Of course a good backyard cook-out isn't complete without beer :-) I'm sipping on some Trippel from New Belgium Brewing Co. Good stuff!
And the chickens? Well, it's pretty simple: three whole birds (two with sliced and pickled jalepenos stuffed under the skins) with salt, pepper, and a lot of Mesquite smoke :-) We'll also have some pinto beans and potato salad later.
Hope you all have a fantastic and safe New Year's Eve!
We passed a pretty good time. The weather wasn't ideal - the skies were gray and the temps were pretty chilly (low 40's, but the wind was blowing pretty good).
About 3am we both had enough of the cold (our tent was not blocking out the wind effectively, even with the rain fly on), and I put the air mattress in the back of our RAV4. We climbed inside and enjoyed a wind-less sleep the rest of the night.
Henry and daddy kick back and enjoy a few cold ones (Capri Suns & Fat Tire)
Henry warms by the campfire and makes a good-night phone call to momma.
Many thanks to the kind rangers at the Amistad NRA headquarters. They were very helpful and friendly to us. They even gave Henry a Jr. Ranger badge, which he proudly wore. And thanks also to the camp host (at the San Pedro campground) and his lab (Montana). They were very kind as well and even checked up on us.
I shot nearly 700 photos during the trip! :-) And nearly all of that was just family. I did manage to get just a little "serious" shooting in.
We ventured downtown on Christmas Eve after sunset to photograph the lights. My mother-in-law is getting into photography now and I thought she'd enjoy some night shooting. This shot is of the courthouse in Del Rio.
Hope you all had a great Christmas (or what ever holiday you celebrate this season)!
Sometime during the second trip, I became consciously aware that I was shooting a lot of trees. I was definitely attracted to the amazing fall colors we've been having (it's been more colorful than in past years... for Texas). But I was also focused on the trees in general.
At the end of the month, when I finally sat down to take a hard look at what I had shot, I really didn't have too many shots of the fall colors. However, I did have a lot of tree photos - dead trees, silhouetted trees, Oak trees, Mesquite trees, etc.
Lately, when I've been out shooting, I've let myself wander a bit and have let go my forceful desires to "get the shot", i.e. I've tossed out my expectations and not let myself fear the onset of disappointment if I returned home with no good photos. It's easy to justify - it really doesn't matter what photos I take. I'm not shooting to get paid nor for any deadlines. I have no requirements.
I've been a bit of an anxious control freak my whole life, and the same applies to my photography. After letting go, it felt liberating not to have that self-induced pressure to make photos.
The end result is that my "take", i.e. my selection of keepers from the shoots, was just as numerous (if not more) than previous shoots when I applied my forceful, unrealistic photographic desires and wants. It's hard to let go. But it works.
Click to enter the gallery and see more photos from my November shooting:
www.texbrick.com/photo/dl_fall08
Canon 40D, 17-40mm f/4L
40 minutes, f/5.6, 17mm, ISO 200 (and then pushed 1/3 stop in RAW processing)
40 minutes later (actually 80 due to the NR cycle), this magnificent spinning sky spun up on my LCD. Damn, I was happy. A little disappointed too. The dark skies that we have at the High Lonesome Ranch aren't that dark after all. There's light over the north horizon polluting the sky. I could just barely see it with my naked eye, but I'm surprized how brightly it showed up in these long exposures.
Here are two more:
Canon 5D, 24-70mm f/2.8L
30 sec., f/2.8, 24mm, ISO 1600 (and then pushed 1.3 stops in RAW processing)
This next shot was taken just inside a tree line. I took my first steps towards designing a real landscape/starscape shot. The break in the trees frames the "cloudy" band of the Milky Way. I love the look of leafless trees silhouetted against the starry sky. This is the sort of shot I ultimately want to produce, having components of the land with a sky full of bright stars.
It's difficult to compose shots because of the darkness. Even an f/2.8 lens on a full frame camera does not transmit enough light to see and compose the scene through the viewfinder. Keep in mind this is under a moonless sky.
