Monthly Archives: January 2013
Fog Over “7 Hills”
Setting the mood for the weekend
Starting today, my Friday posts will be a very short write-up, if any, and a photo that I believe does well without many words.
Fog Over “7 Hills”
Almost every time I venture out on morning photo expeditions, I turn onto what’s known as “7 Hills.” It’s a road in Watertown that leads to the countryside. Its nickname comes from the seven steep rolling hills that grace the land (I never really counted, but it would be a silly name if it was a different number).
On one of those photo trips back in 2010, I came across this scene, 5 minutes after leaving the house. I stayed for about 20 minutes before continuing on to wherever I had planned. It was going to be a good day!
Have a great weekend everybody! Tomorrow, a photo of a sunrise that waited for me.
Stars and Stripes Air Show
Photographing Motion
Photography usually means recording a scene the way it looks in the viewfinder, but when the subject is moving, some pretty cool effects can be achieved. We can crank up the shutter speed and really freeze the movement, or we can slow it down and allow the action to streak across the sensor. When I photograph water, I almost always go slow; creating silky smooth areas around sharp, stationary objects, but when I photographed a high speed boat race a few months ago, I shot at very high speeds — 1/1000th of second or faster most of the time. It stopped the movement completely and showed off the super high rooster tails left behind the boats.
Panning
Another option for capturing motion is to take the camera and follow along with the moving subject. If the camera remains moving at the exact speed of the subject while the shutter remains open, you can get some pretty amazing results. It isn’t easy however and it’s very humbling to get bad results over and over again.
The first time I tried panning, I think I took over 150 photos. I knew that the bike leg of a local triathlon would be coming through the area so I found a good, out of the way spot to set up my tripod. Then, one by one and sometime two by two, racers came flying by. Time after time, I produced a nice image of a blob. I eventually figured out that I needed to speed up the shutter a little, but even then, I only walked away with 4 or 5 decent images with the sharpest one shown at right.
Stars and Stripes Air Show – Warren, VT
A month later I went to an airshow with my family at Sugarbush Airfield in Warren, VT. I took many photos that day, but when this one red plane continued to do low flybys in front of us, I decided to tryout my recently practiced new skill. I only had 4 or 5 opportunities to get the shot, but when I zoomed in on the image on my camera, I was excited to see the plane in detail. Without the practice a month earlier, there’s no way I would have captured this shot.
Tomorrow…Setting the mood.
Sunrise – Cape Cod National Seashore
As a follow-up to my last post, I wanted to share this website I heard about on one of Gavin Seim’s podcasts (It was on podcast #85). That site is The Framed Network. I just signed up myself, but from what I have seen so far, there is a ton of FREE photography related information in the form of video episodes where they dive deep into many topics. I have one playing as I write this (always multitasking) and photographer Joel Grimes is talking about Photoshop and giving an example of a composite he made. I paid for 12 months of training videos from an excellent pool of photographers a few years back. The videos were great but I always felt guilty when I wasn’t watching enough or at least what I considered enough for what I paid. I can tell you that the first two videos I watched on this site are of the same quality.
Cape Cod
I still remember being a kid vacationing in The Cape with my family. We used to wake up really early (hated that) so we can get a good spot at Nauset Beach before all the “normal” people showed up. Just as the parking lot was being closed as full, we would be making our exit, with a nap in my near future (I was lucky to make it out of the parking lot some days).
I never appreciated those post-beach rides my dad loved to go on. First, I had usually spent the morning riding waves over and over again, so not much was going to keep my tired little body awake; and second, I wasn’t impressed with The Cape’s beauty as much as my parents were. They could drive around for hours exploring all the side roads along the shoreline, stopping every once in a while to take in some seascape, luxury home, or fishing pier. I would usually be dreaming about a possible trip to the go-kart track that we would be passing on the way back to our place, hoping that today was the day my dad would stop. But my dad would usually take a different route on the day we finally did stop at the track (I never understood back then why we couldn’t go every day) to surprise me and my sister. I love being a dad now and teasing my own children, just like my dad did with me, but nothing beats being a kid on go-kart day!
Sunrise – Cape Cod National Seashore
Flash forward to this past summer and I’m waking up at 4 a.m. to leave my parents’ recently-purchased condo to go photograph that very beauty I ignored as a child. Mom, Dad and the rest of my family were sleeping away as I headed out. The one thing I hate about the summer, other than the heat, the noisy neighbors and a bunch of other stuff, is the time that the sun rises. Six a.m.comes way too fast on vacation, but knowing I might miss the best time to photograph helps me to get up and out of bed. The silver lining is that at least I am back with the family just as they are waking up or a little after. Unfortunately, because of my early rise, I will need a nap at some point during the day — just like when I was a kid!
