Category Archives: motion

Fire dance

The coming week is going to be busy and there’s a good chance that I won’t have an opportunity to post anything so I’ll leave you with a fun shot today, just in case you end up having to stare at it all week. This one’s from an evening spent photographing fire dancers on the beach in Fiji. Not really an evening as much as a few minutes. There’s a brief period when the sky is dark enough but not too dark to balance with the fire and the light being cast by the fire. It’s fast and exhilarating — made more so by the bits of flaming material that occasionally gets flung in your direction. These guys and gals were amazing and put on quite a show.

For those of you interested in technical stuff, this was f/5.3 at 1/6th of a second. It was shot at 6:28. The entire shoot lasting from 6:17 until 6:37. 400 shots in 20 minutes (I’m glad I wasn’t having to change film). There are plenty more fun ones from this series which I’ll share in the coming weeks.

Altes Rathaus

As soon as I saw the 14th century old town hall — the Altes Rathaus — built in the middle of the river Regnitz in Bamberg, Germany, I knew I needed to dedicate some time to shooting it. Unfortunately, I was leaving the next morning at 8:00 am. It’s okay, I thought, I‘ll get there before sunrise and shoot some long exposures with the tripod before it gets too light out and be back in time to check out of the hotel and catch my ride to Regensburg. I rose very early the next morning and looked out the window to thick fog drifting past the streetlights. Not such bad news — I love fog — I just hoped I could see the town hall from the footbridge I had scoped out on the map the night before.

I packed up so that I’d be able to leave the hotel quickly after my shoot and headed out into the mist with my tripod over my shoulder. Through the winding streets, I eventually found the river and the footbridge. It was foggy, no doubt, but it was lifting. There was just enough left to give a nice mood. It was still quite dark out but I added a neutral density filter anyway. I wanted to cut out even more light in order to extend the length of my exposure to let the water blur and give some sense of motion. The rivers run fast in this part of the world and I wanted to convey that.

The footbridge had a little bounce to it and I had to time my shots between the locals crossing on bicycles so that the vibrations wouldn’t blur my shots. Once I had a few variations I was comfortable with, I set off to find other vantage points. I had little time but wanted to make the most of it. There are a whole series of bridges crossing the river in this area and I zig-zagged my way back and forth down the river shooting from each of them.

I left myself a little time so that I could continue to shoot a few things on the walk back to the hotel. This is one of my favorite times of the day when traveling. It’s when you get to experience the real town. People sweeping the sidewalks outside their shops, others walking to school or work, everyone just going about their day. The tourists haven’t arrived yet so the place is still real.

I don’t know if these shots will ever sell — sunny skies often have a better chance — but they are among my favorites from my trip to Germany because it was one of my favorite mornings. Off on my own watching a strange city come to life, the weather crisp and cool — it doesn’t get much better than that.

Back from Jamaica

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After a brief delay due to a missed flight and re-routing through Pennsylvania, I am home once more. Sorry for not posting from the road but internet access was not always available to me, nor was there much time to even offload cards. I arrived home with nearly all of my shots still in-camera rather than on my portable hard drives. But as they say in Jamaica, “no problem, mon”.

The shot from the river raft above was a fun one. At the beginning of the run, I was shooting “normally” — trying to keep everything crisp and sharp, raising the ISO along the way to compensate for the setting sun and diminishing light. It was somewhat overcast and nearly sunset by this time and I gave in to the inevitability that I was going to change my game.

Embrace the darkness. Embrace the blur.

Rather than increasing ISO further and dealing with noise in post-processing, I held steady at ISO 800 and began shooting intentionally for some motion blur. At first I panned with passing rafts to isolate their pilots (captains?) and get dreamily blurred foliage behind. After several passes with that technique, I turned my attention to the pilot of my own raft. I steadied the camera on a bamboo cross-support of the raft and fired away. This particular shot is at f/5.6 — to give myself a wee bit of depth-of-field in case the focus was off — and half a second. By using the raft itself as a kind of tripod, I could maintain sharpness on it while the world swam past. I was amazed at the amount of detail and color that the sensor could capture in those dark conditions. More than you could see with the naked eye.

I nearly filled a card shooting in this way because I knew the ratio of keepers would be extremely low. But, what the heck, if I got one good one, I’d be happy. As it turns out, I have several. Had I been shooting film, I would certainly have been more conservative and I probably would have missed some real keepers.

Traffic at the night market

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I ended day one in Thailand at the night market in Chiang Mai. The market itself was fairly touristy — lots of t-shirts and trinkets — but the local traffic was colorful enough for me. I enjoy places where a large percentage of the traffic is on fewer than four wheels and Thailand is full of scooters, motorcycles and tuktuks. It’s a hobby of mine to lock the shutter speed at 1/15th of a second and pan with these commuters in the evening to turn the background into a chaos of color. Obviously not every shot will be great but you end up with a few and I’m not paying for film and processing anymore so what’s it really matter? Chalk up another win for digital — it frees you to experiment and from failure comes the occasional wild success. As with the lottery, you don’t win if you don’t play.

I haven’t mentioned much about the Red Shirt protests in Bangkok. They began around March 12th and I arrived on the 15th. During my two weeks in Thailand — about half of that spent in Bangkok — the protests remained quite peaceful. You would see the occasional street blocked off or a group of riot police at a checkpoint but you could easily go about your day without any problems. On only one day did a tour get cancelled due to street closures and traffic problems due to the protests. When I flew out of Bangkok on the 28th, there were signs of enhanced security near the airport but things remained peaceful.

