Month: November 2018

Love and Mercy

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It was the first song I heard this morning. It stunned me. It’s an old Brian Wilson song called “Love and Mercy.” He more or less gave it to the Miraculous Love Kids/Girl with a Guitar. Not only did he approve it, but he reworked it by singing with the girls. They were in Afghanistan. He was in Los Angeles. The project came to be when two young Afghani girls were killed by an IED that was meant for U.S soldiers.  Innocents killed. Again. Note. I tried to give you a link to it. I’m not very good at that, which is why I normally don’t share the music I sometimes talk about. Even when I manage to do it, I have no idea how to do what many of you do and attach the link to words on your page without showing the link. You click on a word and takes you to wherever. Not for me. Today it got worse. I did what I was told. I pasted the link to my clipboard. …

Into the Light

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This is another one. It is a picture that I overlooked because I was trying to make a picture of the full moon. This picture obviously failed. Or, did it? If I was only trying to photograph the moon, for sure, it failed. If I was trying to make something a little different from the usual than it succeeded. At least it did for me. You may be walking away, shaking your head and laughing. “You call THAT a picture?” Oh yeah. The moon is the little round white light towards the left bottom center of the picture. Anyway. Let this be a lesson to us all. Especially me. Don’t chimp. Don’t delete. Don’t even look at questionable pictures for a couple of days. And, when you do, make sure that you look at them on a big monitor. Those itty bitty LCDs on the back of your camera or on the front of your phone are next to useless when it comes to evaluating a picture. I keep yammering away about that. I hope …

Red, White & Blue

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While many of you in the Northern Hemisphere are already having wintry days with snow and very cold temperatures, we in the Gulf Coast are finally in the middle of something that looks like fall. Make no mistake. I’m not crowing over it. I know there are those of you who are cold. And, are dreading a long cold, dark winter. I like cold. I like snow. I get it. When you have to live in it, it’s not fun. But, it’s been a long time since I had to do that. It’s likely that my old hip and back would hate it. But… The picture. It was almost a throw away. It came at the end of a dog walk. I never could frame it properly. I had to crop it in post production. But, I didn’t self edit in the field. I didn’t delete in camera — or phone, as was the case. I looked at it on a big screen and thought that it had possibilities. So away I went. I worked …

Whenever You Need It

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Another storm picture. Rain never stops us. I think a lot of us were fooled because we weren’t ready for the intensity of the rainfall. Never trust the weather people on your local news. They mean well, but if I got about 90% of what I said wrong, I’d fire myself. I’ll talk about this picture. That’s it for today. I made it with my new magic smart phone. This is the one that makes a 12 megapixel file. Usually, I process in the phone with Snapseed. I started thinking that I didn’t really like the final product, so I started experimenting by downloading the file to my main machine and using onOne to develop it and do the finishing post production. What a difference. The newest version, OnOne Photo RAW 2019, even has a template for making words. At this point, I cull in Photo Mechanic and Edit in OnOne and that’s it. Goodbye Adobe. Again. Finally. I don’t have to pay $9.99 a month forever. Keeping today photographic, more about this picture. The …

A Big Rain

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A big storm blew in to the region. I thought I had I beat when we ran errands. But, oh no. I should just stop thinking. It wasn’t all that bad because we are used to it. And, it dropped our temperatures by about 30 degrees. When we woke up in the morning, it was a new world. For a few days. Anyway. This picture isn’t what you are thinking. I might suggest that you take chances with your photography, but I’m not suggesting that we all get killed doing it. The traffic in our lane was merging into traffic coming from the left. But. This is important. Our lanes were stopped by a red traffic light. I was in the front position, so I took advantage of it and made about a billion pictures. You’ll see more during the week because I done good. I did have to laugh while I was making these pictures. I was using my magic new phone because I wasn’t expecting to actually work. As I made pictures through …

About Us — About Now

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The picture is a placeholder. It’s pretty enough, but that’s not what this post is about. I promised you my views — among a lot of other people’s views — about Instagram. In yesterday’s chaos I forgot to write about that. Sorry. Today’s post is about social media, and Instagram, in particular. It didn’t help matters when I read about the “selling of ourselves” in a New York Times editorial piece this morning. It helped even less when a friend of mine who talks about the music business said about the same thing in an email that he sends to a few close friends. About a million of us. Here goes. Instagram. There is a growing belief that it hurts photography more than it could ever help. It is derivative in nature, with so many photographers producing the same kinds of images that everybody they follow does too. You know the ones. Pictures with water in them that is exposed at such a slow shutter speed that water appears to be almost mist-like. Or, the …

Oooooooops

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Yeah. Oops. Today is a little fractured. As it happened, I awoke at 3:34 am and could not fall asleep. It seemed that there was a bill due today that I’d neglected to pay with all the holiday and birthday stuff going on. My brain sort of exploded and woke me up. So. I paid it. Luckily it is bank to bank so even though I paid it on the day it was due, it’s on time. The wonders of banking technology. Then I was wired. And, I didn’t want to disturb the house. So I decided to work a little until I got tired. That happened about 4:45 am. I awoke again around 7:30 am. I started to doing morning stuff including coffee and breakfast. I was a little woozy so I laid down to read. I awoke at 11:45 am. The dogs needed walking so I did that. We all ate lunch. I sat down at the big machine. I read some news. I was just getting up from my desk when it …

Night Motion

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The blue hour. In motion. I look back at my career. In the middle past. It was a time when I used film to do this kind of work. It was a time when sometimes I had no other choice. Film had a slow ISO. You had to adjust or light for it. I loved it then. I love what I do now, except that it often takes me time and thought to get back to what was once easy. Forgive me for constantly dipping into the past. I firmly believe that if you don’t understand where you came from, you’ll never have a path to get to where you are going. This picture certainly wasn’t made 20 years ago. It was made last night when I was waddling around full of too much turkey and the fixin’s. It’s an example of what you can do if you take your mind out of it.  Or, if you can barely stand up because you ate really well. Too well. I’ve often found that when I am …

Autumn Sky

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It’s the time of year. In many ways, this is the prettiest time of year in Southeastern Louisiana. There are wonderful sunrises, except that I’m rarely awake to see them. I am awake to see the sunsets which have this exploding light sort of feeling. Funny thing. As much as I say I don’t photograph sunsets, I do. I suppose what I really mean is that I don’t chase after them. But, like all of my subjects, if I see it I photograph it. Sometimes that means putting a sort of funky subject in the picture in order to give it context. Telephone lines. Oh, come on. In my own defense, I’m often way out-of-place to make a pretty picture. Now you know about the picture. If you are in The United States, you are likely counting the hours until this day passes because you have a four-day weekend. It’s Thanksgiving. If you are brave enough to deal with the crowds, Friday is called “Black Friday,” because there are huge fake sales on all sorts …