Changes

A lot can change in our lives, sometimes the pace is slow and others it is much faster. Whichever pace it takes, the end result is inevitable; change will happen.

In the months since my last post, a lot of changes have either happened or are still in the process of happening. The biggest, and still ongoing change in my life is that I no longer work for the University of Oklahoma. Also within the next couple of weeks, I will no longer be living in Oklahoma. Instead I will be living in North Carolina. So, among other things, this will give me a whole new realm to explore photographically.

Photo wise, I did take a trip to South Dakota a couple of months ago and spent 10 days camping. And wow, this was an eventful trip and not for all the right reasons. Before we got very far into South Dakota, from Nabraska, we ran into a nasty hailstorm. Up to golf-ball size hail and so heavy it was a "whiteout" and we had to pull to the side of the highway. Suffice to say, the truck hood and roof was pretty badly dented; whereas our camping trailer was heavily pockmarked and had a roof vent smashed in (letting in the hail and rain). So the first order of business afer we got to the campsite was find someone to repair the vent to keep any further weather out. If that wasn't enough of a hassle, during the drive there I had noticed some noises coming from the driver's side front wheel; suspecting the wheel bearing being worn. Picked out a local mechanic (close to the campsite) and booked it in for repairs. Then on the day of the repairs and while driving there, the brakes failed and emptied the contents of the fluid reservoir all over the road. Luckily for me the mechanic (Wicked Wrenches in Rapid City, SD) was able to arrange a tow truck to get me to the shop. A couple of days later, and after a new wheel bearing and all new front brakes, I had my truck back and could start to explore the area.

The two main locations we wanted to check out was Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. Both iconic rock carvings, on vastly different scales; Crazy Horse being the larger carving. It's also not that easy to take images other than the classic views of these locations. Not unless you have time an opportunity to make multiple visits, at different times, in different weather and different seasons. Unfortunately, I didn't really have a lot of flexibility due to losing so much time with truck issues. So I stuck with the "tourist" frame of mind and went for it!

Mount Rushmore was pretty impressive, and the iconic figures quickly pop into view as you approach. And as you enter the main path towards the monument, they stay in your view as it's perfectly straight and centered on the monument.

Once you reach the other end of the path the monument is pretty dominant, although the visitor's center is very informative and well worth a visit, providing the history and backstory to the site.

However, for me the lady performing the "hoop dance" was a captivating sight to watch and was an unexpected bonus; and one I was glad to have a fairly high FPS capability.

Now, using  slower shutter speed could have given a completely different view as blur would be introduced but I chose to stay fairly fast to capture more detail.

Then the next day we visited Crazy Horse. The difference in scale is pretty impressive and I can see why the locals recommend visiting Mt. Rushmore first. And Crazy Horse is all the more impressive in that is is entirely funded by donations and the profits of the on-site shops. Unfortunately you cannot get as close to the monument as you can with Mt. Rushmore (unless you wish to pay for a special tour) so a long lens is an essential to get a close view; or you can switch to a wide angle lens and photograph the scale model of what the finished carving will look like.

Not that you can't get a good view of the monument but I certainly hit the limit of my available zoom range when shooting from the visitor center area.

My personal recommendation is to hop on one of the tour buses that will take you closer, as well as give you some further insight into the history of the area.

And yes, I know I could have zoomed in a lot closer here, but I really like the context of the image and the sense of scale that you can't really convey from a zoomed in shot. Also while here, take the time to explore the visitor complex as there is a lot to see. There is a lot of fascinating indigenous art and crafts as well as earlier work of the sculptor. Among the sights I found this wonderful, life-size Kachina doll.

All in all, south Dakota is a great place to visit. My only regret is that I didn't have more time to explore and to visit these sights ant different times of the day to maximize lighting options. Suffice to say, when the opportunity to revisit comes, I'll be heading back.

And now I need to get back to packing in preparation of our move to North Carolina; I've put it off long enough to get this post put together but really need to get back to it.

Back to basics

I've been undertaking a lot of introspection lately and revisiting where it all began for me and photography. At times the acquisition of new gear and the pursuit of new styles, techniques and attempts to specialize can distance you from your true, creative spark.

