An Eclectic Mind

Action photos at the lake.

I spent the July 4 holiday weekend at Lake Pateros in Washington State. Most of the time I wasn’t flying — I spent 3.1 hours on Friday drying cherries — I was holed up at the extremely pleasant (and helicopter-friendly) Lake Pateros Motor Inn. Mike and I lounged a bit on the upper deck patio walkway right outside our room. The lake was wild with boaters and jet skiers and wake boarders. On a whim, I took out my Nikon D80 camera and its 70-300 mm lens. I set the camera to continuous shooting, zoomed all the way, and started snapping photos.

To my surprise, a few of them came out pretty darn good.

I continued snapping photos throughout the weekend. On Saturday, Mike and I took a helicopter flight around central Washington and we took turns snapping photos out of the helicopter. (He’s a pilot, too, and we had the dual controls in, so I had a rare opportunity to use both hands and decent equipment for aerial photography with doors off.) Some of those photos were pretty good, too, like Mike’s shot of downtown Chelan.

This all goes back to my theory that if you have decent digital photographic equipment, are in a good place to take photos, have good photographic conditions (i.e., lighting), and enough storage space on your memory card that you don’t have to skimp on the number of photos you take, you have to get some good shots. Mike and I took over 200 shots from the air during a 3-hour flight the other day. I bet we only wind up with about a dozen really good ones.

Anyway, I put the Lake Pateros photos online on a new Web site I’m experimenting with: Flying M Photos. I’m hoping to build up a library of stock and fine art images, as well as event images like this, for sale. With luck, this will fund my photography habit, which is quickly becoming quite expensive.

Were you out on Lake Pateros during the July 4 weekend? Check the site to see if I got an action photo of you! If I did and you want to buy a copy to remember your day at the lake, use the coupon code LAKEP to save 20% on your photo order.

A place for my best photos.

I’m an amateur photographer and, like many amateur photographers, I sometimes get lucky and capture a better-than-average image. While I’ve often shown my best photos here, I’ve been wanting to put them in a place of their own for a while.

I don’t like Flickr. I don’t think I want my photos as part of what seems to primarily be a social networking service. I do have a Flickr account, but I rarely put photos there.

I did set up a RedBubble account. When I first signed up, the service was small and I was very impressed by the quality of the work there. These weren’t snapshots and doodlings. These were pieces of artwork. And, when I ordered some cards and framed prints, I was extremely pleased with the high quality of what I received. Cards were printed on thick photo paper. Framing was professionally done and properly sealed in back. This was how I wanted my best work to be presented — among other high quality work, available for sale at reasonable prices for high quality product. I wrote about my initial experiences and excitement about RedBubble here.

Well, RedBubble has changed. As the service grew, it became just another image-based social networking service. A mutual admiration society where many people were uploading images that, in my opinion, were pretty crappy and other people were telling them how good they were in five word praises. Photos over-corrected with Photoshop. Cell phone images! Besides, the management of RedBubble seemed more interested in “art” than photos and really pushed that kind of work. I’m not an artist and really didn’t like much of what the RedBubble folks were pushing. The print quality, however, remains good, so for now, I’ll continue to upload my images there.

But I didn’t want to use RedBubble as a showcase for my photos. I wanted something better. Something more personalized. Something that showcased just my photos.

The answer came a few months ago when the folks at Automattic, makers of WordPress, and eight6 jointly released a theme called Monotone on WordPress.com. I tried it out and liked what I saw. The theme had the amazing ability to sample the colors in an image and choose one as the background for the image. It was like color-coordinating the mat for a matted photo. The results was unique and visually attractive.

But I had a few problems with the WordPress.com-based theme. The biggest problem was the way it handled post tags — it pooled them with tags from all WordPress.com users. So if I tagged an image with the word “Arizona,” clicking a link for that tag in my photoblog post would display posts tagged “Arizona” on all WordPress.com blogs. I was not interested in maintaining tags for the benefit of other WordPress.com users. (Sorry, folks.) And I certainly wasn’t interested in maintaining a photo blog with so many exits to other blogs. So After my initial trial, I stopped posting.

But Friday, I discovered that Monotone had been released for WordPress server installations. I decided to give it a new try by installing it on my server. The result is what you can find at http://photos. marialanger.com/.

I did have some problems with the installation. I think it’s because I followed the instructions to the letter. (Silly me.) When I removed the .htaccess file that had come with the theme and used the Permalinks feature of WordPress.com to create a new one, the problems went away.

