Categories
Photography Travel

Curious avian behavior

Last November when Paula and I were in Rome we saw a fascinating thing: a swirling cloud of birds which, viewed from a distance, looked more like smoke or a swarm of insects than a flock of birds.

flock of birds

Around dusk Paula and I were walking along the wall of Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome when we saw a massive flock of birds, all seeming to converge on the same location.  The birds looked as though they were heading towards a plume of smoke coming up from one of the city’s parks.  The “smoke”, however, was flowing both up and down.  The best way to get a feel for what it looked like is to check out the video Paula shot with our pocket camera.

Starling murmuration from Reeves Little on Vimeo.

Video: Swirling flock of birds in Rome

We still have no idea what was going on.  Our best guess was some sort of feeding frenzy, catching insects which were coming out as the sun went down… but the flock was way up in the air and I think of insects as sticking closer to the earth. Perhaps there are some amateur (or professional) ornithologists out there who can shed some light on this.  Or maybe I should just ask an Italian.


FYI: Castle Sant’Angelo is a huge mausoleum built for Emperor Hadrian.  It was later fortified and used as a defensive position on the Tiber River.  If you’re in Rome we highly recommend visiting the castle in the afternoon as it provides wonderful views of Rome.  As sunset approaches grab a table at the little cafe located on the monument’s wall.  If you’re lucky you’ll get one of the tables facing the Vatican and get some great pictures of St. Peter’s Basilica with the sun setting behind it.

Categories
Life

Happy New Year!

It’s 2007, you know what that means?  My driver’s license expires this year.  I wonder of the California DMV will send me a new DL to my address in Ireland.

It is also that arbitrary time for a portion of the world to reset their calendars and reset their goals.  Yes, New Year’s resolution time.  Resolutions always feel artificial to me… and yet I cant resist the “clean slate” state they represent.  Here’s some stuff I’m going to do this year:

  • Join the gym (and use it at least twice a week)
  • Take more pictures (at least every other day)
  • Spend time reviewing my pictures (instead of just keeping 100% of them)
  • Get back on the Getting Things Done wagon

One of the things I rarely make the effort to do is to go through my pictures after taking them.  I should really get in the habit of tossing out the crap (I’m a horrible pack rat) and cleaning up the good pictures (below are two different compositions of the same shot, the second removes the distracting window from the bottom… though I’m still not sure which I like better 🙂 ).

Statue picture before editing

Roman statue

I hope everyone has a great 2007!

Categories
Idle

Smugmug tip: use keywords

When using photosharing sites on the web most people simply toss up their photos and leave them there.  If you do this (and I admit, I do it for the majority of my pictures) you’re missing out.

Adding keywords to your pictures gives you a whole new way to browse through your memories.  Everyone one is used to looking at a typical photo album… here are pictures of us at Mike’s birthday… here are pictures of us in Disneyland… etc.  Absolutely something people want to do… but also something people have been doing for centuries.

If you apply keywords to your pictures you can also look at a totally different set of pictures.  One thing I learned from my dad is this: if you see a dog you must pet it (I learned other stuff too, but bear with me).  As a result of learning this lesson well I’m starting to end up with a collection of pictures of me petting dogs.  Once you have some keywords you can then combine them with others… so I can see pictures of me petting dogs in South Korea.

Now, don’t feel like you need to go out and add keywords to 100% of your pictures in one go.  It will be overwhelming.  You should, however, start adding them slowly and, as you start to spot things you do frequently, go back and add special keywords like "pet the dog" or "self portrait" (tip: if you want a two (or more) word keyword in smugmug be sure to put quotes around it).

Categories
Photography

Photo tip: get a good, compact flashlight

I’m betting that you, like me, have been to plenty of cool places where your eyes could adjust to a dark space but getting a picture in the poorly-lit space was nigh-on-impossible.  A flash in many cases will create a harsh effect and (if you shouldn’t be taking pictures) may draw unwanted attention (shhh!).  If, however, you carry one of the new, powerful flashlights you can get some great shots.

When Paula and I were in Salzburg we visited the catacombs at St. Peter’s and came across this wonderful altar in a cave that dates back to medieval times.  The room was quite dark with a bit of lighting behind the items of interest.  Fortunately we now carry a great flashlight given to us by Phillip, Paula was able to light the center of the altar while I snapped a couple pictures.

altar

The flashlight was also helpful for examining the faded paintings on the walls (and before you get on us about deteriorating the paintings… Paula has a masters in archival studies, we were sure to not do any damage. :)).  While traveling we’ve used the handy light to look into shadowy nooks, light up hidden signs and generally find our way in the dark.  At first Paula made fun of me for my geeky obsession with carrying the new toy, but she soon came to appreciate the added light-on-demand.


There are a whole mess of HI (high intensity) flashlights out there, but I’m quite smitten with the unit Phillip gave us, the SureFire G2.  It’s carry-on friendly (no complaints from security yet) and despite being very small and light it packs quite a punch – the thing puts out so much power that you can burn yourself if you leave it on too long!

Categories
Photography

What makes an interesting self portrait?

As I was browsing my friend network via my space… yes, I may yet breathe some life back into it… but I digress… I came across this self portrait in Tim’s space:


 timSelfPortrait.jpg


The picture itself wasn’t that striking to me until I read “self-portrait” in the post title.  This got me thinking… what makes an interesting self portrait?


