Digital Magazines

A review (sort of) that is photography related (again, sort of) but not about photography. After getting a Kindle Fire I decided to try subscribing to a couple of digital magazines, National Geographic and Outdoor Photographer. Both feature very nice photographs and it seems a shame to throw away/recycle print copies after reading them but what do you do with them? Enter digital subscriptions.

I really like the National Geographic digital presentation. They reformat the articles for digital presentation, text is separated and scrolls vertically, moving from section to section is done with horizontal scrolls. Photos are organized in albums for viewing with only captions. They even include interactive maps and audio/video clips. Very cool stuff, very well done, it takes good advantage of the touch screen. I haven't done a side-by-side check of the digital version against the print version but I think the articles are condensed from the print version. They don't seem as long as I remember from when I had a print subscription in the past but they are long enough to convey the stories. I don't finish one wishing they had included more and I read almost all of them. The one niggle I have is their app/delivery system. Perhaps the digital format they have chosen dictates it but I have to guess when an issue is available, open the app, log in and manually download the new issues. Maybe if they sent an automated email to let me know when a new issue was available it would annoy me less but aside from checking, there seems to be no way to know for sure when the latest issue is available. Never the less I give them 4½ stars out of 5 for the great presentation of great content.

Outdoor Photographer got the delivery right. When a new issue comes out it automatically downloads to my Kindle and pops up - BAM! as Emeril would say. No effort on my part. That's the last cool thing about the digital version of Outdoor Photographer. All they do is digitize the print version as whole pages, like a pdf file. Perhaps that would work fine on a desktop computer with a large screen but on a Kindle sized tablet it is a navigation nightmare. If you view the whole page, the print is far to small to read. If you enlarge it enough to be legible you are looking at only a section of page and spend all your time scrolling both sideways and up/down trying to read it. And because OP has a nasty habit of spanning photos across pages you see only a portion of the photo at a time or turn the Kindle sideways for a full two page view which is very small. Consequently I find myself reading very little of OP, a quick scan of each issue and perhaps one article, that's it. Add this to the editor's apparent notion that the only good landscapes are west of Denver (an annoyance I've noted in the past) and I will pass on renewing that subscription.

I've tried other digital subscriptions (news media) and noticed the same issue. They either scan and dump the print version as whole pages, sometimes in a proprietary format like Zinio, or they reformat the content to fit the constraints & advantages of digital presentation. IMO the latter is superior and the former is a poor substitute for print which isn't dead yet and won't be until publishers wise up to the differences or perhaps those who don't will simply cease publishing altogether.

The photo above has nothing to do with the post. It is just there for your viewing pleasure. It is from the canoe trip in the prior post. Like the others it was made from the canoe. Please respect my copyright and do not repost either the photos or the text without permission. Share by referring to this URL of this page.

Another Season Begins

I went canoeing in the Adirondacks on Saturday. I hadn't been out in my canoe in the last two summers and vowed not to miss another season. I started on Mountain Pond on Rt 30 but the wind was pretty strong down the length of the pond and was a headwind on my return to where I had put in.  I wanted to paddle more but decided I needed a more protected body of water so for my second excursion I went to Church Pond in Paul Smiths.

There was some headwind as I set out but it was less strong, or so I thought as I had less trouble paddling into it. Church Pond is somewhat smaller than Mountain Pond but is linked to Little Osgood Pond by a canal that was dug by Paul Smith. There is another canal from Little Osgood to Osgood Pond which by some standards could be called a lake. I have never understood the pond vs lake naming in the Adirondacks. It is so capricious that it must have been a matter of whim by the person naming the body of water. It does not seem to bear any relationship to relative size.

The stump above is along the shore of Church Pond on the side toward St John's of the Wilderness (http://jims-ramblings.blogspot.com/2009/08/st-johns-of-wilderness.html). It was the new evergreen growing on the side of the stump that first caught my eye. Upon closer inspection I decided to include the whole stump and surroundings. I especially liked the reflections on the ripples in the water. The image was converted to B&W in Lightroom based on a preset that I created. I tend to tweak all presets taking into account the individual image and this was no exception.