Then I was able to customize the theme by making minor changes to its template files. For example, I inserted copyright information and reformatted for lowercase throughout much of the blog. I also made the vertical image format page wider. I’ll continue tweaking — I always do — but for now, I’m pleased with the way it looks.

And most image posts link back to RedBubble, where the image is available for sale in a variety of formats.

I hope you’ll visit Maria’s Pix and participate by commenting on my work. Your feedback will not only help encourage me to stick with it, but will help me to be a better photographer.

I get out and try to photograph the world around me.

I brought my Nikon D80 camera and four of its lenses with me to Washington state. I’ve been out a few times taking photos. I got some nice bird photos on Sunday, but I’ve also taken photos of some less interesting subjects. The other day, on a walk near the golf course late in the day, I got some nice photos of a wheat field and some weeds growing alongside the canal.

I like the wheat field photos. One of the themes I’m always pursuing in my photography is infinity. I like photos of things that seem to go on forever. The fields of wheat, corn, alfalfa, and other crops here are huge and, from the right angles, it’s easy to get a photo of the crop that fills the photo. The photo shown here, shows the deep furrow created by the irrigation circle’s tires as it moves through the field. I have other shots that are just wheat.

Here’s another fill-the-frame image. It’s the bark of a tree alongside the golf course. I love the texture of this. I think it’s a birch tree — most of the bark is white — but the white bark is split, with deep brown-gray cracks. There’s a lot of depth to this. It makes a nice desktop picture. (So does the wheat.)

I took this photo yesterday while on a bike ride. It’s a good example of the kind of farm fields around here. This is an alfalfa field with an irrigation bar on wheels parked on one end. This kind of irritation travels up and down a field — it doesn’t do the circle thing. The alfalfa has been cut and baled. The bales are left out in the field until they can be gathered. While this isn’t an especially good photo, it’s a typical scene in the Quincy area.

Yesterday afternoon, I went back to Quincy Lakes with my camera, 70-300 mm lens, and tripod. Although the lens has image stabilization built in, the tripod really is necessary when you set it to the full 300 mm setting. My goal was to get a photo of a Yellow-headed Blackbird. Not only did I get a photo of the magnificently marked male, but I also got a shot of a female. I got both of these photos from the same place I shot the Redwing Blackbird on Sunday.

I also saw and photographed an American Coot, which is like a duck, and its babies, but none of the shots are good enough to share here. I might go back in a few days and try again. I know where one of the nests are and as the babies begin to mature, I should be able to get better shots of them.

I went out last night to take some photos, too, but I’ll save those for another post.

A few photos of the wildlife I spotted during my day trip to Quincy Lakes.

I spent most of Sunday at Quincy Lakes, a weird area of small lakes nestled among the rocks southwest of Quincy. I brought along my camera and my big lenses. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring along my tripod. But I did manage to get three pretty good shots of the critters flying around there.

I’m pretty sure this is a redwing blackbird. I could be wrong. If anyone knows, please share info in the Comments.

I have no clue what this bird is. I don’t have any of my bird books with me and my Internet connection isn’t as reliable as I need it to be to look things up. Know what it is? Use the Comments link or form.

A butterfly.

Some more photos from my yard.

Yesterday, one of the buds on the saguaro cactus in my front yard bloomed. Today, there were many more blooms. I took this photo from the covered walkway near my front door using a 200mm lens. The blue color of the sky is not enhanced in Photoshop; it’s a direct result of the polarizing filter on the lens.

Saguaro flowers bloom at night and are pollinated by bats. Bees and birds do a bit of pollination during daylight hours. After a day or two in the sun, the flowers wilt. Fruits begin forming shortly thereafter. The fruits are small and hard and, as they ripen, they split open to reveal red pulp. Seeds are tiny — think smaller than poppy seeds on a bagel — and are eaten and passed through by the birds who feast on the fruit.

Keep in mind that this cactus is 15-20 feet tall. The flowers are on top. This is one of the reasons it’s so difficult to get good photos of saguaro flowers — it’s not like you can stand right next to them.

I just ordered a 70-300mm Nikon lens with image stabilization. I think it’ll help me get better shots of things like this. I’m also looking forward to using it on my flight to Washington state this coming weekend.

Related Posts:

• My Cactus is Growing an Arm
• Snake in Cactus (with Photos)