Winter Wonderland

The Most Expensive Photo Ever

I read yesterday that a photographer, Peter Lik, recently sold a photograph for a whopping $6.5 million. The buyer is, of course, anonymous (if I'd paid that kind of money for this B&W photo I'd want to stay safely in the shadows too). The photo was taken in Antelope Canyon, Arizona and shows a dust cloud, shaped vaguely like a human form, being illuminated by a beam of light from above. Quite frankly, I've seen better and more pleasing images taken in roughly the same place and they've not sold for anywhere near that amount. I don't know much about Lik other than he's a very aggressive character who has several galleries around the world where he sells his images for very high prices. The approach uses high pressure sales techniques and targets the less than knowledgeable 'walk in' trade. He sells limited edition (if one can call 950 copies limited) and increases the price for each image as the number remaining dwindles. It's brilliant marketing but I'm not sure it's fine art. The article I read (can't find it again unfortunately) was highly critical of both this piece and his tactics in general. I can't comment on any of this but do find the idea of pressuring buyers is unethical at the very least. Of course, it's always nice to see photos sell for high prices but one hates to draw negative attention to the business as it hurts all of us. I'm not sure yet what the long term impact will be but wish the photographer's reputation didn't lend some uncomfortable color to the record.

A Strange Snow Day

Although Crimea is in the extreme south of Russia (as of last spring we're no longer part of Ukraine ... that's another interesting story I'll probably tell over time in this blog) but we get some very brutal winter weather. Earlier this year it was -27 degrees C (that's -17 degrees F for the metrically challenged) and, damn, it was cold. The tears froze on my cheeks as I walked our dog. Anyway, most of the time it's a bit milder and we get snow. One morning I went outside to walk the dog and discovered that sticky snow had stuck to all the trees but was mysteriously missing from the ground. I assume the ground temperature was just above freezing and the snow melted on contact but the trees had gotten cold enough to capture and preserve the snow as it fell. The effect was magical and I spent a long time wandering around, enjoying the beauty of the moment (fleeting as it was ... in a few hours the wind had knocked most of the snow down). When I got home I took my camera and shot down on the trees from our eighth floor flat. The image below was the best of the lot.

It was a dreary day and the initial image wasn't too exciting. The histogram was a single, broad hump near middle intensity with some strong side lobes at lower values. To fix this I created a luminescence mask that selected the snow and used a neutral overlay layer and a white brush to selectively paint in the highlights. When I finished I had 2-humped camel histogram which was what I wanted. My final step was to change the image to B&W.

I love how the main vertical branches seem to disappear into the dark background, as if the tree is floating in the darkness. It gives an ethereal quality to the image. The random scatter of the branches gives the image a surreal quality that I find very appealing. What do you think?

Winter's Beauty - 70 mm (1.6 crop), f/8, 1/20 sec, 100 ISO (license CC BY-NC 4.0)

Drifting as a way of life

I grew up in the Midwest, around Chicago. My childhood was anything but normal as both my parents died before I turned 10 and I wound up in a orphanage (they liked to call it a 'children's home' but under the covers it was very much a warehouse for lost, abandoned kids) until I graduated high school. Fortunately, one of the few perks from living that misery was they agreed to pay for my college education so I worked my ass off and eventually earned an engineering degree. I was a pretty good student which got me an invitation to Stanford where, after 4 years of hard work, I wrapped my hands around a nice piece of parchment declaring that I was a "Doctor of Philosophy" in engineering. The future looked very bright in those days.

But ... there's always a but isn't there ... I was a certified flake and had the attention span of a gnat. I'd work on some project for a few years and then grow bored until I got tired and angry and burned the bridges down as I left the place. I've done just about everything you can imagine over the years which is good for keeping your interest peaked but not great for building a long-lasting career. So you see, wanderlust is in my veins. I hate long-term commitments and the idea of staying in one place for an extended time really makes me itch. That's why wandering seems so interesting to me. I can stay just a long as I want and then move on. Maybe I'll shoot Death Valley for a month, working the options to exhaustion and then move down the road to someplace else for a few days or a few weeks. Maybe I'll chase storms in the spring (not looking for tornadoes but taking pictures of the awesome wall clouds that form ahead of the front) or maybe I won't ... whatever I feel like doing at that moment. Not having thick roots lets me quickly pack up and head to the next opportunity. My only aim is to take pictures ... lots of pictures ... and improve my skills and the quality of my images. And to end the day exhausted but happy.

A Sunset Worth Keeping

My wife lives in Crimea ... yes I was here when the little green men showed up and maybe someday I'll tell you about it. Her flat is on the eighth floor of an old soviet-era apartment block. My little balcony office faces west so I can see the sunset every evening. Unfortunately, Crimea isn't really a good place for sunsets. It's either no clouds or so overcast you can't find the sun so a spectacular sunset is a really nice departure. I was working on some pictures when I noticed that my office was turning a very intense shade of red. Opened the curtains and the image you see below blew my socks off. Quickly set up the camera on a tripod and snapped of a dozen images at various stages and orientations as the sun disappeared behind the buildings.

There's one big problem with the image ... you can see it in the first panel below (the raw image with minimal processing). They love to string wires between the buildings and the sky is absolutely filled with these image killing lines coursing back and forth. Some are even worse because the lazy workman skimped on the cable ties and you can see big loops of black cable everywhere. Fortunately, several hours in Photoshop with the spot healing brush and the cables are all gone. It's not perfect as the healing brush does impact the underlying image but still a much better image in the end. A bit of final tweaking and the bottom image is the result. Man how I hate wires in my pictures.

