Nine Days Across the Outback: Day Nine

I was ready for my trip to end. The lack of internet access gnawed at me. I kept running into Australians who asked for my opinion on McCain's VP pick on various US states ("Sure, I don't think she's qualified. But don't you think she'll win Florida?"). I missed not being dusty. Most of all, I missed being something other than melting in that damned 4WD.

Speaking of scorching, we did the smart thing on our tour that day, and visited Litchfield Park, and hit some waterfalls. Cool, soothing waterfalls, a gentle hike through semi-tropical woods, and then a plunge pool. Encouraged, I took off my boots, and walked down the stairs to the pool...

and nearly blistered my feet on scorching sandstone.

Really, I was tired of the Outback by that point. Even the 6 meter tall giant termite mounds barely lifted my spirits, and when we rolled back into Darwin, I booked another room at the Holiday Inn on my phone as I sat on the steps. My flight out was that night, but I had just enough time to catch one last sunset, and I headed back to Mindil beach to catch the very last dregs of it.

"Sunset at Mindil Beach"

This shot was a classic 'sunset and silhouette' shot. They're simple as pie to take. Get the subject in between you and the sun, then meter on the sky. Adjust your exposure to get the colors to pop to taste.

As the sun slipped below the waves, I walked down into the water, and felt the Pacific on my toes.

Hours later, I was on a plane back to Sydney, and then on to home.

Nine Days Across the Outback: Day Eight

Miseration. Heat. The 4WD vehicle we were taking through these tropical parks was a unique vehicle. Unique, because it lacked any insulation between the engine and the floorboard above it. And this vehicle, once it started going off-road, got very, very hot. Outside was hot, inside was hot, it was a mess.

I was ecstatic to find out that our destinations for the day were two giant waterfalls. Unfortunately, both of these waterfalls involved hikes. The first one was a fine hike, but I had to turn back when the trail required edging along a ledge you had to edge along facing the face of the rock. I might have made it -- but definitely not with the camera, lenses, and tripod. (Good news: The falls weren't running this time of year). The second set of falls involved clambering over boulders. Lots of boulders -- very high.

While the rest of the group decided to go climbing, I sat on one of the boulders, read my Kindle, and photographed a few lizards. Very relaxing, and when I discovered that the members of my group who had dived into the pool at the base of the falls were completely dry (from the heat) by the time they got back, I felt like the reading and lizards plan was a hit.

After looking at some really far away wild horses at Anbang Billabong (Outback version of an oasis/crocodile breeding ground), we went to our camp, which ended up having modern amenities like a saloon, and real bathrooms. I went to check-in desk (which was really the saloon), and asked what I considered to be the million dollar question. "Excuse me", I said, "But along with the places to camp, do you have .. rooms?". The bartendress smiled and said, "Yes, but it only has air-con, a bed, and a light". I nearly fainted from euphoria. "How much?" She didn't catch the note of desperation in my voice.

"Forty dollars."

"Sold!"

I woke up icy cold from the A.C. in the morning, and it was the best forty dollars I spent in years.

"She Didn't Start the Fire"

Speaking of heat, I snapped today's photo of a girl from our tour group by the campfire. When I took the shot, I was really only interested in the yellows & oranges of the fire coloring the scene.

What I got was a sort of glow, that seemed to capture the rays of light from the fire like a kind of orange fog. Which was a neat trick, considering it was so clear.

So, what caused this?

Hate to say it, but I'm not quite sure why I got this look (luck on my side, at last!). I have a few theories, but maybe someone reading this can explain the glow. Here are my theories so far:

• I shot this at f/2.5. Some sort of aberration from being so close to wide open?
• Off axis light bouncing around inside my lens, providing some sort of ghosting?
• "Banding", or sensor artifacts? (I did shoot this at ISO 6400)

Hopefully someone else knows more than I do -- hope you enjoy the fire. :)

For the interested, here are the rest of my photos from Day 8:

Twin Falls
Jim-Jim Falls
Sunset and Wild Horses at Anbang Billabong
Camping

Nine Days Across the Outback: Day Seven

Our seventh day saw us taking off from Darwin and heading into the wilds again -- on a cruise to see wildlife (read: Crocodiles) down Mary River, and then into Kakadu National Park, where we first went to an Aboriginal site at Burrungui Rock.

Culturally and geographically, Burrungui was more interesting. Viscerally, Mary River was more interesting because I witnessed firsthand the *snac* sound that a saltwater crocodile makes when it closes its jaws. The crocodiles, however, are not what today's photo is about.

"You Talkin' To Me?"

Along with the crocodiles, the Mary River was lousy with various Outback birds. Most of them were entirely new to me, so I was fascinated by them. Unfortunately, I ran into the problem one always does when photographing birds:

• They move pretty fast
• The good light for them (like most things) is not broad daylight
• Most of them are pretty afraid of people
• Did I mention they were pretty small?

Unless you are going to be photographing emu or giant ostriches, this means that bird photography is pretty difficult. You need a nice, long, telephoto lens (probably at least 400mm if you want to be properly insane about it), and you always want this lens to be reasonably fast -- probably f/4 or better, so you can catch birds in lovely golden hour light (e.g., get ready to break the bank). You also need to really understand the behavior of the bird, and how to get close to it. You've got to catch it doing something more interesting than just flying through clear air. You've got to get it in good light, like every other photo. You've got to get the focus right on something which can move very fast. And, while you're at it, make sure that composition is interesting. ;)

If I were going birding in the Outback, I would probably have needed to bring a big lens, which be something that would have added about six pounds to my lens collection. And which would likely not be handhold-able. And would have added about $1400-$10K to my lens budget, depending on how wedded I am to my new career in selling photos to the Audobon society. ;)

I made do with my 70-300mm f/4-5.6. Every one of them had to be cropped, and image quality was fairly poor. But I loved the look on this bird's face, and for one brief moment I thought, "This isn't just shooting birds. It's bird portraits.", and then it clicked for me.

Nine Days Across the Outback: Day Six

Darwin is a city of the tropics, located on the northern edge of Australia. The energy reminded me just a bit of Miami, but smaller and even more multicultural. The evening of my sixth day in Australia, I found myself dumped off in front of the Holiday Inn. I'd spent the last hour trying to find a hotel room in the city, which were showing up as completely full. Rather than staying at a hostel (my friend Tim & I), we stayed at the Holiday Inn.

After all that time on the road, I can assure you that Holiday Inn is the best Holiday Inn in the entire world.

That afternoon seemed like the most exhausting of my trip -- a long day at Katherine Gorges and then more time on the road -- felt like I'd been trampled by one of those outback camels we kept seeing everywhere. And as I collapsed on my hotel bed, I was almost ready to sleep the entire night...

but there was a photo opportunity, and I couldn't bring myself to miss it.

Darwin has a street market on a place called Mindil Beach. Hundreds (maybe thousands?) of people show up on the beach to watch sunset, then they hit the market to buy food at the market, listen to some amazing music (I witnessed a trance/didgeridoo mashup myself), or just wander around and experience it.

After slurping down some oysters and miscellaneous meat skewers, I ditched my traveling companions and just lost myself in the market, alone with my 135mm lens.

"The Man from Maningrida"

Finally! After six days of shooting primarily landscapes, an opportunity to shoot people was like mana from heaven. I stopped being tired, and started being excited. The sun had already set, but there was still just enough light that I could eke out some very nice shots.

