New web site and new blog are live!

I've moved!

Spring finally appears to have arrived in New Hampshire and I'm happy to announce that I'm finally able to take my new web site live, as well. The site integrates my blog, my portfolio and some other cool features (such as the ability to buy prints directly) that will become more obvious as I add more content there.


Please visit the new site, move your RSS subscriptions and join in the fun at:


www.rwcfoto.com

More portraits

Wonder if Godiva needs any product shots? ;-)

Hoppy Easter

Project Portrait

The past six weeks have been incredibly busy with much travel and even more photos. I currently have a backlog of over 2000 images waiting for me to sort through and pull out the best.  I certainly have plenty of material for future blog posts sitting in my "inbox". When I finally completed the month of travel, my primary focus had to be replacing the aging server in my home office. Unbelievably, this consumer-grade PC has been running continuously for over 10 years with no hiccups and no failures of any kind. Unfortunately, the version of software it is running is so old that there is no longer any support for it and no good way to upgrade or update it. I ordered new server hardware and built up a new server installation from scratch, using current software, and moving bits and pieces over as I went. I'm pleased to say that the new server, though not fully configured, is now live. It also provides the basis for my new photography web site that is under construction. I hope to have that site live in the next 2 to 3 weeks. Now back to work on the photos...

One thing that was on my photographic "to do" list after my recent travels and training was to try a couple of new lighting configurations for shooting portraits. I also wanted a new self-portrait with a lighter background. I set up the backdrop and 3 lights and started shooting. The key light was an SB-900 in a 24" softbox, camera right at 1/8 power. The fill light was an SB-900 in a 1'x3' strip box at camera left. Even at 1/64 power and with the light feathered in front of me, it was still too intense so I added the egg crate grid to bring it down. The background was a bare SB-600 with the dome diffuser sitting on a light stand, just below shoulder level, about 3 feet directly behind me and running at 1/32 power. All of the flashes were controlled by PocketWizard FlexTT5 receivers with a MiniTT1 + AC3 combo on the camera.

To tie it all together, I used OnOne Software's new DSLR Remote HD on the iPad to speed things along and control the camera. It's amazing how much more quickly I was able to make the setup and the inevitable adjustments using LiveView to frame the shots, then fire the camera and instantly see the result without moving from my position in front of the lens. In less than half an hour, I was able to get several shots to add to my portraiture portfolio.

Gore's Art: Made in the Ghetto

Please visit my NEW SITE and read about Russell there!

Russell Gore

While walking through the French Market in New Orleans during my recent trip, hoping for inspiration for our photo assignment, I spotted Russell Gore. His bright green shirt and the gold medallion around his neck are what drew my eye initially. He was sitting at a table laid out with his artwork and was finishing some additional pieces while waiting for customers. He calls his business Gore's Art: Made in the Ghetto and he designs and makes jewelry. He uses colorful strips of plastic, molded together, to create bright and funky pins. I liked them so much I bought two of them.

Russell is a passionate golfer who plays whenever he has time to get out on the course. His green shirt is significant in that he always wears it on the Sunday of The Masters if Tiger is in the hunt. I don't know if he'll be wearing it today or not! He hopes to see Tiger competing for the green jacket again but confesses that he thinks it may be a while before that happens again.

When I asked if I could take his picture, I told him that the shirt and the medallion were what had originally caught my eye. He said, "There's a story about the medallion." I asked him to tell me and he suggested I take the picture first. I should have taken the hint but I insisted that he tell me. That medallion you see in the photo is made from his wife's gold. She died in his arms during Hurricane Katrina. After her death, he gathered it all up and turned it into that medallion. He finished by saying "You can take my money and all the rest that I have and I'll go on. If you take my medallion, I'm coming after you." Somehow, I had trouble focusing the camera to take his picture after that.

As I took my leave, he gave me a reproduction of a newspaper article that had been written about him. When I finally got a chance to read it on the plane home, I discovered he was even more remarkable than I had first thought. Credit goes to Dre Dorse, the author of that article, for the following tidbits:

• He was born and raised in the St. Thomas housing development in New Orleans, otherwise known as the projects.
• He studied commercial art and photography in college and worked as a graphic artist before setting out to start his own business.
• He spends at least two days a week back at the St. Thomas projects working with kids to try and keep them away from drugs and other destructive behaviors

Russell truly is a remarkable, humble, thoughtful man and it was a real pleasure to share a few minutes of his time. His art is cool too!