That has unfortunately changed in the last couple of days. While I had been having to check the news on BBC’s Asia-Pacific page, the Bangkok protests have now appeared on the front page of CNN’s site. The situation has worsened with at least 20 dead now and hundreds more wounded. It’s hard as an outsider to fully understand the state of affairs or to know from half way around the world what the current condition is or why things went south. I can only hope that we’ve seen the worst and that soon Thailand can move beyond the violence. It’s a beautiful country with amazingly kind people that deserve to live in peace.

Of course, photographers have been on scene throughout. The Boston Globe’s Big Picture ran a series of images from the “unrest” on April 9th. I’ve also been following the coverage of Bangkok-based photographer Gavin Gough on his blog (search it for “red shirt” and you’ll see several entries). I think you’ll find from these image galleries that things are not entirely black and white. They never are.

Working the sunset, part 3

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One more from my Puerto Vallarta beach session. I was beginning to feel like I was shooting greeting cards — sunset over ocean surf, footprints in the sand, etc. — so I decided to play a little. Call it a game of “don’t drop your camera in the water”. As the waves would pull back from the beach, I would follow them out. Then, as they came rolling back in, I would hold the D700 down almost to the sand and run backward in front of the waves firing off exposures all the way. I wanted to capture some motion and convey the feeling of the waves coming in. I experimented with several shutter speeds — this was f/6.3 at 1/13th of a second. Strong sharpening in Photoshop helped bring out some interesting texture in the distant wave. Technically, I doubt there is much that’s “right” about this photo but I do feel that it captures the moment better than a static shot. At least that part of the moment that I was shooting for. In the end, whether it’s a success is up to the viewer.

One man’s trash…

flea market

flea market

I’ve intended to shoot the White Cloud Flea Market in the tiny riverside town of White Cloud, Kansas for decades but it’s held only two weekends a year and in seasons where I’m usually on the road. I finally made it this year and have to say that it’s an experience. Sort of a Woodstock for junk dealers. I loved it.

All of the above shots came from the tent of my favorite dealer who was actually at the overflow flea market in the small town of Sparks. Yes, there’s so much stuff that one tiny town and its surrounding farmland can’t seem to hold it all. In fact, I think there were more dealers in Sparks and more of a community atmosphere. This particular tent proved my earlier theory that anything is cool when gathered in large quantities (the exception to this rule is food, which can become downright disgusting when seen in quantities larger than a plate). Bin after bin of toys, toy parts, house numbers, gears, etc. were a visual treasure trove for me. We bought some things, too, including an excruciatingly brightly colored ’70s-era Japanese pachinko game that will soon have a very special place in the new house.

The rack of vintage sunglasses below is from the White Cloud market but the tattooed gentleman was a vendor at the Sparks market. A great guy who spotted me photographing a John Belushi figurine and wanted me to see his Blues Brothers tattoo. All-in-all a great day.

flea market

In the Pen

penitentiary

Sorry for my recent absence… I’ve been in the penitentiary.

Don’t worry — just touring. After a few days in St. Louis last week, we stopped in Jefferson City, Missouri, to tour the recently decommissioned Missouri State Penitentiary with our guide Mark Schreiber (above). Mark was the Deputy Warden when the site closed and has tons of great stories. Tons. The tours are definitely worth checking out but be sure to get reservations as they are sold out weeks in advance.

I’m now in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The weather is currently toying with us but this is one of those places that I think is just as beautiful in the rain. Still, I’d take a little sunshine. Fingers crossed…

Tea break

egyptian potter

Another portrait from Egypt — this time a potter taking a break to have some tea. I had a print order to run last week and sent this and my Chinese kite flyer along for a couple of 11x14s. I don’t often get prints made for myself but these two look really nice.

As usually happens, I’m having some technical issues just when I have the least time to deal with them. One of my terabyte drives is acting up so I’ve been shuffling the data off to other drives so that I still have two copies should it go down altogether. I’m on the road for the next week so I’ll have to finish dealing with it when I get back but at least my images are safe in the meantime. I think it may just need to be reformatted but it’s not going to happen today.

As usual, I’ll do my best to post from the road.

Temple of Seti I, Abydos, Egypt

abydos, temple of seti I

Photographing people in Egypt is not always easy. Many want “baksheesh” — typically a dollar unless they see you have more (on a side note, on this recent trip I heard at least one person refer to American dollars as “Obamas”). I don’t have a problem with compensating someone for taking their photo but in cases like this I find that it wrecks the moment. I saw a man in a turban at one temple standing in beautiful light until he saw a photographer lining up for a photo. He then stepped back into the shadows and held out his hand. Sure, the photographer could have paid the dollar and the man would have stepped back into the light but I doubt that posed shot would have been as good as a real, found moment.

Thus I was especially pleased with this man I found at the Temple of Seti I in Abydos. He was standing inside with strong sidelight coming in through the main temple door. I made eye contact with him and raised my camera as if to ask “may I take your photo?” He responded with a slight nod and didn’t change his stance or expression in the least. It was just what I wanted. I fired off a couple of frames and someone caught his eye as they came through the door. He turned his head toward them and I got this wonderful profile that I like even better than the original shot.