July 23, 2003
| One of my hobbies is photography which I've done on-and-off now for the last 25 years. I do technical picture taking such as slides I use for the courses I teach or for paper presentations at conferences. I also do nature photography of land- and seascapes, mountain and rock formations and other subjects that interest me. Recently I've been taking a lot of "street scenes" especially in New York City in Greenwich Village, Chinatown and Little Italy. For the last few years I've done close-up work of wild flowers. I also enjoy photographing everyday objects that have unique textures, patterns and shadows which I like to get close to and fill-up the entire view finder. Some examples include baskets, coiled rope, logs forming a corner of a log cabin, a pile of pebbles on the beach and hay bound up in large rolls in a barn. For many years our family has taken vacations during the summer where we often travel to national parks and monuments like: Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, Grand and Bryce Canyons, Arches, Grand Tetons, Zion, Denali in Alaska and others. I look at these trips as great opportunities for picture taking - sometimes to my family's dismay! A recent trip was to southern Utah where we visited 6 national parks. By the time we were done I had my family reeling from my taking pictures (11 rolls) of rock formations. They were "rocked out" by the time we headed home via Salt Lake City. I've started making similar trips on my own to save the family's sanity. Monument Valley on the southern-most border of southeast Utah (adjacent to the Arizona border) is an example of a recent "solo" trip. In May of 2004 I took a one-week course in Yosemite National Park offered by the Rocky Mountain School of Photography. |
| I currently use 3 cameras in 3 different formats: a manual focus Minolta X-700 35mm camera with a wide-angle (28mm), medium-range (30 - 75mm) and telephoto (75 - 205mm) zoom lens and a 400mm fixed lens; a medium format 645E (6 x 4.5cm negatives) Mamiya camera (120 and 220 backs which provide larger negatives [1/3 larger] compared with 35mm giving a denser, richer image) with an 80mm manual focus normal lens; and a recently acquired Canon 10D 6.3 megapixel digital camera with a 35 - 75 mm auto-focus mid-range zoom lens. For "street shots" I usually shoot hand-held and for landscapes and close-up work I use a tripod with a cable/shutter release. Most of the time I use through-the-lens aperture priority metering. When I work in low-light or difficult exposure conditions I'll go "manual." Once-in-a-while I'll shoot on full-automatic but as I've gotten better at judging lighting conditions I use this metering mode infrequently. I also use a hand-held Sekonic Flash Master L-358 digital meter. Finally I have a Olympus C-3020 3.2 megapixel digital camera with a medium range zoom lens. I tend to use this more for technical work (lectures or presentations) but I'm also finding it useful for previewing shots I'm setting up with my film cameras. I'll also use this camera as a point-and-shoot for family parties and the like. |
| Historically I've used Kodak color slide film (Kodachrome and Ektachrome, ISO 64 - 400). I'd prefer to shoot negatives (enlargements are much better quality from negative vs. slide film) but I shoot so many (too many according to my wife) rolls of film during our trips that storage is a problem and so slides take up much less room. On the other hand, I really like the way slides project on a screen. Recently I use almost exclusively Fuji film, especially Velvia ISO 50 & 100 which gives warm highly saturated colors (especially the greens and reds). And, even with higher speeds (e.g., ISO 400 & 800) the traditional "graininess problem" has largely disappeared. The silver-halide grains in the film emulsion are now irregularly shaped (vs. the original spherical shape) allowing the grains to be more efficiently "pushed together" and reducing the grainy appearance typical of older film types. Digital SLR (single lens reflex) photography is adding many new options and possibilities for processing and displaying images. |
| Since I now have many digitized versions (scanned from film or sides or directly from a digital camera) of some of what I consider my better work I'll occasionally post some of them up on this section of my Web site. The quality is quite good although still not what you'd expect from conventional film processing. Also, in order to fit these shots onto a single screen so you don't have to scroll through the picture, I've resized the images which at some point decreases quality a bit. Of course the other explanation is that they're just not good shots - I'll let you decide. |
| In any event, if you'd like to take a look click on the right arrow below. As always, your critical comments are encouraged and appreciated. Stop by my office any time if you want to "talk cameras or photography." |
| Thanks for taking a look! |