New Orleans: Day 1

First things first: I had a wonderful time in New Orleans on my National Geographic Weekend Photo Expedition. I met some great people, both as part of the program and the locals, learned a lot, and got better (I hope). It was wonderful to meet Tyrone, Jennifer and Krista and they worked hard to make sure we had a good time and a great experience. I'm already trying to figure out which one to do next. Tucson or Santa Fe look mighty interesting... There is far too much to detail in a single post so I'm going to be writing about the weekend for several posts to come.

How it worked: For the 2 full days of the workshop, we went out to shoot with a specific focus in mind. We were out for 3-4 hours and then returned to the classroom to review our take. We were each expected to pick our top 20 images from the day and then sit with one of the instructors (Tyrone one day, Jennifer the next) to critique those 20. As part of the critique, they would pick their top 3 or 4 images to be displayed for comment to the entire group. The critiques were an extremely useful vehicle for learning what to look for in a photo, particularly as we were encouraged to listen in on each other's critiques when we had the time.

Day 1 officially began at 9am. However, about half of us met Tyrone in Jackson Square at 5:45am to catch the sunrise and beautiful early morning light. I ended up selecting a couple of these in my 20 for the day (more in a future post), including this one of the St. Louis Cathedral.

Off to New Orleans

I had another blog post planned for this week (a shoot involving colored gels on the flash) but I ran out of time to write it. It will still be there to write when I get home. This post is guaranteed to be my shortest yet!

I'm on the plane (and hoping that blogger works well enough on the iPad to let me post this) en route to New Orleansa by way of Atlanta, for a National Geographic Weekend Photo Expedition. I turned 50 last fall and this trip was my birthday present. It took a while to find the right expedition but this is it. I'm at once excited and terrified.

I hope to have lots of good images and stories to share on the blog after this weekend. As the cliché says: stay tuned...

In motion

This past weekend, I needed to shoot photos showing motion for an assignment in a course I'm taking. I was not allowed to use flash which pretty much required that the shots be done outside. In the winter in New England, outdoor motion photography is hard to come by except on the ski slopes so that's where I headed with the camera.

There are two primary ways to illustrate motion in a photo and I had the option of submitting either or both for my assignment. It was an exceedingly bright day making it difficult to tell whether I was getting anything usable while we were still on the mountain so I made a number of shots with each technique and planned to sort out my submission once I got the images back to the computer. I ended up with some good examples of both techniques and submitted one of each.

The first technique is referred to as "stop motion" or "stop action". It involves using a very fast shutter speed to freeze everything in the frame. In order for this technique to work, the subject has to be caught in a position that isn't physically possible when at rest. As luck would have it, my first shot on the mountain was the best of the "stop action" shots and is the one I submitted.

200mm, ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/2000 © Richard Critz

The glare from the snow and not being able to use my goggles with the viewfinder made tracking him to guarantee that the camera focused a serious challenge and I was essentially shooting half-blind. While I would like to have caught more of his skis while he was airborne and would have liked to have the critical focus be on his eyes instead of the tips of his skis, I think this shot succeeds quite well at capturing motion.

Fiddler on the Roof

Ok, so it's a bad joke. "Sunrise, Sunset" is the name of one of the songs in the musical "Fiddler on the Roof", one of the classics and one where I still know most of the music despite never having actually seen it on stage, only on film.

What's that have to do with photography? Nothing, except that today's post is a short and sweet one about sunrises and sunsets. These shots are all about playing with the White Balance setting on the camera to enhance the colors rendered by the camera. Facebook friends have already seen them.

The sunrises are first (well, duh) and were shot with the camera set for a standard, cloudy white balance. For these shots, I had to boost blacks and highlights to improve the contrast, and boost the saturation of the reds and yellows just slightly (all in Lightroom). With a little more time to fiddle with the camera, I probably could have gotten closer to this directly out of the camera but I was trying to snatch the photo in the 3 minutes where the light was just right.

20mm, ISO 800, f/3.5, 1/25 © Richard Critz

20mm, ISO 800, f/3.5, 1/80 © Richard Critz

Pro glass

The Nikon D300 (and its bigger brothers) are incredible performers in low light. One can shoot at ISO 1600, and even higher, without fear of luminance or color noise spoiling the frame. Even up at ISO 3200 on the D300, the noise is easily managed with small adjustments in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw. Unfortunately, even with that capability, being limited to a maximum aperture of f/5.6 when fully zoomed on my consumer-grade zoom lenses has made it a challenge to get photos in dim auditoriums. It also makes portraiture more difficult by requiring more light from the strobes and having too large a depth-of-field.

