California's Rainforest

A few months ago I went up to Northern California (real Northern Cali, not San Francisco or the like), to do some do some Rabbi/Kosher work up there supervising cheese production at a place called Rumiano's. It's a cte little family owned operation that makes some great looking and smelling cheese, but as it wasn't Chalav Yisroel I can't confirm the taste (officially (JK)). The plane landed in Eureka, I rented a cute little Kia Rio and drove up to Crescent City. Being as I landed a bit before noon and I didn't have to check in to the cheese plant until 1 AM, I took the time to do some driving and hiking around. I discovered a whole part of California I did not know existed. I mean, I knew that there were redwoods and they were on the larger side. And I knew that it rained more up north that it did down south. Did you know that it rains over 100 inches a year in what's called "the redwood coast"? 100 inches! Most of that is in the winter, then when the snow starts melting and those cold waters run into te ocean it creates this ridiculously cold and foggy sub-climate that provides these massive trees with over one half of their needed water intake. That mean these trees get the equivilant of over 200 inches of rain a year. Amazing. And I know this because I was bored enough to stop by one of these nifty visitor centers thy have set up and actually watched the 12 minute feature film about the redwoods (I actually left slightly after the six minute mark once the "climate change" angle was brought in. Not my thing.).

I also discovered that these forests are very dark and my camera was having a very difficult time there (especially with the patches of relatively bright sky popping in everywhere).

The beaches up there, besides being very cold (the water doesn't get much above 50 degrees) are very rocky. Or pebbly. I.e. no sand. none. Just a lot of pretty polished pebbles that peps pay big bucks for to stick in their fish tanks.

But the air... mmmmm. I guess it's all that oxygen being produced by those giant trees, it's wonderful. Addictive almost.

On to some pics:

That would be mu Kia Rio. A wide angle lens to a dumpy car is like the liquify filter to a double chin. Magic. The car actually looks a lot dopier in real life. And it doesn't really accelerate. Really. It doesn't. But it had air conditioning and a jack to plug in my ipod, so was happy.

That would be someones shoes on a stump. Who leaves shoes on stumps? (I am viciously holding my self back from writing a some sort of stumps me pun, uchhh, wasn't strong enough.)

Big rock on little rock beach.

The now-famous polished pebbles.

Big trees, big road.

And that's that. I wish I went around the actual city taking pics (wasn't as into it yet back then). It's a real interesting city. Very poor, very happy and friendly. Very small, with some cute homes on the beach (more like bluff).

Next time maybe.

A Tale of Two and a Half Sunrises

this is a continuation of last post

As I was soliloquizing, there should be a reason behind each picture. Something is always being expressed (even if something as simple as "hey look at my 2 year old daughter, aren't her arms edible?"), and our job is to realize what we want to express and then compose the picture in a way that best expresses the desired expression (I could use an expresso right now).

As an example here are two and a half sunrises (the second two are from the same morning).

These pics are all from the same spot at around the same time with the same lens at the same aperture (probably) and at the same focal length (around 200mm). Yet each one would elicit a different response in the viewer.

Disclaimer: When actually photographing these I did not think of all of this, these were all taken pre-epiphany.

The first is powerful, makes you want to get up and do something, go on a hike, explore. The colors explode, expressing all the wonderful potential in a new day.

The second is mellow.It's actually a bit before sunrise and expresses calm. Maybe a bit of thoughtfulness. The colors are very low contrast and on the cooler side expressing maybe a relaxed eagerness for the coming day.

The third? I'm not so sure about. It's still low contrast but very warm. the new day is here (the suns out), but I'll take it slowly, firmly (maybe).

I'm not sure exactly how this fits in to every type of picture, but I do think it applies everywhere. So next time, before you press the shutter, stop and think for a minute (if you could), try to express to yourself what draws you into this scene and how to best express what you are feeling or want to express with this picture. See what happens.

Back to the book.