I also get frustrated because I have to alternate between using a flashlight to move around and manage gear and then getting my eyes to adjust to the dark to compose shots. I've more than once flashed my eyes while fumbling with gear thus having to sit there for a minute or two waiting for the light spots to go away :-)
I also borked up a few shots 'cause I had to flip on the flashlight during an exposure to check and see what was lurking in the dark. I'm not alone out there. Most noises turned out to be birds or raccoons. I definitely do not want to have a close encounter with a large boar in the pitch black.
Regarding composing the shots, I tried shining a flashlight on the trees while looking through the viewfinder, but that only helped to compose the near to mid-positioned landscape elements. Anything far away, and also the sky, was still dark. Plus it was a little difficult to hold the light and reposition the camera sitting on a ballhead. I need three hands.
Trial and error shots still work best. But at several minutes per shot (30 sec. exposure + 30 sec. noise reduction + time to evaluate the LCD and reposition the camera + time for eyes to adjust to the dark), it takes a while to make a few test shots to fine-tune the composition. I suppose I could shut off the long-exposure noise reduction and bump the ISO to 3200 and take 15 seconds shots, but that requires changing settings and diving into the custom menus, and that takes time too even in broad daylight.
Plus I was shooting in the cold, so operating the camera and managing gear with gloves on adds an extra level of frustration and difficulty.
On this last outing, I brought along my fast 50. I really wanted to see what the view was like through an f/1.4 lens, and it's a very nice, noticeable difference over an f/2.8 lens. Composing scenes is just possible through the viewfinder if your eyes adjust to the dark.
However, 50mm is a little too long for what I want to do, and the DOF at f/1.4 to f/2.0 apertures is too shallow to make the fore/mid-ground objects acceptably sharp. Anyway, I had some fun with it.
Here's a shot looking up at the sky only. I was blown away by how bright the photo was and how many more stars appeared as compared to my shots with the f/2.8 lens.
Canon 5D, 50mm f/1.4
15 sec., f/1.8, ISO 1600
Here's another with the 50. A little bit of reddish/purplish color showed up in the middle of the frame. I hope that's natural, and not some weird noise pattern/amp glow crud from the sensor.
Two weekends ago, I was hunting in the Texas Hill Country in a location that has little light pollution. I took several shots one evening about 2 hours after sunset and about 30 minutes before moonrise (the moon was waning and about 90% full, so if I tried shooting after moonrise, the sky would have been too light).
Canon 5D + 24-70mm f/2.8L
30 sec., 24mm, f/2.8, ISO 1600 (and then pushed +1 stop in RAW processing)
And here are two more shots taken at about the same settings as stated above:
The greenish light on the trees is from a sodium vapor light on a nearby cabin. The light streak in the photo just above (left) is from a couple of guys on 4-wheelers passing by.
Getting a shot like this is difficult given the limitations of the equipment. Exposure times are limited to 15 to 30 seconds because the goal is to NOT have star trails. With a reasonably wide focal length (24mm in this case), star trails will just start to become noticeable around 25 - 30 seconds exposure time (actually, it depends on the final output of the photo; for web-sized images you could probably go 60 seconds, but my ultimate goal is a nice, largish print: 8x10 or even 11x17).
I shot wide open (f/2.8) at ISO 1600. I found that the resulting exposure is still a little too dark. I pushed the exposure +1 stop during RAW processing, but that increased the digital noise in the file to a point where it greatly degraded image quality. ISO 1600 looked pretty good, but ISO 3200 (effectively) did not. Post-processing noise reduction works well, but it also kills the fine detail (there's an amazing amount of tiny stars visible in the sky, and that's the fine detail I want to see in the final print).
The exposure that worked out best (providing the best-looking sky) from my series of test shots was this: 30 sec., ISO 3200, f/2.8. However, ISO 3200 is not really usable and 30 seconds is just a little too long (star trails).
So, I'm going to have to get a faster lens or a camera that is better at very high ISO :-)
Jeff and I had been planning to get together for a serious photo outing for months, but you know how life gets busy and gets in the way of "hobbies" :-) In late September, we finally found a free weekend that didn't have excessive heat or hurricanes and made a one-day trip to the park.
I haven't seen any of Jeff's work from Bastrop yet. Maybe this post will get him movin' ;-)
The weather was fairly nice during our trip. We hiked several miles and scouted around the park in the early afternoon. My heart sank when we arrived at the ferns and found them burned to a brown crisp. The drought conditions earlier in the summer had wiped out most of them. However, it did appear that they were making a comeback. A few bright green ferns stood proud above the crunchy forest floor.
