Category Archives: Blog

Point of departure

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We recently returned from a multi-week vacation to the Puget Sound area. This trip followed our now-standard approach — fly to some interesting locale, rent a car, drive a thousand miles or so over a few weeks while taking in the sights and sounds. This is the first picture I’m posting from the 2,000+ photographs I collected in the process:

Point of departure

It’s a view out the front windows of the ferry between Vancouver (the city) and Nanaimo (on Vancouver Island), both in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. I was originally hoping that I could capture some nice scenic views on this leg of the trip, but it proved… wetter… than the weather forecast had predicted.

So when life gives you rain, you take rain pictures.

At this point, the ferry was just leaving the Vancouver docks; that white-outlined dark spot is a small fishing boat heading out ahead of us. In retrospect, I like the sense of mystery that focusing on the water gave this shot. I took another version of this shot, but focused on the small boat — doesn’t look nearly as interesting.

Great Expectations

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One of the best parts of living in Colorado is that we can get up to some… interesting… mountain events over the course of the year. This was a Canadian entry at the 2012 Breckenridge snow sculpture contest:

Great Expectations

I’m always amazed at just how much detail the sculptors can coax out of packed snow (OK, in this case with a bit of help from some icicles).

Great Expectations details 1

And of course, you have to look carefully to spot all the goodies they’ve packed into their work.

Great Expectations details 2

Ridin’ and shootin’

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Another fun shot from the 2012 National Western Stock Show — this one from the Cowboy Mounted Shooting event:

Ridin' and shootin'

Honestly, I’d never even *heard* of Cowboy Mounted Shooting as a competitive event before. But when we showed up at the stock show ticket desk, we could definitely hear it! We wandered into the arena to see what all the noise was from — and found this fun little event going on.

Getting this shot was a bit tricky, though. The arena lights are relatively dim, and the horses move pretty quickly — so I had to let the ISO get up to 2500 in order to get a reasonably fast shutter speed. At times like this, it helps to catch the action when the horse and rider are rounding a corner — so they’re moving as slowly as they’ll ever be. Oh, and put your camera on “continuous” shooting — catching sparks in mid-air is a game of chance…

New (free!) eBook from Craft and Vision — a review

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Craft and Vision just came out with a new eBook — 11 Ways You Can Improve your Photography. It’s a pretty impressive little eBook — and best of all, it’s free!

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But before I send you on over to the Craft and Vision website, let me give you a quick rundown of what you’ll get in this thing. Nine of Craft and Vision’s writers contribute eleven tips on how you can improve your photographic skills, and none of it requires buying gear. 69 pages of useful and thought-provoking material, and it won’t cost you a cent to read or put into practice.

Definitely a good thing in the middle of the obligatory holiday shopping binge!

I won’t spell out what the 11 tips are, that’d completely spoil the surprise for you. But I can summarize. A few tips are pretty basic — so, particularly good for beginners. Others are much more profound, and delve into the reasons and rationale behind our photography, and the use of photographic composition as a storytelling device. Good for everyone, but particularly useful for those who have mastered the technology of their cameras and have moved to a more contemplative place with their photography.

So all-in-all, I think this is a wonderful eBook — particularly when you consider the price! So go and get it!

Seed head

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A spur-of-the-moment shot from a solo photowalk a few weeks back:

Seed head

I have no idea what kind of plant grew these seeds, but I liked how the swirl of the seed head mirrored the feel of the bokeh background. It’s just one of those things I don’t really have words for, you know?