Without belaboring the point, I have been deconstructing my work and working to retrain my creative eye. Examining pattern, color, texture, as well as tone and contrast of black and white images. I'm also not setting any particular genre to what I photograph as I want to not set any artificial restrictions on myself.

Now I know that this is not necessarily going to producing many spectacular images or much to share here or on my website but that's not my intention anyway. This is something that should lead to new work, mainly projects for myself to build my portfolio and website.

The first couple of images in all this came by way of my macro lens. Both were images taken in natural light and utilizing long exposures to achieve the needed depth of field. The first of these is of a maple tree seed where I wanted to capture the texture and subtle coloring.

The second image was more for color and shape and to add an extra challenge to the natural light long exposure is that this was a honeysuckle flower outdoors. Took several attempts before the wind was still enough to not affect the image.

And then on a more mundane level, I finally completed setting up SEO on my new website. It was something I kept telling myself I needed to do but kept putting off. Well, I can now report back that it is complete. I even went as far as setting up website analytics so I can see how well it is doing and if I need to fine tune anything.

Change, change, change

I can never make my mind up as to whether change is a good or bad thing. This is not helped any by there seeming to be so many (albeit small) changes I've needed to address lately.

Chief among them is that I have recently overhauled my image editing processes. This has been a somewhat, drawn out process but I'm glad to move on from doing everything in Lightroom. I'd have to say a big contributor to this has been my acquisition of the Nik Collection; and my getting around to fully exploring it. Now instead of making a lot of edits directly in Lightroom, I am using Dfine for noise reduction and Sharpening Pro (output) for final sharpening. These two tools are miles ahead of the adjustments within Lightroom and the resulting images are much improved. And on the subject of Lightroom; it has a weird habit of skewing the colors when importing NEF RAW files from my cameras. Testing out the different Camera Calibration settings certainly pays off and using the Camera Standard setting gives my more vibrant (and red) reds. No more orange tinted reds!

Oh, and while on the subject of the Nik Collection, I have to mention Silver Efex Pro! I am loving the B/W conversions I can do with the software. I've even created my own custom preset so I can quickly replicate the look across any image. In my opinion it is the best B/W convertor available.

The other big change is concerning my online presence, as GoDaddy has completely changed their website building software and "obsoleted" my website. Now I know that I need to redesign and update my website but I do not like their new software, which is clunky and not the most intuitive. Of course, I already have a sore spot where they're concerned and their poor Mac support; hence why this blog is no longer hosted on their domain. So, I'm now looking into alternate hosts and platforms to start fresh and bring my website and blog back together. I'm also no longer considering a free solution as, unsurprisingly, you do get what you pay for.

I can't really talk about image editing and workflow changes without providing some samples, so here are a couple of images from my recent trip to Pikes Peak in Colorado. Regular visitors to my blog will recognize them, as I did post the color image previously; albeit with my "old" image editing workflow settings. Hopefully you can see the changes in the finished image.

And here 's the same image after running it through Silver Efex Pro and my custom preset.

Some things change; other things stay the same

There have been a lot of changes (and some not so much) since my last blog post; however long ago it was.

First and foremost (as it's the largest change in size) I traded in my Subaru for a Ford F150 pick-up truck.  This is primarily to provide us with a decent tow vehicle for our camping trailer; which enabled us to spend a week in Colorado (near Colorado Springs) and provided me an opportunity to visit Pikes Peak and the spectacular views from the summit.

It also provided me with a great photo platform for a visit to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, here in Oklahoma. To me this is a wonderful location to escape the "noise" of civilization and unwind. When there's no vehicles driving down the gravel roads, all you hear is the sound of nature, mainly just the wind. You might be wondering just what I meant about the truck being a great photo platform; well that has to do with the local inhabitants of the prairie preserve, the bison heard. Jumping in the truck bed gives a great elevated vantage point that also prevents any errant bison from getting too close to me; a great safety feature.