After the epiphanous part. It goes through the visual weight and meaning of different lines, shapes, shades, colors etc. to try to hone your expression skills. Many times we instinctively respond a certain way to powerful pictures but we don't understand why. This book is a short primer on understanding the visual language involved in how we see and perceive (and react) the world around us.

5 stars, Two thumbs up and a packet of mustard to "Photography Composition" by Tom Grill and Mark Scanlon.

Good luck finding it though.

Book Review + Epiphany

I admit, I read way too much. As a kid I used to read everything I could find. I knew the backs of every kleenex box and furniture polish by heart. Nothing escaped my semantically inclined gray matter.

Naturally, as I was getting into photography I emptied the library and even (gasp) bought a few books from amazon (my BFF). After reading, flipping, delving, studying and eventually chucking many a book, here are my hard earned book reviews and rating:

Actually before we go there, a quick overview. There are generally four types of photography books:

1. How to use your equipment books
2. How to compose your pictures books
3. What to actually take photos of books
4. History of photography, Biographies etc.

The first two are very often clumped together and are found in abundance at the beginner level. By far my favorite is "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson (and as evidenced by the over 700 reviews on Amazon, many agree). Short, to the point, very explanatory and beautiful examples, he basically explains what he calls the "photography triangle" (or something to that effect). It's composed of Aperture (amount of light coming in), ISO (sensitivity of the "film" or sensor), and Shutter Speed (how long you let light hit the sensor). And in the heart is the camera's built in light meter which tells you (with some prompting sometimes) which combinations work. He then goes on to explain why you would want different Aperture sizes or Shutter speeds based on what you want out of the picture. Good stuff, highly recommended. Two thumbs up, five stars.

In the second category there are a bunch of books I don't remember because they all explained more or less the different aspects of a photograph. Namely (this is from memory)

• Line
• Shape
• Form
• Tone
• Color
• Light

And they probably all wrote about the rule of thirds and the golden proportion (aka the golden rectangle, ask Dan Brown about it). Yipee. None of the books I read pop out as anything special.

In the third category there are a whole bunch that are okay (how to photograph kids, adults, wedding, portraits, etc.) though there are two that really stood out:

1. Photography and the Art of Seeing by Freeman Patterson
2. Photography Composition by Tom Grill and Mark Scanlon

Photography and the Art of Seeing is more of a workshop type book, which you really have to get into to get anything out of it (which I have not done too much of yet). As of now it gets four stars until it gets a bit more use and then I'll re-evaluate.

Photography Composition is more of an epiphanous (is that a word?) for me. It doesn't go in depth into much but it brings an outlook in to photography that I have not seen anywhere else and I find it quite intriguing (and, in fact, epiphanous).

The authors come with the premise (which makes sense so far in most cases, though I am working at applying it to all) that every photograph is telling a story or expressing (or attempting to elicit) an emotion (or mood). It's the job of a photographer to first of all figure out what story he is trying to tell, and then how to tell it best by choosing the right combination of lens, aperture , shutter speed, composition, placement, timing, and what to include or exclude in the frame.

So, now it's not "wow, that's cool, let me take a picture" it's "wow, that's cool, let me figure out why it's cool, what emotion or mood or idea does it tell, and how could I best express that feeling I got when I first saw it (or maybe I could elicit a different feeling by shooting it in a different way)".

This is getting a bit long, I'll continue it in a bit with some examples and some more thoughts (as if anyone cares. nunu.).

@ The Cow Farm

Had loads of fun taking pics at the cow farm. Tramped around with my tripod and had some fun self portraits.

And

And

(that's would be me as reflected in my wonderfully portable 27" iMac)

And a nice low light pic (taken at f/2.8, iso 1400 (my Rebel would quake at such numbers, the D700? Bring it on!) didn't have my 50mm f/1.4 yet).

And some random cow-farmy pics:

And finally, a cow.

Mmmmm tongue (do you think cows like how their tongue tastes, maybe if you feed them enough pickle juice or something).

