I hadn’t paid a visit to one of my favorite places in a long time so this morning, on the way to work, I stopped by David Fortier River Park in Olmsted Falls. It was quiet and dark under the clear, early-morning sky. I carried my little Canon G11 camera towards the rock-lined stream and river that converge in the valley park and gingerly stepped out upon the rocks. I photographed ancient, water-sculpted rock walls and flowing streams. I took images of the rich green colors and leafy trees, light and dark reflected in the water that led to the park’s stone bridge. It was beautiful and relaxing just being there for 10 minutes. Realizing it was time to resume my trip, I carefully stepped across the damp, slippery rocks, looking down to avoid water and a sure tumble into the shallow stream. Then, either at a glance or in the still-live LCD panel of the camera, a sight caught my eye: all of the elements I sought combined, in painterly fashion, in one image. I took one shot, made my way (still dry) to my car and headed off. Only tonight looking at the photographs did I see that, for all of those carefully-composed photographs, my favorite and the best of the morning was that “accidental” vision. Beautiful serendipity.
photography
All posts tagged photography
The library invited me to hang another showing of my photographs in their art gallery area. The gallery is actually an alcove in a long corridor that leads to the facility’s meeting rooms. Hundreds of people will pass pay on their way to and from events. It may not be the Cleveland Museum of Art, but it’s something!
It was fun and a bit challenging (self-editing certainly can be) choosing from among hundreds of photos which to show. I’d decided on a nature theme, “Down by the Pond”, which helped narrow the prospects. Despite that the selection process took hours. Once I’d made my picks, I made final technical and artistic adjustments to the images and set the digital files aside.
Late Wednesday morning I placed the order for 12 of my photographs to be printed and framed through Mpix, a company whose work I’ve appreciated. Their quality is high and their prices are quite reasonable. Still, when you take even a respectable price for framed art and multiply by 12, well, it gets into real money pretty quick!
Thursday afternoon a big box arrived at the office … the photos! I was stunned. I’d expected a bit more delay between ordering and receipt but that’s just one more thing about Mpix that I appreciate!
Friday I spent a few hours revamping my photography Web site. It’s still fairly basic but a lot more attractive and well-organized than it has been. Print sales there are disabled, at present, until I can create a price list.
So everything’s coming together for my little show. I’ll add some pond-themed photos from a 2009 exhibit to the new pictures and will have about 20 themed works for people to look at. Now, if only they’ll buy a few!
After dropping our cat off for a brief hospital stay, I stopped by Hinckley Lake for a hike and another effort at dragonfly photography. I was quite disappointed with my efforts on Sunday, coming way from that session with only a couple of acceptable pictures. So I walked the entire circumference of the lake stopping now and again to shoot images as opportunities arose. It wasn’t until I’d nearly completed the walk –about three-quarters of the way around– that I began to see a few dragonflies. I photographed one that perched for a while on a leaf of grass. Others stayed out of reach — too small and too far away for me to image properly. I noticed a large, dark variety liked to fly in figure-eight patterns in set territories and it occurred to me to try and capture dragonflies in flight. What the heck, it’s digital so I’m not wasting film! So I tried and tried and deleted a good number of blank or blurred frames in the field. What I got back, however, was astonishing to me and of better quality than I managed shooting still-life insects Sunday!
Don’t worry, I’m not sure how to pronounce it either! I believe it’s “Show-fel” but hesitate to say the name out loud. What I can say is that it’s one of the gems of Northeastern Ohio parks. Located in Lorain County and part of the parks system there, Schoepfle features large formal gardens, paved and earthen walking trails, ponds and a river, along with woodlands to explore. On a whim we took off Sunday morning and paid a return visit to the place spending an unusual and welcome time quietly watching and photographing the grounds and, in my case in particular, the dragonflies that flit around the ponds. I saw and photographed several varieties. We saw many thin and tiny blue-headed damselflies in the act of mating! Dragonfly copulation is an interesting hook-up (literally) and you can read about it elsewhere. At any rate I’m sorry to report that many of my photos did not live up to my expectations — and I wasn’t seeking dragonfly porn but beauty shots of the various gossamer-winged creatures. She Who Must Be Obeyed often bemoans her humble all-in-one pocketable digital camera but yesterday managed to out-do my digital SLR and its top-of-the-line close-focus telephoto. It’s a great little camera she’s got so I wasn’t too surprised. I’ll just have to learn from my mistakes and try again… maybe today!
