Blog posts including recent work, tutorials, thoughts on photography and art and just day to day life!
Traveling traveling traveling! All I have been doing is traveling. Well, I am back now and time to catch up with my life. I took this shot in Springfield, Ohio, in Snyder Park. Its funny how you can find an interesting scene just by looking around. Not much of a park but it does have some nice spots. Probably a good thing to do more often - slow down and look for good things. Beauty is all around us if we only look. Seems like only the ugly draws our attention, there is nothing like a car wreck to make…
October is here and the mornings are starting to feel like Fall. I have been out and about the past few weeks on a variety of assignments for my day job. The next few weeks will be about the same. This shot was taken on Doty Island as the fog started to clear. I only had my 100mm lens with me so I had to take 5 shots and stitch them together into a panorama. With the 100mm I set my shutter speed at 1/100 sec (about as slow as I dared to avoid camera shake). At a f/9 aperture,…
Road Trip(!) Saturday. Went down to Pewit's Nest natural area. Very pretty - maybe more people than I would expect for a late Saturday afternoon in September... Late afternoon and it was relatively dark in the woods. So the problem is too high ISO sensitivity which equals noise. So I set the ISO to 640 - pretty low noise on my 5d - and the shutter speed and aperture on manual. From past experience I can handhold this lens at 1/15seconds so set the speed there and then the aperture to get a reasonable exposure. Canon 5d MkIII | Canon…
Just a casual portrait in the park. Nothing fancy, nothing planned - just look at the camera and and the shutter snaps. This is both the easiest and the hardest portrait to capture. Sometimes it just happens and it is effortless, but just try and get this look on purpose. We are so self conscious today and we all "pose" for the camera. Fake smiles, fake poses, fake Facebook lives. Why is it so hard to be natural? Canon 5d Mk III | Canon 24-105 f/4 L | 105mm | 1/240s at f/4.0
Sunday Morning in Riverside Park. Not Much more to be said! Canon 5d MkIII | Canon 70-200 f/2.8L II | 180mm | 1/160s at f/5.6
A storm comes in from the West. It is September but really hot and humid the past few days. I caught this in the early evening as the front came in - perfect timing. A few minutes later and it was heavy rain with boring grey overhead. I did not have my widest lens with me so I shot this as a panorama and stitched together 5 shots. Canon 5d MkIII | Canon 25-105 f/4 | 24mm | 1/40s at f/9.0
St. Mark's joined with Gloria Dei, St. Paul and Our Savior's for a public worship service in Riverside Park, Neenah. Wonderful time together and such a beautiful morning. Canon 5d MkIII | Canon 70-200 f/2.8 II | 200mm | 1/250s at f/4.0
We had a video shoot on the Wolf River (near Fremont) yesterday afternoon. Always great fun to do shoot some video with old friend and to make some new friends. Did a bit of still photo action shots along with the video and I will post them later this week. The keys to this shot is a very high shutter speed to freeze the action and a smooth panning motion to reduce any camera shake. The consequence of the high shutter speed is you need to shoot at an open aperture to avoid excessive ISO noise. Focus precision becomes critical…
Site seeing with some friends from Grenoble, France. We watched a beautiful sunset at High Cliff State Park and really enjoyed the colors. This is a technically difficult picture to pull off for several reasons. The first is the backlight from the sunset will fool your camera into making their faces really dark. However, if you expose for their faces the sunset will be too bright and all the color will be lost. The second is the high depth of field requires a small aperture which will drive the shutter speed down and the ISO up. Low shutter speed -…
The best laid plans of mice and men Go often askew, And leave us nothing but grief and pain, For promised joy! Robert Burns August full moon and I was ready! It was a beautiful night in Oshkosh - just perfect! Temp was around 80, modest humidity and there was music playing at Waterfest. I arrived on time and set up the perfect shot. I would capture the full moon rising between the girders of the rail road bridge across the Fox River. This would be an awesome shot with the diagonal bridge outlined acaings the darkening sky. I used…
Another sunset picture. The light was so beautiful and made everything so special. When you look around the world it is so easy to worry about the future - the news is all bad news! But, if you step away you see that there is so much beauty in the world. Yes, the news is bad, but it has always been bad! Always some crisis or flood or war or law and order issue. We live in this world and and we care so we want thing to be better. That is a good thing and we should never stop…
Final preparations for my photography class are underway. The class will be "cookbook" hands on photography - minimal jargon and technical stuff and more how to set your camera to get the best results. Just finished up pictures with the beautiful DeAnna to help demonstrate what lens settings will do. Watch for updates on the days and times and enrollment. Class size will be limited!
