Ireland

Our family has just returned from a very busy 8-day tour of Ireland, which was concentrated mainly on the western side of the island. I will follow up with a list of things that went well for us, and things that didn't. But first, below are a few photos that stand out from the rest.

"Colorful Cottage"




"Taking a Stroll"




"Irish Hills"

Photo Contests

This has been a pet peeve of mine for years. It seems innocent enough. You find out about a photo contest, find your best photos, then upload them. Along the way you select "Yes" or "Agree" to every checkbox you encounter, never bothering to read what you're agreeing to.

You may be lucky enough to win, and that's great. But let's say you don't win (like most people) - what have you just agreed to? As an example here's an excerpt from the Smithsonian Magazine's latest photo contest:

"By entering the contest, entrants grant the Smithsonian Institution a royalty-free, world-wide, perpetual, non-exclusive license to display, distribute, reproduce, and create derivative works of the entries, in whole or in part, in any media now existing or subsequently developed, for any educational, promotional, publicity, exhibition, archival, scholarly, and all other standard Smithsonian purposes. Any photograph reproduced will include a photographer credit as feasible. The Smithsonian Institution will not be required to pay any additional consideration or seek any additional approval in connection with such uses."

Sooooo ... for absolutely no compensation you are giving Smithsonian the right to use your image(s) in any way they want ... forever. Did I mention that you get not a dime from them for that right?

For some contests your entries are limited in size, which is a good thing because it limits the potential usefulness of your image by those running the contest. But the Smithsonian has no resolution requirement:

"Digital photographs should be taken at the highest resolution possible."

Oh, and maybe you're thinking they severely limit how many images you can enter. Nope:

"You may enter up to seven (7) photographs in each of the five categories with a total contest submission of thirty-five (35) photographs."

Thirty Five is a LOT of photographs. And you're just handing over hi-rez copies to a magazine to use any way it sees fit, forever, with no compensation.

Still interested in entering that contest? I'm not.

Back to Philly

It's been a while, but I've made a trip into the city of Philadelphia to begin producing some new work from there. For the last few years I've been concentrating on more natural settings, and also of birds and other animals. But I do enjoy the more scenic parts of the city as well, especially in the right light.

During the morning when our family is preparing for our day we often have a local news channel on the TV. They usually show a shot of the city from across the Delaware River from the riverfront of Camden, NJ. Frequently there is a beautiful sunrise that casts a soft morning light across the hulking buildings, making them look almost beautiful (if you can say that about a hulking building).

So that's where I headed, across the Ben Franklin Bridge (by the way a very beautiful bridge in its own right), to the area near the Adventure Aquarium. On this morning the pre-dawn light was quite nice, and some soft distant clouds provided a subtle backdrop to the skyscrapers. I took a number of "keeper" shots, but one that stood out for me was the one below, where I include the moon that stood far above. I don't usually make a concerted attempt to extract deep meaning from my photos, but there's something about this composition that makes me reflect on how small our world is in the big scheme of things.

New visitor

We have a new visitor to our bird feeder lately. As I've said before I'm not a "bird person", so I cannot readily identify this bird. My first thought was that it looked like a woodpecker. But instead of just guess I decided to go online.

I ended up at the site Whatbird.com to try and help me with identification. After entering the different criteria, such as bill type, color, etc., I think I narrowed it down.

It looks to me like a ladder-backed woodpecker, or possibly even a gila woodpecker.

The most interesting thing about this bird was what I caught it doing in the image below. He seems to be clearing out the smaller seeds in order to get to the bigger ones. I'm sure the smaller birds would find those smaller ones down in the grass. Quite unique behavior.

Hiatus

It may have seemed like I've been on a hiatus for a while. I have not posted any new images in a few weeks. Between the changeover from fall to winter, which is a difficult time to photograph scenery, and the holidays, I have not been highly motivated to create new work.

We have had a lot of cold weather, but not much snow. Today we were lucky to get a soft snowfall during the day. I took advantage and made haste to my local park to try and photograph the covered bridge there. I was able to get a few nice images, although the one I "wanted" was not possible since the higher water level prevented me from reaching the position I have used before.

I am finding photographing snow difficult. There is always a contrast between the brightest white, mid-tones, and the shadows. The sky was overcast today, so that lessened the contrast, but that can lead to drab images, especially of the gray sky. On the other hand a sunny sky would have pumped up the contrast to the extreme, making the scene very harsh. I think I prefer the overcast conditions, where I have more control on making adjustments.

What Was I Thinking

I'm starting a series of posts to delve a little deeper into particular images that I think could be somewhat instructional. I want to go through my thought process during the image-making process. Maybe this series will help you a bit in your own photographic endeavors.



I was walking in a local park this past weekend, trying to get inspired for the coming fall foliage season. I can across a tree with these very unique and interesting seed pods. It was an overcast day, with the fog slowly dissipating (which is normally a great time for nature photography) but I was concerned about the following things:
- Lighting
- Sharpness
- Background

Even before addressing these concerns I must say that these pods were mostly at or above eye level, so I would have had a very hard time setting up the camera to get a quality shot. So I immediately searched out a sample that I could remove from the tree and shoot elsewhere. I found a small branch with a series of pods, and with the last pod already open exposing the seeds.

I initially looked for a place that I could position the branch in the nice diffused light, but have a dark background, possibly a shady area below another tree. There was no wind, so that was helpful. But I couldn't really find a good place where I could secure the branch and setup my camera to make the shot.

So I decided to take the branch home and work with it there. I set it up so it angled down slightly. The background was some dark cloth, and I lit it with a large softbox. I used a good quality 50mm lens to achieve a very sharp image. I made sure the pod branch was parallel to the image plane.

I made a series of images and under such controlled conditions it was not long before I had an image I really liked. I still have the branch in case I want to try different lighting (such as back-light) or different backgrounds. But I am quite please with my first attempt.

Black Eyed Susan and Daylilies

It is the middle of summer - actually more towards the end of summer - and the predominant color is ... green. But in the area near where I live there are a few types of flowers that most commonly break up the monotony. These are the daylilies and black-eyed susan. They are everywhere in fact. The daylilies are so common it boggles my mind that people pay good money to have their flower beds look so much like their neighbors.

I guess there are advantages to these apparently robust flowers. They probably don't need much water, which is a real plus in the hot, dry summers we often get. But photographically they become much too common - it can be very hard to be original with them. I do try though, and I think the image below is composed well enough to use these flowers in a setting that simply says "summer".

Moonshot

I recently made a photo of a moonrise in Yosemite National Park, and I have received some questions about handling the moon in photographs. Many experienced photographers know how to handle the moon but I'll discuss it a little for those who don't.


The light coming from the moon is approximately as bright as other earthly objects in daylight. So if you were to take a picture of the moon during daytime, which is when the above image occurred, you will typically see the moon with all of its details. But if you attempt to include the moon in a nighttime image, with an extended exposure, the moon becomes over-exposed and becomes a bright ball. Some people don't mind that effect, but some do.

There are various ways to handle this problem:

1. Make your photo with the moon during daytime (like the image above)
2. During night-time use a long exposure if you don't mind the "bright ball" effect
3. Some people make two exposures, one exposed for the scene and one exposed for the moon, and they post-process the images to have the moon show with it's detail
4. Some people simply paste in a copy of the moon in a night-time image (I'm not a big fan of this technique, although photography is art so it is not off-limits)

So there you have it.