Sunflower Summer

Summer is winding down, and the lack of rain locally has meant that what little color was around the last month or so has pretty much vanished. Although I actually saw some leaves turning colors prematurely, due to the dry conditions.

But the heartiest (and largest) of all flowers are still hanging in there. I have come across a few large "groves" of these flowers. Although many of these are near their last days, there are quite a few that are still going strong.

Before long it will be fall and we'll be chasing the colors of the season. But until then we'll take what we can get.

Orphan Works Bill

I don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about copyright issues (although I probably should) I do read my fair share. One very enlightening column was posted by, in my opinion, one of the key voices on licensing and copyright issues. Dan Heller has taken a very close look at the bill making its way through Congress, and he's not worried. I have not read through the bill myself, but following Dan's logic and his analysis I think we photographers are not in danger of abusive theft of our images.

Here's Dan's Blog

Summer Doldrums

Yep, it's here. The dreaded summer doldrums, and I'm specifically speaking about the photographic doldrums. For various reasons I have gotten out to shoot very little this summer. One big one is that the morning "magic hour" of beautiful light is way too early for me. Sunrise before 6:00 ... yuk. During the summer my family, being free from school and work, like to stay up late nightly, so I don't get a chance to get to sleep early enough to allow me to wake up easily to catch that nice morning light.

We did have a family vacation in California, but I did not allot any time just for me to go out and shoot. We had only one rental car so it just didn't work out that I would go off by myself for any length of time.

To add to that, July and August in the Philly area is pretty devoid of color. Many of the wildflowers that would normally attract butterflies and moths have died or wilted due to the heat and lack of rain. So for me that leads to a little lack of inspiration.

This past week I was fortunate to catch a pair of white egrets feeding in the back area of the Churchville Reservoir. There was a bright morning sun, which added a little too much contrast, but I did manage to create a few images that were interesting. I have been waiting for the egrets to show themselves. They only rarely make a clear appearance, and I was surprised to see two of them together.