White balance you say?

You know what I like about taking photographs with my iPhone? Simplicity.

At its core there are no settings. You select the Camera app…. it selects the focus area (or you can do such if so inclined)…. you press and release the virtual button. And you’re done.

Granted, there seems to be millions of apps by which to edit your image, but the actual act of snapping the photo is brain-dead simple. And this is a good thing as I’m pretty brain-dead a lot of the time. But for every moment the iPhone is just fine for capturing something in a lovely stream of 1’s and 0’s there is a moment when a dSLR (or something relatively equivalent) certainly comes in handy. But the price we pay for shooting with fancier cameras is complexity. And complexity, my dear readers, opens up opportunities for mistakes.

But this isn’t necessarily always a bad or undesirable thing. For example…

West Milton Falls in Fluorescent White Balance Setting

I snapped the above a few days ago while re-visiting a local waterfall, which is actually part of a city’s drainage system. I had thought I ‘fixed’ all my various settings to the appropriate… uh… settings, when about half way through the shoot I realized the white balance setting was still on Fluorescent (I had been shooting in my kitchen a few days previously).

Sigh.

I quickly made the necessary adjustment to Cloudy and continued shooting knowing I could easily alter the white balance setting in Lightroom as I shoot in Raw. Notice I said I shoot in Raw and not in the Raw, which would be a completely different matter altogether.

When I returned home and popped my pictures onto the computer I finally had the opportunity to see them on the large screen which allows for a better view. I moved along through all the pictures with the incorrect (Fluorescent) setting and then came upon the ‘correct’ ones. And you know what? I was disappointed with them. Yes; they were much more accurate in terms of color, but they seemed to have lost something. And so I tried an experiment.

I created a virtual copy of the above image and set its white balance to Cloudy within Lightroom and obtained this result…

West Milton Falls in Cloudy White Balance

So… is it just me who thinks the image with the much more appropriate white balance setting is less appealing or what?

I confess I prefer the foliage in the corrected version, but the focal point of the image is and should be the waterfall and there I find the incorrect white balance setting to offer a much more pleasing effect. Perhaps more importantly is the fact it was my intention all along to work my final selection of photographs such that any greenery showing would be fairly desaturated as to take away its potentially distracting qualities and help keep the viewer’s focus upon the water.

Once I factor in my additional editing plans I can’t think of a single reason to not use the incorrect white balance setting on all my keepers and let the work speak for itself with those who view them. However, I elected to seek some opinions from others and shared these two images with a handful of friends and family. The consensus? None.

There were those who liked the correct white balance and those who preferred the incorrect one, AND they were evenly split. Good grief. It’s bad enough when I myself have difficult selecting for more impact, but when everyone puts the decision up in the air…. Wow.

So where does this leave me? Well I’m going to work the keepers with the incorrect white balance and edit as previously mentioned. However, I think I will include at least one copy with the same edits, but with the corrected white balance and see what folks on flickr say about the choice. Can’t wait to see where the choices fall.

It Felt So Good It Actually Stung A Bit…

Was it really Friday? Just two days ago? That’s so strange because it feels like it was no later than Wednesday last when I made my way to downtown Dayton and then on to Cox Arboretum further south.

My original intent was to grab a few pictures for a photography class project from both locations and return home to go through them. But what is often said of the best laid plans?

Still, I’ve no complaints.

The trip downtown provided me the chance to grab my handful of shots, however none of them ‘worked’ and I pretty much knew this from the moment I saw them on my camera’s LCD screen. I’m usually one to not discount a picture until I’ve seen it upon the much larger computer monitor, but these were so far off-base it was tempting to simply delete them in camera. And yet I didn’t follow this thought to its conclusion and actually wound up keeping one of the images for my own amusement.

But the trip to Cox Arboretum was far more productive and much more exciting.

What started as a search for a few pictures where I could fiddle with a very shallow depth of field (DoF) turned into a three-hour adventure in photography with overly warm, spring-time sun and the enjoyment that can come from being surrounded by fellow humans who were out enjoying the weather and park. The arboretum was jam packed with visitors, all there with what appeared to be a specific purpose. Some had come round to enjoy a midday lunch in the grass or at many of the tables setup around one of the ponds. Others had opted to take advantage of the reasonably strong winds to send kites soaring into the cloudless blue. Others, not unlike me, had arrived to snap photos of flora or children. There were a number of moms and grandmothers ushering about no small numbers of children and/or grandchildren, hoping to take advantage of the unseasonably warm weather for photographic purposes. All in all, it was a glorious day.