The above is a 180 panorama I took from a scenic outlook spot with a 35mm lens (50mm effective). And I have to say that the rolling hills so remind me of parts of Dartmoor National Park in England, which is an all time favorite location of mine, that I grew up visiting as often as i could. Colorado helped to provide me a renewed taste of rocky and elevated terrain, something that's pretty lacking in Oklahoma. And I certainly intend to start traveling more to interesting locations.

Okay, back to the bison. For my photos of them I broke out an old Nikkor 300mm manual focus lens I have. And here lies a few discoveries: 1. I'm seriously out of practice using a manual focus lens, especially on moving targets and 2. the manual focus system on the Nikon D2X is not that great for moving targets. It uses a range-finder style indicator to show when you are in focus but the focus target is in the center of the viewfinder, so focusing and then recomposing provides plenty of time for the subject to move; I so miss the split focus indicator on my old manual focus cameras, so much easier to use and didn't require you to "centrally focus". Anyway, it unfortunately meant, as I found out later, that most of my photos are a little soft on focus, or off by a lot.

Now for the things that haven't changed. I'm still spending 8 hours a day in front of a computer for my "other job" and have lost my desire to spend long periods in front of a computer when I am away from the office. Unfortunately that has seriously effected my photography as, shooting digital photos, you have to do everything on a computer. Suffering from technology burnout is not conducive to being a photographer. Maybe I need to step away from digital and go back to film for a while, and have the photo lab do all the work for me. That way all I would need to do is any additional editing and sorting.

Whatever I decide to do, something will need to change so I stand a chance to recover my passion and drive for photography.

Visit to Robber's Cave State Park

I recently started what could be a long running project, visiting and photographing National Parks and State Parks; starting off in Oklahoma, my “home” state. Not the I have visited many yet, in fact, this recent trip to Robber’s Cave was my inaugural trip. For anyone interested in visiting, you can find out a lot of information on the Robber’s Cave page of the TravelOK website here: http://www.travelok.com/listings/view.profile/id.6415

As it turned out, weather affected things somewhat, as there was rain and storms moving through the area as we were traveling to the park. In fact, for a while I was not sure if we would be doing much more than holing up in the cabin we had rented for the entirety of our 2 day stay. Luckily, the morning after our arrival was a lot drier as the weather front had moved away. It was still damp from the previous day’s storms but it was not actively raining anymore.

My plans were not set in stone but I was wanting to take some 180 and 360 panoramic shots as well as some HDR/regular landscape and detail shots; which is pretty much what I did. The climb up to the cave was interesting as the ground was still a little wet and the rocks were slick in spots, plus I was carrying my backpack of camera gear and a large tripod strapped to the side. Once I reached the summit of the climb and neared the cave entrance I was greeted with nice panoramic views of the surrounding area. And one of the biggest things I had noted was how clear the air was here; moss and lichen were everywhere. Trees and rocks were covered, creating fascinating textures and patterns.

Now on to the photographs.

Picture 1 is a 180 panorama of the actual cave. I took this so that I could capture the entirety of the cave entrance without having to use an ultra-wide lens, and subsequent image distortion.

Picture 2 is a simple landscape shot using an 8mm full-frame fish eye lens and is looking out from near the cave, out over the valley.

 
Pictures 3, 4 and 5 are closer detail shots of the patterns and textures the mosses and lichens were making.

 
Picture 6 is from a HDR bracket set of the Devil’s Slide feature below the cave.

 
I also took a HDR bracket set 360 panorama, which due to viewing issues will be posted to my 360cities account. It is not a full 360/180 circular panorama as I didn’t include a zenith and nadir shot but it is still a great view of the cave and surrounding area.

Minor update

As there was no usual mid-week post last week, I wanted to do a quick update to let everyone know that I'm still here.

My recent photo "assignment" was to take photos at a halloween costume competition, but as I did not have any model release forms signed I can't really share any of them here. They were used for university instead for competition judging and for posting the winning participants. I'm not too concerned by all this as if nothing else, it was a good exercise in shooting on the fly (so to speak) as most of my plans had to change on the day and no two photos were the same. Also, I had a very short space of time to setup and shoot each photo, weather it was a single person or a group of 12+.