The shot for today was an aboriginal artist, who I found playing his didgeridoo next to a display of his art. It was tricky -- this shot metered outside of 'stable' for this focal length (about 1/60 s) for the iso which I found was looking good in this light (4000). So, I was walking around in manual mode, forcing it to 1/125s, and trying to make do with the aperture at /4, /3.2, or /2.8.

I love my 135mm f/2 -- almost certainly my favorite lens. It's very sharp, but more importantly, it has a 'look' that makes it special. Only the 85mm seems to have such a similar feel, and even technically sharper or superior lenses do not have 'the look'. But it's not a perfect lens. At f/2, it's just a smidge less sharp. Aberrations (particularly chromatic aberration) can be noticeable. And on an FX sensor, the depth of field at f/2 is .. thin. Try < style="font-style: italic;">total depth of field. The distance in front of the subject is one inch. At ten feet!

This can be tough if you're shooting a person, where you focus on an eye, and hope you really got the focal plane flat, and not at some angle. And that's what I was trying at first with this shot, but got a little frustrated. So, I thought, "What about just accepting that it's going to be off kilter, and exacerbate this?" And that's what I did, after I went for a diagonal composition. Worked for me, and one of my favorite portraits I've taken in challenging conditions.

Here are there of my photos from day 6:

Camp at Katherine Gorge
Katherine Gorge
Last Leg of the Trip to Darwin
Mindil Beach Market

Nine Days Across the Outback: Day Five

Pubs. Termite mounds. More pubs, this time with crocodiles on display. More termite mounds. Our destination for the day was a camp at Katherine Gorge, a national park, but between us and it were all these pubs.

The mother of all these pubs -- the biggest, most touristy, and (apparently) the one with the best chips was in a place called Daly Waters. We stopped there, cooked lunch for ourselves, and then...

Our guide announced we go bowling.

I thought, maybe, we would be headed to the only bowling alley in the Outback. Nope! We started bowling on the streets of Daly Waters. Well, most of our group did -- I got out the camera and started taking some.. sports photography?

"Bowling for Daly Waters"

I tried a number of shots of people bowling, but it was pretty challenging conditions -- midday sun bright overhead, and my fundamental lack of interested in anything to do with bowling.[1]

When I saw this shot though, I pounced. Shooting from behind the bowler seemed to be a slightly novel angle, and the use of sepia was (more) accommodating to the harsh light. What makes the shot for me, though, is the composition. I love the symmetry about the diagonal line, and the 'mass' of the clusters of people (or person) on each side seem to be roughly equivalent. It works for me, but of course these things are subjective -- but hopefully it works for you.

You can find photos of my fifth day in the Outback here, here, here, and here.




[1] I took bowling as a physical education class in high school. I used up all my passion for the sport then.

Nine Days Across the Outback: Day Four

Our third night in the Outback went spent in a town called Alice Springs (population 30,000). It was nice to get away from the omnipresent dust of the Red Center and the crude accommodations of tents. Beers and camel pie followed, and then we woke up for an outrageous early departure.

It's not clear to me why we needed to leave at 5 am, but my rule of thumb is that if I am not waking up early for an amazing sunrise over a landscape painted by the hand of some sort of deity of pure beauty, I am waking up in vain.

So, I slept in our bus for the first few hours of the day, and then awoke for our first bleary stop, which at the marker denoting the Tropic of Capricorn. We had left the colder and sandier desert to the south, but we still had many hundreds of miles of wasteland ahead of us.

When we got back in our vehicle, I found I could never fully sleep. I would try to read, or mull about some problem, but my mind would constantly veer off from the chain of thought into wild and counterfactual contingencies. Time was liquid as I faded into and out of this state for hours on the road. I realized we had traveled for hours, but the scenery outside remained unchanged.

I mentioned this to the tour guide, and he cheerfully pointed out that the termite mounds were ever so slightly higher -- that was how we knew we were heading north.

I'll be honest: The land here was barren and dotted with scrub brush. The only breaks in the road were the occasionally ruined and burned-out car (these could be a photo study in themselves), and periodic pubs and small towns. These towns were often incredibly small -- a pub, a petrol station, and maybe a few scattered residents. The total population was sometimes in the double digits, and the towns would be full of stuff left behind there by visitors, which breaks us to today's photo:

"Wasted"

I found these crushed metal barrels out near a little petrol station and tourist destination known as the Red Sands art gallery. It was a little touristy for my tastes, so I stepped outside to wander around a bit, and found lots of abandonaria. These two metal barrels immediately caught my eye. Something about them rising out of the metal sand, so scorched, textured, and rusted really caught my imagination.

I went sort of wide with this shot, shooting around 24mm (wide, but not so wide I have perspective distortion to seriously worry about -- though imho, probably might have made another interesting angle here). I set it at f/4, because I wanted some separation between it and the background -- though again, the framing I ended up choosing here is really all barrel and sky, so I needed it less than I expected.

Most importantly, I used a polarizer. A polarizer can do two things for you when you slap it on your lens:

(1) Knock the reflected glare off water or some other reflecting surface (so great for shots 'looking into the water', but also reflecting glass, or even tree leaves)
(2) Bring out rich, deep blues in the sky.

(2) was what I wanted here. Since your polarizer is really just a filter that cuts out all the light vibrating in a particular direction, you get your deepest and richest blues about ninety degrees off from the sun.

One additional issue though: If you're shooting a big blue sky at a wide(ish) angle, you'll begin to see an uneven patterns. That's because the polarizer is going to vary continuously across the whole sky -- so you'll get parts of the sky that are ninety degrees away from the sun, and some parts that aren't. The above photo is a great example of this, since we have what is almost an ink spill of blue in the upper left hand corner and then a reduction in this as you get away from it. Here, the effect was intentional: The complicated pattern in the sky was meant to mirror the light and darker reds on the barrel.

Here's a complete list of the places we stopped on my fourth day in the outback:

Red Sands Art Gallery
Barrow Creek Station - Australia's first telegraph station
The Devil's Marbles
More from the Road
Campground at Banka Banka

Nine Days Across the Outback: Day Three

On our third day in the Outback, we went to a place called King's Canyon. We hiked up to the top of the canyon (about 300 meters), then hiked around the tops of broken sandstone domes, then finally back the other side.

That's the boring version. The truth is, King's Canyon was the most dangerous place for me I visited in Australia. We started our hike by climbing up something called 'heartbreak hill', which was a set of sheer steps in the side of the canyon wall heading straight up. I actually handled this pretty fine, but once I got to the top I realized I'd used up half my water in the ascent. Our tour guide cheerily bounded past us, "Don't worry, it's an easy walk once you're at the top!".

Ha!

At first, the top seemed easy. Some broken sandstone, but nothing like the initial climb. But as the sun rose higher and higher in the air, it got hotter and hotter. You know how people cook pizza in brick ovens? Imagine yourself getting hotter and hotter, only to find that the ground beneath you is absorbing heat and then re-radiating it back into you....

Fortunately (and this is one of the biggest lessons here), I was with friends. One of them brought an extra bottle of water, which we all split. This still only got us three quarters of the way around the hike -- after that, I had that moment where I turned over my bottle to see it sad and empty. The last leg was the worst. I found myself barely able to think, and could barely focus on not slipping and tumbling down the canyon. From a motivational standpoint, what kept me going was the thought of about seven grand in camera and beautiful glass going *crunch* was what kept me on that trail.

Later, at the bottom of the canyon and a liter of water later, my friend Tim put it this way:

"I knew something was seriously wrong when you stopped taking photos."