Normally I don’t bother to photograph folks, but I came across the two young ladies above as they sat next to a field of particularly handsome daffodils. I was polite and kind enough to ask if they would mind being in any of my shots to which they were quite agreeable. Perhaps I lingered just a bit too long as one of the girls, perhaps sensing my question, explained they were looking for four-leaved clover. To each their own, eh?

The only down-side to the day, if I may call it such, was that I managed to get a bit too much sun and upon returning home found myself rather red across the face, back of the neck and arms. It seems I forget this sort of thing every Spring upon my first long-term exposure to the bright orb of the sky. At least this time I only managed a bit of a sting for the next 24-hours after liberally applying lotion to those over-exposed locations. But I think it was well worth it in the end.

It Felt….. It Felt Good. Damn Good!

This morning while enjoying breakfast with my wife I suddenly thought “Holy shit! It has rained like crazy over the past two days. I wonder if the water fall at Charleston Falls Preserve is doing anything interesting?” Between loads of melting snow and over 2-inches of rain it occurred to me that the normally ‘dull’ waterfall might actually be a ‘real’ waterfall.

See… normally it looks like this (please forgive the rather heavy-handed post-processing effects):

(photo courtesy of my iPhone)

It is a pretty place, but not much of a waterfall to be frank. But what about after some serious rain? Well let’s just say it got a lot better!

(photo courtesy of my iPhone)

Now isn’t that better?

But the issue of the waterfall isn’t the real thrust of this posting. Nope. Instead, I guess this posting is, in a way, an extension of my last post regarding my attempt to get back into this photography game. Today’s adventure was a pleasure. A real pleasure.

My original intent was just to run out to Charleston Falls Preserve, see if the waterfall was more interesting photographically speaking, and if so snap some pics and come home to watch the inaugural Formula 1 race from Bahrain. As the above picture shows the waterfall was far more interesting than it has ever been before during any of my visits.

And so I puttered about snapping pictures from this position and that place and eventually found myself satisfied. Satisfied that I had done both what I wanted and needed (“need” being the need to get out and take some pictures again). But as I packed up my kit I thought “You know… I wonder if there are any other photographic treats in the park today?” After all it was perfect shooting weather in so many ways: 41-degrees Fahrenheit (5-degrees C), lightly misting, quite grey and overcast (soft, diffuse light with no shadows) and everything covered in water such that colours looked rich and dark. And so I took off on the trails in search of other valuable targets.

Now… I do not have any of the pictures from this excursion yet available as I haven’t yet gone through them. I’ve been busy since I got home. Sorry. But the tale is just as important in this instance because it was the simple act of getting out and enjoying myself that, in a manner, recharged my batteries for this hobby.

While out there I managed to nab a handful of pictures related to my first shooting assignment for my photography class and I spent about 30-minutes stalking a small herd of deer I chanced upon. Granted, the end result was a meager one photo for all the time I devoted, but let me tell you…. it was EXCITING!! Moving slowly and carefully with camera in hand I tracked them from the trail while they made their way through the woods, eventually leading me to a tall grass prairie where I managed my one picture. But the great thing is now that I know there are deer there AND I know a place where they congregate I can return one day (hopefully soon) and play the game of sit & wait in hopes of nabbing some additional pictures. (keep in mind I only got the one picture because I didn’t have my camera out and in hand when I chanced upon them – they were unexpected as I had never seen deer there before)

Of course, any great day must have its less-than-stellar moments, which for me was when I tried to snap some pics of the quite large vultures gliding in the grey skies above me. For whatever reason…. probably a brain fart or a bit of senility creeping in…. I turned my 70-200mm zoom lens to 70mm and began shooting wildly into the mid-March air. Wondering why the damn birds looked so far away in the viewfinder I put down the camera and took a quick glance at my settings where I discovered my 70mm boo-boo.

However, this very minor mistake is not going to ruin my otherwise perfect afternoon! Three hours of glorious hiking, stalking and photography more than compensate me for such stupidity.

Really? Has It Been A Month?

Where does the time go, eh?

