And so it sweats…

My last post discusses the beginning salvo of my SoBoFoMo project revolving around the feral and homeless cats I watch over and feed. Since then I have encountered two bits of ‘fun’ I thought I’d share.

Here’s fun number one:

The weather...

Yeah. It says “90” right now (and ‘right now’ is almost 9:30p.m.), but it was 96 at the peak today with a heat index of around 110. You know… I left Florida to escape this sort of thing.

(sigh)

It has been like this all week and will remain like this through tomorrow, as you can see in the above picture. While things will cool-off over the weekend and into the week it’s still scheduled to be warmer than average. Just not stupid-hot. Needless to say working with a dSLR in this heat, with this humidity, in a small wood which only serves to trap the humidity under the leafy canopy (and between the two humidity is far worse than direct sunlight) I’ve been reluctant to shoot pictures.

The cats look and act distressed (lethargic) and I don’t blame them. It’s nasty. I myself looked as if I had just stepped out of the shower as I returned to my car to come back home. And into a real shower.

(heavenly sigh)

So this first week of photography has yielded precisely three-days of photographs when I had planned at least six. Kid you not… the camera actually slipped out of my hand the other day as both it and my hand were so covered in sweat.

Gross… I know!

But I did learn something yesterday while out with the camera and I apologize for not having the pictures to prove it as I’m entering this blog post from a different computer. What I “discovered” is when trying to photograph cats in a small wood with a flash attached to the camera there is a very good chance the flash will highlight… even over-expose… the leaves and branches that lay between the cat and me; the humble photographer.

This does not lead to the sort of results one had hoped for. It also begs the question: does forkboy have the slightest clue what he’s doing?

It’s probably best we don’t answer that…

And so it begins…

Solo Photo Book Month.

31-consecutive days to create a PDF book for upload to the SoFoBoMo site. Said book containing at least 35-newly taken pictures.

Text? If you’d like.

Fancy or plain? Doesn’t matter.

It’s something to do. Something to try. A new way to express myself centered around photography, but creating something more than a finished JPEG for upload to Flickr.

And so it was I began photographing on Thursday.

As these books typically revolve around a theme of some sort I opted to go with one close to my heart: the feral and homeless cats. It’s a shame I cannot use the plethora of pictures I already have, but that isn’t the purpose of the project. Not that I have any objection regarding taking more photographs of the cats, but there is a difference between just snapping pics because I want to versus needing to.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t get some nice shots anyway.

I have already noticed a difference in my temperament regarding shooting as a need: I’m not real patient.

I suppose part of the issue is that I feel I will need to spend more time on the book creation part than the principal photography so there is an impetus to get the photography out of the way, so to speak. However, like most any creative process (and undoubtedly photography is a creative process) there will be great days and not-so-great days. These first two days have provided some good pictures, but not as many as I had hoped for.

Granted, part of the problem is lighting. Specifically: the lack thereof.

As the homeless and feral cats live in a small wood and as this time of the year the wood is in full-leaf there is not a whole lot in the way of light on the forest floor, where the cats reside. Certainly shooting at higher ISO’s is possible, but it’s not exactly what I had in mind for quality photos for this project. Still.. not all has been lost.

It occurred to me I should submit the idea to SoFoBoMo for having these projects sprinkled through at least three portions of the year. This way those who elect to participate are not trapped into one season and one season only, such as we are currently. For my purposes mid- to late-Autumn would be a far more ideal time as sunlight reaches the forest floor quite readily with the disappearance of the leaves. There is also the problem of it being particularly warm to hot at this time of the year meaning we photographers who elect to work outside find ourselves sweating for our work.

Blech. (oh… and not to mention the issue with mosquitos, which are a major issue at this time of the year)

So I snapped almost 200-pictures in two days and of that I felt maybe 5 were real keepers for the project. Granted…I kept more than that: 63. But I kept those additional 58 only because I may find myself in need of them to make this project work as principal photography time winds down and book creation gears up.

However, while I was becoming rather frustrated with the natural light situation in the wood, it occurred to me that I could try to rectify the situation by introducing some of my own lighting. While this may require fiddling about and experimenting a bit, and thus costing me valuable shooting time, it may be a solution to my lighting problem.

