are more concerned with the state of their fingernails and a thimble full of computer knowledge, I left and went to Costco. This for an iPhone 6 not iPhone 5, same plan (plus 50 minutes of US calling), cheaper price AND the phone cost was $149. If I switched to Bell, which I readily did.

20 minutes later I was live, they transferred my existing data from the old phone and I got on the road back up North.

The reason I went with Rogers in the first place was because of mistreatment by Telus and the fact they had no usable signal up here in the Highlands. With Bell, I've got 4 out of 5 bars sitting at my computer. The iPhone 6 is nice, same look and feel as the 4s but faster.

I just ordered this "Tough" iPhone case through RedBubble with my own image on it:

It's a pretty dark image (intentionally), looks good on screen and I hope it will print well. Cost me about 60% of the cost of an Otterbox, by the way.  

In a rut?

Here's a link to a series of ideas/exercises that might drag you out of that funk:

http://petapixel.com/2015/07/16/13-exercises-for-photographers-that-can-help-jump-start-creativity/

...or you could get out of your comfort zone and do something different, like street photography!

Street Photography Outing

Seven strong, we headed down to Kensington Market on Monday. All street photography newbies. We knew that it was supposed to rain around 2pm but we hung in there anyway. Trying to get everyone in the same place at the same time was like herding cats. It can't be done! Holly and Chris were in a 'horticultural' shop, learning how to plant certain kinds of "seeds". Maggie went into another shop and bought earrings. Sharon was doing her own thing. Wendy turned left when we turned right. It was a challenge! Amin and I stayed together most of the time, though.

First thing I shot was an onrushing streetcar on Spadina. Slow shutter speed, zoom while shooting. Kind of trite and overdone, but I like it! The streetcar driver wasn't too happy with me standing on the track in front of his moving vehicle!

Then there was this guy...

He was sitting there, giggling and laughing to himself. There was a lot of that going on in Kensington: I usually get the munchies too, when I get the giggles... anyway he got real serious and gave me the eye when he saw me shooting his picture. 

I didn't want to make it all about shooting characters. I wanted stories. So I actually approached this next guy (after I took his picture!) and asked him, "how do you sound"?

He said, "I don't know, I haven't played in a long time". I'm not sure what he was on but... He asked to see his picture on the camera then wanted me to email it to him! Either he wasn't what he seemed, or he was...

Then the rains came. 

Another guy walking along laughing loudly at some internal joke 

This was one of my favourite pictures of the day.  

But this one tops my list:

Tolerating the rain? Enjoying it? Reveling in it? In a hurry to get out of it? I didn't make this one black and white because I think the colour adds to it. In fact, I might make this the basis of my first attempt to paint a person. 

I have several more images to process from that outing. Hang in there!

Twinkle, Twinkle...

The other night I went out to photograph the Perseid meteor shower. Good news and bad news: I saw lots of meteorites but I didn't capture many on the camera. However I'd like to share two images.

This is a StarStaX composite of 100 images. There are actually four meteorite events visible in the image, look for lines that go in odd directions. But they're lost in the splendour of the star trails. I overlaid one of the foreground images and painted it in Impression

Both of these images are somewhat dark, I hope they render well on your monitor. 

This was a single long exposure (38 minutes). Partway through, I discovered that the lens was covered with dew so I carefully wiped it without moving the camera. The canoe was NOT in the scene: I comped it in after someone on Facebook gave me the idea. But the sky really did look like this, an example of real life emulating art.  

Stay tuned for more next week!

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Am I one-dimensional?

today you get some "sporadic musings" to start things off. Just trying to change things up from time to time.

...I hope not. At least I'm trying not to be. Yes, my first passion is photography, but there are other things in life. Something missing is people and I'm trying to correct that, but I do have others: writing, teaching, music, the outdoors...

I love music. If I could come back as anything in another life it would be as a musician. I envy people who can express their emotions so, well, blatantly. When was the last time you looked at a photo or a painting and were moved almost to the point of tears? Or with joy? So all of that said, I know that I can't play any instrument like I want to (my keyboard is sitting to my left as I write this, a guitar leaning against the wall and a handful of harps (harmonicas) lying on top of the keyboard. All unused for months now). But I can certainly listen to others play and perform.

What's driving this discourse is the fact that I attended a great concert in Haliburton last Saturday, by Harry Manx (and Steve Marriner). Both terrific musicians, first one in a long time. I didn't bring my camera in, although I could have – I decided I wanted to enjoy experiencing the music instead of trying to photograph it. I gave in and shot a couple of iPhone shots, that's all.

Too many links... go to YouTube and search for these guys. Their music is off the wall and not what you're likely used to but you might be impressed by the skill and emotion with which they play. PS, I never thought I'd be impressed by someone who plays a Sitar (or sitar-like instrument like the mohan veena) and clearly is influenced by Indian music (OK, George Harrison...). He did drop the "Ravi Shankar" name.

