Welcome to My View

Hello and welome to My View for Monday, June 23, 2009.

Hello Everyone,

I hope you had a great weekend.

Craig Tanner, a fantastic teacher and great friend with whom I work teaching workshops and on The Mindful Eye, and I spent the weekend with a great group of people here in Atlanta at our first Inspirational Weekend with The Mindful Eye. It was a lot of fun, we saw many old friends and made some new ones. Thank you to all who participated!!

Today’s image is a whimsical shot I took in Death Valley earlier this year in the days after the Death Valley Workshop when I was out shooting for myself. I came across this piece of wood in the desert near the Devil’s Corn Field area and immediately laughed out loud when I saw it — crazy woman, standing in the middle of the desert, laughing to herself!!

I keep coming back to this image as I scan images for preparing workshop presentations or for My View. Today, I’m in a lighthearted mood and decided to post it for your amusement.

As always, your comments and critiques are most welcome.

Death Valley Dragon

Death Valley, CA
Canon 1Ds Mark II, Canon 16-35 2.8L lens at 16mm, ISO 100, f/8, 1/45 sec, Bogen Neotec tripod.

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Hello and welome to My View for Wednesday, March 18, 2009.

Who Makes the Image

Hello Everyone,

A belated Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you all!!

Later this week, Craig Tanner and I will conduct our first Next Step workshop for 2009. This is a special workshop that is all about creativity and finding the fears that hold you back as an artist, and one that Craig and I both enjoy teaching immeasurably.

As I prepare for this workshop, one of the things that came to mind was the question “Who Makes the Image?” Does your camera create the image you captured? Did you create this image? Did it come from somewhere outside of the person that is you? These are questions that artists have posed for some time now — where does the creativity come from?

As I pondered these thoughts on this beautiful spring day in Atlanta, I was reminded of an image I snapped during our recent Death Valley workshop, attended by an amazing group of photographers. We were photographing a gorgeous sunset from Dante’s View, high (5475 feet) along the crest of the Black Mountains of the Armagosa Mountain Range that form the east wall of Death Valley. From this peak, one can see the lowest point in the park, Badwater at 282 feet below sea level, to the highest point, Telescope Peak at 11,331 across the Valley in the Panamint Mountain Range.

One of our participants had been photographing this brilliant sunset and stepped away from the camera for a moment, leaving me wondering who was creating the image.

As always, your comments and critiques are most welcome.

Who Makes the Image

For a larger view

Dante’s View, Death Valley National Park
Death Valley, California
Canon 1Ds Mark II, Canon 28-70mm L lens at 38mm, ISO 1600, 1/250 sec, f/8 and a half, handheld.

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Hello and welome to My View for Tuesday, March 11, 2009.

In a Moment, Everything Changes

Hello Everyone,

I apologize for my long absence from My View. Since I last posted back in January, I have been extremely busy and much has happened.

First, I have been busy with The Mindful Eye as we launched our 2009 workshop season with the Death Valley National Park workshop in late February. We had a great group of participants and, once again, a great workshop in this exotic and other worldly place. I will show some images from this national park in the next few posts to My View. I’ve also been working on getting us ready for the rest of our spring workshops coming up. And, I’ve started a series of tutorials, posted on The Mindful Eye, for the beginning user of Lightroom.

The image today is not from Death Valley, but is an image that I took from the valet parking area in front of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, where we stayed on the night before we flew out of Las Vegas on our way back to Atlanta. I had the Lensbaby Composer on my camera and the moon was just over the hotel on the horizon to the left of a spot light that was beaming up from the hotel. The blue of the background night sky and the yellow of the part of the hotel that was in my image made this such an “other worldly” image and seemed most appropriate after coming out of the other-worldly Death Valley National Park. It is always a bit of a shock to me to drive out of Death Valley and back to Vegas where one’s view of reality changes in just a few hours.

As always, your comments and critiques are most welcome.