After paddling the length of Church Pond I came to the canal where I found a second interesting stump. Photographing this one was a challenge from the canoe. The canal is completely under the shade of the surrounding trees and a canoe is not a very stable platform. I managed a sufficiently short shutter speed (exposing for the shadows) by raising the ISO and opening the diaphragm to f/8, helped along undoubtedly by the image stabilization in my Canon 7D. The version above has a modified Lightroom Infrared preset applied to it. I did away with the negative clarity in the preset and added some sharpening, also a touch of burning in on the upper stump.

I wasn't able to navigate the second canal to Osgood from Little Osgood because of blow down across the narrow channel. Perhaps another day. On the return trip I stopped to photograph the lean-to and dock that are adjacent the canal in Church Pond. Again I used the modified LR Infrared preset. Returning to the dock where I had put in I had a tailwind but noticed a distinct current flowing in the opposite direction. That may well account for the relative ease of paddling into the wind when I first set out. It was a good start to a new season of paddling and hiking in the Adirondacks.

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Thinking About Art

Recently I watched “The Monuments Men”, a movie that I recommend although this isn’t a review. This is more of a mulling or pondering of the rationale the main characters used for their mission in light of how the world has changed since WWII.

For those who aren’t familiar with the movie the plot (based on real life) involves a group of art specialists who set out to save the art that has been stolen by the Nazis in their advance through Europe. They volunteer to serve in a special unit to find, identify and retrieve great works of art as the Germans retreat after D-Day. The rationale for the mission is that the art represents the culture of the invaded countries and if it is lost or destroyed it will mean the destruction of the culture. As the lead character puts it, people can be killed but new generations will be born and the culture lives on through the art, thus it is important to preserve the art.

As the Germans gathered up the art in their retreat they stored it in mines and it takes the protagonists some time to learn where it is. The rest of the army is too busy fighting to provide more than minimal assistance and pays little attention when the Monuments Men do succeed. The only discovery they make that gets attention is a cache of gold in one of the mines. That gets everyone’s attention including the media. Over the course of their self assigned mission the Monuments Men save and return millions of pieces of art, paintings, sculpture, etc. In the process they lost two of their unit plus two members of the team from allied forces. In the final scenes, Frank Stokes, the leader of the unit is reviewing the mission for his superiors and is asked “Was it worth it?”. He responds that it was.

After the movie I wondered about his premise in terms of the modern world. In prewar Europe I can see where it could be argued that the art and architecture was the embodiment of the culture in which it existed. In today’s global society I’m not sure that still applies. Yes, there are remnants of that old culture but it is rapidly fading and art is more an expression of the individual artist than of the culture and values of the society in which the artist works. Would any art curator today risk life and limb to salvage Damien Hirst’s pickled shark on the pretext that it represented our culture? Or how about Raffaello D’Andrea’s robotic chair? I wonder.

Back in the Adirondacks

It's been a while (last fall) since I've been down to the Adirondacks to do some photography. Sunday I drove to Old Forge to take in the last day of Paddlefest. The event was disappointing on two counts. One, the weather was distinctly chilly. There were only a handful of people brave enough to try out the paddle boards and boats. Second, there were even fewer canoes than last year. The vast majority of craft were standup paddle boards and every sort of kayak you can imagine. The guys from Slipstream Watercraft had their superlight canoes there (as little as 9½#). Those were interesting but not suitable for my uses.

I did a bit of photography along the way. The waterfall above is right alongside Rt 28. The stream comes out of a large culvert a bit up stream and then runs parallel to the highway for a bit. There is a bit of guardrail in the picture at the very top. I probably shouldn't confess that. I should just let you all think I hiked several miles to reach this place. I will be doing that later this summer (hiking) but not on this trip.

I also drove down to Thendara to check out the RR station there. I was last there when they were just gathering old RR cars to restore. I made some photos of the station, which is architecturally interesting, and a box car that was there.

