Tips for Successful Flower Photography

Now that Spring is here, it's time to start getting shots of all those beautiful flowers and other plants, whether they be in your yard, in the wilderness, or at your local Botanical Gardens.  But before we start talking about how to do it, maybe it would be best to figure out exactly what type of photography you want to do.

Contemporary flower photography demands a pretty good list of gear.  You'll need a tripod, a live-view camera, a macro lens or an extension tube, a remote shutter release, a reflector, focus stacking software, a telephoto lens and a wide angle lens.  But do you really need all this stuff?  The answer lies in what type of pictures you're trying to end up with.  If you're like most photographers, you don't really know that until you start shooting, and you see a few that you like among the hundreds of shots you took.  But I think it's a better idea to at least get a notion of the end result before you even go outside.  That way, you'll save time and aggravation, in addition to ending up with kept shots that are better, and fewer wasted shots.

Most of the aforementioned gear, save the tripod, didn't exist for the first hundred years of photography.  Yet people still took beautiful pictures of beautiful plants and flowers.  Make no mistake, those shots didn't look anything like what you see today on Pinterest or in magazines.

Here's a shot from 1890, from an unknown photographer.  Its color has been added manually, probably within a month of the original shot:

Flowers, 1890

Note how several rules of composition have been followed.  Having the subject slightly offset, using a simple background, and adding foreground interest with a blurred depth of field, were applied back then the same way they are now.

 The coloring gives it away as being vintage, but the subject could be contemporary.  Taking this shot required nothing more expensive than a tripod. (Other than the camera, of course.)




Here's a shot a friend of mine, Greg Schlack, took in 1979, using a standard 50mm lens on a 35mm camera:

Greg Schlack, 1979

The color is very nice and natural, and it may take your eye a second to notice the oblivious honeybee, concentrating on his business.  Greg took the time to focus on the honeybee, as well as to move the center of the flower to the left third of the frame.  This placement does double duty, as it also allows the focal point to be in the center of the frame, yet still shift the overall interest to one side.

And here's a shot I took a couple of years ago, using the entire list of equipment from above:

I tried to accomplish some interesting lighting, but since I was so close I needed to rethink the composition rules for the flower as a whole.  This shot has a very contemporary look, and would be very appropriate for many uses.

But it may not be the type of shot you're going for.  The point is, you can go out in the field with a simple camera and some thought, and get shots that are just as good as anyone else could come up with, as long as you have a vision.

Will you be using these shots for wedding invitations that need a vintage look?  You'll be better off going for the vintage look in camera style and composition, rather than just using an Instagram filter.  That is, unless the bride-to-be is looking for "that vintage Instagram thing."

Are you trying to sell them to a magazine?  In that case, get a macro lens and start going crazy.

Now let's get into a few tips.

The Tips, for Real This Time

 

1. Focus Everything Manually
Using autofocus can get you into some trouble in this context, as the camera most likely won't pick the same place to focus as you would if doing it yourself.  The camera could very well focus on a blade of grass in the foreground, simply because it's trained to focus on the closest object.  Or it may focus on the wrong leaf.  This becomes very critical when shooting flowers, since the depth of field is so shallow, and focus is very hard to see on the LCD screen or through the viewfinder.  Unless you're in complete control, you won't realize your misfortune until you're back home.

Using Live View and zooming the view in all the way will assist you in focusing manually.  If you're outside, the flower will be moving even if you don't feel a breeze.  If it moves too much, use a couple of clothespins with string tied to them.  Clamp the flower stem in the slot of the clothespin so that the stem won't get damaged, and then tie the free end of the string to a more stable plant, or perhaps to a small stake you've brought with you.  Do this with two clothespins in two opposing directions, and the flower will be much more stable.  You've probably already thought of a couple other stabilizing methods, but don't damage the plant just for the sake of your shot.

2.  Remember Composition
Try not to place the flower in the very middle of the shot, unless there's a specific (rare) reason why you would want to.  Generally, the object of interest should be offset one direction or another  If you're only an inch or two away, the entire frame will be filled, as in my shot above.  In that case, you can still compose within those limitations, offsetting the center of the flower, or using light (or shadow) to frame the point of interest.

Most flower shots will be vertical, with a third or so being horizontal.  Let the subject and the intended use dictate how you should shoot.  This may make it more difficult to place the camera, but that's just the price one pays.  You may want to leave some background space above the flower for text on a wedding invitation, or frame a flower vertically that really wanted to be horizontal, leaving a lot of space at the top because you know it's for the cover of a magazine.  If you compose for the final use, the end result, with text over a blurred background for example, will look much better than a picture slapped onto an invitation with text on the blank paper.

Do whatever you want, but know why you're doing it.

For the background, of course it will be out of focus, but it may still be too distracting.  Take some extra supplies to tie back other plants, and think about taking a sheet along, to drape over unwanted things that you can't get rid of.

3.  Why Are You Shooting THIS Flower?
So you've looked over all the flowers and bushes in the location, and here's the one you've settled on.  Why?  And even more importantly, why should the viewer care?  You'll want to highlight that reason so that everyone else will know why this one's so special.  Maybe it's the way two leaves poke out away from the rest.  If so, keep those in focus, and nothing else.  It could be that the stamen look nice at an angle.  Retain that angle when shooting.  And speaking of angle, look around an entire flower before discounting it.  Interesting shapes and shadows peek out when you look from an unusual angle.  Get down on the ground and look up at the flowers, then get up on one knee and look at them at eye level.  Your shots will automatically be more interesting than if you shoot from a standing position.

4.  Take a Reflector
I generally prefer to shoot in a natural lighting environment, but that's not always possible.  Much of the flower may be in shadow, and if you don't have a reflector with you, you would pass over an otherwise great shot.  Don't let the little things deter you - you can put in some lighting by using a small to medium-sized reflector, giving the eye a very interesting focal point when the light appears to come from underneath the flower.  You don't have to use it all the time, but have one with you.