Altered View of Reality

Outside of the Luxor Hotel
Las Vegas, Nevada
Canon 1Ds Mark II, Lensbaby Composer with 2.8 ring, ISO 1600, 1/15 sec, handheld.

Another change to my reality came last Thursday morning when my American Eskimo Dog and loyal friend and companion of nine years was killed in an accident in front of my house. Everything changed in an instant. I felt as if I had been hit by the truck that took my Riley’s life. After a few days, the earth has stopped shaking so violently, but my reality has been altered and I’ve not quite adjusted to it yet. This image of Riley was taken a while back as he slept on one of his favorite places, the back of my sofa. I so appreciate all the messages of support that I received from my family, friends, neighbors and those posted to The Mindful Eye community.

Go hug your family, including your pets, today, let them know how much you love them. Everything can change in a instant.

My Riley

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Hello and welome to My View for Monday, December 29, 2008.

I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas and Holiday Season!! As you can see from the time between postings, I took a break from photography last week and concentrated on friends and family. I did not take a single shot during Christmas celebrations!! I hope all of you had a wonderful time with your family and friends during this season.

Today’s image is another from the San Xavier del Bac Mission just south of Tucson, Arizona. As my friend, Suzanne, and I were leaving the mission from a short visit in early December, I saw this beautiful barrel cactus showing off it’s lovely bright yellow fruit. Behind the barrel cactus, a purple prickly pear cactus was displaying it’s lovely purple pads, making a great background for the green and yellow of the barrel cactus. So, of course, I had to stop and click off a few images.

As with the healthy cacti and their fruit, I wish you all a healthy and happy 2009 in every way.

As always, I welcome your comments and critiques as they serve to make me a better photographer and a better person.

Thank you for visiting My View.

San Xavier Cacti

San Xavier del Bac Mission, Tucson, Arizona
Canon 1Ds Mark II, Canon 50mm 1.4L lens, ISO 400, f/2.8, 1/250 sec, handheld.

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Hello and welome to My View for Thursday, December 18, 2008.

Today’s image is another of the San Xavier del Bac Mission just south of Tucson, Arizona. I made a brief visit to this lovely church during a long weekend visit to Tucson a week and a half ago. This image, hopefully, begins to show the reason the mission is called The White Dove of the Desert. As I noted last week, the church is undergoing a long restoration process.

This image is from the left side of the church, looking at the left tower. It is a combination of two images, stitched together in Photoshop, in order to get more of the tower than I could get with the lens I was using at the distance I was standing from the tower.

As always, I welcome your comments and critiques as they serve to make me a better photographer and a better person.

Thank you for visiting My View.

San Xavier del Bac

San Xavier del Bac Mission, Tucson, Arizona
Canon 1Ds Mark II, Canon 50mm 1.4L lens, ISO 400, f/6.7, 1/500 sec, handheld.
Combination of two images, stitched together vertically

Hello and welome to My View for Thursday, December 12, 2008.

I missed posting an entry to My View last week because I traveled to Tucson, AZ where I had the opportunity to photograph the holiday performances of the Tucson Desert Harmony Chorus, an award winning chapter of Sweet Adelines International. A very good friend of mine sings with the chorus. The chorus needs some new publicity photos and invited me out to capture their two holiday performances. Meeting these ladies and hearing them sing was an amazing experience. If you live in or around the Tucson area, you should definitely try to catch a performance.

The day after the performance, my friend took me out for a bit of sight seeing. We went down to San Xavier del Bac Mission in the Santa Cruz Valley south of Tucson, on the lands of the native Tohono O’odham (or Papago) people. We had passed this mission going back and forth to Tubac on several of my trips to Tucson in the past, but had never had time to stop. The mission is being restored at the moment, but is still a beautiful sight in the midst of the desert. Most of the outside of the church is normally brilliant white and it is know as the White Dove of the Desert. I did not get many images that I really liked of the outside, with the restoration going on, but did photograph some “small scenes”.

This particular one is of the candles lit at one of several alters inside the sanctuary of the church. The warm glow of the candles in the darkened sanctuary created a peaceful and quiet feeling within me.

As always, your comments and critiques are most welcome. They serve to help make me a better photographer and a better person.

Thank you for visiting My View.

San Xavier Alter Candles

San Xavier del Bac Mission, Tucson, Arizona
Canon 1Ds Mark II, Canon 50mm 1.4L lens, ISO 3200, f/2.5, 1/1500 sec, handheld.
Combination of two images

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Hello and welome to My View for Monday September 1, 2008.

As I continue work on the workshops scheduled for 2009, I reviewed a lot of images from previous trips to our venues last week. I was looking for images that showed an aspect of each venue that one doesn’t normally see in publicity photos.

I found this image of the sun setting on the cliffs above Golden Canyon in Death Valley National Park that l like. It is an image that shows something other than the salt flats and the dunes. I hope you enjoy seeing another view of this magical and exotic park.

Your comments and suggestions are most welcome as they help me grow as a photographer and a person.

Thank you for visiting My View.

Golden Canyon

From down in Golden Canyon, Death Valley National Park, November 2005
Canon 5D, 28-70 mm 2.8L lens at 28mm , f/11, 1/2 sec, ISO 100, camera mounted on tripod

Golden Canyon Alternative (see my post below)

Hello and welome to My View for Sunday, March 16, 2008.

This week’s post is a continuation of images from the recent Death Valley workshop that I taught with Craig Tanner for Radiant Vista.

The skies of Death Valley are, very often, severely clear. On this particular day, Thursday evening of the workshop, we left the group in the field just a bit early to make reservations in the dining room so that we could all eat together on the last night of the workshop. As we left the our shooting location, we wondered if the clouds in the sky were going to “pop” at sunset for the workshop participants. When we approached Stovepipe Wells, where we were staying, the sky started changing to reflect the sunset light in the amazing clouds that were present that evening.

As instructors, do not shoot on workshop sessions for ourselves. We are there for the participants, not to do our own photography work. When this sky started to change, we realized that we were “without participants” and quickly stopped on the side of the road and captured a “grab shot”.

Sometimes the universe just simply graces us with gifts. And, I am always extremely grateful for every one of them.

As always, your comments and critiques are most welcome.

Thank you for visiting My View.

“Fire on the Panamints”

Canon 1Ds Mark II, 70-200 mm 2.8 L lens at 190mm; f/4.0 at 1/45 second, ISO 800; hand held

Hello and Welcome to My View for Thursday, March 13, 2008

Each day, no matter what is going on in my life, I try to set aside some time to express my gratitude to the universe for all that I’ve been given, for all the close friends who support me on my journey to become a better photographer and teacher of photography, for everything in my life..

Last week, I had the pleasure of teaching a photography workshop in Death Valley with Craig Tanner. For this, I’m most grateful. I’m even more grateful for the participants of this workshop. Each and every one of them brought their own skills and energy to the workshop, and graciously shared with everyone.

One of the most meaningful things that happened was the standing ovation Craig and I received at the end of the workshop. This is the second year in a row where this happened on the Death Valley workshop and I am extremely touched. To each and every one of the participants in this year’s March workshop, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

My presentation to the workshop was on alternate ways to shoot landscapes. One of my favorite ways is to pan across a landscape, using a slow shutter speed. This shot was taken at the Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes on March 7, the last morning of the workshop.

Your comments and critiques are always appreciated and welcomed.

Thank you for visiting My View.

“Mesquite Flat Pan” Death Valley National Park, March 2008

Canon 1Ds Mark II, 50 mm 1.4 lens; f/22 at 1/3 second panning camera while shutter open.

I am traveling back to Atlanta from Death Valley by car with Craig Tanner. We are in Port Aransas, Texas for a couple of days where Craig is finishing shots for a commercial job. I’ll post some about this trip in the next few days.