DearSusan

#1233. I do it myyy wayyyy (hands-on effort vs full-auto photography)

One of the mottos of (some?) crossfit trainers is “I don’t care about your results, I care about your effort”. Does photography follow the same logic? Tied up in knots   Imagine a gym where a guy turns up in a linen suit with a robot lifting the weights for him. Thanks to Elon the conqueror, this could be a reality very soon. “Honey, I benchpressed 700 lb today!” “Well done, dear”. While this…

#1232. I tested Vero

So you don’t have to 😉 – Maybe you should, though! My Vero feed   In a recent roundup of news, I linked to a Peter McKinnon video detailing 10 reasons to try out the social platform Vero. It seems to provide an alternative to Instagram that isn’t chasing TikTok’s debilitating features, offers more possibilities for sharing and connecting, and hasn’t yet turned on the content creators that…

#1231. My Latest Lens

#1230. Backyard Gems: On the Road Again (Finally)! – Part 2 – Hedley Art

In Part 2, we wind the clock back to the beginning of the trip, to our first stop in Hedley and The Old Trading Post. You’ll recall …   “The first stop on the outbound route east was the town of Hedley on the way to Osoyoos our first stopover. Hedley (pop.242) is an old Gold mining town dating back to 1894. The attraction for our stop was a couple of old cars in a field next to the highway that…

#1229. The futility of re-creation

A beloved lost photograph and the opportunity to shoot it again, along with my attempts to emulate film in digital. Gorges du Verdon   Above is one of my favourite personal photographs. Ironic, really, as landscape photography usually does very little for me. That photo – the source file – was lost to one of my many backup fiascos. It was taken in the famous Verdon Gorges, already documented…

#1228. Week Links of Photography (10 Sep 2022)

#1227. My thoughts on the Hasselblad X2D

Is it a dream come true, or just another boring camera in a string of boring quantitatively-designed cameras in a suuuuper boring quantitative-driven market? Shot on a Hasselblad X1D & XCD 90 lens   This, above, is how a camera should be judged. Can it help a photographer produce good images? Images that the author feels proud of. All the rest, at least for amateurs, is blah blah blah. So…

Well, August is over. Time to celebrate the great black & white photographs you sent me during that month 🙂   I love black and white photography. Even though recent weeks have seen me trying to up my colour photography game, black and white is where my heart lies. Because it can produce such a variety of results, because it allows for such realistic departures from reality, because – untethered…

#1225. Calibration and Color Grading: Two tools to up your colour game in Lightroom

#1224. Some thoughts on Photography and Meditation

This is not some fluffy post about inner peace. It’s not a guide. It’s an attempt to establish links between both activities and derive useful suggestions for our hobby. Is your mind quiet like this sky? 😉 #MonochromeAugust   Let’s begin by saying I’m not trying to convince anyone to start meditating. Meditators know for a fact what effect the practice has on their lives. Others can try for…

#1223. Week Links of Photography (20 Aug 2022)

Bucket lists vs adventure vs exploration, creative scientific photography, defining and understanding the Netflix look, Brenizer portraiture, the difficulty of shooting monochrome with a colour camera, a film photography star’s favourite camera (and it’s not a film camera), Kodak Gold in 120 celebrated, photography-centric smartphone announcements, AI in the arts, and a homage to Robert Adams.…

#1222. Week Links of Photography (13 Aug 2022)

List of topics On the wall   To print, or not to print? That really is the question, in photography, these days. A photograph that’s not printed essentially dies only a few days after it was brought to life. Realistically, how often to we dig out old photographs from hard drives hidden away in drawers? It probably says more about me than about the hard drive vs paper debate, but I was…

#1121. Jersey in 11 photographs

During my couple of weeks off, Jersey (Channel Island) was my home for a while. And what a home. To sum it up in two words: Jersey is … The Shire. With beaches. And cliffs. And more.   So the idea behind this post is to provide a synthetic glimse into the beauty of this small-ish island (about 8 miles long). And rather than an expansive essay, the goal is to cover as much ground as possible in…

#1120. #MonochromeAugust (Pixii challenge)

It is now midsummer, in the Northern Hemisphere. At no time in the rest of the year is the light so hard. For nice colour photographs, you often need to be up early or very late. So, how about a month of monochrome? This is the gist of the open participation challenge Pixii is proposing. Jersey mono 1 – #MonochromeAugust   As always with Pixii news, I’ll keep this purely informative 🙂 The…

#1219. A Sprinkling of Scotland Highlights

Scotland is the highlands and the lowlands, glorious landscapes, Whisky of course and the cleanest air and cold clear water that you could possibly imagine. This is where 2 of my great grandparents and one of Anne’s (Mitchell) great grandparents were born. In April and May this year Anne and I spent sometime exploring the countryside. Perfect time to visit with the wild spring flowers in…

With this latest release, Pixii asks what makes a great monochrome camera. Here’s their answer. As promised in my last article about the Pixii camera, I am keeping you updated with news from the Team at Pixii. Since I’m doing some work for Pixii, this post focuses mainly on information, explanations, and sample images. Where any opinion is ventured, it is purely based on repeatable observations…

#1217. Backyard Gems: On the Road Again (Finally)!

Yes … it’s been a while! The COVID clouds have parted and it’s been two years since the “6 pack” hit the road into the hinterlands cameras in hand. After a month of planning and discussion we took to the road on May 27 for 12 days exploring south eastern BC. All told with side trips and backroads about 2000 mile of driving. There’s far too much to cover in one post, so this is going to be in at…