Category: Photography

Magic of orchids

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date March 10, 2004

Did someone ask for a little color?

Life in Missouri

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date February 22, 2004

I wasn’t in a crowd mood yesterday so didn’t go to the Grand Mardi Gras parade in St. Louis. Besides, I’d rather focus on the true Mardi Gras parade Tuesday night. I plan on taking my digital camera and my film camera will have the ISO 400 B & W film–what is, I feel, the perfect choice for this type of event.

Though I didn’t go to the parade, the weather was fine and I grabbed my cameras and headed out to a park to hike and take photos. However, I hadn’t walked too far before my hiking boots were getting stuck in the inches thick mud, having forgotten that rough dirt trails just after a thaw are not the best terrain. I then moved to my favorite lake region and spent a happy time walking around the lake, letting the moist marsh grasses clean my shoes, and pestering the geese along the way.

I also picked up what is probably one of my best photos to date, at least in my opinion. I’ll have to figure out a nice essay to use it in, but I want to use some care – it’s a strong photo and needs a strong subject.

I captured the photo with both my digital and my film camera. I rarely go anywhere now without both cameras ever since I lost the chance to have my photos highlighted in an article of their own at Missouri Life magazine. Still feeling the effects of that one, and probably will for some time. However, life goes on.

(Heh. At least I still have my sense of humor. )

Yesterday, though, my film camera was acting sluggish and when I’d finished the roll and tried to reroll it, it wouldn’t budge. I got home and took out the batteries and one of them had failed and was leaking. Luckily, the leak didn’t hurt the camera housing, but I’m not sure how this roll will turn out, so the one photo may only be captured in digital and not film. That doesn’t matter; all that matters is that I captured it.

My time wasn’t just devoted to photos. As I was driving yesterday, and walking in all the muck, I was thinking about turning 50 this year and how I wanted to do something special. I thought that I could take a road trip and finish all the states in my ‘visited’ list, including visiting Alaska, but this just doesn’t have that much appeal for me.

After playing around at that web site that allows you to generate your ‘visited’ maps, I’ve been thinking how my visited country map has so few countries that I won’t even post it. The only countries I’ve visited are Canada, Mexico, and the UK (London to be precise). Not much when you look at it on a map.

I had planned some trips out just before the dot-com bust, back when I had money. I had already completed one trip, the one to London. Also on my list were other countries such as Ireland and Scotland, Germany and France, and perhaps even Italy or Spain. Outside of Europe, I wanted to visit Japan, China, Africa, and Australia. Especially Africa and Australia. Since I was a little bitty kid I’ve desperately wanted to visit Africa and Australia. I still do, though if I visited Africa I’d probably restrict my visit to South Africa primarily because I know folks there, Farrago and Mike Golby. (BTW, Mike Golby is back writing online again.)

However, my preference of all these countries would be to visit Australia. When I worked at Skyfish, several of the people were from Australia, and I learned much about the country through them–enough to want to visit. A couple of them have gone back home, and I’d like to see them again, catch up on old times. Besides, there’s at least one person from Skyfish who I’d love to visit because he owes me a really nice, expensive dinner, and good bottle of Australian wine.

Then there’s the people I’ve met online who are from Australia. I’d list them out but I don’t want them to think I’m inviting myself to their homes. They might be forewarned and then have to pretend they’re not home if I come knocking. However, it was working with one Australian friend, Allan Moult on Leatherwood Online that really did it for me. I kept looking at the photos and reading the stories, and I wanted to visit and see the places for myself; not just Tasmania (the focus of Leatherwood) – I want to see as much of the country as I can, culminating with New Year’s night in Sydney Harbor.

More than just wanting to visit, to explore and to experience (not to mention fill in countries on a map), the trip would fill another purpose. For the last year, I’ve been primarily living each month at a time, and I’m getting a bit weary of this. I want to have something to plan for, something that extends out past the end of the month. Just getting by isn’t enough. I want, and need, more.

