Central Florida Ballet: The Making of the Nutcracker Book: 2 The Gear for Film Photography

Warning! The following material is of a technical nature and is only suitable for people interested in the mechanics, methods, and gear I am using to create this book. Those reading this for anecdotes of the ballet process and/or the artistic elements of making attractive pictures may experience drowsiness accompanied by incessant yawning and are encouraged to read the previous entry and following entries of Central Florida Ballet: Making of the Nutcracker Book. For those interested in what gear I am using and why, you have come to the right place.

As I have mentioned before, I am too stupid to own a dslr so The Nutcracker will be shot in its entirety in 135 film.  Actually there are other reasons I am using film. The main one being aesthetic. I wanted this to have a classic look that I have not yet seen digital photography and photo-editing software effectively duplicate. Especially when working in black and white. A very close second reason is exposure latitude.  It’s a lot harder to screw up a shot with film than with digital and I want to focus on composition and content, not worry constantly about fine-tuning settings.

I am using Pentax 35mm manual-focus  bodies from the seventies to early eighties.  I might put a ‘fancier’ film body in the mix later but, for now, I’m using these cameras because photography to me  is ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed, and Focus. No other buttons or sub-menu functions need apply. I don’t desire the assistance of a computer chip and a battery of sensors deciding what a good picture looks like. I’ll meter my own shots and ,the film, for better or worse, will record faithfully what I decided on without running it through a computer program first.

Shot with Pentax 50mm 1.4 Lens on Kodak BW 400CN Film

Finally, I am using all prime lenses. There are plenty of heated arguments between photographers on internet forums and in magazine articles as to whether digital or film is better. There is no argument that prime lenses are better than zoom lenses for image quality. Harder to use, more restrictive, less versatile, but much better final results nonetheless. Plus, I’m photographing in dance studios that, to the camera’s perception, have the lighting conditions of a cave so the extra speed of a prime does not hurt.

Now to compare the equipment to the subjects and the conditions I am photographing them in to confirm your suspicions that I am absolutely crazy. I am documenting the mounting of a production of  Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker performed by the Central Florida Ballet. The first half (or so) of the book I am making will be the rehearsal process. This is primarily photographing in three separate studios of various size, with fluorescent lighting of varying brightness, rehearsals and candids of ballet dancers, directors/choreographers,  and supporting stage craftspeople, as they prepare for the big opening night. I wanted a slightly informal gritty look for this part of the book to create a feeling of authenticity and peering behind the scenes  so I chose to do it in all black and white film to be followed by color photographs for the production itself. Sort of a Wizard of Oz effect.

Ballerinas Take a Break

To be as unobtrusive as possible, there can be no flash, no reflectors, and I’m working without a tripod or monopod because it would impede my movement.  I crouch down as low as possible and then stand to my full 6′-3″ height to get different angles on dancers who, conveniently, are typically 1/4 to 3/4 as tall as I am giving me a wide variety of low and high angle shots. Not to mention I need to move freely to get out of the dancer’s way as I seek out different angles and rove about the perimeter of the studio. Plus, I’ll often be wearing two camera bodies with two different focal length primes and switching these out on a supporting device would be too slow.

Worse, the first rehearsal I photographed I used 13 rolls of film. I typically photograph rehearsals once a week. This is putting me at between $150-$200 a week in film and developing costs. I will be photographing at this pace for approximately three months. Despite the initial sticker shock of a top of the line DSLR, it’s looking like a bargain now.

Sounds like a job for a top of the line DSLR with a really nice, versatile, zoom, and the greatest advancement in photography at the turn of the century; shake reduction, doesn’t it? Yeah, it really does. I have no adequate explanation for serious technophiles as to why I am approaching this project the way I am. No charts, no stats, no pixel counts versus digital noise versus film grain as to why I would decide to shoot this project on thirty year-old cameras and lenses with film.

Ballet Feet

All I have is art history. In the age of amazing CGI, the greatest monster film of all time is still King Kong. When George Lucas had nothing but a dream and a whimpy ten million dollar budget with a cynical studio that thought the film would not last a week, he gave us Star Wars. When he had virtually infinite resources and the incredible power of CGI, he gave us Jar Jar Binks. William Shakespeare, argued as the best English Language writer of all time, wrote his masterpieces in the strict confines of iambic pentameter and his great poems in the strict syllable count of sonnets. Rick Allen, world-famous drummer for the rock group Def Leppard, stated in an interview that he became a better drummer after the tragic automobile accident that robbed him of his left arm.

