The story of Vivian Maier is absolutely fascinating as is the body of extraordinary photographic work she left behind. If anyone is a street photographer and does not know about her, this is a must see.
Category: Photography
Clouds and Sky in High Contrast B&W
Should Always Auto Bracket a Landscape for Exposure Blending – CreativeRAW
https://creativeraw.com/why-auto-bracket-landscape-exposure-blending/
I have been bracketing in RAW when I shoot for a.while now.. I takes up a lot of memory once downloaded so I have to manage my files on import more carefully and delete files more often to keep from using up my overall storage capacity too quickly. That was happening and I was lazily buying more storage as a solution, rather than carefully managing what I had and developing a streamlined workflow for deleting files I would never use sooner rather than later. It takes overcoming a “hoarder” mentality in a certain way.
Trinity River after the Flood
All the images above were taken the day after Dallas received a historical level of rainfall the day before. The rain amount was from 10″ to 15″ in 24 hours depending on where it fell. This record of rain fell days after a heat wave record of 67 consecutive days without rain and heat above 100 degrees ended. This deluge caused the Trinity River bed to go from cracked parched earth to flood stage above 30 feet in less than 24 hours. With that rain, the dry cracked earth caused by the drought and heat was under water.
The picture below was taken a few days before the rain.
Urban Exploration in Black and White
Photo walks for me sometimes involve a minor level of urban exploration of manmade structures, both abandoned and active, that have a story, detailed components, and unique interesting designs in a manmade environment.
Often, my favorite time for these explorations is a Saturday afternoon when the natural light of the day is brightest, into the twilight hours, when there is a mix of artificial lights mixed with the changing natural light. It is also a time of recreation from family play in the daytime, to a more adult dinner and nightlife time.
Early Sunday mornings are another time I enjoy urban exploring but for entirely different reasons. It is a time when the urban landscape is relatively empty and quiet. I have gone before sunrise, to catch the changing morning light illuminating all the manmade structures and as people begin to emerge into the scene.
Unlike street photography, my images at these times focus only on the inanimate manmade objects I see of interest and not the human element active among them. I leave that part of it to others.
These Are Not Photos: Beautiful Landscapes Created by New AI | PetaPixel
Photo Subjects at Home
It is often said that one does not need to travel far to get good photos, there are many a few feet from your door if you just look for them. Sometimes, they can be a few feet inside your door. Then black and white/grayscsle image of the lamp, window blind slats, and black background screen on a stand is a few feet from my bed. It has been there a while, but I didn’t “see” it there and visualize it as in this picture until I woke up the other morning and there it was! One thing I enjoy about photography is how it encourages he to look deeper into object around me and grab a nice image from the mundane.
Watch “5 Reasons I Miss My DSLR: A Mirrorless User’s Rant” on YouTube
This is a very entertaining video that is spot on as far as what I would miss most if I gave up my DSLR and why. I am more about final images than gear and what will ensure I get what I want in that regard, without the hassle, and at an affordable price. What he misses about his DSLR here is not just an inconvenience for me, but can be a show stopper in getting the best images, when I want them, when I see them, without fail, under all conditions. The battery power hog that Mirrorless cameras are was off-putting to me when they were first released and still are now. When my camera battery died after a longer than expected and unplanned day of walking around on my one and only trip to Key West in 2003, I almost missed once-in-a-lifetime shots of the sunset at Mallory Square. It was over, the battery was gone after my very last shot. (I know the lecture and remedy that is returned when I tell that story, but it can, and does happen to the best of us). Still, that was a “never again” moment for me, but I have gotten close a few times in spite of my best-laid plans. The screen clutter on Mirrorless cameras can get messy and hard to work around under certain conditions. The list goes on. That said, Mirrorless Cameras are the future and the advantages are numerous and well known. I am not a Luddite and am a Pragmatist, which means I go with “what works” in most everything. When it comes to photography, “what works” is having a great and lasting image to talk about in the end.
The Cicada Sights and Sounds of Summer
Note the arid ground after our long heat wave and drought enters record territory
The Capturing of Flying Seagull Mayhem & Edit Success in Lightroom
Four years ago, while on a walk around the lake with my camera one afternoon, I began to hear the sound of seagulls making a tremendous racket and then saw quite a number of them in the sky, darting around in all directions above the shore. They were very active and making quite a squall. As I got closer, I noticed a young couple feeding them near the shoreline. I saw this as an opportunity to get some Seagull in action shots so moved closer. It was absolute pandemonium at this point and almost impossible to plan a shot. The couple had left some bread on the shore and I began trying to toss some of it up in the air to draw the Seagulls closer with bread in one hand while holding my camera with the other, then quickly juggling it all to try “grab” a shot. This whole planned process was not working so I just set my camera to a shutter speed that would freeze the fastest movement and action, while not opening the aperture so much that I would lose my depth of field. Fortunately, it was a bright sunny day so the ISO stayed low and I basically joined the mayhem and shot at will. When I downloaded the pictures that day, what I saw was pretty sad, and felt like a total loss. I didn’t go back to look at them, until recently. The attached picture looked hopeless from an exposure standpoint and the image of the seagull was small and in the corner of the frame. Fortunately, I was shooting with a full-frame Nikon D750 DSLR so there was a lot of room to crop and still hold the image together. In the end, I pulled the JPG image of the one attaches scene, and made adjustments to it only in Lightroom. To get this image at 1/4000 of a second (didn’t realize I set it that high) and f10 with an ISO of 100 pleased me! Of course, this has compelled me to go back and look at the rest of the Seagull shots from that day to see what else I might find to work with!
