"Instant Connections" ::

I ordered Jason Landry's "Instant Connections: Essays and Interviews on Photography" a couple of weeks ago and finally got around to starting to read it late last week and I've got to say that I've found it to be a most enjoyable book! Landry owns the Panopticon Gallery in Boston and has a MFA in photography.

The book is a mixture of personal anecdotes, interviews, and thoughts from a gallery owner on how to get a photographers work out to the public. Anyone looking for technical information about cameras, equipment, or processing will be disappointed, but if you would be interested in a humorous take on the business side of art photography, then this is the book for you! You will not be disappointed!

Order and enjoy!

Happy New Year ::

Here we are at the beginning of a new year and here's the first photograph from January 1, 2014:

I'm hoping to be more active in 2014!

Here's Another Photo ::

Except this one always creeps me out!

This cemetery is part of a funeral home operation, but it seems to have changed hands and to have gone through some changes. I haven't driven through it in a while, but I don't think this sign is still there.

Back To Shooting Some ::

I haven't had much time lately for my own photography. I seem to have been too busy in my day job photography and it's especially difficult now that the days are getting shorter. I leave home in the dark and get home in the dark. Here's a photo that I shot earlier today:

Inkjet print longevity ::

Last Memorial Day weekend, which was the last weekend in May, I put a print of my oldest stepdaughter on her grave site. She was killed in an auto accident in 2011. The print was part of a flower arrangement that was done specifically for her tombstone and was an 8x10 on Epson Premium Luster paper which had been laminated. I hadn't been down to the cemetery in a while and I decided to drive down yesterday morning. I had long been curious about just how long this print would last before fading began and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could find no discernible fading at all.

I have long been a proponent of Epson printers, papers, and ink although I do occasionally print on Hahnemühle papers.

My Blogging Enthusiasm :::

I'm afraid that it has been pretty low lately, but I'm going to try to remedy that. Here is a photograph I shot this morning on my way to work.

I often drive by this pasture and barn and I've long wanted to photograph it. As I was driving to work just before 6 a.m. I looked over and saw the fog and low hanging clouds after last night's rains. I had to turn around and go back to catch this scene, but I'm glad I did. I learned long ago that a scene that deserves to be photographed should never be put off. More often than not that scene can never be repeated!

Rick Sammon Seminar In Huntsville ::

I attended a Rick Sammon seminar yesterday here in Huntsville. Rick appeared with sponsorship from the Huntsville Photo Society and Southerland's Camera and, I think, with Canon although the corporate sponsorship was muted.

I was especially interested in his thoughts on HDR photography and I found them to be very enlightening and I'll probably make some small tweaks to my processing workflow. Come to think of it, I shot a scene in HDR yesterday and I've yet to download the images so this should be the perfect opportunity to experiment some.

Unfortunately, I had to leave before the seminar was over so I'm not sure what I missed, but I still got some great tips on composition and lighting and I would highly recommend participation in one of these seminars if one becomes available in your area. The cost was perfect: it was free!

Rick Sammon also conducts workshops at various locations worldwide. There is one coming up, and I don't have the dates, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The price is $1495.

Printing With The Epson Hot Press Paper ::

I've had a chance in the past couple of weeks to print about 10 photographs on this paper and I have to say that there is a lot that I like about it. All of the prints, other than 1, have been black and white. When I got the paper I didn't plan on printing anything until I had had a chance to do a custom print profile, but I just couldn't wait so I printed one of the recent color photographs with my fingers crossed.

I was very happy with the results of this first print utilizing a generic profile, but I generated my custom profile the next day and printed the black and white photographs and I've been very happy with the results. The tonal scale is very nice and I really like the feel and the weight of the paper. The only downside for me is that the paper has a very noticeable curl which I hope, with some pressure, will go away since I'm not a big fan of dry mounting and I always mount so that the printed piece can be removed. I always leave a generous margin area inside the mat and sign the photograph on both the front and the back of the the margin area.

All in all I'm very satisfied with the paper and I will continue to use it although I will also continue to print some of my work on the Hahnemuhle gloss pearl paper.

Epson Hot Press Bright Paper

I received a roll of Epson Hot Press Bright paper earlier today to try out and I'm keeping my fingers crossed hoping that I will like it, but it'll probably be a couple of days before I really get a feel for it. I'm printing out a paper profiling chart right now and I'll let it dry for about 24 hours before I generate an ICC profile for the paper. Unfortunately Epson doesn't provide a canned profile for the combination of this paper with an Epson 4000 printer, but a custom profile, theoretically, should work just fine!

I've been doing most of my printing on Hahnemuhle glossy pearl paper and I really like the results, but there are some qualities of the Epson that I really want to try out, and I'll update the results after I have a chance to do some serious printing.

A New HDR Image ::

Saturday was a very nice day, for a change, and I drove down through the Clouds Cove community and found a major change to this sign which I had photographed several times before. There are several crosses of different sizes in this small area, but this one seems to be the only one often undergoing changes.

I am pretty happy with the outcome of this shot which was 5 handheld exposures. I really should have taken the time to set up the tripod, but I decided to give this a try and I must have been pretty steady, especially since I was using a longer lens to take the photograph.

Happy New Year ::

Here's wishing everyone a very Happy New Year! I've never been one to make resolutions, but I am really hoping for more time in the coming year to take many more photographs. I am also planning to shoot more film this year as opposed to digital although I am a big fan of electronic images and just what we can do with them!