Finally, for guidance, I turn to Alan Dean Foster and his classic SpellSinger series of fantasy fiction novels. In one book (don’t ask me which one) he describes how this musician must pull-off a phenomenal performance to survive. The Hero of the story has a flashback to asking his favorite bass player, backstage after a concert, if he has any advice for a newbie in the music industry.

The bass player did not reply with advice regarding the latest amps. He did not point out his favorite equipment or some specific technique. Instead, he said something along the lines of, “Go for the sound, man. You’ve got to have a sound.”

The equipment  I am using is my ’sound’. This book will be what it is because of the equipment used to make it. Not despite it.

For high speed and indoor light, forget ugly digital camera noise. This is the beautiful grain of Ilford Delta 3200 B&W film.

Now to get down to brass tacks:

Film and Processing: For rehearsals, I am using primarily high-speed films such as Ilford Delta 3200 and Fuji NeoPan 1600. I love the “film noir” look in a lot of the photographs I am taking with these films due to the high contrast and large grain. Still, I want to have some nice, clear, shots in the mix so I go down to Kodak BW400CN Professional and Kodak TX400.

Target was originally a godsend for giving me nice high-res scans for web production with the CN41 process but, during the making of this book, they suddenly cut off doing in-house processing. Now it all pretty much costs the same for black and white or color film  so I’m processing almost exclusively through Dwayne’s Photo Lab. There’s a 2-3 week delay but the results are exceptional for the cost and good enough to post on the web. At the turn of the year I will get a film scanner of my own to process the final files that will go in the book.

I can not help but wish they made a ‘middle of the road’ 800 ISO black and white film but I am hoping the Fuji 1600 will be my “silver bullet” between grain and light sensitivity. More on this as the proofs come in.

Camera Bodies: As I have mentioned I am using Pentax film bodies. They are all the same in that they have center-weighted metering and manual focus.

The third body I was using was a Pentax ME. This body would typically hold the telephoto lens with the longest range since this range needed the least adjustment for the bodies’ metering capabilities. Sadly, it died at the last rehearsal. RIP Pentax ME. You served me well.

The second body, the Pentax ME Super has a great meter for dictating what the shot should be. Still, it only goes up to 1600 ISO. This does not help when I am shooting Ilford 3200 Delta film where I am trying to squeeze the last drop of ISO sensitivity from it. Still, I love the big and bright Pentaprism viewfinder of this camera and it remains a favorite in my bag.

Finally, the queen-mother of all camera bodies, to me, the Pentax K2 “limited edition” all-black body. The K2 was the professional version of the iconic Pentax K 1000.  A real dinosaur of a camera, this heavy monster features a pentaprism that makes you feel like your looking at the scene with both eyes open instead of through a viewfinder. Only the Pentax Spotmatic boasts a pentaprism as wonderful to focus through.  I like the two needles to the right in the viewfinder. The black one indicating where your exposure “should” be according to the center-weighted meter, the blue indicating where you have actually set it.

In a world of  hybrid cars, fuel-efficient cars and cars that can do more with less engine, we have 12, 14, 24 megapixel cameras with dozens of points of spot metering. The K2 is a 1967 Chevy Impala. You can get many cameras that technically handle much better but for sheer durability, power, and dependability, none are a greater pleasure to drive.

I hope any fans of the television series Supernatural appreciate the analogy.

A camera body is not much to consider, though. It’s really just a box that holds and exposes the film. What really matters is what is attached to the camera that the image has to go through to get to the film.

Vasile Demonstrates

Lenses: The lenses I am currently using for this project are all “softer” Pentax primes. For the difference between a ‘prime’ and a ‘zoom’ lens, go to someone else’s blog. This one is running way too long already.

The least-used, but hardly least-important, lens in my lineup is Asahi Optical Companies’  Takumar (bayonet) 1:2.5 135mm lens. When looking for reviews on this lens, I found that people either loved it or thought that it could serve no other  purpose than as a paperweight.  All I could deduce is that it had soft focus but its’ image quality was excellent. This has proven to be true and I love this lens for creating flattering photographs of human faces and bodies. Heck, my pets look awesome through it too.  Any candid shots of anything/one living, and this lens is a shoe-in.

Takumar 135mm 1:2.5 Sharp? No. Beautiful? Yes!

