Landscape, Nature and Travel Photography

One thing is constant no matter where I travel. What is common place for a local is often special to someone traveling through. Somehow when we are exposed to something, no matter how beautiful, day in and day out it often becomes less special. Yet when you show this “common” item to someone visiting the perception is completely different.

While in Utah I had this experience several times. Sunflowers on the side of the road… nothing special to the locals, yet an incredibly beautiful photographic subject to me. I suppose the moral of this thought is its sometimes helpful to put on the hat of a tourist where you live and rediscover what is in your own backyard.

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Technorati Tags: sun flower, Utah, desert, photography, stock photo

Last week on my flight out to Utah I got an amazing glimpse of the impact that the California wildfires are having on the state. The pristine Sierra Nevada mountains looked more like the Great Smokey Mountains. I suppose this is to be expected when 2000+ fires rage out of control through the state for several weeks. Even with this view from 30,000 feet it’s tough to fathom the scale of destruction and the lingering effects it will have on the land and air.

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Technorati Tags: California, wildfire, fire, smoke, Sierra Nevada, mountains, mountain range, aerial, stock photo

Some very exciting services and applications launched today including a new search engine Cuil.com and Adobe Lightroom 2. Having used Adobe Lightroom 2 Beta I’ve been very impressed and opted to buy Lightroom 2 at the first notice of its availability. Unfortunately after purchasing the Lightroom 2 Upgrade per the install PDF I was unable to get the program started. I was not given the option to reference my existing install and my Lightroom 1.0 serial number was not considered valid. Later I received an email that provided the upgrade serial number. Once entered then my old serial number was entered and then the application loaded. If only the install notes set my expectations correctly. Adobe gets the Good and the Bad reference in my post.

The Ugly is reserved for the new search engine Cuil. Cuil was getting tons of press today and was being blindly praised as the new kid on the block to challenge Google. As most found out today who tried Cuil it was far from impressive and probably could be considered to have one of the worst Web 2.0 lauches of all time. Why the hate on Cuil?

As noted in my first observation of the search engine via my post on FriendFeed:
“Not very impressed with Cuil.com and the seemingly random association of photos to results. Very confusing”

I wasn’t alone in thinking so. Later as I delved into the search engine even more I became even more troubled. When searching for my name in Cuil I knew it wouldn’t be pretty. There are two other Jim Goldstein’s that come up often when searching my name. Lucky for me! One is Jim Goldstein and his Band of Angels. Doh! The other is an eccentric Jim Goldstein with a house often featured in architecture magazines and in sports magazines due to his fanatical attendance to various pro basketball games. Flip a coin as to which is most inappropriate to my photography oriented web site. Sure enough the architecture/basketball Jim Goldstein has his image associated with my web site in Cuil search results. Even worse someone else’s photo of the Golden Gate Bridge is associated with a commercial site of mine.

My two biggest complaints…
First I don’t want another persons photo associated with my web site. The last thing I need is someone confusing my site with that of some eccentric.

Second I don’t want my commercial efforts being negatively impacted because inferior photography is being displayed and randomly associated with my commercial site.

I wrote Cuil about my concerns and due to the frenetic nature of their launch today they never wrote back. If and when they do I’ll follow up on this post. I later found out through another post that they were blaming much of what was being perceived as inaccurate results on technical problems due to a larger than expected spike in traffic.  See Cuil shows us how not to launch a search engine via CNET

Today definitely wasn’t dull. Upgrade problems aside Lightroom 2 is worth a look and if you’re a glutton for punishment check out Cuil.com to see what kind of whacky results are being tied together for your site or photography.

Technorati Tags: Cuil, Lightroom, upgrade, search, technology, software

The 19th episode of EXIF and Beyond has been released.

This episode features an interview with Utah based photographer, author and naturalist Guy Tal. Central to this episodes discussion is creativity and employing the creative process to landscape and nature photography. Discussions on the topic of the creative process can often be abstract, but like much of Guy’s photographic and written work his eloquence shines through. This is must listen for photographers of all levels.

Download the latest episodes:
EXIF and Beyond: Guy Tal

For the non-iTune listeners a streaming version of this podcast can be accessed here.

