Archive for the ‘Cameras & Photography’ Category

It was almost 8pm when we heard the sound of our driveway gravel snapping and popping under our wheels after almost 8 hours on the road from Grand Marais.  This morning will be spent clearing out the gear, garbage and oder that can collect in your automobile after a few days at a sea kayaking symposium.  So for the moment let me just share some pictures from the 2010 Great Lakes Sea Kayaking Symposium & the wonderful landscapes & seascapes of the Pictured Rocks National Lake Shore region.  Click here for the slideshow.

Is something wrong, she said – Well of course there is
You’re still alive, she said – Oh, and do I deserve to be
Is that the question?
pearl jam

Is not the Optio by Pentax the biggest shaft ever put to a paddlers hide?  I’m on my 3rd.  The W60 is the first one that actually stayed working for more than one season. Working, just long enough for the lens to do it’s impersonation of the record from Monty Python’s Hungarian phrasebook sketch. “I will not buy this camera, It is scratched.”  Of course it is.  There’s no freaking lens cap!  Great plan for a camera that’s supposed to put up with what outdoor folks can throw at it.. Seems obvious doesn’t it? (insert curse here) Read the rest of this entry »

He’s using code that only you and I know.
This is no trick of his.
This is your magic.
– k. bush.

I’m finally making my photography available for purchase.  It certainly took me long enough!

The camera is like an uneven path in a Japanese garden. It forces you to slow down and pay attention to the world around you.  Photography is a gift you give yourself.  You need not sell or even display your work to benefit.  Most of the pictures I take ultimately are deleted or thrown away and still I have pleasant memories of those moments, even when nothing caught in the camera turned out.  Still, if you click the shutter enough you are bound to have a few successes. Read the rest of this entry »

Nothing remains  / We could run / when the rain slows
Look for the cars or signs of life  / Where the heat goes
Look for the drifters / We should crawl under the bracken
Look for the shafts of light on the road
Where the heat goes – bowie

So the idea is to take 3 pictures and sort of mush them together in a way that adds way more data & depth than an average photograph.  Normally this “HDR” or High Dynamic Range photography produces wildly surreal images.  Much of that of course is due to the artistic whims of the photographer who has endless opportunity to tweek the images during processing.  I’ve never really messed with HDR myself. For me most of the enjoyment of photography is in the moment and trying to capture the minds eye as it were (A hopeless task from the start I might add.).  I’ll certainly edit images  in Photoshop, but my joy is camera in hand. Still, I’m also driven to know how things are done, which sent me out to give HDR a go myself yesterday. Only the challenge I set for myself was to make it look well, real.  Then once I got started I totally adjusted my thinking. Yeah, that’s just like me!

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with my face pressed up to the glass, wanting you
beautiful, you’re beautiful, as beautiful as the sky
wonderful, it’s wonderful, to know that you’re just like I
and i’m sure you know me well, as i’m sure you don’t
but you just can’t tell who’ll you love
and who you won’t
– smashing pumkins

I spend a good amount of time in the absence of others.  It starts in the morning when for whatever reason I’m usually awake and chomping at the bit to get on with my day by 5am, sometimes earlier.  The dogs will come join me around 6am, the rest of the house.. 7, or 8am. Sometimes… like yesterday for instance, I’ll head out of doors as soon as the sun comes up and putter around our tiny 3/4 an acre yard.  I’ll weed gardens while the leaves are still wet with morning dew, prune a tree branch I keep seeing in the more active part of the day when I’m in the middle of doing something else, or maybe just stroll around with my coffee in one hand and my camera in the other..

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I’ve got a phone conference with a client coming up in about an hour and all sorts of other businessy bits to deal with today… so all you get for stopping by today (at least for now) is this photograph of my Rockpool Alaw Bach waiting to take me on an early morning paddle up the Lake Michigan coastline toward the Point Beach lighthouse.

Sometimes a photograph is almost like being there. Sometimes a photograph just clarifies where you really are.  Oh well, you know what they say, “Visualize the future you desire, then  make it happen”.  Nothing like a Thursday morning platitude to get the day started.  On the other hand I can’t help but remember what Emerson said, “When there is no vision, people perish.”  Emerson, all the inspiration, none of the BS! And with that… Have a flippin’ fantastic day…

Take a little walk to the edge of town
Go across the tracks Where the viaduct looms
like a bird of doom – Nick Cave

Here’s the music for today’s post…
(opens in a new window)

The folks on the northwest coast always warn you that when the sky is dark and gray for days you simply have to get out and stay active.  So yesterday under the pressure d, claustrophobic squeeze of heavy clouds I drug everyone along to explore another section of the 400 Trail.  Of course the problem with me and clouds is my perspective get’s a big ah, filtered…

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