CLOUDS; MY IMAGES, POEM BY ROD MCKUEN

As you may have noticed, the sky and particularly clouds dominate much of my landscape images. Heck, even in portraiture I tend to  include the sky. 

I think a blue sky with soft billowy clouds can be very dramatic and I love to see them and photograph them. They're another part of nature that we see all the time but tend to ignore. We shouldn't. Clouds can be amazing. In landscape photography, clouds can make a good image great.

There are times when I like to feature the sky and clouds, sometimes just including the sky in an image.

But most times I like to include some of the landscape in the images as a visual anchor.


Yesterday Phyllis and I visited a local beach that I had read about. I read that it was not very busy and in a secluded area with a series of 13 beaches with parking along a two lane road. It is so secluded that beach 13 is a nude beach. Public nudity is against the law in Florida   
but the beaches are on federal land and there is no federal law against it. It was kind of funny that its parking lot was one of the fullest. Now we didn't go down to that beach, honest, no really we didn't. I wanted nature images but that would be a little too much nature for us. Besides, I was looking for sky images but not moons!!!


We walked down to one of the other beaches and it was beautiful: white fine sand, blue water, not very many people and a great sky. 
As I started making images I liked what I saw. Up or down the beach both views were equally great. I took a few images right away.

Then I realized that what was grabbing my attention the most was the sky with great clouds in both directions. I decided to concentrate on the sky: composing to make them the most dominant part of my images. There are many "rules" of composing and I do use them a lot, especially the rulers of thirds, which I will go into on another day. 


One of the rules that is broken a lot by some photographers is where to put the horizon in your images. The rule is not to put it in the middle, dividing your image in half visually. Should this rule ever be broken? Of course, all rules in photography should be broken or stretched. Well, maybe not the one about charging your camera's batteries but most all others should be tested. Below are two examples of the same image. The first one has the horizon at almost 50%. The other has the horizon lower in the image. I think the second is more dramatic and interesting.

As I sat in front of my computer, I remembered a poet from the 1960s and 1970s. Rod McKuen was a modern poet. This was no Robert Frost. He wrote poems (and songs) that touched us back then. He was relevant, a term we would not have used in the 60s and 70s. He was a fascinating man whom I will write about another day. 


To give you an idea what kind of man this poet was, here is an example. Before a tour of South Africa in the1970s, Mckuen demanded 'mixed seating' among white and black concert-goers. This opened the doors for successful tours for African American performers, including Sammy and Ella. If you don't know who they are, you should!! His humanitarian efforts have twice won him the prestigious Freedoms Foundation Award.


I had many of his albums and books. I remembered that he wrote a few poems about the sky and clouds. This is one of my favorites:


             Pushing The Clouds Away
Clouds are not the cheeks of angels you know
they're only clouds.
Friendly sometimes,
but you can never be sure.
If I had longer arms
I'd push the clouds away
or make them hang above the water somewhere else,
but I'm just a man

Who needs and wants,
mostly things he'll never have
Looking for that thing thats hardest to find

I've been going a long time now
along the way I've learned some things.
You have to make the good times yourself
take the little times and make them into big times
and save the times that are all right
for the ones that aren't so good

I've never been able 
to push the clouds away by myself
Help me.
Please.

If you like this post please Stumble it in the share button on this blog (upper right). Also don't forget to click on the images for a larger view.


I'm including a video of Rod so that you could hear him recite his poem.

SAVING YOUR PHOTOGRAPHIC SLIDES WITH DIGMYPICS.COM

As regular readers of JP Brandano Florida Wedding Photographers know, we do not endorse many products on our blog. We have never dedicated an entire day's blog to one product. Today we are doing just that. Recently I had an idea for an upcoming blog and realized that I had some images that I would need to use. The problem was that those images were taken during my pre-digital days. Most of you remember something called film with those green and yellow boxes. 


When I photographed back then I, like many, always used slide film. Like most of us, I have thousands of slides neatly stored in boxes and sleeves put away in a closet not being seen for years. In the past I had tried buying a converter but ended up taking it back after seeing the results. It was just not very good. The colors were wrong and the quality was really poor. I could buy a really good scanner for about $1500 but once I converted all of these slides, what would I do with it?? I just could not justify spending that kind of money on something that had limited use. After all there is always a new lens that captures our eye!! 