Tomorrow? Action!
Moonlake
Starting with this post, I am going to be sharing some of my favorite photographers to follow. I’m not sure how often yet. Maybe once a week or some other scheduled duration or maybe just whenever I feel like it. Time will tell.
Who To Follow – Gavin Seim
I first started following Gavin Seim (http://seimstudios.com/) about two years ago during a phase I went through listening to any photography related podcast I could find. His Pro Photo Show podcast is the only one I still listen to regularly. Why this one? The energy and passion he brings. He is clearly someone who thinks about things from many angles and is willing to try new ideas. You may have to rewind a few times because he moves at a pace faster than the rest of us, but it’s worth a listen if you are looking to get good photography advice from a pro.
Moonlake
I came up with the idea to show this image when I was writing about HDR last night. This is not an HDR. In fact, it wouldn’t even be a digital image if it wasn’t for a scanner. This was taken on Black & White 35mm film and developed in a darkroom in my parents’ master bathroom. The reason this image came to mind, was that it followed the same concept as the image of the river. It began with a vision and finished with editing. It’s hard to tell, I know, but this is actually an ordinary lake. The black along the top is the result of severely underexposing the photo, and therefor, the evergreens on the other side. The sun setting just above them and out of the frame provided a perfect moon-like effect that I envisioned before snapping the shutter. The first time I made a print from the negative I was disappointed. The beach was way too dark. Today, that would easily be fixed in Adobe Lightroom© with a quick stroke or two of the adjustment brush. But in the darkroom it was handled by arcing a piece of cardboard along the water line for one length of time, then with the cardboard removed, exposed for another length of time under the enlarger. Getting those lengths of time correct took a lot of trial and error as well as enlarging paper, but using that technique allowed me to get the image I pictured in my mind when I took it. Just like the HDR technique I used helped me get the desired result in the Mad River image.
Come back tomorrow for one from Cape Cod!
Mad River Morning
A Quick Word About HDR Images
I will be doing a series on HDR imaging next month, but for today I want to just quickly mention my feelings on whether or not it is photography. I have read some heated debates over the subject, and foolishly chimed in on a few. I say foolishly because it doesn’t matter. Let me repeat that in case I wasn’t clear. It does not matter. None of us take a photograph thinking about what someone will call it. I hope not anyway. And anyone admiring it doesn’t care whether or not some forum jockey living in his mother’s basement says it’s not a photograph.
I take the high road most of the time and call my final output an image. It doesn’t matter whether I processed it using HDR or made a slight color change in Lightroom. It’s hard for anyone to fight the word image and it avoids having to deal with something that just doesn’t matter. My end goal when I go out with my camera is to be able to come home and create an image I can call a work of art.
Mad River Morning
A few minutes after I snapped the photos of the deer fighting, I found this little pull-off on Rt. 100B in Moretown, VT. This was a clear HDR image for me as the bright clouds from the rising sun would have forced me to choose between blown out (so bright there is no detail) highlights or very dark shadows. This “image” is the wallpaper for one of my monitors at work. I never wonder what to call it.
Tomorrow I go old school with one from the darkroom days.
To Crop or Not to Crop
Writing the 4 posts for the Newtown the Beautiful series took a lot out of me, so I will be writing very little today and in most of my posts this week. I will still be posting a daily photo unless something gets in the way of that.
Free Newtown Images
I mentioned at the end of the last post that I would be making the images from Newtown available for download. You can get them here.
Cropping
Cropping refers to removing unwanted areas from an image and depending on who you listen to, there are many viewpoints on the subject. One of my favorite photographers to follow and listen to is Moose Peterson. He has a great post on why he doesn’t crop here. That’s right! He doesn’t crop his images at all.
I often think about Moose’s philosophy when I photograph and edit. Then I crop anyway if it suits me. Why? Because for me, it is a benchmark to attain, but it doesn’t stop me from making my final image as good as possible. The downside to that is it limits what you can do with your final image.
