The old bird bath has a new function. . . (read more)
By Scott Shephard
I don’t think that the bird that is about to land is worried that there won’t be enough bird seed for him/her – Deb seems to provide a never-ending supply in the bird bath that is located on our lower patio. The bird bath rarely has water in it anymore. And though I really don’t know much about sparrows, I think they’d prefer food over a bath any day.
Canon 5DIII 1/350s f/4.0 ISO400 200mm
There are, of course, many ways to see the same thing. (read more)
By Scott Shephard
I showed you three views of the same plant yesterday and today I am showing a a much more literal way to see it. This plant (name???) is the same variety as the one pictured yesterday, though in a different state of bloom.
Except for my photography, I am not a control freak. But I do enjoy exercising the ability to get my viewers to see what I want them to see it as I want them to see it. Sorry if you feel manipulated. 🙁
Canon 5DIII 1/1000s f/2.8 ISO400 100mm
Can an object be real and abstract at the same time?
By Scott Shephard
To be “real” and “abstract” at the same time seems like a contradiction. But I think you are looking at an example. This flowering plant, which I photographed at Indian Canyons in southern California, is certainly real. What creates the abstraction has something to do with my use of focus and point of view and much to do with the fact that I’ve turned the photo into black and white.
I guess I like the ambiguity of the image. If I’m lucky, the ambiguity requires the viewer to impose meaning based on his or her own perceptions and experience. It’s like life itself.
Canon 5DIII 1/250s f/4.0 ISO250 102mm
(For those who need something less ambiguous, I offer two other views of this plant.)
A wild animal? He thinks so.
By Scott Shephard
He comes for the cracked corn, not because my camera beckons. In fact, once he was aware my presence a few feet on the other side of the patio door that separated us, he flew off. He did return but was much more furtive and therefore much less photogenic.
The ring necked pheasant is South Dakota’s state bird, incidentally. But it’s also the bird that people from all over the world come to shoot. That seems paradoxical to me. But I only hunt with my camera . . . .
Canon 5DIII 1/90s f/2.8 ISO400 200mm
Spring has sprung, the grass has ris, I wonder . . . (read more)
By Scott Shephard
When Deb takes a photo of mine off the wall and puts it on the floor, it is her way of saying . . . . well, that she doesn’t want the picture on the wall.
She rarely does this and recently what she took down was my “Winter Triptych” which I’m sure she likes but which tends to remind us of something most South Dakotans want to forget: winter.
So I made what I am officially calling my “Spring/Summer Triptych.” It’s a creative title don’t you think? And for those wanting names for the flowers, from top to bottom, they are lily, crocus and flowering crab apple. I offer nothing fancy today; but I hope it is optimistic.
The birds certainly don’t mind the wind and rain. . . (read and see more)
By Scott Shephard
It was rainy, windy a deeply overcast when we parked our car at the overlook to the La Jolla caves. I thought twice about getting my camera out. Frankly, I’ve thought twice about getting my camera out at any time in 2016. Believe it or not, I’ve even thought about just quitting photography. But then what? The fact is that I’ve just gotten lazy. . .
But I did get the camera out and took a few photos. I’m glad I did. As I’ve taught my students, photography isn’t an accident; its a concious process. And it takes discipline, practice and dedication. Oh, and a good “digital darkroom” to help gray days look just a little brighter.
Canon 5DIII 1/125s f/8.0 ISO400 24mm
A few more from this beautiful area:
Do you visit the Photo A Day blog once and a while? Thanks is you do. (read more)
By Scott Shephard
First, if you subscribe to this blog via email, thanks. It turns out that I have been sending the daily posts to the wrong group so I think I am welcoming some of you back. I hope you stay. Of course, if un-cluttering your life is a 2016 resolution, you can easily unsubscribe to this blog. But how about attacking that bloated junk drawer in your kitchen first? Or your sock and underwear drawer? Or you car’s glove compartment.
