Daily Image - Jul 2014 Archive

01 Jul 14. I've written before about living in an area that is the confluence of two weather patterns, and of the wonderful clouds, although not always wonder weather, that it produces. We had a baptism Sunday and when we got to the beach it was immediately apparent that there was going to be a delightful show in the sky, so I called Jan and she came down with the cherubs to wander the beach and watch the show in the heavens. It apparently wasn't as good a show for those on the other side of the pond according to friends who live on that side, but on our side it was worth watching. We spent about an hour watching the clouds combine, and then dissipate for the most part. This shot was taken at roughly the apex of the show. I've added a little micro contrast enhancement to give the clouds separation, and also smoothed them out some to show the layering in the individual clouds. I probably should have done a little less smoothing, but I wanted that layering to really show. The amazing detail in the clouds that the eye perceives is almost totally lost in these 2 dimensional captures. Back away about 10 - 12 feet from the screen and the softness is far less apparent. Nikon D300s; 18 - 20; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/1000 sec @ f / 9.

02 Jul 14. Yesterday it was announced that the ice pack at Antarctica was growing faster than anytime in recent history and that it was experiencing its 18th straight year of ever cooler temps, a record being set last Wednesday or Thursday, breaking the record set in 2013. And while the Arctic ice pack has been gradually shrinking for the last two decades, it grew by 40 % in 2013 compared to 2012. With one pole growing while the other shrinks, one might consider the possibility that the earth has either shifted or is continually shifting on its axis by the tiniest fraction of a %, but enough to cause a change in hemispherical temps. Something like this could account for the record wherein we "see" ice ages followed by warming periods and it repeating. And something we may not be able to control with carbon credits, "experts" opinions to the contrary. Back in 1980 when Mt St Helens blew her top, all the experts were talking about how it would be a minimum of 10 years before anything would even begin to grow in the blast zone. By the following spring the hill sides were covered in wild flowers, and among the very first to appear was the plant commonly called fireweed. Fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium) is native throughout all of N. America and is a very lovely magenta plant. It grows all over where we are and this was taken in a neighboring yard on Sunday. As today is supposed to be a fine art type image, I thought this shot might be appropriate. I took the original and cropped off some from both the top and bottom, and then added a wee bit of contrast enhancement to just a few select petals. As it was somewhat breezy when I took the shot, the background is naturally blurred and saved me the work of doing it myself. Otherwise, this shot is right out of the camera. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 5.6.

03 Jul 14. With Theatrical Thursday being upon us, the Sequim Lavender Festival not being very far off, a visit there just a week ago to visit the game farm, and many emails asking for more of the painterly looking images, we'll go with a Monet-like rendition of my favorite lavender farm. As you approach Sequim, this is the first farm you encounter and perhaps the nicest laid out of all the farms. It is one of two that have entertainment for you at no charge as well as speakers showing you how to do different "crafty" things all associated with lavender. The owners are very nice and make themselves available to chat with you about all aspects of running a lavender farm. If I had to limit my time while trying to see as much as I could, I would visit this farm and just two others. Up until last year my list would have included a fourth, but it was sold and the new owners have taken it in another direction and it is no longer in play. Although I work hard to keep people out of my images, this particular shot would have benefited from a couple of lasses in long skirts and bonnets walking in the grassy field at the right of the frame. Yes, I could have put them in, but that is something I have never done with an image, save for replacing a very boring sky now and then. The image was shot around 1900 so the sky was not as bright as I would have liked it, so I brightened it a bit and then added a fair amount of contrast enhancement to it before converting it to the painting look. Without the adjustments, the resulting transformation would have been a bit ugly. With the texture for the sky, the conversion worked well. I thought about making this as a van Gogh employing his short brush strokes, but elected to go with the Monet approach as it seemed more like something he would have painted had he had access to lavender fields. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f /8.