What I need is to start a Australia travel fund. I’d reserve my books for paying for day to day living, and then any funds I receive from articles and photos and teaching would be marked for this fund. I have some good article ideas I’m in the process of marketing, and I’m thinking of starting up a site to sell prints of my photos, including the ones that Missouri Life wanted to use but declined when they found out I had no slides for the photos. Sort of my own version of “Missouri Life”.

In addition, I hope to teach a few classes at the St. Louis CC extension program, and that might earn something. Maybe I can even use a trip to Australia to promote my new book, or generate new article ideas and grab new photos. I might see if some of the training companies there would be interested in me training a class or two.

I’d like to stay in the country a couple of months, and might be able to swing this if I live and travel frugally. There are a lot of inexpensive hostels in the country and one can get a good deal on airline tickes if you shop around carefully.

Then, once I’ve been to Australia, I’ll start planning my next trip to Africa.

Regardless of how long it takes, and it probably will take a long time, the nice thing about having something to plan for is that I find myself thinking of new ideas and getting enthused about writing and photography again. I’m not sure how fast my fund will grow, but it’s nice to have a dream again.

Photography Places

Cape Girardeau

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date February 18, 2004

Today was sunny and in the 60’s (that’s ‘warm’ in Celsius). Since issues are still open on the book I am foot loose and loosed my feet to Cape Girardeau today.

Cape Girardeau is a Lovely little town on the Mississippi, with a smaller college (Southeastern), some great architecture, and about the friendliest people I’ve met in Missouri. I ended up chatting my way through town.

First off, Cape Girardeau is the world’s only inland cape, originally built on a rocky promontory on the Mississippi. There’s a park by the water you can walk along, watching the barges float past a rather pretty bridge.

Today the wind was blowing so strong it formed white caps on the river, and a mist, like fog, in the distance. I kept getting sand in my eyes, and spent most of my walk crying, which somewhat fits a lonely river walk. Thankfully I wasn’t seen or there might be concern I was going to throw myself into the river in despair. The need not have feared, though — a person would not commit suicide by jumping in a river with three cameras.

Unless they were weights.

Didn’t stay too long by the water.

Since Old Muddy can be a wild beast at times, there are canals through the town to help with water overflow. In addition, there’s a huge flood wall built between the town and the river. By the height of that wall, that town must have faced some serious flooding.

The buildings in town were interesting. Several vintage civil war era buildings, some in good repair, some with just enough weathering to make them interesting. And because of the college, you have a mix of old and new, including beautiful old buildings with wrought iron trim, and beer cans in the grass surrounding. It is not your ordinary waterfront, tourist town.

Additionally, it has a thing for murals. There are murals everywhere. The nicest of the bunch was the mural pained on the river wall–The Missouri Wall of Fame. It features famous people who have been born in Missouri. Among them are Mark Twain, of course, Walter Cronkite, Betty Grable, George Washington Carver, President Truman, General Omar Bradley, Josephine Baker, and several others.

Today was a quiet day — too quiet in some ways, because I think my picture taking generated interest in its own right. However, that led to fun conversations. For instance, I was taking pictures through a closed antique shop window when the owner came up and we started chatting about the sewing machine in the window. He said that the machine was actually listed on eBay under his username (which I will post as soon as I find the piece of paper he gave me).

His shop, A-1 Consignment was great; just a jumble of stuff, and I do mean jumble (that will make the collectors drool). The business is a part-time job for him, so it’s not always open; he supplements his income selling stuff on eBay, which I thought was an interesting story to pursue (putting into my future story to-do list).

He also had a terrific story to tell about Rush Limbaugh, as well as an old Post Office letter cancelling machine but I’m fading fast, so I’m forced into being a tease, and leaving these stories for tomorrow. In the meantime, the rest of the photos.