"Heroine"

Virtually every shot I got in King's Canyon I was vaguely frustrated with. All of them were decent, but none of them made me say 'whoa' -- no moment where it really all clicked. I think this shot comes closes. The girl in the photo was in our tour group, and she's standing on a ledge overlooking King's Canyon. The light was difficult, because it was getting close to mid-day, and so it's a bit harsher than I liked. I got inspired for the shot when I saw her walking around on the edge. I saw the red, white, and blue, and I knew what I wanted. "Pose like supergirl!", and she was on it.

Here's what doesn't make the shot for me, other than the hard light. The edge of this cliff is not well-defined enough for me. It lacks the dimensionality I wanted, which would have made the subject and the ground underneath her pop. I think I should have gone for a narrower depth of field here, to make the background more of a red blur, but maybe there's something else I could have done. What that is, I don't know -- suggestions welcomed. :)

If you're interested in the photos of my near-death experience at King's Canyon, you can find them here, and you can find some pictures from the road to Alice Springs and beyond here.

Nine Days Across the Outback: Day Two

Uluru.

I mentioned getting off the plan at the Ayer's Rock resort, and being surrounded by red sand in every direction. I fibbed a little. There is red sand and some low scrub everywhere, but in the distance, the horizon is dominated by the Rock. Uluru is what the Aborigines call it, and "Ayer's Rock" is what it was to the Europeans. Anywhere you go in this area, you can see Uluru. Even out of the corner of your eye, it strikes you. To me, it almost seemed like an affliction of the land -- bright red rock breaking through the skin of the earth. That leads me to today's photo:

"His Red Right Hand"

The night before at Uluru, I had gotten screwed by a cloudy, mushy sunset. No sun at all, just gray. Light is important at sunrise & sunset at Uluru, because when you have soft sunlight hitting it directly, it glows, and that's what you see in this photo.

Had our tour group been a bit faster getting up in the morning (recovering from some drinks and dingo wrangling the night before), we would have arrived here before dawn. I would have loved to see what sort of colors popped out of the sky with a long exposure in the pre-dawn hours, but I'll take this one instead. :)

Arriving at Uluru was a bit of a mob scene at sunrise. There were literally dozens of people, all of them with cameras and varying levels of expertise. I wanted to wide, so I kept edging down the road you see above until I was well to the side of the other photographers. This took some persistence though -- people kept seeing me, with a giant camera and tripod, and assumed I knew what I was doing, and would move ot the side of me. This finally stopped when I finally talked to someone doing this, and offered to e-mail them my photos if they would please stop. :P

This particular shot was near the end of sunrise proper, as our tour guide was anxiously tapping her foot to go drop us off for a walk around the base of Uluru. I was extraordinarily blessed with an amazing sky and insane clouds, but I wanted to give this photo some action leading viewers into the scene, so I stopped in a place where shadows converged on Uluru, and I found that it really draws the viewers in. Not everyone agrees with this though -- some people find the shadows too distracting, but I like the low key way it puts myself in the scene.

This photo was shot on my tripod, with my trusty Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8, which probably proved itself my most used lens when crossing the outback.

If you like the photos of Uluru, you can enjoy more from that area here, and the road to King's Canyon (where I was the next day) here.

Nine Days Across the Outback: Day One

I landed in the Outback at a resort town called Ayer's Rock. Coming off the plain, I was assaulted by red in every direction. I picked up a tiny handful of the stuff, and it was thin and powdery (the better to get on your sensor, naturally). We got picked up at a hotel by an exotic four wheel drive style vehicle, and drove nearby to a place called Kata Tjuta, where big red lumps of sandstone rise out of the plains. They were impressive, but I was bedeviled by a flat, overcast sky. Great for taking photos of people, less so for large natural rock formations that I wanted to see some pop in. We also stopped at sunset Uluru, which is why there is an Ayer's Rock resort in the first place, but the sky was mush -- not a single bit of color in the gray afternoon. More on that tomorrow though, because Uluru deserves its own day.

That night, we made our way to a camp, where we had to chase off dingos, which made off with a woman's pringles (don't ask). As our dinner was cooking, I looked up and noticed that the moon had vanished by some clouds on the horizon. Directly above me was a patch of clear sky, and the stars spread across it like diamond dust. Where we were in the Outback, we were really half a continent away from everything. No light pollution in any direction -- I think you'd have go out on a ship in the middle of the Pacific (or maybe the Himalayas?) to get a clearer sky.

Now, I don't know a lot about taking pictures of stars, and I knew even less, trapped in the Outback away from my precious, precious internet, and even miles from any cell signal.

My co-worker Tim explained this to our young tour guide, who was mystified that we would be going through information withdrawal.

"Imagine the closest you can come to being a demigod. Everything is at your fingertips: Press a button, stuff arrives at your doorstep. Get lost? Look up a map on your phone. Don't know something? Google for it. Now, imagine if all that went away."

So, I knew a few things:

• Stars are really dim
• But if you have too long of an exposure, you get star trails (which you may want)
• Bump up your ISO too much, and the noises overwhelms your stars
• I wanted a big, expansive vista of stars
• But, I knew I'd need more than just stars -- either to frame the picture, or give it context.
  

I figured that meant I wanted something with a reasonable focal range (probably south of 70mm), something that opened very wide (at least f/2), and good quality.

So, I popped on my Nikkor 50mm f/1.4, put the camera on my tripod, and pointed it at the sky. I was getting what I thought was a very reasonable result around f/2 and 5 seconds:


Now, what went wrong here?

For one, I got a little paranoid about those stars moving, so I kept trying to get my exposure down. As a result of this, I kept it pretty close to wide open (f/2). This has a number of deleterious results on my photo. For one (and more obviously), you can see that the trees in the foreground are blurred, since I've knocked the branches out of my depth of field. Relatively a minor problem though, and maybe I can convince people that I, uh, did that for artistic effect.

More troubling is what you see in the corners of the image:


Whats' going on with the stars? Why aren't they points of light? It's not like I've exposed for too long -- they're little wedges.

This is a type of lens aberration that occurs when you have pinpoint sources of light off the main axis called Coma Aberration. Lenses which want to minimize coma aberration have an aspherical element, which generally does the job. The good news is there are new, high quality lenses out there with aspherical elements which can be had for relatively cheaply -- like the new Sigma 50mm f/1.4. The bad news is, this was not the lens I had on my camera. I had my Nikkor 50mm.

While it has many virtues, resistant to aberrations is not one of them. It's razor sharp by f/2.8. Very contrasty. Images look *good* with this thing. It's tiny -- so small it can even go in a jeans or shorts pocket. So small that if a team of secret service agents is limiting by lens length cameras that can go into a Barack Obama fundraiser, they won't bat an eye at your ginormous SLR when you've got this little baby on the camera.

However, in this case, I sort of hosed myself. The only thing I could have done to help myself out here was to stop down -- probably to at least f/4, or maybe even higher. Now, if you remember from up above, I was also concerned about the exposure getting too long, so the stars would get motion blur. Turns out, most people who are serious about taking photos of stars without trails put their camera on telescopes with motors that track stars in the sky. Who knew?

And me, I didn't have much time to fool around after this shot -- dinner was ready, and by the time I came back out, the moon was shining brightly again, and I'd lost this shot. Still, I learned something after I brought this picture back from the wilds, and hopefully now you have too.

If you're like to check out my other first day Outback photos, you can find them all here.

Nine Days Across the Outback: An Introduction

In September, I took a trip to Australia for some business, and under orders from friends & management, took some vacation time. (As a chronic workaholic, my former manager has a Facebook group). Per my general rule, I am a lover of civilization. Walls, a roof, kitchens (with gas stoves), soft beds, delicious food, fine wines, air conditioning -- these are to me what the simple ability to live in a city was to the medieval Germans. One might lose these things in a tragedy, or possibly some sort of Mad-Max style collapse, but giving them up voluntarily?