I’ve never calibrated my computer monitors. With all the photography and publication work I’ve done on computers over the years, it’s never been done. Lately, looking at my photos on various monitors and in print, I’ve begun to feel something needed to be done. So I bought a Spyder3 Elite colorimeter and calibrated my monitor this morning. It was a fairly easy process once the software was installed and updated. The colorimeter and its software ask certain manual adjustments be made –brightness only, in my case– but is largely automatic. The whole thing was done in under an hour, though I didn’t time it.
The Spyder’s software came with a set of photos displayed in a window that, after calibration, allowed fast switching between the monitor’s former color settings and the “corrected” ones. The “before” and “after” displays were both acceptable and pleasing but post-calibration images were noticably warmer in color. In general my monitor also seems a bit brighter and possibly a bit contrastier.
As a non-scientific test, I opened my recent sunset photo from its RAW file and adjusted it in ways similar (as best I can recall) to what I’d previously done. Then I copied half of the previously-pleasing picture and superimposed it on the newly-adjusted image. Whoa! That’s what’s displayed above. In each case the colors may be more brilliant than the original scene but the comparison is still striking.
So I’m hoping for better, more consistent results with my photos and graphics. It wasn’t cheap but I think it will be worth it.
A day of changeable weather in Northeastern Ohio ended with a spectacularly colorful sunset illuminating rippled clouds. We used to believe we had to travel to the Arizona desert to enjoy such color when really, all we need to do is stop and look around.
I’ve paid good money at a “photo-sharing” site for a place to display, market, and protect my images. Their stock page templates suck. So I’m still lookin’.
I actually like the free photo blogging theme offered here, at WordPress. Though it will only display one photo per post, it does offer protection against “click and grab” abduction of my pictures. It does not offer protected galleries and some of the features of the pay site.
As usual, if you take the best features of two or more sites you’ll get something that’s really good. {sigh}
Here’s the URL of my WordPress experiment: http://guilfordphoto.wordpress.com

W00066279.jpg was taken on January 11, 2011 and received on Earth January 12, 2011. The camera was pointing toward RHEA at approximately 59,938 kilometers away, and the image was taken using the CL1 and CL2 filters. Sister moons are seen above and to the left of Rhea; the bright line is an edge-on view of Saturn's ring system. This image has not been validated or calibrated. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute. Levels, contrast, and brightness adjusted by James Guilford.
It seamed like it might be fun to toy around with brand-new raw images just received from the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn. I must say I didn’t do much with the image. Still, it was fun to see details emerging from a formerly soft, gray picture as I made adjustments to the image. I’m away from my home office so I used GIMP instead of Photoshop but I’m sure to play with pictures like this more often in future!
I was sorely disappointed with Lulu.com this year. I’d created my 2011 calendar using that company expecting the same very good results I enjoyed last time. What I received was, in several places, second-rate printing at best. So today I used Zazzle.com to create a new edition of the 2011 calendar. Their online creation process was easy though didn’t seem to offer some customizations to which I am accustomed. Still, I’ve heard good things and will hope for the best. So I’ll be placing an order for close relatives and dearly hoping Zazzle provides me with excellent product! All told, next year’s calendars are costing me a fortune!
UPDATE: The calendars finally arrived at my PO Box over the weekend and I picked them up today (Dec. 6). They look very good though slightly shorter than the Lulu 2010 product. Zazzle’s image quality is very good (way better than what Lulu did to the 2011 calendar) though perhaps a bit flat. Then again, I’m used to computer screen and photographic print renditions. At least I now have something decent to send and sell.
Though the days have been unseasonably mild, they have lately dawned clear, foggy, frosty, and beautiful. Yesterday I stopped to enjoy scenes at Baldwin Lake. This morning I paused at the aptly-named Frostville historical village. Oh, how difficult it was to pay a rushed visit to those ice-decorated places in my travels on frosty mornings.









