Category: Travel

03-13-16 Self-Absorbed?

Why not try to get your face in most of the things you photograph? (read more)

By Scott Shephard

One of the nice things about people taking selfies in public places is that they are often oblivious that someone is taking a picture of them taking a picture. Am I a creeper? I don’t think so. I’m a photographer. 🙂

And here was the photography challenge on this occasion: How do I get a photo of a massive statue of a sailor kissing a nurse and somehow make it more interesting than all of the millions of other photos that have been taken in this place? (Which is on the San Diego waterfront, by the way.)

One answer is that I could have taken a selfie with the statue in the background. Since I’ve never been to this spot, it would have been truly unique. But I think a better answer to the challenge is what I ended up posting. And are people who take selfies self-absorbed? Maybe. Is it bad to be self-absorbed? I can opaquely answer that with a monumental selfie:

  Deb and Scott strike a pose and generally obscure the monuments at Stone Henge. But they get a truly unique image in the process.
  Deb and Scott strike a pose and generally obscure the monuments at Stone Henge. But they get a truly unique image in the process.

03-12-16 A Pretty Good View

By Scott Shephard

On our recent visit to southern California Deb and I drove over to Point Loma, a peninsula across the bay from San Diego. We went to see the famous tide pools on the western side but I ended up spending more time photographing the Rosecrans National Cemetery, which is located there, than I did anything else.

I have always been drawn to cemeteries as photographic subjects though I don’t often share the pictures I take there. Military cemeteries are especially compelling, in part because they are symbols of sacrifice and in part because of the symmetry, color and geometry that draw my eye.

Beyond all of this, though, the most striking thing to me about the Rosecrans National Cemetery is that it is full. After putting 110,000 soldiers to rest, this cemetery has no more vacancies. Maybe once the military cemeteries all fill up we could find less violent ways to resolve our differences. . . . ?

Canon 5DIII 1/750s f/11.0 ISO250 98mm

01-11-16 Big Island Morning

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)

01-08-16 Life Returns. Slowly.

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

01-07-16 Into the Woods

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

01-06-6 So Many Textures

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)

 

03-31-14 Details

The impressive soaring dome at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, was no doubt inspired by the Roman Pantheon. . . .

By Scott Shephard

When I’m shooting a photo in a place like the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, I often wonder what I could possibly photograph that someone else hasn’t already done. The answer on my visit yesterday when I took this was, “Not much.”

But I still took this picture, in part because I wanted the place in my photo collection. I was also experimenting. The experiment? Can I do an HDR photo at ISO 1250, without a tripod and have two of the three exposures slower than 1/60 of a second? The answer is yes, I guess, Though a magnifying glass would no doubt show the imperfections.

On a side note, I am struck by the fact that under this spectacular dome, the statue is the Roman god Mercury. I wonder if designers could get away with blatant paganism in a public building these days?

Canon 5DIII 1/50s f/2.8 ISO1250 16mm

03-30-14 Curiosity (2004)

He peeks around the corner to get a better look at the American photographer. . . .

By Scott Shephard

Last Sunday I posted something from 2004 and I’m doing the same today, this time from another trip Deb and I took. Our son Brian was teaching English for a year in Japan in a program called JET and we spent a week there.

One of the schools he worked in was a pre-school and our visit is one of the more memorable travel experiences I have ever had. It was fun to watch the children as they went about their daily activities. But it was also fun to see how they interacted with Brian, whom they adored.

Their reaction to me and my camera was also interesting. In the US I think that our children are taught to to be suspicious of strangers. And strangers with cameras taking photos of children? Don’t even think about it!

But almost everyone I encountered in Japan, including children, we open and comfortable with my camera. In the US, a typical reaction to the candid photographer is a frown at best. But in Japan I was regularly greeted with smiles and peace signs.

In the case of this child, there is a cautious curiosity. It is one of my favorite photos from our wonderful week in Japan.

Canon 5DII 1/320s f/4.0 ISO400 145mm

(If you want to see another photo picturing fascination and curiosity, here’s an Instagram post from yesterday of a young boy looking out his window as our plane rose above Minneapolis/St. Paul.)

03-23-14 Walking the Dog (2004)

A man walks his dog on the dock in the bay (on the Greek island of Crete).

by Scott Shephard

I have decided that Sunday’s are going to be my “Flashback Day,” which means that I will post something from either my recent or ancient digital or film photography past. You’ll have to come back next Sunday to see if I remember saying this or if I am true to my word.

This photo was taken in 2004 from the observation deck of a cruise boat that had just docked on the island of Crete. Deb and I were on a Greek island cruise with a group of great Watertown High School students.

This is really more of a snap shot than anything, though I like the look and feel of the photo. I also like the composition, though I will admit that I knew nothing of the “rule of thirds” or of leading lines or of texture or of light and shadow, etc., etc. I must have had some subliminal grasp of these things because they are all present. Or, I just got lucky.

Canon 1DII 1/800s f/10.0 ISO320 300mm

Ready for An Adventure?


02-05-14 Our Italian Villa

2014 02-05 Our Italian Villa by Watertown, South Dakota, photographer Scott Shephard
2014 02-05 Our Italian Villa by Watertown, South Dakota, photographer Scott Shephard

I set the Way-Back Machine to 2008 in my quest for something refreshing (at least to me) to post. 2008 doesn’t seem like that long ago but for a photographer, who might measure time based on know-how and equipment, it was 2 cameras ago: then – the Canon 5D; now – the 5DIII.

The joke in this photo is that my good friend Scott Peterson and I are sitting down to something that doesn’t look particularly Italian and that isn’t particularly fancy. But if you note the flowers and candle gracing our pool-side table, you glimpse clues to our dinner theme on this beautiful night in June, 2008: “Presentation Is Everything.”

I refer to “Our Italian Villa” in the title, though in truth we were only renting it – for a little over $100 per night. The villa consisted of a restored farmhouse and cottages and was only two miles from Sienna. There were 6 guest rooms, including our little three room pool-side cottage. But for two days, we had the whole villa to ourselves. And, as you can see, it had a swimming pool! Perfetto, as the Italians say.

Canon 5D 1/80s f/5.6 ISO250 24mm

A “Donate” button??? Really? Well, yes. This blog, along with my photography, are labors of love. But if anyone feels compelled to offer a little support to help pay for the web hosting, I wouldn’t want to stand in your way. 🙂

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Our Italian Villa by Scot Shephard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.