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March
8, 2009 - New Gallery: Snow Sculptures
It has been a
long time since I last posted a new gallery on this
site. Photographing near home tends to produce a
regular trickle of individual images that fit best
in the “Feature Photo” spot.
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Snow Queen
Pentax
K10D, Sigma AF 10-20mm f/4.0-5.6 EX DC @14mm
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Adding images over time to a flash gallery is just
enough trouble to discourage me from compiling galleries
this way and anyway, I’m not big on arbitrarily
categorizing photos to fit a theme. However, after
photographing the snow sculpture competition at this
year’s Yukon Sourdough Rendezvous I came to realize
I could not reasonably portray the magnificence and
depth of these artists’ collective output with one
or two featured images. This was a world class event
that drew participants from as far away as Finland
and many of the sculptures deserve special
attention. I’m not usually inclined to document
other artists’ work but these creations and their
outdoor location inspired me and, while they
presented some photographic challenges, they also
offered me scope for my own artistic
interpretations. I ended up with plenty of worthy
images to fill this gallery. I hope much of the awe
these sculptures imparted on me is passed through to
you in my photos. Follow the link to Snow
Sculptures - Rendezvous 2009.
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May 11, 2008 - Magnified
Images of Feature Photos
As my Recent
Feature Photos page grows I have been pondering what
I will do with the older posts. They will have to
move to other pages if they are to stay on the site.
Also, I would like to offer the images in a variety
of sizes to better suit the widely differing screen
resolutions used by different site visitors.
This has led me
to experiment with the format I now have applied to
the most recent posts. Slightly smaller, lower
quality images should help a bit to alleviate slow
page loading. Clicking on an image opens a larger,
high quality version in a popup window. Your screen
resolution is detected and the most appropriately
sized image from a selection of available sizes is
chosen automatically. This should be satisfactory
for screen resolutions as low as 600x800 while
providing a reasonably large view even on high
resolution screens. Scripting must be enabled in
your browser for this to work.
What you can see
here now is a trial and may change in my final
implementation. It adds a lot of manual labour, made
worse by the limitations and outright bugginess of
my web design software. Perhaps I will continue this
for select photos while offering others in one size
only. In any case, the Feature Photo images on the
main pages will be smaller and the older ones will
be reduced to thumbnails linking to some sort of
larger versions. I anticipate that eventually I will
extend this treatment to other images on the Home
page and elsewhere.
I would welcome
any feedback on what I have done and ideas for what
you would like to see. It likely will take awhile
for me to complete the change. I get busy at this
time of year and I want to spend more time outdoors
and less time staring at a computer monitor.
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February
18, 2008 - New Camera and Lenses = New
Perspectives
Since
going digital in 2004 I have been shooting
with a Konica Minolta Dimage A2, a compact
sensor, fixed lens camera, albeit one of
the most advanced examples of its type,
designed for serious photographers.
Meanwhile, digital SLR technology has been
advancing and these cameras have become a
lot more sensible and affordable. I have
been contemplating an upgrade for over a
year and finally I took the plunge last
month.
My new camera is a Pentax K10D, a 10
megapixel advanced amateur/semi-pro model
that is the top of Pentax's admittedly
limited DSLR line. Actually, I got one of
the last ones and it just has been
superceded by the evolutionary K20D ... at
over twice the price I paid.
My initial focus on the brand stemmed from
the fact that I have a good selection of
Pentax lenses from my old 35mm SLR's that
will still work on their current camera
bodies. Ultimately, this reason diminished
in importance as I came to realize the
limitations and shortcomings many of these
lenses likely would have on a digital
Pentax. Aside from the fact that none of
them are autofocus, many are older "K" or
"M" type lenses that do not communicate
aperture information through the
"crippled" KAF2 mount of the
new bodies, which necessitates manual
stop-down metering and imposes some other
limitations such as lack of automatic
flash control. I do have some "A" lenses
which are much more fully compatible and
have all the functionality I feel I need.
But then there is the question of "digital
optimization". Older lenses designed only
for film, especially wide angle ones,
often suffer excessive susceptibility to
flare and other quality issues when used
with digital sensors.