July 4th. Happy 4th everyone, even if you don't reside in the U.S. I probably should have some sort of fireworks image to share but as I don't, I thought I'd go with something brightly colored and moderately explosive, if you are an insect. This is another shot of the red lily I shared last Friday but this time you get to see more of the plant and a different perspective of the stamen. This image started out in a new program, to me, that I used for the first time to see if it was actually as good as it was being hyped. First impression is that while it may be, it is so far removed from the interface used by most of the other graphics programs that I quit after playing with it for almost 30 minutes. Which means that I'll need to invest a lot of time to make it worthwhile and I'm not sure I want to do that. But as it is priced right, $50 for the next day or two, it would be a good investment for anyone looking for a powerful graphics editor at a very reasonable cost. Even at its normal price of $80 it would still be a good investment for anyone looking for a good graphics editor who didn't already have one. I finished this off with my usual software as I didn't want to take all day to get there. Starting with the base image, I cropped off a bit of material I didn't like, duped the layer and changed the blend mode to multiply masking off the stamen, and then added about a 5% increase in the micro contrast. Otherwise it is a basically straight image. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f/10.

07 Jul 14. With the temp today in the mid 80s, way too hot for true PNW folks, and forecast to remain such for the duration of the week, I thought something with snow in it might be appropriate for helping us in cooling off, so we'll make a visit back to Hurricane Ridge and look at some mountains and a bit of snow, the kind that makes you want to get out and play on it. We had gone to the park to capture the sunset, but we had taken friends with us and I was reasonably certain, although they said otherwise, that they really didn't want to wait around another two hours past the two we had already spent there, just for me to get a few sunset images, and I knew for certain Jan didn't. So after spending some time looking at the scenery, and then some more feeding a certain raven hand fulls of dog food in an attempt to get just the "right" shot of him flying, we left and returned home in what turned out to be a lovely sunset. This shot, taken just before we started being entertained by the raven, was one that really showed off the valleys and ridges of the foothills of the Olympic range. I had to tease out the detail in the hillsides by employing a couple of luminosity masks, and I added a small amount of clarity adjustment in the sky to provide for some separation of the clouds, but that was the extent of the adjustments to the original. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f /16.

08 Jul 14. About 6 miles from Neah Bay you come to a pullout that is not all that well marked that serves as the entrance to the Cape Flattery Trail, which, if you elect to walk it, will take you to the most NW point in the contiguous 48 states. Alaska of course will take you way further west, and I mean way further, but you can't walk to that point and it is a substantial distance away!! Neah Bay however is roughly 3 hours distant and only 135 miles of driving through some truly beautiful countryside! I'd wager that most of you would require closer to 4 hours to drive it just because of the beauty and the stops you'd make along the way. It is a nice days trip and if you time it right you might even enjoy the quaint restaurant in the area. It is truly a rural eatery and if you don't like mounted animals on your wall, you might elect to try somewhere else for a bite to eat, but be prepared to do some driving. The walk along the Cape Flattery trail is relatively easy, and while not handicapped accessible, those who need the assistance of something like a cane could traverse the trail with little difficulty. We made the trip late in the afternoon, around 1700 PDT, so it was beginning to become tripod only shooting conditions but as I had left the tripod in the SUV, it was a find yourself some kind of support shoot. The shot I'm sharing today is of course a B&W image, it being B&W Tuesday, but I may just share the other two, the color and creative versions, as several of you asked for more of the three series builds and I may possibly be working late for the next few days haying, but that part remains to be seen. This shot was not as dramatic out of the camera as I would have preferred, so I employed a series of luminosity masks to selective adjust different areas of the image to get just the look I wanted which was how I remembered seeing it, and then did the conversions for both B&W and creative. Generally you'd be given a much greater overall view of the water and rocks, but that has been so over worked that I wanted something a little different so I concentrated on the incoming tide beating up the rocks. The water around the rocks is simultaneously shades of green and blue + white. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f/ 8 leaning against a tree.

