A Photographic and Cinematic Adventure On The Creative Frontier
After a quick review of the camera’s controls, and a lesson in polarization, I turned my wife Shauna loose in a small airplane (an otter to be exact) for a flight around the summit of Mt. McKinley. I knew she had the eye, I just didn’t know how good her eye was. When we landed and reviewed our images, she thought I would dig this one. She was right, I’m pretty sure everyone else is going to like too. There is a good chance you might be seeing more of her work in the future.
After yesterday’s build up you were probably expecting to see an image for Andy Schleck crossing the finish line with his fist clenched punching through the fog. I might have been able to get that image had I had a press pass and a 300mm lens. It wouldn’t have been a problem. However, I was standing in mud on the side of a mountain 400m from the finish. Not an ideal situation for making images of historic sports moments. So why did I decided to share this image and the story that led to it? The answer is simple. This is by no means the best image from the Tour, you can find those images all over the web. It was however the best image I could make to tell the story the day my dad, the A-team, and I waited in the fog and rain to witness the arrival of the yellow jersey. It is these moments, captured in images like this, that compel me to continue to pursue my vision (and carry some extra camera gear with me). I hope that in some small way, this site compels you to continue to pursue yours!
This is another image from my visit to the local rail yard last year. You can see a previous composition from the same location here. It was one of those days where I knew I was going to pass something interesting on and errand, so I decided I would grab my gear and tack on 30mins to my commute. I wonder how much memory my brain is wasting trying to efficiently plan photo errands? I should formalize a documentation strategy so I can save space for things like remembering to mow the lawn.
It seems like summer is just getting started. The calendar tells me it is over halfway gone. We are trying our best to take advantage of what summer has left to offer. No better way than an evening hike in the hills near our house. As you know, I have been putting the Nikon D5000 through its paces, and I am pretty darn surprised by it. If you can get over the fact that it has only one command dial and get used to doing your adjustments in the menu system, you have yourself a very capable camera. One thing that I have been wanting to test is the exposure bracketing feature. The D5000 will only allow 3 brackets, but the nice thing is you can bracket by 2 full stops. 2 stops is usually enough for most of my HDR work. For very high contrast scenes (think super bright light out the window of a room) you need more than 2 stops on either side of the anchor. However, for most of my bracket sequences, the D5000 is proving to be a great companion.
For the non-photographers out there, that interested in knowing more about this ‘photographer speak’, feel free to drop me a line. I would be happy to help you get started making images!
A while back I was searching for a reasonable backup camera to travel with over the summer. After quite a bit of deliberation, I decided on the Nikon D5000. I have been putting it through the paces and I am quite pleased. Here is a simple capture from the camera while we were out on a drive over the weekend. I will be writing up a more formalish review of it shortly, as for now, here are a couple things I like about it.
