Simply Amazing

The above photo was take at the Grand Rapids Art Museum. It is a pencil drawing titled Calvary, American Officers 1921. The artistic tool of choice by the author Chris LaPorte was a 2h drawing pencil. This is just a section of the entire piece as you get a better look at the breadth of the work in the image below.

These are the same photo except the top one was corrected for distortion in Lightroom. The actual drawing goes out of frame in the lower photo. Having the people in the picture gives some for of scale of the work. Below is a closer image of some of the men in the drawing. One of the real amazing aspects of this drawing is how the shadow of the sun presented nearly split lighting and eventually came to broad lighting on the left side of the drawing.

Finally the image below is a close up of one of the officers just to show the detail that was given to each stroke of the pencil. The vision and touch LaPorte had with the 2h pencil is... Simply amazing.

I can think of no better way to close out this post than to present here the Work Statement by the author:

E Pluribus Unim - Of many one.

Many marks make ip the drawing. Many men make up the regiment. Many lines make up the face. Many wrinkles make up the shirt. Many characters make up the story. Many experiences male up the event. Many minutes make up the hour, day, year.

This drawing is both a representation of the people, their legacy and the countless organization of pencils marks that make up a composition. It is about the process of drawing, and also a portrait if these men who must have survived horrific events to preserve what we experience today. The drawing is an exploration of character and an exploration of mark-making to revel that character.

It is also a tribute to lasting legacy. I wanted these men to be life size, so that their impact may be immediate and tangible. They are her and now but also way back when.

Chris LaPorte - Artist

Take Care... Doug

Regatta Central

Last week we took a trip out to Maryland to visit our two oldest children. We also brought our youngest (if 23 works) for the occasion. Saturday was a milestone birthday for myself and the whole thing almost did not happen as I was supposed to shoot a wedding on the 23rd. In the last few weeks of the engagement things fell apart and it did not happen so it was off to MD. We got out there early enough on Wednesday for Tom (23) and I to ride along during a regatta in the Chesapeake Bay off of Annapolis MD.

I had been around some regattas in the British Virgin Islands a number of years ago but this was something quite different. In the BVI is was basically a single class race. This was a multi-class with different starting times and course distances that would end us all up in the Annapolis Harbor around the same time.

I took this picture after we had started our class and you can see there are at least two other classes down wind. The green buoy in the center is our turn point. You might be able to make out the red turn buoy on the left side of the image. What is really crazy was when we were had the spinnaker hoisted some of the others were making their way back.



You can see in the image to the right a returning boat coming close along our starboard side.

The boat with the red and blue spinnaker is not in our class but going the same direction.

Take a look at the image below where I have isolated the real traffic. I was shooting with a Nikon Coolpix L22 which did a nice job but even at 1/320th second exposure it did not freeze the motion and so there is some blur here.

Yep the blue and white spinnaker was not the real traffic. The returning boat split the difference between us and the bot that wasn't 30 feet away from us. Everyone took it in stride like it was nothing. Now flying planes has a lot of nautical similarities, this is really where it has to stop. We just don’t run that close to each other, at least not in opposite directions.

Anyhow it was a real blast with all the boats tacking and jibing into the harbor for the end of the race. As the boat owner does not keep his boat in Annapolis we had about 45 minutes to travel before we got it back home. While all the other boats were docked or mored and the occupants no doubt tipping back a few cold ones we had the following experience.

It just doesn’t get much better than that.


Take care... Doug

Didn't Get a Single Thing

If you are sharp and have been with me for a while, you will realize the image above is from a different post I did on jpeg shooting. So why am I reusing an image? Did you read the title to the post today. Hello?

Last Friday was an absolutely beautiful day in Washington D.C. We were visiting some of our family and celebrating or grandsons first birthday. With the weather being as nice as it was and the fact that we had hit the mother load on the Cherry Blossoms in Washington, we had to go into the city to get some shots. The two main areas for the Cherry Blossoms are at the around the Tidal Basin at the Jefferson memorial (above) and the reflecting pond and the Lincoln memorial.

It was a great plan with a couple exceptions. First there were six of us and the baby. Little mom did not want to take the baby on the Metro (subway) as he had not been feeling well earlier in the week and I could not blame her for that. Second was the fact that in addition to the seven of us there must have been half the population of the know world or at least most of Japan that migrated to Washington D.C. to see what we wanted to see.

Looking at the map above, the red line which is a little over a mile, took nearly two hours to manage. In addition to that the other car in our group stopped in the middle of traffic just past the "T" in the road. We managed to get up to the round about that was closed and pulled out of traffic to wait for the the rest of our party and come up with a game plan. This is represented by the blue dot on the map.

No this is where it got a little shaky. At the Independence Ave intersections was a couple of the Park Police' finest trying to manage what was really an unmanageable task. That of traffic management at a time where there was too much traffic for the roadway system, but I guess that is a normal occurrence in the metro D.C. area and one of the main reasons we enjoy our life in West Michigan. Anyhow Deputy Dog saw us sitting there and was not happy and pointed for us to get back into traffic. My options were to:

1. Get back into traffic
2. Get out of the car and go talk to the officer; or 
3. Stay in the car and wait for him to come to us.