I'm dubious.

Balancing these misgivings was my unhealthy desire to go to interesting places and photograph interesting things. So there I was in Australia, with a d700 and a Crumpler bag full of lenses, so I did the only sensible thing: signed up for an overland tour of the Outback!

My friends and I traveled from Uluru, in the center of Australia, north to Alice Springs, along the Stuart Highway, then north to Darwin and Kakadu National Park -- a nine day trip of over 1200 kilometers. Along the way, I took a few photos...

This brings me to this post. I'm going to be posting one photo from my Outback trip every day for the next nine days. I'll pick a photo that I think I learned a lesson from, demonstrates a technique I found it very helpful to understand, or just, looks pretty, and then write about it here.

Before I start, here's a bonus photo:



I got this from the top of Sydney Tower, one of those taller-than-every-other-building buildings in Sydney. The good news: They let you bring SLRs up there. The bad news: They don't let you bring a tripod (and probably no monopod). They did let me bring my Crumpler bag though, which was good enough to give me a lot of fun options for shooting the city. I had a big problem, though, which was how to stabilize the camera enough for a nearly one second exposure. The high ISO on the d700 is good, but it's not enough to get the exposure I wanted for the cityscape (I would have ended up with window lights, but no detail on buildings or the streets).

The solution? They had a row of those pay-a-coin-and-look-through-the-scope dealies all around the edges of the observation room. I put the camera on one of those, locked it into place, and *bam*! Instant ad hoc tripod.

Election Day

It's not about right versus left, nor liberal versus conservative. It's not about tax breaks or increases. It's not about slogans, clothes, or handshakes. It's about people... living their lives, both rich and poor, separate individuals with a future that is intertwined at so many levels that we'd rather not openly admit it.

I've tried to consider arguments on both sides of the aisle. On one hand, what a person works for, what they earn, ought not be taken from them and given to another. Yet at the same time, I can no more so ignore the cries of people who suffer from sickness when relief is available but financially out of reach. I can sympathize with the dreams and ambitions of an entrepreneur setting out on an uncertain path, gambling everything on the hope of a better life for his or her family. And I am saddened for those who share this dream, but are never provided with the means and ability to embark on the journey for it.

As long as I can remember, I have felt empty when I see our place in the world. We can do better. I've seen the people of our country demonstrate kindness to strangers during Katrina, I've seen limitless compassion and prayers after 9/11, and I've seen our soldiers' courageous fight for justice in a world so cloaked in despair.

However, despite these examples, we are failing. When genocide threatens entire regions of the earth, how dare we sit back and say we've done enough? When the arguments once used to persecute minorities are being resurrected to target people based on their orientation, why do so many stay silent?

Government can't provide solutions for all these problems, but you can.

Today is election day in the United States, and this is our chance to do better. Stand up, vote! I am not writing to say that you should vote for one particular candidate. However I am writing to remind you that there is more at stake than taxes and war. For the first time in recent memory, I feel that the election isn't between the lesser of two evils. I think there is a genuine opportunity at hand to make the world a better place, for both Democrats and Republicans, for both rich and poor, for the right and the left. We can make America better, we can make the world better. Today, we have the unique opportunity to stand up, cast off lingering doubt, ignore the fear that has been the companion of politics for the past 8 years, and be counted among those who will do better, for no reason other than because we want to and because we recognize that we have to.

Please, go vote!

Musical Light

A group of us went up to Yosemite and the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains this past weekend. We manged to spend some time in Yosemite Valley, Tioga Pass, Mammoth Lakes, Devil's Postpile, Mono Lake, and Bodie. Brandon and I are still editing our photos, but I did manage to get this one shot of Tenaya Lake while driving across Tioga Pass. We had been driving since about 5 AM and I realized we were going to make it completely across the pass before sunset. Now since I was travelling with family and not everyone was a photog, the idea of pulling over and waiting an hour so we could catch sunset on Tenaya Lake seemed like a nonstarter. So considering I was exhausted, I pulled over and said I needed a power nap. I got to sleep for a good 40 minutes and then we continued on our drive. We came up on Tenaya Lake and we saw this sky and reflection. I pulled over, jumped out of the car, and started firing away. Totally worth the tiny little white lie. (I really was tired, though, so it's the truth with an ulterior motive).





The second day of our trip the sky was boring, just a bright blue dome, devoid of clouds. I found it hard to get inspired, I knew there were potential shots all around me, but nothing seemed to click. I pulled out my iPhone and started listening to U2's Beautiful Day (one of my favorite songs). A few minutes after turning on the music, I started noticing things I was missing before, and got quite a few good shots. So my question to you is this: Have you ever used music to help you get inspired while taking photos? What's on your inspiration playlist?

Printing Your Photos for Fame and Fortune

I've become addicted with getting copies of my favorite photos printed out.  I recently bought the ColorVision Spyder2 Express monitor calibrator.  I must say, it's awesome.  My monitor has never looked better and the prints I get (when I print using the appropriate printer profiles) is just fantastic.

I do all my regular 8x12 printing at Costco, because they quality is great and the price is right!  On top of that, Costco has printer/paper ICC profiles available for nearly all of their in store photo labs.  Proof your shots in Photoshop, convert them to the appropriate printer profile, and then take them to the store on a thumb drive.  Go through the process as you normally would selecting your prints on the little kiosk.  When you go to pay for your order, tell them you have color corrected your own photos and that (if applicable) they should be printed out on a particular machine.  They'll do the rest!  (Note: Some Costcos have more than one printer, and quite often only one has a profile available for it.  Make sure they print on that machine!)

Given all the extra steps of using the correct printer profiles and a calibrated monitor, I've noticed that virtually all of my prints were a little dark.  I was perplexed as to what could be responsible for this.  Turns out, the genius of all things Photoshop, Scott Kelby, had this same problem.  In his book, Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers, he gave a tip out on how to compensate for this darkness.  This method works perfectly for me, so I highly suggest you try it if you have the same problem.

1. Starting with the image you want to print in Photoshop, make sure the image is flat.  That is to say, make sure it has only 1 layer.
2. Press Control-J on the PC or Command-J on the Mac to duplicate the single layer.
3. Change the blending mode for the new layer to screen.
4. Then adjust the opacity of this layer to somewhere between 20% and 30%.  Scott suggested 20%, I find 25% works well for me.

That's it!  Now flatten the image again, and go print!  The image will look bright on your computer monitor, but remember, when it get's printed, it's going to be darker, so it will balance out.  Make sure you don't brighten your originals!  When getting a photo ready to be printed, I always work off of a copy!  Be safe!

Hoover Dam

While in Las Vegas last week, Brandon, Cem, Andrea, and I made our way over to Hoover Dam.  We were about 3 minutes late for the dam tour, and they wouldn't let us in because the dam security folks had shut down the X-ray machines and metal detectors..  (Sorry, I'll try really hard not to make another dam joke.  Dam it!)

So we decided to walk along the top of the dam and salvage the trip.  The dam was impressive, though I feel strange that it didn't give me the same sense of awe that Niagara Falls or Yosemite Valley did.  I guess maybe because it was man made?  In fact after flagging the 1200 pics I took in Las Vegas as picks or rejects, I realized I only had a few pictures from Hoover Dam that I actually liked.  Furthremore, none where of the dam proper.  I had pictures of Lake Meade behind the dam, I had pictures of the river continuing at the base of the dam, but no pictures of the giant hunk of white concrete that is Hoover Dam itself.

