Watch Where You Step!

House Full of Jars

Saturday night I was watching TV and came across "Billy the Exterminator". In this episode his job was to remove a 5' rattlesnake from a storage shed. This shed was full of old carpet and a lot of other junk. Billy almost got bit by the snake! Sunday, while driving home from Midland, Texas, I stopped at this old house to get some photos. To reach this room in the photo, I had to climb through a room that must have had 5 or 6 deteriorated mattresses piled up on the floor. Guess what I was thinking about? I did keep telling myself that it was 34 degrees and the snakes won't be out. Warm weather would have had me as jumpy as a grasshopper. This house is about 15 miles from Sweetwater, Texas, home of the world's largest "Rattlesnake Roundup" each year.

What Could Have Been.

On Monday afternoon I headed to my friend Dan's house to pick him up before heading downtown to shoot the full moon rising over downtown Dallas. The day had been mostly sunny and was still that way when I left my house. When I arrived at Dan's house about 4:15 I noticed that some clouds were moving in. Actually it was a pretty solid wall of clouds. Twenty minutes later we arrived at our shooting location near downtown. It was almost totally cloudy now and it would soon block out the eastern horizon. So much for seeing the moon rise at 5:15! I couldn't believe this last minute sudden change in the weather was going to cheat us out of what we came here to shoot. Knowing it didn't look to good we still decided to get out our equipment and hike down the Trinity River levee to where we had planned to shoot. The overcast skies made for some pretty flat light, but you never know.
 I had brought along two tripods. My plan was to set up a camera on one of them shooting a time lapse while I did stills using the other tripod. This was my first attempt at time lapse so that was another reason I was so bummed out about the weather change. I went ahead and set things up even though it wasn't looking too promising. Well, we never photographed the moon and the sun did not find a last minute hole in the western sky for a surprise sunset. The light did start looking better as it started to get dark and the lights of downtown started coming on. I left off the first half of the time lapse I shot because the light was so pitiful, but the second half isn't too bad. It was fun to try something I had not done before. It was also a challenging first effort with the light changing so much from start to finish. I did get a nice still image of downtown using my 180mm macro lens.

After we finished shooting we gathered our equipment and hiked back to the car. It was starting to look like the cloud cover was breaking up. We loaded the vehicle and shut its rear door. I looked up and saw the moon come out from behind the clouds but it was totally dark and the moon was way too high in the sky now.  We got in the car and headed out to get some dinner.

"What 's Your Favorite Photograph?

As many of you know I spend some time on Google +...actually a lot of time. This morning I noticed a post by Colby Brown featuring a QUOTE OF THE DAY.

“Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow." ~ Imogen Cunningham

This got me to thinking because I have been asked this a number of times while I have been showing my work. I will usually say I have a lot of them and point to several that are hanging on the wall. I'm not sure I would say it is the one I'm going to take tomorrow. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited about getting out and shooting but there is not a favorite to pick yet. I might could say "the one that I shot yesterday" but would have to put a disclaimer by that. Yesterday, I did shoot a few things to use in a presentation I was giving to the Fort Worth Camera Club but those pictures don't count. Saturday was the last time I went out and made an effort to seriously create something wonderful. I did and here it is, "my favorite photograph".

Dawn Over Dallas

Weather permitting, I will probably be out with my camera tomorrow. Hopefully something special will be created and I will have a new favorite photograph. Hmmm...so maybe it is the one I am going to take tomorrow.

Shooting star over the Dallas skyline!

I had made a mental note in the back of my head that the next time the river floods, I need to go shoot the Dallas skyline and the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge reflected in the Trinity River. After the Dallas area received more than 4 inches of rain Tuesday night and Wednesday I decided I better head downtown for sunset. The river was definitely flooded but the lights on the new bridge were not turned on. Bummer! I decided to aim the camera at the downtown skyline and not worry about the bridge on some of the shots. The bridge looks so much better with the lights on and I could have really got some sweet shots had it not been sitting off to my left in the dark. Not the end of the world though. My archives didn't have an image of the Dallas skyline reflected in the Trinity River so I decided this was a good time to get a few. I was doing my usual thing, shooting 4 or 5 bracketed exposures of each scene. During a 13 second exposure I see something flash like a firework and then I see the shooting star streak down the sky, right in the middle of what I am photographing. Damn! How cool was that!
Quite honestly, I'm not sure if the picture does the shooting star justice. I like the photo just fine but I wonder if you would know what the streak was if I hadn't told the story. Feel free to give me your thoughts on that. I will probably never get another photograph of a shooting star in the skyline, but just in case you are listening up there  "could you bring it in at a 45 degree angle next time?"

Inside Angel's Diner

Inside Angel's Diner

I was looking for an image in my files and when I came across this one I thought "I've never shown this to anyone". So here it is! This was at Angel's Diner in McAlester, Oklahoma.

New Work From Your Old Archives!

"Zion Tree"

This morning I read a blog post from an acquaintance on G+, Alan Majchrowicz. It was about "Bringing Life to  Old Photos". I definitely could relate to his words since I also have a habit of reviewing images that were shot years  earlier. The image above is a product of that habit. Whenever I return from a trip I will review all of the images. I will process all the favorites and then it may be months or years later before I go back and take another look through all the "losers". Oh heck, I shouldn't call them that. The favorites were probably the tens out of the group.There may possibly be many eights and nines in the remaining images and maybe a ten that I overlooked first time around. This can happen because my expectations are different immediately after a trip. I usually have a few shots that I am really excited about but sometimes I don't think the final image conveys how excited I was when I initially created the image. Several years later my mind has cleared of all those expectations. Software, my processing skills, and my vision have also changed and I hope for the better.
"Zion Tree" was taken three years ago in Utah's Zion National Park. I may have liked it better as a color image if it had a rich blue sky and better light to contrast with the snow and red rock. The light was flat and the sky was gray. When I looked back at it a few months ago, I thought "it may make a nice black and white". After making all the adjustments in Photoshop I was pleased  but I did feel it needed one last tweak. Most of the Topaz filters seem to be used a little heavy handed  by most photographers but a little bump from "Topaz Detail" worked perfectly to add a little texture back into the snow. I created a separate layer for that adjustment and then masked the layer so it only had an affect on the snow.

To Crop or not to Crop?

 Last week I posted a selection of images of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. One of them was this top image but I had cropped it right at the base of the arch. It also had a little more contrast and saturated color. This version is pretty true to how I remember it. I'm possibly having second thoughts about the first version. After looking at the raw file again I am starting to like my shadow running towards the arch of the bridge. The man that is taking a picture doesn't bother me that much. I did slightly crop the left side to remove a distracting person that I still don't want in the picture.

This second image is nothing more than a crop of the first one. I also like it this way but I still tend to be partial to a version without people. I think the shadow of me and my tripod would be enough. What do you think? Which version do you prefer?