09 Jul 14. Tuesday was a day of errands that ended with my watching a webinar given by a big name photographer whose work seems primarily to be that of manipulating images of African animals and "wild" horses. The photography was demonstrating the use of creative plug-ins from a big name company for use in turning an ordinary image into a fine art piece. If you go to the link the image of the leopard on a tree stump and the white elephant are among the images she used in her demonstration. In the process she talked about masking and gave a very cursory example of the unique technique she employs. At the same time she implied that to really learn what she does you need to sign up for one of her workshops. That kinda irritates me. From my perspective, if you are going to show a technique, show it completely and not make it a teaser to try and generate business for yourself. Show the entire process; most folks won't be able to follow it anyway and those that do will still have to do a LOT of practice before they get it right , if ever they do! Generate a good impression as opposed to frustrating your viewers. In the majority of the mailings I provide the series of steps I use to get the final output. And although I don't detail how I did it, I list what I did. I've said this before but a few years back, for any of you who want the step by step procedures just email and ask; I'll happily provide. It will be a long response and one not suited for this narrative. Shooting info the same for this as for Tuesday's, only this time it is the full color image. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 8.

10 Jul 14. O.K., it being Theatrical Thursday, we'll look at the third of three versions of the same file. This was created using one of the plug-ins from the company I refereed to yesterday. Now you have the original color version, plus the B&W, and creative versions. Each should give you a very different "feel" for the subject and each, I think, does a good job of showing off the area but in different ways. To get the results I do you note that I'm employing masking techniques, and I think for most folks looking at this stuff and wanting to do it, the two most difficult tasks when starting out are masking and layering. Both are extremely easy to do, but like anything else, it is easy to do once you know how to do it. Like riding a bike. Easy, but not the first time you got atop one. So let's chat a bit about making a mask. Let's go back to elementary school when you took a light and cast a shadow of a classmate on a black sheet of paper and cut out the inside. You called that a silhouette and when you placed that black piece of paper over a white sheet of the same dimension, you had a face that was white. You could, of course, have switched the colors of the papers, or even used other colors, but the process would have been the same. The white (underlying) sheet was the background, and the black (overlaying) sheet was the mask. In photographic image manipulation programs, the color white is used to show something at 100 % opacity or totally visible, the color black for 0 % opacity or totally hidden, and shades of gray to show opacity amounts in between. We commonly say "White reveals, Black conceals". So back to our silhouette. The white paper was totally revealed EXCEPT for the area where the black paper concealed it. And that's all there is to masking as complicated as it sounds. That said, masks can be very intricate employing MANY shades of gray to selectively conceal or revel details. But like anything else, you first learn how to sit on the seat, totally grasp the handle bars, and go straight down the street. Only with practice do you ride with no hands or doing a handstand on the handle bars. These three images have had some very complex masks employed to get the results I desired, but the process is the same, simple or complex. Same shooting info as before (same image), Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 8.

11 Jul 14. For today's macro shot I thought I'd point you all to the ultimate in macro capture rigs. This link arrived in an email today from a company I've known about for a long time, and one which has always had some very nice hardware to pedal, but this one tops the cake. It will be of interest to maybe 2 or 3 of you, a curiosity for many, and likely of no interest to most of you. But I just had to share it. I need to rush out and buy three! Today's shot was taken in a local nursery which allowed for my placing the plant against a dark background. That made it easy to cut out in post production and layer it against a solid black background. While you loose everything about the plant this way, you gain in isolation of the flower. This was shot with my standard 18 - 200 lens but on the Df body which gave me a 16 MP image which means that I had plenty of pixels with which to play. I added a very slight micro contrast manipulation, plus cropped the original very tight. Other than that, it is straight from the camera. Nikon Df; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/1000 sec @ f / 8.

