(1)
January (1)
FebruaryMarchAprilMayJuneJulyAugustSeptemberOctoberNovemberDecember
Simply being alive makes me feel thankful. I'm thankful for a God-given joy of being able to show people, through my eyes and limited skill set, a universe that both surprises and rewards me. I hope I can inspire others to look at the world with a new perspective, and find the love, the humor, and beauty of both God's and Man's creations.
This blog is about my passion for light-drawing. That is what the word photography literally means from its Greek parts, drawing with light. Like all other things in life, I am still learning and experimenting. Sometimes, I fail, and sometimes, I surprise myself.
In any case, I hope these stories amuse, entertain, and inspire you to just get out and draw with the light you have.
I just received the new lens I purchased. For a long time now, I have been wanting to get a more powerful telephoto than the 70-200mm f/4L I already have. So, for a self-inflicted birthday present, I ordered the Tamron 150-600mm lens.
When I unpacked it, my wife's jaw just about hit the floor. This monster is huge. As a comparison, here are my two telephotos side-by-side.
Canon 70-200 and Tamron 150-600Both of these are extended out to their maximum focal length.
And I thought my 70-200 was big!
A few weeks ago, when I was out shooting at the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge near Olympia, Washington, an otter came trotting up the frozen stream toward me. When he got to within 30 or 40 feet, he looked directly at me, determined I was harmless, and then went about his business, completely ignoring me. Of course, I was madly clicking away, getting as many shots of the otter as I could with my 70-200.
I think I got bitten by the wildlife bug that morning. I hope I can master this huge behemoth of a lens and bring back some spectacular images of all kinds of wildlife, songbirds, raptors, woodland critter, and such.
"I just went out and did what I loved." "Don’t ever underestimate the power of having fun with one of your obsessions."
You just have to admire a person who is willing to go where most are not willing to go. Whether that person is a test pilot or an astronaut, a movie maker or architect, if the product of their efforts is unique and of breathtaking quality, we simply have to respect that person for their drive.
The new music video below was done by a group called OK Go, and their new song is "I Won't Let You Down". I'm not familiar with the group, but this got my attention.
The little Segway-like devices they are riding were provide my Honda, and the helicopter carrying the camera was a DJI S1000. The interesting thing is, they had to run the song at half-speed while doing the choreography. This gave the copter time to move around and get into position for the various angles and altitudes of the shot. Later, in post-production, the playback was sped up to normal speed.
The really great thing is, this was done all in one take. No cuts, no edits, no inserts. All done from start to finish without stopping. That is incredible!
The following is from an email we received after an engagement photo session with a terrific young couple, Sam and Alyssa.
"We did an engagement photo shoot with George last Sunday and had an awesome time with great results! He was easy to work with, and we got a lot of great shots in a good time frame. Really helped having multiple photographers. The shoot was relaxing and fun, and with a location already picked out by George, we just had to show up and smile. We were more than pleased with the resulting pictures to make our album from!"
As we were ending a recent visit to the Los Angeles area, and since we were flying out of the Long Beach airport, with about two hours to kill, we decided to make a mad dash visit to the waterfront. I didn't have my DSLR with me, so with my wife's trusty pocket point-and-shoot, I tried an experiment.
With no tripod available, I carefully took 10 exposures of the Long Beach waterfront from the Queen Mary parking area. I was careful to keep the camera level and aligned with the seawall, overlapping each shot by about one fourth.
I stitched the images together in Microsoft's Image Composite Editor and adjusted color and lighting and ragged borders in Adobe Lightroom. Since wide panoramas are typically too wide to view easily, I have posted it to a web site that specializes in displaying and printing really big pictures, GigaPan.com.
So, here is my 65 mega-pixel picture. For best effect, click on the full-screen icon, then zoom in until the picture overflows your screen and becomes slightly pixelated. Then, zoom out slightly until the picture gets clear and sharp. Now scroll left and right and up and down to explore the Long Beach waterfront.