On a different note, I found a great product that I am eagerly awaiting its arrival; the Phottix Luna folding beauty dish. Finally I will be able to use a beauty dish on my SB-900 hotshoe flash. This, alongside my pair of shoot-through umbrellas and Lastolite Ezybox, will give me all three main lighting tools for portrait work and will allow me to vary from wide, soft diffused light to more directional and contrasty light.

Eye of the beholder

I'm pretty certain that I am not alone, as a person and as a photographer, in my opinion that everything has its own natural beauty. Take spiders for example; while reviled by many, I find their unique forms and features to be fascinating and beautiful.

I found this particular specimen making its web at the side of my house, while I was walking one of my dogs. As the web was only a few feet off the ground, I had to stop Jax from having a snack while I checked out the spider.

Next it was a case of grab my camera, macro lens, flash and Flashbender modifier. This time I switched to TTL balanced flash and Aperture Priority on the camera so I could concentrate more on framing and focusing. Of course, breaking out a light stand and getting the flash off camera would have also been an option but I went to for on camera flash bouncing light off the Flashbender to create indirect illumination.

I did a quick search on Google but so far I have not identified the particular species of spider. Still, I find it to be pretty striking and after taking about 30 images, I left it alone to go back to creating it's web.

Throwback Thursday

Here is another delve into my photo archives and a previously unreleased photograph. This one was taken in October 2008 at the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve, near Pawhuska, Oklahoma - it was my first visit to the preserve and my first encounter with a bison.

The photo was taken in the late afternoon sun, close to 4:30pm and is of a single bison as it forages in the prairie grasses. If you're ever in the area, I highly recommend paying the preserve a visit and stepping back in time to when most of Oklahoma was open prairie lands and the bison roamed free.

Small things

Like a lot of things, photography is often made (or broken) by the small things - not least of which is the need to watch the background for unwanted things or "photo bombs" by people/animals/objects. Also, by focussing on the little things we can find some really interesting subjects; colour, texture, shape, the play of light and shadow, etc.

I spotted this little flower in my back yard, in our small raised bed and I felt inspired to break out my camera and try to capture it. The late afternoon sun was placing the raised bed into shadow so I also broke out my SB-900 and Rogue Flashbender to provide some more flattering, indirect lighting. I then took several shots with the flash set to TTL/BL and was not very happy with the results as the flower was getting washed out. To compensate for this I switched over to manual on both my D2X and SB-900, finding a happy medium with the flash set to 1/4 power and the camera set to 1/100 sec and f/14 on my 60mm macro lens.

I like how the strands of spider web add a little extra interest to the shot - wondering where the spider may be; when did they leave; when will they return.

And I still like the square format to give a more balanced image (to me), some may not be too enamored with it but I like it on this particular shot.

Until the next entry, keep exploring and experiencing...

Musings and observations

I haven't spent much time behind my camera so far this week, but have every intention to remedy this very soon.

Not that I haven't been doing photography related things in the meantime. Been watching some instructional videos from Lindsay Adler on lighting and posing techniques, as well as diving into another of her great books - Fashion Flair for Portrait and Wedding Photography. And another great source for lighting techniques is any of Joe McNally's books - and great reads too!

Oddly enough, I observed (by chance) a couple of photographers taking portraits at a local park over this past weekend; while I was there exercising my dog and letting him get excited with all the squirrels. Anyway, back to the "photographers" and my impressions of watching their work. My number one thought was how they need to read "Shooting in Sh*tty Light" by Lindsay Adler because I'm seriously thinking that their photos are not going to be very great.

One photog was working with a young couple and all she had for light modifiers was an on camera flash (no diffuser dome or other modifier in use, other than the built-in bounce card was extended) that was set to 90° straight at the subjects - the most unflattering option. They would have done a lot better to have had an assistant with a 5in1 reflector/diffuser to work with the wonderful afternoon sun (for natural light) or to help in getting the flash off-camera to provide a more pleasing fill light. What made this one worse for me was a little while later I overheard the photog and subjects talking about the shoot and the photog commented about looking forward to receiving their $400 fee! Wow classy; talking loudly about that kind of thing in a public place.

