I recorded a podcast giving some recommendations for the photographer in your life. The pricing ranges from expensive(relatively speaking) to inexpensive, hardware to books and software. I hope it is helpful in making useful decisions for your holiday purchases. All of the items can be studied on line, here are the useful website links:
In addition, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals has an excellent training platform which provides video tutorials on a wide variety of photographic subjects at a reasonable cost for the active learner.
To listen to the Podcast entitled "Gifts for the Photographer in your life" click on the link following this sentence(s) or in the side bar of this blog. Additionally you can find the Podcast in iTunes under Hold the Eye Images Podcasting.
Arrived last evening at the annual Sausalito Art Festival which starts today at 10AM. The Inn above Tide, is a great place to stay, and is right on the water overlooking San Francisco and the Bay. Every morning is different, I have posted in prior years diving birds, sea lions, and various other creatures in the early morning hours. This morning like every morning is completely different. Minimum wildlife but lots of interesting people out on the water.
Some bring man's best friend
Others, just like the big sail boats, silently moving across the water
Me, I like man's best friend, something about exercise and you buddy, that makes me smile. So there you have the early morning in Sausalito at the Inn above Tide. Nice spot to be on this foggy morning before the festival.
The roots of the Erickson Cattle Company began before 1892, the year a cabin was built on the out skirts of what is now Yosemite National Park. A lot has changed since that period but one thing hasn't, the Erickson family is still in the cattle business. Dan Erickson, the great grandson of the founder, tends the herd in the Sierra high country, rides rodeo, and lives an authentic cowboy lifestyle, albeit modernized. He drives the cattle to lower elevations in the fall, avoiding the heavy snows and does it the old fashion way on horseback. It is not nostalgia that drives this decision but economics. The open land is available, and trucking is expensive, so the cowboy trail drive is alive and well. They have a facebook account at this location: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Erickson-Cattle-Company/197768206917176.
This is a photography blog, so I was privileged to photograph some of their activity last weekend and interview Dan and Andra Erickson for Hold the Eye Images Podcasting. Co-hosting this podcast is Julie Kitzenberger, who works with Hold the Eye Images Inc., and is a well known photographer in the Bay Area. Examples of Julie's work can be found here:http://photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=979198. But before I share any photos, here is the interview on Hold the Eye Images Podcasting, which can be listened to on this blog page, or by clicking on the right side of the blog. It can be found also on iTunes under Hold the Eye Images.
So, you have listened to the discussion, here are the Erickson's and yes they are this handsome and beautiful both in the way they look and most importantly the way they act, right out of a magazine.
But let's look at the images they create for us photographers, pretty special when you think about it.
Here is Dan at the beginning of the day, quite a sight with the sun, always shot at F/22 and the mist from the body heat in the cool Sierra air.
And of course, the cattle drive, sepia gives it that olden day touch.
And there are more images for the taking!
So you have the option of different looks which are important for the variety of your portfolio.
And you can't forget what the sun gives you when a little dust gets up in the air. One sleeping and one watching, or one looking at his iPhone? You guess.
Also the close-ups that were discussed in the podcast, here are some examples. And yes the guns are real, and Tim who is pictured here fired off a couple of shots to wake up the cows in the beginning of the round-up.
And, no one ever gets in a bad mood with Dan standing watch!
And we have horses to photograph, many options including these running right at me.
So at the end of the shoot, my camera count was 3,000 images, and I have not looked at most of them by any means. I have some cool photographs of the roping, more still photography, more great images of cowboys riding and many more yet to be examined. The platforms for shooting are provided and work well. As Julie said, both wide angle and telephoto lenses are needed, and at the end of the day, you might get something like this.
After getting up early in the morning for a nap, even the horses need a nap. Happy Trails!
Special thanks to Rebecca, Al, Renis, and Charlie for helping and especially to Rebecca for putting together such a great workshop. And if you go and get a chance to talk with Al, his stories covering this area as a photojournalist are very interesting. See you soon folks.
The last leg of our trip was a few days in the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy and then on to the Maasi Mara to conclude the trip with four days of amazing wildlife photography. Let's start with Lewa, a unique place where wildlife preservation is the purpose of the Conservancy. Like the rest of Kenya, there are lots of animals in Lewa, migrating across Africa, but the population most focused upon is the Rhino. Poaching is a serious problem for Rhino's and you will hear more about this on the podcast in this blog. Here is a Rhino from Lewa, that I photographed on one of several days we observed these majestic creatures.
