Water Water Everywhere

Here's some fun.

Rachel’s mom, Wendi, sent me a wonderful link to a British Columbia photographer who has does stunning work in some of the specialty areas we’ve been investigating: macro and HRD in particular. 

Living in Victoria, Evan Leeson walked many days to work after a rain.  For years, he took macro photos of raindrops in morning sun: the results are wonderfully visually exciting and found here. 

Check out his HDR images, too — it might excite in you a real interest in architectural photography.

In case you get lost navigating, Evan Leeson’s photostream is here. 

After looking at Evan’s images this afternoon, I tried my hand at some water droplet photography (above).  This is a first-try effort, but you can just go to youtube yourself, and get some tips on the rather simple setup – the real trick is hitting the shutter release at the right moment to let a fast shutter do its magic.  I am going to keep working on this one!

And it just keeps getting better!  Barb McCracken has invited all Ft. St. John & area students to Strawberry Jam at the Lido Theatre for more opportunities to try your hand at low-light performance photography.  It’s free & it’s fun and it’s every month.  Ask Barb for details. 

SE Asia Beckons

I really really hate to seem to be rubbing this in.  But I am leaving next week for a six-week wander through Malaysia.  This might affect the course, but not too badly.

My son was good enough to send me a tiny netbook so I can keep in touch:  both by monitoring flickr, and by checking your emails.

So PLEASE:  make sure you submit your assignments by uploading them to flickr.  Don’t attach them to me in email:  I will not be able to handle the bandwidth requirements.

AND I am writing report cards this week.  Some students have already wrapped the course, others are getting close — but I would like you to know that even if you wrap the course you are welcome to hang around in flickr as much as you wish.  We can’t have too much creativity.

Here is my traveling blog in case you want to follow it.  I’ll try to post a few images from time to time, and you’ll get to see the totally untouched images out of the camera.  Darn.

Ringbolts were used to haul paddlewheelers past the canyons 

on the Skeena near Terrace.   Modern highways have replaced them.  

HDR will not loosen its grip.

Low Light Opportunity

Thanks to Barb McCracken's connections in the world of entertainment, students in the Fort St. John area have an opportunity to try some event photography in low light. 

All students are invited to the Lido Theatre on Tuesday February 1 to try their hands at this type of photography.  Doors open at 7:00 PM.  It will be a fine night of free entertainment by local talented artists — AND you can pass it off as homework!

Barb — who is a student in this course — already has some real experience in low-light event photography.  Check out some of her very cool images on her flickr photostream. 

(On a teacherly note, let me remind you that you can substitute any special project work for regular assignments).
 

An easier subject for low-light photography than

stage performers is a boat that sits still in the first 

light of dawn.  As is so often the case, the trick

seems to be balancing ambient and artificial light.

Malaysia

I just wanted to let everyone know I am going to be taking a little photo safari to Malaysia through the second half of February and back at the beginning of April.

I am looking at an iPad to enable me to continue this work while on the road: I'll take one for a test drive in a few weeks and will know better then.

In the meanwhile — I see that at least one student is taking up the challenge of low-light photography.  This is a wonderful and rewarding endeavor — all you really need is a tripod. 

We'll be discussing this in our YDIP12 area, so keep in touch at the flickr site.

I'll give you more information about the Malaysia trip soon:  preparing for the photographic end has been quite interesting, and I'll share a few things that I've found very helpful in a later post.  It'll certainly give others a change to share tips they've found helpful.

Low Light Example:

In the old French colonial streets of Luang Prabang (Laos)

the night life is mellow and friendly.  Carrying a tripod

is a must for low-light photography, but worth it for some.

Are You Satisfied?

With respect to the Rolling Stones, the Ministry of Education wants to know how satisfying an experience education is.  And, actually, so do I; but that is not quite as important to the mandarins.

So if you would be kind enough to go to the Satisfaction Survey, it should only take a few moments to fill out.  The Ministry wishes parents also to fill out a similar survey — which, for our adult students — might be a fun request to make.

Formerly, this was the same survey offered in regular school with items like "Do you feel bullied," but now it has been crafted JUST for Distribtued Learning students — so please have a look at it.  Honest.  It will only take a very few minutes.

MUCH MORE FUN: Some students have taken hold of the various alternative assignments: the HDR, macro, low light ideas. If you have not been playing with these things, jump right in:  it's easy and much more fun than learning about stop-based exposure.  And everyone should be going to flickr regularly:  it's starting to cook.

And for those of you who want to explore the undeveloped part of the course around post-processing: here is an online image processing program that looks very similar to the industry-standard Photoshop™yet is free and online and works equally well on Macs and PCs. 

HDR

Thanks for your responses to the blog last week.  A few of you expressed some interest in HDR photography.  Like Lisa and Duncan.  It caused me to get a program called Photomatix and spend long evening hours glued to the monitor. 

This is a fascinating development — the High Dynamic Range created by the software compensates for the limitations of dynamic range that has plagued cameras since the American Civil War — certainly more recently for those who used slide film. 

And right now we are watching the maturation of a technology that has already gained huge acceptance among post-processors.  It's exciting to play with this — like surfing close to the front of the wave.  There are a few good news bits on this:

• it's free (get Photomatix on line -- it watermarks your images, but who cares when you're playing)
• it stands alone from other programs.  Photomatix does it all.
• there is a built-in full tutorial in Photomatix
• Trey Ratcliff (a great HDR artist) has a set of free tutorials AND a sense of humour!
• LAST REASON:  it's fun

You should bracket your images (i.e. take a series at different EVs), but even if you don't,  you can get a degree of increased dynamic range with one image.


Check out our flickr site where I've posted a few.  They are first attempts.  Trey Ratcliff has GREAT images.

The New Year

Hi Folks:

I hope everyone had some quality personal time over the break (which, for me at least, always includes pressing the shutter release a few times).

So welcome back to the school and to the course.

I thought I might ask your opinion on a notion I had recently about the assignments for the course: some "special projects."  We can substitute these for other assignments so you have more choice.

One topic that I have enjoyed exploring is HDR photography.  Here are some HDR images, so you know what I'm talking about.  It can produce a very "painterly" look, is great fun to play with — and has the general reputation in the field for being overdone!

Another special topic you might want to pursue is macro photography.  I suspect most of you are familiar with that term — Here are some macro images for your viewing pleasure.  If you wish to work on macro as a substitute for an existing assignment, let me know.

A third idea that occurred to me was the topic of low-light photography, one of my own favorites.  The images linked are not particularly powerful, but will give you some ideas.

Finally — this might be harder to do:  I was wondering who might be interested in a virtual photographic field trip.  We would all agree to go out on one weekend and take photos to share on flickr, then comment on each others' work.

If you'd like to follow up on any of these, let me know — comments made right here in the blog would also help us to build our learning community!

Welcome back.