Second, those who are my friends on Facebook will have seen this photo already. Sorry to repeat myself.
But what about the photo? Well, it’s really 5 photos layered and processed as an HDR. And you’d never know it, but the sun was about 20 minutes from coming up. I shot this in twilight and needed a flashlight to see the camera settings! The longest exposure was 30 seconds and it looks almost like mid-day. There I go bending reality again. 🙂
I will also mention that the waves were crashing onto the rocks but the long exposure makes the water look relatively flat. The only evidence of the waves is the spray, which looks like low fog in this picture. More bent reality!
Finally, look closely and you will see two people in this photo sitting on the far shore by the palm trees. They are waiting for the sunrise, not for me to finish the 1 minute photo sequence. Because they are pretty sharply focused, they obviously sat very still for those 60 seconds.
Hawaiian sunrises will do that to you.
Canon 5DIII f/16.0 ISO200 40mm (5 shot HDR sequence)
After the volcano erupts, life returns. (read more)
Scott Shephard
One of the things that is striking about the so-called Big Island of Hawaii is that it is the “youngest” of all of the Hawaiian islands. What that means is that it is only 500,000 years old. On a human scale, that is really old, of course. But compare that number with the age of the rocks in the Black Hills in my home state of South Dakota – geologists say that they are around 2 billion years old. On a human scale that’s almost unimaginable.
But compare either the age of the Black Hills or that of Hawaii with the fact that the moss covered rocks you are looking at bubbled out of the depths of the earth in 1960. And a few miles from where I took this photo, you can walk on parts of the earth that were formed an hour ago. (The walk is imaginary given that the stones would melt your shoes.)
For me, the paradox of Hawaii is the lushness of so many parts of the island juxtaposed with the seeming bareness of places pictured here. But in the 55 years since the eruption that formed this ground, if you look closely, you will see that life is abundant. Give this area another half million years and watch out! It will be a jungle. Maybe.
Isn’t it odd that the “maybe” in that last statement is up to us and the choices we make today about preserving our planet? What took billions of years to form might be destroyed by 200 years of human inattention.
Canon 5DIII 1/15s f/16.0 ISO200 100mm
Dark and mysterious? That’s how I saw it. You may have seen something else. (read more)
By Scott Shephard
Not too far from the place I captured in yesterday’s photo, I found this location. And, like many things I see in Hawaii, it is amazingly photogenic. This road is called Pohoiki Road and runs for a few miles though trees that arch over and shade the road.
I am fascinated by this place and suspect that the locals who drive this road every day don’t even notice its mystery and beauty. That leaves me wondering what we in the Northern Plains see every day that a person born and raised on the Big Island would be impressed with? Miles of flatland, covered in wheat, corn and sunflowers? Frozen lakes that you can walk on? Thunder and lightning? Lingering twilight that seems to last for hours in midsummer? All of these and many more are bound to impress.
Canon 5DIII 2s f/16.0 ISO400 24mm
Can you call yourself a photographer when you don’t take your camera out of the bag? (read more)
By Scott Shephard
The most important part of getting a decent photo is getting the camera out of the bag. For me, believe it or not, that hasn’t been a regular thing for the two weeks we’ve been on the Big Island in Hawaii.
And so this morning just before sunrise I told Deb I was going out to look for photos. She asked, “Where?” and I said, “I don’t know. Maybe the lava fields nearby.” But the lava fields didn’t call me. Instead, I ended up at a place called Isaac Hale Park. I got out of the car (without my camera) walked out onto the rocky shore and watched the surf roll in.
I was actually back in the car with the motor running when my inner photographer voice, which I had put on mute weeks ago, asked, “Really?! You’re too lazy to take a photo of this?” I ended up taking many more here but this is the first one I processed.
There’s a lot going on in this photo – maybe too much. But at least I took my camera out of the bag . . .
Canon 5DIII f/16.0 ISO100 28mm (3 bracketed exposures combined in HDR Efex 2)