This looks better large on black so check this link Tulip set. Thanks to my friend Mark K for pointing this trick out for me it makes things easier for quick slideshows that I don’t want to custom build. Check out his latest from the Big Apple, I really would like to spend some time there as well as the tulip fields.
A week turns into two while you gather thoughts and take care of all those little things that keep you from clarifying the thoughts you want to write down. Next thing you know a whole month has gone by and you haven’t posted a thing. In the meantime a lot of images have been made and those ideas you thought about sharing have been resolved to the point of not really needing to write about them. Life goes on, faster and faster. I know we deal in split seconds of time when an image is made and as we get a little older the split seconds that are life stack and pass at an accelerated rate as well. The last month a lot of images have been made and not really shared, a lot of ideas have been sorted and rough drafts written but not shared. Limbo of the worst kind I am thinking.
Spent a couple of days with Sabrina Henry, Mark Olwick, and friends Dave, David and Mary. The importance of sharing both images and ideas was reinforced over time spent in the tulip fields and coffee. It is hard for me to express how much I enjoyed the time spent with these folks. So as Sabrina is planning on a project involving images within a mile of her home, I think I will plan on sharing images that I make, have made and have planned, along with the ideas and thoughts that rattle thru my head much more often. Feel free to remind me if I forget to get something up here in a timely fashion.
In that spirit I will add a few more of the tulip images and there is a set on flickr that will fill out from the shoot as I process the images. I can only describe editing the 300+ images from both the SLR and the E-p2 as color overload. The colors and amount of color has to be experienced to really be believed. Acres and Acres of colors, almost mind numbing. So as they say More to Come.
I am still chasing the whole new and processing experiments with the new system, the flowers were at the back entrance to the local Walmart and it was raining like crazy. The colors just popped so I had to shoot a couple of images. If I can get it figured out I’ll add a section to the blog for just E-P2 images and keep everyone updated on the process. As it stands now I would tell everyone to get one of these cameras it is the most fun and best files I have ever seen out of a camera this size.
The flowers were shot in raw and converted in LR and a little Nik Color Efex added. I will probably go back to the jpg workflow with this camera though they are great out of this machine. Also These were edited on my 13in laptop instead of the dual screen set-up and that is a real different experience.
There are two other shoots that will be getting posts one is a local Vintner and I have a couple of images to post that were shot jpg with the D700 and I have some great images from my street shoot with Willow, a young model here in town. As they say more to come soon and a few more over on the flickr stream
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Watching
I have been a little remiss on posting, all my time has been taken up reading the great stuff others have been doing lately. I also have been preparing a post for Urbangrafix on what my whole take on style really is how it relates to what we all do and how we do it.
On that sort of take I sold a lot of things I have had laying around that haven’t been used for a while to purchase a new tool, and Olympus E-P2. I have been fascinated with what Kirk Tuck and others have been writing about the Micro 4/3 system. For a long time my G9 has served well, but I wanted something that worked a little better in low light and did usable HD video. We started doing video work for our clients 4 or 5 yrs ago and have a lot of very good equip for SD vid but with the latest innovations in DSLR and HD video it was time to up the ante. Research on both the Panasonic and Olympus system made me believe one or the other would fit my need well. I settled on the Oly because I have a lot of Nikon and Leica lenses from my film cameras that will work on this system with the right adapter and still retain IS for lower shutter speeds.
What I didn’t figure on was how much fun this camera would be. It is like going back to the rangefinder I started photography with, small, discrete and fast. Never had a camera that has in cam processing so I tried out the “Grainy Film” filter and was just blown away with how much it was like the old newspaper photos that made me want to be “that guy’ with the camera on the street. Of course this led to adjusting the monochrome setting to my liking and shooting in real low light at ISO’s I would never have tried a few yrs ago. The above image was one from wandering around PT late Sat night, there are a few more on my flickr stream as well. I am flat out in love with this little rig, the shooting I did Sat night was after a 3 hr shoot with the D700 and a very pretty young lady working on her portfolio. I had more fun walking the town with the E-P2 than I have had in yrs. Set to Monochrome I see the image just like it will be. I am going to give the G9 a similar setting and see what it will do as well. The adapter will be here Monday and then the Leica f2 50mm is going on and we will see how well the manual focus works out. I am flat out excited. B&W and street work and I get that same feeling I did when I first tried to be the guy that shot for Life magazine when I first got hooked on photography as art.
I know and believe the mantra that “Gear is good, vision is better”, but at times you need to remember more or better gear can get in the way of vision. The D700 with a Nikon 24-70 is a beautiful thing and I love what I can do with the files that come out of that machine, however when you raise it to your eye on the street in my part of the country it is like waving a 12 ga shotgun in everyones direction, duck and cover is the main reaction of most. At the least you are noticed and the natural feeling of the scene disappears. Not so with a small rangefinder or P&S style camera. I can see and be part of an urban or work environment and still get images that feel right. Stuart over at thelightwithout has started a month long run with his GF1 and a single lens and I am finding a set of ideas to follow along with his example, more on that soon and more on what I finding with this new found freedom as it develops.