5.  Shoot With Manual Settings.
Obviously this isn't a requirement, if you're just out to have fun, or if you want to shoot two hundred flowers in a day.  In those cases, don't hassle with settings.  You should have the camera do it for you.  But when you're going out specifically to get certain shots, and you want to concentrate on a handful of flowers, you'll be better off if you take full control.  Keep the ISO low, between 50 and 250.  White balance should be at daylight (or shade, if it's overcast), and left there for the whole shoot, so that it will be predictable when you go back for postproduction.  If you're going to do any editing at all with the shot, use RAW instead of (or at least in addition to) JPEG.  You'll have much more leeway before the shot deteriorates.

Experiment with aperture.  Many people will tell you to keep it small by using a large number, like f/22, so that more of the flower is in focus at once.  I tend to go the opposite direction, keeping it wide open by selecting a small f-stop number, like f/4.5.  This will decrease depth of field, making the background more out of focus.  The advantage of doing it this way is that the eye is forced to hone in on one small detail of the flower.  But sometimes this technique requires focus stacking to get more of the subject in focus.  Focus stacking means taking many shots of the same frame, each focused on a different sliver, and then combining them later. 

As before, do it either way, but do it because you decided to for your own reasons.

Now stop reading about it, and get out there and start shooting!

Taking Pictures of 35mm Slides

Many families with members over the age of 35 have 35mm slide collections, some of them quite vast.  To keep these memories from being lost, most people send their slides out for scanning.  In doing so, you have a choice; either pay someone a tremendous amount of money to do it, or do it cheaply and have them sent overseas.  In tackling the Greg Schlack project, I didn't really find either option attractive, as there were more than 8,000 slides in the collection, and even doing it cheaply overseas would have resulted in spending more money than I was comfortable with.

So I did it myself, without a scanner.

To do it, you'll need a decent-quality (12MP or greater DSLR) 35mm digital camera, a 35mm slide projector, a macro lens, a tripod, and a couple of ND filters.  Basically, you just take a picture of each slide.  Big thanks go out to my good friend Dave for forcing me to document the process!  Here's how to do it:

1.  Set up the projector as though you're getting ready to project the slides.  You'll want to be sure the glass lenses between the bulb and the slide are clean, so you might want to clean them before you set up.  A scratch or smudge on one of the internal lenses will show in the final product as a dark blob.  Important note:  If you should happen to touch the bulb, be sure to REMOVE the bulb and clean it with alcohol.  The oils on your fingers (even a tiny amount) will cause the bulb's glass to heat up at a different rate than the clean portion, and will cause a glass blister on the bulb or even an explosion.  Either will burn out the bulb, and they're (relatively) expensive to replace.  I can tell you all that from personal experience.

2.  Remove the projector's front lens.  This procedure varies from projector to projector, but will usually entail either tilting the focus knob up, which releases the lens, or in the case of less-expensive projectors, just rotate the focus knob until it pushes the lens out. 

3.  Using a tripod, position your camera so the macro lens points down the now-empty throat of the projector.  The distance you'll need to use varies with the lens, and could be anywhere between six inches and 18 inches from where the slide will be.  Be sure to get the lens as perpendicular (and not rotated, with relation to the slide!) as you possibly can to the internal mount for the slides.  Having it off-axis will cause you to be in focus on one part of the slide, and out of focus on another part.  You'll be able to see this error easily once you get to a computer (or wherever you're viewing the final result), so just do a few to start. Another sign of failure to be perpendicular is Keystoning, a term from the silent-film projection era when projectors were pointed upwards toward the wall.  The top of the projected image was wider than the bottom.  I suggest mounting your camera normally for ease of use, but you can also mount it upside-down to avoid one extra step later, which is turning your image upside down.  More on that at the end...

3a.  If your lens will focus to a maximum distance of only a few inches while in macro mode, you won't be able to use this method, as the slide will be about five inches inside the projector, and your lens won't be small enough to get inside that assembly.

4.  The projector is bright, bright, bright!  You'll probably need to expose as fast as your camera will allow, though the final settings will depend on your distance from the light source.  I used ISO 100, F16, 1/4000, and still had to have two neutral density filters on the lens to let even less light in.  I set white balance at a little cooler than daylight, but you can adjust it later if you're shooting in RAW, which you should be for this project. 

5.  Before putting the slide tray in place (making sure that inner ring is in place also!), blow air around the slides to remove dust.  You can remove the dust in Photoshop, but doing it for a thousand slides will make you hate your life.  Blow all the way around the tray.  The advantage of the tray is that the compressed air can get around both sides of each slide during the blowing process.  This will blow the dust into the air, so also blow over the top of the tray to try to keep that same dust from settling back into the tray.  Don't go crazy - you can't get rid of all the airborne dust.

6.  Turn the projector on, set the first slide, and work with the camera to get the entire slide in the frame, at the right exposure and focus.  Some macro lenses will be better suited than others, only because of their magnification size.  I suggest using a remote shutter release.  The exposure is super fast, so you won't get a blur if you click the shutter button by hand, but it's possible you may move the camera just a bit when pressing down on the shutter, making your alignment a tad off.  But doing that isn't a requirement, just an option.

7.  Take your first picture, and set the next slide using the projector's control.  Since the projector places the next slide in exactly the same place, you shouldn't need to readjust focus for each slide.  I checked focus about every forty slides, but I'm not sure that was even necessary.  When you've done a handful, stop and take them back to the computer to look at them for dust, Keystoning, and general and off-axis focus.  If you use an image editing program, make a selection around the edges of the visual portion of the image.  Looking at those perfectly straight selection lines will tell you right away if the slide is tilted or Keystoned.  Make your camera/tripod adjustments if necessary, and try a batch again.

When you turn the projector off, make sure to leave the fan going for ten or fifteen minutes afterwards.  It's amazing how much heat builds up inside those things, and the bulb will burn out more quickly if left to cool without the fan.

For me the most time-consuming part was putting them all in carousels, so I abandoned that portion of the idea pretty quickly.  If yours are already there, then that's a huge timesaver.  Having them in carousels will also orient them partially correct for taking their picture.  The projector flips the image horizontally and vertically when projecting, so looking down the projector throat (essentially looking at the projection backwards) will reveal an image that is correctly oriented left-to-right, but is flipped vertically.  This will need to be changed at the computer in one of several ways, but the easiest is to open Windows Explorer, navigate to the directory the images are in, and select them ALL.  Then right-click, and select Rotate Image Clockwise.  (It'll take a few seconds if you have many hundreds of images.)  Then right-click again, and select the same item again.  This will rotate all your images 180 degrees.  You could also mount your camera upside down if you want, and eliminate that step.  But doing that sort of freaks my brain out when shooting, so I'd rather do it later, and use the camera like I'm used to.

