Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to All

May the world be filled with peace and love and joy.

What’s a Good Image Worth?

We’re out in the field and see something that moves us. Can that feeling be made into a photograph? Will the light help or hinder? Is our equipment capable of capturing what we’re seeing in our mind’s eye? So, we take a chance, set up our equipment, and make the photograph. We’re never really sure of what we’ve gotten. It’s always an experiment. Sometimes we get lucky and the film or digital sensor captured something that’s as good or even better than what we thought we saw. There’s always that element of luck. I’ve read somewhere that the great photographers are luckier than the mediocre ones.

For me, and I imagine most photographers, trying to make memorable images in the field is always a crap shoot. I recently came back from Yosemite after shooting something like 40 sheets of 4×5 film and didn’t get anything. Ouch!!! That’s when the recrimination usually sets in. How much money did I waste? However, it’s always a crap shoot. I’m never certain when I’m taking the image. I have to experiment. I never remember that time I was in a snow storm at Fallen Leaf, lake, took only two photos and one is fantastic.

I just got back 19 sheets of film from which I told myself would be my last large format shoot until I have an income. At first look I was totally disappointed and again asked myself what was I thinking when I was taking those images.

I scanned this one last night and now I’m in love with it. 19 sheets of film? No problem.

Fog and Rain

A light rain and heavy fog this morning. This would be the type of morning I would grab my 4×5 and wander through the forest. However, I’m trying to conserve my money and I wanted to try some digital blends so I put my D300 with a 24-85 zoom in a fanny pack to keep it dry and headed out. I started off doing group photos of the mule deer in the soft fog and then I tried doing trees. I played around a lot more than I normally would have with my large format gear. However, when I got back home, the few images that really stood out were the ones I would have shot with my 4×5 had I had it with me. In fact, even though I bracketed exposures, I was able to work with a 1 stop underexposed single image and get what I needed. I think the wider latitude of the CMOS sensor helped me here.

Fog and Sun

I got into the habit of taking early morning walks through the hills west of where I live a few years ago. It’s a wonderful way to start the day, particularly when most of that day is spent sitting in front of a computer. When I would see something that caught my eye with the possibility of making a photograph, I would come back with my 4×5 whenever I deemed the light was right. I’m still shooting 4×5, but as I get broker and broker, I can’t justify the increasing expense of it. Increasing expense, because as the labs to process the film get fewer and fewer, their prices get higher and higher.

I’ve gotten into the habit of carrying my D300 with me every morning. It has a wonderful setting where I can delay the shutter a few seconds after I release it so I get automatic mirror lockup and I don’t need to carry a cable release. If something catches my fancy, I just shoot it. It the light is weird, I just bracket a lot and see if I can make it work in Photoshop. Most of the time I come back empty handed, but It’s fun to play with this and it doesn’t cost me anything.

This morning the light was particularly interesting because we had fog rolling in from the west while we had the sun burning through the fog in the east.

With 4×5, I would have shot this with a soft grad, but I just bracketed exposures with the D300 and merged them in Photoshop HDR.

I should have a batch of 4×5 film coming back from the lab later this week. I hope I got something.

Inspiration

There’s something about being outside in the woods in the early morning. The rising sun is illuminating the leaves and maybe there’s a little moisture on the branches, so that picks up the light too. It’s hard to be in the midst of this beauty and aliveness of nature and not be inspired.

Now, taking a photo of this inspiration is another matter. There is no digital sensor or film that I know of that can capture anywhere near the range of light that the human eye can. In fact one of the first things they teach budding nature photographers is to learn to see like film, or now it’s probably learning to see like a CMOS sensor.

Today I did what I hope is a successful blend of multiple exposures to capture this beautiful morning light. It took hours of playing in Adobe HDR and I’ll probably spend more hours on the image before I consider myself finished, but I’m pretty with happy what I’ve gotten.

12.8.09 – I did a little more work on this image so I re-posted it.

Exhibit at Mountain Light

In the fall of 2001, I did a workshop with Galen Rowell. I had already read Mountain Light, read his column in Outdoor Photographer religiously, and frequented his gallery in Berkeley so I was pretty familiar with his work and techniques. Spending time with Galen was an unforgettable experience. He was incredibly nice and available. I rode shotgun when he drove us up into the White Mountains to one of the Bristle Cone Pine forests, and just hanging out with him was great.

Galen’s Gallery, Mountain Light, sponsored a contest for Galen’s workshop participants and I’m honored to have had the two images above juried into the exhibit.

The exhibit will run from January 5 — March 31, 2010 with the opening on Saturday, Jan. 16th from 6-9 PM
106 South Main Street, Bishop, CA 95314. http://www.mountainlight.com

iFotoGuide – Arches National Park

Bret Edge and I are thrilled to release our new iPhone app. The photographer’s guide to Arches National Park.

See more of it on our web page or check it out in the app store.

Approaching Rain

It’s very windy as storm clouds blow in from the pacific. The sun is still fighting a loosing battle to illuminate things. This in-between light is so beautiful, dark clouds and fog on your right and sun on your left. Such a joy to be out in it.

What looks like dust spots in the sky are birds.

Morning Mist

Another frosty morning. Mist was coming off of Bon Tempe Lake.

Frosty Morning

I love the Winters where I live. The weather in the Bay Area in Winter is like Spring in most other places. Lots of rain, new leaves and occasional frosts. By the time I got out this morning it was in the high 30s, but there was still frost on a lot of things, like this burnt log.