Another beautiful sunset in Neenah. This is from the Friendship trial on the Fox River. A cold front was moving in and created beautiful clouds, colors and light. This is a composite of 10 photos stitched together in Photoshop CS6. The challenge here was to keep the ISO down to prevent noise while getting a low blue shutter speed and sufficient depth of field. Canon 5d MkIII | Canon 24-105 f/4 L | 24mm | 1/25s at f/6.3
Sunset in beautiful downtown Neenah! Canon 5d MkIII | Canon 24-105 f/4 L | 105mm | 1/60s at f/5.6
Just some rocks on the lake shore...not even a particularly good picture. Taken at 200mm with a non macro lens. Shallow depth of field so not much in focus. So why do I like this picture? I guess it is just the colors and the patterns. Or maybe it pulls some memories out - some beach when I was a kid. I do love going to the beach because it makes me feel young and Summer would go on forever. Canon 5d MkIII | Canon 70-200 f/2.8 L II | 1/800s at f/3.2
Stay back! That is what he seems to be saying to me! Sometimes life is like that - you rush in and don't always see the warning signs that you are too close. We're too busy, too much in a hurry, too focused on the next goal to look around and see the landscape around us. We need to slow down and enjoy things! Canon 5d MkIII | Canon 84mm f/1.8 | 1/1250 f/5.6
Busy day - busy week. It seems like Summer has just been, so far, just a whirlwind of activity! I feel blessed that so much is in my life! I also feel a bit overwhelmed that so much is in my life! Yesterday was a wonderful day. Between storms I had a shoot with an old friend and a new friend (getting ready for my photo class this Fall). It was hot and muggy but it was also so much fun working together. While I was winding down my wife noticed the sunset. Like a shot I was out the…
It's Sunday morning and the children's sermon is waiting. I think this is just a cool portrait! I know it's just a stuffed animal, but all the components of a great portrait are there. Good color, a nice setting, great "eye" focus. Most of all, it is an interesting story (at least I think so). That is what a good photo really is - a good story. A good portrait makes you wonder "what is she thinking?" or "what is going to happen next". Personality comes through but mixed with mystery. You enter the picture and your imagination is an…
Poor tree! You grow for years on the side of the mountain and just mind your own business. Then one day along comes the insects. The tunnel under your skin and eat away. Nothing you can do. Then one day along comes an elk. Beautiful animal! Majestic animal! Itchy animal! Just walks up and scrapes off you bark! At least it got rid of the insects... Canon 5d Mk III | Canon 35mm f/2 II | 1/320s at f/5.6
Tired of the same old 4th of July fireworks pictures I did something different. Long exposure and I played with the focus to get some different effects. So much fun! Canon 7d | Canon EF 60mm macro | 2s at f/2.8
Just hanging with friends before the light parade in Neenah. Canon 5d MkIII | Canon 35mm f/2 IS | 1/80s at f/5.6
Funny thing about photography. You spend lots of money on high falutin' equipment to get the ultimate in image quality. And then you take a picture that fills you emotional self with joy - but it is technically horrible! How can something be beautiful and horrible all at the same time? The answer is simple: a picture is about telling a story. This picture is about joy and happiness and you don't need sharpness and resolution to achieve that! Good thing to remember when I get the urge to buy the next best thing - I don't really need it!…
The firefly population is growing in the Town of Neenah. They seem to like warm Summer nights. This is a long exposure shot taken on a tripod near my home. Canon 7D | Rokinon 16-35mm | 16mm | 6s at f/3.2
Doing a negative scan and cleanup for friend. He purchased this negative that depicts his year make and model Rambler. As near as I can tell this is a 1959 Rambler and got a wonderful 36.88 mpg in it's LA to New York trip. The mileage contest was sponsored by Mobilgas.
The Strawberry moon rises over Lake Winnebago. The full moon in June is known as the strawberry moon - guess it is time to pick! This year the full moon came on the Summer Solstice (the longest day of the year). Won't happen again in my lifetime! There are two difficult things about photographing the moon - it is so bright and it moves pretty fast. Where you usually have to crank up the ISO and slow down the shutter for the moon you need a pretty fast shutter and a low ISO. This was taken at 400mm so the…
