Spring Beauty

What a great name for this little ground-cover wildflower! They are absolutely everywhere this year here in Bucks County, PA. I find them very attractive flowers but because they grow low to the ground, they are difficult to work with. Typically, when working with this plant I am laying down on my side trying to steady a handheld macro lens and focusing manually. The key is to work the flower against a somewhat colorful background to add some contrast for this mostly white subject.

I made this image this morning on another hot April day that felt like summer. There was a lot of leaf litter around and this one flower was popping out from a hole in a dried out maple leaf. I used a Canon EOS 40D with a Canon EF 100mm f2.8 macro lens wide open (ISO 400).

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Ghostly Williamsburg, VA

Making the restored town of Colonial Williamsburg look as though it was in 1776 is impossible, but photographic interpretations can help with the illusion. I found that photographing the colonial city at night allowed me to more easily pretend that it was really the town that Jefferson still walked. Another way I obscured some of the modernisms of the restoration was by using a Lensbaby Composer. This is a lens that allows manual control of distortion of focus. It can be used to give an eerie feeling to an image.

For the image below of a colonial home, I used a Lensbaby during dusk so as to combine both the focus distortion and low light (hence the blue cast) to create a dreamy or ghostly sensation.

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Penn State – Berks: What I learned in class

I gave a talk to a photography class of 20+ students at Penn State – Berks campus this morning. The teacher, Jeff, selects one photographer each year to speak about their work and approach to the medium. I learned that most students were using “point and shoot” cameras to learn photography. While this would have never worked when I was in college, I do believe that most of these cameras today are more than capable learning tools.

In most respects these simple cameras are more complicated and more geared toward learning the medium than the truly simple Fujica ST605n classic 35mm with which I leaned photography. Even basic digital cameras often come with exposure overrides, white-balance controls, histograms, and of course instant feedback. The tools have changed, so why shouldn’t the learning process change as well? I was asked by a student at the end of my talk whether I thought the way I learned the medium (B&W darkroom, then color slidefilm, then digital) was a better way to learn than digital from start? I’m happy that I learned in the progression that I did, but I certainly don’t think I would feel deprived if I were starting out today learning only digital.

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Starry Night – Colonial Williamsburg

Maybe the most important home of any in Williamsburg is that of George Wythe, signer of the Declaration of Independence and mentor to Thomas Jefferson (who spend a great deal of time in the Wythe House). Going through the Wythe house, an original building not a recreation, is an experience of going back in time. Of course Colonial Williamsburg cannot totally portray the feeling of the town as it was. But when dark, it is a little easier to imagine that you are actually there in 1776. That has been part of my motivation to begin photographing there at night.

This image was made with a Canon EOS Xti on a tripod with a EFS 17-55 f2.8 lens at f2.8 and 10 Sec. Focusing was easier on this image as there was sufficient artificial light falling on the building.

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Twittering

As more of my friends and associates are now keeping in touch on Twitter, I have joined the chirping. You can find me twittering here. You can also follow the link on the right hand side and down on this blog screen. What have I gotten myself into now? Actually, the connections I’ve made have already been helpful.

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Governor’s Palace

Just returned from another trip to Colonial Williamsburg. We stayed at the Williamsburg Lodge which is nicely situated right in the historic area. This gave us freedom to walk to and from our room from anywhere in the historic area and me freedom to pickup and go photograph as I pleased.

The gardens were not at their peak during this trip, so I took it as an opportunity to work with a Lensbaby and to do some night photography. When you have been to a location often, creatively it becomes harder to stretch visually. So working with a new lens and during a different time of day provided me some much needed variety in image making.

The image below is one I visualized before the trip when I saw the weather forecast promised a clear night. I knew from previous trips that there would be enough artificial ambient light to allow the Governor’s Palace to be seen, but not so much as to obscure the stars in a clear night sky. I made this image with a Canon 17-55 f2.8 EFS lens wide open and at ISO 400 to keep a reasonably fast shutter speed of 10 sec. (short enough to prevent star streaking).

The Palace is a reconstruction of the original building on this site where several royal governors and both Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson served. The foundation is original, some of which can be seen in the cellar. It’s an amazing building with beautiful grounds and a centerpiece for the town. Photographing it at night was a special experience, especially as I was in earshot of the militia practicing at the magazine (at around 9:30 pm).

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Spring = Colonial Williamsburg

Since my wife and I had our honeymoon in Colonial Williamsburg in 1990, the coming of spring has always been associated with the gardens and history of the restored town.  We’ve gone other times of the year, but for me spring is the best. I find the traditional English gardening methods as interesting as any of the other history there and of course visually, it’s great.

From the white-picket fences to the neat squares and rows of flowers, the simple buildings, and farm animals, it’s all very inviting. But I do enjoy the total package in Colonial Williamsburg. The streets and buildings where the fathers of our country met and argued, ate and drank, studied, and walked. I find it pretty powerful. For me still, it is  a challenge to interpret the town visually even after 20+ visits.

The image below was made in the Palace (Governors residence)gardens in mid-April. The Palace gardens are quite wonderful and complex. Here I am trying to introduce some visual movement with a strong diagonal composition and many layers of color and form. I hope though that  the bench at the top of the image lets the viewer stop and rest there momentarily to enjoy the scene.

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Sunning

It was a nice sunny spring day, hopefully one of many to come. Spring finds me wanting to spend time outdoors more than any other season. Even though the grass height is telling me that mowing must soon start, I like the longer days and milder temperatures. Just being able to work with the windows open is a big deal. The sun this time of year also has a more direct hit on my studio space in the morning, which I particularly like.

Certain birds really like morning sun as well. Sunning themselves to dry out wet feathers or just to warm up their bodies, they stretch out their wings and face the sun directly. These situations make for great opportunities to create  silhouette images, in this case of a cormorant. There are quite a number of these big birds at a lake I frequent here in Bucks County. Working with the symmetry that water reflections allow, I made this image on a spring morning very much like today. My usual bird-photography kit was used, a Canon 1D Mark II camera with Canon EF500mm f4.0 L IS lens and a Canon TC1.4 teleconverter. It’s kind of a peaceful image.

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