Bringing my own lighting could help immensely in getting the shots I both want and need for the project. Sure… things aren’t so bad without the addition of lighting…

But instead of shooting a bunch of pictures and having to dump 95% of them simply because there is blur (thanks to camera shake and/or moving subject), I could salvage a lot of those shots and then find myself in the enviable position of having to select the best composed and framed instead. Not such a bad deal after all.

Of course it does mean making some decisions about what is both useful and practical in regard to bringing in some lighting. I could go with the most basic and simple solution: on-camera flash. Let the camera make all the decisions and hope for the best. Or I could shoot as I typically do (aperture-priority) and shoot the flash manually, just adding fill. Or so I hope.

Or I could take it a step further and bring my portable light kit with me and drag around a light stand, umbrella and electronics in hopes of getting the most effective use of my flash. While this route sounds very appetizing for what it could bring to the picture quality it also has the horrible down-side of meaning dragging a bunch of equipment through a wood rife with shrubs, trees, thorny-things, etc.

I confess it sounds like more work than it may be worth.

I suppose the solution is to try the on-camera options and see what results I can obtain. Ultimately I want great photos, but I must temper this desire with expediency as well.

Such is the life of a photographer, eh?

Not according to plan…

It was supposed to be a perfect day. The weather, while warmer than I like, was very nice. A good breeze. Reasonable humidity. Plenty of sunshine and enough puffy, white clouds to make it an attractive sky.

You know… a good day.

And when nature hands you a good day you should take advantage of it with your camera and so it was I made some plans. A quick trip south of Dayton to collect a ring I was having re-sized and then a short journey to Cox Arboretum to take full advantage of the very recently opened Butterfly House!

As they say… the best laid plans…

Jeweler was closed for the week. On vacation. I didn’t know about it and I had been saving my trip to the store for post-butterfly house opening seeing how both the store and Cox Arboretum are not exactly around the corner from my house.

“Oh well,” I thought. “The butterflies will more than make up for this,” was the thinking which cheered me up. Except the butterflies were not in attendance at the butterfly house.

Nope.

Maybe four or five small monarchs.

(sigh)

I think this happened to me two years ago. Early July, regardless of the fact the butterfly house is open, is too early for the butterflies. I need to give it until the end of the month before things really start to pick up. (make mental note about such so we don’t have to write about this problem again next year)

Well… adopting the make lemonade mantra when life hands you lemons, I moved on to the various ponds at Cox Arboretum thinking I may grab some shots of the dragonflies. I do love dragonflies. But again it is just a bit too early in the season for them.

Oh… they were out and about. Buzzing to and fro as dragonflies are wont to do. But they were not out in the numbers I have seen deeper into summer. Nor were they very big; most being rather tiny.

Drat. No. Double drat!

But so what. I spent a nice afternoon outside for a few hours and I may have snagged a few decent dragonfly pictures (I haven’t yet checked). It’s still nice to be out and about with the gear doing what I enjoy most about photography: being behind the camera.

And not unlike my last post, seeing how this is a blog dedicated to photography, how about a snap real quick? I’m glad you agree…

Tulip

I didn’t snap many flower pictures this Spring, but when I saw my neighbor’s tulips just past their peak, relaxing in a smattering of dappled sunlight I just couldn’t help myself. Tripod and 70-200mm lens in hand I ventured across the street and threw myself into it. There are two things I really like about this picture: (1) the symmetry of the flower, and (2) the brilliant yellow in the base of the petals.

Like sunshine made flower.

Theme update…

Damn.

I’ve been using the same theme since the day I began this blog so long ago. Hold it… how long ago was it?

I opened up on 19 February, 2008.

Wow.

I knew I had started this thing not too long after purchasing my first dSLR (in December 2007), but it doesn’t really feel as if it has been almost 3.5 years. That’s longer than most every job I’ve held!

Anyway… Don’t think this change is change for the sake of change. Nope. Nothing that banal. I’m comfortable with… well… comfortable. I don’t usually feel the need to mix things up if only because I have that urge. Instead, this change has been brought about for a couple of reasons.

