Morning Rituals

Nikon L35AF, Fuji Reala

A man does Tai Chi on a foggy summer morning at the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park.

--Warren

A Day at the Zoo...

I took our almost-12-year-old nephew Josh, a budding nature photographer, to the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore last weekend - I haven't been their since our own kids were younger than Josh. My brother Mark (Josh's dad) decided to come at the last minute, and we had a great boys' day out, roaming around the zoo and photographing the animals.

Of about 80 or so shots I took, most were for the birds, but some photos I took of some birds turned out pretty good. The best was this one of a handsome Lappet-Faced Vulture (Aegypius tracheliotus). This bird, an old-world vulture, is in the African exhibit at the Zoo. He was kind enough to sit still for me while I composed the photo. Who knew that a vulture could be so good-looking?

Josh, at almost twelve, is a little to sophisticated to fall for the various kids' stuff spread around the zoo, but 47-year-old dad Mark and his 57-year-old brother me couldn't resist a little childish fooling around. Here is Mark doing a wonderful job posing as a lion.

A Female Dragon

Forgot to post this one from the retirement party. It's a group of moms who perform dragon dancing. They were good.

Eric

A Couple of Photos from a Retirement Party

I was at a retirement party a couple of weeks back and caught a couple of fun photos. One was of this musician and the other was of the little boy below with a lion's head.

Eric

Lost Blog

My blog, Imagine There's An Image is now read-only.

Somehow, I lost all access to my original Google account, meaning GMail, Blogger, and a host of other services. One day, my password just stopped working. I've gone through all of the things Google tells you to go through to recover my access, but to no avail.

I've created 2nd Exposure, a new blog under my new Google account.


As with the old blog, this one will be primarily for and about photography and photographers.

To start things off on a good note (ouch! bad pun!), here's a photo of an amazing entertainer, Charles Lee, taken at Inner Harbor in Baltimore last Friday. Mr. Lee is thrilled us and brought smiles to all of us in the lunchtime crowd with his renditions of Motown classics.

Best regards,
SteveR

Quiet and Overcast Day at the Coast

Nikon L35AF (P&S), Fuji Reala 100 accidentally pushed +2 stops

It was a typically cold and overcast day at the coast near Daly City. This little beach access area is situated on a cliff overlooking the beach and ocean.

--Warren

Gaggle of Shower Heads

D200 55mm

Last weekend the old Sheraton Hotel on Miami Beach had a going out of business sale. In one room was this laundry basket with all these shower heads from the rooms. I liked this shot because it was not something you would see every day.

Sorry for not being around, the company I was working for just completed the purchase of another larger company...toooo much work. Now more time for photography.

Antique Bottles, Honomu, HI

Nikon D100, Tamron 24-135mm



--Warren

I Adopted a Nikon FM

Hi Gang,

I've been meaning to post this for six months, but only got around to it just now. I was browsing Craigslist as I usually do about six months ago and I came upon an ad for a FREE Nikon FM body. I know that film cameras have really dropped in value, but this was ridiculous!

I immediately emailed the person who listed it, and I got an immediate response. The camera was in good working condition. The only thing that it needed was new foam light seals and foam for the mirror cushion. This was too good to pass up because I've never had the pleasure of owning a FM body.

Fortunately, the camera was nearby in San Francisco, so I drove to pick it up. I learned that the guy had recently gone digital and he wanted the FM body to go to someone who would continue to make good use of it. I promised him that I would put it to good use. Just for fun, he also gave me the rotted, disintegrated original case for the camera. I thought I'd take a picture of the case and post it here before I throw it away.

After I got the camera home, I checked it out and found that all the functions seem to work fine, and the only major cosmetic problem was a pronounced dent on the prism where it had apparently been dropped at some time it its life. I purchased a foam sealing kit from Ebay but I have not had time to work on it yet.

When I finally run some film through the camera, I'm sure you'll see the results here on the forum.

--Warren

Here's the Nikon FM with my 35mm f2.0 mounted:

Here's the case that has seen better days:

Savoring the Moment, Lahaina, HI

Sony DSC-P72

Gail looking at the beach and ocean from inside the restaurant where we were having lunch at Lahaina.

--Warren

A New Camera

I've been using a Nikon D50 for the last six weeks. I thought I would share some of the photos and impressions with the camera. This is my first digital SLR (yeah, what took me so long!), after using 35mm SLRs for more than thirty years. The D50 came with the 18-55mm kit lens and I've modified some of my old manual focus Nikkor lenses to work on the camera. Nikon AI lenses do not need to be modified. The downside with using these old lenses is that the meter and autofocus will not work.

The first photo was made with a 28mm Nikkor. The second shot is with a 55mm Micro Nikkor.

Here's what's good about the D50: It's got a good sensor. Colors are bright and require little adjustment. If you like saturated colors, this is great! The camera is light and easy to carry. It feels like a Nikon N80 or N8008.

The bad news: The kit lens is cheap and not very sharp. The viewfinder is difficult to focus with manual focus lenses. And as stated earlier, the meter won't work with older lenses.

