08-06-12 The Painted Church

The Painted Church, aka St. Benedict's Roman Catholic Church, is officially in the town of Captain Cook, though I remember it as being somewhere on the side of a hill away from any kind of urban features. From the outside it is fairly nondescript. But on the inside it is beautifully painted, thus, the name "Painted Church."Rather than talk about the church I want to talk about photography. First, this is a hand-held exposure at 1/15 of a second. I don't travel with a tripod and for interior photography in dimly lit spaces, you have to be lucky to get something acceptable with that shutter speed. Thank you, Image Stabilization!I took this photo in 2008 and at the time, I don't think I knew what HDR was. But but this scene begs for HDR treatment - not to make it seem someone surreal but instead to do a better job of exposing the who scene, including the windows, which are clealy blown out. "Blown highlights" is photographer talk for bright parts of a photo that have no detail because they are severely overexposed. If I had had a tripod, I would have taken one photo that properly exposed for the windows and one photo that exposed for the interior. And then in software, I would have combined the two into one well exposed photo.Like so many other places I have travelled to, I need to go back to the Painted Church and do it right (or at least better). . . .

08-05-12 Window Peeking

In my quest for something other than landscape and macro photos for this blog, I have gone "dumpster diving," which is my term for going back to old photos that people more organized than I would have gotten rid of a long time ago.This picture, taken in Delft, Netherlands, is certainly not art. But it is a narrative. Because of that, I converted it to black and white, in part because it was the two dogs that caught my eye in this scene and they were both black and white to begin with.And why is it a "narrative." Well, I think it tells a story, though, like so many other photos, it has many different stories to tell if you give it a chance. Is it about how life in Delft in different than life in your home town? Is is about the couple? What is the young man saying that is causing the woman to look the way she looks? What about the man in the background with his hand to his head?And, of course, what about the dog looking my way?What I like about candid photography is that though I am really "in" the photo because of how I frame the scene, I am also a kind of a voyeur. And so are you. As a photographer, I am saying "Look into this window and feast your eyes."

08-04-12 Reflections

I have photographed clouds reflected in this same water before. But I am a sucker for redundancy. This photo started out as a 5DIII picture but I imported it into Instagram and published it as the square, over filtered photo you see here. Some would say it's cheating to do Instagram photos with a camera not built in to a phone. And so I guess I cheat from time to time. :-(

08-03-12 Dawn

Here's another HDR photo taken from the bluffs overlooking the northern leg of the Little Bend on Lake Oahe. In the shot I posted a while back I was looking east into the rising sun. In this shot, I've moved my tripod, the sun is behind me and I am looking off to the northwest towards the Cheyenne River.I don't know about you, but when I look at this photo I see the pure white of the popcorn clouds. Then I see the sea green sage and, finally, the distant, dark water and long line of the cloud covered horizon. (And if you are paying attention to words here, I hope you appreciate my alliterative attempts. Opps, I did it again. :-) Or did I? Actually, "alliterative attempts" is an example of assonance. Sorry, but I was an English teacher long before I started to call myself a photographer.)

08-02-12 Good Soldiers

This is my last sunflower photo for a while, though maybe I need to go back to this field in a week to get the soldiers in full bloom.

08-01-12 Feed Me, Seymour

So here's and example of what I was talking about yesterday when I said the sunflower had amazing textures. The plant has a bit of a gothic appearance. And, no, this is not a cousin of the man-eating plant that stars in "The Little Shop of Horrors."

07-31-12 Waiting for the Sun

So who takes photos of sunflowers before they bloom? I guess I do, though I'll admit that it was a total afterthought yesterday morning. I was finished with the tree, clouds, and sunrise photos and as I headed back to the truck, I noticed the field of nascent sunflowers that was next to the field I had been standing in.What I liked was the deep green hues of the plants. I also liked the amazing textures in the sunflower heads. And so I took about 40 photos of sunflowers not in bloom. This is the first in a series of three. Bear with me if you're not into green things. . .

07-30-12 Distant Showers

Once again I ventured out before sunrise this morning. My wife and I were at the Spring Creek marina and when my wife told me to make less noise so she could sleep a little longer, I grabbed my camera bag and tripod and went driving.I headed to the two trees that I photographed last summer thinking that I might get something a little different. And I did. What made this shot special, of course, is the rain shower that is happening miles off in the distance. And I should admit that one of the reasons I went back to the same two trees is that I wanted to try to get an HDR photo that does a better job of exposing the relatively dark foreground. And I got what I wanted. Because of that, there's a lot of texture in this photo. Maybe too much?

07-29-12 Wing Span

I'm not really equipped to photograph birds in flight - I need a much bigger lens. But, When twelve big bird started circling the trees not too far from the Spring Creek marina, I decided (being pushed by my wife) that I needed to try to photograph one.This one came pretty much overhead, though even with my 200mm telephoto, I had to crop out about 80% of the photo to get a decent "close-up." In case my wife is wondering why I keep getting higher resolution cameras, this photo will certainly answer that question. Now, Deb, how about letting me get a 400mm lens?(We thought these might be eagles but after doing a little research, I've decided they are turkey vultures or buzzards. Oh well. . . )

07-27-12 Disaster Drill

Under normal circumstances, I don't think the hospital would let a photographer in to ER to photography a patient, who, in this case, seems to have a big twisted bolt in her belly. But this was only a drill. It was conducted by a variety of police and rescue units in our area back in April.It started at the airport but I volunteered to ride on the first ambulance to leave, in part because the hospital part of this exercise seemed interesting and in part because it was freezing cold the day of the drill and the ambulance looked warm and inviting. :-)

07-26-12 Morning Rain

07-25-12 Black Eyed Susans