Snowy Day Post: Spectacular Mt. Rainier Sunrise

Saturday, October 29th, 2011

A quick little post on this snowy October Saturday (!?!):
Every so often we get to see a Mother Nature put on a spectacular display. Natural phenomena paint the sky and the world around us with colors almost too rich to be true. This is one of those instances:

The shot below is of Mount Rainier near Seattle, Washington. Every once in a while, when the light is just right and the cloud layer sits just below Mt. Rainier’s summit, early risers get the treat of seeing Rainier cast a shadow across the sky right at sunrise.

Image via http://www.komonews.com/weather/blogs/scott/132629943.html

Check out more images at http://www.komonews.com/weather/blogs/scott/132629943.html.

Now to go find my snow shovels… (seriously, shoveling in October?? I think there might be some hot chocolate in my future).

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Steve

Thursday, October 6th, 2011

I never knew Steve Jobs; I never even met him.

And yet I, like many other people, refer to him only as “Steve.” To lots of people it probably seems weird or silly to be on a first-name basis with someone you’ve never met. But to a lot of people who admired him, he wasn’t Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, Inc., Steve Jobs, Founder of Pixar Animation or any of the other handful of titles he had. He was just “Steve.” He didn’t need any titles, because his actions, accomplishments and foibles spoke for him. If somebody talked about Steve you knew immediately that they were talking about the visionary who in addition to being a genius was also an uncompromising perfectionist and was so demanding that often he was a giant pain in the ass to the people who worked with him.

I never even met Steve, and yet my life, like many others, has been affected by him in many ways, both large and small, both superficially and fundamentally. Like millions of other people, I use his gadgets. Steve’s gadgets let me listen to music wherever and whenever I want, they keep me in touch with my friends and family, they entertain me when I’m bored sitting waiting in airports. Steve’s gadgets they tell me how to get where I’m going when I’m lost, they help me do my work creating photographs and they allow me to write this very blog post.

While these things are all important, they’re somewhat superficial. But my life has been impacted by him much more deeply as well. I started learning about Steve when I began to realize the incredible world-changing potential of the products that were coming out of Apple, mostly unnoticed at the time. I read as much about him as I could and I became convinced that there was genius there that was largely undiscovered. I invested heavily in his company when the rest of the industry was writing it off as a failure and suggesting it should be shut down, and the unbelievable returns that Apple provided me on my investment later allowed me to buy the home I now live in, which I would never have been able to afford to do as early as I did were it not for my prediction of Apple’s success.

The more I read about Steve the more fascinating he was; adopted by parents who promised his biological parents he would get a good education, he sat in on a calligraphy course in college before dropping out after one semester because it was costing his parents too much and he didn’t see the value. He lived on friends’ couches and floors returning empty bottles for food money before leaving on a spiritual trip to India, all before his twenty-first birthday when he founded Apple in his parents’ garage with his buddy Steve Wozniak. He talked about a lot of these things and many more in a Commencement address he gave to Stanford University’s graduating class in 2005. It may be the most inspirational speech I’ve heard and is certainly the best Commencement address I’ve ever heard. But the most fascinating thing about him was his absolute insistence on perfection. As the head of a multi-billion-dollar business where millions of dollars could be made or lost by even the slightest delay bringing a product to market, even then Steve was an uncompromising perfectionist. Steve was known for killing product ideas that had spent months or years in development because he didn’t think they were good enough. It is rumored that Apple engineers proposed three completely separate designs for the original iPhone, all of which Steve killed, because they weren’t up to his standards. He made the teams go back to the drawing board and do better.

It is through this uncompromising demand for excellence that Steve had what I believe will be his most important legacy. By demanding the very best and settling for nothing but, Steve inspired me through his example to challenge myself, aim higher, and demand more from myself and accomplish great things.

I am not the only person who was inspired by Steve to do great things, and as a result, each of us benefits not only from the many things Steve gave us while he was alive, but by the many things that will by accomplished by others who were motivated by his example.

The world lost a leader yesterday, someone who excited our imaginations and motivated us to aim higher than we thought we could. It seems like great human beings always die too early, but the world was lucky to have had Steve among us, for even the brief period time we did.

Rest in peace, Steve. You will be missed. The world is a better place because of you.

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Kayak & Canoe Photo Shoot

Wednesday, September 21st, 2011

Yesterday I posted a quick bit about the photo shoot I put together on the Charles River just out side of Boston. The focus of the shoot was recreational water sports like kayaking and canoeing. It was the first time I had worked with any of the five models we had that day, but they were all wonderful to work with.

I was shooting with my Canon 7D camera body and a variety of lenses, primarily the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM. I chose to use my 7D body for this shoot for a variety of reasons; as the newest of my cameras its autofocus system is arguably the fastest and best, which was important for this shoot since the models and boats, the focal points of the images, were going to be in constant motion. Also, the 7D has a faster continuous-shooting frame rate than my 5D Mark II body, for example, which better allowed me to capture the fleeting moments of best facial expression, body position, etc. on the models in a fully dynamic environment like the one in which we were shooting. An additional side benefit of the 7D was that its APS-C size image sensor yields a crop factor of 1.5, meaning that all of my lenses were 50% longer, which was nice for flattening the images and bringing the subjects right up close and personal even when they were a distance out on the water.

We were slightly hampered by the fact that some clouds rolled in the middle of the shoot and therefore the light was a bit flatter and less vibrant than I would have wanted (we were relying mostly on nature to provide our light for us although we were using some modifiers and artificial light for fill), although towards the end of the day the clouds began to dissipate and gave us some nice light again towards what turned out to be the end of the day.