But I guess it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that I haven’t been posting to this blog about photography when I haven’t really been taking pictures. But that isn’t completely true. I actually have a pretty large catalogue of unprocessed/edited photos sitting on my computer. I have the intent to boot-up the machine and sit down and go through them all, etc., but I just don’t seem to make it to the chair. I wish I understood why the trepidation. But for now I refuse to get too worked up about it. I figure that like many of my creative moments in life it will come to me when it comes to me and there is no point in pushing it upon myself.

That or I’m simply a lazy sod.

I think I’ll go with lazy sod.

But all this laziness doesn’t mean I haven’t been something of a shutter bug. Please note:

I have found myself making no small use of my somewhat recently acquired iPhone and its camera. My previous mobile blowers also had cameras, but neither (the Motorola RAZR and Palm Centro) were of any particular use for taking pictures that one might wish to share in a forum such as the Internet. But the iPhone does a pretty reasonable job all things considered. And there is a wealth of iPhone apps dedicated to photo editing and I have downloaded a fistful and make good use of each on almost a daily basis. The above picture was captured with the iPhone while I was hiking and then edited using an app named Camera Bag.

A worthwhile moment to mention here, on WordPress, is that I both entered a local photography contest and walked away with second place within the category I entered. I haven’t entered an actual contest until this one popped up so I’m quite surprised and excited that I actually won something! The contest was via Woodland Cemetery in Dayton and winners were announced last weekend on the 11th. I had entered this picture:

It is actually a Photoshop Elements processed picture I took back in February (I think). It’s one of the first pictures I ever fiddled with in Elements, but oddly enough and as much as I liked it, I never posted it to Flickr. Probably part of being a lazy sod, you know? But still….second place. Awesome.

Here is a picture of me, looking rather rumbled and weird, next to my winning entry:

After the winners were announced it became known to me that the cemetery was offering one of those walk-about type things where a guided tour is provided of some of the more important or interesting characters buried within the cemetery. At each of the graves of said folks there is an actor/actress who talks about the person as if they were the dearly deceased. Since I was already there I opted to stick around and take the tour, which lasted about two hours. During this time I snapped some pics with my handy Canon Rebel/400, but also clicked away here and there with the iPhone, thus obtaining this picture:

It is actually a crop of the original (I removed the others on the tour) and I know…I know…he really should be in the left of the picture for a better sense of balance, but this was all done on the fly and from within the crowd of folks. The wasn’t a whole lot of time for getting the best angle, etc. so I’m lucky to have what I have. I made use of the iPhone app Photogene to perform the crop and conversion to something akin to sepia. I’m pleased enough with the results considering all things.

Lastly, the other day I was going through some pictures my cousin had uploaded to Facebook of a day trip she and her son took to some park near where they live. Some of the pictures were taken around the shoreline of a small lake and included lily pads. Lily pads always remind me of Monet, which always reminds me of the work of Impressionists. Wheels slowing clicking I emailed my cousin and asked for a full-sized copy of a particular picture, which included my nephew on a dock, laying, while playing with some of the lily pads in the water. Opened in Photoshop Elements (cuz I don’t have the grown-up version of Photoshop) I played around with it all morning to create an Impressionistic version of the image with the end result being thus:

I actually created two versions and I still haven’t decided which one I prefer, but it was a somewhat fun way to spend a few hours this morning. I say “somewhat fun” because I really didn’t obtain quite the result for which I was looking. Both versions are close, but not quite there and I eventually grew both tired and a bit aggravated as my hoped-for results were alluding me. This might explain why I don’t particularly care to do this sort of photo editing, you know?

For the benefit of Mr. Chuff

Whenever I’m in a thinking mood, which really isn’t very often after all, I try to “see” things that I think my fellow Flickrites might enjoy seeing. I concede that this paying attention thing hasn’t exactly paid off in spades for anyone other than trainmanchuff. And so it was a few weeks back when I was down in Dayton for a photography convention. After leaving the convention I grabbed my car-camera (the Canon Rebel XTi or 400D for you Euro-trash types) and did a walkabout of the city and snapped no small handful of pics, which I have yet to look through or process. Until today.

Chuff has made noise in the past about Dayton’s electric trolley bus system, so I thought I’d grab a few pics of them in action to help satisfy his pagan lust for all things bus and train related. But speaking of pagan lusts…

Apparently Chuff has this ‘thing’ for hi-viz wear. You know…the sort you find rail workers wearing. Or construction workers. Constables. I’m seeing a pattern here, but I shall not elaborate.

Hope you enjoy the pics Chuff!

