Scattered Thoughts . . .

The kids came over again today on this long snowy Thanksgiving weekend.  (I just realized that I had also written just a few short months ago about a snowy Memorial Day weekend... will we ever catch a break?) The grandchildren spent some time this afternoon out in the backyard building a snowman with Grammy. Their attention was split between building the snowman and the sailboat sitting under a few inches of snow.  Eventually, their attention went to the kayaks standing tall and strapped against the house. Those boats seem to constantly call their names whenever they visit.  Today was no exception. A note of interest here:  I was the same at my grandparents' house... the boats always beckoned... I can still smell that home on the water and hear the waves lapping at the boats, dock and bulkhead. There is just something excitingly intriguing and special about boats, trains and airplanes... especially to kids. We did the usual "Sunday dinner" at the house this evening.

Who doesn't want a fireplace in their home?  A fireplace conjures up feelings of warmth... physical as well as emotional... beautiful architectural details... the faint smell of burning wood... the crackling of the fire... the playful dance of the flame... and a place to hang your stockings at Christmastime. Fitting even a small fireplace in a small home can be almost impossible though.  Fireplaces take up valuable real estate in any home.  Actually, fireplaces often become a major feature in any room and can even be monumental in size.  Even small fireplaces sometimes just can't fit into small homes... or can they?   Preliminary sketch... We have a small home.  Okay...  we have a really small home.  We have only three adults in the house but it is a tight fit.  It is such a tight fit that we are having difficulty renovating the house. Where do we put all the stuff that is in the room we want to renovate while we are renovating? It is like those little sliding tile gam

Flash photography has always been a thorn in my side.  I'm not alone though.  Most people have no clue how to properly shoot photos using a flash and that includes most photographers! Whenever we think of "flash photography" we picture a photo, any of millions of photos, that look like there is a big spotlight shining on the subject.  The background is so dark and underexposed that you can't see further than about ten feet in front of the camera.  These kinds of photos are terrible and have always bothered me. There is nothing 'warm' about them... there is nothing exciting about them... you can't even tell where the photo was shot... and they almost always cause the subject to frightfully resemble that "deer in the headlights" look. To imagine the types of photos I am referring to, think of the last time you tried to shoot your friends at night... you are in a beautiful location with warm lighting throughout the room... there is beauti

Whenever I upload photos from my camera to my computer after a day of shooting, I am always excited to sort through the photos.  This is when I set up another folder so I can move the "keepers" to their own folder.  If I am satisfied with the photos I consider "keepers", I consider the shoot a success.   The reasons why a photo doesn't end up in the "keepers" folder can vary greatly.  Sometimes the composition isn't what I had in mind.  Sometimes focus is off or there is some blurry camera shake.  Sometimes the exposure is off enough that I've clipped highlights or shadows.  Other times the results are just not what I was hoping for when I shot the image.  It is these photos which just didn't meet my expectations that I find I need to revisit after a few days, weeks, or sometimes months. I find that if I take a break from the photos and then come back to them later, I see things differently. I just went through the photos from Adam&#

In today's digital world where almost everyone carries a camera of some sort around with them each and every moment of every day, we sort of take the art of photography for granted. We can even easily forget that photography is an art. Cameras are in virtually all mobile communication and media devices.  Compact cameras are relatively inexpensive and the amount of available models is mind-boggling.  There is a vast array of photography-enthusiast cameras.  There are professional cameras.  There are security cameras.  There are traffic cameras.  There are news cameras.  There are webcams, Skype and Face-Time.  We are immersed in photos all day long...  but, do we truly understand how to effectively use these devices we call cameras? Cameras are tools made to capture an image.  Each camera is different.  Each camera has its weaknesses.  Each camera has its strengths.  The person handling this tool must understand light, shadow, tonal contrast, color, aperature, shutter speed, sen

Formal headshot from our makeshift, improvised living room studio...  he looks like he should be working at NASA here! This is the time of year when the families of every high school senior are scrambling to get some photos of their senior for the school yearbook. Even though I seem to have a camera affixed to my hand at all times, we also have found ourselves scrambling to put together some photos to submit for Adam's yearbook.   Although I needed to shoot a couple of headshots of Adam, it turns out that our most difficult task was choosing which of the many candid photos I have on hand to send in for submission to the yearbook! Adam has always done a good job at avoiding me whenever I have the camera in hand, however, I have done a better job at still managing to get good photos of him regardless.  Of course, long telephoto lenses help me with being stealthy and staying under Adam's radar. That being said, I actually found more than two dozen good photos of Adam that

Light painting is a unique form of art that most photographers have tried at one time or another and this photographer is no exception. You have flashlights in hand, a camera on a tripod, a remote shutter release, and while you use a long shutter exposure you freely and fluidly draw or light objects with the flashlights.  This type of art can be tedious and sometimes frustrating but it is always fun to see what you have created! In this image, I painted the flag in light using a flashlight while it blew in the breeze... Until now, there have been two forms of light painting.  The first involves using flashlights as a way to paint subjects with light rather than lighting them with very harsh flashguns.  Using this technique, the objects can be anything, including people.  I have seen some beautiful long exposure portraits done with flashlights.  I myself have used this technique more than once to create beautifully lit scenes in photographs.  This technique produces a very so

Sheila's new car! Sheila's 2000 Buick LeSabre has been slowly crumbling away over the past year or so.  The engine is great, the fuel economy is as good as most new cars, it drove well in the snow and it has been very reliable but the frame and everything underneath has been corroding away due to years of exposure to road salt.   The car has a slow fuel leak...  the brake lines are soft and in need of replacing but there is no area of chassis solid enough to hold the new brake lines... the car's jack can no longer lift the car because the frame where the jack is supposed to lift the car crumbles when you touch it... and, we've been delaying a much needed replacement of brake rotors because we knew this car is at the end of its life so we were avoiding spending some hard-earned money needlessly.  As a result, we've been searching online for a new car for the past few weeks. Neither one of us really cares for car shopping.  Actually, we both hate

Downtown Manhattan, One World Trade Center This past weekend was the long Columbus Day weekend so we decided to head toward Long Island to see some family.  It had been a year and a half since we had seen any of my family. That last trip was for the funeral of one of my cousins which happened to be the same day the grandchildren were born.  This particular cousin was also a neighbor and school classmate so I knew I needed to make the trip down to Long Island for his funeral. While I headed toward Long Island for that funeral a year and a half ago, Sheila headed to the hospital to meet Liza for the birth of the grandchildren. Afterward, Sheila and Adam hopped on a train and headed down to New York to meet me. Anyway, we hadn't seen any of the family since that very hectic week a year and a half ago.   The Empire State Building We headed south on Saturday for the long Columbus Day weekend while it seemed the rest of the northeast was heading north to check out the aut

Assuming my health cooperates, we will be visiting family in New York soon.  As always, I plan to shoot a few photos while we are out and about in New York City and on Long Island.   Whenever I am thinking about a photo shoot, even if it is simply sightseeing, I like to review photos I have previously shot as well as photos others have shot.  Basically, I like to research. I like to prepare. I like to figure out the best time to photograph a particular sight...  finding the best light, best shadows, a new interesting angle... Truth be told, I research before doing anything including photography. So, while I am up and awake in the middle of the night tonight, let me share some of my old photos I have shot while in New York on previous trips.... This first shot is from the Museum of Natural History...  elephants stampeding through the Africa Hall...  This is a very dark hall which makes it difficult to focus without getting motion blurring.  In this case, I made the motion bl