The M4/3 systems handle color pretty well as well. I am pretty committed to shooting raw almost exclusively until I saw the jpg files from this camera and I will be writing more on this soon as I finish out the tests I am doing both with this and the big Nikons on the next few shoots I am doing. I’m not sure how to rationalize this purchase but I am sure glad I made it. I am shooting everyday and getting a lot of images I like. I guess I have been hording a lot of my images lately and will try to publish more of them as time permits.
Stay tuned for the stuff I am trying to put into coherent words for Urbangrafix and for here over the next week or so and I’ll try to make the posts more often and worth reading….
In the meantime check out Jays work and his interview at JerseyStyle, and the work and words that Sabrina has been doing.
Ok since Sabrina, Jeff, and Mark have all posted portraits this week I figured I should jump on the bandwagon and get one online myself. Visit Sabrina and take a look through the last few posts for a great series of people photos that she made during her recent visit to Africa. Jeff got to attend a workshop with Kirk Tuck that I would have loved to go to and came back with some great studio portraits. Mark is adding to his 100 Strangers project both here and abroad with some great street portraits.
Great stuff from all three of my friends and a little unfair as now I want to travel, don’t really care where to but I want to go. The above image was an outdoor shot with a 42″ diffuser held between the sun and Katie, I can’t remember for sure but I may have had an SB 28 cam right for a touch of fill. Few more of the outdoor shoot of Katie over on the flickr site.
PT Cyclery has been a mainstay of business in Port Townsend since the 80′s and a great bunch of real helpful folks even for those of us who don’t know a lot about something with no motor. They were nice enough to let me shoot a few images for a project we have in the works. There are a few more of the session on my flickr site, the project I’ll add to the blog when it is done.
The camera that is with you is the right one. iPhone photo while waiting to go drag out the big guns for a shoot at the bicycle shop. This is my favorite photo from the whole day and all I had with me at the time was my phone.
Sara who runs the Center Valley Animal Rescue stopped by and needed a quick portrait (ya got 20 min) for her brothers wedding website that didn’t have animals or a motorcycle in it. Up went a black sheet and out came the lights. Beautiful young lady who laughs a lot and puts up with a few of us that tease her unmercifully. She is truly dedicated to saving animals of all kinds and the ranch is there solely to her dedication and hard work. Check out the info on her site at http://centervalleyanimalrescue.org/ . Special lady and doing a special job. Next time we do this I want time to do it the way she deserves, but these do show some of who she is inside.
Set this up and shot about 60 frames in about 20 min on a Sat. they stopped by on the way home from Costco. Simple set-up and shoot. The 85mm is perfect for the space I had and I like the way it works for this kind of portrait. Click the photos to link to flickr where I added the lighting info.
(Sara if you read the first paragraph I will deny writing it)
Couple of my favorite images from a shoot last Friday with Katie. We tried out a couple of new ideas and they managed to kick off a whole new set of inspiration for an upcoming shoot.
This was one of those short series of images that I couldn’t get out of my head. It took 3 days of driving into town and retrying to get everything lined up to get it right. Timing the bus runs, weather, and getting the camera settings right to get what I thought I saw in my head.
No not an earth shattering set of images but they are something I wanted and it ended up with a little bit of added story to go with it in the image. Point is I failed the first few times I tried it and kept at it til I got what I wanted, bonus was I learned a lot in the process I wouldn’t have learned if it went right the first time.
Click the image and then go thru the rest while it is on screen. It was fun to shoot, I like being in that zone that you get to when you are going for something in your head. We have a hell of a bus system for a rural area and I have more ideas for them that I’ll publish as I get the images.
I don’t plan what I am going to post about very often it all just seems to happen when it does. Lately I have been reading a lot of blogs where the consensus is that text needs to go with a photo to add context and meaning. I feel that if it needs words it has failed. Universal ‘truths’ or stories shouldn’t need an explanation to prop them up. Photojournalism was cited as one example however all to often I see poor writing held up by great photos or poor photos held up by the writing.
We only get better if we reach for that one image that says everything so clear it doesn’t need anything else. I would like to believe that the Steve McCurry photo Afghan Girl would have the impact it does without the back story. I still don’t know the story behind the image but I feel every time I see it.
On another note there is some new stuff over on my flickr acct that some of you may like to see and there is another photographer I have been talking to that does work I wish I could. Please take a look at http://whilestandingstill.com/ beautiful subtle work.
Not to mention that Jeff Lynch still has some openings for his Spring Safari in Tx. Jeff is a must read for those of you Canon shooters and for doing landscape work. And as long as you are cruising the photo web check in on K-man’s trip to Japan and part east, fantastic images coming out of this world jaunt and he is calling it work.
Go look there is a lot of inspiration out there and a lot of folks that are shooting everyday.
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