(And its Mardi Gras this next week — I have to be healthy for the parades and the King Cake.)

Photography

Film at midnite

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date February 9, 2004

Before I quit Orkut, at the Digital Photography forum one of the members started a thread with the question of which is better: digital or film. I expected to hear most members of the group say digital, but instead there was a good mix of answers. Some preferred film, some digital, others, such as myself, liked both.

This last week I’ve spent time scanning in several old slides and negatives, and I’ve enjoyed it for the most part. It was good seeing old photos, like this one of flowers in New Hampshire, though it’s not the type of photo I’d probably take today: it’s so determinedly cheerful, like the wife of a dying man.

I love my digital camera because it allows me to experiment and try new things without having to worry about the cost. I also like getting immediate feedback, seeing the results as I take the photo. By checking how each photo comes out, I can modify the exposure and the angle until the picture I’m trying to find appears. Tough to do with film, unless you have a lot of money, or a lot of experience. Or both.

Sometimes, though. when I’m in a mood, I’ll take pictures of everything, and I’m not sure this is good for building photographic skills — skill is dependent on being somewhat discriminatory in the photos one takes. When I read about photographers who have put tens of thousands of digital photos online in just a few years, I have to wonder if the good shots I see were deliberate creations, or the results of statistical probability.

With film, each picture has a cost, so you’re more aware of what you’re doing ( or at least I’ve found it so, but I could be an exception). Plus there’s a feel to the film camera you don’t have with digital (or at least, I don’t have it with mine).

Awareness and feel aside, there’s a magical aspect to film: getting it developed and seeing the photos at a later time; looking for the ones that worked among all the ones that didn’t. And my film cameras have better optics than my digital, but that’s primarily because I can’t afford the high end digital SLR cameras.

(An advantage to the explosion of digital cameras is that excellent film cameras can be had at eBay for literally a few dollars. A disadvantage is finding out that my beloved film cameras aren’t worth more than the price of a nice blouse.)

When I take digital photos, I’ll delete pictures when I’m out in the field and am running out of space. Can’t do that with film, though, and I’m not sure if this is an advantage or disadvantage to digital photography. I’ve kept most of my old negatives and ones I didn’t like long ago are the ones I find I like now. Like this misty, shaggy, old growth tree with its crown of ferns.

Film can fade, but there are risks to digital, too. There was a story in the evening news on Sunday about how images are being lost because they were digital and not film. The format the earliest digital images were stored in is now no longer compatible with today’s computers, and retrieving the old images is difficult. Film can fade, but it still stays film.

Another risk of digital film is demonstrated by the infamous hug of Monica Lewinsky by Bill Clinto at an event before the story broke of their affair. The photographers at the time used digital, and weren’t interested in the photo — just a crowd shot, after all — so they discarded the images. All except for the one lone photographer who had captured the event on film, and thus recorded this bit of infamy in history.

Amy Yee in the UK Financial Times wrote on this:

Photographers cite an almost mythical example of the importance of archiving: photographers using digital cameras deleted an image of former US president Bill Clinton greeting yet another faceless crowd in 1996. Dirck Halstead, a Time magazine photographer, was still shooting film. After searching through thousands of pictures in Time’s archives, he recovered the indelible image of Mr Clinton hugging a beaming Monica Lewinsky.

Photographers who use slide film can also be eager to toss slides, but when you use negative film, you tend to keep everything. Most of the images I’ve been able to salvage have been film. I wonder how many good images I tossed long ago because my eye wanted to go one way, but the results didn’t fit the the requirements of a proper photo. I wince at this, and am determined not to toss an image — digital, negative, or slide — unless it’s obviously bad. And then I’ll probably still hold it.

Back to my scans of the old film. Some of the it suffered very little over time, like the flower above. Other negatives or slides, though, deteriorated until the film is either unusable or requires a great deal of work to fix. Several pages of film are totally lost.