(p.s. these pics were processed using a trial download of the software I typically use on my desktop PC, but done instead on my iMac. very exciting stuff you know)

Gonna be a short one….

Seeing how I pretty much covered everything of the photo shoot with the daughter at Woodland Cemetery, I really don’t have much to add except for something about the most recent upload to Flickr (10 pictures) and some final thoughts.

In my previous post I mentioned how I frequently took at least two snaps of each pose: one with and one without flash. Some of the pics with flash were repeated at different flash outputs so I may have wound up with five or six flash versions before we moved on to a different pose. On the whole I was more pleased with the non-flash versions of all the photos where she is on the ground with the lovely Ginkgo leaves. However, this isn’t the case for the pictures in the latest upload to Flickr.

The images I took of her against or by the tree (with the Ginkgo leaves still about) looked too dark when first viewed in review on the LCD screen of my camera. I took a number of non-flash images before I realized that maybe flash was the way to go and again began the process of shooting multiple images at different flash output levels until I found that for which I was looking: images that looked natural and without any harsh shadows. This was, for the most part (and keeping in mind this was my first time trying such a technique), a success, but not as complete a success as I would have liked. If you look at the above image you can see a distinct shadow created by her right arm upon her exposed skin. Oh well….I’m not going to worry about it. I still think it’s a lovely shot and the shadow a very minor annoyance.

So…final thoughts. This was a great achievement for myself. I real pat-on-the-back moment if I do say so myself. When at the cemetery I saw the ‘scene’ and realized its potential. I thought about its potential and found a way to exploit it. I opted to work outside my comfort zone and try not just one (portraiture), but two (flash not on the camera’s automatic settings) new things. I had fun. And of all these moments it is the fun part that I will likely remember the best. It was fun because it was new, exciting and different. It was fun because the daughter and I got to spend time together in a positive manner, which is always difficult with a 16-year old. And yes, it was fun because things worked out. I’m not so certain the impact of the fun bits would be so strong if the whole endeavor had led to rubbish.

The only problem now is, where do I go from here? How much of this was simply a coincidence of moments that happened to work together relatively flawlessly? What are the chances I can do this again, but under different circumstances? Can I replicate this bit of good luck without over-thinking it and making it decidedly less fun? I don’t yet know the answers to these questions, but I’m hoping or the best.

Gonna be a long one…..

Like the title says, this is likely to be a long posting. But I do have lots to say and I think it’s only fair to warn you advance. So settle in, grab a cup of tea or a bottle of beer or a glass of single-malt, and take a journey with me…..

This is the daughter being semi-forced into being my model for an afternoon of shooting at the Woodland Cemetery in Dayton, Ohio.

Nice, eh?

A few weeks back I ventured to the cemetery with some fellow Flickr mates, who also happen to live in the area. We had a great time shooting and chatting, and then followed it up with some nice dinner. While shooting I thought about how nice it would be to return on an overcast day and shoot some images of the various statues and such. You know….pretty common fare for cemetery photography. But as I like that sort of thing I have no problem with running with the crowd. And so I did return on just such an overcast day with pending rain.

While visiting on this overcast day I noticed that the Ginkgo trees had finally shed most of their leaves, which had been quite attached when I was there the week before. Even in the diffuse light of this overcast day the leaves made for quite a splash of colour as they lay upon both lawn and road. While it took a while an idea did eventually develop in my mind that I should return with daughter in tow and shot her against these leaves. I thought that her darkish red hair, pale complexion and penchant for blue-coloured clothing would make for wonderful contrast and compliment against these Ginkgo leaves. And so it was that I returned home with this idea in mind only to find that the weather predicted for the next day was to be more of the same: overcast, but without threat of rain. And so I informed the daughter of my plans for her.

The next day (Thursday, if memory serves) was indeed overcast and I eagerly awaited her return to home from school. Once she arrived I filled my car with my camera kit, some towels (as it was damp from the previous night’s rain) and a ladder, which was to be used to offer me some altitude by which I might better shot the photographs as the daughter lay upon the leaves.

So far the planning and excursion have been pretty straight-forwarded. But this was, for me, an incredibly stressful situation. I had never before done anything like this. I did manage to cajole the daughter and a friend of hers to semi-pose for me for a series of pictures of them playing Guitar Hero, but this was completely different. I was about to embark upon something new and completely different and my life’s history tells me that such journeys always, not sometimes or almost always, but always end in failure and misery.