Now, lest you be under a wrong impression, I do not spend all my time time at the farm taking odd pics. Rather I have a very rigid schedule, composed of time-wasting, graphic design, truck checking, cow inspecting, book reading, iBook reading (yes I have an iPad, more on that some other time), learning, sealing, sleeping, cooking, eating, coffee-making, amongst other things.

Happy cow thoughts.

D700 - First Impressions

As you may have heard, I recently picked up a Nikon D700.

1st impression: Wow this thing is heavy.

2nd impression: holy moly this manual is huuuge (as in 444 pages)

3rd impression: It's all in English (obviously wasn't printed in Cali).

Seriously, this is one beast of a camera.

Here are my favorite features (as of yet, just got the camera late last week):

Auto ISO: You tell the camera what is the slowest shutter speed you want and the highest ISO you want and it will magically raise the ISO when the speed gets too slow. This is something I have dreamed about and saves hours of fiddling with buttons and dials and switches and menus oh my!

AutoFocus: This camera does a better job focusing on the eyes (which is where you usually want your portraits focused) in full autofocus mode (no points selected) than my Canon did with a certain point selected and aimed right on the eye.

AutoFocus 2: The Nikons have this amazing tracking mode where you tell the camera what you want to focus on and wherever that object moves, it follows, and it works! I shot my bro-in-law running around with an old 70-210 lens and it got 7 out of 10 hots in perfect focus (where my canon would get 1 out of 10, the first one).

Okay. Pause. I started this post almost two months ago. In the interim my camera died! Took my cf card out, stuck it in my reader, transferred the epics my comp, put the card back in the camera and BANG. Camera shut off and wouldn't turn on.

Shoot back in time a bit. (I'm writing this on my iPad so it's going a bit slowish). I was looking at dif places. To buy a camera online and eventually settled on ButterflyPhoto. Why? Because Bing gave me percent back and it was a good price to start (almost too good). Extremely stupid reason to choose a store. Before I bought it I called to make sure it had a USA warrantee, they said yes, but I should have asked for an email to that effect so I would have some proof if it didn't. So i get the camera, doesn't have a warrantee inside and comes with a European wire with an adapter. Warning bells go off, I call ButterflyPhoto freaking out and they tell it is a USA warrantee but since things are odd (they said it usually comes with both wires, one must have fallen out. Right.) they would send a USA wire and a 3 year warrantee from CMS (never heard of them), and they would sen me an email certifying it was a USA model (which they never did).

So a few weeks later after being in shooting heaven my camera won't turn on and I highly doubt that Nikon will take care of it.

So I timidly go to the Nikon repair center in Manhattan Beach (Cali) and lo and behold it's a USA model under warrantee and they said they will take care of it!

Turns out the card reader screwed up the CF card which screwed up the camera and pushed some pins into the AC power thingamajig (holy cow! My iPad actually recognized that as a word, but it can't get a city name straight unless I capitalize it). The Nikon rep said it was my fault and they shouldn't have covered it but they did anyway (4 points for Nikon).

Morals of the story: 1. Forget about saving a buck here and there, just buy the camera from B&H and get over it. 2. Don't spend too much time worrying if your camera has a warrantee. 3. Get a decent CF card reader. 4. Don't tell you wife that the camera you just bought instead of a dishwasher is broken and might not be under warrantee (I didn't tell her until it was at the Nikon repair center and they assured me they would fix it). She really appreciated not having to worry along with me.

Now that I got my camera back, I want to shoot instead of writing reviews, so I'll get back to that eventually.

Tracht Gut Vet Zein Gutg

here, have some sand

here, have some sand, originally uploaded by asparagus festival.

Chanaleh having a lot of fun throwing sand at me. It is beyond my limited capabilities as a thought thinking thinker as to why kids must throw sand. I think the thought process must go something like this: "I like tatty's face when he has things in his eyes and has to make all sorts of funny faces to dislodge the particles. Let's see how many pieces of sand I could get in his beard this time." Or maybe more like: "I like french fries. Let's throw sand. I want a bicycle." I think it may be closer to the latter.