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Sunburst in Blowing Snow
Pentax
K10D, Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 @20mm,
1/125 sec, f/8; moderately cropped
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Even after discounting the importance of
my existing lenses, the K10D held enough
appeal to maintain my favour. The $650
price provided a lot of camera for the
money. It is a rugged body with extensive
dust and weather sealing. It has image
stabilization built into the sensor unit
so it works with all my lenses, no need
for expensive stabilized optics. It has
innovative modes and features that help
the photographer to take control of the camera rather than vice versa. Indeed, it
gives me the sense that its design was well
thought out by photographers, whereas some
cameras clearly have been designed by
electronic engineers. The main criticism of
the camera that has consistently come up in
test reviews is the quality of its JPEG
processing, but that does not concern me much
because I routinely shoot in RAW format
anyway. And I like the fact that it allows me
to shoot in the open source .DNG RAW format,
which seems more liable to have continuing
software support far into the future than
proprietary, camera specific formats.
Though I have had the camera for a month, the
brutal winter weather that persisted here
until this past week has discouraged me from
taking it out for much serious photography
yet. However, it has been a good opportunity
to study the manual and do some test shooting
inside and through my windows. I am feeling
pretty familiar and comfortable with it now.
I'm also feeling very satisfied with my
choice; this camera is everything I expected
and I am really going to enjoy working with
it.
Since I wanted some lenses with better
functionality on the K10D than my old ones, I
spent considerably more on new lenses than I
did for the camera body, but these are
investments that should continue to be useful
on future cameras long after the K10D is
thoroughly obsolete.
My new lenses are:
- Sigma
AF 10-20mm f/4.0-5.6 EX DC - The last
lens I bought for my film cameras was a
17mm Tamron and I was really getting
into ultra wide angle photography so I
missed that with the Dimage A2. I was
not too surprised to discover that the
Tamron on the K10D is very prone to
flare that can severely wash out the
whole image area and, anyway, 17mm is
not really ultra wide on a camera with
an APS-C sensor, so this old glass has
been relegated to the shelf. This is a
difficult focal length range and the
Sigma digital-only zoom is not perfect
but it is very good and I am having fun
with it already.
-
Tamron AF 18-250mm f/3.5-6.3 DiII LD IF
Macro - This digital-only zoom is
widely acclaimed as the best in the
"vacation lens" category. I was a bit
sceptical, having in the past bought a
few zoom lenses that were highly
recommended but I hated them and they
sat almost unused. I just received this
lens a few days ago but my initial
testing has me very impressed with how
phenomenally zoom lens technology
apparently has advanced in the
intervening years. Though some
compromises are inevitable in a
do-it-all optic with such extreme range,
I'm thinking it may only reveal any
image quality shortcomings in the most
critical applications. I'm amazed that I
did not see any flare when I shot
directly into the late-day sun; that
always used to be an Achilles heel of
zooms. The aperture is very slow beyond
the wide angle range, but my camera's
image stabilization should help me deal
with that. I bought this lens for those
times when I'm not prepared to lug along
a full complement of prime lenses or to
change lenses, as perhaps when
conditions are inclement. If my initial
impressions are borne out, my camera may
spend most of its time with the Tamron
18-250 attached.
-
Pentax FA 50mm f/1.4 - I already had an
excellent Pentax 50mm f/1.7 but it is an
"M" lens and I felt I really wanted
fuller functionality in a lens of this
spec, which I'm likely to use for
dynamic subjects such as people. Anyway,
at less than $200 it is a bargain for
such a fast, high quality optic.
-
Sigma AF 70mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro -
This is said to be Sigma's best quality
lens so I couldn't resist it. I love
macro photography but the 70mm focal
length is a bit shorter than I prefer
for nature close-ups, making pleasing,
smooth, out-of-focus backgrounds hard to
achieve when desired. It should be an
excellent medium telephoto for landscape
and general photography of outstanding
technical quality.
Also,
I have ordered a:
- Pentax
AF 31mm f/1.8 Limited - I decided to
spring for this after I found that my
Pentax A 28mm f/2.8, which was an
excellent, sharp, contrasty, flare-free
lens on my 35mm cameras, disappoints
badly on the digital body with severe
flare issues. The Limited is
ridiculously expensive for a 31mm lens
but everyone who reviews it gives it
raves, even on a digital body regardless
that it was not specifically designed
for digital. Popular Photography
declared it one of the three best lenses
money can buy, the other two being Zeiss
optics. It is said to be immune to
flare, which is particularly important
to me at this focal length. I like
shooting towards the sun.
