Technique. Create. Paralysis. Liberate?

I read way too many photography magazines. I buy way too many photography books (at least relative to other types of books). I study the technical side of digital image creation. I have learned (not enough) about my camera. I know the basics. I know some advanced stuff. This crap is like a drug.

I was at Barnes & Noble today and grabbed the usual assortment of photography books and magazines. One of the Brit mags that are so good. Photo District News. A few books I had seen reviewed. Random magazines I had never purchased. I set them down in a chair and slipped off to the bathroom. Upon my return, some overly-efficient employee had taken my stack off to be re-shelved. So I went and got them again. All of them. All of the books and magazines I had impulsively gathered. I flipped through an interesting book on digital black and white photography (heavy on photoshop, including a very cool sampling technique I had never seen and must learn and ohmygodihavetohavethisbookjustbecauseofthisonetechnique). Another one on landscape photography. I ripped through the stack with all of the cold analysis I would bring to a so many cases I might have dug up for a brief. Sorting. Culling. Stacking (two stacks--one for absolutely not, one to go back through).

And then I opened a magazine called Life Images. The pages of this magazine have very cool shots (although maybe not technically superb) and some words that either inspired them or were inspired by them. (Never mind the fact that the publishing company is apparently big into publishing magazines on quilting.) I created a third stack--keeper--and put this magazine in it.

At that moment, something clicked. I've gotten so into the technical side of my little hobby that I have forgotten what I love about it--creating, capturing, preserving and story-telling. I have managed to get caught (bound?) up in the technical side of photography at the expense of getting out there and pushing the button.

Driving home, I noticed a field of purple flowers leading to a metal barn that will be a great shot if the clouds decide to move out. I noticed the water-laden bunches of scrub grass in a pattern on a hillside next to the interstate that would look oh-so-cool in black and white. Spring is often thought of as a time of renewal. Liberation, too, I hope.

Don't Think Twice

Did anybody watch American Idol last night? I usually space out at this point in the competition because most of the freaks are off the show, and the amusement of the earlier auditions has faded, but I tuned in for a while last night, and caught David Cook's cover of Chris Cornell's cover of Jack-O's Billy Jean. I'm usually pretty sharp with music stuff, who's covered what, who's produced what, etc. I had no clue that Chris Cornell (of Soundgarden fame) had covered this. So while I'm a little less impressed with David Cook for maybe letting this get passed off as his arrangement, at least he knew about it, and if you really listen to it, Ryan Seacrest introduced it as a cover, so it was out there. Whether RandyPaulaSimon picked up on it, I don't know. Bottom line: most incredible performance I've seen on American Idol ever, and a great version of what was a good song (for about 3 minutes, anyway).

Tragic fire in Bentonville

A house fire in the early morning hours claimed the lives of 5 children, the oldest of which was a seventh grade girl my mom has tutored for the past five years (Tuesday was their day). The Morning News generally updates its website quickly, so see here for what they are reporting.

As a parent, this is one of those things that just kicks you in the gut.

I'll update this post as I learn more.

UPDATE: There was a press conference a little while ago. KFSM has an updated story here.

UPDATE #2: The story in today's Morning News is pretty thorough.

UPDATE #3: The comments on the Morning News story includes a comment from the aunt and uncle. I guess the meth theory has been explained away. As expected, no clarification on the news tonight.

Look out for that wave . . . .

I shot this on the beach at Coronado Island, just down from The Del. The sun had already gone down and I was trying to get what I could. I learned several things: 1) You're not as far away from the waves as you think you are, so be careful where you set your camera bag; 2) while you'll sometimes get lucky, good shots require planning, particularly when the light changes quickly (shooting in manual mode, I was changing the exposure about every 5 seconds); and 3) the graduated neutral density filter (3-stop hard filter in this shot) ranks right up there with the guitar capo as one of the greatest inventions, dollar for dollar, of all time.

For the curious, here's the EXIF data:

Nikon D80
Sigma 10-20 at 14mm
f/16
1.3 seconds
ISO 400 (don't ask me why)
Manual exposure

All in all, pretty colors, but I think there are some technical issues. Depth of field is pretty good, but the shutter speed blurs the waves to an unacceptable degree. A faster shutter speed would have required higher ISO (more noise in an already dark picture) and/or larger aperture (bye bye, depth of field). If I had to do it over, I'd have lowered the ISO, used something like f/8 and focused on the waves to freeze them a bit, since there's really no detail in the main subject (the glow way out at Point Loma). I probably should have used a 2-stop soft grad instead of the 3-stop hard grad I used (even though I like the result with the 3-stop) because the 2-stop might have allowed me to use a faster shutter speed.

