Glenyce Jane seems to be in perpetual motion but she does pause from time to time for photo opportunities. . . .
By Scott Shephard
We recently spent the better part of a day with out son Brian, daughter-in-law Katie, and our beautiful granddaughter Glenyce Jane. She is approaching her first birthday and I have discovered that when she is awake, she seems to be in constant motion, which makes her hard to photograph.
After her afternoon nap, Glenyce donned her brand new Easter dress, made by her grandmother Mary. We tried to pose her and I managed to get a few decent shots, though she seemed to be interested in any thing but my camera.
Glenyce Jane is perfect in every way, of course. What grandparent wouldn’t say that about their grandchild?
This flashback from a year ago compresses hours into seconds. . . .
By Scott Shephard
Today’s Flashback Sunday “image” is from a year ago and you are seeing my first attempt at time lapse photography. It’s not much but it’s all that I have.
For the technically minded, I set my 5DIII on a tripod with my Canon intervolumeter set to take a photo every 30 seconds for about 3 hours. So in this short video you are seeing about 260 photo in the short 13 second sequence.
There’s a lot that I have to learn about time lapse photography. It’s on my “60 at 60” list.
When you stand in the vast, open landscapes of western South Dakota, you are never in the “middle of nowhere. . . . “
By Scott Shephard
I live in South Dakota and now that I am mostly retired and my wife is soon to be mostly retired, people often ask if we plan to move away. To me, the question is really, “Now that you aren’t forced to live in South Dakota, why aren’t you moving somewhere better?”
I’m not puzzled by the question given that many times this winter, facing more cold and snow than I like, I wondered, too, about why we live here.
Today, the answer lies in the landscape you see here, which is somewhere well west of the Missouri River and somewhere slightly west of the Cheyenne River. It was a blustery, gray day when I stopped my truck along the side of the road to take this photo.
I am a long way from a city of any size. I am down a gravel road that curves ocassionally but then goes straight as an arrow for miles. I have not seen another human for close to two hours. There is no sound of traffic, or of farm machinery or even of cattle. I hear only the sound of my breathing, the soft click of my camera shutter and the rush of the wind along the grassy hills.
A tree falling in the forest makes the ground shake – even if there is no one there to feel it . . .
I will spare you my philosophical meanderings about trees falling in the forest. I will say that the ground shook when these trees fell. So consider a rephrasing of the question: “If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to feel it, does the ground shake?”
Nascent: “just coming into existence and beginning to display the signs of future potential” . . . .
This photo was taken at in the fern room of the Como Park Conservatory in St. Paul, MN. In a room filled with various shades of green, it’s hard not to notice a fern that is a nonconformist. But I don’t think this one is a mutant. Instead it had recently unfurled because the surrounding brothers and sisters were green. Thus I concluded that this fern was newly unfurled. The dictionary definition of “nascent” on which nascence is a derivative is “justcoming into existence and beginning to display signs of future potential.” I like that word and all that it intends.
Is there something symbolic about an unfurling fern?
By Scott Shephard
I continue to indulge my fern fetish by posting this unfurling fern. It has larger meaning of course and is rich with symbolism. But that’s all I have to say today.
The more things change . . . the more they change . . . .
By Scott Shephard
The old saying is that “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” But in the realm of digital photography I believe nothing could be farther from the truth. Recently, I was reading an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the various film formats available to a photographer written by a nationally known photography guru. When he gets to 35mm (which is the format emulated by modern digital single lens reflex cameras – aka DSLRs and the kind of camera used to take today’s photo), he says
“35mm is a strictly amateur format. The only legitimate professional use of 35mm [is] for newspapers and sports . . . . ”
— Well Known Photo Guru – 2003
In another article offering recommendations for which digital camera to buy he says
“Resolution and ISO are silly numbers used to try to sell you more expensive cameras. . . . Now that every camera has double-digit megapixels, camera makers invented another meaningless number they use to extract more money from the innocent, called ISO (pronounced eye-ess-oh).
ISO is a rough measure of low-light sensitivity. It only matters if you shoot in the dark, and then shoot without flash. As soon as your flash pops up, the higher ISOs aren’t used anyway. Even if you learn how to use the higher ISO settings (few people do), there isn’t much difference between cameras of the same type and era, regardless of cost! All the higher ISO settings do is make the picture look grainier, and the cameras that sport the highest ISO settings look horrible at those settings!”
— Well Known Photo Guru – 2013
Well, Mr. Guru, I disagree. In 2014 I don’t believe that a 35mm format camera (such as the Canon 5DIII I shoot with) is for amateurs. Nor do I believe that in 2015 resolution and ISO are silly numbers. Frankly, since 2003, digital cameras have made amazing progress.
Why do I tell you this on “Flashback Sunday?” The photo you are looking at was taken with a DSLR known as the Canon 1D, a camera which represented a revolutionary change in digital photography. The camera cost $5500 without a lens, had a 4.4 megapixel sensor and wasn’t all that great at high ISO. But the photo (taken at a time when I was very much an amateur) isn’t bad. I took this photo in 2003.
I think that in the 21st century, it’s best not to be a Luddite. The Luddites were people who felt so threatened by the machinery of the Industrial Revolution that they set out to sabotage and destroy it. There are some who mourn the obsolescence of film, darkrooms and temperature controlled developers and fixers. But I’m not one of them. My problem is that when I look at a photo such as this one, taken with a dinosaur DSLR like the 1D, I want to go back and photograph it again.
I’m thinking that someday, if I keep up with the pace of change, I will say the same about everything I.m doing now. Such is the nature of change. . .
A black and white photo is really something less than black and white. And a whole lot more . . . .
Forgive my title, which alludes to a best selling book that has nothing to do with ferns or photography. I was just trying to get your attention.
The fact is that a “black and white” photo is actually thousands of shades of gray. And, in this photo, there is little that is either purely black or purely white. The variety of shades is what gives the photo its texture and dimensionality.
Frankly, I really liked this photo in color but when I converted it to a fairly high contrast black and white image, I had a kind of a “holy cow!” moment. It wasn’t the color that I liked about this capture – I liked the patterns, texture and play of light on the serrated fern leaves.
In color and in different light, this photo of a palm leaf would convey a very different feeling . . . .
By Scott Shephard
I took this photo as part of an assignment Dennis Newman, photo/media instructor at Lake Area Technical Institute, gave us on a recent field trip to Minneapolis and St. Paul.
I had originally processed this photo in color (see it here) but on a whim decided to see what a black and white process would do to it. And I liked it – primarily because it drew attention to the nature of the assignment, which was “light and lines.”
It occurs to me that photographers are like a movie directors in the way they use light, color and space to convey a mood. In the case of this photo, dark and mysterious is a long way from green and vibrant.
