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Moments of discovery.  On the beach of Baie St. Jean, St. Barthélemy, FWI.  July 16, 2009.

2009 is a great time to be in photography.  The quality of the equipment and the software to process images has improved dramatically in the past 15 years.  I find that my mind coached with training of what these tools can do, has even altered my perceptions of the way I see the world.  I now look for things that often I cannot see, but that I know are there.  Very exciting stuff in that the end resulting image is often analogous to what Forrest Gump said, "it's like a box of chocolates, you don't know what you are going to get."  But usually one knows that you'll get something that you will like.  The other day I was showing some rowing images to a very experienced friend in the sport.  She saw things in the image that I could not see: wrist position, back inclination and elbow angle of the various rowers that told her information about what was going on in the boat.  Oar positions and alignments that meant nothing to me, but to her trained eye, it was a wholly different plane of observation.  It is like this for me when I photograph a subject.  Many times I have been asked "what are you photographing?" and I have difficultly explaining that I am not quite sure, well, completely anyway.  I am sure it sounds like a stupid answer to the questioner.  However the same thing has happened to me a lot with other photographers.  We'll be in the same place at the same time, and looking at our pictures later I'll think, "were we on the same trip together?"  My point is people can and do see things differently and can be trained to see them in a certain way.  Not so different from doctors studying x-rays.

One of the tools that Adobe Systems has added to the quiver of Photoshop CS4 Extended Edition in recent years has been the "stack mode" and its special filters.  If images are captured with precise alignment, Photoshop can take this "stack" of images and process the individual pixels.  A maximum filter will  yield the brightest value of that pixel position from all the images in the stack.  The minimum filter will do the opposite, while the median filter falls in between.  The latter is of great use when you want to photograph a subject that has people or objects moving within the frame.  With enough exposures, you can make them all disappear from the final output image.

These three images here are of some rocks off Point Lobos, California (near Carmel).  A series of nine images stacked together.  Everything about the images is identical, save for the TIME that they were taken.  The first is with the maximum filter applied, and all of the surf (bright white) and the white birds show up in abundance.  Remember the birds have been multiplied as they were flying, so it is likely nine times as many birds as in a single photograph.  The median filter leaves the image in a slightly more natural state but removes much of the chaos of the image.  

The minimum (bottom left) shows the darkest part of the rocks without the white surf, and a few dark birds as well.  Of the three I find this one the most interesting as brighter objects tend to be retained on our retina and memory longer than do the darker ones.  That is to say we can imagine the maximum and median images easier than the minimum, dark image.  I think it has become my "art" at this point, it is mine.

I have had a lot of discussion about this image in my Caribbean gallery so I am going to elaborate more on it.  I did an exploratory trip of the Caribbean in 1978 on an old 1930's schooner for six weeks.  I traveled from the Grenadines to Antigua.  May 15, 1978 was the first time I saw English Harbor (I kept an extensive written log so I know the dates).  There were not any boats in the outer harbor then (lower part of the image with a lot of anchored sailboats) and I took a small dinghy and rowed over to the far end of the bay.  For the next few hours I snorkeled the entire length of the shallow bay, repeatedly diving to the bottom.  The whole expanse of water was full of shimmering schools of juvenile fish, and with each plunge toward the bottom the fish would open a "hole" to let me through and then close behind me, covering my view of the surface.  It was magical.  I was 28 years old and had been free diving and SCUBA diving since my mid-teens in California, but I had never experienced anything like this.  It was an enthralling, interactive contact with nature.   I did not visit this harbor again until 1990 when it became my first landfall after sailing across the Atlantic.  Another visually intoxicating experience with the elements. This trip was only my third visit over this 31 year history.  I knew that there were steel drum bands playing on Shirley Heights on Sunday evenings, having been there before, so we set off just before sunset in Pele's Taxi, the driver a local personality.  I knew the view, I was armed with a basket full of memories and I knew exactly want I wanted to convey in an image.   Which I might add as was quite different from the throng of commotion behind me... a hundred steel drums, children & adults dancing, beer and wine flowing to the staccato of the drums... even some palm fronds being woven into baskets. 

This image was published in the March 22, 2009 issue of the Austin American Statesman as it won their "Win in a Flash" contest.

Recently I have been going back and looking at some older images that I took with film.  Some of these I can photograph on a lightbox with my Canon 1Ds Mark III using a 100mm macro lens with a 12mm extension tube to get more than 1:1 and shoot within the boundaries of the slide or negative to get a "new crop".  The side benefit of this technique is I can get a RAW image of the old slide and more easily fix any color casts.  On larger transparencies I have to resort to the flat bed scanner, which isn't so bad really is the format is large enough.  The one presented here is a 50 x 120mm positive transparency from a Noblex 150.  When I took the image ten years ago I did not think much of it at the time.  However with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.1 and Photoshop CS4, I can breath new life into images such as these.  It's almost as good as going back.

I stumbled upon a few images that I took last April in Boston, MA.  Hand held HDR images of the Stata Center at MIT.  I could not resist one more try at creating something that seemed out of this world.  It looks like a wild dream of a "space port."

Another angle reminded me of the "warp drive" on Star Trek.  The place is a trip without moving.

Via Louisiana, Avery Island to be specific.  Skip the hot pepper sauce tour, it's just a non-event.  The garden/nature drive ($6.50 per person) is also not really worth it.  I felt like it was just a way to have the public pay for the landscaping of the owner's ground's around their private homes.  I think I saw one of them saying "yahoooooooo" screaming down the bayou water skiing around the alligators.  I could not wait to get out of the place.  Here is my best shot.  My self portrait grip says it all.  Let me out.

Today I shot almost 400 images of a criterium bicycle race here in Austin, Texas.  These athletes are pushed to the limits in the 100 degree plus (F) temperatures. This was my favorite of the day.  Ally Brandt of Austin, Texas.