The most interesting thing at Hoover Dam, in my opinion, is the amount of 1930's art deco signage and statues.  On the Nevada side of the dam is a memorial to those men and women who built the dam and to those who lost their lives during its' construction.  The ground is covered with a star chart so that future civilizations might know the significance of the location and be able to approximate when and why it was built.  The American flag is guarded by two giant art deco winged statues.  I found this memorial to be more inspiring than the dam itself.  It's of these statues that I want to share a photo.  Brandon says it's perhaps the best picture I've ever taken, and I might have to agree with him.

Portrait Professional

I've seen Portrait Professional being advertised in various publications for quite a long time.  I gave it a try the other day and was absolutely blown away.  Prior to using it I thought it was just a general, blur the skin plugin, but in reality, it's sooo much more.  It actually builds a wire frame over a person's face and adjusts their features (shape of eyes, the nose, double chin) to make them more symmetric and subtle where necessary.  (Yes, it smoothes out the skin, but it does so without making it look like a Barbie doll.)  These are all techniques professional retouchers do manually in Photoshop, but Portrait Professional makes them easy for non-Photoshop wizards to do in under 3 minutes!!  It's quite amazing how much better people look when their neck is just a little bit longer. :-)  Go ahead, try out their free demo, it's amazing!

As a special gift for our readers, anthropics, the folks behind Portrait Professional, have given us a 10% discount code to share with our readers.  When placing your order, use the code discd6 to take 10% off!

Vegas Baby! uhm Travel Photography

Yup, I was in Hawaii for 8 days, now I'm in Vegas for 7. Got here today and didn't get to do much shooting. It's too tempting to just pull the camera out on the strip and start clicking away. Not exactly going to get a lot of keepers like that, so I had to do some research first. :-)



Since I seem to travel to some random places for work fairly regularly, most of my trips are for 2-3 days with lots of work things scheduled. How do I find time for shooting? Well, thankfully, the best times to shoot are way before and way after work. However, how about location scouting? How do I find places to go take some shots without having much time to explore? Here are some of my tricks:

• If there is a local camera shop (Ritz or Wolf don't count), stop by and ask for advice. I've found local staff are all to happy to give an out of towner a tip or two.
• Check Flickr, Panoramio, or Photo.net. On Flickr and Photo.net there are groups with discussion forums where lots of people before you have asked the same questions. Go learn from their mistakes and/or failures. Panoramio's photos are accessible from Google Earth, but that deserves its own bullet.
• Google Earth is perhaps the coolest tool for photographers in unfamiliar territory! The newest version supports showing terrain maps in 3D so you can get a good idea of what you'll see from what locations. Also, it has a sunlight simulator!!! This is an absolutely amazing feature that will show you the intensity of sunlight in certain areas. Are you going to be in a valley? Want to know what areas will get the last bit of sunlight? Google Earth can do that for you. Google Earth also links to Panoramio to pull in travel photos and make them easy to view from Earth's 3D interface. Very cool!
• When you get to a new place, go hunt down a Borders or a Barnes & Noble. Virtually every bookstore I've ever been in has an entire section dedicated to local interest. Within this section you'll usually find several photography books full of great shots of the region. Skim these books, take notes on interesting locations, and go see what you can find. Can you make it better? Did you see the potential for an interesting composition that wasn't in the book. You may go to the same spot, but you can make the shot your own! (Having just gotten to Vegas today, this is how I now know that the roof level of the McCarran Internation Airport short term parking garage has an amazing night view of the strip.)

I hope some of these suggestions are helpful to you. I'm going to go wander around the casino with my camera. (Oh, one last bit of advice, check with local security people in advance if photography is ok, best not to end up in that very big desert out there.)

..mike

Still Alive

I just wanted to make sure everyone knows that I haven't fallen off the face of the planet. I've simply avoiding contact with the outside world while I relax in Hawaii. (And by relax I mean photograph everything). So far the trip has been great, and I have a bunch of posts planned for when I get back. This is my first trip to the tropics with an SLR and on top of that my first attempt at geo-tagging all of my shots. Get ready for some interesting posts in a week or two. However, until then, I'll leave you with this awesome panoramic shot I took on the eastern cost of Oahu.

Lord of the Flies

There is a photographic deity -- a creature of glass and whirring motors. Infinitely sharp, perfect image quality, it sees and exposes all.

Tonight, this deity gave me a gift. This evening, I was uploading a handful of really mediocre macro photographs from my garden, and then I noticed something buzzing around -- a fly that had gotten in from when I left the door open from earlier. As if guided by some occult hand, the fly landed on top of my monitor, and remained immobile there. Sitting next to my computer was my d300, with my 105mm f/2.8 macro mounted, and a 5T Nikon diopter (Ebay -- they don't make 'em anymore). Beside it was my SB-800, still in remote mode from the macro shots early in the day. Carefully and quietly, I picked them both up, afraid I would have just one shot...

And the fly didn't move! Nor it did continue to move for the 30 odd shots I took thereafter (even after I got the second flash out of my trunk for some Strobist action). I'm not going to say I blinded this fly with my flashes, but by the time it did buzz off, it looked a little drunk in the air.

More on what little I know about taking macro shots to come, but the chance for live fly photo blogging doesn't come along that often...



For the complete fly photos, check here.

Failure to Launch

A few weekends back, Mike and I went to the Sonoma County Hot Air Balloon Classic -- SCHABC as their website calls it (they need to work on their acronyms). It's in Windsor, a little town in Sonoma, out in wine country. I'm not sure what's wrong with hot air balloon people, but apparently, their big deal is to launch balloons around sunrise -- which at June in California means at or before 5 am. Ugh. We forced ourselves up at 4 am, and hustled down to the park where the balloon event was happening. I arrived, psyched up by pictures of balloons I'd researched on Flickr, ready with my polarizer to capture the graceful ascent of balloons as they soared into the limitless blue Bay Area heavens, and...

Fog and smoke filled the sky, which was featureless. The cloud ceiling was at 700 feet, and balloons need 2,000 feet to get clearance to launch. As a result, we got a purple sky at sunrise with balloons firing up, some tethered balloon for the kids, and that was about it. Still, I went around, taking shots of everything, hoping to catch one of those 'ah-ha moments', and I think I learned a few lessons which are hopefully worth sharing.

Lesson 0: Backup Religion and recovering files from a CF card

Normally, I'm atypically good (per human norms) with backing up data. Data goes from card to laptop, and from laptop to usb drive, and eventually to a NAS with a raid 1 to have multiply redundant storage for photos. This time, I forgot my usb drive at home -- so I copied everything to the laptop, and started processing at the end of the trip.

Two days later, my laptop's hard drive died. My.. four month old.. laptop.

The lesson is: If you care about your photos, be religious about having at least two copies of them at any one time. If you're really serious, you can start to worry about site-based redundancy (what if there's a fire? or an earthquake?), or you can calculate the mean time to failure of all the spinning disks in your life, and then try to guess how many copies you need before catastrophic loss in your lifetime is unlikely.

I got lucky -- I shoot with three CF cards, a Sandisk 16gb and 8gb, and a Transcend 32 gb. I hadn't deleted the stuff I shot on the 32 gb card, so I mainly had photos taken on the 16gb card. The bad news was, I'd deleted everything on that card, and was halfway through it, taking photos of friends up in San Francisco. The better news is that CF cards just seem to be running a Fat 32 file system -- very widely used, and very easy to recover from if the files weren't actually overwritten. I used a tool called PhotoRec, which is open source, only 23% cryptic (my mom couldn't use it, but any high school kid today could), and worked flawlessly.