I started looking around for a company that could do the conversion for me at a reasonable price. As I read numerous reviews and looked at many web sites I found one company that seemed to stand out. That company was DIGMYPICS.com, get it Dig my Pics? Okay maybe you need to be my age to get it, but it did get my attention. The fact that they use a Nikon Coolscan 9000 scanner really interested me. I had read elsewhere that it was one, if not the best scanner available. I then read that they manually do color and exposure enhancement and a thorough quality review of each and every slide all for just 39 cents per 35mm slide scanned. In full disclosure that price depends on DPI. For 39 cents it would be at 2500 DPI. You can go up to 4000 DPI at a cost of 69 cents a slide.

I made this image during Phyllis' and my honeymoon in Nassau in 1987. I was shooting down from our hotel room. Think of that, a 1987 slide! That's over 24 years ago converted into a digital file and sent to you on a DVD.  I think the quality is amazing. 

Click on these images for a larger image to see the quality of the scan.

 Some other great features include;

Price - compare it to other companies' gold or platinum levels  (which offer scanning and manual enhancements). I think you will be really happy!

YOU ONLY PAY FOR THE SCANS YOU KEEP. Do you believe this? You check the scans online when they are through and you select the ones you want sent to you!! 100% satisfaction or you don't pay.

You can see your images on line as they are scanning them.

You can have the files made as TIFF files or JPEG files at no extra cost.

You can get free transfer of your scanned photos to Phanfare or Picassa Web Albums. That's a lot of features for a really reasonable cost.

I photographed these butterflies mating in 1997.

They also offer scanning of 35mm negatives, printed photos up to 8x10 and even video tape to DVD. I have not tried any of these services so I cannot comment on their quality.

These images taken in the Banff area of western Canada were made in 2005.

After I received my first batch I immediately started selecting slides for my second order. Slide quality can and will degrade. We have slides that are very important to us and do not want to lose them. For example the images I will be using for a blog in September were extremely important. This service has taken care of that concern for us. By the way their customer service has been terrific. I received an email yesterday from them asking if we were satisfied with the product. Pretty cool touch, I thought.

This image of a couple we were photographing was made in Hawaii about twelve years ago!

This image of a great Blue Heron was made on the campus of Brandeis University over fifteen years ago.

 I really recommend that you try digmypics.com, if you have slides or film that are important to you. Let them know I recommended them, if you do. We do not get any compensation for endorsing them!! Dig it???  

THE GRAND CANYON PART TWO

( Please remember to click on images for a larger view)
After we were shown our cabin and unpacked we started walking along the rim taking photos. As I mentioned in my first post on the Grand Canyon the view down into it seemingly changes by the minute. As the sun moves across the sky shadows form in different areas. Atmospheric haze can be seen more or less always but depending on the light it becomes more evident. Between the haze and the different locations of the sun, colors seem to change; intensifying or becoming muted.

If you're there after a rain shower the air becomes really clean and clear and the haze dissipates. On this trip there were no rain showers but the canyon is always wonderful to see. It is one of those places where you realize the enormity of the world and how small you are in it!! It's a great place to get a sense of perspective on life.

On the rim there are critters: the ones on the ground and the ones that fly.

  
The squirrels are very use to people and will take food from your hands. It is never a good idea to feed wild animals, they can become dependent on humans for food and loose their fear of us. In larger animals this can become really dangerous for humans. Also some of the food we usually have with us might not be healthy for the animals.

There are larger animals on the rim but I'd never seen any until later that night!! More about that later!

We wanted to try and photograph a sunset and one place to do that is at Mather Point. When we arrived there it was already getting crowded and we quickly staked out our place on the rim from where to shoot. I was amazed at the number of people, some with children who ventured out onto the rock outcroppings along the rim. These are natural formations and have no railings, one slip and you fall at least 450 feet on hard rock. Surviving a fall is rare. But people still feel the need to chance it. As you can see from this picture there is very little room for error. If the two people farthest out had ever slipped, stumbled or fallen they more than likely would have been dead. 