First, I had grown weary of the font size on my original theme (which was, if you weren’t around previously): a white-on-black theme. It was a smaller-sized font and this made it tiring to read at length in my opinion. Seeing how the blog is mine my opinion does have some weight and merit.

Second, and perhaps related to font size, was the problem with colour-shift of the font. It was common to notice a slight greying of the white letters at the periphery of my vision and while my eyes may now be 46-plus years old I remain 20/20. I can only imagine how irritating it may have been for others venturing to this online tome.

Third, and again related to font size, I have recently purchased a new laptop, which is actually a 13.5-inch variant as opposed to my previous laptops all being 15.6-inches. This had the unfortunate affect of making the already smallish font appear even smaller on this smaller screen. And as I do most of my postings for WP on the laptop… well…

Fourth and finally, besides wanting to address the font issues I wanted a theme which appeared simpler. Neater. Cleaner. Lighter. The dark white-on-black looked and felt heavy. While I have liked it up until very recently my opinion had changed of late and I believe I would have made this change even without the font issues.

However, while fiddling with the various options available to this WP theme I noted a handful of upgrades which could be had for a price. For instance, there is an option to alter both the font and font sizes for the header, titles and text. Cool. But it’s $30/year. Personally that seems a bit steep to me, but I am curious.

I have no intention of becoming a coder so that I can make my own blog, etc., preferring to leave such matters to the experts at WordPress. But I’m not certain I can justify $30/year for font creativity just so that I can more personalize my blog. Yet… I am intrigued and wonder if the $30/year price is per blog or per account. This is important because I have more than one WP blog, but they are all under one account. It would seem to me a more reasonable expense if I were able to utilize such across multiple blogs.

I think I’ll check into that.

So there you go. New theme. New style. Hell… I even changed my header picture to something different just to mix things up a bit. Just a bit. Oh! And since this is a blog dedicated to photography, how about a photo?

The Daughter

SoFoBoMo…

Solo Photo Book Month.

I discovered this event, if you will, about two years ago and after checking it out I elected to not partake. I wasn’t so much concerned about the photography part, which I figured I could handle, but it was the creation of a book part that left me stumped.

Stumped because it would likely have required me to invest in some software. Perhaps pricey software. For a potentially one-off event.

Thanks, but no thanks.

But now… two years later….

I don’t even know what brought it to mind this year, but about two weeks ago I was doing something on the computer when the SoFoBoMo thing popped into my head. It’s almost karma-like in so much that the event starts 1 July and here it was only two weeks to the start. I reacquainted myself with the FAQs and such and tonight… just a few hours ago… signed up to partake.

Yeah!

I already have in mind two themes from which to select and I’m having some difficulty figuring out which way to go. One way, I think, may help me with another blog I’m looking to start very soon. A blog which I hope will lead to the self-publishing of a book. And here’s a hint:

The other route would, I hope, also be interesting for me as well as readers of my finished project. And here’s a hint for this route:

I don’t know…. But I have to make a decision right quick as I must start sometime between tomorrow morning and the end of July as I only have 31-days to complete the entire project. This includes the taking and processing of at least 35-pictures (which means to get those 35 I’ll likely take over 400) and then the compilation of such into a book-like format for uploading to the SoFoBoMo site.

No small feat for 31-days.

Welcome Surprises…

Being an amateur photographer I’m accustomed to surprises. Unfortunately they tend to be of the un-welcomed variety.

Like the time I first took out my brand new 70-200mm lens. Photographing cardinals in an ice-covered tree I’d press the shutter release and nothing would happen. Then some seconds later “click”. I spent two or three minutes thinking there was something wrong with the lens, when in truth there was something wrong with me: I hadn’t changed the camera settings back from self-timer after my last use.

(sigh)

But sometimes we hobbyist photographers get lucky. Something cool happens. We’re playing in post-processing and chance upon a setting which really makes our otherwise average photo really sing. Or once home and in front of the computer we realize the pictures we took and thought were ho-hum on the camera’s LCD screen are actually pretty good. These are great moments.

