Frigid Opportunities

It is cold here today. More importantly, it is really dry. All of the moisture in the air has frozen and adhered itself to whatever available surface it happened to be near. This is what frozen water vapor looks like:



Very pretty, and very tiny. That lovely fractal branch of frozen vapor is only about a quarter of an inch long. And as soon as the suns rays hit it, unlike ice, it will not melt into a water droplet. It will revert straight back to vapor form and simply disappear. In the meantime it provides a great photographic opportunity. Not just by itself though...water vapor is everywhere, and when it freezes like this it tends to cover every available surface. For the photographer, this makes for a wonderful but very brief window of opportunity to capture images like this:








Beauty like this makes it worth enduring the cold.

Yep...winter.

Here's an example of an image which I have gotten great feedback on, but which I myself don't really care all that much for. It just doesn't convey any emotion to me at all.

Merry Christmas!

It is that time of year, so I thought I would post a Christmas tree. I took some test shots of it last week, and decided that this would be the way to go....dark and warm at the same time.

Winter has arrived.

This is my version of a shot done by my daughter last week. I have been teaching her about contrast and having her practice black and white shots to help her train her eyes to see when good contrast offers the potential for photo opportunities, and to become familiar with how it plays into composition.

The minute she spotted this view and shot it, she knew she had a good one. I agree, and liked it so much that I decided to make one for myself, changing the angle slightly to emphasize the asymmetry on the left a little bit more.

She is a great student, and is catching on very quickly.

I have a Christmas photo planned for tonight, so look for that here either tonight or tomorrow, and hopefully it will clear up enough for me to get a view of the full lunar eclipse which is supposed to be viewable here in the wee hours tomorrow morning. The weather forecast is not looking good for that though.

Stomp!

Elephants are fascinating creatures, in so many ways.

Oh my...

The things you find while looking for something else...



These are the members of a band that was called BackTalk, and this is a shot I did for a photography class I took back in the 1980's. It isn't very good quality, even for the 80's, but it made me happy because I had thought that all the negatives from this shoot had been lost with a bunch of others from the same time period in a flood several years ago. While looking for something completely different last week, I stumbled on the one set of color negatives I shot that day (all the others were B/W).

The neatest part of all is that all these years later the guy in the middle (Tommy) and the guy to the right of him (Mike) are still playing together in a band, and this week they have a gig in Las Vegas.

Welcome to November!

Not sure how it happened so quickly, but here we are in November. In my last post I said that one of the first things I was going to do was share with you some of the projects I am working on.

I have a friend in an African Drumming Ensemble, and have been working on putting together an African-themed, mostly wildlife mini-gallery (anywhere from 8-12 images depending on the venue) to compliment their shows. At this point it is mostly done, I have put together the photos and designed three different and original styles of frame for them. Now I just have to decide on a final line-up, decide on final sizes, and get the images off to the printer. Once they are back I'll frame them and be ready to go.

Although not my usual gig, I took some senior portraits this year as well. I have actually been on somewhat of a portrait bender for the last few months, and been enjoying it pretty well. I haven't taken portraits in quite some time, and am pleased with how it has gone. I think good portraits are some of the hardest photographs to take. Facial nuances are infinite, and it is amazing just how much of a difference the smallest ones can make.

Now I am gearing up for the winter shoots. I will also be giving my daughter a "Principles of Black-and-White Photography" seminar once the snow arrives. She has really taken to photography in the last 6 months, she shows a gift for it, and is eager to learn more about it, so I have been coaching her as well.

Lastly, I have finally decided to make a very small number of my images available as limited edition prints. There will be at least two, maybe three images so designated. The print runs will probably be around 1000, but that has not been decided yet. Finalized details will be posted here as soon as they are available.

That's it for now!

-Jonderson