As I re-read this and wonder why I wrote it anyway, the realization has set in that as I age, I've transitioned from participant to observer, and that's not a great feeling. I used to ski, hunt, fish, hike, work out, play racquetball, put 17km on my legs and knees on a weekend teaching motorcycling... I was invited on a trip to Yellowstone yesterday and have been considering Iceland. But my first thought is, "how much walking is involved"? {sigh}. I really have to do some of these before I can't any more.

Message: don't "put off until tomorrow what you can do today..."

Another Great Experience

I've been fascinated by American Sign Language for some time. I haven't learned it properly because I really don't have anyone nearby to practice with, although I know three people who are very conversant with it: my cousin Dr. Steve who is a psychologist and specializes in deaf patients, Shannon, a photographer friend from the Huntsville area who is hearing impaired and in fact teaches ASL, and my friend Ilana who works with deaf kids at the York Region School Board.

Enough intro? Ilana and I went to a new restaurant in Toronto called "Signs" where all of the wait staff are deaf. And you have to order from the menu using ASL (there are 'cheat sheets' on the menu and the table!). The food is good, prices are Toronto-competitive, and the atmosphere is outstanding! I highly recommend the place.

I was going to photoshop this to make me taller and slimmer and not so stupid looking, but hey, 'I yam what I yam'. Ilana, of course, doesn't need any photoshopping! 

By the way, when we first walked in, the maîtresse-d' (did I get that right?) specifically said it's OK to take pictures. In hindsight, I should have taken some shots of our waitress Chandri (her 'sign name' is "Candy". You'll understand what that means if you get into ASL), while she was talking with us. Signing with us. I will next time, because I'm definitely going back. Watch the little video on the Signs site.

What's fascinating about ASL is it isn't just making signs with your hands, speaking in ASL is like acting. You need to add body language and facial expressions. People who speak it well are soooo fast! It's hard to read them! But our waitress and the other staff at Signs know that, and are really helpful!

By the way, as long as I'm rambling on about this, did you know that there's less and less need for signing today? Two reasons that come to mind: a large percentage of profoundly deaf people can regain some hearing through cochlear implants today; Ilana tells me there's almost no need for signing in the public school system any more; and electronics, like iPads and the like, make communicating much easier than it used to be. See? You learned some trivia today!

I DID photoshop this one. Slim, eh? Too bad it's not that easy in real life! 

PS If you Google "ASL" or "American Sign Language", there's lots of links to learning the basics.

Speaking of iPads...

I was, right? OK, I mentioned them... I can't use my old iPad 1 as much any more. Somebody mentioned recently that Apple has built obsolescence into the iPad (and iPhone) products. They have, haven't they? Consider that I can't upgrade the I/OS in the old iPad beyond version 5. Then apps come along with updates that I can't install or worse, that I can install but no longer work. I haven't figured it out yet, but iBooks, which I used to use to read a library of books and pdf's on the iPad, doesn't want to work any more. Hell, I can't even play Scrabble. I think Apple wants me to buy a new one... anyone else have this issue?

Colour Space

For my photographer and Photoshopping friends (what photographer doesn't do post processing today?), the issue of colour space is important. Bottom line, what you see on your screen will likely not match what you get when you print; and what you see on the internet (especially FaceBook!) doesn't look like what you're seeing in Photoshop or Lightroom. It's not a simple topic.

When you're editing, you're likely using a "colour space" which is bigger than what the printer or monitor can handle. For example, you might have something fluorescent orange which won't look that way when you print it, but you want to edit it in such a way that you can see all the detail, all the nuances of colour in the program, onscreen. But as I said, the minute you want to post that image online or print it, you have to convert it to the colour space those media can handle. And that's not so simple either! For example, do you want that range of fluorescent orange colours to look like the brightest orange you can print, or do you want to "map" them down into the colour space so you can still pick up details?

A good example was that business card I showed you last week: the printing press uses cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks to create the colours, your monitor uses red-green-blue*. They're obviously going to look different and in this case, I had a greenish tinge. Both Lightroom and Photoshop have the ability to simulate what the image is going to look like in a different colour space – PS more that LR – and it's called "soft proofing". Here's an example

The picture on the right is what the image looked like when I finished editing it (just the colour, etc. I haven't edited the picture itself, so don't criticize it!). But when I saved it for FaceBook it looked like the middle one. In order to make it look good in sRGB (for online or printing) I had to change it in Lightroom to look like the picture at left.