We started with a few pictures, but I realized that she was too stiff so I talked her through loosening up and being more natural. Surprisingly it worked. She took well to my directions and relaxed, thus relieving much of the tension that the first few photographs conveyed. I also quickly learned that full-body-length images weren’t working. Not at all. They looked to linear and didn’t pop in any meaningful way (as much meaning as one can gather from the 3.0-inch LCD screen on the back of a digital camera). So I shifted focus (pun completely intended) to shots that were much closer up and here I struck upon success or, at the very least, success compared with what I had been getting.

Concerned that the overcast day was going to leave the daughter underexposed, I had brought along my flash unit (Canon 580EX II) to help me through the shoot. However, I wasn’t certain it was worth bringing as I really have zero knowledge and/or skill with its use. About the only thing I know is that I can regularly obtain better flash images indoors by bouncing the light off ceilings or walls when using it (thanks Strobist!). And I have managed to get better flash pictures in this manner, but I had always set the camera to full automatic mode when doing so. Under cemetery conditions there were no walls or ceilings from which to bounce the flash and full automatic mode for the camera seemed….well….non-experimental. As such I had made up my mind that I would shoot in my preferred mode of Aperture Priority and use the flash to help lift shadow or even tones as I saw fit.

The results were interesting if nothing else…

I knew that full-power flash would not work at all. Period. No way. No how. And I do know enough about the workings of my flash such that I could change it’s output (up or down), which I did. I experimented with different settings: -1/3, -1/1, -1&2/3, etc. until I found a setting that didn’t completely wash out her skin tones or create shadows on the leaves behind her. This was actually quite a bit of fun for me, experimenting and all that, but not so much for the daughter, who had to remain in the same position while I took multiple shots of her at different flash power settings.

In the end I believe that the non-flash images are fine on their own. I do not think she is underexposed or that the images are too dark in general (it was really overcast and being November the sun doesn’t get very high in the sky anyway). As a matter-of-fact, I think lifting the shadows with the flash unit removed a bit of the three dimensional quality that comes from the aid of shadows. However, and in defence of my efforts, I think the flash versions came out far, far better than I had any right to imagine. Some are better than others, but on the whole I think the flash versions stand up in their own right and that there are other pictures not yet uploaded to Flickr whereby the flash version was definitely better.

Upon getting home and going through the pictures I was quite nervous. I was, at first, wowed by my results. They were, on the whole, far better than I had anticipated, especially considering the so many firsts that were involved on this shoot. But I was afraid that as days passed and I looked at the images more closely I would find fewer and fewer with which I was pleased. However, I’m very happy to report that as time went by I became even more pleased and proud of my results.

In addition, after my wife had an opportunity to view them she passed along a compliment, which both warmed my heart and surprised me as she usually doesn’t make too many comments (much less compliments) about my photography endeavor. She said something to the effect that it seems to her that I have improved upon my framing and composition as the months have passed. I’ll take that, thank you very much!

Finally, there was one flaw with many of the images taken with the flash and that was of reflection in the daughter’s eyes. Granted, as the power-output was low the reflections weren’t overwhelming, but simply distracting: a little pinpoint of light on an otherwise lovely brown. To remedy this situation I took advantage of the clone stamp in my oft-used JPEG editing software, Paint.Net (freeware). Problem solved!

So there you have it. Work with a model. Flash work outside my usual comfort zone. Utilizing photo-editing software for something other than tweaking and conversion to JPEG. A grand adventure in every manner and one which I greatly enjoyed not just because I obtained results with which I am so pleased, but because it was truly a great way to spend an afternoon with the daughter.

Busy, busy, busy…

Oh it’s been a busy, busy, busy week of photography. No. That isn’t quite right. It’s been a busy, busy, busy week of trying to take pictures. By “busy, busy, busy” I mean that I have made some minor excursions to places where I hoped to grab some nice pictures related to this time of the year we call Fall.

You know….Fall. When the leaves change colours, the temperatures drop and the bugs begin to disappear.

I returned to John Bryan State Park in hopes of catching some nice Fall colours. Maybe some beautiful reflections off what exists of the Little Miami River. Unfortunately for those of us who both live in SW Ohio and who love photography, the very dry summer has left us with little in the way of quality Fall colour. It would seem most trees are simply yellowing and then dropping their leaves. Great. But the trip wasn’t a complete loss….or so I hope.