The deer play fighting in a field happened so fast that I had one chance to turn the camera, focus and snap as many shots as I could before it was over a couple seconds later. Unfortunately the little guy decided to take a pee right in front of the action and I was left with an unusable set of photographs. That is until I cropped out the offending action. I also made it a vertical image because after cropping the right side off, there was too much empty space over on the left. I am much happier with the final image, which for me, is enough to say the cropping was justified. But cropping doesn’t come without sacrifice and the final size of my image is much less than the original 16.2 mega pixels. A large print goes out the window, but I wasn’t going to make a large print of the peeing deer either.
Tomorrow? One of my favs from Vermont and a little more on HDR.
Newtown the Beautiful. Part 4 of 4
When I started this self made assignment, I didn’t know what to expect. The only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to capture beautiful images of Newtown / Sandy Hook. I didn’t expect to come up with any answers for why something so ugly could happen in a town like this.
We will never know all the facts that led to a poor deranged boy doing the unimaginable, but for me; I can only surmise that we, as a society, let him down in some way. We didn’t do enough to prevent this tragedy from being an option for him. We didn’t take these mass killing weapons out of his mother’s, and therefore, his, hands. And we certainly didn’t take away the idea that we care about anyone other than ourselves. That is my opinion and I am allowed to have it. I also have the freedom to write about my opinions.
We will all hear a lot about freedom in the upcoming months. I believe there is a line somewhere between ultimate freedom (You know? The kind we see in the movies like Mad Max, where everyone does whatever they want), and a communistic culture where we can do nothing without approval. I hope that line is far away from either of those two extremes, but the point I am making is that when people use the word freedom as an excuse to stop change. Let them know that we will still be free, and that those 20 children should have been free to grow up and call those people idiots if they wanted to.
Goodbye Newtown
So I really didn’t expect to come away with much more than my photographs when I started this. I never talked to anyone there yet the town and this project gave me so much more to take home.
On the last morning I would be taking photos there, I woke extra early because I heard on the news that they would start taking the memorials down that day. It was the day after Christmas and very cold outside. I had not intended to go to the memorial in town at all when I began this, but as my hope began to grow on that last trip, I thought I should at least take a walk through the memorial and say goodbye in my own way.
There was no one around that morning. The road to the school was still closed, but there were no more police. No mourners walking around. Complete silence and I would have wanted it no other way. I strapped my camera over my shoulder to take some personal photos, but it never moved from there. It was both a great, and an awfully sad walk. My thought to the victims: I hope they become the most influential people of all time. The ones who truly changed the path of a country.
I walked back to my car, over the bridge lined with frozen teddy bears and flowers. The same one that crosses the river I would be photographing for my last image.
Day 4 – Pootatuck River, Sandy Hook
As I entered my car; I hadn’t planned where I was going to photograph. I wanted to get to the memorial and walk around before it was gone. I planned to drive around and find a place to photograph later. Well, that spot was right where I was. As I turned left, away from the memorial, I saw a large parking lot with some sort of stage or something. A park, I thought! Perfect for a photo within Sandy Hook! It was more of a parking lot for the downtown area, but it had a nice walk that lined the river that runs through town, and that offered up a nice view as it rushed under the bridge I had just been on.
If I am going to photograph water, I almost always use a tripod because I like to slow the shutter down and make it look smooth. It was pretty bright out so I used my polarizer filter to help give me a longer shutter speed. I took many different photos here because each one was a little different due to the random nature of water. I chose this one because I liked the ripples curving around on the bottom. I liked the overall photo because it was right for an ending photo for this series: The memorial just out of the frame on top and the water continuing to move on below it. Just like we have to.
As a final way for me to do something, I will be making the fullsize version of all four photos available for download. I will have a link to get them in my post tomorrow.
As I left for the last time on this project, I passed the same sign I had the previous three trips. It said: “Overcome Evil by Doing Good Today”.
Newtown the Beautiful. Part 3 of 4
After I had left the diner the previous day, I quickly drove up the road towards Main Street to try and grab a photo of the general store. It has a classic New England look to it and I thought it would be perfect for this series. I first noticed it on Saturday morning on my way to Mill Pond. It was still dark out but I really liked how the inside looked all lit up. Just like when I passed the diner, I made a note to return.
This time, after leaving the diner, I had a feeling there would be too much light to get the image I wanted. I was wrong though. Very wrong. There wasn’t any light at all. In the store anyway. In fact, all the lights that made me want to capture it were off. I was in vacation mode and forgot that it was Sunday. Closed for Business. Back home I went with my 5 photos of the diner and plans to return the next morning, Christmas Eve.