14 Jul 14. A very good friend who lives nearby with water front property which looks directly across to the Olympic Mountains called a few days ago to invite us to take a boat ride to view some seals and waterfowl as the water was dead calm and it would be a pleasant ride. By the time we reached his home the wind had picked up and the water was no longer mirror-like, but we decided to have a go at it anyway. As we began our adventure we had a little difficulty in getting the 25hp outboard started, which should have been sufficient indication, the weather conditions being what they were, to call it off and wait for another day, but, being Scandinavians, we pressed on and made it almost to our destination before the engine quit. With a tide running against us, we drifted right up to one of our intended shooting locations and had to push ourselves off the rocks while working to get the engine restarted. It eventually did and then, instead of returning home, pressed on to visit an inlet just a little further on. As we entered the inlet the engine once again quit and this time wouldn't restart. So we switched to our armstrong backup power units and struggled against the rapidly moving tidal waters eventually making it to the far shoreline. Beaching the boat, we tied it to a private pier and spent some time on the beach pondering our options. Two that came to mind was to call in support in the form of another outboard motor to swap out for the return trip, and try one more time to get the problematic 25 hp going again. We did both, first calling for backup, then trying to get the old 25 started once more which we did, and motored home. Once back home we shut it down to beach the boat, and that was the last time it ran. Meanwhile our backup was trying to get us the other engine and wasn't getting our phone messages that we didn't need it. But all turned out well and we had a good time. The image for today was taken from the point in the inlet at which we beached the boat. The mountains in the background are the Cascades, on the eastern side of Puget Sound. With several new folks recently joining these mailing lists, and questions about what I'm doing to get the images, here is an explanation to the best of my ability to explain it. All digital cameras capture the image in a RAW format which might be associated with the idea of a latent image in film photography. You cannot see the RAW image as such, it is a B&W capture with luminance data for all of the colors. It takes special software to read these files which then allows you to work on them or just view them. Not all cameras give you the option of saving and/or working with the RAW image, but all of them provide an image in .jpg that you can see and edit. Embedded in the RAW capture is a .jpg and it is this image you see on the screen in the back of all cameras and the only format provided by some cameras. All of these .jpg files have been processed by the camera to give you something useable. So no matter what you shoot, the image you get from your digital camera had been manipulated (processed) in some manner. The difference between the .jpg and the RAW is who is doing the manipulation, you, the photographer, or the engineers working for the camera company. I elect to shoot in RAW and be the one who does the image making. I've attached a .jpg that is as close as I can get from the camera, the "pure" image as some would call it, in addition to the final edit I made. You can decide which you prefer. D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 9.

The .jpg from the camera.

15 Jul 14. Drive to MT, then to Glacier National Park, and go to the eastern side where you can stay in any number of motels, most notable a couple of rather quaint ones in Babb. From there you can drive a short distance south to enter the road that takes you to Many Glacier. This is my favorite part of the park and where I saw my first two grizzly bears, the first walking along a trail with me and the second at a great distance on a hillside. The walking partner was a youngster and was more likely just taking the easy road to a new spot for foraging for lunch than anything else. It didn't mater too much to me as there was a couple of young girls running between me and the bear announcing its presence. I figured if the bear was really hungry, they'd make a much nicer snack than would I, especially since they turned around and ran towards the bear! The closest I got to it was perhaps 25 yards and it was up the hill side looking for something to eat and basically ignoring all of us on the trail. I got a few shots of it but none worth sharing as there was too much brush between the bear and me. The other guy was really big but about a mile distant. Not much of a threat. That walk started not far from the lodge which sits on the shore of Lake Sherburne. The lodge is a lovely old building and worth a visit. You can stay in it, for a handsome price, and enjoy a real nice relaxing time if that is what you enjoy doing. There are also several restaurants in the lodge and well as shops to separate you from your wallet, but neither the food or the "stuff' for sale is worth the $$$ in my opinion. Just visiting the lodge is however something I think worthwhile. The view from the decks is not unlike what I'm sharing today, although this view is from a location about a block east of the lodge and to my thinking a bit more dramatic. This was taken not long after sunrise and just as the breezes were beginning to pick up and destroy the mirrored reflections of the surface of the water. The light wasn't all that spectacular that morning so I first had to work a bit with the original capture to get it as I had wanted to see the view that morning, and then converted it to the B&W I'm sharing today. D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority;ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f / 8.

16 Jul 14. As Paul Harvey was fond of saying, and now the rest of the story. Our little boating adventure involved not only Jan and I as guests, but the cherubs as well. Now neither Jan nor the cherubs can swim, so even though they were all life jacketed, had we capsized in the water we would have had an interesting time. Not that we were planning on capsizing, but then, I don't know of any planned "accident." As we started across the open water the cherubs were in the bow and not so sure they were going to enjoy the adventure, but then, as soon as the water got a bit rough, and the bow was bouncing up and down on the waves, with the water and spray flying around them, they were having the time of their lives. You might even have been able to hear them squealing with delight from where you live! Jan and I were the ones seated directly behind them with the moisture that was bypassing them getting us quite wet. So we slowed the boat, put them behind us and directly in front of the outboard, which redistributed the weight and allowed the boat to plane instead of plow through the water. That fixed the spray problem and greatly increased our speed. Then we were doing just fine until we got to the two small islands/large rocks and started to slowly cruise around at which point we lost power. When we finally got it started that first time, we did a slow cruise around both the rocks with the seals and then the one with the birds, the one we almost bumped into. The rock with the birds was primarily occupied with gulls and cormorants, with many of the gulls protecting chicks. I was able to shoot three different family groups of the gulls, all with two chicks, but as the chicks were really well camouflaged with respect to the rocks, I likely missed many opportunities simply because I didn't recognize them. Today's submission is a good example of what I was up against. Hint: try looking about 1/3 the way from the left edge in the middle. After we shot the birds, we made a pass at the seals who still remained on the rocks, most of them having quit their sun bathing to come and inquire as to what we were doing, and then headed into the inlet about which I wrote Monday. The cherubs rode in the middle on the return trip and again had a great time, more than ready to do it again. And so we shall. D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 9 hand held in a very bouncy boat!

17 Jul 14. Just prior to retiring and leaving MD, I created an image of a tree in a moon lit field with the moon as a crescent and its light casting a blue shine on the leaves remaining on the tree. A couple of the list members have a print of this image, one hangs in our house, and it was one of the featured images in a local show about 6 years back. The tree image was shot at roughly 1300 on a February afternoon, the moon was obviously a night shot, and all the blue colors added by me. The entire thing was a fabrication, but many folks have commented on how much they liked it. But since it wasn't actually a real single photograph it must be considered as art, even though it is composed of multiple photographs. For today's Theatrical Thursday's artsy submission I've done something of a similar nature, but much less ambitiously. It is a single shot, taken in October in the mountains, and was of a beautiful Vine Maple, Acer circinatum, which is on my favorite trees list. The specimen was holding on to all its leaves which were a vibrant red to red-orange, and was just begging to be photographed. I made 5 different versions of this one image, and this is the one that I attempted to have simulate having been taken in moonlight. Those of you who have done moonlight only photography will be familiar with the blue cast that frequently accompanies such captures. For those of you who appreciate open space, you may want to remove the small grouping of leaves at the middle right edge. Shifting the red tones to cyan, and the yellows to blue, as well as turning off the red color channel, allows you to easily create this kind of look. It doesn't work for everything, but I find it somewhat effective when working with foliage. Nikon D300; 18-200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f / 8.

18 Jul 14. Today's macro submission will take a different form in that it is intentionally rendered a little soft due to the nature of the subject, a spider. Knowing that some folks don't like these kinds of critters, I've tried to soften the "blow" a small amount. Although the subject of the photo is a spider, it is not the spider itself that caught my eye, although it obviously did or I would have missed the shot, as much as it was the intricate design on the dorsal surface of its abdomen. When you take a close look at it, you may get the idea, as I have, that creatures such as these, as well as many insects, are the basis for the designs of many pieces of jewelry or tapestries. Much of the jewelry of eastern flavor seems to stem from designs like that seen on this spider. You may even recognize the basis for a crest on this critter. Whenever I have an opportunity to look at collections of insects, such as the wonderful collection in the Museum of Natural History in D.C. I am in awe of the beautiful colors and designs that these animals display. Tends to make me think that all of man's artistic work is just that of mimicry; seems like it fits well the statement of copying as being the highest form of flattery. I've punched up the colors some to get the very warm red to yellow blend, sharpened it a little, and increased the micro contrast to really bring the pattern on the spider to the forefront. The original is a much more subdued capture but all the elements are the same. Nikon D300; 105mm macro; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/200 sec @ f / 5

21 Jul 14. Never did get the call to help with haying this year so I've elected to go back into the archives and pull from previous efforts. Like those in the past, and a first for this year, this is a five shot composite HDR which I then reworked some to get my final desired look. Unlike those I've shared previously, this one has neither people or a full view of the barn, but rather, concentrates on the main beams and the very top of the stack of hay bales. The set of images I used didn't display sufficient dust, so I added a little noise into just the beams of light to represent the dust that was actually present at the time but not moving enough to give the feel I wanted. With the light shining through the slats as it is, I had the feeling as I was working with the image that this might serve as a nice image to portray the first Christmas and that maybe I should save it for that time of the year. Might just have to work up another for the December 25th mailing with a bit more of the barn in the frame. To get this look I separately adjusted the color of the reds, oranges, yellows, and grays, isolated the light beams to add some noise to simulate the hay dust, and lowered the color temp just a couple hundred degrees to render the light more white and less yellow. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/6 sec (middle of five exposures) @ f / 9.

22 Jul 14. As we were driving to Bozeman to purchase supplies for our stay at the condo, I realized that we had driven that road back in 2007 when we were returning home from our Grand Tetons/Yellowstone trip that we took with the photo club from Gaithersburg. It was a great trip and our first exposure to the Grand Tetons. The drive was one with me wanting to stop every mile or so to take photos but didn't as we got a late start because one of us had been taking photos and we had a long drive ahead of us. So I just looked at all the beautiful scenery and drove on. Driving the same road on the way to shop found me doing the same thing as I had no way of knowing how much time would be needed in Bozeman. As it turned out, we spent the majority of the day there and began our return home in the late afternoon but not so late that we didn't have some nice light for the return which meant that I could get some of the material I had forgone on the way to town. At one point I had stopped and walked a very short distance from the vehicle to shoot some beautiful red shrubs framing a deep blue river with a blue sky full of puffy white clouds for the background. When I got back to the vehicle Jan asked if I had captured the animal tracks in the snow on the far bank. I had completely overlooked that and went back to try and capture what it was she was seeing. I tried a couple of different lenses to get the shot and the image for today is the best of that attempt. The color versions are nice, but it took B&W to really show off the tracks to the extent I desired. The river is perhaps two feet deep in this scene and is lacking both a visible fisherman and fish, but the tracks add a bit of interest to the photo that I think I prefer over the fisherman. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/2000 sec @ f /10.

23 Jul 14. While driving around the loop road heading to the eastern portion of Yellowstone National Park known as the Lamar Valley, we rounded a curve in the road to encounter a large number of vehicles lining both sides of the road and a group of photographers (film crew) all looking across the road with their cameras pointing to a specific location. We stopped, I got out to see what was causing the commotion, and was directed to a spot where a black bear was munching on its kill, a deer that had been taken down about three hours earlier. Putting my sharpest lens on the camera, I joined the group and took quite a few shots! Today's submission is typical of those shots and was taken with a lens with an effective 300mm focal length. If you look carefully you just may see the bear and its prey which is what I was seeing through the camera. I was shooting between all those other folks with the big glass that you see in the "film crew" image. It was kind of funny, but it was what I had and so that's what I used. To actually get the predator and large sheep images you need that big glass or just be lucky enough to cross paths with them unexpectedly, which can potentially become quite "interesting." Looking at some lens reviews last night for some of the bigger, but not break-the-bank expensive big glass, I ventured across a couple of videos on a technique I'd never heard of before, but one that apparently has been available on digital bodies, especially the Nikons, for over a decade, called back focus. It is a method for using a dedicated back of the camera button to do the focusing instead of the shutter release that offers many advantages. It saves battery power, makes for easier composition, and provides greater control of the camera. I set it up on all the bodies last night after watching the videos a couple of times and tried it out today. I'll now be using the technique in all my work. Some of you may find it worth while to check it out. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 5.6.

The film crew.

