We have, very near to Bisbee, a wildlife refuge, mainly for water fowl and specifically for the migration of the sandhill cranes. The Sandhills are very wonderful bids. They migrate in large numbers and are very fun to watch. The sandhills are also the family flock of several whooping cranes that have been placed with them under the safety in numbers therory I guess.

I took some time out yesterday to drive out to the refuge. I had big hopes for both the lighting and the sky after two days of great rain, but was a bit disappointed. As my Grandmother said 'Climate is what you hope for and weather is what you get'. I had some fun, which is what the trip was about. I was rewarding myself for having to work this week-end. I got some photographs worth working on and if time permits I plan to go

back this evening.

I wonder who looks at or reads this blog? At times I think maintaining this is an exercise in self-promotion that is going nowhere. I don't get any comment on the shots that I post here. I have no way to know if that means there is little of interest here or if people just don't comment. According to the counter I added some 130 people have stopped by. I don't think all those hits could be me -could they?
I have a bit of work up in one of the local galleries but that seems to be a dead end. In the 6 months the work has been up I have sold one print and a few cards. Some of the problem may be location as the work is displayed in a small dark backroom and I am paying for the privilege, but ya never know.
I have submitted a photo to jpg magazine and it has gotten a few votes. I don't know if the votes are from people who really think it is a good shot and fits the theme of entropy or if the votes are from people who like me and are trying to be kind.
In any event if you follow the link I posted below it will take you to my jpg mag submission. I think it is worth a look. Whoever you are, if you are viewing this post, I hope you will decide for yourself. I really do think beauty as well as visual intrigue are in the eye of the beholder.
http://www.jpgmag.com/photos/84982

Well while I was in San Fransisco I had a chance to play with Nikon's new VR lens, the 18-200 f/3.5-5.6. Needless to say my plastic took a hit that day. I am very happy with this lens and suspect that it will be my new walk about lens. It is fast, sharp and very versatile. I often struggle with being able to get close enough to my subject due to rough terrain or physical barriers. This lens will solve some of those issues.

The combination of the new lense and the new software has re-energized my photography. I am semi-patiently waiting for the course work to arrive from the New York Institue of Photography as well. I think it is time for me to add some formal structure to my knowledge base. I know myself well enough to know that I will not buckle down to learn some of the basics unless I am forced into it by some type of formal framework. I am also a bit pathological as a student and will work hard to be 'the best'. It is probably good that there are no other students against which to measure myself as I can be hard on myself and demanding of others in that setting.

San Fransisco

I was just in San Fransisco for a lighting fast trip. I was there for a meeting with the agency's CMS fiscal intermediary which was not a lot of fun but had to be done. The meeting was boring but my plane did not leave until late the next day which gave me a little bit of time to wander around and see some of the sights. I was on foot in the Fisherman's Wharf area. Very touristy but also very photogenic. I did not take the DSLR but had the Olympus p&s. I had forgotten how tough it was to work with the shutter lag and as a result lost some shots but I do have one or two that I think may be worth the effort.

While I was out in the early morning - long before most tourists would be out and about I ran into the baker who works in the Cannery Row Bakery. He had just finished the morning baking and had set up a basket on the counter displaying the various rolls that are avaialble. The shot through the door came out rather nicly for a P&S camera. The lighting was a challenge so I metered for the bright napkin and then recomposed the shot. All in all I was pleased with the results.

Well I have made the jump to Adobe Lightroom to manage photos and simple adjustments such as curve and tone. It is very easy and if you do any work in photoshop the learning curve is not too steep. I spent a few weeks working with the trial version before making the jump and I think it was a good choice. I had quite a bit of fun with the program this last weekend and think I got some adequate photos out of the process. I was up Brewery Gultch on Sunday taking a few shot and did all the adjustments in Lightroom. It handles RAW files very quickly or at least much more quickly that Adobe Bridge which slows my 2 gig machine to a crawl at times and heaven forbid that I should try to manage more than one action at a time.

While I was up the Gultch I took several shoots of the area where the cribs were - in particular the bed frame fence. This is one of the best IMHO.

JPG Magazine

There is a great magazine out there that I just recently discovered called JPG. It is a magazine that showcases work by the submitters of photos and the photos that are included are the ones voted on by the membership. There are generally several themes in each issue and several articles re;ated to photographers are issues related to the brave new world that has become photography today.
I submitted several photos to the current theme of Entropy and hope that if you are reading this blog you might cruise over to the JPG site and vote for work that you think is worthy of being published.

So check it out.

http://jpgmag.com/photos/

Adobe Lightroom

So I was fooling around this last weekend and downloaded the trial version of Adobe Lightroom. This program has been in beta development for sometime now - a process that I did not get involved in. The first version seems to be very user friendly and I am thinking that it is a better place to start the RAW workflow than the use of Adobe Bridge which is a big memory and resource hog on the PC. I am running with 2 gigs of RAM and it is still a slow boat to China and prone to lock up at a moments notice - or is that lack of a moments notice?
So here is an example of a B&W conversion that I did utilizing Lightroom. I think that it is a pretty good effort and at least as good as conversion using the Carr method. Now mind you I am looking at the quality of the B&W conversion not the subject matter of the photo, which is marginal IMHO.