One example of the White Rhino in Lewa
Be sure and listen to the podcast to hear about the efforts and costs in protecting these animals from extinction. Lewa has the full range of animals you see in Africa, the major difference is the extent to which The Lewa Wildlife Conservancy goes to protect the Rhino. A small army of armed police roam and watch over these creatures from poachers. With all the animals free to roam and move on, the task is daunting, but best described by Frans when he discusses the issue. In the meantime, check out http://www.lewa.org/ for more information.
Next we stopped in the Maasi Mara for four wonderful days of photography. We stayed on the Mara River at the Serian Camp(to get a glimpse watch this) , a great place with the sounds of Hippo's snorting at night. As you will hear in the podcast, the abundance of wildlife in the Mara is unbelievable. You land on a dirt road, no buildings, just your Rangerover(hopefully or you are screwed), to drive you into the bush. We did game drives twice a day, balloon rides, tracked animals, watched, saw and photograhed so much wildlife, at the end of this Safari, I had nearly 10K photographs. The Mara is truly a wildlife photographers paradise and here are just a few examples of what we photographed. The young and the old Giraffe.
The young and the old lion and going out with Jonathan Scott of The Big Cat Diaries. Jonathan went out with us one day to visit the Marsh Pride. Check out his work at http://www.jonathanangelascott.com/
The young feeding, in this case on a Zebra
The young and the old showing affection.
The handsome young posing like a "rock star"
And one of the most feared animals in Africa
The Topi looking like a sentry for predators but not really, he is staking out his territory. A common citing on the Mara
And for birders the Lilac-breasted Roller(hope I'm right), one of the prize birds of the Mara.
Also common the Gray Crown Crane, on beautiful bird with quite a mating dance.
To hear more about this place, from the perspective of others and listen to Frans and Christine talk about their work, click on the podcast embedded in this blog or click on the Maasi Episode listed in the right column.
Well this is the last of the podcasts while on the Safari, I plan on an upcoming one, talking about what I learned about the "right gear" for such an adventure in Africa. To say the least I learned a lot, but I was lucky with my choice of equipment but most of all with choosing Frans and Christine as the Safari Leaders, they are wildlife specialists, world renowned as videographers, photographers, and writers, and their explanations as well insight helped make this a trip of a lifetime. Also a special thank you to David and Patrick our guides as well as Lydia and William of Origins. All of the camps I have written about were wonderful as well as great experiences. There is so much to see, to learn about, to appreciate, that at times it is overwhelming. Africa is a wonderland of opposites, great good and evil, chaos and tranquility, but most of all change. Rwanda with a terrible past just a few short years ago is peaceful, clean, and tranquil today. The wildlife that is abundant today is struggling, no one knows what a decade will bring, or when the last wild Rhino will disappear. There is nothing profound that would do Africa justice, it is what it is, and as a westerner, I have never seen anything like it.
With thousands of photo's, I'm back from my journey to East Africa. I started from Nairobi, Kenya, journeyed to Kigali Rwanda, drove to the Virunga Mountains on the border of Uganda, Congo, and Rwanda. From there we hiked to 10K feet through the thick bush to meet up with Gorilla families for a couple of days. Came back to Kigali, flew to Samburu via Nairobi, and on to Elephant Camp Watch. A wonderful place in the bush where wildlife roamed the camp at night. After two days of wildlife photography, meeting local conservationists, and activists, we went on to Lewa Conservancy where we spent 3 days meeting with the likes of Alex Root who introduced Dian Fossey to Gorilla's and others who are concerned about the future of Africa's ivory horned animals. We talked with security people who are charged with protecting wildlife from poachers, a dangerous and difficult job. Poachers offer as much as 35K for Rhino horns to people who earn less than a dollar a day so the task is difficult. We also spent lots of time each day photographing this special place. The final leg of our journey was the Masai Mara where we spent four days, in one of the highest concentrations of animals on this planet. We even did a shoot on lions led by Jonathan Scott famed for the "Big Cat diaries". Jonathan has spent a lifetime studying and documenting big cats on the Mara for documentaries, filming, and books. His knowledge is second to none. We also worked with a young woman, Sarah Blackburn who is going to Oxford for her Ph.D but currently is doing field research identifying lions in the Mara.
The trip which lasted nearly 3 weeks, was lead by Frans Lanting who incidentally has an article in this month's National Geographic on Namibia. Frans and his wife Chris have been photographing and writing about Africa for over 30 years, so we were able to meet people and go places based on their experience. And yes, I did podcasts from these places, which involve the whole group and their personal experiences. Finally, a limited edition book will document our experience with our photo's and stories, put together by Frans and Chris.