An iPhone picture

Since I'm doing much shooting in dim auditoriums and am looking to start trying to do some portraiture professionally, I decided to take the plunge and buy the first item on my drool list, the Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR II lens. This is a professional grade beast that seems universally loved by the shooters who have it. If nothing else, I'll build up my left arm just holding the thing!

Technically, it features a couple of huge advantages. First, unlike my other zooms, its maximum aperture doesn't change as it zooms. It's a solid f/2.8 across the board. This gives me a full 2 stops more light through the lens when it's racked out to 200mm. Second, it has Nikon's latest generation vibration reduction technology (VR II) which lets me shoot without a tripod at much slower shutter speeds than would otherwise be possible. Nikon's marketing materials claim VR II allows you to hand-hold 4 stops slower than would be possible without VR II. Most of the reviews I've read contend that's pretty accurate.

Mega-softbox

It was a few minutes before sunrise and it had snowed just enough the night before that the schools had declared a 2-hour delayed opening. The sky was still thick with clouds, almost to the ground, and there was enough fresh, new snow to make everything clean and white again. Sounds were muffled and the air was still. In short, it was one of those rare mornings that make New England winters worthwhile!

The clouds and the snow also made the light amazing. It was broad and soft, with no harsh shadows. It really was like being inside a gigantic softbox. The challenge, of course, was to make the camera see and, more importantly, reproduce what I was seeing. These are exactly the conditions that highlight the difference in dynamic range (the difference between the brightest highlights and the darkest shadows) between the human eye and a camera. The eye is so much more capable of adjusting to extremes.

Playing the drums

Tonight's installment will be short, I promise. (And less Greek, Kali! Well, maybe not, but I'll try.)

When I got my SB-900 flashes, one of the many cool features I discovered in the manual is the ability to do a repeating strobe effect. This is definitely not something my older SB-600 flash could do. I immediately had the idea of using it to catch my older model, Thing 1, playing the drums. Of course, the first time I tried, I really didn't have a clue what I was doing and failed completely. I didn't even keep any of the shots, they were that bad.

However, not to be deterred, I kept studying, playing, experimenting with other lighting and mulling the shoot over in the back of my mind. Finally, a couple of days ago, I thought I knew enough to try it again. First, I had to wait for nightfall. I knew that I needed to have essentially no ambient light because I was going to have to use a 2 second shutter speed and I needed the camera to record only what it could see when the flash was firing. The room where the drums live has LOTS of windows, so nighttime shooting was the only option.

Flash? Oh no!

Since I first picked up a camera with malicious intent again 2 years ago, I have largely avoided situations requiring me to use flash or otherwise add to the existing light in my shots. Yes, I had a Speedlight (Nikon SB-600) that I would use when I absolutely had to, but I hated the results I got and no amount of "but you just have to bounce the flash" made it better. In short, the results sucked. Thus, I confined myself to outdoor photography and to taking advantage of the outstanding low light capabilities of my D300. To be sure, I got some great pictures within those limitations but I was still restricted.

Back in October, I decided that I could no longer live with these limitations and that I had to figure out how to use, really use, flash to control the light in my photos. To that end, I started reading everything I could find and watching every video I could lay my hands on. I discovered Joe McNally's blog and video courses (arguably the most amazing lighting artist around and a damn fine photographer, too), David Hobby's blog (aka the Strobist), training from Scott Kelby, Neil van Neikerk's blog (a wizard with shaping a single, on-camera flash so that it looks like you didn't use a flash), Russ MacDonald's blog (anything and everything that should have been in the Nikon Speedlight manuals and is not) and many other resources as well.

I learned concepts for shaping light, diffusing light, adding more lights, setting flashes to provide different amounts of light (you can do that? -- who knew!), the joys of Nikon's Creative Lighting System (CLS) -- an advanced wireless system for controlling their lights (very effectively, too; see McNally above) -- and on and on. I discovered many reasons why my previous efforts had been destined to fail from the outset. I learned, really learned, how to operate my Speedlights and that all those "weird" adjustments not only are not weird, but are entirely necessary if one is going to make good photos.