Then a little while later I saw what must have been a wedding party of some sort - big stretch limo, about a dozen people streaming out and being herded into a group for some photos. The photog in this scenario had nothing more than a single body and (what looked like) a short zoom lens. He proceeded to line everyone up, facing into the afternoon sun which meant they would all be squinting heavily and scrunching up their faces. Most unflattering!

Now it's not like I'm (currently) any top portrait photographer but I'm educating myself on good practices. I'm also very well aware of mistakes I've made in the past with a lot of my portrait work...not least of which is producing boring, stiff portraits. Add into that poor lighting choices (don't light a male and female subject the same - one will not like the look) and general errors.

I am currently planning my "first" portrait session since all my video classes and reading and will incorporate as much of what I've learnt as I can into the photos. I'm even following Lindsay's prep work suggestions to identify location and photo style. And of course, I will post updates and photos here after they are finished.

Wayback Wednesday

Today I'm going to do something a little different and dig into my photo archives to highlight never before published photos.

The year is 2005 and I have recently started working with a digital SLR camera. The camera in question is a Nikon D100 (and yes, I do still have it) and I am busily diving into the whole world of digital photography.

Like a lot of people, I have mixed feelings about zoos and aquariums but I have to say that they do offer the chance to photograph animals that you may never otherwise have an opportunity to. On this occasion I was at the Oklahoma Aquarium and saw a pretty good sized bass swimming around and I took several photos of him/her.

For the technically minded, the lens used was a 60mm f/2.8D Micro with an exposure of 1/20sec @ f/4.

I hope you like this small glimpse back in time and a chance to see a photo that has not been widely shared before. Who knows, I may make this a regular thing!

Busy, busy time

It's been a while since I last sat down with my laptop and typed up a blog entry and a lot has transpired in that time - some good, some not so good.

I think I'll just dive in and get the not so good out of the way. For some time now my Macbook Pro has been progressively having performance issues and Lightroom had been a major pain in that it would often fail to open and read all my cataloged images. Thinking that the problem was with Lightroom I contacted their tech support for assistance. Hmm, was that a fun time - not that they were not helpful or anything, it was how bad my Mac and Lightroom were behaving. I ended up having two separate support chat calls and both ended the same way with my Mac being so locked up and unresponsive that I had to power it off.

Long story short, it eventually turned out to not be a problem with Lightroom. Instead it was the disk in my Mac that was going bad. Fortunately I had the foresight to insure I had an up to date backup of all my photos onto an external disk, which in the circumstances was more fortunate than I first thought as the entire image folder for 2014 on the internal disk got wiped out! Backups are good!!

Ah, the joys of technology - a necessary thing for any digital photographer as our work depends on it in so many ways. And yes, my Macbook Pro is running (I rebuilt it on a spare disk).

And speaking of photography, I have been making pictures in all this and still experimenting with lighting. A couple of small portable flashes can be very versatile and when needed, can illuminate an entire room.

My first photo sample is natural light on a rainy day. Not sure what it is but I like to look for small details on wet days and this view of my garden is very whimsical -

I know some may not like how it's primarily out of focus over most of the image but it certainly draws you in and that was my intention.

Of course, what would this post be without at least one puppy photo? Well, this one would be 1 short as I'm going to post two - one of Amber and one of Jax. Both of these were taken with a pair of Speedlights on stands and set to 1/2 power, shooting straight up to bounce off the ceiling. Effectively they lit the room and removed any mixed lighting from the ambient and CFL lighting in the room. Also, I felt they looked better cropped 1:1 as I kind of like the square format look - 

My last photo updates are my most recent work and sees me dabbling again in event photography, recording events on campus; as part of my day job at the university. In this case the event was to mark the groundbreaking on a new 4-year medical school initiative between OU-Tulsa and TU. The event included the attendance of the president of OU, David Boren -

And what is a groundbreaking without at least one picture of dirt being dug - 

I'm hoping my technical woes are behind me and that I am now free to get back to making photos as I've missed being creative.