Since I abandoned using the carousels, I instead used the Kodak B40 Stack Loader, which allowed me to transfer stacks of slides at once from the metal trays they're stored in.  This was much faster than loading them one by one into a carousel. I picked one up on Ebay for sixteen dollars.

If you've put your vertical slides in vertically for viewing, be aware that those will require a larger area to be photographed, so you'll want to have a compromise zoom amount to get more area than you would otherwise need.  I had all my verticals horizontal, then rotated the images that should have been vertical in a batch on the computer after the whole process was done.

As you can tell, there's some post processing work to be done on each slide, but if you've been careful about your settings, you'll be able to set up an action to do the same thing to every slide, saving you hundreds of hours of work.

4 Tips for Travel Photography

1.  Go where people aren't.  

You'll have plenty of opportunity to shoot the standard fare that everyone else shoots.  But when you do that, find a spot where people aren't gathering, and get a shot that's fresh.  Look for something no one else is looking at.  Additionally, go to places that are more off the beaten path, to further inject your own signature into your shots.

2.  Go when people aren't.  

Having a person or two in your shot is great, to give a sense of size and scope.  But too many people are a detriment, and waiting for the crowd to thin won't always work.  Instead, go first thing in the morning or at the end of the day.  It's surprising how few people are sightseeing during those times, and you may find that the lighting is better too.  This may seem to fly in the face of something I've written before, about not caring so much about Golden Hour shots.  That advice still stands, and is separate from this advice, because you're using the time of day for two advantages - one for crowd relief, and one for lighting.  If it fits into your schedule, go ahead and do it.  If it doesn't, then turn away from the crowds and find another shot.  Simple.  You're welcome to use the light to your advantage, just don't think you're limited to only that time.

3.  Use a focal length you don't want to use.  

If you were about to shoot long, walk up to the shot instead, look left and right, and come up with something totally different than you anticipated.  If you were going wide, zoom in on something of interest.  This tip is all about shifting your perspective, trying to tell a story you wouldn't have otherwise told.

4.  Shoot life.  

When traveling we tend to concentrate on landscapes and things.  That's great!  But expand yourself into the people who live where you're going, asking them if you can take their picture while they're doing something interesting, like going on about their life.  They'll pretty much always say yes, and you'll have something more personal, that no one else on your Facebook feed will have.  I think you'll find that people will be more interested in your shots as well.

4 Lies They're Telling You About Your Photography!

With the explosion of the power of the Internet, not only is there more advice out there than you could possibly home to read in your lifetime, there will only be even more advice every dingle day.  Ten years from now, you won't even know who to believe, assuming you know that today.  Given those facts, it does seem a tad ironic that I'm going to refute that advice by giving you advice... over the Internet.

It's not my intention to make things confusing for the budding (or experienced) photographer.  The whole point of photography, at least from the perspective of the person behind the lens, is to find something magical, pleasing, or somehow moving.  To take a picture that will be memorable, for whatever reason.  To capture a special moment, and transfer that emotion to the viewer.  So whenever you read something confusing, or something that will make you stop enjoying taking pictures, ignore that piece of advice.  You've got better things to do, like treasuring the moments around you as you explore new places.  If enjoying those moments means you need to put down the camera, or even leave it at home, then do that.  The experience of being in the moment is why you're alive; don't forsake that in favor of a bunch of little pictures.

So here are some ways people are lying to you, trying to get you to fit your pictures into their tiny world:

1.  You should only take pictures during the "golden hour," which is when the sun is just a tiny bit on top of the horizon, either just before sunset, or just after sunrise.

Simply incorrect.  There's no doubt that shots can look wonderful with that light, but it depends on what you're shooting, and the look you're trying to achieve.  For example, the shot below was shot during Golden Hour:

Keystone at The Edge of Night

 I was trying to catch the lights of nighttime skiing, but still get the detail of the trees, visible only during the day.  As you can see, the shot is a disaster.  There's no contrast, no shadows, and no interest.  Here's another in the same series of ski area shots, this time from Breckenridge:

Breckenridge, 11:00 AM

This one was taken at about 11:00 in the morning on a cloudless day, when there were harsh shadows.  This is easily the most popular shot I've ever taken, with incredible detail, contrast, and smooth lighting even under direct sunshine.  Don't forget that even at Noon in Colorado, the Sun isn't directly overhead even in the middle of Summer, so you don't need to worry about straight overhead lighting.  Your positioning relative to the subject will make much more difference.

Golden Hour is great.  Use it when you can.  But don't ever think the rest of the day (or night) is inferior.

2.  Invest in a set of prime lenses, and zoom with your feet.

This one started because primes will generally give better image quality than zooms.  But modern zoom lenses are so good and so versatile, you simply won't see any difference unless you're printing your images really, really big.  But the larger factor in the demise of this myth is the fact that a shot done at 35mm will look completely different than the same framing at 100mm.  It's beyond my understanding why any photographer would further this ridiculous myth. Let's do an experiment:

Below is a shot of a generic SUV (my current vehicle), shot from about sixty feet away, at 120mm:

120mm

 Once I took that shot, I "zoomed with my feet" to about five feet from the car, and shot it again from the same elevation at 24mm:

24mm

 You'll notice that the two shots are radically different!  In the first shot the background has been brought into the frame by virtue of the longer lens.  We can also isolate the focus of the subject more effectively with a zoom, which may or may not be desired.  And that's what this boils down to - not that one way is inherently better than the other, but that you will need to decide what distance to pick, based on what you want out of the shot.  The 120mm shot shows the true lines of the car, and makes it fit into its surroundings better.  The 24mm shot gives the car more attitude, and draws your attention to it, even though the car takes up precisely the same width in both shots.

You want to zoom?  Do it.  Walk forward, and get a radically different shot?  Do that.  But the whole point of you making that choice is because you know the shots will be very different.  We can't pretend that walking forward or back is any substitute for zooming.