Lesson 1: Don't be afraid to fiddle with that exposure compensation

This is a bit of a 'Let go, Luke!' thing for me, that I've only really come to appreciate in the last few months. I think it's true that most modern cameras are so good at exposures that you generally only have to decide if you want to spot or matrix meter. At least, for 90% of the photos you take, that's the case. And, for the really low light stuff, I would always manually meter, and it'd work out fine (modulo chimping).

But I find that having the ability to have the camera meter for you, then offset it just a nudge does really come in handy. This is obvious advice if you're an expert (or just plain not clueless), but it took a bit for me to realize it. Watching balloons launch in the early morning light, I found there were two things going on:

- Fire from the balloon
- Ambient light bouncing off the low-hanging clouds from the not-yet risen sun.

Spot metering on the sky made the sky too bright, and left the fire uninteresting.
Spot metering on the fire made everything else way too dark (the fire is bright).
Matrix metering still made everything too bright (mainly picking up the 'big sky').

The best compromise I could find was too take the results from the matrix metering, and dial it down -.7 - 2 stops. That gave me something a lot closer to what I was looking for -- purple-deep blue skies, and some detail in the flame-lit areas underneath the balloon.



Lesson 2: Always shoot the reaction

I think of this as a "Joe McNally" lesson. I read this passage from him where he described his time shooting for Sports Illustrated: He'd go to cover a horse race, and end up shooting a circle of people betting in some dark alley.

The part that made this lesson easy was that the balloon show actually had a lot of people really excited about balloons, and willing to do the really immense amount of work needed to get one up in the air. The part that made this lesson hard is that I find it pretty difficult to photograph strangers. It feels vaguely invasive, and I think, "Oh god, I'm the creepy guy with a camera", and of course, if kids are around, I sit around thinking that someone's 7', 300 lb father is going to beat me to a pulp, or (worse) start breaking glass. I don't have a good answer for this part yet, but when I need to, I just force these feelings down and take the picture. I'm not going to say here is "it helps to not have a conscience", but maybe it helps to just think of it as what it is -- photons getting counted on a tiny little piece of silicon.



Lesson 3: Always take your angle where you can get it

One of my first odd experiences with my SLR was on Hamilton Island, this little but surprisingly touristy island on the Great Barrier Reef. I was at the highest point on the island, ready to take a picture of a gorgeous sunset vista over some Australian sea, and the sky had turned into featureless gray mush. Behind me, a limo rolled up, and a bride & groom get out, and behind them, a shabbier car shows up with their photog. He has them pose, do their thing, then he sprawls down on the ground, in nice vest and cumberbund, and shoots up at them.. because it worked!

Sitting back and watching all the tethered balloons rise, I realized I wasn't getting the angle I wanted. I wanted to be up and under, to get what I affectionately thought of as the 'math textbook cover look' (which always have balloons -- somebody explain why?). So, I threw myself on the slightly damp grass, and started shooting up and over, and I got more than I bargained for:



The sky was basically white/gray fog here, so I metered on the balloon. That seemed sort of 'blah' though, and it seemed to be blowing out the balloon a little (maybe reflected light from the fog?), so I dropped it by about -.7 on camera. That darkened the balloon a fair amount, but not super shadowy. It also was just about enough to still blow out the sky, which already had almost no detail, into being very close to pure white -- leaving me with a balloon drifting in a white sky. In post, I was a little disappointed that it wasn't darker (I wanted more detail on the orange fire). I bumped up the blacks and fiddled with the exposure, and this popped out. For me, this was the best photo of the trip -- just out of control colors, and this wild, pop off the page balloon soaring away into nothingness.

So, don't be afraid to roll around on the ground.

*

I really was bummed that there was no balloon launch. My research on Flickr indicated that you could get amazing shots if you slapped on a polarizer, and composed a swarm of balloons in the sky just right, but it was not to be. Still, every trip I take like this, I feel like I learn stuff, and that's what this post is hopefully about. :)

Relevant links:

My complete gallery of keepers from the balloon festival.
Mike's gallery from the same event.

Some amazing shots people on Flickr got (or have gotten in previous years);

http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitaltrav/193810099/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitaltrav/195550847/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spiicytuna/190320676/

Gear primarily used in taking balloon shots:

- Nikon d300
Comment: The excellent ISO 1600 helped me get enough shutter-speed pre-dawn to get some interesting shots. Also, it's my baby.

- Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8

Comment: You're going to want to go wide with balloons, because they're big. You also want it if all those balloons go up in the sky, so you can get a constellation of them floating around. It also helped me get more light in early morning -- it's plenty sharp at f/2.8, and I was shooting before sunrise with lots of people moving around. Mind the distortion at the edges though.

- Nikon 70-300mm VR f/4.5-5.6
Comment: You're going to want to zoom in on balloons high up in the air (which didn't happen), but you're also going to want to see detail with what's happening with the balloon crew, and to shoot the crowd to get reactions.

- Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8
Comment: Once the tethered balloons lifted off, I used this to capture individual balloons 40' or so up. It has better controlled distortion than my wide angles, and the perspective is more suited to the balloons up in the air but low, and I always love the image quality on this lens.

- Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 D
Comment: Used to shoot some portraits of people in the crowd. Most of those were lost when the laptop died and went to heaven, but using this lens wasn't strictly 'necessary' -- it's just arguably my favorite lens, and nothing beats it for shots of people's faces. Also, it's laser sharp -- just gotta control that depth of field when you shoot at 1.4.

- Gitzo 1540T Tripod
Comment: Very useful in the pre-dawn shots of the balloons. Probably would have been useful if I were shooting some amazing shot of all the balloons in the air that I wanted amazing sharpness on. Once the sun was up (albeit behind clouds), I didn't use it -- just folded it away (yay for Carbon Fiber).

- Adobe Lightroom 2 (beta)
Comment: I do 99% of my photo processing here. A little pokey at times, but I like it.

What would have helped:
Something like the d3 or the d700 would have given me 2-3 more stops of ISO in early morning, meaning movement of the crew would have been crisp. As it was, I was hovering around 1/15-1/40th -- wanted just a bit more.

The Next McNally Book

I just heard that Joe McNally's next book The Hot Shoe Diaries: Creative Applications of Small Flashes is due out before the end of the year! This is the time to pre-order NOW! For those of you who weren't lucky enough to grab The Moment It Clicks before it flew of store shelves everywhere, this is your chance to be one of the cool cats and get a copy first!!

I absolutely can't wait to see this book in print. I read his last book cover to cover, word for word, the same day that I got it. It was just so good that it was a little sad to reach the last page. I don't think I can recommend this enough!

Going Tropical

So I've finally caved and decided to use up some of that vacation time I've been stockpiling for the past two years. In less than 36 hours from now, I'm going to be on the beach in Oahu, Hawaii. Yeah, that's right. No work, just play, and lots of GORGEOUS things to take pictures of, of course! Hopefully I can strike the right balance that won't make Sara get annoyed with me too much. :-D

If anyone has any advice or tips for the best places to go and see while on Oahu, please please please leave a comment on this post with the info! I've read a bunch of travel guides and I've been there before, but it's so stunning and gorgeous, it's hard to recall it all.

I'll try and post summaries of each day's photos, but that might be a bit lofty. So, let's aim for a few posts while I'm recovering from oodles of relaxation and shooting.

Not to be Missed

Joe McNally has a post on the fate of a life-sized set of polaroids (taken with a polaroid the size of a room!) he made of the people who he saw as the heroes of 9/11. The shots are truly amazing, and it's a great story of the photographic community coming through in a pinch.

