Another Great Meeting

My friend Danny Hammontree who started the South Florida Camera Club has done a bang up job with the club. Our membership has grown incredibly over the past year and the club has had to move a couple of times to larger and larger meeting halls. Every month there are presentations by fantastic speakers, print competitions, tutorial lectures, field trips, and just good ol' fashioned camaraderie. Last night's meeting was no exception. The presenter was Seth Resnick, Professional Photographer, Canon Explorer of Light, PixelGenius partner, and co-founder of D-65. Seth is also a feature consultant  for Adobe Photshop and Lightroom products.

Seth spoke for over three hours and gave a highly emotional retrospective of his work that had the entire room mesmerized. The photodocumentary series on the little girl's progress as a burn patient was heart wrenching. That was then contrasted by images of South Beach, Miami and some amazingly beautiful abstract images of colors and textures. Seth shared some wonderful photographic insights that were taught to him by his friend, Jay Maisel along with tips on stock photography, model releases, and techniques on using Lightroom and Photoshop.

I was really inspired by his work since I also have a penchant for photographing colors, textures, and also one of Seth's favorites; rust. I'm now itching to pick up the camera and look for more images that are out there, waiting to happen.

Last night's meeting also had a visit by Canon's Professional Market Representative, Chuckie Luzier. He brought with him a treasure trove of Canon cameras and lenses for all of us to play with and drool over. I especially liked the new lightweight but almighty powerful Canon 800mm/f5.6L IS lens. Chuckie has spoken at a previous club meeting and his insight and knowledge about Canon products has been very helfpul.

If you are a photographer that lives in the South Florida area (between Miami and West Palm Beach), you really owe it to yourself to check out the club. The club is tailored to all levels of photography from amateur to professional.

Looking forward to more meetings.

Levitation Challenge

My friend Jax inspired and challenged me to quickly produce a levitation self portrait like her Shock image. Jax (Jacqui) is so cool with getting me to expand my photography by venturing outside the box. I love her for that and truly value our friendship. Ironic how it was only a couple of years ago that I was teaching her my photographic techniques and now she is teaching me. Today, Jacqui is an accomplished photographer with a bristling photo business, editorial publishings, and several art awards. What goes around, comes around.

Knowledge Sharing + Good Friendships = Great Karma.

Thanks Jax.

So last night, just before sunset, I saw her challenge to show her that I could also do the levitation trick. I didn't have much time since the sun was already low. I headed out back. Got into my relaxed, meditative state, set the camera on the tripod, activated the self timer, and voila!

Enjoy.

The Unexpected

Yesterday afternoon I saw clouds forming and thought it would be a great idea to head down the road to Green Cay Wetlands to shoot some landscape HDR images. When I usually go to Green Cay, I take a long telephoto and concentrate on bird shots. This time, however, I forced myself to concentrate on landscapes (but I did take along an old, low cost, 75-300mm for the Nikon just in case).

As I was settting up on the boardwalk to shoot with the 24mm, I noticed a couple of people had stopped and were admiring these small terns chirping away on the boardwalk railing. I haven't seen the terns that close before because they are always flying erratically like bats and diving into the water for tasty morsels. So I quickly changed to the 300mm and moved in slowly and close to photograph the small birds. After shooting off a bunch of frames of the terns sitting, I decided to be patient and try to capture one landing or taking off. I managed to get an image that I was happy with. The bird is known as a Least Tern and you can tell by the white triangle patch on the black forehead. I believe they are an endangered species so it was nice to see a bunch of them enjoying the wetlands.

Rik Cooke, a National Geographic photographer, once told me that although it is nice to go shooting with a plan, sometimes waiting for something to happen with no expectations will result in a magical moment. During the time I spent with Rik in Hawaii, those moments surrounded us constantly. I think about that often and Saturday at Green Cay was one of those moments. Oh and by the way, I still enjoyed shooting my plan to catch the clouds at Green Cay. HDR techniques are really useful when it comes to capturing the nuances of clouds.

Orchids

To me, there is something very attractive about orchids. Maybe it is the symmetry, maybe it is a touch of the exotic or alien, or maybe it is the sensuousness of their shapes or how delicate they appear. Whatever it is, I do enjoy photographing them.

Shuttle Discovery STS-124 Launch

(photo by: George Quiroga, logo courtesy of NASA's press kit).

Yesterday I tagged along with friends and family on a two hour ride up to Titusville to see the shuttle launch. We ended up at Space View Park next to the Indian River directly West of the launch pads. We tried to get tickets to the Kennedy Space Center but did not have any luck. Space View Park has a good view and is about 12 miles from the launch pad as the crow flies. You can definitely feel the energy from the blast and the loud roar is exciting. The park was packed with people, NBC local news, and vendors. The atmosphere was very festival like and audio broadcasts from NASA were blasting through the PA so that everyone could know what was going on. There was deluge of a thundershower just as we arrived at 2:30 PM but then the skies were clear for the rest of the day.

Because the park was so crowded when we arrived, I tried to find a spot on the corner of a low wall where I could set up a tripod for the 400mm lens (640mm equivalent with the digital camera) and a 2X to raise the effective focal length to 1280mm. I was glad to be a little higher than the crowd to see the launch but unfortunately I was in a spot that had trees blocking part of the ascent (notice the dark spot in the image above as I shot through the trees). At at distance of 12 miles I could see the pad but details were difficult to make out due to the haze formed by ground heat and humidity (my guess). The 2X also cut the quality down. Even so I was still able to manage a few shots I'm satisfied with given the conditions. I had to bump up the contrast and sharpness on these to make them more palatable.

For more information on Discovery's Mission STS-124 download the Press Kit or visit the NASA web site.