Landmark

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It’s tough coming up with a “different” way of photographing a landmark like the Golden Gate Bridge. Making life more challenging for me was the fact that on our recent trip to the bay area, it was overcast and wet most of the time.

But as luck would have it, we were headed north from San Francisco during one brief window of time in which we had actual blue skies and sunshine. I’d found some roads on the north end of the bridge via Google Earth, so wound up at an old artillery site called “Battery Spencer” in the Marin headlands. It was windy as can be, but I managed to hold my gear still for long enough to get off a few good shots like this one.

Landmark

There are other spots further west along the road that will give you good views of the bridge, but Battery Spencer is the best one I could find to capture both the bridge and the city in one frame.

Crystaline

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As the saying goes, if you’re looking for a photographic subject, and don’t see anything in your surroundings — look up / look down!

Crystaline

This is a shot of a chandelier in a ballroom at Filoli Gardens south of San Francisco. I didn’t *quite* get things centered (I was in a crowd, so couldn’t do my usual stunt of laying on the floor for this shot), but I still like the symmetry…

Just waiting for breakfast to arrive

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I spotted this little scene up in a tree at the Green Gulch Farm, near San Francisco, California:

Just waiting for breakfast to arrive

The spider didn’t seem to mind the soggy weather a bit. Should you find yourself in the San Francisco area (in particular, in Marin county), we’d highly recommend a stop at Green Gulch Farm. The people there are friendly, and it’s a wonderful quiet place for a stroll (even on a wet day)…

Calakmul Structure III

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Structure III isn’t the largest building at Calakmul, and it was likely never the fanciest, but it’s by far the most interesting one there:

Calakmul Structure III

It was typical in the Maya Classic era to periodically rebuild structures — tearing down old superstructures, covering their platforms with another layer of masonry, building anew on top of them. In some cases, this happened every 20 or 50 years for centuries — that’s why a number of them took on elephantine proportions.

Structure III was different, though. It seems to have been inhabited for the duration of Calakmul’s existence (about 1,500 years), but was never buried and rebuilt. Fairly early in its history, a very well-appointed tomb was built into one of its rear rooms — other than that, it appears that nothing was done to alter its original architecture.

For 1,500 years.

The inhabitants did such a good job of maintenance that when Calakmul was rediscovered 1,000 years after it was abandoned, this was the only structure at the site that wasn’t just a rubble mound. It’s thought that the tomb held one of the original kings of the site, and that Structure III was a palace inhabited by his descendants.

Things that are, and that are to come…

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Just a quick update about the Maya ruins eBooks (if you haven’t purchased a title, and aren’t interested in getting one in the future, feel free to tune out now…).

I’m doing the final edits on the Calakmul eBook — I expect to release it within the next week to Amazon and Smashwords; it usually takes another week or two in order to get on the shelves at Apple (iBooks), Sony, Barnes & Noble, etc. Calakmul is big, but poorly documented (since it’s really only been excavated relatively recently), so I’ve had to do an unusual amount of research in order to pull this one together — sorry for the delay!

Meanwhile, since “The New iPad” is now on the streets, I’ve added 2048×2048 to the list of wallpaper sizes I provide when you buy a title. If you’ve already purchased a title or two, follow the instructions in Appendix C of your eBook(s) to get to the wallpaper I’ve put together for you.

If, on the other hand, you haven’t purchased any of the titles yet, what are you waiting for?

eBook review — Forget Mugshots: 10 Steps to Better Portraits

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mugshots_thumb.pngCraft and Vision has just released a new eBook — this one’s called Forget Mugshots: 10 Steps to Better Portraits, and as usual, it’s a good one. $5 gets you 32 tabloid-sized pages full of good tips on making more engaging portrait shots.

Right up front, I have to say that the book’s title is a bit off — because the 10 steps aren’t really “steps” that you’d take one after the other. But then, calling it “10 Factors to Keep in Mind in Order to Make Better Portrait Shots” would have been cumbersome.

So, about the book. After a brief introduction, Forget Mugshots dives into the 10 “steps,” each explained in depth and illustrated by a couple of fairly quick examples, and nearly all of them wrapping up with a “Portrait Profile.” The profiles consist of a portrait or two of an individual annotated with the camera settings used to make them, and accompanied by the tale of the subject themselves.

By the way, here are the titles of the 10 steps:

  1. Relate
  2. Wait for the moment
  3. Use the “right” lens
  4. Use more than one frame
  5. Understand the smile
  6. Watch the eyes
  7. Play with the light
  8. Control your background
  9. Get level
  10. Pose carefully

I don’t want to leave you with the impression that David duChemin’s 10 “steps” are some sort of hard and fast rules, they’re not. But they really are aspects of the inter-personal process of portrait photography that you need to think about before you start to make your next portrait. And of course, thinking about them while you’re making a portrait would be a good thing too. So as far as I’m concerned, Forget Mugshots is a fantastic deal for $5, even if you only occasionally do portrait shots.

Night snow

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So a few months back, we got a late afternoon dusting of very sticky wet snow — the immediate result was an odd vertical ridge of snow on top of all our trees’ branches. So lit only by our porch light, I had to grab a shot of this unusual scene:

Night snow

It took a little help from Topaz Adjust to bring out the contrast in what’s admittedly a very abstract image…

Painter

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If you’re about ready for a little break from all things Maya, here’s a shot from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science — it’s of a miniature carving (roughly 10″ tall) by Vasily Konovalenko titled “Painter:”

Painter

If you’re wondering why miniature sculpture is in a natural history museum, it’s because Konovalenko’s carvings are entirely made from gemstones. Here’s this little guy’s bill of materials from the placard:

Shoes: black jasper

Pants: jasper

Shirt: lapis

Apron: white jasper

Hat: jasper

Face & Hands: jasper

Eyes: sapphire

Floor: agate

Bucket: petrified wood, cacholong

Brush: agate, amethyst quartz