Hi Everyone,
It's been a while :-) but here's an update! Our nine Newfoundland puppies are all doing fantastic at about 4 1/2 months old. From a birth weight of 1 1/2 to 2 pounds, they now check in at 53 to 74 pounds! My wife Mary and I kept two - a male and female - and the other seven are thriving at their new homes.
Here are now-and-then pics of our male Newfie pup, Fritz.
Following is Fritz at sunset ... 4 1/2 months and 70 pounds. Note: He's not quite half-size yet!! :-) ... with an expected adult weight of about 160-170 pounds.
From my previous blog, here's Fritz at 3 weeks old and 5 pounds:
Thanks, Kerry Drager
Greetings from the California countryside! Our Newfoundland pups - all nine of them! - are doing well at 3 weeks old. From a birth weight of 1 1/2 to 2 pounds, they now check in at 4 to 5 pounds. (See my previous post for more details.)
For the portraits below, my "studio" included soft window light (i.e., no flash and no direct sunlight), an old blue blanket draped over a living room chair, and two very appropriate props: a BetterPhoto.com squishy camera and a BetterPhoto.com coffee mug.
I shot each image with a 50mm lens on a full-frame D-SLR, and the settings were f6.7, 1/100th second, and ISO 800. Help was provided by my wife Mary, the official breeder in our family, and my stepdaughter Kristin, the official puppy wrangler - an essential assistant for any puppy photography adventure :-) The top pic shows a gray male ready for action. In the middle shot, a gray female is barely awake. And in the bottom image, a black male enjoys a close encounter with the (empty) BP mug.
Until my next puppy report, have fun with your own photography!
Thanks, Kerry Drager
Out in the California countryside, we are the proud "parents" of nine healthy Newfoundland puppies! My wife Mary is the breeder, but events like this seem to involve anyone who happens to be nearby - especially someone with a camera :-)
I took the accompanying photo the other day when the pups were 1 day old. The litter includes five black (very common) and four gray (very rare) puppies, each weighing 1 1/2 to 2 pounds at birth ... a verrrrry long way from their eventual 100-plus-pound adult size!
For this image, I selected a prop - a BetterPhoto coffee mug, naturally! - plus window light as the light source. A wide aperture (f/4) and high ISO (800) provided a shutter speed fast enough (1/250th second) to easily hand-hold the camera with a 105 macro lens. Of course, it helps to have an expert assistant (my stepdaughter, Kristin), who chose a puppy that was sound asleep - so no squirming, bouncing, squeeking, or squawking! The fact that a gray puppy was selected, instead of a difficult-to-record black one, was no accident either.
With tight close-ups, focusing decisions are crucial. With most pet and people portraits, the eyes have it. But, sleeping aside, these puppies won't open their eyes until they're a few weeks old. Can't beat the nose as a key focal point.
By the way, Newf puppies do seem to look better with age :-) so stay tuned!
Thanks, Kerry Drager
The Entertainer and the Entertained
Magicians in their magic acts are entertainers. They perform mystical feats designed specifically to cleverly trick us -- those being entertained -- into believing something miraculous is happening when they waive their wand or perform an incantation. Deep down, we know it is somehow explainable, but we want to be entertained, suspend our disbelief, and enjoy the show. We may half-heartedly try to figure out what really happened behind the scenes, but in a way, perhaps, we almost don't want to know: it might ruin the illusion and we'd no longer be entertained. The entertainer practices his craft building the clever and believable deception, and the entertained soak it in without thinking all too hard. That is the difference between the entertainer and the entertained.
The Juggler
Photoshop and Magic
People beginning to edit images with Photoshop and Elements often scour the menus looking for the tool that will do something spectacular to their images believing great images are just a few clicks away. It is almost as if they want the program to entertain them with an element of magic or a fantasic feat of mind reading. Photoshop and Elements have lots of tools whose behavior may seem mysterious and unexplainable at first, at least one named specifically 'Magic Wand', but regretfully there are no 'magic' tools that read your mind. No matter how clever the implementation of a function or how well it seems to work there is never anything 'magic' about a tool itself. There is a calculation -- however complex -- that drives any tool application. The behavior can be described and predicted, no matter how we might resist knowing.
To Be the Magician
A true magician doesn't waive a wand and hope magic will happen -- imagine what would happen to a magician doing that on stage. The magician knows the secrets of the tricks and what goes on behind the scenes, utilizing props and tools with purpose to craft the perfect deception. Likewise, the imaging magician, must be a master of the tools and craft of post-processing. Just clicking a filter or auto function and being elated or disappointed by the result isn't mastering Photoshop and Elements, it is being entertained. Being entertained can be pleasing at times, but generally it is not how you make a magical image. The tools themselves have no way to see and evaluate the images they work on except as a calculation. They are lifeless props and props never make magic either.
Magicians practice their craft and develop their art, and you will want to do the same to achieve desired results with your post-processing in Photoshop. Changes do not have to be mystical, spectacular or flamboyant to get the most from your images, and post-processing is only a portion of the photographic craft. There is a place for being both the entertainer and the entertained, the magician and the audience. Learn and be awed by other people's craft, but strive to understand the magic of their images like a magician in the audience watching the craft of the magician on stage.
To Learn More
My courses teach the timeless fundamentals for Photoshop and Elements that you'll use as the core of your craft. I talk about magic tools in my Photoshop 101 class...namely the "read my mind" and "do it for me" tools: mythical tools designed in the minds of users hoping there is an easier way. But it is the only mention of magic tools in my courses. You get practical methodology for Correcting and Enhancing Your Images, solid techniques for matching your images on your Monitor and In Print, and advanced exploration of
Layers: Photoshop's Most Powerful Tool. Each is a facet of the tools you have to master to perfect your image editing craft. My latest book, The Adobe Photoshop Layers Book, is the perfect companion to these courses.
Coming from a writing background (I have an MFA in Fiction Writing), I find it is interesting to note the overlap and comparison of thinking about composition of images and composition of prose. The common quote "a picture is worth a thousand words" comes to mind. Interestingly it is said one of the 'rules' of photography is that images should tell a story. If it is true, who should be more likely to have an interest in photography than someone who has studied fiction writing...I find my experiences with writing help me see my progress through photography more clearly.
Writing At College
Taking writing courses was a confounding joy. I might be handed an assignment to write a story, and might be inspired immediately to write a poem. With the suggestion that I write a poem, I might be at no short hand to write prose. Other students I know would claim to get the much-romanced 'writer's block', often meaning they couldn't come up with anything interesting to fulfill an assignment. While my reaction to assignments may just have been some perverse part of my nature, the imposed task would fill with obligation, rigidity and expectation...and I could find respite in doing almost anything but the task at hand. I enjoyed discovery and creativity; it was simply more fun to explore writing to whatever end than to perform a task.
The upshot of structured courses was that while I was compelled to complete the necessary work to conform to the expectations, I wrote probably twice as much unstructured work in addition to the formal assignments. To stave off verbal constipation, I made a habit of keeping a scratch book (and still do) where I was free to experiment and explore words. In the abstract paths, scraps, and unfinished pieces may not be my best work and material, and much I've never shared or published, but some inevitably filtered back into other finished work, and it is still where I do my most intense learning.
And After College...
Later, continuing down a lawless path, I taught college English for several years, and tested ideas from my own learning, using my students like guinea pigs. I tried to abandon rules entirely as part of the curriculum -- rules, I reasoned, were something no one really cared for, and college students should have had their fill by the time they met me -- so I had my students exploring writing itself rather than tethering them to the rule book. They wrote a lot, improved tremendously by following their interests, and seemed to allow themselves to enjoy the experience of writing which, in turn, helped them learn from it, often coming in a back-handed way to the rules -- whether they recognized them or not.
Choosing Your Rules
The best of rules, when you know them, become simple, helpful guidelines built on common sense: suggestions as to what will achieve success with relative consistency. While anyone can resist rules, the essence of rules can't totally be ignored. Rules of writing attach meaning to words and without that reference writing would never convey an intended meaning; likewise, you can't take a picture without light in the absolute dark. Rules may not fit your perspective as you hear them, but they may have other meanings, and more fitting, creative, and personally meaningful interpretations. For example, the rule of thirds really says to me: "don't be boring", which can lead to a lot more than 4 suggested options.
There are all sorts of writings, just like there are all sorts of photos. Some photos might tell a story, and might seem more like a poem, a story, or even a novel -- and some may only be meant to be snippets, scraps, experiments, and vehicles for learning. If you following the rule that each shot needs to be a story as an imperative, you may hold yourself back from capturing some less structured frames, experimenting and exploring possibilities, and learning from and enjoying your time taking pictures. In other words, you will do well to follow the rule of trying to tell stories with your images -- so long as it doesn't oblige you to try and squeeze impossible imagery from an inappropriate scene when you might, instead, happily snap the shutter to learn some nuance about light, shadow, shutter speed, or color that may later help you 'tell a story' in better conditions.
Pear Stems. Shot when I found my camera in hand and some interesting light after dinner.
Practicing Lawless Photography
At times, when you are frozen, looking for the ultimate shot in a dramatic scene that is being elusive, it may help to put the rules out of your head a moment and just look through the viewfinder. Snap off some frames without expectations, move in and away, tilt the camera, shoot portrait and landscape, change your lens...Think of as many rules as you can while doing it, and break every one -- for a reason if you can think of one, or just because. After you shoot a series, view the results to see if anything you shot suggests a direction, and then use that suggestion and refine the result. You can always use rules first if you feel naked -- or you may find you follow them more naturally as you shoot view and refine.
When you first open up an image in Photoshop, it may seem like nothing special. But almost always there is something more in my captures than what initially pops up in Photoshop. As Jim Miotke said in his introduction to his interview with me on betterphoto radio, you can often have a lot of interpretive and creative control with your images and find something quite different than what you originally see using the digital darkroom (Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, or other image editing software). While I enjoy photography, what makes the journey really complete for me is exploring what I can do with what I have captured during image editing to make the most out of the results.
For example, on a recent trip to Nantucket, I had combed some lightly tread beaches in my early morning walks along the shoreline, and found some fairly sun-bleached snail shells that were large and whole. After returning home with them, and later that evening, I tried arranging them and shooting a bunch of exposures just toying with shape, shadow, depth-of-field and various lenses on an old picnic table.
When the trip was over and I reviewed the images, none seemed terribly special immediately. I could make out muted colors that would probably have been more brilliant had I used a spray bottle to mist the shells. But even so, I selected a few images out of the bunch to play with like the one here...
I knew I could punch up muted color, enhance the dynamics range of the images, fiddle with effects for local and global contrast, enhance sharpening and softness, and push the limits of what the images kept hidden in the captures. Using techniques that I teach in all of my courses (Photoshop 101, Color Management for Digital Photographers, Correct and Enhance Your Images, and Leveraging Layers) I did just that, and started to see results. I ended up finding several images that were keepers in the bunch.
Once you know how to explore an image to redefine the color, tone and dynamics, you can make even flat images spring to life. It requires a little effort to learn the modern, digital darkroom, but the creative levels that it unleashes are well worth the effort. As my skills continue to grow in image editing (even after 15+ years of full-time use), editing and adjusting captured images has become as much an exploration and adventure as the capturing. I unravel and adorn each image as a unique object, exploring its intricacies in post-processing to create a finished piece.
by Ibarionex Perello
 © Ibarionex Perello All rights reserved |
We learn about lighting, composition, color and contrast and practice until we can make snap judgments in the instant between bringing the camera to our eye and depressing the shutter release button. It’s not an easy thing to learn to do, but practicing by taking picture after picture helps us to develop that skill.
What comes along with this are the “rules” that we feel that we must follow to create a successful image. Rules such as keeping the horizon straight, exposing for the highlights or using a tripod are all things that can help ensure that the images that you make can be as good as they can possibly be.
But if your experience is anything like mine, I can take these same rules and use them against myself. Instead of seeing these rules as things that help improve my images, I can use them as excuses for not taking the pictures in the first place.
I was recently shooting some concert images in a club in Hollywood. The music was fantastic and the performers were full of energy, offering some exciting possibilities when it comes to making photographs. Unfortunately, the lighting wasn’t great. Though it may have satisfied the needs of the performers, it made things especially difficult for a photographer.
To get a decent shutter speed even with my f/2.8 zoom lenses wide open, I still had to raise the camera’s ISO to 1600. This only gave me a shutter speed of between 1/90 to 1/125 second, not ideal for capturing sharp images of a lead singer who moved across the stage as if he owned it.
There would have been a time when I would have given up and said that I can’t shoot this. The light is too low. My images will be blurry. There will be too much noise with the high ISO. This venue doesn’t fit the bill for what I know I need to produce consistently good shots.
That was all true, but I shot anyway.
I steadied myself as best I could and tried to capture those in-between moments when the singer or the members of the band were at the peak moment of a gesture or movement. I set my ISO to 1600, despite the presence of noise, because I wanted to have the fast shutter speed that I knew I would need to get a sharp result. I shot anyway even though I knew the circumstances weren’t ideal and that I wasn’t adhering to all the rules that I had learned over the years.
The result was many blurred and underexposed images. But along with those, I got some fantastic shots that despite the challenges that I faced, thrilled me, including the one that you see here.
Rules are good. They definitely will help you to make better photographs. But never allow them to keep you from taking the picture. Allow yourself to try and shoot anyway. You’ll never realize what magic may happen unless you bring the camera to your eye and shoot.
If there is any rule of photography that you should always live by, it should be the simplest one: keep shooting.
by Jim Zuckerman
When I tell my friends that I haven't had a vacation since 1972, they all laugh. Because I've been to so many places in the world, they think my entire life is a vacation. Well, not really. Even though I travel so much, I'm always shooting, and that for me is work. If I lie on a tropical beach somewhere, after thirty minutes or so I get bored and I start looking around for something to shoot.
In 1981 I made my first trip to Tahiti. The color of the water is so saturated, and the palms and the verdant mountains are so seductive, that one could easily come to the conclusion that this is paradise with a capital 'P'. I flew to Bora Bora from the capital, Papeete, and after checking into my lodge I went straight to the beach and did what everyone dreams of doing: I laid down in the tropical sun and thought I had been instantly transported to Heaven.
And that lasted about a half hour.
Ok, now what? Since this was before the Internet, researching photogenic subjects was done with travel books, post cards, and talking to local people about things of interest geologically, historically, culturally, etc. Someone told me that there were two canons in the nearby mountains, so I decided to hike up to them to see if they were of interest. I thought that perhaps they had been left over by the French army, perhaps from the 1800s, but that was not the case at all. They turned out to be artillery from the United States Navy. To help protect the islands in case the Japanese moved that far east in the Pacific, the Navy placed these canons here early in the war. In fact, carved in a nearby tree was an engraving that read "Katz, USN, 1943".
The canons were rusted and had been covered with graffiti, and by the time I trudged up the mountain carrying my medium format film camera, the sun was already high. I took pictures which I knew would never be considered fine art, and probably would never sell. But I stood there trying to imagine how the servicemen stationed here spent their time as they watched for enemy ships.
These pictures were taken with a Mamiya RB 67 on Ektachrome 64 transparency film. I used a 50mm wide angle lens, which is approximately equivalent to a 24mm lens in the 35mm or digital format. The aerial view I've included in this blog was taken from a small airplane I hired on this trip to do aerial photography, and it shows the rugged terrain in which the canons were placed.
On this Memorial Day I thought it was appropriate to remember these pictures and the sacrifices so many have made for our freedoms.