Hope
Many thoughts raced through my head as I drove up I-84 for the third morning in a row. Most of them of the families in Newtown, but also for the others who wouldn’t be getting a chance to enjoy this holiday season. For those still dealing with the aftermath of hurricane Sandy. For those that have had to fight this economy more than the rest of us. And those that are, well, just dealing. It is that merry time of year after all.
But then my thinking began to shift. I thought about what I was doing; why I was awake at 6 in the morning scraping off my frozen car, trekking out to take these photos. I was doing it because it was what I could. Given my skills, this was the best I could come up with. I finally realized that what I was doing was enough. Up until that point, I think I was searching for something more. Some unattainable answer for all of this and it was driving me crazy. The reality is that people came together in the days following the tragedy. Not all people of course. There will always be a few misguided individuals that try and take advantage of any situation no matter who suffers, but they are the minority. The rest of us however, are doing what we can. That was enough to give me hope as I exited for Newtown/Sandy Hook one more time.
Day 3 – Newtown General Store
I remember the first time I took photos of a building like this under a dark sky. It was well past sunset in Woodbury, CT, about 15 years ago and I was looking for anything to photograph that night. I drove by an antique store that was closed for the night but the front window had two very bright lights which showcased some cool looking old items. This was back in the film days, so there wasn’t the instant feedback of knowing whether you nailed the exposure just by looking at the back of the camera. To make sure I got the shot right, I took two, 48 exposure, rolls of film that night. I really wanted that shot!
Taking the knowledge I learned from many nights and early mornings just like that one helped me for the quick 3 photos I took of the store here. Similar to the day before, I was feeling uncomfortable pulling my tripod out in Newtown, but there was no way to get the photo I wanted without it. Yes, I could have cranked up the ISO, but that would have made the photo grainy. The higher end SLRs have amazing quality at higher ISOs, and my mid level one does pretty well, but when looking for the highest quality, go with your camera’s lowest setting. That means a tripod is a must in low light because the shutter stays open for a long time. Everyone has a length of time they can handhold the camera for without getting blurry photos. There are many variables that change that length, but for me, it is not very long. I drink lots of coffee and anyone who has seen my handwriting will tell you it looks like chicken scratch. That is not a good sign of a steady hand.
So, guilt creeping back in, I changed the settings in the car. I jumped out, crossed the street to get a good angle, mounted the camera and three clicks later I was back in the car.
I drove passed the memorial again on my way home, and for the first time, I did it with a little hope on that Christmas Eve morning. Hope that the lives lost in this small New England town will not be lost or forgotten, but will act as the catalyst for change. Because we are doing what we can to help make it that way.
Tomorrow, I say goodbye to Newtown in part 4
Newtown the Beautiful. Part 2 of 4
Guilt
I wrote a lot in part 1 about my initial reactions to the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. I am sure you all have your own stories about that dreadful day. For some, it was much worse than that. It is hard for me to even imagine what those poor parents, husbands, sons, daughters and boyfriends had to go through that day. To think about the poor innocent children who had to hide and huddle together, some for the last time on earth, is almost too much to bear.
So I started to block it all out: Facebook; the news; anything that might remind me of what happened. That wasn’t possible though. For one; everything reminded me of it. A Christmas song on the radio; an advertisement of a boy and his dad together; or simply looking down and watching my own kids playing. Two of them twins, and their older sister, who is so very sensitive that she cried really hard when she found out one of the victims, Noah Pozner, was also a twin.
But it was the feelings of guilt that really made it so hard for me to let it go. Guilt about how I first reacted to the whole thing. Guilt about how I treated my friend that day, and guilt about trying to block it all out. It wasn’t right that I was trying to forget what happened. Why? Because we should never forget what happened that day. It should pull at you to reject what happened as just another senseless act. For me, It was so much more. It shattered an ideal that our youngest students our safe while in school. It opened my eyes to how we should of seen this coming. I don’t mean that this incident should have been stopped. I mean that we have seen a constant progression of hate over the years and I pray that this act in Newtown marks the beginning of the decent.
These were the thoughts going through my mind as I was back on I-84 heading for Newtown on Sunday, December 23rd at 6:00am
Day 2 – The Diner
From a photographer’s viewpoint, going into Newtown so soon after the shootings created a new sense of guilt. For the previous 9 days, the town had more reporters and members of the media in it than ever before and you could tell that it was starting to get to some of the townspeople. A few “No Media!” signs were along the road into Sandy Hook when I visited the day before and that had me thinking a lot about whether I was “media” in this instance. In the end, I decided that it didn’t matter what I thought. If one person there saw me as media, then yes I was and I didn’t want to be the cause of any more pain for these people.