But to start with, here is a podcast with Frans talking about the trip
I was watching the BCS football game tonight, reading the latest "Mac" magazine, downloading recommended apps, figuring out what I needed next with my photography(app wise), looking for the rating or reviews of each app that was suggested.....thinking about streaming to my TV, managing Twitter, ....and you know, I had to pull the plug so I could go download Lightroom 3. All of a sudden I'm blinking and I come to the realization, I'm turning from a photographer into another piece of technology dependent other pieces of technology to function. If I pause for a moment and recall the days when I just took pictures and the most difficult decision was what film to buy. I didn't do anything with the images(except black and white), dropped them off or mailed them. Only actual saw them when the negatives or chromes were returned, and then even asked someone else to print them. Today, all of that happens almost instantly, and is all done by me. Additionally, when taking pictures, I didn't just snap away, I planned, was careful, because you could not make adjustments to mistakes since you didn't see your image, and film cost money so you had to be careful about just snapping away. Today, I can shoot as much as I want, make adjustments on the fly, and who cares, the images are virtually free.
I know, I sound like a caveman complaining about having to wear clothes, but the world of photography has changed so much along with the rest of technology. I now have an iphone, itouch, ipad, 4 computers, high speed internet connections throughout my house wirelessly, even my TV tells me whose is calling on my land line( from Comcast). My car tells me I have a call, my cell phone shows me movies, my iTouch allows me to talk with people and see them and it's not a phone. And the bulk of this change has occurred withing the last 10-12 years. I constantly communicate with people through email when I fly, order from the back of the seat in front of me, watch any number of movies for free, even live television. And the fun part, they fondle me before I get on the plane to give me a cheap thrill.
I was watching the Ellen Degeneres Show today, and she had someone from the audience who could balance on a skate board, and dribble five basketballs at the same time. What ever happened to the getting the guy out of the audience who could "walk the dog" with a Yo-Yo?
I feel better now, typing on my blog, getting ready for another podcast and planning a Youtube channel that will feature Hold The Eye Images Photography. I'm really not sorry we have so much technology, nor do I feel put upon by the change. In fact, I feel privileged to have lived in a time without cell phones, when you stood in line at airports to use your corporate card to check in at the office. It was like today, a special time, people didn't work all the time on laptops on the plane, no laptops existed. They drank, laughed, wore suits and ties, flirted with the flight attendants, and sleep. I remember my first car phone, called a bag phone, boy was that cool. But I noticed it did up your productivity being able to call in things etc. And my first exposure to personal computers was an old Compaq, that had a big handle on it and it was about the size of 3-4 shoe boxes. We ran lotus and guess what, we could put in data sets and get graphs! I thought that was the coolest gadget in the world. But one of the best things that I wish had not changed were presentations. People would come in with a stack of view graphs and right away someone would say pick 4 and talk about them. With power point, everybody thinks you love to see their creation and hear them talk. Even kids in grammar school do power point presentations. I hate long presentations and often just get up and leave. It's all about story telling, not slide shows, and that art is being lost quickly. Everything has a story, you just have to find it. Like great photographs, there is always a story within.
No that was not a typo, Cali Hobgood-Lemme won the top spot in photography as well as the overall "Best in Show", competing with over 275 fellow artists which includes 20 photographers. The Sausalito Art Festival is a competitive event, meaning you must apply, be judged, and get an invitation before you can enter. In the case of photography over 200 applicants attempt entry while 20 were selected in 2010. According to Festival publications the show sales are around $4 million making it one of the best if not the best show in the US. I had to a chance to interview Cali, and listen to her story as she described her work, inspiration, and techniques she used in creating these award winning images. Before you listen to this podcast, go to PhotographsbyCali.com and look at her work, it will give you a better frame of reference as she describes painting her black and white images. Again her website is: http://www.photographsbycali.com/
To listen to the interview simply click on the button below, or Episode 11 listed on the right or go to iTunes and search Hold The Eye Images, listen to Episode 11. Enjoy Cali Hobgood-Lemme
Last day of the festival, the most prestigous in the US. Artists from all over the world come to this gathering, where food, wine, and music complement the artists showings in one of the most beautiufl settings possible, Sausalito and the San Fracisco Bay. The food is just OK, but the rest is terrific. Two music stages go all day(for three days), with top flight musicians from rock icons to upcoming new artists. I'm looking forward to Marvis Staples even though the headliner is Jefferson Starship for today. So far my favorite music was Lynn Asher and Cole Tate with special guests Carlos Reyes and James Nash. If you have not heard of them, don't despair since they are local musicians who are amazing. In the world of art which includes music and photography, I'm always struck by the fine line between success and struggle. Lynn Asher et.al. show this, they are wonderful, talented, and above all extremely good musicians, yet financial success on any scale is still elusive. So what about photography?