But today I’m talking about coming across something within the actual image, which we hadn’t originally seen. For instance, we start with this basic flower picture…

A pretty picture of a pretty flower. But nothing surprising about it. Right? Well when working with this in Lightroom with a large, 24-inch monitor I came across this…

Isn’t it cute?

Sure… this isn’t a big surprise. A bug. On a flower. Outdoors. It could happen. But it was unexpected and unseen when I snapped the picture. Hell.. it was only because I was playing with cropping that I even saw this little fellow in the soft shaft of sunlight falling upon the petal.

And just the other day I was out at a local garden, Wegerzyn Garden (part of the Dayton, Ohio, area Five Rivers MetroParks system), snapping pics of late Spring flowers when I came across a bee. A bee doing its busy bee thing and so I started snapping a series of pics of it on this one particular flower.

When I got home and was going through the images I had, once again, zoomed in to better see the bee when I … well… well see for yourself.

The poor little bee has what I am certain is an unwelcome guest: a mite!

While I’m certain the bee could live without this Faustian nightmare, I can’t help but think how lucky I was to be in the right place at the right moment such that I could capture this bit of nature.

I’ll take these sorts of surprises any day of the week over not clearing previous session settings.

Firsts for 2011…

It seems a bit funny to be typing “Firsts for 2011” when one considers we are…. what…. half-way into 2011. But I think it will all make more sense when you see….

While certainly not the first butterfly to be found in the Dayton, Ohio, area in 2011 it is my first shot of one. I imagine folks who venture to my flickr photostream get tired of shots of my butterflies. But that’s their problem. I love photographing them. They are such beautiful little creatures and seeing them on my computer monitor makes me smile. Their bright colours. Sometimes iridescent.

Like I mentioned in one of my more recent posts, if I enjoy it why shouldn’t I photograph it? It is, after all, my hobby. My passion. I should shoot what makes me happy. Granted, I hope others enjoy those images as well, but ultimately the only person I need to satisfy is myself.

I also have a penchant for photographing…

Although I’m not certain what I’m really photographing in this image. I was shooting for the bee (I do love bees.. at least in terms of photography), but wound up focused upon the flower instead. But I do enjoy photographing flowers as well, just not as much as bees and other bugs.

At first I was going to delete the image from my hard drive as it wasn’t what I was looking for. You know… I nice & sharp picture of the bee. But before I could flag it as a reject in Lightroom I think I realized how this photo worked just fine after all. The flower is lovely and the bee, while out of focus, is still in-focus enough that I, and any other viewer, immediately recognize it’s a bee.

And upon further consideration I decided that this ‘mistake’ was actually a very nice photograph. Or at least I think so.

Mike Langridge…

This evening I received the news my fellow WordPress author, fellow flickr photographer and group photography project comrade, Mike Langridge, had passed on 1 June.

(photo by Darren)

I don’t recall the exact particulars of how we met, but it was via WordPress. I believe he came across my then recently started blog and posted a comment. Which led to me looking over his blog. Which led to me leaving comments. Pretty soon we were reading each other’s blogs and leaving comments all over the place.

In addition, it was Mike who turned me on to using Flickr as a place to put up my photographs, which were accumulating quickly after the then-recent purchase of my first dSLR.

(photo by Darren)

Mike was a prolific photographer before he became ill, but oddly enough it will not be his photography by which he will be best remembered in my mind. No. It will be his blog. He had such a gift for writing. His earlier stuff is fine, but as the years progressed he truly came into his own. His style was one to which I very naturally gravitate in that it was quite conversational. Very natural. Almost in a stream-of-consciousness manner, but with actual punctuation and the like. I gravitate towards this style because it is the style in which I wish I wrote. Well… I do. Sometimes. Not as much as I would like though and that’s mostly because I DO NOT PRACTICE doing such.

Lazy sod.

Regardless… Mike was a genuine character. Not a warm and fuzzy sort of guy, but that was alright. It simply wasn’t him. Those of us on this side of the Atlantic who knew him didn’t even know he was so sick. We knew he had been quite unwell… unwell enough that he wasn’t snapping pics or writing, but we didn’t know how bad things were. Or turned out to be (lung cancer). Again.. that was Mike. He wasn’t the sort to let on to such things for fear of being besieged with well wishes and get better soon stuff.