As I was standing there looking at them I heard a voice say, " That's nature's way of thinning the herd." I turned and saw a man in his 50s fully bearded wearing a cowboy hat. He was a local guide speaking to a group that was with him. He told them that at least once a year someone falls to their death. He said, "It's almost always due to their own foolishness. People don't think and up here. If you don't think you could die". He said that the year before on the same rocks a couple had taken their really young child out and didn't hold the child's hand. The child ran towards them and something happened: the child ended up falling to it's death. 

The sunset turned out not be anything great. Most people started leaving but we have been through this before. With nature nothing is guaranteed, it's not produced by Disney. We knew that sometime when the sun goes down you can still get some pretty nice images. We and a few others waited. It was not the best sunset we have ever seen but it was worth the wait.

I composed different images as the sun went down behind the mountain range. After dark we went over to the El Tovar Hotel for dinner. I think it is your best bet for a really good meal and a glass of wine (or two) on the rim. 

After dinner we went upstairs to the lounge for a few adult beverages. We were lucky because there was a small patio with one table and no one was sitting there. We spent an hour or so out in the night air relaxing and talking about our day. We knew we had an early morning and decided two martinis would do. In hindsight one might have done the trick quite nicely!! 


As we walked outside on the path to our cabin talking and laughing just enjoying the night and each other, we saw them. On the lawn in the back of the hotel were a few large plastic elks. I had my camera with me and thought it would be a fun image. Then I heard Phyllis say," Jim they're real!!" Now, why we thought that the park would put fake elk out side on the rim, I have no idea. Well, I think it had something to do with a few glasses of wine and a few martinis!! 


I have photographed elk before in Colorado and other places. I know the signs when you're getting to close to them, there are no signs!! The only ones who know how close you can get to them without triggering a negative response are the elks. They get as big as a thousand pounds and have a surprising burst of speed. I knew that you should stay about 30 yards from them. I repeat, I knew this. I had photographed them in the past but not after a few drinks. Remember my mantra..ABS (Always Be Shooting). At night after a few drinks and close to wildlife may not be the best time to ABS!!
I took a photograph from a reasonable distance, (not 30 yards).

The elk ignored me which gave me a false sense of security. I had a mid range zoom with me and decided I wanted a closer picture. Now even though I knew you don't go running up to the elk, I slowly started walking closer photographing. In the background, I remember hearing Phyllis telling me not to get too close. But I proceeded to go closer.

At this point I am about 60 feet from the elk and you can see he is eating but keeping one eye looking at me.

I am now about 50 feet from it. He is paying much more attention to me at this point.

I knew at this point I was as close as I was going to get. He was still looking at me as he ate. When he put his head down to get more grass, I really noticed how large his antlers were. I also remember thinking if he charges me, I really don't have anywhere to run, the rim was about 60 feet behind me in darkness. I started thinking I should back up and get out of there. But this time when he brought his head back up from the ground, he snorted. That's not a good thing and I remember seeing him charge at me. I still took one more images as I was backing up quickly.

You can see I clipped off the top of his rack and a hoof. At this point I wasn't thinking too much of composition. I walked really quickly back and to my right. The elk charged once more but stopped a distance from me and just looked. A false charge meant to warn me. It worked!!

He went back to eating as we walked up the path but he kept looking at me, I think daring me to come back. I thought better of it and we went back to our cabin. 


The next morning we went out early and started photographing the morning light on the canyon.

In this picture (above) you can see people (lower left) starting out on their hike down into the canyon.

This shows the early light warming up the walls of the canyon and reaching into some points in the canyon. 


The images below are of Lookout Studio. It was designed in 1914 by Mary Colter as a gift shop and lookout point. There are two good lookout points opened in good weather. You can see how well it was designed to blend into the surroundings.

This is the top of the rim in the early morning. There are not too many people up and walking around. You can see a small retaining wall and a bench carved out of trees from the canyon.

Like I had written in my earlier post, I have visited the Grand Canyon many times over the years.  Every time I visit, walk up to the rim and look down and out at this wondrous canyon, I feel the same feeling: a sense of solitude, no matter how many other people are near and a renewed respect for nature and the natural world. This is a wonderful country and world with many amazing areas. Go into it and search them out. The closer we all get to nature the more we will understand what we stand to lose if we do not try harder to co-exist with nature.