External Validation

I finally heard back from the folks at http://www.istockphoto.com/ and it appears that my submissions were in fact up to stock snuff. So now I will be combing thru the archives over here looking for the one half of one percent of shots that may be suitable for stock images and submitting those a few at a time while hopefully adding a few more to the collection as I go along. I don’t know if it will amount to much but at least now I can further confuse people I meet on the streets by telling them that I shoot stock photography. “Huh?”

No new photography adventures this week (so far) but I am planning on going to a meetup of the St. Louis version of the strobist group from http://www.flickr.com/ and meeting some of those colorful charactors in person. We are going to be shooting some high end sports cars which is something I had never really thought about doing before so I should be able learn something in the process. I’m hoping to try out some new lighting gear while I am there.

The gang over at http://www.adventurecanoe.com/ is also getting together this weekend for a quick float trip, so that made for a tough choice between paddling canoes or photographing cars. I’m hoping I will still get to go camping (and canoeing) sometime in October for a little fall color action out in the wild woods of the Missouri Ozarks. I’m hoping for an Indian Summer this year.

The Strobist Bootcamp II, Assignment IV, winner is supposed to be announced over at http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/ on Monday 09/28/09. I’m curious to see the results on that one which was on the subject of transportation. I’ve had a good time taking photographs in the process of doing those assignments.

Right now I’m looking for some sort of bag or case to throw my light stands, adaptors and flash units in. I seem to have a lot of little boxes and nothing really fits or is easy to access all those small parts and connectors. Of course there is no budget for new cases, bags or backpacks (as usual) so I’m a little stumped for what to use. The lightstands and umbrellas fit in an old baseball bat case I found for $2 but it’s all the other junk like cords, chargers, batteries, filters, clamps and flashes that I can’t figure out what to do with. I think I need something like a tackle box with lots of little compartments. A waterproof Pelican case would work well since I like to venture outdoors with all this junk every now and then.

I want an iPhone

The fact is, I'm a late adopter (or is it adaptor?). One of the few things I have ever bought when it first hit the market was my Nikon D300 and that's because I have a lot more confidence in Nikon cameras than any other consumer products. I figured the camera would be right out of the box or that Nikon would make it right if it wasn't. That's based on past experience. All my Nikon gear works and keeps working for years and years.

When the iPhone came out I thought to myself, "Oh I want one of those." I didn't camp out at the Apple Store or wait in a long lines to get one, I waited... A few months later Apple dropped the price and I still waited. The truth is that I am a luddite and I don't really use a cell phone very much. The one I have now is probably eight years old and has a couple of missing and broken parts. I often forget it and leave it sitting on the kitchen counter like a pitiful answering machine. For the most part I can live without a cell phone. Whenever I get around to calling someone they are usually busy talking to someone else on their cell phone. The other problem is that our family is locked into another service provider's plan for at least a few more months, atleast that is my current excuse. Oh, and I hate the thought of paying those monthly data and text plans for the life of the new phone.

So, I keep looking wistfully at iPhones and iPhone upgrades and thinking that they are not so much money and that I need a new point and shoot camera anyway, so the iPhone could kill two birds with one phone, I mean stone. Today I'm sitting around minding my own business and looking at photography blogs when I come across this tidbit from Chase Jarvis.



Damn, I want an iPhone.

Thinking In Black & White

Sometimes it's easier thinking in black & white.

It's a lot less trouble to get things right

At times it's better being color blind

And much less taxing on my mind

You can't see clearly late at night

When nothing seems very bright

It's not about a subject all the time

It's always about chasing the light


I took this shot in passing as I walked across the street in a moving crowd of people. No time to pause or think, just react to the scene and the light. Actually I took three shots in the space of a second and I couldn't make up my mind which one I liked the best from a compositional view. All three images had their merits but this one was the sharpest of the bunch so it got the nod.

It's a handy skill to be able to take photos on the fly without really taking aim. The truth is that the percentage of success is pretty low. The odds can be improved by shooting at a higher ISO sensitivity, fast shutter speeds and using a wide angle lens. Practice may help as well. I spent most of the day using my Tokina 12-24 zoom lens to take photographs of buildings and people. The people shots are mostly at the 24 mm end and the building photos are mostly at the 12 mm end of the zoom range. Sometimes I walked around looking for people to include in my photos and other times I found a scene I wanted to photograph and waited for people to come and go through the frame. It seems like most people will ignore you if you stay in one spot long enough.

Sometime in the afternoon I remembered being back in gradeschool and learning to use a microscope. It seems the correct method is to have both eyes open even on a single element instrument. I figured out that I could take photos with both eyes open (I'm normally left eye dominant) and keep an eye on people who might be moving into frame from my right side. This allowed me to frame a scene and then predict when the action would happen. Of course having the ability to fire off five or six frames every second also helps your odds of getting an interesting shot. Sometimes everything comes together to form an interesting image (interesting to me at least). It's not all about luck but having luck helps.