3.  Pros only use Manual Mode, so You Should Too.

In the studio, sure.  There's no reason to use anything else.  But Very few pros use Manual when doing travel, scenic, or motion shots.  When you're in the wild, conditions vary dramatically and quickly, and you'll rarely have time to experiment, or use the meter.  So instead of going completely Manual, use Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority.  Aperture Priority lets you define the depth of field by setting your own aperture, and then the camera figures out how to achieve ISO and shutter speed within your parameters.  Shutter priority, useful for reducing (or accenting) motion blur, lets you decide what shutter speed to use, and the camera figures out the rest.  Leaving the camera on full automatic (or Program, for Canon users) is often frowned upon because of the reasoning that the camera may guess wrong under certain lighting conditions.  But those exposure guesses would be wrong in both Shutter and Aperture Priority anyway, so if you're more comfortable letting the camera figure it all out, don't be afraid of that either.  You'll miss a few shots, sure.  About 3%.  So stop worrying.

4.  You should only take five lenses and two cameras on your trip.

Yes, I actually read a blog by a respected photographer who said he had lightened his kit to "just" five lenses and two cameras.  When the day comes that you're being paid to fly somewhere and shoot something, you won't need anyone to tell you what gear you need. You'll know what's required for that shoot.  But until that time, take TWO lenses AT THE MOST, and ONE camera.  Your backup camera can be your iPhone, which has a better camera than it has any right to have anyway.  Take a versatile zoom, and maybe a wide-angle.  Or even just the versatile zoom, and then you only have to deal with one lens.  Start concentrating on getting good shots, and you'll have a lot more fun.

Your mental power should be devoted to exploring for shots and enjoying your trip, not hassling with gear or waiting for light that may never come.  You can wait for that light when you're taking a trip specifically for photography.  Until then, learn to find the shot, and your future photographer self will thank you for that experience.

The Greg Schlack Project

If you were in a band in Colorado in the 1980's or 1990's, you almost certainly were photographed by Greg Schlack.  If you graduated high school in Boulder during that time, or up until 2010, the chances were pretty good that Greg shot your senior pictures.

Greg lived his entire life in the house he grew up in, so he was always easy to find, and a constant fixture around Boulder for several decades.  He passed away suddenly in 2009, leaving behind a vast array of friends and clients who have missed him, his humor, and his positive disposition, tremendously.

And he left something else as well.

After his death, I was given his lifetime collection of 35mm slides.  These weren't the slides he took for clients.  These were slides he took while on his own adventures, which he had squirreled away haphazardly in shoeboxes, never brought out for anyone to see, save a mere handful of shots that he had enlarged and hung around his home.  In all, there were over 10,000 transparencies, spanning almost forty years.  Greg had begun the research into making the move to digital photography, but never got the opportunity to actually make the transition.  So his entire body of work remained in the analog realm.

What a PORTION of the collection looked like before cataloging. 
Only a handful of boxes were labeled.

I knew something needed to be done with these.  they showed not only Greg's view of life in Colorado (and around the world), but also showed a unique window into other people's lives, and showed the heart of what it was like to live in Colorado in the 70's and 80's.

I spent several weeks sorting the slides chronologically, as that seemed to be the most useful sort.  I then stored them all in slide drawers I bought through EBay, to prevent having them get scratched, dirty, and unorganized, as they had been for so many years already.  It seemed like the next logical step would be to have them sent overseas to be scanned, so I tested a couple of different companies with two hundred slides each.  I felt uncomfortable sending (potentially) so many slides around the world, but local companies would be way out of reach financially.  While not expensive on a per-slide basis, the cost would definitely add up no matter who scanned them.  I bought a scanner and tried scanning them myself, but it was cripplingly time-consuming, using over a minute per slide.  With me not sure how to proceed, the slides sat for several years.

During cataloging

Durango and Silverton RR, circa 1976

During that time, I got the idea to start a Kickstarter campaign to help pay for the scanning, then turn the slides into an experimental film about Greg.  This idea rolled around in my head for quite a while, trying to figure out how best to structure the payouts for backers, particularly regarding whether they would receive stills, copies of the DVD, director's commentary, or a combination of all the above.  Trying to get all this organized in my head before starting the campaign caused me to not start the campaign.

But then recently, while in the middle of a completely separate glass slide restoration project, I happened across a forum post that mentioned a different method of scanning.








It involved these steps:

1. Get a slide projector and remove the lens.
2. Using a high-quality digital camera with a macro lens, point the camera down the throat of the projector and take a picture of each slide.

Colorado Plains, 1980

It was so obvious, I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of this previously!  It had some big advantages over using a flatbed, namely quality and speed, and it would be very predictable, since the projector takes care of positioning each slide in exactly the same way.

Off to the races.  I've been able to scan 9500 slides in less than ten days, and since my mother still had our family's slide projector, the only cost was the purchase of a slide stacker, to make the loading process faster.  I had started by loading the carousel trays, which was plenty fast for the shooting process itself, but loading them and unloading them took a great deal of time.  Even though the stacker only holds forty at a time, loading it is so fast that it really doesn't matter whether it holds forty or four hundred.

I'll show more examples in Part II, which I'll post once the film is put together.

A Handful of Memories from Union Station

Union Station in Denver recently opened after a three-year renovation project costing $500 million.  The new transportation hub is designed not only to be a center for travelers, but a gathering place for the neighborhood, with shops, a hotel, and restaurants.  The hub currently serves about 15,000 users a day, with that total expected to rise to 200,000 by 2030.

The new facility is impressive, and much of the old facade was retained, keeping a piece of the tradition of the station that's been in place since 1881.  Congratulations are in order to the design and working team for being able to mix the old and new.  Here are a couple of samples of what it used to look like inside:

A Wall Sconce Keeps Watch over the Public Space.  All of these fixtures are gone now.

The Cavernous Public Space in Union Station (Now home to shops and a common area)

Inevitably though, many things had to go.  Not least among them was the underground tunnel system that train passengers had used for a hundred years to get to the various lines without having to cross over live tracks.  Here's a view of the tunnels that I have reproduced as a one-of-a-kind aluminum print for a collector in Castle Rock:

Union Station Tunnel, Showing Tracks 2 through 8

Here are a couple more views, looking in the opposite direction:

Tunnel, Looking Toward Street Level

Mural in Tunnel, Showing Snow Removal Train on Trestle

The subway tile, deco fixtures and hand-painted mural aren't really in the style that would have been in keeping with the modernization of the building, and there wasn't enough room anyway for the new bus concourse.  Here's how the concourse, in the same space as the train tunnels, looks just before opening:

Bus Concourse (Image courtesy CBS)

If you think this looks like the airport, you're not alone.  People demand space, maneuverability, and convenience.  They don't want to be too distracted by interesting details, or historical items they may have to read to understand.  The new concourse is wonderfully utilitarian, and will be useful for far more than the old tunnel system.

But something of value was still lost.

And more than that was lost as well.  The basement used to house two giant model train layouts, the more interesting of which was built on the site of the old jail underneath the station.  After thirty-plus years of adjustment, building and maintenance, the Platte Valley & Western Model Railroad club had to move out.  Here are two of several hundred pictures I took of the HO scale layout just before dismantling:

Train Layout Detail - Vista Car in Yard

Train Layout - Diesel Passes Under Trestle

I'll be contacting the current stewards of the layout, in hopes of working with them in their new space at White Fence Farms.  I'm hopeful that a collection of these photographs will be available for perusal at White Fence Farms.

Movement is inevitable.  It isn't always progress when that movement occurs, but if we can salvage some of the old in our ceaseless quest for the new, then we have to accept that we've made real progress.

All images copyright Craig Patterson, except where otherwise noted.  All rights reserved.  please contact me if you wish to use these photographs for any purpose whatsoever.

An Idea for a Christmas Present

You're in trouble!  You need to buy something!

I suggest you slow down for a minute, and do some real thinking about what that person wants.  They've probably told you in some subtle way, though maybe you weren't listening at the time.  Instead of coming up with another bauble to buy from Amazon, why not take a picture for them, and have it framed?

Slow down again.  This won't be a picture of you, or a picture of the other person.  Instead, find something to shoot that will actually mean something to them.  You'll need to go back over some things they've said, or places you've been together, in order to find the clues.  Let me give you an example of something that happened to me, so that you can start to recognize those clues.

The History
My father passed away about 25 years ago, and my mother's been living on her own every since.  (Don't worry, she wouldn't have it any other way!)  She lives in a mountain home with an absolutely wonderful view of the Colorado High Country, and it's the last home she'll ever live in.  I grew up in that home, so I'm quite familiar with the view, and I also know how important it is to her.

Additionally, she misses my dad.  She says she''s often dreamed of the two of them on airplanes, hers just behind his, off to find their next adventure.

Those two observations didn't at first seem to be related.  But in pondering her views of her life and situation, I put together something in my head that I knew I had to shoot.  You can do the same thing.  Go back over some history you have with this person you want to create something for, and distill that history into a couple of important points.  Don't worry, you don't have to ignore the rest of who they are!  You'll have opportunities later to come up with other meaningful remembrances.  For now, just use two, and then come up with a way incorporate them into a single photograph.  It can be literal, but in my case, I constructed my desired photograph from three pictures, creating something that has never existed in real life.  But you don't need to do that!  You can use ONE picture, either somewhere outdoors, or constructed in a little free space in your apartment.  The setting doesn't matter.  What matters is the sentiment and content.

The first picture I used was a view from her house of the mountains.  The second and third were of contrails I saw as as I stood on the deck of her home.  The contrails weren't in the right place in the sky, so I needed to do some postproduction work.

Combining the three gave me this image:

Contrails in Evergreen, Colorado, with Mt. Evans in the background

It shows her and my dad, off on their next adventure as the sun sets, her just a bit behind him.  Believe me, I know this picture doesn't mean much to you, my loyal reader.  It's not supposed to.  It needs to mean something that is specific to its recipient, and I promise you, she cries every time she looks at it on her wall.  At that gave me a Merry Christmas.

Now go out there and start shooting!

Finding Care for Inpatient Rehab

I should first mention that no organization can ever pay me to be featured in my blog or newsletter, nor can they give me any kind of incentive.  I mention people and companies because I think they deserve the mention, and that's the only criteria, period.

Having a loved one experience health concerns is always troubling, and it doesn't help that the choices for assistance are so varied and overwhelming.  How do you know who will do a good job, and which facilities should be avoided?  In general, we have to trust the medical professionals that are supposed to know who's good and who's not for your local area.

Based on such a recommendation from the wonderful staff at University Hospital in Aurora, Colorado, my wife and I recently accepted, on my mother's behalf, the services of an organization called Advanced Health Care.  They have many facilities around the U.S., and two in Colorado.

My mother had an injury that occurred several months ago, but was never diagnosed.  It was suddenly made much worse about a month ago, when she was staying at our house to recuperate from an unrelated hospital stay.  She's 84 as of this writing, and those of you who are in a similar position will understand that when it comes to pain management, there's nothing worse than seeing someone in horrible pain that you can do nothing about.  And with no time to spare, it's also difficult to find someone who's trustworthy, as you don't have much time to research, and if you had researched previously, many of those providers are no longer available!  Add to that the fact that there are many types of services, and you don't know which will need to be utilized at any given time, and you can get quickly overwhelmed.

After a stay to diagnose, University decided that she needed inpatient rehab, and suggested Advanced Health Care, who, as stated above, actually have many facilities around the nation.  Although I can't be certain about the rest of their facilities, it seems quite probable that they're all of the same same high quality as their Aurora location.  They specialize in inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation, and short-term nursing.  All of their patients anticipate being able to leave, to a specific situation.

My mother was there for 20 days, and was consistently (and constantly) treated with respect, care, and friendship.  Staff was never upset or impatient with her, and she grew to know them by name.  The provided meals were dependably nutritious, but still fun to eat, and how much she ate was closely monitored without getting in her way.  (It's often difficult to get the elderly to eat enough, so they were more concerned with getting her to eat more, than to restrict what she had.)  All meals are served in the dining room (not a cafeteria, but more of a restaurant), so people do not get stuck forgotten in their rooms for days on end, as happens in some other facilities.