First, the show is by invitation only. This means you apply, judges examine your work, and you are sent an invitation or rejected. I don't know how many apply etc. but any artist you talk with is pleased to be invited, if not thrilled. The art runs the gamut from furniture-wood to watercolor, 2D mixed media to fiber. In all, thirteen categories including photography. During the show, they award "Best in Show" for each of these categories which is added prestige and a money prize of $500.00. An award of 1st and 2nd are given for each of the thirteen categories. In 2009, the photography 1st prize was given to Chris Honeycutt of Pacifica Ca. and Patty Mulligan of Berkeley Ca. Second prize went to William Vanscoy of Brookings Or. This year the photography first prize went to Calli Hobgood-Lemme and second went to Kelli Knack. You can google the names adding "photography" and check out their work.Twenty photographers were invited this year. I did not count the number of artists but the Festival claims 275 artists with 20,000 original pieces of art. and 4million dollars in sales. Not bad for a 3 day gig by anyone's standards.
I have been attending for several years and while I'm no qualified judge of photography, I will give some comments. The first quality you notice is that all the photography is "eye catching", causes you stop and examine. Secondly each artist has a certain "vision" or "point of view", meaning the images follow a theme. You can see for yourself looking at the websites of the names given in this post. Finally, there is definitely unique processing involved, from wet printing to adding color to black and white. Image capture ranges from large format to digital with most being film on medium to large format. The images are not iconic scenes but created from the artist eye. In fact many could be anywhere, which gives hope to all of us. One common factor is the quality of the printing is extremely high, whether wet or digital, it all looks terrific. The images, for the most part, are simplistic, not complex, with focus for the eye. Compositions run the range, and interestingly break many "rules of traditional judging". Clearly, artist expression is the key which is no surprise, and within the boundaries of excellence, you can write your own rules.
Overall comments, clearly these photographers are photographing for festivals, competiting for the top tear. Their perspective is creating a unique body of work that will sell at these shows. Interesingly their pricing I would describe as modest compared to the rest of the show. Unframed prints are in the $90-$100 range, and limited edition large framed pieces(think Epson 9880), are for the most part in the $2000.00 range. Based on my conversations with high end painters over the years whose originals start around $7000, this show can reach $30-40K. Photographers are not in this sales category from the pricing I observed. Again, from conversatons with some of the artists, they will attend from 3-10 of these shows/year. All say this is the best show, measured in sales.
For this year, William Vanscoy and Alla Tsank were the photography judges and have agreed to an interview for Hold The Eye Images Podcasting. I'm very interested in picking their brain about photography which should be of interest to most photographers. Alla is a painter, who also judges painting for the show, William(Bill) is a photographer whose work is beautiuful. Both have websites so check them out.
I did some photography at the show with a 24/1.4, shooting at l.4, posting later. I also did a nine image pano of the SF skyline with evening haze using a 600mm. Have not had time to download, since my evenings where spent out and about. Discovered a new place the "Sea Horse" which has live music every night, reminds me of my days in Memphis with all the clubs. Another story, but never written about.
Time to pack up and head out for another day at the festival. Happy Labor Day.
The adjustments to these images involved CS5 and a bit of cropping. Many single images contain multiple opportunities to create a different feel. Also, Monique is a good example of how facial expression controls beauty. People often say, "I don't take good pictures", but they are attractive? The reason is facial expression, our faces constantly move and a camera stops that movement so the trick is to find that facial expression that defines your individual beauty. The more expressive you are, the more "looks" you have with your facial movements. Great portrait photographers train themselves to be able to "see" that special look. The rest of us have to take a lot of pictures, pray, and hope. Sounds like a good title for a book, and maybe a movie. You want to figure out your look? Maybe another blog or I will put in the book.
When I'm in a gym, I work out, but tonight I spent several hours shooting Monique who is competing in a couple of weeks in a professional figure contest. This is not body building but figure and that doesn't mean glamor, it means fitness. This required lighting and I use Profoto and Elinchrom Ranger Quadra lights. Both are outstanding, the Elinchrom which performed wonderfully are also more portable. I used an Elinchrom Octabank, two 1X4 strip lights, and a softbox, but not all at the same time. Most of the shoot involved the Octabank and another softbox. I used the strip light down low when she was in a push-up position, with a grid(photo's to come but not today).
Enough technical stuff, I will write about the lighting in another blog, giving all the details, it's late but I did want to post one of the images. To say she is buffed, is an understatement. She is a professional trainer, and spokesperson for weekly videos promoting fitness. This contest requires a super human regiment of training- two and one half hours a day, plus a strict diet. It pays off as you will see in this image. More to come on the shoot, technical stuff, and fun stuff that it is very interesting. I'm writing this in hopes she will love her images; otherwise, as this image shows, she will kick my butt! AND, I barely escaped this punch, my cat like reflexes are failing me.
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