Well this must have been one of those times that judgement was not to be found in my brain. My decision to stay in the car may have been safe from a non aggressive move such as the second choice. Clearly I should have just got back into traffic an been on my way. The only problem was that two of our occupants had gone back to see about the other car. I was simply going to wait for them.

I don't remember the officers name (which is probably a good thing) but he as a motor policeman so I will just call him Poncherello because he reminded me of Erik Estrada from the 1977 series "CHiPs". So Ponch is strutting up to the car and verbally lays into me. I my feeble attempt to get a word in to explain the situation, I realized he had no interest in hearing my plea. Guess that would be saved for the judge. With my drivers license in hand, Ponch walks back to his motorcycle and retrieves his ticket book. Seeing as how I was going to get a ticket anyhow, I was sitting there thinking of how I could politely rebut his refusal to listen to reason. Here is where keeping my mouth shut probably was the best thing I could do. Ponch went to the back of the vehicle to write down the  tag number and came up to the window and told me that there are places to pull off and this was not one of them. I could have made a real fool out of myself and told him that in fact there were no other places to pull off because they were either taken or closed (by the police). But I remained silent and he gave me my licensee and told me to get moving. Not ticket. My wife figured that while he was at the back of the car he looked up and saw that his absence from the intersection he was supposed to be working was not getting the attention it so deserved and it was a higher priority that writing some idiot a citation. Personally I think when he saw the Florida tag with a Michigan drivers license he realized hi efforts were futile and that he would simply let it go. Either way I was happy

The other car got a jump and we all ended up back at the house after seven hours of driving a total of 85 miles. And how many images did I get on the 5D Mk II. Zilch, Nada, None, Zippo!!! I didn't get a single thing.

Take care all... Doug

Catch Mom

Before we took of for Hawaii I had the opportunity to do a baby shoot. The mom knew we were going to be gone and it would be a couple of weeks before I was able to process them. That time is now and I am having such fun working with these images. I shot them on a Canon 5D Mk II with both a EF 70-200 f/2.8 L IS lens and the EF 50 f/1.4. Lighting was with a pair of Elinchrom RX600's with a 39" Octa Bank and a 14x35" strip box on a Manfrotto Boom Arm.

Little Gabriel kept his attention on mom while I shot away. We were laughing so much during this sequence as he just drooled away. Click on the image to see how clear the bubbles are.

So here I am working on these images and I saw something that exemplifies the detail this amazing camera can capture. In the first image on the left eye if you look close, you can see the reflection of Gabriel' mom in his iris. Well, just take a look at the image below.

That is really something. Obviously this has had the crop beat out of it as this image is 522x485 or 253KB where as the original image is 5616x3744 or a little over 21MB in size. That makes this 1.2% of the original image and it is still respectable. Ok, I'm done with the geek rant.

So if you couldn't figure out the tittle of the post, you now know.

Take care and I'll cya later... Doug

Timing is Everything!

Once in a while the sun, moon, and stars all line up for you. This past Christmas was one of those times. The fact that all three of our children, one husband and our first grandson was going to be in for Christmas... Well, what can I say, their Mom and I were very happy. So there was the sun.

Now for the moon. I had a few items for a studio I have been setting up downstairs and have been flip flopping back and forth between what lighting I was going to go with. Alien Bees, Profoto (that was the spectrum) or something in between. The Bees were ok, I have an 800 Ws unit that I have to adjust every time I change something. This is common for studio lights and as I understand one of the purposes for an assistant. I think technology has moved fare enough that we can do better. I found that in the Swiss. It was two days before Christmas when the large B&H package came to the door with the Elinchrom lighting kit. I covered the set-up in a previous post. click [here]. So the Sun an Moon were now in place.

The stars almost slipped by as on Christmas day we all went downstairs to get the family portrait done. We shot, and shot. Probably 70-80 images in all, we gat about all permutations of people shot. Tim our oldest and least willing to have his picture taken was in a hurry to go visit a friend and had taken off when he felt it was over. We were finishing up when Sandy said that we have not taken a picture with just the three of them. Oh well, guess that one was a loss... Or was it? All of a sudden we heard the tromping of Tim' feet down the stairs... He had forgotten something. We had not broken down the set-up yet and we called him over for the picture. Yes the image above is the only picture we took. All the stars were in their proper place that day.

This image will be sent off to be printed on a 24x30 canvas and I will have to let you know how that turns out. The camera specs are this; shot with a Canon 5D Mk II with a Ef 24-70 f/2.8L USM lens at 1/40th f/14 at an ISO of 200. A red gelled speedlight triggered with a PocketWizard lit the background . The two Elinchrom 600RX monolights were triggered with the Skyport system.