No.

He had no use for such things. And that’s alright. That was Mike. The only problem is that it meant I couldn’t say goodbye. I couldn’t tell him what a great man I thought he was. How much I loved his writings and how it was his writings often helped me to see things differently. To even change my mind on occasion. I regret the chance to tell him those things never came.

But that was Mike. Will miss you, you old fart.

(photo by Darren)

Things in life…

They say there are two things in life of which one may be certain: death and taxes. I’d like to add a third: not working on your blog.

Clearly I’m guilty of such.

As this is a blog dedicated to my adventures in photography one may be forgiven for thinking I had given up photography. And some would further suggest this isn’t such a bad idea! However, they would be wrong. Wrong about my having given up photography, but not about it being a good idea.

I have, actually, been snapping pictures and such ever since my last post regarding the birds in the snow. That was, I might add, a glorious day. One for the record books. And as is my wont I have been all over the place photography-wise. I’ve snapped more pics of the feral and homeless cats I feed and watch over. I’ve snapped some using the daughter and her friend as models. And, of course, there have been birds, flowers, landscapes, etc. I’ve pretty much covered all my usual bases.

Hell.. I even attended a Scott Kelby seminar in Indianapolis, Indiana with my camera store guru and new friend Alex. It was titled “Light It, Shoot It, Re-Touch It”. It was fun and cool and very exciting. Also a bit baffling as I don’t use Photoshop, which is the software he was using for the seminar. Even more bizarre was that I was the grand prize winner of an all-access pass to Photoshop World being held in Las Vegas this coming September. Absolutely wild it was. A room filled with over 500 professional photographers and I, the non-Photoshop using hobbiest, walk away with the grand prize.

Who would have thunk it?

Though all this background information does nothing to explain why I haven’t been posting. I wish I could offer a reasonable or useful explanation, but I have none. Unmotivated? Surely. Lazy? Without doubt. Lacking guidance? Of course.

But if pressed to offer a real reason… if pressed to truly weigh and consider why it is I haven’t been posting for a while I think I would point to two reasons:

1) The situation at home. Meaning, the continued lack of gainful employment coming my way (regardless of the number of resumes I’ve been sending out) and the low-level tension which exists between myself and my ex-wife-to-be. Mind you, we get along just fine. Our problem was never one of fighting or anything like that. The tension comes from simply having to continue living together while anxiously waiting for something good to happen to/for me in the job market so we can get the ball of divorce rolling, so to speak.

2) A lack of direction related to photography.

Point 1 is simply no within the purview of this blog so I shall not venture forth and illuminate you to the particulars in that matter, but I can speak here to point 2.

I enjoy snapping pictures. I really do. I do it almost daily. If not with my dSLR I’m certain to play shutterbug with my cell phone. Hey… a photograph is a photograph regardless of the device used to take it. And while I have no problem with being a basic and generic shutterbug I had hoped… maybe expected… that by now something in particular would have shown itself to be the sort of photography I wished to focus upon.

I don’t know why. I mean, I don’t know why I felt that need at all. Maybe it’s a normal and logical conclusion to which to arrive when one undertakes a new hobby. That at some point in the future the hobby will become more sharply focused. More specific. That it will cease to be something simple and become something more complex. Something which requires more time and dedication and in which one feels as if they are growing within the confines and context of said hobby.

But why does it have to be that way? I suppose it doesn’t. Regardless it is the way I feel and since it’s my hobby and my blog and my life, why shouldn’t I live it the way I feel regardless of how it appears to only add anxiety and complexity where none is necessary?

So where does this leave me exactly? Where am I and what are my plans? My intentions? My concerns and needs?

Fuck all if I know.

I almost wonder if I’m holding back, intentionally or otherwise, simply because I feel as if the rest of my life is on hold. Waiting for a job. Waiting for a divorce. Waiting for finding a new place to live and starting over on my own. Perhaps these up-in-the-air issues are thwarting my attempts to move forward with photography? Or maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe I’m just not certain where to go. What to do.

