White Sands National Monument in New Mexico is one of the most beautiful locations in the southwestern United States. The lighting is like no where else that I’ve experienced. The iconic pastel hues that paint the landscape here have inspired artists for centuries. To say photographing this location was inspiring would be an understatement. The more I review photographs from this location the more I want to return.
Light & Shadow - White Sands National Monument, New Mexico
View more photos of White Sands National Monument…
Technorati Tags: landscape, photo, White Sands National Monument, National Monument, stock, photography, New Mexico, southwest
Sea Otters are one of the more interesting wild animals in Northern California. From their playful interaction to their use of rocks as tools to eat their favorite food it’s hard to get enough of them. Photographed below is a wild Sea Otter in Monterey, California who kept his paws are on his ears while basking in the sun
Sea Otter fur is unique and the main reason they were hunted so aggressively in the past. They have the thickest fur of any animal with 850,000 to 1,000,000 hair follicles per inch! Their two coats, outer and under coat, traps air close to their body insulating them from the chilly ocean water. In this photo you can see the fur around the head freshly groomed and dryer than the rest of his body. What I find fascinating is the contrast between the look of the dry and wet fur in this photo. If you look at the stomach you’ll see the Otters reflection on his wet belly.
Sea Otter (Enhydra lutris)
Learn more about Sea Otters via the Marine Mammal Center
Technorati Tags: Monterey, California, wildlife, photo, photography, stock photo, sea otter, Enhydra lutris
Recently I’ve been reading a lot of news stories demonizing Coyotes coming into suburban environments. It wasn’t that long ago that two coyotes were killed here in San Francisco and I thought I would post a photo of a typical Coyote encounter.
This Coyote like most others was very shy and was waiting to come down from the hillside early one morning only when it saw no one else around. Very skiddish it was only interested in hunting small rodents and birds in a near by meadow. As soon as I became visible this Coyote was quick to run off back into the safety of the dense foliage in the near by hills.
The problem I have with the demonization of Coyotes or other predators by the press is that they portray human-animal interaction in a very one-dimensional fashion. Seldom is there any note of how humans impact and condition animals to become acclimatized to us. The build up of our trash, people feeding wild animals, etc. all contribute to these animals losing their innate fear of us. Unlike Raccoons, Skunks, Possums or other common urban wildlife that we often ignore, if not accept as denizens of our neighborhoods, Coyotes like many other larger predators, get the short end of the stick and pay the price of such acclimatization to humans with their lives. There aren’t too many advocates for these animals, but one day I hope to see that we hold people accountable on some level for their part in these common and increasing human-animal conflicts.
In the case of Coyotes they get a double whammy when it comes to conflict with humans. The lack of predators in our neighborhoods results in a booming population of prey that initially draw Coyotes into our neighborhoods. When not hunting natural prey they become acclimatized to foraging in our trash or hunting small pets. it’s a tough balance for Coyote and humans, but sometime in the future I hope better civic and state policies are identified and put in place to minimize the killing of these predators and increasing public respect for local wildlife.
Technorati Tags: coyote, urban, wildlife, photograph, photo, stock photo, Canis latrans
Sunrise or sunset? I suppose that will depend if the glass is half full or half empty for you on this Monday. Either way I hope that everyones Monday starts off well.
Photographed below are California Oak trees in a grassy meadow. If you’ve been to California you’ll know that much of the landscape inland from the coast resembles this scene. Several years ago I would often travel from Santa Barbara, in the central coast region of California, to north of San Francisco in Marin county. Much of the view along the way was this very type of landscape. Driving by this landscape it’s easy to take for granted the forms and textures present in this environment. Only recently have I started to explore this common view by foot and each time I’ve learned something new and/or gained a new perspective. It’s amazing how a sense of discovery can be found in your own backyard, so to speak, versus half way around the world.
Technorati Tags: California, photography, landscape, nature, stock photo, oak, tree
11
May
Posted in Software, Technology by Jim |
For some strange reason I started to experience really odd behavior with Adobe Lightroom this weekend. In the end I burned a good portion of my weekend dealing with reviving Lightroom rather than working on my photographs. This made me a very unhappy camper as I’ve been short on time to catch up on post-processing. How far this will set me back I have no idea, but its not going to be a short amount of time as my schedule is growing increasingly busy. What I’ve since learned is that I was not alone in dealing with this dilemma over the weekend. I’ve since read up that Dawn Armfield and Raoul Pop experienced problems recently. Raoul ended up putting out a video detailing how to fix his specific problem (Dealing with a corrupted previews catalog in Lightroom).
So what was the deal? I started up Lightroom only to have nothing appear. Thats right nothing, yet my computer (Apple G5 Quad with 4GB RAM running 10.4.x and Lightroom 1.3.1) showed that it was running. I tried looking online for all kinds of information describing this problem and ended up pushing forward with a much delayed upgrade to OS X 10.5 and Lightroom 1.4.1.
