Key West

Got lost for a few days on that funky little island ninety miles north of Havana. Highly recommend.

Family Time

Just back from a week with family. 64 people. Ages from 3 to 80.

Catch up with everyone, revisit old hang-outs, recharge the batteries. Every two years. Nothing like it.

Below is my nephew enjoying a cold one on the beach. Dusk. Distant cumulonimbus catching the last of the sun's warm light. Contentment.

Pretty much says it all.

Good to be back. Big hugs to everyone!

'Tis the Season.

"There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot." ~ Steven Wright.

Can you sense it? Feel it? Smell it? It's in the air! Time to get the waders out. Dust off the Shimano. Put the roof-rack on the car. Time to do a little fishing!

Loggerheads.

On the east coast of Florida in the month of August the Turtle Patrol is busy... very busy. Loggerhead turtle nests are still popping up overnight, and the indefatigable scientists and volunteers that monitor them are found each morning doing the work that needs to be done. Looking for new nests and for signs of escaped hatchlings. Digging up and counting hatched and unhatched eggs.

This threatened species returns every year despite the continued massive build up on the shores of this southeastern coastal State. Lights have been blacked out, nests are staked and dated, volunteers stroll the beach keeping a watchful eye. Mindful that maybe 1 in 10,000 will make it to adulthood, they too return every season to give the little buggers an assist.

Despite all the dangers, the obstacles, the turtles come back. The Turtle Patrol's buggies are constant reminders that something special is taking place along these shores. Female loggerhead tracks can sometimes be seen early in the morning, before the crowds and high tides arrive. And if you're really vigilant.. and lucky!... you can even catch a glimpse of a few hatchlings!

Loggerhead hatchling.

Tracks to and from nest.

Turtle Patrol.

Nature Boy.

When I'm photographing subjects I like to get them in varied situations. Different settings.

This is Chris. A true outdoorsman!

Here he's watching a group of pelicans doing a fly-by as he continues to catch nothing.

In this shot he's just kinda hanging out showing off his pasty-white muscular body. To be fair, he does tan rather nicely girls!

In this shot... well, hey, Nature calls!

In the end, keep your camera at the ready. Never know what your subject will do!

Cheers.

Be Prepared.

The sun is setting fast and the sky is looking good. I've got a wide angle lens and I've crouched down so as to highlight the clouds. The flash unit is in my left hand, held out and up. I've dropped the exposure by about a stop (I'm guessing here!) and flash exposure is preset in manual mode and likely is at 1/16th power, which usually works at this distance.

Knowing your settings and distance beforehand makes it much easier to capture shots like this.

Also, in the background you can just make out the young man on the lifeguard's chair I shot earlier. (You can scroll down to the "Quality of Light" post to see it.)

Color Temperature.

Let's talk about color. Or, rather, the psychology of color. There is a school of thought out there that says we humans are comforted by "warm" colors and discomfited by "cool" colors. A crackling fireplace, candle light, a campfire, sunrises and sunsets... these tend to instill in us a settled, even soothed emotion. And the warmth (color wise, not just heat wise) is in no small part the reason for this relaxed feeling.

Before the digital camera explosion photographers employed various techniques to create this warmth in their photos. An amber glass filter over the lens or shooting with daylight balanced film under tungsten lights. Today, we have white balance (WB) control in our dSLRs.

We can adjust the settings so as to create a cool, bluish tint in our photos or, as I usually like to do, create a more warm, yellowish/orange tint.

Below are two examples. One is shot at sunrise on a hazy beach morning. The other is around a fire-pit and tiki torches. You can see the effect you get setting the WB to a warmer setting and what happens when you set it to a cooler setting. Everyone is different, of course, so you may not like the warmer tones. But generally speaking, it is the warmer tones that people gravitate to when looking through images. Keep this in mind when your making your photographs. Are you creating an image that attracts people or gives them a sense of unease?

This is necessarily an incomplete post. Feel free to pepper me with questions if you need this fleshed out a little more.

Meantime, dig out your camera's manual and have some fun playing around with your white balance settings.

 

Cheers.

Quality of Light.

Good light is essential for good photography. Early morning, late evening, overcast with dramatic clouds, and of course a judicious use of flash.  Whenever possible avoid sunny, midday photography. Harsh light from directly overhead makes for pretty crappy images.

There are times of course when you have no choice but to shoot at or around noon. In those cases, go for it. Make the best of it. But when the sun starts sinking low get back out there. Even the weakest of compositions will benefit from better quality light.

Below are a few shots from a recent trip to that big peninsula at the southeast corner of the United States.

Up first, a shot at 5 in the evening with storm clouds in the distance. A lone fisherman wading into the deep in search of his quarry gives us a sense of scale.

Image two was taken around 7:30 PM while the sun briefly peeked through the clouds, casting long shadows and a warm glow on two beachcombers.

The next shot was taken about ten minutes later, the sun had gone back behind the clouds and I had an assistant hold a flash, camera left, pointed directly at the dude in the chair. Nice clouds, good background.

Last photo: 7AM, hazy sky, orange sun, silhouettes... 

Quality light is the key to quality photography.  Get out early, stay out late and shoot like mad!

Cheers.