Okmulgee Lake and Dripping Springs

Earlier this month I re-visited Okmulgee Lake and Dripping Springs Lake, on a nice sunny day, to explore and photograph. For anyone interested in paying it a visit, you can find it at GPS coordinates 35° 36' 01"N 96° 03' 35"W, approximately 5 miles West of Okmulgee on Hwy 56. Dripping Springs is signposted from Okmulgee Lake and is a little further to the South West.

I've visited the area a few times now but have still not ventured much further than the easily accessible parts - will need to correct that some time and really explore the hiking trails for any further vantage points and items of interest.

I was also taking this as an opportunity to test out a new polarizer filter, which I found was just a little too "deep" for my 12-24mm f/4 lens and it vignettes slightly at the 12mm end. Despite this minor inconvenience I really like the "Moose Filter" combo of polarizer and warm-up filter - just have to remember to not zoom out to 12mm!

I don't know what it is really but I'm one of those that find the sound of waves lapping on the shore to be very relaxing and calming. Not that the shore here is really up for much comfort as its pretty rocky.

A little further to the South I found what looks to be the remains of a house. Pretty much all that remains is the foundation slab and a rock fireplace w/chimney. There is some wonderful weathering on it all and of course, its sprouted graffiti but it doesn't detract too much (I feel).

I like to make use of shallow depth of field whenever I can as I like how it pulls the subject out of the photograph. Not that I have anything against making full use of small apertures to gain maximum depth of field, just different styles for different subjects. The following selection of photographs are of the tall grasses blowing in the wind taken at different apertures and lens to cover varying depth of field effects.

Now it was time to head on to Dripping Springs Lake. The main visitor here are out fishing for bass but it is still a great place to visit and explore, even if your interests are not in fishing.

A little further on to the south of this spot is a fishing dock that offers the chance to get out onto/over the water somewhat.

While it was a good subject to photograph, it was as I found out, a little too mobile to setup my tripod on to take long exposure photos. As the wind was picking up again while I was here, the dock (and end platform) was bobbing up and down pretty rhythmically on the waves.

I need to pay another visit to the fishing dock to try and capture a sunset over the water as the trees should give great shadows and silhouettes as the light reflects off the water. Just have to time it when there's a great sunset in the making.

New post(s) and photos coming soon

While there may be a pretty sizable gap since my last post, I haven't neglected my photography. Far from it, actually. I have ventured back to re-visit the Okmulgee Lake/Dripping Springs area (viewers of my G+ posts will have seen some photos there) and I have also been experimenting with some long exposure macro photography (again, posted on G+).

I am in the process of creating blog posts to give additional details on location, subjects and techniques so please stay tuned as they will be posted soon.

Return to the park

As the afternoon was passing yesterday I noticed that the sky was looking photogenic, and on a whim I headed to Mohawk Park in the north of Tulsa, OK. I've visited here before and have a couple of pictures already posted on here taken there.

I seem to end up in the same general area as before but this time I spotted a small turtle on the river bank, so naturally I had to include him (her) in the shot:

Just a little further along the bank I found an interesting log sitting in the water, with some nice highlights - or as I found out in Lightroom, some very blown out specular highlights. I managed to tame them a bit so they don't distract too much from the image:

If you ever find yourself in Tulsa, Mohawk Park is certainly worth a visit, if for nothing else than just getting away from the city and relaxing in nature.

Interesting skies

The early evening sky yesterday was definitely interesting, so much so that I grabbed my camera to get some photos. I didn't do any fancy setup or bother with any HDR brackets, instead I just set my 12-24mm lens to manual - 12mm, f/11 and prefocused to 2ft to give me hyperfocal focus from 1ft to infinity - and started shooting at ISO 100. I did step this up to ISO 200 as the light levels fell off some. I also added a -0.3EV comp to offset the contrast.

After a little post processing (levels, sharpening, noise reduction and cropping) this is what I was seeing in the sky.

This is facing roughly South East of Glenpool, Oklahoma which is towards where there had been some storms moving through Oklahoma. This is very possibly a part of those storms, not that the Glenpool area experienced any bad weather as you can see from the blue sky above the clouds.