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Pictures at an exhibition

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 02:57 -0400

Last weekend the spring weather was perfect for the annual Dogwood Arts Festival, sunny and a bit breezy. I last attended 2 years ago and shot this image. Many booths post signs saying no photography of their wares is allowed which forces you to look for other things to shoot. I am often struck by scenes of people viewing the art and try to grab a shot before the people move on. This man looked lost in memories as he examined more closely these intriguing paintings of record albums with the names of many iconic musicians from the 60s, 70s and 80s. I even still own a few of the album names I saw in the paintings. Repetition seemed to be a theme in artwork this year as I also saw another artist's paintings of books lining bookshelves, albeit somewhat abstracted. Unfortunately I wasn't able to grab a shot but you can see that artist's work at jabrem.com.

Well-loved

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 21:19 -0400

On this day of valentines and hugs and kisses I thought I would post this photo of my nephew's well-loved and cherished stuffed bear, Boom Boom. Considering my nephew is eight years old, you can see from the frays and tatters that Boom Boom has served well as his companion. In fact, my nephew is not quite ready to give up on Boom Boom and no substitutes have ever taken the place of honor that Boom Boom holds. Surely there's a life lesson there.

Clearing Night Sky

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 06:47 -0400

This is a grab shot... yes, it's true. I was sitting on an exit ramp, looked over and saw this view. Grabbed my camera and took the shot. My camera is noisy at high ISOs but sometimes you just gotta go with it.

Thanksgiving Table

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 22:53 -0400

I have a family member who is in a foreign land this Thanksgiving Day, so I grabbed a few shots of the table set for our wonderful dinner. This is for John, and anyone who is away from family, as a taste of home and the meal we shared in their absence. Maybe a visual feast is almost as good at the real thing when there are too many miles in between.

Harvest Blessings

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 00:40 -0400

For many years in the autumn I've driven by a church pumpkin sale saying, oh, I should go and photograph the pumpkins. Last year I finally did. What a perfect photo to post this week to commemorate Thanksgiving, and as an acknowledgement of the many blessings in my life, and I hope in yours also. "Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices, Who wondrous things has done, in whom this world rejoices… | Oh, may this bounteous God through all our life be near us, With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us; And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed; And guard us through all ills in this world, till the next!" Martin Rinkart, c.1636, public domain

Maple Leaf

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 22:40 -0400

Another in my ongoing fall leaves series, taken in the 2011 autumn season. Took this with my Tamron 28-75mm 2.8 lens, a lens that I love for its sharpness. (John, this is a taste of fall just for you.)

Revelation Pt. 2

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 08:00 -0400

I've often read the suggestion that when you frame a shot and take it, to zoom in and take another and then maybe zoom in even more, simplifying your image even more to find yet another shot within the original photo. That's what I did here, simplifying even more the shot in the previous post, almost abstracting it to slices of sea and sky. I love these subtle type of images where you challenge yourself to distill the photo down to its essence so I found myself torn between the previous post and this one as to my favorite, thus you get to see both.

Revelation

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 01:16 -0400

I'm sitting here working on this photo, agonizing how best to post-process it, and listening to photographer Penny de los Santos talk on CreativeLive.com about how notoriously insecure photographers are..."we are only as good as our last photo," we feel the world is telling us. How true, for me at least. I worked on this photo and thought "hmmm, how would Chromasia tweak this shot?" This scene was dramatic when I shot it but I wanted to enhance the drama in post also. The revelation in the name of this post comes from finding this shot at a southwest Florida beach I'd never been to before, but the scene itself looks like the heavens opening up and reminds me of the verse, "the heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands."

Night Song

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 19:23 -0400

I shot this photo in 2010 and found it again as I was going through my archives recently. What jumped out at me in this image that is similar to several others of this tree posted on Fotosimile is the bird I captured at the very top of the tree.

Misty Falls

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 00:51 -0400

I had the opportunity this week to be on the campus of Toccoa Falls College and walked up to see the beautiful falls again. Shooting the falls can be a challenge because the rock face and the bottom of the cascade is often in shadow and, of course, I left my tripod in the trunk of my car. This is not the best photo technically (shot handheld at slow-ish shutter speed), but wondered as I shot it how it would look in black and white so couldn't help giving it a contrasty look reminiscent of the tones in Ansel Adams' wonderful photos.