While John Bryan State Park is a nice place to visit I have been thinking that I would like to try someplace else that is both new and closer to home. Having visited a couple of the local Five River MetroParks parks (they actually have some of my Flickr photos on their site – a few on the main page and on the link for Cox Arboretum!) I thought it may be time to try another one and so I elected to journey to the Germantown MetroPark in Germantown, Ohio. The directions led me to believe it would be a pretty quick trip, but that wasn’t the case.

It also wasn’t the case that I found much to photograph. The area is heavily wooded, which is nice if you’re a tree and such, but it made photography rather uneventful. I remain hopeful that with more visits I’ll find good or great places to snap pictures, but this day I simply drove around and then took to some trails.

One trail led to some nice Fall colour shots of groups of leaves like so.

Otherwise the wood was so dense there simply wasn’t anything to photograph. I later located another trail, which was actually marked for hiking (I think the first one was an unofficial trail, blazed by folks just interested in running around in the woods and being rule-breakers), and enjoyed a very vigorous hike through the hills and into and out of the valley. I swear; there wasn’t 15-feet of horizontal trail to be found. Up. Down. Left. Right. The trail was never level or straight for more than 10-feet. And again, it was heavily wooded and thus didn’t lend itself to great photography. But maybe to okay photography on occasion.

However, not all was lost over the past few days and oddly enough the best actually came from home. The other day I ventured outside to the west-side portion of our huge estate (some 16-trillion hectares) and took to snapping some pics of what little Fall colour can be found upon our estate. And I wasn’t disappointed either.

But the really best part was when I returned to the front entrance to find the daughter standing just inside, looking out the glass door at me returning. And it hit me. “Take her picture. No. TAKE HER FUCKING PICTURE YOU A-HOLE!”

You know…I’ve complained about my poor lack of timing when it comes to taking pictures. But this time everything was just right. The daughter was in the right place at the right time. I was in the right place at the right time. Mother Nature was in the right place at the right time. And most importantly my brain was in the right place at the right time.

I actually snapped two pictures of the daughter in the doorway: one was focused upon her, while the other was focused upon the reflection in the glass of the trees across the street, thus giving the daughter a soft look – sort of dreamy – sort of ghosty. But I haven’t shared those pics with you here (you can see them on Flickr), but instead the processed image I made of one of the two.

I thought the dreamy/ghosty quality could be further enhanced via post-processing and lo and behold I was right! I’m actually quite proud of the result. I usually don’t toot my own horn (especially when it comes to my photography lark), but this time I think I did a great job and I’m pleased as punch to share this with you. (I will concede there is one thing wrong with the image, but there is nothing I can do about it, but I’m not going to let it bring me down! No way. No how).

Thank you and good night.

Just do it

Not too long ago I was posting comments upon a Flickr account belonging to a gentleman who takes exceptional photos of nature. Besides the usual “Gorgeous photo,” type comments I had also, on occasion, stated how lucky he was to have such a great place to take pictures. It was as if nature had rained down upon him the blessings of beautiful and abundant scenery such that all he had to do was walk out his door, point his camera in any direction, press the shutter release button, and voila: instant gorgeous image.

I hated him.

Eventually there sprang from my commentary some e-mails from him discussing how it comes to be that he gets these incredible shots. He also states how it would appear that I too have some wonderful places where I could be taking pictures and went through the bother to send me the URLs for a few public parks in my general area. I must say I was both excited and depressed. Excited because he took the time to see through my commentary (to get to what I was really saying) and depressed because he helped expose me to myself.

His communication helped me to see how I was being self-defeating. This self-defeating nature comes as no surprise to me as I am, no doubt, more of the “Glass is half-empty,” sort. And there are other things that have been going on in my life of late that have helped fuel the fire of this self-defeating nature. His thoughtful words helped me to see that I didn’t have to continue with my self-defeating nature, but more importantly the insights he provided helped propel myself into thinking that I’m not creating total rubbish here. Clearly this photography lark, if I want to be better at it, requires work and that what appears to be done so effortlessly on sites like his is actually a lot of hard work and experience gained over years of involvement in photography.

Armed with inspiration from his kind and thoughtful communications I vowed to work harder at this photography thing. And inspiration came to my aid the other day when I was walking out of my local Best Buy and saw the most glorious sunset I have seen in some time (other than through images on Flickr – we’re talking in-person here). While there wasn’t enough time to run home and grab my camera kit I promised to venture forth the next evening and capture some of the wonder that is the late evening sky around here.