Serendipity Now

I mentioned I try to carry my camera with me wherever I go. This is not because I necessarily lead this ultra-exciting life where lions, tigers, and bears are on parade every day [note: if only!], but that if you do carry your camera every day, you find yourself seeking out things that make justify lugging it around all worth it. After a while, you start noticing things you didn't see before -- or, blind chance and old man Bayes puts you in the right place at the right time.

Today, I've got three shots to show that only happened because I had my camera with me All the Time:



I left the office late one day, and the sky was on fire. Saw nothing before or like it since then. I reached into my bag, slapped on my Sigma 10-20mm, and then ran to my car, only to discover I'd left my tripod at home. What then? The sweet spot for the composition was at 20mm, which meant I "ought" to be shooting at around 1/30th of a second. Unfortunately, at iso 1600, the camera was telling me that I needed 1/4th of a second. Just over two stops slower -- not a great result.

So, I used two tricks I've learned when I'm in low light, and need to shoot sharp(ish):

- I leaned against a tree
- I shot in continuous mode

My experience is that the tree is like a poor man's monopod. For a small tree, I find you can get about a stop's worth of shutter speed leaning against it -- larger trees where you can really nestle in between branches might get you more, but I pay a clumsy tax. Continuous shooting is less reliable -- I can generally squeeze out a one third to one stop advantage in shutter speed, but it's pushing your luck.

In this case, I was able to get something relatively sharp (it being clouds and bushy trees silhouetted helped!), and managed to capture that crazy sky.



This is actually shot in the same place as the previous image, in that period of time after sunset that I call the 'Blue Period'. The sunset has set, and absent any reflecting clouds, the sky turns a deep, deep blue -- I love it! Unfortunately, you really need to have a tripod, or (modulo brightness) a steady hand and a camera that looks good at ISO 1600+.

The reason why I took this photo was because the foreground was illuminated by a parking lot light, ensuring that the foreground wouldn't just be this dark blah area -- and the sky has the below-the-horizon sun to illuminate it. Plus, you've got these trees with the vivid green leaves, quasi-framing the blue sky. And, if you shoot it on a tripod for 25 seconds, it looks like you're on a medium-budget alien word on Star Trek.

I got off three exposures for this shot, and then the parking light flickered off, and the sprinklers came out -- had just packed up my camera and nearly got wet. So, not only did I only get it because I happened to have my camera, if I hadn't stopped and taken it right then I would have missed it. Carpe Photographum and all that.



My company runs a shuttle service between offices in San Francisco and the peninsula, and one day I took the shuttle to SF. At the same time, California is, um, on fire. Not the place where I live, but there are zillions of fires all around me, puffing soot in the air. Net result? Some really weird, gray skies during the day. The sun is just a smidge warmer and dimmer, and you occasionally get some crazy things happening like the sun turning blood red for the last few hours of the day. In this case, I was on the way home, and I saw the sun peeping through these gray clouds (which I assume were laced with things like soot and ash). I wanted to get a shot of the guy sitting next to this window peering out through it, sort of a 'dude gazes out in horror over post-apocalyptic San Bruno', but being as I was bouncing up and down and frequently clueless, I under-exposed the guy and overexposed the window a smidge. Thankfully, it was fixable in post -- and I love the shot precisely because it is so weird.

Commenting on Photos

I just finished reading this blog post about how to post useful comments on Flickr photos.

Too many comments are like "Great Job!", "Nice!", "Wow, come join my group!" These comments aren't really that helpful, are they? Are you guilty of leaving meaningless feedback too? I know I am! Read the post above and make a resolution to only post constructive comments in the future!! We'll all benefit from this.

An Unexpected Turn of Events

Recall when you were in kindergarten, remember how you'd be given some xerox'ed page out of a 1960's coloring book of some random thing that you really didn't care about, with the instructions to color it in? I hated coloring while in kindergarten, and I still do. Even worse, you'd come home and your parents, no matter how horrible it was, would act as if it was a check from the Publisher's Clearing House prize patrol, they'd affix it to the refrigerator to hang for posterity, or until you brought home another god awful mess, that, would hopefully show some sign of improved coordination.

Well, I'm still at that level, 22 years later, trying to show some signs of improved coordination. My wife thinks my photos have reached the point where they won't make our small apartment look like the house from Sanford and Son. Do you know what that means? We are going to frame and hang up some of my prints. (Dear God, what is she thinking?) After much discussion, we decided that we'd put 3 "city themed" photos in our entryway. (These photos will also serve as warning to all those who enter that they should expect to be flooded with stories of my latest random photo trip.)

Unfortunately, we only have two photos (in our theme) that we thought were worthy of being put up for guests to see (NYC skyline shot and one of the Golden Gate). However, our original plan called for three, so we needed to get another one ASAP.

After reading Thomas Hawk's blog post on the top 10 places to photograph in San Francisco, I felt the urge to go up to the Mandarin Oriental hotel in SF and sneak up to the top floor sky walk. After monitoring the weather forecast for the past few days, Brandon, my wife (Sara), and I trekked up to San Francisco Sunday night on a crusade to fill the blank spot on my wall.

Now, the Mandarin Oriental is one of the swankiest hotels in San Francisco. The three of us are typical Silicon Valley folks. We're rocking the jeans, the t-shirts, and random backpacks full of camera gear (well, typical save the last part). There was unanimous concern we'd get cornered by hotel staff and sent to a Chinese prison camp as we tried to go up to 48th floor at 11PM on a Sunday night to take pictures.

So there we were, this traveling road show of photographic misfits, leaving the comfort of our warm valley dwellings and companionship of sandal wearing kinsfolk, to explore the world of people who spend more money on shoes than I have on cars. Now I’m not sure if it was either our suave Silicon Valley demeanor, our unsuspicious nature, or plain ignorance that got us past the virtual armada of people waiting at the front desk to stop folks just like ourselves from wandering their fine establishment at all hours of the night.

Okay, maybe that's a bit dramatic. We pretty much just walked in, hit the elevator button, and went up to the 48th floor without so much as anyone giving us a second look. We got up to the skywalk, and the view was just magnificent. Unfortunately, the windows were dirty on the outside, and there was enough low level fog to make every light have a giant halo that screamed, "Go shoot somewhere else!"

Afraid of overstaying our welcome at the Mandarin, we decided to hop in the car and head over to Treasure Island for some night shots of the city skyline. We drove around TI a bit and eventually pulled onto the side of the road and started unpacking our gear. Now one of the great things about San Francisco, is the plethora of completely shady people who seem to live in the shadows and remind you of Jack the Ripper. I quickly noticed that such a man was behind us! Yay!

So there we were, 2 software engineers and a school teacher, taking photos of a slightly foggy San Francisco skyline being watched by this strange homeless man wearing US Army camouflage garb. He was standing there with his hands in his pockets, which for some reason, made him 10 times more shady. I started thinking whether or not my 40D attached to my Manfrotto ball head + tripod would make a decent club. I surmised it would, but decided not to test the theory. I quickly shuttled everyone back into the car and we drove a mile down the road. Now, at this point, I was hoping I'd get one decent city shot. However, it never happened. In fact, the only shot I got of the skyline was this zoom effect I did of the Ferry Building on the SF side of the bay. It’s not a bad shot, but by no means is it “wall worthy.”