After backing up my internal drives and completing the upgrades I started up my computer only to experience the same weird behavior. Only this time the program was indeed running, just with no windows open. None of my catalogs (original or backup) could be opened via File > Open. In fact when doing so I received the following error “Error on Mac: An error occurred when attempting to change modules.”
I searched online with limited results but eventually found this thread of discussion aptly titled “Error on Mac: An error occurred when attempting to change modules.” Nothing worked until I brought over my last backed up catalog from another drive. The application still would not open it via File > Open, but being on an Apple computer I was able to drag the catalog to the application icon and it opened finally. Once open, per the support thread noted above, I went to “File > Catalog Settings > Relaunch and Optimize”. This seemed to do the trick once I got my catalog open. The challenge was getting it open in the first place. Such a pain in the ass.
Only after I got Lightroom up and running and ranting on Twitter did I learn that others were also having this problem. Seeing as how nothing changed on my computer when this first started and continued to be a problem even after my upgrades I’m wondering what could have caused the problem. Watching Raoul’s video I noticed something we have in common. We’re both using mirrored drives. I also noticed in the support thread that I found that many Apple computer users were experiencing similar problems while using external FW800 drives. I myself am using two external FW800 drives. My primary catalog is stored on my un-mirrored non-FW internal drive so I have no idea what the cause is. It is possible that I had a problem at some point and had to hard shut down the computer or the drives and perhaps that contributed to the problem. Either way I hope that Adobe is able to put out a fix and/or if you happen to experience this problem (or one that is similar) my experience helps you save a few hours of aggravation.
Technorati Tags: Adobe, Photoshop, Lightroom, corrupt, catalog, error
11
May
Posted in Links & Articles, Photography by Jim |
This past week proved to be an exceptionally good week for photography related content on the web. Having been active in the online photography community since the late 90’s I’ve become increasingly impressed with the growth and quality of this community. The level of quality this past week deserves special attention, particularly the following links:
Speedlinks - 05/06/08 - Orphan Works Edition - Photography Business News & Forum
Many great reads on the history and a variety of perspectives on the recent revival of the Orpan Works legislation. If you’re unaware of this legislation and what impact it could have on you catch up here and let your voice be heard.
Ansel Adam’s Yosemite - New York Times
Former assistant to Ansel Adams, Andrea G. Stillman, provides some very interesting narrative to 9 of Ansel’s most famous work. I posted this earlier in the week, but found it too good not to link to twice.
Kodak’s First Digital Camera - Retro Thing
Think some of the newer dSLRs are a bit bulky? This link puts it into perspective how far we’ve come with digital camera technology. Once again I posted this earlier in the week, but found it too good not to link to twice.
Freedom of Speech Photography Video - In The Field
Photography to stir the soul. Richard Wong displays some of his recent photojournalism photographs via a video on YouTube.
16 Steps In Answering A Customer Inquiry - Digital Protalk
A bit of business etiquette every photographer should become familiar with… answering a customer inquiry. David Ziser gives a great overview to this most basic of business practice.
Do you know what Hyperfocal Distance is? - PhotoWalkPro
Jeff Revell provides a great intro to Hyperfocal Distance. If you’re interested in getting sharper images this is a must read. How fitting I put it in this post 
Your Complete Guide To Adobe Bridge - Epic Edits
Brian Auer completes his excellent 7-article write up on Adobe Bridge.
Photo Contests WTD 473 - What The Duck
A classic comic.
Back in the Time Machine Link:
The Essential Landscape - Six Silver Bullets by Guy Tal
The land of the midnight sun (aka Alaska) produces some of the most beautiful light for photography. The trick is being able to see it through the quickly changing weather conditions. Not far from my camp when I took this photo the midnight sun kissed the mountainside as a storm front was moving in. With in minutes this beautiful light had vanished only to appear hours later as the storm cleared. To this day I’m in awe of how rugged yet beautiful this landscape is. Looking through Arctic photos these past couple of days I’m getting the itch to return as soon as I can.
Arctic Refuge: Hidden Beauty
View More Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Photos…
Technorati Tags: Arctic, Arctic Refuge, ANWR, photo, photography, landscape, scenic, Kongakut River, valley, Alaska
8
May
Posted in Camera, Photography, Technology by Jim |
This has been making the rounds online this week and I had to share it in case any readers here have missed it. In 1975 Kodak developed the first digital camera prototype. Hardly something you’d carry around your neck to a family function. 100 line black and white image were recorded to a cassette tape and took 23 seconds to write. The “microcomputer” being the size of a large VCR was required to display the image on a “monitor” (actually a TV).
The question I have is how many MegaPixels rather MilliPixels would this have been?
Read and see more photos of this beast of a computer here:
Kodak’s First Digital Camera
Technorati Tags: Kodak, first, digital camera,