Original Raw image - 70 mm 1.6 crop, f/16 (-2/3 ev compensation), 1/50 sec (license CC BY-NC 4.0)

Crimea Sunset - same as above (license CC BY-NC 4.0)

Finding Places to Shoot

One of the biggest problems for a photographer, beyond creating images, is figuring out exactly what to shoot. Unfortunately, most of the planet isn't all that photogenic and one can waste a lot of shoe leather pounding around the neighborhood looking for something interesting. I keep a notebook by my computer and write down pertinent directions for any interesting places I find as I surf the internet. But that's hit and miss, especially if you're on the road and looking for places ahead to explore. With gas prices what they are (and expected to rise significantly in the future) it's important to have a plan.

I've found several places where one can get guidance in this regard. All of them require you to be on the internet to access the images. One is an application call Stuck On Earth from Trey Ratcliff, the well known travel photographer. You can look at photos taken by Trey and others and get useful information about how the picture was taken. It's overlaid on Google Maps so you can see exactly where the photographer stood to make the shot. Unfortunately it's only good for some MAC computer (OSX version 10.7 and higher), for the iPhone/iPad crowd and Android. No Windows versions yet. But it's excellent for finding locations that produce good images. Trey admits to using it himself to find good places to shoot.

The other application I often use is run by Google. Panoramio shows interesting photos overlaid on Google Maps with location information so you can see where the picture was taken. As you zoom in more and more pictures open up so you can drill down to a specific street or map location. No all the images are that interesting but you can always find gems. Again, it's about saving time and aching feet.

There's also a site called Atlas Obscura which details interesting places to visit and photograph. Not sure it's exactly a directory to photo sites but it does provide details about the place and why you might want to visit it.

Look Under the Covers

Sometimes it pays to look a bit deeper when composing a shot. A few years ago I was visiting a friend in Woodbury, CT. It was in the late spring and he had a huge flowering bush in his front yard which was covered with small white flowers (wish I could tell you the name of the tree but he didn't know). I had just bought a new camera and was itching to take some shots to see how good the images were so I wandered out in the early afternoon and started poking around in the shadows. The bush, all 10 feet of it, intrigued me but the sun was so bright I knew any images would be washed out and uninteresting. Just out of curiosity I stuck the lens through the outer leaf layer and was amazed to find a whole other world in the shadows. Here the flowers were more vibrant and the colors more exciting. A few dozen shots later I had plenty of images to work with.

In Photoshop I wanted to try something different. Although the image was interesting it lacked depth and, quite frankly, there wasn't a real focal point. I decided I'd create one by muting out much of the image and concentrate attention on the closest grouping of flowers and associated buds. Using the selection tools I picked the background elements and converted them to black & white. In this way, the viewer's eye is drawn to the foreground and the colorful buds. A nice image made better by being a bit creative.

Beautiful flowers - 100 ISO, f/4, 1/80 sec (license CC BY-NC 4.0)

The Road Less Traveled

I'm a photographer. It's in my blood. Not in a professional sense, at least not until now, but always there, an itch that I had to scratch. Throughout my life I've always had a camera ... sometimes a simple point-and-shoot, other times a serious instrument like a Mamiya twin lens reflex in high school or an Olympus OM-10 during my world travels in the 80s. Always a camera, always an image to capture or a memory to preserve. And always so much joy behind the lens.

But 'being' a photographer never happened. Life got in the way ... raising kids, working for the cash flow, chasing the ever elusive brass ring ... always something 'more important' interfering with what my heart really wanted. Year after year with my face pressed to the grindstone and that gnawing fear that time would run out for the dream. At times the idea seemed impossibly far away.

But life is always about second (or third or forth) chances. Circumstances change, opportunity knocks and, if you're listening, a new tune plays. And I am listening. Suddenly the obligations are gone, the impediments are pushed aside and I'm free to change direction. And what a change. You see, I've got a new passion in my life ... I'm going on the road.

The idea is simple and yet, maddeningly twisted. I'm buying an old truck (oh, not so old but not new either) and I'll put a cap on and get all the needed gear and flesh out the camera stock and computers and ... and then start drifting. I'll start in Albuquerque (I have family there) and follow the warmth as it moves north. By summer I'll be in Canada, maybe Banff, and then start working west and south as the winds blow cold. By fall I'll hit Washington state and follow the coast down to the Mexican border and finally back toward home base by late winter. Then wash, rinse and repeat, each time taking different routes and visiting new places. Always drifting, always taking pictures, always finding new experiences.

What's different is I'm inviting you to come along ... vicariously or in fact. I'll post my itinerary on this blog so everyone knows where I'll be. Look for the red flags on the Google map to the right. Click on the flag to see the date(s) I'm planning to occupy that location. Where I'm currently at shows in yellow and past locations in green. If my route passes near you ... you're invited to hook up and we can shoot together. Simply e-mail me and propose a time and place. We'll trade techniques and 'war stories' and learn together. My (our) images can appear here ... hopefully at least one per day ... along with occasional videos as I shoot, process and breakdown how I got to the final result. I encourage you to comment on the images (no flames please) and maybe more. I'm considering making the raw, source images available for download and you can play with them and post back your take on my stuff. The idea is to advance all our skills by sharing ideas. Does that sound like a workable plan?

Oh Man ... Don't You Just Want To Crack Them Open

I'm a few weeks away from getting all this started but I wanted to put up my first image. I shot these lobsters a few years ago while visiting San Francisco. These beauties had just come out of the huge steaming pot on Fisherman's Wharf and looked so damn good. The sky was salty blue but I let it blow out so the background didn't interfere with the main subject. This was a single shot, hand held. In post I pushed the reds to extreme and the sky to full white. My mouth waters just thinking about how good they must taste. Now ... where's the drawn butter?

Ready to eat ... 17 mm 1.6 crop, f/7.1, 1/13 sec, 640 ISO (License CC BY-NC 4.0)