Live and learn.

Off Duty

We got back from San Diego last night about 11:00. I haven't had time to really go through the pictures. I didn't take as many as I thought I would, but here's one that's indicative of having checked out for a while.

Shot in RAW format, double-processed (once for the sky, and once for the foreground) and combined in Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 (using a layer mask from Grant's Tools).

Quit Fondling My Aids

I haven't met Sach Oliver, but he's the lawyer who sued the motel over in Siloam Springs because the room his client rented allegedly had bed bugs. You have to admire Judge Wilson's sense of humor.

Cooper Chapel

Here's something I've been working on. I have another version where I have worked out some of the geometry issues, but I like the tone and contrast of this version better. Comments and critiques welcome. I'd like to get this printed and hang it in the house. My first thought was over the toilet in the red bathroom next to the kitchen. I wonder whether that's sacrilegious? It's something interesting to look at while you're standing there (sorry ladies, you'll have to see it in the mirror).

Lot's of issues to work out on this one before it gets printed. This was just a test shot to see how it might look.

The Tax Man runneth away.

OK, so voters in the Bentonville School District rejected the millage vote by what some are saying is a significant margin. I'll be the first to say that I'm not surprised it didn't pass, and I'll also be the first to blame the school board for what appeared to be a rather lame effort in publicizing the election in the first place. I'll take it a step further and say that because of the way the proposed millage was structured, there may not now be funds available to shore up some dilapidated facilities that our kids will be using. Should we have been forced to accept a new high school (whether you're in favor of one or not) in order to raise money for needed repairs and improvements to other facilities? There were plenty of things in the pot for our kids, and now it's unlikely to happen because this was an all or none election.

How many times were you approached by someone "official" about the election? I was approached once, and that was thanks to a form letter from Gary Compton to let me know of a "town hall" type meeting to mobilize those who would carry the banner. How many commercials did you see? How many newspaper ads did you see? How many direct mailings were there? I saw a few signs in a few yards, proclaiming a need to "End Overcrowding" on March 11th. People get out to vote for people, not issues, and having this millage election as a stand-alone event was a fatal mistake in my judgment, especially in a presidential election cycle when you have a presidential primary, primaries and non-partisan judicial elections in May, and a general election in November. I haven't looked into it, but it would have been better to piggy-back onto something more glamorous, such as the Benton County Sheriff's race.

Going back to the drawing board is not going to work. These people need to get a bigger drawing board and actually draw on it.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not bitter it didn't pass. I'm just tired of the belly-aching. If you're going to have a successful election, you have to campaign successfully. As far as I can tell, the campaign stayed home.

Speaking of Strobist . . . .

Speaking of Strobist, Julie and Hadley just got me the first installment of the Strobist lighting kit, consisting of a light stand, reflective umbrella and umbrella adapter. I can mount my Nikon SB-600 on it and control it via commander mode on my D80. Limited range, gotta have line of sight, etc., but still very cool. No sync cables. TTL works. Pretty slick. I'll need another flash soon. Just kidding.

I'll be focusing on landscape and nature stuff for a while now that spring is around the corner. The trip to San Diego will be a good outlet for all the reading I've been doing. I'll get to try out the ND grad filters I got for Christmas, too.

Start-up

I'm not really sure why I started this blog. More than anything, I think this is an avenue to share my passing attempts at amateur photography with friends. LeAnne Parks is always bugging me to share the pictures I take of the Playgroup kids, but I never do. For all the ease of digital photography, it's a bit of a pain to load, cull, crop and edit pics and then email them to people.

I don't know. Maybe this will suffice, maybe it won't. I may need a dedicated gallery like something on Smugmug. I'm not sure I want to pay for it, though. I've been reading Strobist too much recently for that. Besides, all the Strobist people hang out over at Flickr anyway.

I'm not convinced I'm fierce enough to have a "real" blog. We'll see. Gotta start someplace. I tried to upload the very first picture (one of Hadley, Annalee and Ander) but it didn't work--I'll figure it out. I'm not sure how much storage space I get, so there may be a Smugmug account in my future after all. Check it out--something like $39.95 per year for the very basic account with unlimited storage. The $59.95 power user account looks like an even better deal, except I don't need the video option. Too bad there's not an in-between or a la carte package.

UPDATE: Ok, this was the first picture I was going to post. This is from last year's Christmas parade. More, please!