A few weeks ago I finished a one week photography workshop put on by Jay Maisel (of Spring Street in New York City) within the parameters of the venue offered by Vancouver Workshops in British Columbia, Canada.  Jay still has me framing photos better in my mind.  I am grateful for that.  It was a week outside the envelope of my experience.  I need that too.  I have learned from that as it grinds against what is easy.

Vancouver offers a lot of easy shots for photography, not the least of which is Stanley Park on the western edge of the metropolis.  Here is my favorite sunset of the trip by the restaurant, Sequoia Grill (highly recommended).  I have posted some photos at this link.  Steve Ginn also posted his travel log here.  My thanks to Chris Ogden for organizing this trip, it was a superb learning experience.

Last week I took up a new hobby, primarily in the hope of giving me a stable and portable platform on the water for photography.  It should be fun if I don't get too tense.

 
The Stata Center at MIT, named for Ray and Maria Stata, continues to fascinate me as I process the images from this trip.  Only yesterday I met an employee of Analog Devices, Mr. Stata's company, here in Austin. The building's architecture is a tremendous statement to the thinking processes that go into conceiving new ideas, natural or artificial.  On the natural side, there is one image from the beach just north of Woods Hole.  Enough to make one ponder the sea as well.

It's a cloudy and somewhat biting day here, but less rain than yesterday. Perhaps I'll start a novel like Lord Byron and Mary Shelley. A few places around here make you feel like it is 1816 again. We're off to Martha's Vineyard tomorrow for the day.

I have not had any beans yet, but lots of Chinese tea and great architecture.  Boston is a wonderful town.  A quick walk across the Boston Common and we were in Beacon Hill.  Almost immediately a local resident who was walking his dog sparked a conversation with us and started giving me some of the local history and culture.  Within seconds he said "follow me" and led us to some of the great architecture of the city.  Some blocks later having parted ways with my first host, a gracious lady coming home struck up a conversation as she entered her home.  She said "Oh you're from Austin, the people there are different from the rest of Texas aren't they?".  I said "yes, we didn't vote for George".

So much history here.... I walked 12+ miles on the first day, and 9+ on the second.  The whole of the "Freedom Trail" to Bunker Hill Monument, the USS Constitution, water shuttle back to downtown, Boston Common down Commonwealth Avenue, over to Newbury... across Harvard Bridge, and like a magnetic pull I was drawn to Frank Gehry's architectural masterpiece on the MIT Campus.  Then back to the city across the Charles River and a sail boat race.  Boston has it all.  Tomorrow I am off to Woods Hole, MA.  More from there....

A year ago today, I was pondering a lot of cold thoughts.  Most due to the weather and not neurons.  The Antarctica video is still in progress... but with the help of a talented documentary maker (we were working on it today), it may actually be finished before I do it again in HD.  Meanwhile, I have uploaded an odd collection of West Texas images, a few of which I really like.  They can be found here.

A wonderful start for 2008.  My Iceland travel story was just published in the JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF PANORAMIC PHOTOGRAPHERS.  Here is the link to the full story on the IAPP web site.  If that fails to load, here is the PDF on my server. 

2007 is gone.  What a year.  Remember: Drive the road like you know where it is going.  Sometimes it turns out that you do.  In any event, the view is grand! I hope everyone finds their cloud over the horizon. - rj.

Landmannalaugar, Iceland. '07.

Christmas has past, and News Years is upon us.  So I have been reflecting some on the past year's images.  A few from the Caribbean (right) had never been touched before [night time shot with my little Canon SD800, Gustavia, St. Barthélemy, FWI].  Several more can be found here in this gallery.  The most interesting perhaps is a Flash VR of five images taken in 1984 of Baie St. Jean, St. Barthélemy.  Taken a decade before Apple Computer invented QTVR.  CLICK HERE, it is a window into the past, everything but the pecan pie at Chez Francine on the beach.  In 2008 I'll go back and make an update.  Happy New Year.

A nice surprise, my short article for the new magazine EVERYWHERE was included.  If you hurry you can get a discount on the subscription until December 31st.  My article is the first past the table of contents, the one with the big white iceberg!  Pages 14 & 15, the full issue can be found here on their web site.

I went to a Remote Control Aircraft Park, airport really, last week.  Flight commencement was supposed to start about 9am, but like JFK Airport, there were delays.  I was restricted from getting a vantage point that would have eased the sun's morning angle in my face, so I made the best of it.  An hour of roasting in the morning rays were about all I could handle, but it was quite the sight to see there on the tarmac.  Scaled down versions of some classic aircraft, and most all of them would fly.  There were even a few experimentals, like this powered hang glider, whose creator said he had about 500 hours in building it.  Some had sponsors, and some did not.  Or perhaps they just liked beer and put the name on it anyway.  In any event, it was a beautiful display of dedication and workmanship on their part.  The crowd was electric with excitement for the first flights.  Some were prepared for the morning glare as evidenced by my friend's son.

Photoshop World was over today.  I saw several familiar faces, met a few new folks, and learned a few new things.  Curiously most of what I learned this time was about video.  Time Lapse.... and it really looks fun in Photoshop to export SLR images to HD video.  Can't wait to try it.  Meanwhile, I have set my sights high, and these instruments I saw on the trip here are the tools to do just that.  The Very Large Array, west of Socorro, New Mexico.

Tomorrow morning I depart for Photoshop World.  A journey to let me explore my creative side in new ways.  I am always ready to embrace them.  The image at the left was my pilot on a balloon ride in Snowmass Village, Colorado in 1995.  As the sun rose, I asked her to go to the far side of the balloon and express to me how she felt.  She loves ballooning.