Rocks and Cacti
April 24th, 2007
Another from our wandering off the trail on the way up a mountain at Big Bend. I loved the dark color of the rocks in this area and was looking for a spot to contrast them against a skin tone. Had to find a spot where the sun was not directly on the rocks or all the color was washed away by the glare.
One Week to Pinhole Day
April 22nd, 2007
Next Sunday, one week from today, is Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day.
Check it out here: http://www.pinholeday.org/
People all over the world will take photos using pinhole cameras on that day and post them to a web site. I’ll be participating, with the help of several models. I’ll keep my submission to the Worldwide site PG-13 (lots of kids are involved in doing pinhole photos for this site) and post the more R-rated photos here.
In the past I’ve used homemade pinholes…made by sticking a pin through some thin metal…but in the past year I bought a set of laser-drilled precise pinholes and I’ll be using them in various manners this year. I have one that is “factory” mounted on a body cap for my Nikons. I placed another at the back of a T-mount adapter for Nikons to get it closer to the sensor, thus making a wider-angle of view. I’ll use both of those on my D200 next Sunday.
I like doing pinhole photos with a digital camera because of the extra control it provides. I can quickly see what is happening with framing and exposure and make adjustments. To me that’s a vast improvement over working with film and just having to cross your fingers that something will work.
Meanwhile I’ve been doing some testing. This is Nemesis, shot this week in my studio. I used 3,000 watts of quartz light for this shot. I usually try to use sunlight through my studio windows, but if the sun isn’t out, it’s a problem, causing very long exposure times for models to stay still. The quartz lights weren’t all that great, but at least I know they work and I can use that as a fall-back option if Sunday turns out to be cloudy.
In the bush
April 21st, 2007
In Ruins
April 19th, 2007
On our second day of shooting at Big Bend we stopped at an old abandoned mercury mine. We stayed away from the mine itself, but explored the many ruined buildings in the area. This is the doorway of what may have been a home when the mine was active.
Rocky
April 17th, 2007
Have I mentioned the sun at Big Bend. The searing, brutal, relentless, glaring hot sun? I thought I had. Challenging light. From the moment the sun rose above the horizon until the moment it sank below it, it blasted us. It cooked us. It created lens flair. Hot highlights and dark shadows. Never a break. Now and then there would be a hint of clouds, but the sun would burn them off in no time.
This is on some rocks in the morning of our second day of shooting. It was fairly early in the morning. This was a great setting. With some relief from the sun, even a little bit of cloud cover or mist in the early morning there would have been lots of possibilities for compositions here. But the sun beating down on us dictated everything about the shot…camera angle, pose, composition all determined by the sun. And that’s the way it was at Big Bend.
At the movies
April 15th, 2007
There’s an old movie set in the Big Bend area. It looked real familiar when we stopped there. I’m sure I’ve seen it in some westerns. It made for some good backgrounds. Here’s Niecy in front of the “church.”
This is the last of the photos I’m going to post, at least for now, from our first day of shooting at Big Bend. I’m still editing the shoot. The next post will be from our second day, after Rose had joined our little photo party. After I work through the rest of the Big Bend shoot I’ll circle back and work on the earlier shoots on this trip, the Ozarks and the Houston area. Lots more photos to come from all of that.
It appears that all went well on Friday the 13th and on Ruination Day yesterday. We can relax now, maybe.
And, finally for today, thinking of Kurt Vonnegut who recently died after a long lifetime of challenging and inspiring us, here is one of my favorites of his many wonderful quotes:
“Listen: we are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.”
OK…sorry, here are a couple more:
“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ “
and,
“There is no way a beautiful woman can live up to what she looks like for any appreciable length of time.”
Kurt is up in heaven now… 😉
And, so it goes…
Niecy in Closed Canyon
April 13th, 2007
Here’s another photo of Niecy in the slot canyon we hiked on our first day at Big Bend. It was one of the very few places in the area where we were at least partially out of the sun while outdoors. But the canyon wasn’t as deep, as narrow or as colorful as slot canyons I’ve photographed in the red rock desert up around the Utah/Arizona border. Still it offered some shelter from the sun and some photo opportunities.
It’s Friday the 13th and tomorrow is Ruination Day…so you all be careful out there.
Niecy inside
April 12th, 2007
Getting away from that hot Big Bend sun.
Big Bend Panorama
April 11th, 2007
Here’s a view of morning in Big Bend. This was shot from near the old cemetery in Terlingua Ghost Town. The ghost town is not so ghostly these days with a gift shop and a number of restaurants along with many residents. I think they are really going to have to give up calling it a ghost town soon. We had breakfast one morning in the building to the right. That’s where we met the cook who had rolled his truck and the welder getting away from it all but hanging on to his bluetooth earpiece.
I did a real quick merge job on this pano, so the seams aren’t real good. I shot it hand-held, but I think when I get time to play with it I will be able to get a good clean merge. I may adjust exposure on a few of the frames before I merge it again to even things up a bit better. But not bad for a quickie assembled with the free software that came with my Canon G6. I used the Nikon D200 and 18-200 lens for these shots.
Niecy in a doorway
April 9th, 2007