Rehab exercises were done in two sessions per day, with illustrated instructions given to her so she could continue her regimen after leaving the facility.  The entire time, the focus was on getting her back home and independent, not on shoving her out the door for some other facility to deal with.

A social activity of some sort was planned every day, but attendance was not required.  Anyone who felt up to it was welcome.  Instructions on what she was allowed to do alone and what required assistance were very clear, and staff never ignored her when she needed some help.

And finally, no matter what facility you choose, you should look for one that accepts Medicare, because Medicare demands periodic inspections.  The State does do some inspections, but they don't have enough money or trained staff to really do as thorough and demanding a job as Medicare does.  Facilities that are not required to be inspected may be just fine, but with no one looking at them before you arrive, my personal belief is that you're asking for trouble.  You are completely within your rights asking for the results of the latest Medicare inspection. If the facility has an excuse for not showing them to you, turn around and go anywhere else.

If your or your loved one's situation requires short-term assistance, I would strongly suggest that you call Advanced. 

Something to Think About When Traveling by Car

I just returned from the 2015 SEMA show in Vegas, the world's largest gathering of automotive professionals.  Most people who come from around the country choose to fly, but I usually drive, as there are so many wonderful photographic opportunities along the way.  Driving as much as I do increases the possibility of unfortunate happenings, but they can actually happen at any time, even for those who drive very little.

I had checked conditions on Vail pass, typically the most treacherous portion of the drive through Colorado on Interstate 70.  The forecast was clear, as were the live webcams, so I figured I'd be just fine in my front wheel drive Elantra.  I didn't bother to check the approaches to and from The Eisenhower Tunnel.

That was a mistake, though to be fair, many people would have taken that route anyway, rather than going North through Wyoming, or South through New Mexico.

A great deal of sand had been laid on the approach to the tunnel, so traffic was still going about 50mph even though it was snowing, and there was some snow on the road.  Often, conditions will be different on the other side of the tunnel, as it's on the other side of the Continental Divide, but tonight that was not the case this fine evening.  It was still snowing when I came out of the tunnel, and a great deal of sand had been put down here too, so everyone was still going about 50.

The unexpected part came as I was alongside another car.  I heard a sudden, loud sound, much like a gunshot, followed by the sound of glass ricocheting around the passenger compartment.  Immediately after, I felt a 50mph, 20 degree wind, and the unique crinkling sound of more glass, as it fell from the window over the plastic interior.

It took me a few seconds to realize that I hadn't been shot, that it was just a rock thrown up by the car next to me.  It was very fortunate no one was with me, as we would surely have had to head to the closest emergency room.  I was hit by some glass, but didn't get cut too badly.  It wasn't long after that, that I realized I was in trouble, as I still had seven hundred miles to go, under potentially highly variable conditions.  And that's where the preparation came in.

I pulled over as soon as I could reasonably do so, put on my coat and gloves, and started the process of sealing the former window with gaffer's tape.  While certainly inconvenient, it certainly beat the alternative of driving in freezing cold temperatures with no jacket or gloves.  Even without the tape, I still would have had a coat and gloves to wear, because I was prepared.

You should be prepared too, and with Winter coming, it's even more important.  You should have a survival kit in your car at all times, because so many things can happen.  Just one slip of the wheel, and you could be in a ravine overnight, or worse, for several days.  It doesn't need to take up much space, either.  Here's what I have in my kit:

• Small backpack - everything should be able to fit in this backpack, so it's easy to keep everything together.  And you can take it with you easily if you have to walk.
• Jacket or coat
• Plastic poncho
• Hand warmers
• Flashlight
• Socks
• Toilet paper
• Whistle
• Quarters
• Small mirror
• Matches
• Gloves
• Blanket 
• Sunblock
• Folding knife, as long as it's legal in your state
• Non-perishable food - several thousand calories, such as emergency protein bars, fruit rolls, tootsie rolls, beef jerky, and raisins.  Replace it every year.
• Tape - Gaffer's tape, which is like duct tape but doesn't leave a residue.  It's expensive, so you can use duct tape instead, or even hose tape, but have something.
• Compass - this one won't do you any good unless you know how to use it, so learn.
• Band-Aids
• Neosporin

Anything that can leak or melt should be in its own Ziploc baggie.  And if you come up with other items you think you'll need, by all means put them in the backpack.

So why do you need all this if you have a cell phone?  It's continually amazing to me how many back roads in the US, and even some stretches of Interstate, have literally NO cell service, despite what those ridiculous maps tell you.  So you may not be able to use your phone if you get stuck, and even if you do, what about when it runs out?  You need to be able to depend on yourself to get out of a jam on the road.  If you're the kind of person who calls 911 if you get a flat tire, then you should really engage in some self-reflection.

Then again, the kind of person who thinks their cell phone will always save them is not the kind of person I'm trying to talk to.  I doubt I'll  be able to reach you.

The Tamron 150-600mm - Why I'm Not Buying it, But You Might

 Intro

I'm not going to be buying the Tamron 150-600mm superzoom.  Since my reasons are my own alone, I'm going to give you the pluses and minuses, and let you decide for yourself.  And I'm actually hopeful that my condemnation of the lens might actually cause you to buy it, since we're all looking for different things.

I read reviews of camera gear just like any other photographer, and some of them can be quite helpful.  Others not so much.  Sometimes I want to see specs, sometimes not, sometimes a user experience, sometimes I don't care, you get the idea.  My interests are varied, depending on the gear and why I'm looking at it.

A quick note for ALL reviewers of ALL camera bodies and lenses, though:  Stop including tiny sample images in your posts and reviews!  They're absolutely worthless.  It does no one any good to see a 35 Meg image shrunk to 1000 pixels wide, thinking that it tells us something about the camera or lens.  If you're going to include images, then either crop them to 100% view, or include the full-resolution images behind a click.  And even then, you MUST include a comparison image of something else in order for the image to mean anything at all.

Why Do This?

Since I don't really do gear reviews, one might wonder why I'm "reviewing" this lens in the first place.  I've mentioned previously, and in almost every conversation I have with fellow photographers, that your gear doesn't really matter, so why bother caring now?  The answer is that I will attempt to prove my assertion by looking at a piece of gear much more expensive than what I currently use.  I approached the Tamron with an open mind; I was fully prepared to buy it to replace an aging lens I depend on every day.