Jeff and I made the best of it. It was good to get outdoors, talk photography, and shoot some. I certainly enjoyed it.
I got a chance to process my photos last weekend. I had shot several series of exposures attempting to capture some difficult backlit forest scenes. TuFuse worked extremely well and produced excellent results straight off. The first two photos in my photo gallery were TuFuse'd blends. I was fortunate that there was no breeze during the exposures and the trees remained perfectly still.
Those first two shots feature an oak tree beside a rock outcrop that Jeff and I became enamored with and photographed extensively. I'm looking forward to seeing his take on the scene.
I really enjoy seeing other people's work from group shoots. It's fascinating to see what different perspectives and ideas come from the same scene at the same time.
The Mindful Eye www.tmelive.com
Several years ago, Craig Tanner started the Radiant Vista. As of late last month, it's been split up amongst major Radiant Vista contributors, and Craig's baby is the new "The Mindful Eye" site.
Craig, along with the help of many different contributors, has produced (and will keep producing) damn fine photography content all for free at TME. Content such as the Daily Critique, shooting tutorials, Lightroom tutorials, etc. are there for free. It's like Radiant Vista on steroids.
Check out TME and spend some time with it. Join the community (forum) there and participate in discussions and photo sharing. It's a great place!
Mike's Journal: www.mikesjournal.com
I met Mike and his young son, Eric, last February at a Radiant Vista photography workshop in Death Valley. Mike brought along copies of his most recent journal at the time, and everyone in the workshop was greatly impressed. Mike's Journal features photography from Mike and sometimes also his son, Eric.
But it's not just straight photography. Mike, with the help of another one of his sons, takes the photos and manipulates them into a collection of dream-like art that flows page-to-page wonderfully. Mike writes brief comments and poetry to go along with the imagery, and the text is overlayed on the designs. Some of the photos are just straight photography, but most are transformed into beautiful designs, often with other bits of photos and graphic designs overlayed.
His journals are artisic, fascinating, intelligent, and just fabulous, unique works of art. You can't get that sort of content at your local mega-bookstore.
Check out his latest offering on journal No. 7, Faces of the Dominican. He's actually giving the first 250 copies away for free! I received mine yesterday and both my wife and I enjoyed it. It's "54 pages, poetry art and a short story".
My Blogroll: (see column of links to the right)
I've been collecting links to other people's photography blogs. These are blogs that I read (actually subscribe to via the Google reader) and enjoy. Some are quite different from each other, but the content is usually interesting, educational, and challenging. And that's what I enjoy these days - stuff that grates against my normal mode of thinking and gets my intellectual and creative juices flowing.
It's not a list of my photo buddies, although I personally know many of the blog owners. These are blogs that I feel offer quality content and are worth reading as often as new posts are made. Enjoy!
I used the new gallery format too. When you view each photo, the sub-gallery, or "series", will show up below in thumbnail size. This should make browsing easier. Enjoy!
Project-wise, I'm still very much into this photo project and will continue to shoot Big Bend National Park indefinitely. I have a planned week-long trip to the park about a year from now, and hopefully I'll get to make another trip next year sometime. So, updates to the project page will be a ways off, but please stay tuned!
The three main galleries are simply portfolios based a general theme:
Landscapes
Nature & Wildlife
Human Element
I reduced the number of photos in each portfolio from about 30 to about 15. I think that approximately 15 photos are plenty enough for a portfolio to give the viewer a satisfying taste of a photographer's work and capabilities.
The theme of each portfolio represents the major aspects of my photography and the type of photographs I desire to make. I do shoot outside these themes of course, but my main focus falls into the natural world and people or elements of humankind in the natural world.
I've also updated the style and format of the single page views, i.e. the individual pages that display each photo in a large size. These pages will contain the full gallery in thumbnails at the bottom. So, when you view each photo, you'll get a sense of where the photo lies within the portfolio, and will be able to jump to a different photo without having to click back to the main index page.
Hope this looks good and works out for you viewers. Let me know! Thanks.