It was really really windy, and even with a heavy aluminum tripod, my 70-200mm lens was just catching so much wind, I couldn't get any sharp shots at all. I was about to call it a night, when Sara screamed, "Look, raccoon on the rocks!" Brandon and I looked down, and there was a raccoon standing on the rocks about 10 feet from us. I grabbed my speedlite, threw it into E-TTL mode, and started firing away.



The raccoon quickly disappeared, and then reappeared from a crevice between two rocks with 4 baby raccoons. It was obviously a mother raccoon scouting out things for her children. These little guys were pretty dam cute. I ended up taking a good 15-20 shots of these little bandits before they wandered off in search of breakfast.



So what started out as a trip to fill a blank spot on a wall, ended up with a blank spot on my wall. However, we did get some shots of some adorable little creatures, in one of the most unexpected of places. I guess that just goes to show you, no matter how much planning you do in advance, things will almost always turn out in a completely different way. Just be ready to adapt and see what happens.

Pixels may be Free, but Attention is Priceless.

Some concerned readers have written in, concerned that I'm involved in some sort of elaborate Nikon suicide pact, owing to the fact that I've taken about a fifth of the number of exposures the d300's shutter is rated for. Also, as one friend put it,

"Good God, that's like 150 photos/day!"

It's not quite that bad -- I go out on trips on weekends, and shoot a lot then. But it is the case I've made a religious observance of bringing my camera with me everywhere possible. Like a lot of things, I'm sure there's a Right Way to do this and a Wrong Way.

I'm sure The Wrong Way would entail something like this:

• Bring your camera with you everywhere
• Shoot everything
• Download your daily 150 (or weekend-ly 2,000 photos)
• Upload them all to Flickr daily

If you think about it, this is basically the 'vacation' model of photography. Take everything you see, come home, upload it all, except you'd be living it every day. I don't think it's a great way to learn, and you'll likely be frustrated if you try. Your friends will also likely de-friend you on Flickr, which is the closest modern-day equivalent to being drummed out of the camp because of your fresh case of leprosy that I can think of.

What's missing from the Vacation Philosophy of photography is two things:

• Mindfulness
• A profound love of throwing things out

Mindfulness is the biggie, but I hate to use it because it's something Zen posers are always saying. "Why don't you go to mindfulness training, Brandon?" "Practice a little mindfulness, and find inner peace!". "The quality of mindfulness is not lost on this one, oh Buddha". On and on and on, and since I live in California, I hear this sort of thing on a regular basis.

Lemme describe what I mean in another way. Some years ago, I embarked on a program to lose a lot of weight. The first thing I did was not to exercise more, eat less, change the number of carbs, or anything like that -- it was simply to write down what I ate each day. Studies show that simply doing this is enough to start losing some weight, and the people who bother to do this find it easier to actually start exercising or dieting.

Turns out, simply paying attention to what you're doing is often enough for our brains to perk up and realize something may be wrong (or right!) with your behavior. When it comes to photography, I get myself to pay attention by asking questions. The first, and most basic one is this: Why do I want to take this photo? There ae a lot of good answers to this question, but the only really bad one is: "I can't think of why." Just like dieting, you can ratchet up your expectations over time, and start asking yourself questions like, "Would I waste a friend's time with this photo? Would this photo be something I'd be happy to hang on my wall? Can this photo tell the story of this event? Could I use this photo to teach a class? Will this photo pay the mortgage? [Ok, that's a good joke]". But always start with why you want to take the photo -- and if, after reflecting, you don't have a reason, don't shoot the photo. :)

The second, and just as important thing you can do, is to throw photos out. Let's say you've taken your one hundred and fifty photos for the day, and are staring listlessly in your overpriced copy of Lightroom (or underpowered version of iPhoto). The first thing you want to do is to upload them to share them to everyone, right?

[Crickets]

There's a rule with digital photography that says, "Pixels are Free". It's correct, and only grows more correct in the limit as we get closer and closer to storing terabytes for pennies, petabytes for dimes, and exabytes for dollars, until our brains are all uploaded into a set of poorly written perl scripts that pilot post-human mechs around the surface of Neptune, taking glorious snaps of those icy rings. But like most things, PF has a dual principle, waiting to bite us. It goes like this:

"Pixels may be Free, but Attention is Priceless."

The old world -- the one with film, paper books, and big, clunky, one-room computers, had a different set of rules. Try, "This shit costs money!", or "There's only so much space on the shelf." The new world has a different set of limitations, but the most important one is that at the bottom of all those free pixels, fat pipes, and amazing low light performance, is us. Plain old human brains, evolved to not keep more than seven things in our head at once, and catastrophically unprepared for Modern Times. All that neat stuff, and a tiny, narrow little window of attention to grab someone.

So, if you're going to reach people with your photos, you're going to have to learn how to Cut. It's going to hurt, because anyone who does even the tiniest little creative thing marries it at least a little. But if you're going to learn from taking a lot of pictures, you're going to have to sit down at that computer, and ask yourself a new question: "Why did I take that photo? What was I thinking?". If you can't answer that question, cut it. Deleting it is best, hiding it in a featureless archive in the sky is a close second, but what you upload should be there for a reason. This doesn't mean you can't keep a 'gallery of monsters' around, to teach yourself why something was an epic fail, or nearly, but didn't quite work. But it does mean you have to have made that distinction in your head, and emotionally come to terms with that failure.

Processing my photos and throwing them away is one of the hardest things I've ever done, because I'm a pack rat. I love to hoard things. But throwing it out is the best thing there is for learning. It's both an object lesson -- "So wow, on camera flash really does look like ass", and a carrot: "If I don't do this next time, I won't have to throw it out!". Once you've done this, you can start asking yourself things like, "What can I do to fix this photo? Could I make it work in post processing if I just did this one thing?", and so on.

*

I dunno if these things will work for you (I don't necessarily advise taking 30,000 photos in seven months), but I think it's an invaluable way to force yourself to learn.

More to come in my next post, which is an example of the benefits of always having your camera.

From 1 to 30,643

Hi, my name is Brandon, and I just took my 30,643rd photo with my camera today.

For the last seven months, shooting with my digital SLR has constituted my consuming devotion to an unassigned project. I had a three week trip to Australia planned; I knew that the time had come to upgrade my camera in a big way -- something had gone 'snap' in my head and I was ready to buy an SLR. Being a great big nerd, I spent a month or more researching the problem. At the end of it, I had a healthy case of analysis paralysis -- ultimately decided by some social analysis of what cameras my favorite photographers used and just how good Nikon's d300 felt in my hands.

Basically, I blundered into picking a wonderful camera that was completely and utterly beyond my abilities.

Fortunately for me (and especially all my friends, who get bear the heavy burden of seeing my photos), I'm obsessive. There's something about taking your first good photo with your camera that makes you think, "Wow, you know, I sure would like another one of those". And then when you get another 500 (ok, 2,000) photos after that, you think, "Man, how can I get better at this?". Answering that question is a driving force for me at most of the things in my life -- and that explains why I'm here, 30,642 photos later, having acquired a few tiny grains of knowledge [knowledge is always stored in grains of sand on the beach] about what makes photos good.

My friend Mike and I decided to start this blog because we're still starting out with this photography stuff, but we wanted to share what we knew about that question: How DO you take that next good photo? We're going to bring a beginner's perspective to some questions, and plan to share all the stuff we find out while stumbling around in the dark, and have some fun doing it.

Oh, and FYI, Mike's probably a clinical obsessive too, and if there's anything better than a blog run by a crazy person, it's a blog run by two crazy people.

With that, here are two photos for your perusal: The very first photo I ever took, and the 30,643rd.

I sure hope I learned something.


Photo #1:

Photo # 30,643: