Experiments, competitions, and musings about photography.
About
Posted on
David duChemin’s reminder: What’s best for you
After years of getting photographer David duChemin’s newsletters, but never getting around to reading them because they require more than 10 seconds to scan, I’ve started making the time to read them. It turns out they are often among the best things in my email box and often provide a life lesson in the guise Read More …
Creating my own vision of Egypt
This is a composite image where I put two photos together to create one. The original Egypt image looked like this: Now to find some tulips. These should work: This field was shot in the Netherlands, but the lighting isn’t too drastically different and the distance between the camera and field is similar to that Read More …
A camel dreams at Christmas
Ok, so I needed a way to combine images that would represent our two big trips this year (a Tulip cruise and an trip to Egypt). But don’t you think camels would love tulips? Happy Holidays and may all your Christmas dreams come true!
April 2018 Saint Paul Camera Club Salon
By spring I should have a whole stack of things lined up for camera club competitions, but somehow that never seems to happen. So, as usual, I spent the week before the salon entries were due (in mid-March) trying to figure out what I should enter. Prints: Open color Heading into Winter at Wind Cave Read More …
March 2018 Saint Paul Camera Club Salon
I showed up at the March salon hoping that some of my good fortune from February would continue. No such luck. Prints: Open monochrome In the Race to Win Last fall I printed black and white versions of several images from last summer’s bike race. This seemed like one of the better ones, so I Read More …
February 2018 Saint Paul Camera Club Salon
I was around for the February salon too, which was nice. Prints: Open color Blue Bug in San German, Puerto Rico I considered saving my highly stylized blue bug image for the upcoming Creative digital competition. However, the print turned out so well that it didn’t make sense to submit it as a digital image. Read More …
January 2018 Saint Paul Camera Club Salon
For once I was in town for the salon and I liked the digital topic, so I was hoping it would be a good night! Prints: Open monochrome I always struggle with monochrome. Most of it is an inability to “see” in black and white, but I also have some technical challenges getting the tones Read More …
December 2017 Saint Paul Camera Club Salon
Like the previous month, I was out of town for the December Saint Paul Camera Club salon. Prints: Open color Botanical reflections I love this image. Maybe I’m biased by the fact that I was able to capture it without a tripod by balancing my camera on a ledge in just the right spot and Read More …
Complete and utter Olympus failure on the other side of the world
It sucks not to have a working camera. It sucks even more if you are trying to earn money with your camera. More still if you suddenly find yourself without a camera while traveling in a remote area far from home. Yup. My recently repaired Olympus OMD Em-1 died (completely and utterly) while traveling in Read More …
November 2017 Saint Paul Camera Club Salon
I missed this salon, so have no idea what was going on in the judge’s mind. Just saying. Prints: Open Monochrome Secret Garden at San Juan Capistrano I like how the spiky plants contrasted with the hard features and geometric shapes of this courtyard. I also think I got a really nice traditional black and Read More …
October 2017 Saint Paul Camera Club Salon
This was the first real salon of the season, since the scavenger hunt doesn’t count toward our annual point total. And it was an ok start for me. Prints: Open color I got an 8 for each of my color prints, which put them in the awards for this month. I dream of fireworks I Read More …
Olympus OMD EM-1: Great images, shoddy construction
I’ve been remiss in reviewing my “new” Olympus OMD EM-1. (Purchased a year ago last spring.) In general, I’ve been delighted with the image quality. I’ve been much less excited about the camera’s lack of ergonomics and general good design. But now I’ve run across an issue that left me disgusted with Olympus and so Read More …
2017 Saint Paul Camera Club Scavenger Hunt
The Saint Paul Camera Club begins each season with a “scavenger hunt” that requires members to search out and photograph specific types of images. As in the past scavenger hunts I’ve participated in, all photos had to be taken in Saint Paul during the day of the contest. This year participants had to submit images Read More …
Along the Mississippi River in Saint Paul
The city of Saint Paul is running a Mississippi River photo contest on Instagram, and I was the August winner!
Art-a-Whirl
Last May I participated (without being there physically, since I was in France during the show), in Northeast Minneapolis Art Association’s spring Art-a-Whirl as a member of the Twin Cities Photography Group. Apparently continual downpours and road construction outside the venue kept most people away. With little traffic, it wasn’t a very successful show for Read More …
Playing with fire
There are groups of people, including a friend of mine, who occasionally hide out and spin steel wool all night. (You know who you are, Jim!) This has made me extremely jealous for a long time because it looks so incredibly cool. What is steel wool spinning? At its most basic, steel wool spinning involves Read More …
2016-2017 Saint Paul Camera Club Annual Awards
The Saint Paul Camera Club’s annual awards were presented at the beginning of June. Like last year, I made sure to enter every competition. That helped me collect points (for which there are awards), but it also pushed me to try things even when I didn’t feel very inspired. I pretty much succeeded when it Read More …
Learning to photograph action: bicycle racing
I’ve never been a sports photographer. I’m not particularly interested in sports, so there has never been an incentive to learn how to photograph sports. Sure, I shot a few basketball and football games when I was in high school and college, but mostly because I was there anyway to chat with friends. But sometimes Read More …
May 2017 Saint Paul Camera Club Salon
I was back in town for the May competition, but now the pressure was on, as this was the last competition of the season and I was currently the top point earner of the year in both the color prints and digital categories. I needed to come up with winners to retain that standing! Prints: Read More …
April 2017 Saint Paul Camera Club Salon
Once again I was out of town for the salon. However, this time I found a friend to take notes, so I have some idea what the judges were thinking. Prints: Open monochrome As usual, finding and creating suitable monochrome images was a challenge Leaving the courtyard I took this shot in a castle in Read More …
Saint Paul Camera Club 2016 Portfolio Challenge
As a new activity for the year, we had a “portfolio challenge.” The challenge was to get out and shoot every month of the year from January through December. We could shoot anything we wanted, but to have a complete portfolio we had to have one image from every month. While that might not sound Read More …