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Spring At Last

Real spring at last. Until the first wildflowers emerge it is not spring. It is lingering winter. The first wildflower of the year around here is always Bloodroot, so called because if you pick it the sap from its stem is blood red. But you should never pick them because they are an endangered flower and easily killed. As for the past few years these photos were taken along the Stone Valley Trail  (East side) on the Colton end.

Bloodroot is an unusual flower having two stems, one with the leaf and another with the bloom. When they first come up the leaf is curled protectively around the flower bud, then the leaf opens followed by the bloom. The blooms don't last long and aren't very big, averaging a bit over an inch across when fully open. If you go in search of them remember to take only photographs and leave only footprints. Also be careful where you leave footprints. Remember that other flowers are trying to emerge from beneath the leaves covering the forest floor.

Although I like to photograph single flowers they are generally social like this group at the base of a tree.

Please do not repost without permission. To share these photos refer your friends to the URL for this page. Thank you and happy spring to all, at least in the northern hemisphere.

Full Moon Setting

Once again I have been delinquent about posting. The truth is I haven't been doing a lot of photography. Here in NNY we are in what is commonly known as 'mud season', after the snow melts but before the greens of spring start. Generally speaking the landscape is rather dismal. I did shoot this photo of the full moon  setting one morning shortly after the "Blood Moon" eclipse which we couldn't see here due to overcast. The sun is just peeking over the horizon behind me, enough to lend a lavender hue to the clouds which are mostly still in the Earth's shadow. Dawn and dusk photos of the moon are easier than night time ones because the sky and moon are closer in tone. The moon of course is in full daylight, only about one stop less bright than full sun exposure of subjects on Earth.

The weather is promising spring so hopefully I'll be getting more photos to post soon. If you wish to share this post and/or photo please point your friends here. Do not repost without permission.

Endless Winter

Long time, no post. This has been a tough winter and I haven't been doing a lot of photography. Today is the 3rd day of 'official' spring and the photo above of our old apple tree is the view we had this morning. The good news is that the snow stopped early in the afternoon and 5-6" short of the 7 PM and 8" that was forecast for last night and today combined. It was a strange day. In the photo the wind is driving the snow right to left which is South to North. A few minutes later I was looking out a window on the opposite side of the house and it was also blowing right to left but that is North to South. Another few minutes and it was coming straight down.

I hope this is the last serious snow storm. We had one earlier in the week that dropped about a foot of snow, the most in one storm all winter. Like this one the wind swirled it around a lot  and it sculpted some interesting waves in the driveway that I couldn't resist photographing before plowing them away.

All the photos were made with a Canon G11, shot in RAW mode and processed in Lightroom 5.

As always, if you wish to share the photos please respect my copyright and share the URL of this site. Do not repost without permission. Thank you.

Visual Poetry?

I read a number of other blogs on a regular basis. One is an artists hosting site that frequently posts things from member blogs. Today I read an article about painting by Doug Hoppes that fits very well with the topic I have been discussing in other recent posts, seeing and translating what we see into images that communicate what we see to our audience. In it he quotes one of his teachers, Stapleton Kearns, as saying "The arts are purest as they approach poetry". For the curious the article is at http://doughoppes.com/blog/67282/how-to-fix-that-%93something%94-that-im-missing.

I'm a believer in the idea that artists of all mediums have a lot in common and can learn from one another. The techniques to render what we see and try to represent may be different but the core of what we do is the same. The ideas that Doug Hoppes expounds in that post can just as easily apply to a photograph. Where a painter may take a certain amount of "artistic license" by leaving out distracting elements or emphasizing others to direct the viewer's attention in a representational work, so may the landscape photographer use both in camera and post exposure controls to impart the "feeling" of a scene.

In the case of the image above I used an exposure that left detail in the brightest portion, the sky. But even then the sky was basically a flat grey with little variation. My eye which has the capacity to see a much greater dynamic range than the camera and thus differentiate the subtle shadings in the sky had seen more. In order to make the image closer to my vision of it I selected the bright areas and applied a curve that translated the subtle differences into a range of tones that a computer can display. That left the line of mist behind the islands and some other foreground details too dark so I dodged them on a merged layer in order to bring them back up in relation to the surroundings. The result is how I remember the scene, how it felt. Hopefully it is a poetic representation.