A
couple of my old lenses that I do
anticipate I will use regularly on the new
camera:
- Kiron
105mm f/2.8 macro - This was my
favourite lens with 35mm film and it
appears capable of serving me well again
now. It is somewhat more prone to flare
with the digital sensor so I will have
to be careful shooting into the light
but I expect this still will be my
preferred lens for macro photography.
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Pentax A 200mm f/4 - Sharp, contrasty
and highly resistant to flare, this lens
gives up little if anything on the
digital body. In fact, with its longer
effective focal length on the K10D, I'm
liking it better than ever.
Now that I am photographing with more
serious and diverse equipment, for the
benefit of my fellow photographers who
view this site I will begin including
notations of equipment and selected
relevant shooting data with new images
that I post.
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Cold Snap ... From the Inside
The
Sigma 10-20mm lens maintains
excellent contrast even with
the sun in the frame but it
did create a small bright
multicoloured flare spot and
larger patches of subdued
reddish and green flare. I was
able to clean up these
problems pretty well in
Lightroom and Photoshop,
mostly using the clone tool.
Pentax
K10D, Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6
@10mm, f16; slightly cropped
at the top |
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December 31,
2007 - Added page for "Recent Feature
Photos"
With
the first update to my Feature Photo spot,
I have created a new page where I will
temporarily move the displaced photos. Any
time you are wondering whether you might
have missed one or you just want to take
another look, follow one of the links on
this page to "Recent Feature Photos" (Now
Feature
Photos). As I move more photos to
the page I will remove the older ones
before it becomes too unwieldy to
download. I haven’t decided whether I will
then delete them altogether or create a
longer term archive. When I remove other
images from the main pages on this site, I
may afford them similar treatment.
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December
2, 2007 - Major site update ... Finally!
When
I first posted this web site last April, I had no
intention of letting it sit this long without an
update. However, I was still quite low on the
learning curve and I had issues to work through to
make the site more easily updatable than it was
and to integrate new content the way I wanted it.
This proved to require a lot of time, never mind
the time consumed preparing new images to post ...
and the hours sure do fly by when I’m in
Photoshop. A very busy summer and fall kept it
from happening.
I
did pay for proper hosting shortly after I put up
the site so it displays better without the
unsightly ad banners. Also, after a visit to Sheep
Mountain in May I posted a flash gallery of photos
from the trip for the benefit of the friends who
accompanied me, but that was separate from this
main site until now. Over the ensuing months I
made a few false starts at doing more but when
other priorities diverted me for awhile I would
lose my train of thought, so it was always one
step forward, one step back.
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My seemingly endless sunroom project is
complete: weeks of backbreaking landscaping work
have reclaimed my yard from the rocky wasteland
that the excavators had turned it into, the lawn
is established, all the painting and staining
are done, the room is furnished and accessorized
and feeling homey. Now I’m loving it! It was
worth all the trouble. |
Well, now the major projects of the past season are
finished, winter has set in and the days are too short
to spend a lot of time outside, so I have been burning
the midnight oil at my computer. After what seems like
an eternity spent grappling with new concepts and
unfamiliar ways of doing common page layouts and
edits, deciphering syntax and code that initially was
pure gobbledegook to me, struggling with diabolical
software and, more familiarly, polishing dozens of
photographs in my image editing software, finally I am
ready to upload my updated site to the server.
Importantly, also I have set the foundation for much
more frequent, smaller updates in the future.
So,
aside from the changes under the hood, what is
new?
If
you have visited previously you already will have
noticed substantial differences on this page. Most
significant is the spot I have designated as the
“Feature Photo”, as I will be rotating this
picture frequently to provide a dynamic element to
the site. It will always be an image I have taken
recently or at least edited recently, though I
will purposely avoid defining “recent”. Usually I
will aim to have a high quality photograph,
preferably with artistic value, to fill this spot
but I might occasionally insert a lesser
“snapshot” if it has some particular current
relevance. My purpose in instituting this feature
is twofold. First, I want to give you a reason to
return to my site often but without asking you to
commit much time when you do so. My other
objective is more self-serving, to give myself a
sense of purpose, the motivation to keep shooting
and working on images so I might always have good
new material to show here.
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I built this bench in my new workshop under the
sunroom. |
Elsewhere, the Galleries
are where you will find the vast bulk of what is new
on the site. I have added several new photo galleries
in the flash format. Given the data intensive nature
of images, there is a lot there to download and view
but some of the galleries will have limited appeal
beyond a specific audience so you may not want to
spend time looking at all of them. I do hope you find
something there that appeals to you and perhaps even
stirs your imagination.