A slideshow of some of the images is below.

Ultimately it was a pretty good shoot and I think everybody had fun.

After we had packed up and most of the models and crew had left, I saw one more shot that I thought was worth setting a camera and tripod back up again for. I thought it was a pretty fitting end to the day.

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The Trifecta: Three Ingredients of a Beautiful Photograph

Wednesday, July 20th, 2011

It is a very special and rare moment for me when I discover a photographer whose work I haven’t previously seen and which includes what I call “The Trifecta” – the three ingredients which I consider to combine to form stunning photography. I had one of those moments yesterday when I happened to see a National Geographic article about the Kermode bear (or “Spirit Bear,” as some of the indigenous people in Canada call it). The article featured photography by the Canadian nature and wildlife photographer Paul Nicklen. After seeing the images there, I found Paul’s website and, put very simply, sat in pure awe for the next 20 minutes staring at the images he has created.

I’ve spent enough time studying, appreciating and shooting photography that I can tell pretty quickly when someone’s got The Trifecta. And pretty much instantly, I could see that Paul has it. Below are a few of Paul’s photographs. While the photographs are so powerful that they elicit an immediate visceral response, try to appreciate them for a few extra moments; consider how all three elements of The Trifecta are present in each image.

So what is The Trifecta? Here goes – the three things that contribute to truly stunning photography:

#1: Interesting Subject

It goes without saying (so much so that it’s sometimes forgotten!) that when the subject of a photograph is interesting, it is a lot more likely that the photograph itself is going to be appealing. A photograph doesn’t HAVE to have an interesting subject to be appealing (a photographer who excels in one or both of the other parts of The Trifecta can make a great photograph of even a boring, unremarkable and commonplace subject), but it sure helps. A good subject is the most obvious and, frankly, the easiest part of The Trifecta.

Photo ©Paul Nicklen, All Rights Reserved. Reprinted With Permission

It is pretty obvious why the subjects of Paul’s images are fascinating to anyone who doesn’t live above the Arctic Circle (and probably even to a lot of people who do!). He goes to the ends of the Earth (literally) to find them.

#2: Technical Skill

Many modern cameras have been designed to require a lot less technical know-how in order to use them to make a workable photograph (i.e., the “program” and “auto” modes on many cameras). But unless you get lucky, that know-how is still needed in order to make a truly great photo with the appearance the photographer envisions: does the photographer think a slight bit of motion blur is going to enhance the look of the photo? Would the photo be more striking if only a small, specific part of the subject was in focus? Does one area of a photo need more or less light than it’s getting in order to show it properly? If so, how are these things going to be accomplished? These are considerations under the best of circumstances. In a challenging environment, under challenging lighting conditions, etc., the need for technical skill goes up astronomically.

Photo ©Paul Nicklen, All Rights Reserved. Reprinted With Permission

It’s easy to take a picture of a polar bear in daylight through the fence at a zoo; when you’re in the Arctic wilderness submerged under water that’s only a few degrees above freezing and there’s nothing between you and the bear but a few feet of that water, things get a bit more complex. For example: how does the fact that the photographer is underwater affect the shutter speed needed to achieve the swimming motion visible here in the bear’s feet?

#3: Creative/Artistic Vision

Ansel Adams famously said that he didn’t simply see a pretty scene and capture it; instead he imagined in his mind an image of how he wanted a scene to look, then used all of the tools at his disposal (the technical skill) to make that image in his mind appear on paper in the photograph. This creative or artistic vision is the most important ingredient in The Trifecta, and also the hardest to come by. Creative vision is how the photographer chooses to present the image through artistic choices like composition, shape, motion, contrast, texture, color, light, darkness, depth of field and many other variables to visually convey the emotions and the visceral, gut-reaction feel desired. It is how a talented photographer can take even a bland, unremarkable everyday subject and make a striking and visually interesting image of it, or an ugly scene and find the beauty in it.

Photo ©Paul Nicklen, All Rights Reserved. Reprinted With Permission

The photo above is a perfect example of how a talented photographer can convey emotion. Looking at that image, your first reaction would be one of fright, feeling like you’re about to become dinner to a ruthless and terrifying predator. And in fact, those were the emotions Paul was feeling when he shot that image. As he describes in this video, when Paul got in the water with the seal he was intimidated by its size. But soon, he saw that the seal wasn’t threatening, but was actually trying to care for him, bringing him food and trying to feed him, the way a concerned mother would care for its young. And this friendlier, nurturing feel is evident in another photo Paul made soon after:

Photo ©Paul Nicklen, All Rights Reserved. Reprinted With Permission

It is rare indeed to see a photographer with a ready command of all three parts of The Trifecta. Too often, photographers lean on an interesting subject as a crutch to disguise weak technical skill or creative vision (this kind of failing can be seen frequently when imagery of exotic people or places is shown without artistry or any emotion conveyed with the image… this crutch is sometimes used so extensively that, in the wedding industry for example, some individuals will take on a client only if that client’s wedding takes place in a beautiful location and involves only beautiful people). Photographers must avoid the temptation to take this easy way out, and consumers should take the time to appreciate not only the subject matter of photographs, but also how they are presented, and how much of the photographer’s emotions they can feel in the image.

Because as Paul Nicklen and many other masterful photographers have shown, while one strength or another can make a good image, it takes The Trifecta to make a truly great one.

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