Technorati Tags: EXIF and Beyond, podcast, interview, photography, Guy Tal, creativity, creative process

It’s official I’m back. Back from 5 days of a very hectic but relaxing travel schedule to photograph the beautiful natural landscapes of Utah and Wyoming. Not counting my flight from San Francisco to Salt Lake City I logged nearly 1100 miles in my trusty rental car. In a very strange coincidence I seem to have captured a tad over a photo per mile. As we all know it’s not the quantity of photos it is the quality of the photos that matter. Over the coming weeks you can expect to see photos and read vignettes from my trip.

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With an aggressive schedule and so much ground to cover
even while driving my camera wasn’t getting much rest.

On this trip I had the pleasure of meeting several great people across the region. I am looking forward to sharing in the coming week a conversation I had with a very talented and for now unnamed photographer in my next episode of EXIF and Beyond. I’ll also introduce you to a local environmentalist with a great cause that needs your support.

Before ending this entry I should also note that just before and during my trip quite a bit has happened that is noteworthy. 

N. Rockies Wolves Get Federal Protection Restored - National Geographic 
I have to admit I was very happy to have heard this news while in Wyoming.

My Arctic National Wildlife Refuge photos were referenced in a ThinkProgress.org blog post titled Boehner falsely claims there’s no ‘wildlife’ in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (with video of Congressman Boehner’s idiotic claim)

PhotoNetCast #8 has been released with discussions around Photography Contests with special guest professional photographer David Ziser

An Interview With Jim M. Goldstein on Bild och foto

Today there was a good conversation on the subject of photo manipulation on NPR “In A Photoshop Age, Can You Believe Your Eyes?” that I highly recommend listening to if and when they put up a recording of the program. As expected the ethics of photography played heavily in the discussion with many references to last years incident with Allan Detrich of the Toledo Blade details noted in my post Ethics of Photography: Career Suicide by Photoshop. What brought this to the forefront of discussion was recent news of a widely published doctored photo of an Iranian missile test showing 4 missiles launched when only 3 actually did.

What really made this program note worthy was a side point made by photographer Vincent LaForet that got little attention regarding reader based photojournalism and how much it can be trusted. With the advent of iReport on CNN and other news outlets publishing reader submitted photography it makes me wonder…
If photojournalists have a tough time sticking to the ethics of photojournalism how is the general public expected to?

Taking a quick look at the iReport Terms of Use I see nothing of photo manipulation or photojournalist ethics guidelines. Granted most people are submitting photos/videos from their cell phones and time is of the essence. None-the-less there is a risk that such news outlets take with such content and the burden to catch manipulated photos is clearly on photo editors.

I pose the question to you…

Do you trust everything you see when you know it is a photo submitted by a non-professional photojournalist?

This past week and a half has been incredibly exciting here at JMG-Galleries.com. Quite a few new subscribers have joined the conversation here, many as a result of the news in my blog post How Every Flickr Photo Ended Up on Sale This Weekend. Unfortunately for me at the peak of activity of this conversation my eyes started giving me some problems. As you can imagine, for someone who loves photography as much as I do, having healthy eyes is a top priority. After seeing an eye specialist or two it became apparent that I’ve been working my eyes into the ground and am suffering from some hefty eye fatigue. Who would have thought being in front of a computer for 60-80 hours a week would be bad for you.

So much to my chagrin I’ve forced myself to limit my computer time for the time being. Strangely as coincidence would have it this happened only a week and a half before a planned photography trip to Utah where I’ll be meeting up with Guy Tal who is an extremely gifted photographer and author. Letting my eyes focus on the natural world versus a computer monitor over the next 5 days should help both eyes, mind and soul.

To all my blog readers thanks for visiting and subscribing. If you’ve commented here on the blog or emailed me recently I will reply, but only after my eyes have had a chance to recover.

It’s quite common to see iconic photos of San Francisco with the spans of the Golden Gate Bridge emerging from the fog, but here is a view of just the fog at sunset. On this particular evening I had no time to get in place to photograph the bridge in the fog. Instead, much closer to home, I caught a view I’ve yet to see of the fog partially covering the western portion of the city “San Francisco Sunset“. Shortly after that photo was taken the fog and lighting became much more intense. Watching the fog roll in while the light of sunset danced over the rapidly transforming cloudscape was quite a treat. On this evening I’m glad there wasn’t a bridge to ruin it.

View more photos of San Francisco Fog

Technorati Tags: sunset, fog, photography, stock photo