I rationalized that I was not going to be intrusive and also that I would leave right away if someone asked, but as I pulled into the parking lot of the Blue Colony Diner, I was definitely feeling some guilt. I drove around the building, peeking inside to hopefully find an empty diner since it was still early. Unfortunately, I saw an older couple sitting in a booth in the corner closest to where I parked. That changed my approach for taking these photos immediately as my camera would be pointed almost directly at them. I did a quick walk around the front to see if there was a better angle, but my initial instinct was right and I would have to take it from the original area or come back another day. The sun was just beginning to lighten the dark sky that I wanted as a backdrop, so waiting out their breakfast wasn’t an option.
I decided I would work as efficiently as possible, take only what I absolutely needed to make a good image and get out. So I changed all of my camera settings in the car and then quickly pulled out my tripod and locked the legs down. I took a grand total of 5 images that morning and a little piece of each one is in the final image below. This will be the first time I mention HDR, but it won’t be the last. If you don’t know what HDR is, I suggest you visit http://stuckincustoms.com. Trey Ratcliff will explain it better than I ever could, but i will definitely be writing about it in future posts.
Come back tomorrow for part 3. Another building I decided to photograph as I passed it on day 1.
Newtown the Beautiful. Part 1 of 4
When I decided I was going to do these posts, I wasn’t sure how it would go. I was very emotional as I exited I-84 for Newtown/Sandy Hook. From what I have read over the last few weeks, I know I am not alone in the pain felt over the thoughtless act that occurred on December 14th.
It didn’t start that way for me though. You see, I had my work holiday party that day and was driving there when I heard over the radio that police were responding to a shooting at a school in Newtown. That is just 30 minutes west of where my daughter was in school and where soon, she would be in a school-wide lock down until they knew it was safe. The sad thing is that it didn’t even phase me to hear about the shooting and I assumed it was either one student against another or against a teacher. And I also assumed it was a high school or middle school. Like that would have been OK. It is a very sad truth, but we have become accustom to hearing these news reports in our society.
So I just continued on my way to the party and a few hours later, when a coworker told me that 20 children were killed, I knew for the first time that something on a larger scale had happened. I still went to the post party happy hour that happens every year, but being a big tough thirty-something (OK…in my mind I am tough) at a bar full of happy people, while inwardly weeping, was not a good place for me to be. I put on a good act for a while, but when I saw a friend outwardly emotional about what had happened, I didn’t know how to react. I wanted everyone to continue having a good time at the bar, but I was emotional about it too. So what choice did I make? I told her she should leave because she was bringing everyone down. Yes, I know I am an ass and told her so the next day. I left the bar early and immediately got a bad stomach bug that kept me up all night…served me right. Anyway, during the week that followed; I saw so many heartwarming stories and acts of kindness that I knew I had to do something too. A town was weeping and as I read on and on, I realized that it wasn’t a town, but a state; a nation; and a world that was weeping. And as we scoured the web in search of answers, we saw countless images of beautiful memorials in town; of the beautiful faces that were taken from the planet way too early; of the grieving that so many were going through; but I had been to Newtown many times in my life and that was not how I knew it, nor how I wanted to remember it, so I decided I would go as many days as I could on my holiday vacation and photograph the scenery of Newtown.
Day 1 – Pond Brook
As I entered Newtown before sunrise on Saturday, December 22, I couldn’t help but notice the local diner right off the exit. I would have stopped and photographed it right away, but I had been up a few hours already that morning and had planned out my trip so that I could be in a certain area by a certain time in case the clouds opened up. So I made a mental note to go back there another day and continued to my preset destination. When I do these trips I often open up Google maps and zoom into a wide area around my location. From there, you can see rivers and ponds, state parks, etc… And that is exactly what I did to end up here at Pond Brook. It was actually snowing out a little when I arrived, so my hopes for good light coming from the sun were pretty much over. That was until I was packing up the car to leave after taking about 15 or so mediocre shots. I noticed just a hint of the sun on the far trees.
I pulled everything back out, mounted my camera back onto my tripod and began snapping away. I only took 75 photos that morning, which is low for me on something like this, but I knew I had some good images and was satisfied. As I left I decided I would drive over near the school to see the memorial. I didn’t get out of my car, but I gave a nod and a wave to the policemen guarding the entrance to the school road. It was a very emotional first day.
Tomorrow I will share the Image of that diner I mentioned and bring a little color to this blog.
