Photography I can't remember when I originally began to develop an interest in cameras, but I think that it had something to do with some renters that we had living on our property for many years, Steve and Eve. Steve has been a photographer for a good portion of his life and, along with being a living encyclopedia on cameras and related subjects, is a very skilled photoshop artist and runs a business selling his pictures (pay a visit to his website at earthseaimagery.com). While he was living on our property, I would go up to his house about once every two weeks and he would give me a photoshop lesson, and in the process I ended up learning some about cameras and their workings. Since then I have bought myself a camera (a Canon SX50 HS), continued to learn about photoshop, and taken and edited thousands of pictures myself. It is still a favorite pastime for me. I particularly like to incorporate high color contrast and as much visual variety in my pictures as I can. I also particularly like photographing animals.
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PlantsFlora always provides a variety of interesting, colorful and easily found photographic material. I particularly appreciate plants' inability to run away from you when you get close enough to click the shutter.
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SceneryLarge, sweeping portraits and panoramas of landscapes have been a mainstay of my pictures for a long time. They are some of the first things I photographed and are still a main feature of many of my photos.
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WildlifeWild animals are probably my most favorite subjects to take pictures of. They are also definitely the most frustrating. Wildlife possess many interesting habits that pose quite a challenge for the photographer. Some of these include; coming out and posing perfectly for you just out of your cameras zoom range; coming extremely close to let you get that perfect close-up shot when it is just barely too dark for the camera to focus or prevent high noise in the photo; appearing in the previous situation only on days when you have forgotten your tripod, (these pictures usually result in the same predictable grey smear every time); thoughtfully posing themselves for as long as it takes to set up the camera and compose the shot and then flying or running away an umpteenth of a second before you hit the shutter, and, most frequently, disappearing the moment you get close enough for the zoom to see them or just being way to dratted far away to begin with. They somehow even frequently escape the 50x zoom on my Canon SX50 HS. Someday I am going to weld a telescope and birdfeeder to my lens.
However, if these many trials can be overcome or circumvented, which usually happens purely by luck (or skill among a few elite experts), the result is well worth the effort and often very beautiful. I find taking pictures of wildlife exceptionally challenging, very rewarding and, usually, quite worthwhile. My only shortcoming here is that I often have a tendency to assume that just because the picture has an animal in it, it is automatically an awesome shot. |
AircraftI have always liked taking pictures of aircraft, but almost all of my photos come from my limited number of visits to aircraft museums, which nearly always make for visually disinteresting photographs. More recently, I have had the opportunity to attend a number of events on the Kingsley Airbase in Klamath Falls as well as the Airshow of the Cascades in Madras, Oregon. I thought these events might finally lead to some opportunities for interesting aircraft pictures: I wasn't let down.
Here are some of my best shots. |