But there was one set of photos, of older buildings and a garden in New Hampshire where the deterioration has caused a beautiful color shift and fade that, in my opinion, left incredible photos in its wake. Incredible at least to me,and with that I will have to be satisfied. Ultimately, regardless of whether I use film or digital, the only one who can judge whether my work is progressing in the direction I want it to go, is myself.

According to Yee:

While some wax nostalgic about pungent chemicals and line-drying wet prints, most professional photographers embrace digital. Willis Hartshorn, director of the International Centre of Photography in Manhattan, says that digital technology is “just another tool in the tool box”. Since its invention in 1839, photography has always been a changing art form, with its evolution from daguerreotype to silver halide and from black-and- white to colour. Photographers are accustomed to change.

“Ultimately, photography is not about technology,” says Mr Hartshorn.

“It’s about pictures. Technology doesn’t make it any easier or harder to have good vision,” he adds. “The kind of things a serious photographer is trying to accomplish [go] beyond technical issues. It’s about vision.”

Photography Writing

In my other life

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date February 7, 2004

Woman does not live by writing, photography, and passionate crusades, alone. I also like to keep my hands in the tech that’s been my bread and butter for two decades. However, since I now write for a (small) living, I restrict my tech activites to working with interesting people doing interesting things – with a little art, food, and adventure thrown in.

For the past few months, I’ve been helping a friend, or should I say cobber, Allan Moult (aka G’day Cobbers), as he opens up a gateway to Tasmania with an online publication called Leatherwood Online. This is the online version of a magazine that Allan was publisher/editor for years back, but has now found new life among the bytes.

The site doesn’t go online officially until Tuesday, but Allan is letting me release a sneak peek at it. I’ll have more to talk about the publication tomorrow, including our approach to only using open source and shareware technologies. For now, though, let me just point out a couple of tidbits I have a feeling you’re going to like.

First, there’s the photography. That hits you right off, as soon as you open the site. Leatherwood Online has some of the most beautiful photography I’ve seen, from all over Tasmania. For instance, one of the featured artists included with the premier of the magazine is Alan Moyle, with works from his Comic Series – photographs of stand up comics who have visited Tasmania. Following is just one of the photos from this amazing series (comic act known as Tripod):

Tripod

But Leatherwood isn’t just photos – it’s also writing about Tasmania, the people, and the places. Another article titled Taking on the Giant features Shipstern, a rugged, beautiful surfing spot that isn’t for the amateur. Included with the personal recountings of the author Dustin Hollick is photos of Shipstern, and a video taken by Stuart Gibson, who is currently making a documentary of this very impressive surfing spot.

You really have to see this video. And unlike every other site in the world – you don’t have to fill out a subscription form, first.

Shipstern

I’ve found out while working with Allan on this project that Tasmanians like food. They really like food, and it shows not only in their cooking but also in their pride of presentation of the food. Included in the magazine is a tasty article on the mushrooms grown and devoured in Tasmania, again with photos, which I can’t look at because they make me hungry.

Did I happen to mention that one of my most favorite foods in the world is sauteed mushrooms?

mushrooms

There’s a whole lot more, but I have to, out of vanity, point out a few items courtesy of yours truly. Oh, not photographs – I haven’t been to Tasmania, yet. Darn it. However, I do have an official title of Technology Architect, and an unofficial title of “the strange woman who comes by now and again”.

I’ve also been given title of Honorary Tasmanian, which made me eligible to contribute a section of this three author, three section story about the Giant Squid, a subject that’s been of interest to me for years.

And the words looks so grand with the photo of the star of the series:

Lovely, eh?

Allan’s done a terrific job of pulling together the best of Tasmania, and promises lots to come. More than that, though, he’s put together an online magazine the looks and acts the way online magazines should look and act.

There’s nary a popup ad in sight.

More tomorrow. And the rest of my own scanned in archived photos. No, not the following. I wish.

Photo by Geoff Murray