Is Renown an Aesthetic Trap?

Brooks Jensen writes today on Lens Work Daily that he got a copy of the new Sabastião Salgado book Genesis and expressed dismay at the grain that is apparent in the photographs. As a landscape photographer Brooks likes smooth gradations of tone and wonders aloud why Salgado chose to make the images so grainy and choose to do so he did. An earlier discussion of DXO Film Pack on The Online Photographer revealed that Salgado now shoots digital but runs the images through DXO Film Pack to simulate Tri-X 400 or T-Max 3200 and then prints the images to 35mm recording film from which he makes prints. He does this complex process to make the look like they were shot on aforesaid films as he feels that is part of his style that makes his work recognizable.

If you have been following this blog you may remember that I did a review of several B&W conversion plug-ins and that DXO Film Pack was among them. I commented at the time that I did not purchase the DXO offering after using the trial copy because its primary aim was to simulate film (including the characteristic grain) and that was not my objective so I suspect you will not be surprised that I tend to agree with Brooks Jensen's puzzlement and dismay at Salgado's decision to deliberately degrade otherwise beautiful landscape images solely to conform to the look of his more renown street photographs which were made in the decades before digital photography came of age.

Like Salgado I began photography well before digital and like him I shot a lot of Tri-X  and T-Max 400 35mm film. Unlike him I did not and do not regard the grain pattern as part of my "style". It was simply a by-product of the technology available at the time. Whenever I could I tended to use larger format and slower (smaller grained) films which I then developed to minimize the grain. What I regard as my style is the subject matter I am attracted to and the particular way I see and photograph it.

The photograph above was made on film some years before I switched to digital, probably in the early 1980s. Even with medium format there is considerable grain in both the snowy foreground and the sky. While the grain does not necessarily detract from the image I don't feel it really adds either. Had I shot it with digital I certainly would not choose to add imitation grain. I suspect Mr. Salgado's desire to make it look like his earlier images derives for a need to have a consistent "look" with those for which he is known.

As technology improves so can the work we produce with it. To tie one's style to the limitations of an earlier era so that your audience will recognize it seems sad to me. We are in a changing world and we should all be growing and changing with it. I want to make it clear that I have no problem with modifying images for aesthetic effect when the image calls for it but going to great pains to tie a new and unrelated body of work to an earlier body by imitating the earlier technology suggests that Salgado feels trapped by the earlier work, that he has to create an artificial connection to his earlier work for the new work to be accepted by his audience. Of course he may simply like the look of grainy images but, like Brooks, I wish he had chosen to take full advantage of the capabilities he had available for the new work.

The photo above is of a barn in Gabriels, NY in the northern Adirondacks. It was made with a 645 camera on T-Max 400 and has been cropped top and bottom. I don't know the date. I'm a lousy record keeper and unlike digital, film cameras didn't record such things. I couldn't make this photo today. Although the barn is still there a number of trees have grown up in the foreground and there are the beginnings of a housing development behind it. The world moves on and we have to move on with it.

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Oh Deer!

We have several apple trees in our yard and there was a bumper crop of apples this year, so many that we couldn't give them away much less use them all. Surprisingly a lot have hung onto the tree well into winter and the local deer find them attractive. We've had anywhere from two to eight deer at a time feeding under our trees for the last several days. It's fine with me. I won't have to clean the dropped apples out of the lawn come spring. I don't consider myself to be a wildlife photographer but these deer are making it look as if I know what I am doing. In reality what I am doing is shaking the tree to get apples to drop and then when the deer come around I park myself in an upstairs bedroom window that overlooks the yard and snapping photos with my Canon SX50 HS. Today seven deer came around just before sunset.

They are fun to watch. They usually come in pairs, a doe and a smaller one, probably a yearling fawn. Sometimes a fawn gets a bit too frisky and the older deer nips the fawn on the hind quarters. I don't think they can see me in the window but they seem to sense that they are being watched and frequently go on alert like the young one above. Sometimes one seems to be looking right at me. On the other hand cars can go by and they don't get spooked enough to run away.