24 Jul 14. Back to the Olympic Game Farm for another shot of a grizzly but this time in a creative version. I didn't do a lot to it, just enough to make it resemble a teddy bear I had as a child except for a few small portions, eyes in particular, that my sister removed many decades ago. I actually had two little stuffed bears, one brown and tan, and the other whitish and wearing one of my infant "T" shirts; I still have them both. Right now I wouldn't be able to immediately identify where they are, but they made the move with us so I know they are somewhere in the house. Never named either, but these two bears, along with a cart of blocks that will only fit one way in the cart, a snow globe with a cowboy inside, and a hand made sailing ship with working parts, carved for me by my paternal grandfather, are the total of my childhood toys that I've kept as childhood memories. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 8.

23 Jul 14. While driving around the loop road heading to the eastern portion of Yellowstone National Park known as the Lamar Valley, we rounded a curve in the road to encounter a large number of vehicles lining both sides of the road and a group of photographers (film crew) all looking across the road with their cameras pointing to a specific location. We stopped, I got out to see what was causing the commotion, and was directed to a spot where a black bear was munching on its kill, a deer that had been taken down about three hours earlier. Putting my sharpest lens on the camera, I joined the group and took quite a few shots! Today's submission is typical of those shots and was taken with a lens with an effective 300mm focal length. If you look carefully you just may see the bear and its prey which is what I was seeing through the camera. I was shooting between all those other folks with the big glass that you see in the "film crew" image. It was kind of funny, but it was what I had and so that's what I used. To actually get the predator and large sheep images you need that big glass or just be lucky enough to cross paths with them unexpectedly, which can potentially become quite "interesting." Looking at some lens reviews last night for some of the bigger, but not break-the-bank expensive big glass, I ventured across a couple of videos on a technique I'd never heard of before, but one that apparently has been available on digital bodies, especially the Nikons, for over a decade, called back focus. It is a method for using a dedicated back of the camera button to do the focusing instead of the shutter release that offers many advantages. It saves battery power, makes for easier composition, and provides greater control of the camera. I set it up on all the bodies last night after watching the videos a couple of times and tried it out today. I'll now be using the technique in all my work. Some of you may find it worth while to check it out. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority;ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 5.6.

25 Jul 14. For today's close-up/macro image I'll depart from the normal discourse to discuss, at the request of several list members, what I'm using software-wise in my work. As most of you know I shy away from promoting specific products, because software, like hardware, is most always a matter of personal choice. But as I have many products from which to choose, and I play with all of them, I thought I'd make an exception and answer several individual questions as a general discussion. The image for today is not one in which I photographed the subject against my black velvet backdrop in the studio, but rather, a shot taken in the front yard of a red-orange calla lily shortly after a rainfall that I then took into the computer and cut from its background and under laid with a solid black layer. The part the software removed allowed the underlying black layer to show through. The making of a mask for a complex object has always been a somewhat trying, if not impossible, task, but new software is making it almost simple. Of all the masking programs I have, the latest from Topaz Labs, ReMask 4 ($35) is by far the best, and I highly recommend it to you if you want to do serious masking. The process I employed is demoed at the link above. Now, the base programs used by most can be quite expensive, and I'm sure you've heard the names of many including Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, onOne Suite, Elements, and Paint Shop Pro to name several, but Topaz makes one you've likely never heard of that is very capable called photoFXlab ($80). Either this, or Elements ($90), is a very good choice for starting and both have their advantages. All the Topaz programs have one VERY significant advantage; you purchase once with a lifetime (your) upgrade policy. NO other company offers this to you! Now, for a quick and VERY capable file viewer and image manipulation stand alone program, take a look at FastStone, which is freeware. I use it daily as the starting point for all my work. Another workhorse is Vuescan, ($40 for one year of upgrades; $80 for lifetime upgrades) a program for doing ALL your scanning needs. Finally, there is a printing program called Q-Image ($70) whose capabilities are so extensive that I don't have space to write about them but you can review them all here in this collection of training videos running over 338 minutes. You can also watch over 177 minutes of training videos for photoFXlab here. This combination of software is enough to get you doing almost everything I'm doing. Of course it will require effort on your part, but I'm happy to help anyone who asks for it. The total outlay for all of this is either $225 or $265 depending on your choice of Vuescan. In the big picture, this is peanuts for any serious work. The one thing I haven't included here is the collection of plug-ins I use, and these vary in price, but many, such as the Topaz collection of 14 programs, is always available as a bundle at a significant savings and the bundle often put on sale at either a 33% or 50%. I hope this helps those who have asked and perhaps some who didn't. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f / 5.6.