I had never realized that the truly good pictures of people that you see in print and on the web look NOTHING like the reality of the situation in which they are made. Just outside the view of the lens in those photos, there are softboxes, umbrellas, reflectors, diffusers, strip lights and lord only knows what else. It may be pitch black dark when the image looks like daylight or it may be broad daylight and look like the middle of the night. And so, I began the process of completely remaking the way I think about light when shooting people, even outdoors. I've only made my first baby steps down the path but I've had a couple of successes that have made me think that I might, just might, have the beginnings of a clue how to do this.

I knew that in order to do this I was going to need more equipment so after much study, I decided the first steps needed to be with Speedlights, both for size and cost. The softbox and other light shaping tools I got to start with all had to be models that would work with a Speedlight rather than requiring a studio strobe of some sort. Then, it was time to experiment.  Experiments require victims. My family have been thoroughly victimized.  Luckily, they aren't complaining (much) and we're starting to get some really cool shots.

The first success was the family Christmas portrait. Ok, I didn't actually shoot it until AFTER Christmas but it's still the family Christmas portrait. I already think I would light it differently now but using what I knew at the time, I set my key light to camera right, an SB-900 shooting through a Lastolite Tri-Grip diffuser. The second light started as my SB-600 shooting through a Lastolite 40" umbrella with the bottom half flagged (blocked with opaque material to stop the light) set to camera left. I triggered the camera remotely and shot with the camera tethered to my laptop so that we could all see the results immediately. I had the lights balanced just so and we were ready, so we all went to change to "real" picture clothes. And the wheels fell off.

Now I knew that our picture clothes were darker than what we had been wearing during the set up and I expected to have to make some minor tweaks to the flash values as a result. What I didn't expect was for the SB-600 to go nuts and starting firing at full power, complaining the whole way that it was unable to deliver the requested flash power, and totally blowing out the image. I didn't figure out until later (with the help of Russ MacDonald, in fact) that the problem was all due to the way TTL metering is done in the camera. If I had been working behind the camera, rather than trying to be in the picture, I could easily have set the camera to spot meter just on a face, locked the value in, recomposed and shot the picture and had no trouble. In retrospect, doing that kind of self-portrait is probably done with less frustration by using manual flash settings and foregoing TTL metering altogether.  In the end, I ended up switching out the SB-600 for an SB-900 (more powerful) because I misunderstood what it was telling me. And through dumb luck (more accurately known as "my oldest son moved around just enough to get his face into the metering part of the frame") we got the shot. And, in my opinion, it's the best picture of the 4 of us we've ever had.

As always, click on a photo to see a larger version.

65mm, ISO 200, f/8.0, 1/6 © Richard Critz

82mm, ISO 400, f/5, 1/80
© Richard Critz

Next up, I tried a technique for "simulated sunshine". This was shot indoors on a snowy day.  If you look closely enough, you can see that there is some ambient light from outdoors coming through the window behind the Christmas tree. The light, however, is a bare SB-900 set on a stand, about 12 feet off to camera right, slightly behind my model and about 8 feet above the floor. I used no diffuser, no gel, no light modifier of any kind, just a bare flash and a willing subject (aka Mr. GQ). The flash was zoomed (unfortunately I don't remember to what setting) to give the light more punch. And it really is, I think, a creditable imitation of the hard light of the sun.

60mm, ISO 400, f/8, 1/80
© Richard Critz

Finally, I changed subjects (also willing, though more likely to complain about the lights going off in his eyes) to try for a dramatic profile shot. For this, I set the 24" softbox at camera right, facing exactly across the shot (parallel to the camera's focal plane) and with the edge closest to the camera directly in line with my model's nose. In order to avoid the "zombie effect" (which would have been somewhat masked by his glasses anyway), I had him keep his nose to the softbox but to look to his right with his eyes only. It's not much use for soccer player cards and school IDs, but the soft quality of the light along with the dramatic fall off into shadows was exactly the effect I was looking for. As a side note, this was shot only a few minutes after the "imitation sun" photos above, in exactly the same place in the room and with daylight still streaming through the windows behind the Christmas tree.

46mm, ISO 400, f/4.5, 1/100
© Richard Critz

Roue de Paris

In the last post, I described how I got totally useless results trying to photograph the Roue de Paris ferris wheel on my first evening in Paris. The second night, overcast but with no rain, I went out again to get much closer to the wheel and get both sharp "stop motion" shots and a good motion blur shot. With that goal in mind, I headed to the Place de la Concorde with my 18-200mm on the camera and the 70-300 on my belt for good measure. When I reached the Place de la Concorde, I knew right away that I was going to have much better luck this night.