Occasionally one of the older ones will decide to pick an apple that is still on the tree by rearing up on their hind legs to reach it. That's a bit tricky to catch because it happens so quickly. I have to anticipate it, be already focused and aimed when it happens.

The nature show in our yard is turning a winter that started off rather unpleasantly into a much more enjoyable season.

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Getting Better

Winter that is. Winter in the North Country has not been fun so far this year. We started off with a couple of snow storms which isn't unusual but that was followed by alternating freezing rain & sleet storms that left 7 to 8 inches of ice on our roof and on the fields. Immediately after that the temperature dropped below zero F and I could walk anywhere with out falling through (provided I managed to stay upright on the ice). Finally we've had two days of thaw, the first at almost 60°. That took the accumulated Ice and snow down substantially.

I took a walk on snowshoes back to out woods today. The ice is no longer strong enough to hold me but it still bears marks of the sub-zero spell. There are cracks all over the yard, the meadow and the woods from the frost quakes (cryoseisms) that we experienced. When water freezes it initially expands but as the temperature continues to drop the ice starts shrinking again. If it is in large sheets the strains of shrinking can make it crack with a popping or booming sound. Frozen saturated soil can do the same thing. Sometimes it can mimic an earthquake. We didn't feel any significant shaking but there were several booms and the back meadow has the long cracks that caused the sound. Some run for hundreds of feet. Below is a photo of two intersecting cracks. It has begun to melt and is wider than it was when it first formed.

Back in the woods I found more cracks and these prosperous fungi growing on a fallen tree that is "hung" at a 45 degree angle. It broke in a wind storm, Next spring I have to figure out how to finish felling it.

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Some Thoughts about "Seeing"

This post was prompted by Guy Tal and Dan Baumbach’s inter-blog conversation on the role of seeing in photography. In my youth I enrolled in the Famous Photographers Course which was a part of the Famous Artists School. They also ran a Famous Writers School as I recall. All three were based on lessons prepared by or under the advice of well known practitioners. The group behind the photography course consisted of Richard Avedon, Richard Beattie, Joseph Costa, Arthur d’Arazien, Alfred Eisenstaedt (one of my heroes at the time), Harry Garfield, Philippe Halsman, Irving Penn, Bert Stern & Ezra Stoller. Needless to say the course had a distinctly photojournalist/commercial bent. There were no art photographers on the list, indeed at that time (1963) photography as art was still a debatable topic although it was making headway.

The reason the Famous Photographers Course comes up now is because of one of the beginning lessons which talked about seeing, a lesson that immediately came to mind when reading the above mentioned posts by Guy and Dan. The lesson began by defining “seeing”. They said (paraphrased) that most people only “look”, they don’t “see”. Looking will show you where the door knob is so you can open the door, it helps you navigate your way through the world but you don’t truly see what is around you. Looking does not help you relate to your surroundings in a deep way. That lesson has probably been the most influential force on my photography in the ensuing 50 years.

I have learned (and taught) a great deal about photography, mostly of a technical nature, since then but technology changes, sometimes subtly as with the development of newer films like the tabular grained B&W films, to the more radical switch to digital. And the technology is important as a tool for translating what you saw into an image. Likewise the aesthetics of composition (leading lines, “S” curves, the so-called “rule” of thirds, etc.) are tools, but none of that is the message. The message is what you “saw”, the experience of the subject, the vision that impressed itself enough on your consciousness to inspire you to photograph it.

Even experienced photographers and artists spend a lot of time looking but not seeing. It is a necessary function of life. Not just “where’s the doorknob” but where is my fork, where is my coat & hat, etc. A generalized awareness of your surroundings is necessary to daily life and survival. Seeing is a kind of concentrated attention that deliberately shuts out the non-essential of a specific experience. If you have ever fallen in love you have done it (beauty is in the eye of the beholder). For the photographer/artist it is a practice similar to meditation in which you consciously devote your attention to the aspect of the subject that has inspired you to make a photograph (or draw or paint) and what needs to be done technically and compositionally to force your audience’s attention to that same aspect of the subject. This is true whether you are trying to show an object itself or the way the light falls on the object or some other aspect to tell your ‘story’ of the subject. The techniques you use should support what visual aspect of the subject inspired your vision of it. For me seeing is the core of photography. The rest is details.