28 Jul 14. I used to enter into competitions for the fun of competing, but after several years of listening to folks who just couldn't resist making fools of themselves, I gave it up. My favorite two versions of such are the going on and on over the virtues of an obviously bad image when the commentator should have given the image some good solid helpful constructive criticism, and my all time favorite where the commentator, who has absolutely no knowledge of where the image was taken, or the conditions thereof, to tell the photographer how much better the image would be if it had been taken from a different angle, location, etc. This degree of arrogance, much like that held by members of certain photo organizations, is just too much. So I no longer participate in such ventures of frustration. There is of course lots of room for good solid helpful criticism of any image, and I truthfully appreciate any and all I receive from folks on these mailing lists, even though, sadly, there are but a few who offer their sage advice. The image for today is one of those in which a commentator would likely feel obliged to tell me how much better it would have been had I just moved a few feet to eliminate the branch that is covering a portion of the face of the middle cub, or that I could have edited the branch out of the photo. And while the latter is true but I elected not to, the former is not. Moving in either direction would have required me to walk over another photographer standing within inches of me and had I even elected to so do, my position, in relation to the cubs, would have been worse. Of course that possibility would never occur to those who feel like they know more about the location than did/does the photographer. These little guys were playing both hide and seek with the photographers as well as rough and tumble with each other. They put on a real show for perhaps 20 minutes, something the l o n g line of photographers had been waiting for quite a while to observe. We got to see these little guys about 90 minutes after watching the other adult with its kill. Only this time the group of photographers numbered perhaps 4x as many and the cost of the gear must have been approaching a quarter million dollars. I used the longest lens I had, but it isn't as sharp as I would desire, so what I'm sharing isn't razor sharp to begin with, and I've cut out perhaps 20% of the original to share. Normally I wouldn't offer something this soft, but seeing these three little guys was such a treat that I thought you might appreciate it anyway. This last trip we saw more bears than in all of our trips combined; of course our daughter made one trip there a couple of weeks ago and saw the same thing, a set of black bear triplets. This shot was taken with a 400mm lens on a camera body that effectively magnifies the lens by 50%, so it is what one would get with a 600mm lens on a film camera. Remember, this is a 20% section of the full frame, so it may give you an idea as to why serious nature photographers spend $25k or so per lens for the big glass, and also as to why I remain a hobbyist. Zoom in to 100% to appreciate the cubs. Nikon D300s; 80 - 400; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f /6.3.

29 Jul 14. Returning from a full day of shooting and looking forward to a quiet and restful evening, we encountered a bit of a roadblock about 10 miles from the park entrance in the form of a small herd of bison. Now keeping in mind that they weighed, on average, as much as the vehicles on the road with them, the prudent thing to do was to stop and slowly ease by them as opportunity presented. With the herd electing to use the entirety of both lanes, it was obvious to us, as it was to almost all the other vehicles on that road, that we were going to be delayed a bit. Except for one jackass who thought that his desire to be elsewhere took precedence over everything else and, after honking loudly at us for a minute or two, swerved out from behind us, passed rapidly waving arms and yelling at us as they swerved in front of us, then around a LARGE bull directly in front of us, barely missing him and almost (unfortunately) going into the ditch before regaining control of the vehicle and speeding down the road. One of those very few times you found yourself wishing for one of the rangers. The vehicle involved in this display of obvious superiority and intelligence weighed substantially less than did that bull and I was hoping that the bull would give it a nudge!! The bull in discussion is front center in the image. Not being certain as to the attitude of the group at that moment, I took this image through the windshield. I've taken the original color image, fully adjusted the color, then into a B&W program, and finally done a little finagling to give it this 3-D like look. It is a bit surrealistic, but then, so was the behavior of the idiot driving that one vehicle! Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/160 sec @ f / 5.6.