The Baseline Lens

Nikon 100-300mm f/5.6 (Image courtesy Leicashop.com)

For landscapes, macro work, and even some automotive shoots, I currently use the Nikkor 100-300mm f/5.6 lens.  It's completely manual in every way.  It has no autofocus, no auto aperture, no image stabilization, no nothing.  It's a piece of glass with two adjustment rings on it, one of which has two functions.  Since you can't use the camera to help you control the way the lens works (and because it's an f/5.6 - very slow), it's practically impossible to use it for wildlife photography, and almost as difficult for motorsports.  There is no lens profile in LightRoom or Adobe RAW, and Adobe will never make one.  I bought it for $65 off of EBay about six years ago, and it had minor pitting internally, though it wasn't noticeable in the final image.  Fast forward to today, and the pitting has gotten worse.  Anything shot with an aperture smaller than f/8 (meaning higher numbers, up to f/32), has hundreds of dark blotches everywhere in the shot, making the lens useless except for f/8 and f/5.6.  That makes the lens, in today's market, worth exactly nothing.  And sometime in the near future, the pitting will increase to the point that I'll have to just throw it away.

But the shots it does take look extremely nice.  The focus is good, the vignetting is controllable, and the distortion is smooth enough that I almost never even correct for it because it doesn't bother me, particularly when I combine 300 shots to make a panoramic image.

The Contender 

Tamron 150-600mm f/5-6.3 (Image courtesy Tamron)

This is Tamron's SuperZoom, the 150-600mm.  Its f-stop capability varies between f/5 and f/6.3, depending on the zoom level.  It has everything the Nikkor above doesn't have:  camera-adjustable focus and aperture, a really good image stabilization system, and a tripod ring, so that it can sit on the tripod head with a heavy camera on the back and still be balanced.  You can read plenty of other details about it everywhere else on the web if you want to, but that should really be enough talk about specs.

Lens-to-Lens Shot Comparison

Both of these shots were taken at 300mm, using the same f/8, 1/800, ISO 100 settings.

 

Nikkor 100-300mm, 100% crop from center of frame.  f/8, 1/800, ISO100

Tamron 150-600mm, 100% crop from center of frame.  f/8, 1/800, ISO100

For me, this is the most crucial test.  Sometimes it's important to look for chromatic aberration, pincushioning, or any of  a couple of dozen other behaviors, but these two lenses are fairly comparable in all those areas - not amazing, but actually quite good.  So let's not waste time with that.

The Tamron took in a little more light (and thus, color intensity) at the same setting, which could be attributed to a number of things, not the least of which could be that the light changed during the minute I took to change lenses.  So I'm not concerned with that either.  What matters to me is sharpness.  I've been looking for a newer lens that will give me more sharpness overall, so that my panoramas can be blown up even bigger.  My current high score for a pano is twelve feet by forty-eight feet at a full 300 dpi.

It's clear that the Nikkor is sharper, discounting the portions of the Tamron image where there's motion blur.

The Good and The Bad

Here's what the Tamron has going for it:

1.  Works much better with the camera, taking some responsibility away from me.
2.  Much greater reach.  I used all 600mm of it when shooting from a mile away, and was very pleased with the results.
3.  Adobe has a lens profile for it, making it easy to correct in post.
4.  A truly great Image Stabilization system, increasing the lens's usefulness and ease of focus even on a tripod.  Getting stability at 600mm is no joke, no matter what kind of tripod you have.

Now on the Nikkor's side:

1.  Better sharpness.
2.  I already own it.

You can read everyone else's blog, where they will all say that lens sharpness isn't important, but technique is.  Let's say that's completely true (and I do believe that the technique argument is completely true).  If so, then why ever buy a new lens to replace one with the same zoom range you already own?  After all, whatever my technique level, it would be the same level with both lenses.  The only possible answers would be convenience and features.

The Tamron has wonderful new features that would make it more convenient for me to shoot.  But that's going to have to be a tremendous amount of convenience to make me part with that kind of money.  For me, the money can only be spent if the final product is better, which in this case, for what I shoot, it will not be.

If you shoot wildlife, motorsports, or celebrities, your shots will end up better with the Tamron.  In my case, my shots will suffer.  I'll just need to learn to live without the 600mm reach, and build my own lens profile for Photoshop.  When the Nikkor finally fails, I'll just get another one from EBay.

Carnage on Larimer - 2015

Carnage on Larimer is put on every year by Evil Souls Car Club of Colorado.  The art portion, Graffiti on Larimer, is put on by Raul DeLaTorre, owner of Raquelitas Tortillas, Colorado's premier manufacturer of tortilla chips.  Every day they produce over 25,000 POUNDS of tortillas!  And as of fairly recently, their 24,000-square foot plant became 100% wind-powered!  Raul has been very generous with me over the years, and I truly appreciate his kindness and excitement.  His wife Mari shows tremendous patience as she cooks an enormous amount of food, provided absolutely free, for the show participants.  And it's really tremendous food too.  I'm surprised Raul doesn't weigh 500 pounds having such a wonderful cook around the house.  She deserves much of the credit for the success of the show in general, and doesn't get enough recognition.

I've mentioned in a previous post why you should be going to this show, and this year's event was the perfect example.  There is quite simply no other show where you'd be able to see a Chevy pickup with tractor seats welded to the bumper, sitting right next to a Ferrari 250 GTO.  Bear witness, ye heathens, and rejoice:

That GTO's no trailer queen, either,  It had a transponder on the windshield for E-470, our local toll road/speedway, and there were obvious signs it had been driven quite a bit. Hey, are there any fun people who go to this show?  Why yes.  Yes, there are:

As is always the case here, there are all kinds of people.  All races, nationalities, cultures and ages appear alongside each other, just to have fun and be a big family.  I suppose it seems odd that I picked the white people as an example of that, but I took their picture because they were quirky and obviously having fun.

But wait, you say, were there any Rat Rods?  Um, yes.  A ton.  Here are a few:

  

 

Rat rods are reflections of the habits and predilections of their owners, most often with a wry sense of humor.  That humor is evident here in the fan shroud made of license plates, as well as the grille made to look like teeth.  That grille is what all owners of cars and trucks with that style of grille think of anyway, so why not just go for the gusto and make it obvious?