Although I have been photographing for more years than anything else, in college I studied fine art, courses in drawing, painting, printmaking and ceramics (my major). Those who draw and paint do essentially the same thing in terms of visualizing their subject matter that photographers do but I have to say they have a distinct advantage when it comes to creating their images. If something detracts from the image, the draftsman/painter can simply change it or leave it out entirely. The photographer has to figure out how to work around such things, minimize them visually, find a different viewpoint, etc. The details of photography.

Of course in Photoshop we can eliminate such things but those of us who come from a photo journalistic background have a tendency to avoid major alterations in post exposure processing. I guess it’s partly that old habits die hard but it is also true that I tend to relate to things as they are. I know artists who can paint abstracts from nothing but a concept or fantasy images of things that exist only in their mind but I am fascinated by the world as it is and when I edit images I try to do it in a way that accentuates the particular aspect of the subject that attracts me.

I have often been asked by students “What should I photograph?” and have even read where some teachers have told students of landscape photography that to get good photos they have to go to where the good landscapes are, the Western National Parks. That advice might get you a remake of some of Ansel Adams photos, or some other more contemporary photographer but it won’t give you your photographs. You need to develop your own vision of the landscape. I used to show a lot of well known images in my classes and encourage the students to look at images they like while asking themselves why they are attracted to those images, why the images ‘work’ visually. It might be partly the subject and partly the composition but frequently an image grabs the viewer even though it violates “the rules”. The trick to making good images is to look deeply and deliberately until your looking evolves into seeing. Technique will help you render an image that communicates your seeing but only if the seeing was there first. And those occasions when you see something that you can capture with little effort?  That does not diminish the quality of the seeing or the image. Just say a quiet thank you for the gift.

Links to the posts by Guy and Dan are attached to their names above.

The photo at the top was one of those fortuitous images that presented itself to me and, with nothing more than judicious framing, I was able to capture exactly what I wanted, the diagonals of the individual lines and the overall shape against the reflection of the evening sky on the gently rippling surface of the pond. Plants emerging from the earth through water reflecting the heavens above. 

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Happy Holidays

It's that time of year again. I'm happy to see that there is less rancor this year over how we wish one another peace and good will, which after all is the main theme of the season regardless of your religion or lack thereof. I considerably less happy with the recent weather which delayed the arrival of our holiday guest and is eating up our wood pile at a frightening rate. All said though we got less ice & snow than some. We lost power briefly during the night last night but many others have been without it for 2-3 days and some of those won't likely get it back until the coming weekend. That will certainly dampen the holiday spirit for them and the crews that will be working straight through the holiday to get power restored. It does give us cause to remember how much we depend on each other for the things that make life easier.

The photo is of decorations on our back porch. The lights on the trees are enhanced with Topaz Star  Effects. The text overlay is standard Photoshop technique using a bevel (contour & texture) with added satin effect. None are at the default settings. I played to get the look I wanted.

Wishing you all a great holiday whatever your reason for celebrating even if it's just because you enjoy it. After all, you don't need a reason to be happy.

Snow!

We had our first heavy snowfall of winter last night and this morning. It isn't actually winter yet according to the calendar but mother nature isn't much for calendars. She prefers to be spontaneous. As I age I have mixed feelings about winter. For one thing it's a lot of work in the cold. I spent several hours today clearing 7-8 inches of snow off our driveways and paths to the barn & bird feeders. It was cold enough that even with Hot Hands in my gloves my fingers got cold.

Snow does simplify things visually and the longer I photograph the more I like simple uncluttered images. Before I started my snow removal project I went out in the yard with my camera. This is a shrub that grows by one corner of the front porch. The snow caps on the dry flower heads were appealing to me and I made several exposures. This one is the best with a nice clean background of snow as well as the crown of snow on each flower head.

Canon 7D with 18-135mm EFs lens. Please do not re-post or use the photo without permission. Share by giving the URL to this page.