The first objective was to get a sharp, "stop motion" shot. I picked a spot that actually allowed the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde to be part of the composition. After watching the wheel up close for a few moments, it became clear that my primary motion challenge was that of the lights decorating the wheel, and not the movement of the wheel itself. While I could certainly have pushed the ISO a bit to increase the overall exposure, I think this photo captures the ambiance pretty well.

As always, click on a photo to see a larger version.

40mm, ISO 400, f/4.5, 1/60 © Richard Critz

Next up, get a good motion blur showing the wheel in action. This proved to be harder than expected because they didn't seem to want to run the wheel for any extended period of time. In a gross overreaction to my disappointing results the previous night, I started with a 15 second exposure. That didn't work. Not at all. Even 8 seconds was way, way too much but I can show you that one without fear of your clawing your eyes out. I also went with the smallest aperture the lens offers in an effort to keep the image from blowing out entirely while waiting for the wheel to move. That part, at least, did work.

48mm, ISO 400, f/29, 8 sec © Richard Critz

After a bit more fiddling about, I got what I was looking for with a 2 second exposure:

48mm, ISO 400, f/29, 2 sec © Richard Critz

And then the magic happened. While I succeeded in the getting the motion blur I was looking for, I still wasn't really happy with the image. I just didn't have that "pop" I was looking for. Then it occurred to me that the D300 has the ability to do something called "multiple exposure". This is a setting that essentially allows me to take a specified number of exposures and have the camera combine them all into a single image. I had never intentionally done it before (I did one by accident at my sister-in-law's wedding while trying to set up something completely different -- that didn't count). A mad scramble to find the setting in the menus ensues. Once I found it, I had no idea if it would work like a film camera where each subsequent exposure adds to the overall light in the frame, eventually causing the image to be blown out. I decided to assume this to be the case and promptly backed everything off 2 stops.

Well, it turns out, the camera is smarter than the photographer and it knew enough not to oversaturate the image. So after a several tests, I ended up right back where I started with the single, frozen shots for exposure settings. I did several with 4 exposures in a frame and ended up with several frames containing 8 exposures each. Those are the ones I've chosen to publish and here are 2, from different perspectives:

48mm, ISO 400, f/4.5, 1/60, 8 exposures © Richard Critz

40mm, ISO 400, f/4.5, 1/80, 8 exposures © Richard Critz

20mm, ISO 200, f/22, 1.6" © Richard Critz

I then moved closer for some shots looking through the axis of the wheel. You may remember that I had the wrong lenses with me the previous evening. Tonight, I left the 12-24 wide angle in the hotel room and now I needed it. I made do with my 18-200 zoom but I couldn't get the angles I really wanted. I've included the best of the "blurs" here -- I think it looks a bit like a waterfall wrapped around the outside of the wheel. Some of the other shots can be seen here.

At this point, my fingers were starting to get cold and I was ready to hit the sack in preparation for the trip home the next morning. As I was folding the tripod I happened to turn towards the Eiffel Tower and realized immediately that I couldn't put the camera away just yet. I've always wanted a good shot of the Tower with its powerful rotating beacon at the top caught in the picture.

105mm, ISO 400, f/5.3, 1/3" © Richard Critz

I've also wanted to capture the many strobes on the Tower that light up at the top of each hour. When I was in Paris in July 2010, I didn't have my tripod with me so I shot a sequence of handheld frames and then merged them in Photoshop.

Photoshop merge of a number of handheld shots © Richard Critz

I was pretty pleased with the result but it still didn't capture the true effect. The magic was still working and I got it all in a single image without having to resort to the wonders of Photoshop.

112mm, ISO 400, f/5.3, 1/4" © Richard Critz

Paris reflections

The company I used to fly for established offices in London and Paris several years ago.  As a result, both have been a regular destination for us and I have taken most all of the "standard" photographs.  Now, when I go out in either city, I have to give myself an "assignment".  My default assignment, if one can call it that, is inspired by Jay Maisel in an interview he did with Scott Kelby.  When Jay goes out walking in his neighborhood in New York, he is looking for interesting faces and textures.  He shoots anything he sees that strikes his fancy in that area and usually comes out with some good shots.  I had some success with that back in the summer of 2010 so, as I say, it's become my default.

In preparing for my trip last week, the weather forecast for was cold and wet for the entire stay.  I nearly left the camera at home.  Luckily, a good friend and outstanding photographer pointed out this article written by National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson and I planned to give his philosophy a try.