And there were Model A's, 30's, 40's and 50's classics as well.  Like these:

 

This is really just another view of two of the rat rods, since I feel like they belong in both categories.

Mercs are a mainstay of every type of car show, sometimes mild, often wild, and always with a healthy dose of style.

How about 70's and 80's rides?  Any of those?  Well, yes.

 

You don't see too many early-70's Mustang convertibles anymore, much less with a flame job that obviously took a great deal of time to complete.

Even a kit car!

But with all that, surely there couldn't have been bikes too, could there?

Yes, there could.

And this is only about a third of the bikes that showed up.  Here's a view of one portion of one block of the show as a whole:

 

So where was I in this show?  I was in the Art section.  Here's my booth:

I met a lot of new friends, and I can't wait to shoot their cars and bikes.

And here are a couple of booths of friends of mine, like Old School Alex:

Alex uses woodcutting as a base for his portraits, allowing him to make multiple identical copies of a completely analog process.  he even uses the subtractive technique to allow for color printing from one block.

Also showing was Steve Haugen from Victory Illustration:

I've known Steve for several years, and he's the go-to guy for poster art for almost every event in Colorado.  While his talent is well-known, it's worth noting that he's very unassuming, and is not impressed with himself, as so many artists are.  A wonderful guy to hang around.

I'm very pleased to report that this was my most successful show EVER, and that includes art shows and every car show I've ever done.  What a tremendous thrill, and a huge THANK YOU to Raul for inviting me back this year.

I hope to see YOU there in 2016!

Denver County Fair Post-Show Wrapup

A HUGE Thank You to all of my new friends who dropped by my booth at last weekend's Denver County Fair at the National Western Complex!

I've never shown at the Denver County Fair previously, and it's still a young show, with 2015 being its 5-year anniversary.  I admit I felt some trepidation when I started hearing about things like the Kitten Pavilion and Davey B. Gravey's Tiny Cinema.  I'm used to art fairs, gallery showings, and other affairs where everything's quiet and subdued.

This was not that.

Thunder and cacophony abounded throughout the entire Complex, with contests, classes, dancers, bands and poetry readings coming from every available stage, and those stages were everywhere.  There was a huge kid's area, the biggest model train setup I've ever seen outside of a permanent installation, food and diorama contests (sometimes in the same contest, with Peeps dioramas), an art gallery as big or bigger than any retail location, cosplay characters roaming the aisles, and none of that even touches on the vendor booths that were present.

Every imaginable type of booth was there, and then a bunch more you never dreamed could exist.  Not only clothing, food, souvenirs and storm windows, but also fortune tellers, booths hawking other conventions, knives, sculpture, travel, and I don't even know what else.  Local Legend Kenny Be had a booth too, offering giant prints of his utterly fantastic new Colorado Map.

My Booth at the Denver County Fair!

Other than meeting new people, the biggest highlight of the whole Fair for me was seeing the poetry reading contest, when one of the guys from Poetry on Demand was delivering a particularly dramatic reading during one of the contests on a nearby stage.  His mic had some feedback, but instead of standing there waiting for someone to do something, he instead used that opportunity to put the mic in the stand, walk out to the front of the stage, and quite forcefully address his audience one-on-one, intimately and aggressively.  It was so effective, he got the most rousing, cheering response of any reader that day, and it was very well-deserved.  I don't know his name, but if anyone does, let me know and I'll update this entry.  It was truly unforgettable.

In the end, it was far from ordinary.  One might even say it was off-center.  But it was a larger gathering than any of these individual groups would probably experience in Colorado.  And despite (perhaps because of) the disparate nature of all the groups, everyone got along just great.  There was no rivalry or territorialism, only fun, and people who came only for their specific interest still got to experience other cultural phenomena, and interact with people they would otherwise never see.

I had a great time, and if you did too, I invite you to go again next year.

See you then!

Ted Stevens Helps Me Prove It's Not Your Gear

Longtime readers will recognize that I spend a great deal of time telling you that it's not what gear you own that's important, or how much, but what you do with it.

Today I start to show real-world examples of this being the case.  To start off, I'll use Ted Stevens, who is currently traveling around the USA finding adventures to get into.  Here's one of his pictures from Arches National Park, one of my two favorite places on the planet, highlighting Skyline Arch and the area around it.

Skyline Arch, taken by Ted Stevens

This is quite simply a wonderful shot.  Here are the things that I find to be "right" about this shot:

1. The foreground - we see something of interest that catches our eye, and is in focus
2. The background - this is obviously of interest as well, and it's framed so that we can see the entire formation.  Although it's mostly in focus, it doesn't need to be in perfect focus, as it would compete too much with the cactus, and make the image as a whole feel "flat."
3. It tricks the eye into looking at both the foreground and the background.  While most people would be content to shoot only the Arch (and you can see thousands of examples of that kind of thinking on the Web with this very formation), Ted decided that highlighting the cactus, something usually overlooked in such a grandiose location, would be more interesting.  But to hold our interest, he added Skyline Arch, so that we could judge both of them in context with each other.  Neither one detracts from the other, they only add together.
4. The Sun is behind the Arch.  I wouldn't have even thought to do this, but having the Arch in shade prevents it from drawing too much attention away from the cactus.  We still see how majestic it is, enhanced by the oblique sun hitting portions of the Arch at an angle.  mostly shadow, with a few highlights, but we still see the entire formation.
5. Objects of interest are scattered around the frame, following the Rule of Thirds, rather than being centered.  The Rule of Thirds doesn't always need to be followed, but doing so is quite effective in this case.

Search for Arches Skyline Arch on Google, and look at what everyone else, even pro photographers, are shooting.  Ted;s shot has given us more context than most other shots, showing Skyline Arch in its natural environment, rather than trying to show nothing but the Arch.

So what big full-frame camera and expensive lens did he use?  Did he have to buy a special tripod to get so low?  Was this shot 45 of 76 in trying to get the best shot?

No.  He used an iPhone 6 on full auto mode, handheld.  First try.  Because he cared about what he was shooting, and took the time to get it right.

Now get out there and take some interesting shots!