It was a fun day to work with the family and we got some really great shots from the experience.

That will do it for today! Cya... Doug

For more information on our photography, visit us at peekfoto.

Two Blog Week

I think this is my worst unannounced week of blogging since I started. Got won in MOnday, Tuesday and Wednesday went down the chute, today I am wedging it into the day and tomorrow it just isn't going to happen. I will be running around for a wedding we are a part of on Saturday. So here goes...

Last Saturday I got up early to shoot a golf outing the College/Career group from our church was having. Early yes, it was still dark when I arrived at the course. Basically it was going to be an ugly day, no sun, drizzle if not showers. Yuck! It would give me an opportunity to try out my new bag, a Tenba Messenger bag I picked up at one of the seminars last week.

So the shoot went really well, I had a cart to run around with which mad a really good support for the mono-pod I had with me. Here are some shots for the day. All the long shots were done with an EF 70-200 f/2.8 L IS with a 1.4 teleconverter. This first shot was from halfway up the fare way shooting towards the tee box.

This next shot is a par 3 and shot from the tee box. The compression is really obvious with the tele glass. It looks like it's a chip shot but is actually 130+ yards.

Here is another shot racked all the way out to get the golfers teeing. Again the compression is quite dramatic.

This next one is with the EF 24-105 f/4 IS L lens. All of the shots were on a Canon 40D as I wanted the crop for the reach. It was nice with the 6 fps burst rate I could get shots like the one below. This was of the Pastor teeing (duh!) off on the 14th hole and I just ordered a print of this to give him for his office.

Ok, Lets all go Aaaaaah! Is't he so cute!

Yes he is just a bit blurred but that just shows movement. Not really thats just a photographic excuse. Fact of the matter, I was driving the cart while holding onto the camera on the right seat and this little guy goes squirting out in front of the cart. I let the cart coast and use both hands to steady the camera as best i could. Now that's what I call an action shot!

Like I said, I will not be around tomorrow so it will be Monday before I am back!

Cya... Doug

Family Traditions

It's kind of funny how when you are young and know everything how little importance you placed on traditions. Sure we all grow up and want our spouses to cook the way our moms did or do something special our fathers did. Sometimes it works out and sometimes not.

This one seems to have stuck. It was probably fifteen years ago a family at our church invited us to go to Grand Haven Mi on the first Saturday in August for the best fireworks we would see for a long time. Not knowing exactly what to expect it was fantastic. There were quite a few people but it was a bunch of fun. The beach, Lake Michigan, the pier, fireworks, and of course a Chiwawa Chili Dog at Butches Beach Burrito. Ah yes, the last big event of summer.

This year was special in that we get to pass down to another generation this tradition. Yes it was colder than normal, a little drizzle and a bunch of wind, the fireworks still were fantastic.

A couple of years ago we started going out to Grand Haven on the Monday before the fireworks for the "Parade of Boats". I guess two boats constitutes a parade.

The photo above was of a Coast Guardsman tossing the line ashore. This was the Ice Breaker United States Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw. This is the second version of this vessel as of 2006. Click on the link to see more of the history on the Mackinaw.

The photo below is of the Bristol Bay. A buoy tender based over in Detroit. This was the first time I had seen the Bristol. These are magnificent vessels wo see maneuver the narrow waters of the Grand River.

I had a good opportunity to grab a snap of my most better half. I was shooting with the 40D and the EF 70-200 f/2.8 L IS lens. A little fill flash to work with the hard mid day sun did the trick. I was standing about ten feet away so I could zoom and get a nice bokeh.

I guess that will wrap it up for this week. Enjoy the weekend and we will be back on Monday.

Cya... Doug

The Rest of The Story

This is the back story or as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story. Yesterdays post Getting A Jump, I know why do I have a hyperlink to a post you can just scroll down to?Answer; What if you were at this post by another link. Hmm... Anyhow it had a lead in to how and why I got these shots.

First the why. I had left the Interstate in search of a location referred to by one of those brown historic site signs. Just exiting a town in western Maryland, I was crossing a rather high bridge and noticed this train yard below and though I might stop by on the way back to the Interstate.

I did make it to the rather anticlimactic "historic site" and headed back and did make it to the turn-off to what was a truck staging area for coal delivery. It looked like it had been some time since coal had actually been exchanged so I pulled into the staging area. With camera in hand, I made my way over to the tracks and started grabbing some shots. 

Things were going quite well when I noticed what looked to be a semi-official looking truck approaching from down the way. For some reason the rail system people do not like people hanging around. Especially tyrannical biased photographers. I ran into the same thing out in Portland last September when an Amtrak guard got a little fussy about getting too close to the tracks. Oh well, I am not going to get bent out of shape over it so in this case I simply moved towards the car and stowed my gear. After all, I had gotten the shots I wanted.

I got back down to Columbus last night and it looks like I will be doing a couple portrait sessions while I am here this week. That should be fun!

Have a great Tuesday all... Doug