Just in case you missed it...

There's a really great Q&A on Strobist today with photographer Bil Zelman. The interesting part of the piece, for me anyway, was that it was about stripping down and shooting images for emotion, not technical approach which is usually what strobist is all about. I love reading strobist to understand lighting and how to reverse engineer a shot, but even more interesting to me are the conversations that happen between David Hobby and other Pros.

Included in the piece on Strobist is a brief video featuring a slideshow of Bil Zelman's work and a recording of him talking about his process and philosophy. One thing he said in there really struck a chord with me, and it's something I am trying to remind myself of when I think about what I want to capture and create:

"There's a big difference between style and technique."
- Bil Zelman

from strobist.com and zelmanstudios.com

The three greatest words in the English language...

...OUT FOR DELIVERY

I have a few strange habits, but probably the strangest is my fetish for receiving mail. When I get home from work, after I say hello to the kids (and sometimes before even saying hello to the wife) I usually ask if we got any mail that day. Even if I'm not expecting anything.

So when I'm waiting for something I've ordered, and I check the UPS or FedEx status and see the words OUT FOR DELIVERY I get this Christmas-eve, last-day-of-school, night-before-vacation excitement.

Today, and for the next three days, I expect something to arrive at the house for me. First up is the scanner which I have already posted about way too many times. Along with the scanner I should be getting two prints that I had done up from the two winners in the photo club theme contests I've been running (another post coming on that at some point).

Tomorrow should be a few prints for the house that my wife wanted to hang up. She's my only customer right now (hint: Etsy shop link here for your convenience where you can buy my prints ).

And on Wednesday I'll be getting in the frames and mats for prints I'll receive today. These theme winners are being hung up at work. Pretty exciting, although since I am running the monthly meetings and heading up the club I have taken myself out of the competition.

It's a very exciting week for mail at my house.

Finally! it's back in stock!!

man that seemed to take forever...

After finally settling on a scanner I went to B&H (had a gift card) to see about ordering it only to see that it was Out Of Stock. That was about two weeks ago. I dutifully signed up for the Notify Me When This Is In service and would routinely check the site just because I don't trust those services much. There must've been a massive shortage of these scanners because I could not find one anywhere - even the Epson store itself was sold out.

Well just a minute ago in my inbox arrived a note from B&H informing me that the scanner was back in stock and ready to be ordered!

It should arrive on Monday, providing countless hours of sleep deprivation and excitement. I predict I'll be needing a new harddive soon.

In case anyone is wondering, the scanner is an Epson v-500 - see it here: Epson V-500 @ B&H Photo

This is by no means an endorsement... I'll give my two cents when I have a week or so to play with it.

Last shot from Alaska, and a post to Etsy

I thought I was done with the Alaska posts, then I decided to put up one more shot from our stay in Vancouver on the way to Alaska.

This is again from our room at the hotel in downtown Vancouver. We had decent weather while we were there, but on this day it was entirely overcast. The buildings shed this really eerie green light.

You can click on the image to see it in my Etsy store.

Vermont

I lived in Vermont for about four years while attending college. Unfortunately at that time I hadn't been into photography at all. I went back there last fall to attend a friend's wedding and she asked me to take some photos for her of the ceremony. I was definitely nervous. 

While wandering around the farm where they got married I was struck by these massive trees and the way the sun like was filtering through one of them. 

What's it like to take photos of our new President?

A short post on the NYTimes.com Caucus Blog gives a glimpse into what it's like to take part in a 'pool spray' - a presidential photo op that is very much like a run and gun event.

From the size of the crowd and the amount of shutters you hear firing I would guess the approach is a 'spray and pray' one - hoping that if you bracket and fire off as many exposures as you can that you'll get at least one good image.

I can't imagine what it must be like to be one of these photographyers. It would seem that all the joy and passion of taking images is completely gone when it comes to something like this.

Anyway, here's the link that contains a video of the event - just don't blink or you might miss it:

The White House spray

from NYTimes.com from The Online Photographer

Photography and music I like

I was pretty intrigued by the cover and liner shots of Andrew Bird's new album, Noble Beast, so I went looking in the album credits and was happy to see that the photographer's name was included. 

Cameron Wittig was the photographer who took the album shots, and his website is here: www.cameron-photo.com. His site shows a lot of his art, and of particular interest to me are the images under the music section of his portraits.

I had never heard of Cameron Wittig before reading his name in the liner notes, so imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon him again from an image that was posted to FFFFound.com. 

Anyway, I figured I'd share it with you since I am a fan of the man he captured on film and recently became a fan of the man who captured him. 

More images from the Alaska trail

This pond was alongside the trail where we encountered the bear. It's hard to see but in the background you should be able to pick out some of the low-level fog that seemed to be with us for 80% of the trip. 

These photos from the trail were only half of the outing that day. From there we went to a port and boarded a rigid hull inflatable to search for some whales in the sound. We were lucky enough to catch a few humpbacks while we were out there. I'll put those images up in a post tomorrow.

Guy goes hiking, finds camera in river, recovers images, now looking for the owner

Pretty amazing story here: http://basinfoundcamera.blogspot.com/

From the blog:

While hiking in New Hampshire this summer, I found a digital camera at the bottom of a river. Although the camera was completely destroyed, I was able to carefully take it apart and safely recover the photos from its memory chip.

I once lost a phone while on a hike and had it returned to me a few months later after someone recovered it. At that point all I had lost were a few phone numbers and I was ecstatic to get it back. I can only imagine how happy the original owner would be to be reunited with these lost images and videos.

So, if you recognize the people in these photos show them this blog!

Alaska again? Found in the forest around Mendenhall Glacier

Two more things I encountered on the trail from the parking lot to the glacier. First was this mess of ferns and growth that looked ancient - I mean paleolithic ancient. A lot of the forest surrounding the path just had this old feel to it, even though the growth there wasn't all that old considering that less than 100 years before it was covered in ice from the glacier.




The next thing we encountered on the trail was a bit more animated. When we got dropped off by the shuttle there were about a dozen photographers in the group. In the parking lot we all got off the shuttle and a handful of people went to use the facilities. While they were in there the shuttle relocated about a 1/4 mile back across from the trail exit.

Turns out one guy misunderstood the way things were going to happen and he left his gear on the shuttle. A photo hike without your gear makes for a pretty pointless photo hike. So the guide sent him back to the shuttle and told him to head in on the trail via the exit point and eventually he'd catch up with us.


Fast forward to my group walking up the trail. We are casually making our way and I am next in line right after the guide. So she rounds a blind corner with me only a few paces behind her and immediately she freezes. She slowly turns around and says, "You guys are going to get your money's worth in about 10 seconds - everyone slowly step backward until I tell you to stop." So we all do and as we're backpeddling a black bear rounds the corner just plodding along.


He keeps walking up the trail toward us and we keep retreating. I am scrambling trying to change lenses to my 70-200 and eventually I fire off a few frames. They're shaky as hell, and would be no good blown up, but I did manage to get a few shots.


The bear eventually veers off course and leaves the trail heading into the woods. About a minute or two after the bear disappears the guy who left his gear behind starts walking toward us. Turns out he saw the bear a ways up the trail and was effectively flushing him toward us.


Had that guy not left his gear on the shuttle we probably would've never encountered the bear. Of course him pushing the bear toward us and effectively sandwiching the bear between two groups of people was a seriously dumb idea, and the guide wasn't too happy, but it made for a good photo.