Hell… I still have a terrible record at figuring out which of my own pictures is better than the rest. I’m still regularly amazed at the reaction I will get to one photograph on flickr, while another, one I think is great, garners little to no attention. For example, I posted the following two pictures a few weeks ago:

The first picture, of my cat Pumpkin sunning himself at the front door, generated 43-views and 6-separate comments. The second picture, of a mallard at a local park, generated 26-views and 1-comment.

The picture of Pumpkin was just a whim. Just me enjoying snapping a photo of one of my cats doing what they do best: getting some sun. The one of the mallard was me doing what I love best: snapping pics of nature. Especially of animals and birds in particular. I worked hard that particular afternoon to grab a handful of good shots of the male and female mallards enjoying the early spring/late winter day at the pond. And I worked hard to narrow down the field of photos until I had what I thought were the best of the best. And this one… this one in particular really stood out for me.

Tack-sharp. Gorgeous colours. A perfect profile.

In my mind the mallard was a winner. Hands down. Should have been favourited and commented upon and loved by all. Instead it was the everyday shot of a cat in the sun which generated the far greater response. What the hell is wrong with me that I don’t see this? Am I too close to my own work to recognize what’s better? I’m I prejudiced to think less of the casual snap of the cat because I didn’t ‘work’ for it? Am I simply incapable of recognizing something basic and fundamental about the images that would have told me the picture of Pumpkin would be the more popular?

For someone who sometimes entertains the notion of trying to sell one’s work it’s very disconcerting to find oneself incapable of recognizing what may be the better work (at least when based upon viewers preferences).

So… where does this leave me at this time? Am I going to continue with this blog? I’d like to think so. I confess to having an idea for another blog, one which I believe is much closer to my heart, but I am concerned that if I cannot remain dedicated to this one why would I be dedicated to another even if it is something more important to me (the subject, not blogging itself)? It’s a dilemma and is, in part, the reason I have yet to commit to starting it.

As if life isn’t messy enough without me trying to make it more so. What a putz.

It felt like cheating…

It really did.

I felt as if I were cheating when I took those pictures. How could I be doing this? It wasn’t right. No. It couldn’t be. But I had a hard time arguing with the results.

Sure… there were some of the usual issues. The falling snow interfering with the auto-focus system. The lack of sunshine meaning slower shutter speeds for lower ISOs (thank the Maker for Image Stabilization). But this was different. No freezing fingers, but having to look for cleaner spots through which to shoot.

Still….. the results….

See…. about two and a half weeks ago I ventured out to Aullwood Audubon Center & Farm to take advantage of the rarely sighted sun and do some bird photography. It was, to the say the least, a poor excursion. Not so many birds, but worse, the vantage points from which to shoot around the building almost always lead to the building figuring prominently in the background. Not quite ideal. Not by a long shot.

Dejected I returned home, but found myself back at Aullwood about two-weeks ago to discuss a matter with the front desk. While there I visited one of the bird watching rooms (a nice room with books and comfy chairs looking out through a large glass window upon some of the feeders) and noticed there were tonnes of birds present. Tonnes. That’s a lot of birds. But it was snowing and I remembered the poor background issue from my adventure the week before, but suddenly it struck me.

“I can shoot from inside. Through the window!” And so it was I rushed back home and back to Aullwood in the rapidly falling snow. But as soon as I arrived back at the room I realized how this entire idea felt like cheating. Cheating because I wasn’t outdoors in the snow and cold. Cheating because I wasn’t carefully stalking my prey. Cheating because I’d be snug and warm.

Again though…. I cannot argue with the results.

However, it wasn’t all sunshine and bunnies. While the glass window had very recently been cleaned it doesn’t take long for it to get a bit messy, which meant being careful as to where I shot through. And I’m fairly certain the addition of this layer of glass between me and my subjects matter only softened the focus of many of the images.

Yet here I am with about 20 or so real keepers of cardinals, finches, & woodpeckers. It was one of the very few outings where I came home and had a devil of a time selecting the very best as so many were that good. And while it still feels like I cheated I’m not going to argue with the results. Maybe in this instance the ends did justify the means.