Queen storms out of celeb photo shoot - Yahoo! News

Hi Gang,

here is a relevant article that just popped up on the news. Remember our discussion about Annie Liebovitz?

--WT

Link to article below:

Queen storms out of celeb photo shoot - Yahoo! News

Kings Canyon

Nikon D100, Tamron 24-135mm

Dragonfly

I spotted several dragonfly at a pool in the Belvedere Vinyards garden just outside of Healdsburg CA, and was struck by the sharp leaves, and translucent wings and red-to-clear color of the insects. The darkness of the water further set the colors off.

Using an 18-125 Sigma set at 125mm (for comfortable, non-intrusive working distance), f9, 1/80 sec. I shot several images, with this one coming out the best composition. Post-production Photoshop cropping and sharpening produced this result.

As this was a handheld shot, I only wished I had a tripod to give added stability and clarity to the image. In retrospect, I also could have gone to 5.6 and halved my shutter speed to further reduce shake without sacrificing much clarity.

Portrait of Gail (from the archives)

Nikon F2


Shhhhhhh!!! Don't tell Gail that I posted this here :).


I like shooting portraits but I don't have a chance to do them very often. I shot this one about 26 years ago and I found it again after looking through some old pictures that I was going through.



--Warren

Portraits

Hi everyone! I'm still alive, lurking in the forum, but just couldn't motivate myself to do much photo-taking or posting until the last few weeks. I finally put this post on my photo-blog and thought I'd share it with you.

I've been trying to work in some informal portraiture lately. Here are two of what I think are my more successful attempts.

Portraits were what originally impelled me to take up photography. That is, I was so dissatisfied with my high school yearbook picture that I was sure I could learn to do a better job. Not realizing that the problem was the raw subject material and not the fault of any photographer, I prevailed on my friend Roger to teach me about photography. Once I got in the darkroom and became fascinated with the ability to make images, any images, I soon forgot about portraiture.

People pictures, other than those of cute, small children, have never been my strong point. I don't think I really want to go through the effort to be a really great portraitist, but I'd like to at least get better at photographing family and friends.

Composition is my strong point, so I've been looking out for opportunities to combine composition and informal portraiture.

I really like this photo of my friend and co-worker John. First of all, I caught an expression that I think really represents John well. He is pleasant to be around, collegial and professional with a good sense of humor - a real mentch. Second, from a compositional point of view, I like the way the swoopy curve of the desk balances the placement of John on the right side of the photo. Overall, I think it turned out to be a decent "environmental" portrait of a happy software developer.

This next photo is, of course, our son Ben. He's an easy one to photograph, as he usually doesn't mind mugging or posing for the camera. In this case, he was just relaxing on my brother-in-law Peter's boat during our recent visit to Toronto. I thought the boat's wake on this beautiful day was a photogenic backdrop for a portrait, and the way Ben was leaning made for a more interesting photo.

OK, it's not Annie Liebovitz, but a good start.



Speaking of Annie Liebovitz, I recently took a long look at her much-heralded new book, A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005. Frankly, at $75, I don't recommend it. Many of the photos, maybe a fourth of them, are quite compelling, but the layout is not very good - many fine photos are splayed across two pages, ruined by the gutter. Further, I question if the other three-quarters of the photo are worth publishing.

Some have complained that most of the photos are just what you would find in a family album - pictures of Liebovitz' parents, cousins, and her lover Susan Sontag, over the 15-year period. I would defend her to an extent here - some of the family photos are excellent, both in the emotions they convey and in their photographic quality. But many, many more are not so good.

There are probably more photos of Sontag than any other subject in this book. A few are quite good, but most seem to be only of personal interest to Liebovitz, perhaps to Sontag's family, and maybe to Sontag fanatics. A number of these are just downright bad photos - blurred or poorly exposed.

The book also includes some landscapes, many spread across two pages. These latter ones aren't ruined by the gutter, because Liebovitz' landscapes, at least in this book, are unimpressive - perhaps they have meaning to her, but I question that they have any wide appeal.

As a photographer, Liebovitz is a bit of a puzzle to me. Here's what I wonder: she is a very talented portrait photographer, but if her photos were of ordinary people rather than celebrities, would we be all that interested and make such a fuss over her?

I'd like to hear what you guys think.

Canada Day Fireworks!

I like the abstract design of it all :)

Buddhist Temples, Honomu, HI

Nikon D100, Tamron 24-135mm

We were on our way to see Akaka Falls near Hilo, Hawaii. This little town called Honomu was on the way to the falls so we stopped for a look. It was a beautiful, warm, and crisp day and there was a feeling of peace in the air. The main drag of the town is only a block long and there were few people around. Where did everyone go?

I later found out that the town was once the hub of a very busy sugar industry on the Big Island, but is now just a sleepy town of just 541 residents. It was interesting to see these two Buddhist temples just a half block from each other, but I suppose they used to serve a much larger population. I found the architecture of the temples to be very interesting.

By the way, July 4th is coming up in a couple of days. Why don't we go out that day to shoot some patriotic themed pictures and post them here?

--Warren

Hidden Observer

Nikon F4, Tri-X

Sometimes, you would never notice something, unless you look up...

--WT