Beautiful Horizons

RIP - Herman Leonard

       Obit here.

 
   
 
      

An Oasis

It's amazing how amidst all the concrete, you can still find a great egret

in the midst of

a hunt;

a butterfly pollinating flowers;

while other flowers

await other butterflies;

while turtles

and ducks

beat the heat.

 

Butterflies

Ever since I saw a cannonade of cerulean blue butterflies while walking through the jungle in Central America, butterflies have fascinated me. They're one of the best signs of summer and their brief lives makes me appreciate them even more.

I love to photograph them, but it's very challenging. Photographs of them in flight don't look as good as when they have alighted, say on a flower. Waiting for them to land can be frustrating and they're unpredictable, but when they do land it means you have to move quickly.

Sometimes it all works out so well:

Market Slump

Back in 2004 the Republican National Committee was able to charge donors $25,000 for a personal photo op with George W. Bush. Last year the going rate was $10,000 for pix with the Prez. This week at a GOP fundraiser in New Jersey, the price per pic was down to $5000. Still seems steep, but that's quite a downward slide. Maybe they should bring Cheney along to those fundraisers and charge an extra five grand to have him step out of the picture.

Cleaning the CMOS Sensor

After reading the horror stories about cleaning the dust off my digital camera's sensor, I cleaned the CMOS sensor with relative ease. Here's how:

Venice Photos

I finally got a photo album put together. Click here for some of my Venice photos.

A Stitch in Time . . .

I've been busy trying to tidy up my photos from my trip to Italy and get them sized to put in a photo album and it has been taken up a lot of my time.

Digital photography is wonderful for a variety of reasons. I took more than 600 photos on this trip and I experimented a great deal. Unfortunately, I ended up with a speck of dust on my CMOS sensor, but I'm able to remove the dark spots from the photos through retouching software. I love being able to change the ISO from shot to shot. It was a big help when we went inside churches in which we could not use a flash.

I also love stitch software. I took several sequences of photos with an eye towards creating panoramics out of them. Here is a stitched photo of St. Peter's Square in Rome taken put together from six photos:

This panoramic of Venice taking in San Giorgio Maggiore in the background as well as Giudecca Island comprises eight photos:

My previous SLR was an APS SLR and one of my favorite functions was the panoramic setting. Now with a little planning, I can still manage it!

Product Feature Rant

If you've visited this blog regularly, you'll note via the  photo albums that photography is something I take fairly seriously. I finally broke down and bought a digital camera for myself. I had been waiting a while to find a decently priced digital SLR with interchangeable lenses, preferably a Canon as I already have a couple of Canon lenses.

So about a week ago I bought the Canon Digital Rebel XT and am really knocked out by it. It has extraordinary features, not the least of which is the ability to take three shots per second, a feature most digital cameras I've seen so far lack. Also, what may be a drawback to some is a plus to me: you must compose the picture through the viewfinder. The LCD screen is solely for the menu and viewing the shots that you have already taken. I've never seen any special benefit by taking pictures with the camera at arm's length.

Yet there is a problem with this. I have a fairly average size nose, but putting my eye against the viewfinder leaves smudges on the LCD screen from the oils on my nose. So I had to get an eyepiece extender which, unfortunately diminshes the viewfinder magnification by 30%. Still, it's better than having to wioe the LCD screen constantly.

My question is this: why doesn't Canon simply put a retractable eyepiece extender on the camera? By so doing those of us who do not want to use an extender would not have to and those of us who want to keep the LCD screen clean would not have to spend another $20 to do so. I can't believe Canon needs the money . . .