True to my inner geek… admittedly I don’t keep it that deeply hidden, get within 3 feet of me and you’re likely collide, rather suddenly and sharply, with my “inner” geek carelessly strewn about… but once again I digress… true to geeky form I went to the web for answers.  I didn’t go looking for a treatise on the self-portrait, I wasn’t wanting for someone to spell it out for me,  I wanted to look at self portraits to try and understand what grabbed me.


Any image search will return thousands of self portraits… lots of paintings & drawings… fewer photographs.  The photos are, however, what I was looking for and find interesting.  Sure, there are a ton of pictures people took of themselves by holding the camera at arm’s length (and I love ’em, lord knows Paula and I have taken enough of those) but there are occasionally the pictures where you feel the picture contains a bit of “self”.  Self portraits which demonstrate the unique style of the artist (such as paintings by Van Gogh or photos by Warhol) are wonderful  but not quite what I was trying to find.  I was trying to find photos where it looked like the photographer was trying to tell the audience something more than “this is what I look like”.  Paintings, drawings and other “hand-made” likenesses allow the artist to dispense with some real world constraints and give a little glimpse into their inner-self, I want to do something like that with a camera.


I’m always telling myself I’ll start taking more pictures. I’ve been carrying my camera around on a daily basis, trying to keep an eye out for something interesting.  To and from work every day with my camera by my side… and yet… I have taken almost no pictures.  Tim’s picture got me thinking… I’m looking for subject matter… here’s some subject matter I’m carrying with me every day.


A picture taken of me, by me, will, by the very fact I took it, have some of my “self” imbued – it’s unavoidable.  Ask ten people to each take a picture of the same thing and you’ll get ten pictures.  Each picture will be affected by anything from the artist’s personality, sense of composition to things as simple as the height of the photographer (granted only five photos may be truly unique in an artistic sense, but you get my point).  I am going to try to unchain the creativity even more by allowing myself the unfettered use of Photoshop for this project as well.  It will still be a picture… and it will still be of me… but I’m hoping by adding a little “hand-made” to the photography I’ll be able to get closer to the “self” of self portrait than simply snapping a candid of Reeves.


I encourage the viewers at home to play along, I know Tami will be up for it.  I’m sure after I get through the first 4 ideas I have I’ll hit a wall and will need inspiration so I definitely encourage you to send me links to your work… oh, wait,  one exception: Steve, please refrain, I’m still going to therapy to recover from the last self portrait I received from you [shudder]… I’m going to try for a weekly (weakly?) self-portrait and hope my reliability for this project is better than it was for my picture a day for a year attempt which lasted all of 2 months. 


So…  Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more…

Categories
Photography Travel

Pictures from Salzburg trip are posted

It took a day-and-a-half to upload all of them, so that should probably warn you off… there are a ton (583 to be exact).  I’m not really sure you want to go looking at them, it may suck your will to live.  Yep, I said it, I don’t think you can take this many pictures (but SmugMug sure can… I now have uploaded over twelve thousand images and am closing in on 22 gigabytes… not bad for a couple of Jacksons per year).

I’ll post some of my favorite things shortly… but I’m waiting for Paula to make her massive post detailing the whole trip.  She has it all typed up, she just needs to spell check it.  C’mon Paula, now that I’ve outed you, you have to post!

You may proceed if:
a) You want to prove I’ve underestimated you by plowing through half a grand of pictures with no descriptions
b) Salzburg is your home town and you just want to see 574 crappy pictures with a few good ones mixed in
c) You’re a tweaker

For the rest of you, I present a random picture from the gallery:

Random Salzburg picture

Categories
Photography Travel

Back from a great vacation

Yeah, I fell silent there… but for good cause: Paula and I were in Salzburg, Austria for Paula’s Birthday.  It was a fantastic vacation and we now have over 600 pictures to filter and geotag.  Salzburg is a beautiful city and there’s much to tell… but we didn’t get home last night until 1am and after a day at work I’m bushed and heading to bead.  I will, however, leave you with the view which welcomed us to Salzburg.

A picture-perfect start to a great trip.

Categories
Overseen Photography

It’s all been said…

Pictures we took at Ground Zero when we visited in December of 2001.


104-0451_IMG.JPG 104-0461_IMG.JPG


38999920-O.jpg 104-0464_IMG.JPG


More on SmugMug.

Categories
Photography

Great news for those wanting to try SmugMug, no credit card needed now

SmugMug now offers a 14 trial which doesn’t require a credit card.  You now have no excuse to go try out what I think is the best photo site on the net.


Back when Omar turned me on to SmugMug a credit card was required to do the free trial, turning a bunch of people away from the site.  While requiring a CC caused resistance, the number of people who stayed is worth noting: of the people I know who did the trial, over 80% of them stayed with the service.  With props from PC Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Macworld, Newsweek, Businssweek and Forbes you can be sure you’re getting a great product.


Oh, and once you sign up (because you will sign up :)), be sure to download Omar’s Send to SmugMug tool (Windows only, sorry).  Send to SmugMug makes the process of uploading pictures a simple task.

Categories
Photography

A great article on how to photograph fireworks

Just in time for the July 4th weekend here in the states digital photography school dot com has put up a great article on how to photograph fireworks.  So, camera happy people (you know who you are… Tami), read up, and get prepared for next week!