And you know what happened? It was rubbish! But that’s okay. The sky the night before had been clear of clouds, yet looked to be ablaze in a light that could pierce your brain. Of course, a photograph taken from the Best Buy would have been awful, what with the parking lot, light polls and other businesses on the horizon. So the next night I adjourned to another local spot where I thought I might be able to capture the glory of the setting sun. But it didn’t go that well as evidenced by the image above. The tall corn was in the way of the horizon. The sun too low already. And there is no place around here that doesn’t have a large outcropping of trees within 1,000 yards (no flat and tree-less plains around here!). But I remain undeterred. I enjoyed the experience. I hope I gained a modicum of knowledge from the excursion. And I managed a few decent pictures, but nothing to get excited about.

Again, based in no small part upon the advice and inspiration supplied by the most-kind gentleman, I sought a new place to take pictures and settled upon John Bryan State Park (Ohio), which came recommended to me by my fav salesperson at my local camera store. This too was an episode of mixed results.

I trekked about the park, always uncertain of where I was as I had not procured a map of the park’s hiking trails, in search of something interesting to photograph. The truth is that I didn’t find that much in the great scheme of things. Being at the end of a long and rather rainless summer the Little Miami River, which runs through the park, was very low and subsequently rather boring. In addition, the summer foliage goes far in blocking views of various things (the river, rock outcroppings, etc.) that may have been of interest to photograph. Furthermore, where the hiking trails ran close to the river one couldn’t get down to the bank to try any photography as there were signs posted all over the place asking folks to stay on the trail. And finally, the park was rather busy that particular Sunday and as such the wildlife (mostly birds, squirrels and chipmunks) was rarely spotted thanks to the heavy foot traffic and more noisy of the visitors.

But this too didn’t get to me, too much.

I told myself when I first arrived at the park that I would spend time just looking around and take only a few photos (which I did). This was mostly a recce trip to put into my brain ideas for future visits. It’s all about putting in some work. Some patience. Giving things time to happen, but never giving up. Getting to intimately know the places where you like to shoot so that you can make the most of each visit. So maybe I have learned something of late…..and that feels good.

Thanks John.

Strip Sex Nuclear Dance On Ice

Now that my title has your attention (thanks Young Ones!) let me tell you about my day because it was cool. Well…not cool in temperature (actually I thought it was rather unpleasant today, not cool, but a tad warm and humid), but cool in that I had some fun and I get to share it with you, my humble readers.

Meet Ron & Edgar

Ron & Edgar are folks I met through Flickr. I don’t recall exactly how that occurred, but I imagine it was one of those things whereby they had left a comment on a picture at someone’s Flickr site to which I regularly visit and there must have been something interesting about their avatar or comment such that I paid their site a visit. And there you go.

Via the exchange of a few e-mails they had indicated they were heading to the Aullwood Apple Festival today, which was located about dead even between where I believe they reside and where I do reside. I have been looking for an excuse to take photos at a public gathering (something I hadn’t yet done) and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: public photos and meet some folks from Flickr. And there you go.

I’m not quite certain how I feel about the process. I sometimes feel like a snoop, snapping pics of folks who I don’t know. But it wasn’t all that bad I guess.

I think it will take some time for me to become more comfortable with such photography. And I think I need to learn how to take such pictures. Without having given it any thought until the moment I typed the first sentence of this paragraph, I’m wondering if I went about this the wrong way. Instead of walking about and snapping pics when I found something/someone that intrigued me, perhaps it would be better to search out a spot that presents a nice background and wait, not unlike a spider, for my subjects to fly into my photographic web. I don’t know. Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Now, if you visit my Flickr site and view the photos I uploaded you will quickly notice that I only uploaded ten images tonight. This was on purpose. I’m trying a new thing with Flickr….instead of uploading a whole mess of images at once (I have sixty from today) I’m going to upload a smaller and perhaps more manageable amount each day. Ten today….maybe fifteen tomorrow….followed by another ten. I just feel that when I put up a large number of images at once it may be more difficult for a viewer to make or find the time to go through them with the same attention they might offer a smaller uploaded group. Again, comments are welcome about this idea.

So remember to come back and see more pictures from the 2008 Aullwood Apple Festival during the following week. And if you don’t……well…….well……..then don’t. And then you will have missed out on some super killer pictures and your life will be far less interesting and you’ll probably get a zit or break a finger or something like that!