I've had this little Fisheye Lomo camera for several years now, but I seldom use it and I can't remember the last time I took a photograph with it. I guess that I probably put the last roll of 24 exposure Fuji film in it a couple of years ago. Earlier this week I had a roll of 120 film from the Holga to take in for developing and I decided to just take the old roll out of the fisheye and get it processed also, so here is the result of one of the exposures.

Hopefully I will not take 2 more years to expose a handful of negatives with the camers!

OnOne Software ::

Just last week I got my update from OnOne Software's Perfect PhotoSuite 6.5 to the 7.0 versionso I haven't really had a chance to really give it a try although I did get to work with it some this past weekend.

Perfect PhotoSuite consists of different modules that offer different outcomes. There is Perfect Effects, layers, masks, portrait, layers, B&W, resize, and focus so that's a lot in one package. I find myself going to perfect effects primarily for the vignette function although there are a tremendous number of options for modifying the photograph.

I use Perfect Resize a lot simply because I've found it to be the very best upsizing algorithm and I regularly take a 10" digital image and upsize it to 40" with excelllent results.

Once in a while I use Perfect Portrait primarily for taking the "shine" off of foreheads and cheeks. I generally don't like the look of modifying a portrait with anything other than a very mild softening of wrinkles.

I worked some with Perfect Black and White this past weekend with mixed results. I generally use layer adjustments in Photoshop CS6 to make my conversions to b&w so I'm very comfortable with that, but Perfect B&W does offer some interesting options which I will have to explore further although I think that Photoshop's layer adjustments will be my primary mode for change.

I don't use layers, masks, and focus at all although I do see the utility in each. I guess that I really should work some with each of these modules in order to see if I can incorporate them into my work flow in some sort of meaningful way!

All in all I think that for $299 Perfect PhotoSuite 7 is an incredible bargain and I highly recommend it.

I Just Found A New Website ::

and this one is definitely worth sharing:

http://www.surianiphoto.com/

There is also a link over to the right. Marilyn was one of my contemporaries when I lived in Atlanta, but I don't recall us ever having met although I remember the name.

A couple of photographs are of people I knew all those many years ago and I'm going to order her book, "Dancing Naked In The Material World".

Here is a link to a video with Marilyn discussing self publishing as well as how to build a project:

http://howtopublishyourownphotographybook.com/interview-01-2/

A Holga Photograph

I shot a couple of frames of this fence out in the country with the 35mm about 3 weeks ago, but I wanted to see what the feel would be like with an image from the Holga. I'll have to look at the two image side by side to see which I like better.

My first impression is that I prefer the Holga image.

GoPro Hero2

I picked up a GoPro Hero2 last week and I've been busy picking up accessories in the past few days. I just got in 2 spare batteries this afternoon and I should be getting a microphone tomorrow. I also ordered the skeleton case which should be here by the end of the week. I had one of the older Heros that I sold on Craig's List about this time last year, but I like the features of the Hero2, plus the user interface is much more user friendly.

I bought this one just at the time the GoPro Hero3 was being introduced, but I'm pretty happy with my purchase even though I haven't really had a chance to try it out yet although I'm just waiting for the weather and the sky to be just right as I have a project in mind at work which may spread out over several days or weeks.

 I'll be posting some photographs and videos from the little camera soon.

Nikon D800 ::

I've been shooting with the D800 for a couple of months now and I'm still learning my way around the menu, which is a bit different from the other Nikons that I use, but I'm gradually getting used to it. The first thing that I found was that continuous shooting is much slower than the D700, but it is adjustable, to some extent, in the custom menu choices. The highest rate is still 5 frames/second. I'm going to have to check the continuous shooting rate on the D700, but the 700 is much faster. I attribute most of that to the fact that it just takes longer to process a 36 meg raw file, especially with the 8 gig cards that I'm using right now. I have a 24 gig high speed card ordered which should be in very soon and I'm hoping that will make a difference.

I shot a panorama of the Marshall Space Flight Center last week from the top of a building facing north and I was very happy with the results. I also shot a conference last week and, as usual, the lighting was challenging so I shot almost the entire event at an ISO of 5000 and I was very happy with the results. There was some noise, but, for my purposes, it was not excessive. I'm getting ready to order some noise reduction software which should alleviate this situation. All in all I absolutely love the D800. The raw files open up to 16x24 at 300ppi so I would have no problem interpolating up to 96 inches although I haven't tried it yet. That may be my project for later this week with the panorama I shot last week.

I would have posted the panorama here, but it is living on a server at work right now and I didn't think about bringing the image home with me. Not to mention that, in my experience, panoramas generally don't translate well to the web!

A Holga Photograph ::

I've Been Slowly Working ::

I've been slowly working on photographing a rural community near where I live that I pretty much found by accident when I drove down this dead end road one day.

I really haven't met any of the people yet, but the community seems to consist of commuters although there is a fair amount of farming that goes on. Two things enticed to me to drive down the road: there is a petting zoo that is open to the public and there is a small independent Cowboy Church with services on irregular Sunday evenings.

Soon it will be time to start meeting the people who inhabit Clouds Cove.

Been Gone ::

I've been away for far too long and I'm going to try to rejuvenate the blog. Here's a start with a photograph I took back in the early summer.

I've been thinking about picking up a Mamiya RB67 from KEH since the prices are so good on them right now. The only film camera I've owned in the past few years is a Holga, which I really like. I'm torn between getting the Mamiya and picking up another GoPro Hero camera. I've owned an older model GoPro, but I sold it because I wasn't sure that I could really use it to it's full potential. I have been photographing more diverse events lately and I think I could utilize the GoPro more.