I had been out in our back yard shooting photos of things covered in thick frost, when I encountered this jumble of pine needles growing out of a small, bushy tree. There was something about the exuberant randomness of the needles that caught my attention.Of course the crystals of frost and the way pine needles develop and grow are probably anything but chaotic. But to my photographic eye they seem to be and I like it.
Yes, this is a repeat - and I'm not even on vacation. Why the repeat? Because I've been learning some new things about photo editing. In fact, I've made a video:
I am continuing with my theme of "portraits from the past," this time with a photo of Vicky, who graduated from Watertown High School about 8 years ago.
Here's another photo from my photographic past, this time of Kristin, one of the many fine gymnasts who represented Watertown Senior High School's gymnastic program. Not only was she a great gymnast but she was a wonderful portrait subject.This photo was taken at her parents' dance and gymnastics center, Dakota Gold. As I recall, I hadn't graduated to strobe lights and so I was using my "hot" lights. The advantage of continuous lighting is that the light you see is the light you get. The disadvantage is that it doesn't produce a lot of light. Thus, I was forced to use a fairly wide aperture. Truth be told, this photo suffers from camera shake, but ten years ago I wasn't smart of enough to see that. Today, this is a photo that probably wouldn't have seen the light of day.But I like the photo and so to try to make it look good, I used selective sharpening on Kristin's eyes. And then I blurred everything in Aperture, which is a great tool to help make art out of something that is less than perfect. Kristin, of course, is the most perfect part of this photo. :-)
In my search for photos from my early days of digital portraiture, I came across this photo of Joelle that I took almost 9 years ago. I had a great subject but the the photo also represents the power of Aperture by Apple as an editing tool in that in a minute or two I was able to retouch and then enhance the photo. All of this was done in preparation for my Advanced Digital Photography class at Lake Area Technical Institute.One of the nice things about teaching photography is that I learn at every step along the way and today was no exception.
This photo was a "shoebox" experience about 30 minutes ago. In a quest to find photos I have been ignoring, I started at the chronological beginning of a library of digital photos that has close to 50,000 pictures. About 300 pictures into my search, I found this. I don't remember taking the photo, but I do remember the class with great fondness.The light source was a single 150 watt bulb and the camera was my Canon 1D, which represented the state of the art in DSLR photography in 2002. The camera cost $5500 and do I dare say that it was worth every penny? It had a whopping 4.4 megapixel sensor!The "shoebox experience" is what many of us have encountered when we are searching for something in our closet and we come across a box of forgotten photos. I am sad to say that decades from now, no one will have a clue about all of the digital media that we put into boxes. If the 8-track tape and the floppy disk are evidence of the ephemeral nature of electronic media, imagine what will happened to hard drives and compact flash cards we are using today.If you want to enjoy your favorite digital photos years from now, you need to get them printed. And then put them in a shoebox.
For the first time in two years, I have updated my blog's look. I've been contemplating a change for a while but fear of the unknown kept me at bay. When you change themes in blogs, all of the photos have to be resized, hopefully by an automated process. And who knows what you'll get?But it looks like things are working, though if you aren't using a 21st century web browser, you may have problems. Let me know if you do.Here are a few of the changes:
Those who have been reading my blog for years will probably hate what I've done. But I'm not going back. . . .
I have several photos I took in and around Durbrovnik, Croatia, and when I post them here, I wonder how many tens of thousands of other tourists have photos from the same location.But anyone who has wondered the same thing knows that there is something special about having your own pictures. It is perhaps some odd way of tourists marking territory.
I was out on the water and hoping the rain wouldn't come my way. It didn't.
For the last two days it has been foggy and because of the snow cover, it has been mostly white.So I went looking for pictures of summer and this is what I found.I suspect that this is one of those photos that has more meaning to me than anyone else. (Translation: it's not a great photo but I like it.) But you do have to appreciate the pure blues of the sky and water in this photo.And you should have been with me the morning I took this. It was one of those quiet mornings on Lake Oahe that I dream about. It was cool but there was promise of warmth. The only sound was that of birds calling and of distant cattle lowing. You would think that a sailor would yearn for wind but as I'm sure I've said before, there is something pure and spiritual in floating quietly on a body of water in a place that is anything but empty.
This is a view of the outskirts of the city of Dubrovnik in Croatia.
