Duomo Siena

Here's another photo of the Siena Cathedral and one that I adjusted with Apple's raw image processing software called Aperture. I think it's an amazing tool but today I decided it is especially useful to people who shoot architectural interiors in poorly lit places - such as the Duomo Siena. I won't bore you with the technical details, but there are several places within this photo that got special and unique attention - something I never did in Photoshop.If you are wondering about all of those faces that are peering outward, those are portraits of every pope going back to St. Peter, Given that the duomo was built in the 1300's, I wonder if the builders had the foresight and imagination to leave room for at least another seven or eight hundred years of Popes?Canon 5DII 1/60s f/1.4 ISO400 50mm

Under An Amazing Dome

I have a weakness for domes, including this amazing structure. This shot was taken a few years ago and discarded (along with everything else I took in the cathedral.) The problem was that everything seemed so dark. But having found a way to resurrect photos like this, I offer this shot.

The Other Half

One half ended up diced for our clam chowder soup. The other half ended up on the blog. I hadn't planned on taking a food photo but the symmetrical design struck me as worth of a closer look.This was shot with a 100mm macro lens in light that filtered in through our patio doors. I put the onion on a dark red cushion from a nearby bench and I think it provides a pretty good backdrop.

Pretty? Yes. Creative? Probably Not.

So the assignment I gave my students last week was to capture South Dakota winter but to be "creative" in doing so. Of course, what complicates this assignment is what is meant by creative, though to me being creative as a photographer is partly being able to frame and capture something in ways no one else has. What has been submitted has been fun to see, though one of my favorites so far is a manhole cover photographed by a first year student named Tiffany. It doesn't show the beauty of our winters but that's what I like about it. (You should check out Tiffany's photo blog, by the way.)Anyway, I went out to see if I could do my own assignment. While there were amazing photo opportunities yesterday morning because of the frost, I'm afraid that creativity didn't abound. So today I present a pretty photo. But there's not much that is creative here. In fact, I just Googled "pine cones with frost" and I got 1.02 million results, some of which look a lot like my photo. I got 93,000 results when I searched for photos of "manhole covers with slush," but very few actually have slush. Can Google results be a partial measure of creativity?So ends my little discourse on creativity.

Chaos?

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.

The Pantheon Redux

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:

Vicky

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.

02-01-12 Kristin

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. :-)

Joelle

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.

Lost!!!

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.

A Little Prayer

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:

• A more user friendly interface with links to older and similar posts
• An ability to purchase prints through a pro lab
• An interface that works great on iPads, iPods and iPhones (no javascript!!)
• And a nice slide show at the top of the page

Those who have been reading my blog for years will probably hate what I've done. But I'm not going back. . . . 

01-28-12 Dubrovnik's Stradun

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.