Going
forward, I promise the updates will be more
frequent now, at least to the Feature Photo. I see
some refinements that will be necessary as I add
new content to this page. Last but not least, I
want to add more photo galleries. Most of my
current galleries depict specific events or times
and that has excluded many of my favourite images
so I want to make room for more of these.
Meanwhile,
I think I have provided plenty for you to look at
now so please peruse the galleries and enjoy. I
hope you will bookmark this page and return often,
if only for a quick glance at my latest Feature
Photo.
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April 16, 2007 - Welcome
to “Visions of a Contemporary Yukon Sourdough”
After
considerably more learning and preparation time than
I had counted on, I am almost ready to upload my
brand new website, version 0.1. As recently as six
months ago, if anyone had suggested I should have my
own website I would have scoffed at the idea, I just
didn’t see any reason. The initial trigger that led
to my change of mind came late last fall when my
internet service provider announced that it would be
winding down its ISP services. The prospect of
identifying everyone who I would need to notify
about my change of e-mail address was weighing on me
when I watched an episode of the TV tech show, “Call
for Help”, in which host Leo Laporte commented how
cheap domain names had become and suggested that
everybody should have one, if only for a permanent
e-mail address
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Memories
of Gold
Forest fire smoke coloured the sunset
light on the gold dredge tailings that
line the Klondike Highway outside Dawson
City. I should have taken two exposures to
span the high contrast between sky and
foreground, but I only exposed for the
sky. It took some heavy manipulation in
Photoshop to bring out the dark foreground
and that produced a bit of artifacting,
but it is not enough to prevent this from
ranking amongst my favourite images.
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that would not be affected by changes of ISP. That
struck a chord and, after a few weeks’
contemplation, I registered my domain. Well, if you
have a domain name I guess you can’t help but think
about having a website, especially when the domain
registrar offers free basic hosting and free
NetObjects Fusion website design software, albeit a
fairly antiquated version that has proven to be one
of the most maddening applications I have tried to
learn and use.
As
I thought about it, my purpose gelled and now I
wonder why it never entered my mind previously. I
have been an avid photographer for most of my life,
but in recent years I have been having trouble
maintaining my motivation to take pictures. I have a
shelf load of binders and boxes full of slides and
now I am filling hard drives with digital image
files, but what to do with them? My parents and most
of my relatives who used to seem to enjoy my slide
shows have passed on. For many years the Whitehorse
Photography Club was a powerful motivator, both by
providing inspiration from other members and
providing a venue to show my work and receive
thoughtful responses from other serious
photographers. We had regular photo contests,
created group projects and exhibited prints in group
shows. I remain a member of the club but there are
few of us left and we no longer are active enough to
fully satisfy my motivational needs. I have never
quite worked myself up to mounting a solo print
exhibition. But a website ….there is something I can
work with.
Now
I have created my basic website and a gallery
of recent pictures. The future of this site will
depend on your response, dear visitor. My ideas for
future development have been flowing, though most
may never make it past the initial concept. To do
much more than what you see here now, I will have to
ante up some money for less restrictive hosting and
I anticipate that I will, but I don’t want to pay if
no one is going to come. I don’t expect a large
following; just a few of you looking in for new
content once in a while will be enough to justify
maintaining the site and periodically updating the
photo galleries section. A few more might lend me
the enthusiasm to increase the content and endeavour
to keep the site fresh and dynamic.
I
hope you enjoy the pictures and I hope you will be
inspired to return.
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Porcupine
Tear
I came upon this critter on a
favourite trail that loops from my
home. I only saw it as it scurried off
and I figured it was gone so I kept
hiking. Then I thought, “Porcupines
don’t run far, they just find a
protected spot to stand their ground.”
I turned around and found it under the
low branches of a large spruce where
it had disappeared. I literally had to
crawl under the boughs to get an angle
on it. After several shots I decided
that was enough and it was time to
leave the poor fella alone. Not yet
used to having a camera with built-in
flash, I was well up the trail when I
thought, “Darn, I should have used
fill flash.” I backtracked again, the
subject hadn’t moved and I took
several more shots, including this
one. A slow-witted wildlife
photographer should be so lucky! I
only noticed the tear later on my
computer monitor.
This image tied for fourth highest
score in the 2007 North Shore
Challenge, a contest amongst the 30
participating photo clubs of the
Pacific Zone of the Canadian
Association for Photographic Art.
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