After 2 days in London without a single good reason to get the camera out, we arrived in Paris on Wednesday evening, just after the rain had stopped.  The first thing I noticed as we approached the hotel is that there is now this enormous ferris wheel, the Roue de Paris, installed across the Champs Elysées.  All thoughts of looking for reflections on the wet pavement went right out the window and I started planning how to get a good "blur" shot of the wheel.

70mm, ISO 400, f/4.5, 1/13 © Richard Critz

By the time dinner was done, it was nearing midnight and I was afraid the wheel would shut down. I grabbed both my 70-300 and 12-24 lenses, figuring one or the other would give me just what I needed, and headed out.  Just a block from the hotel I snapped this shot, thinking the different color lights and their reflection from the sidewalk was pretty cool  and that it would satisfy my "assignment".

I got about halfway to the Place de la Concorde and decided this was the perfect place set up the tripod in the middle of a crosswalk.  I was zoomed all the way at 300mm but the wheel was filling the frame nicely.  I did several shots at shutter speeds between 1/6" and 3" and thought, based on what I could see on the LCD, that I might have something usable.  Unfortunately, I was wrong.  The shorter speed shots, intended to freeze the motion of the wheel and/or the moving lights, really still left me with a blurry image.  The longer exposure shots, because of my distance from the wheel, picked up a great deal of ambient light from headlights driving towards me and from street lights between me at the wheel, probably a quarter mile away.  This caused a problem with flare, color shift from mishmash of different color temperature of the lights, and produced an image that looked as if I had shot it handheld with a point-and-shoot camera, as you can see here. Of course, I didn't realize this until I got back to the room and loaded the images onto the computer.

300mm, ISO 200, f/29, 3" © Richard Critz

Luckily, as I walked back to the hotel, I managed to shift gears back to my original assignment: looking for reflections on the wet sidewalk.  I switched to the 12-24 because the 70 would have required me to stand in the street, a target for crazy Parisian drivers.  I got this image at the entrance to the Virgin Megastore, which never seems to close.  A few passers-by gave me funny looks, trying to figure out why I could possibly want a picture of the store entrance without any people in it at all.

24mm, ISO 400, f/8, 1/15 © Richard Critz

And then I stumbled across the "image of the night".  The Parisians love their outdoor cafés, no matter the hour, the temperature, or amount of water falling from the sky.  They put up space heaters and curtains and bundle up and shiver while eating their late night snack or having a drink.  I didn't want to intrude on these people so I couldn't reasonably go close, but the 70 would have left out much of the scene.  So, of course, the one lens I really needed was sitting back in the hotel.  Nonetheless, I got this capture with great reflections and the bonus juxtaposition of 2 completely different pools of color.

24mm, ISO 400, f/8, 0.4" © Richard Critz

Of course, I was disappointed at not getting the shot of the wheel that I had imagined but I was thrilled with this unexpected bonus.

© Richard Critz

The next day, I played a little with applying a tilt-shift effect in Photoshop.  When I started, I thought this shot was going to be a great candidate for the effect.  I soon discovered that even with cropping to better contain the blur of the effect, a standard band of focus looked silly.  I tried a radial blur instead, centered on the guy leaving the café.  That was a little better but kind of missed the mark.  And, of course, the colors are already so saturated that there was no decent way to push it further. So I declared that experiment a failure and moved on to planning my next assault on the Roue de Paris.  More on that in my next entry.

And so it begins...

As a corporate pilot, I get to travel all over the world. I get to see amazing things and trying to capture those feelings, I grow as a photographer. This blog is a chance for me to capture not only experiences, but notes to myself about photographic experiments and what I learned from them.


I find that I shoot sporadically, needing a "theme" or "assignment" or some other inspiration to get me really looking at the world like a photographer.  In thinking back over most of the sets of pictures I've captured over the past year, I'm finding that I wish I had made some notes on the process -- a diary, as it were -- to be able to look back at them later.  My first 2 posts are already planned, to cover my 2 evenings of shooting in Paris last week.  I'm trying to get them down on "paper" before they leave my feeble memory altogether.


While much of what I write here will be interesting primarily to me, you are welcome here: welcome to read, to comment, to commiserate.


And a final note: I've never done a blog before.  As such, I have no idea what many of the knobs and switches on this software do.  I'm going to be experimenting some and I expect there will be some fairly dramatic changes to the appearance of this blog, if nothing else, over the next couple of weeks.  Among other things, I'm likely to experiment with the available templates until I find one that "fits" me.