* Actually whenever you put ink on paper, you're dealing with reflective colours and when you look at images on a monitor, it's transmissive colours. So all printers work on the CMYK principle. When you send an image to your inkjet printer, you send an sRGB image and the printer translates that into how much Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black to put on the paper. Some printers have more ink colours (the Epson 7900 has 11 of them, if I recall correctly) in order to reproduce nuances better. Some newer ones can work in other colour spaces. I don't know any printer that can reproduce fluorescent orange the same way a monitor can.

So if you've ever sent a picture out for printing or posted it online and you were disappointed with the colour, this might be the reason why.

Don't get me started on the need to calibrate your monitor if you've got any hope that what you see is what you're going to get! What if your monitor was too red? You'd adjust a picture onscreen until it looks right but look at it on someone else's monitor or in print? If you calibrate you have a chance that they'll be the same.

So much for my lecturing for today. It's one of the things I talk about in my Photoshop and Lightroom workshops. Want to learn more? It's the right time of year, the weather outside's getting frightening! Read about it at www.photography.to and sign up for a course!

What's Art?

There's a discussion going on on Facebook about whether using Topaz Impression is cheating, pretending to be an artist. There are arguments going back and forth about how the computer is not a real art medium, how only people who hold brushes and get paint on their clothes are real artists...

I'm torn. Clearly, anyone who can translate their vision into a shareable medium is an artist (I consider ALL musicians to be artists, see above). Regardless of how you do it (Warhol and his Apple Mac were used as an example), it's art. And there's nothing wrong with emulating someone else: otherwise the question, "who were your influences when you were starting out?" would be meaningless. COPYING someone else is a no-no, though.

Dumb example. I created this in a game for my grandson on my iPad by bringing up an image on my computer, looking at it and then sketching with my finger on the iPad to copy it. This isn't art. It's copying someone else's art. 

But if I take one of my photos and apply brush strokes and textures to it using Topaz Impression, does it become art? Well it already was art... I'm just making it look more like how my mind saw it. Impression's presets are labelled "van Gogh", or "da Vinci", or "Cezanne" or... does that mean I'm pretending to be one of those masters? I don't think so. Since I never studied classical art, I had no idea what those masters did or what their work looked like. As I look through the presets, I find ones that I like, they could be called "X" or "Z" or "fuzzy brush strokes", doesn't matter. By the way, I'm enjoying looking at paintings and would like to know more. I need to go to Kleinburg (The McMichael Collection) again soon. The AGO is south of the 401... 

Can you create art on a computer? Without question. Look up Patrick LaMontagne. His work is amazing. Do I think the National Gallery will ever display a work done in Impression? Who knows? Who ever thought that a Campbell's soup can would be considered art?

I love Impression. It allows me to add another dimension to my images, and as I said above, it makes them look more like what my mind saw. Is it art? Youbetcha.

I reworked this old image in Impression, using the Edward Hopper I preset as a starting point. Probably not something I would hang on my wall, but fun...

Here's the thing. Pictures with minimal editing in them now look flat and lifeless to me. I have to get out of that mindset.

So now some pictures...

If you want to practice shooting birds in flight, go to the dump! Just as I learned from shotgun hunting, when you have a whole flock, you have to pick one bird to focus on (or use a small aperture to get huge depth of field). In this case I got lucky, I had the wrong focus point selected!

There's a plug-in for Lightroom that shows you which focus points were used when you shot the image. 

Sometimes the bird is just standing there, posing for you! My camera is always set to AF-C (continuous tracking) and back-button focusing, so I'm always ready, whether the subject is moving or not.  

Nailed it! But I did shoot about 50 images... I liked this one the best. 

Shooting pictures in the winter is challenging. For the above shots, I set the exposure compensation to about +1ev because I wanted white, not grey snow. Read about it and other winter tips in my 56 page eBook, "Winter Wonderland, a guide to taking better pictures" available for FREE to subscribers to this blog (click the Newsletter link at the top, or here). If you're already a subscriber, you'll get an email with the link to the free eBook. If you don't want to subscribe, you can get the eBook here for $2.

Here's my picture of the day. I went out for a walk and saw the grass poking up through the new snowfall, and the boat mostly buried in fresh snow. It was coming up to sunset, so the shadows were interesting and as soon as I spotted this scene I knew basically what I wanted to do with it. So I shot it with the idea that I was going to process it with brush strokes. I chose the "Georgia O'Keefe" preset in Topaz Impression (there were about 8 presets that I liked for this!) and didn't change it much. This is definitely going on my list of images to print. 

Just a reminder that this time of year you might want to have some Holiday greeting cards printed up with your own images on them, or mine if you prefer. I can help, very inexpensively fro excellent quality. And think about giving gifts of art, it's perfect for those who are really hard to buy for! I have a great selection of images on my SmugMug site (just working on updating it today), on RedBubble (check out their pillows, smartphone and tablet cases and skins and other stuff! Some great gift ideas there!) and on Fine Art America, all at very reasonable prices. Check them out or send me an email and let's talk!

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