After the first day of shooting in cramped studios with lots and lots of dancers I realized I needed a wider focal length than 50mm. I went with the Takumar Bayonet 1:2.8 28mm prime lens. Wide enough to give me a good field of view, but long enough to have no barrel distortion, this is a nice work-horse of a lens.

Finally, my all time favorite lens, favor in Leica, Carl Zeiss, and if you have Canon or Nikon written on your barrel, don’t even bother showing up.  It’s hard to dispute that Pentax 50mm lenses are the best ever made. My personal weapon of choice is the Pentax FA 1:1.2 50mm lens. Slightly softer than it’s sister-lens, the 1.7, this lens produces the best image quality I am able to create with a camera. It’s made for auto-focus but the rubber focusing ring works well enough for me. The image quality reminds me of my old-time  favorite photographer’s use of Twin Lens Reflex cameras. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Conclusion: For those of you still reading this blog entry, are you crazy? Are you not bored yet?

Seriously, thank you for your interest. There are no statements of fact in this post, only an insight into how I approached photography for this project. I hope it encourages you to use your own judgement on what you want from your own photography exploits instead of solely trusting stats and the latest-greatest items touted on photography magazine covers to dictate what you can accomplish.

~Morgan

See How They Run

Central Florida Ballet: The Making of the Nutcracker Book: 1 Announcement

Young Ballerina at Rehearsal for the Central Florida Ballet

The next Real Florida Photo book will be based on the Central Florida Ballet’s Making of The Nutcracker which opens to the public December 19th, 2009.

The book will be divided into two parts. The first half will be black and white photography featuring an in-depth depiction of the rehearsal process. The second half will be in color depicting photographs of the on-stage production itself.

For in depth insight into the photography of this production, visit this blog often along with checking out Real Florida Photo’s Photograph of the Day.

A Day in Florida History at DeLeon Springs State Park

Old Spanish Sugar Mill

First of all, though this blog post is focused on the A Day in Florida History at DeLeon Springs State Park festival, I need to say that DeLeon Springs State Park is worth visiting any day of the year.

A highlight of the park is the Old Spanish Sugar Mill Grill and Griddle House or, as my wife, the MountDoran likes to call it, “The Make Your Own Damn Pancakes Restaurant”.

The reason she calls it that is because you enter this beautiful Spanish Sugar Mill constructed before Florida was part of the United States of America  (Hint: get there early. It fills up fast.) to be seated at an old wooden table with a griddle in the center of it. You are served an assortment of batters in ceramic pitchers with the pancake toppings of your choice. These range from fresh blueberries to walnuts to bananas.  Remember buckwheat pancakes? This restaurant’s recipe competes with my late grandfather’s and that’s saying something.

The beautiful springs made us wish we had bought our bathing suits. The seventy two-degree water looked very inviting on a Florida Summer day.

There is a small museum that features a dugout canoe from the spring’s original inhabitants that’s dated approximately 6,000 BC. That’s when agriculture first began by the Nile River, before the Egyptian Pyramids or anything we think of as ancient civilization.

The festival itself featured an assortment of areas scattered about the park’s grounds that each was hosted by reenactors/historians in period costumes featuring different periods in Florida’s storied  history.

Early Florida Settlers

Many cultures were represented from the Spaniards to the British Colonialists and Seminole Indians along with the early Florida Settlers pictured above. There was also a first aid station where kids could be dressed with a blood-soaked bandage by a woman depicting an Early American battle nurse.

The featured event of the day was a reenactment of  a Seminole Indian War skirmish.

During the presentation beforehand, we were informed that the United States had never won a military conflict against the Seminole Indians which is why they are a sovereign nation to this day.

One reason for this I found fascinating is that, when a slave escaped a plantation, (s)he had two choices: Head North to where slavery was illegal, or south to Florida where runaway African slaves were welcomed with open arms into the Seminole tribe and helped to start a new life.

Of course this made these escaped slaves fiercely loyal to their new culture and when war with the United States came, they knew that capture would mean being enslaved again. They fought fiercely and they fought to the death helping to make the Seminole Nation a force the U.S. Military could not defeat.

As a Floridian, I found the event fascinating and learned as much about Florida history as I did on our last visit to St. Augustine. I enjoy events that bring history to life and this was a good one.

An Escaped African American Slave Becomes a Fierce Seminole Indian Warrior

A Blurb on Blurb and the first Real Florida Photo Book

Web sites are great.  Hand someone a business card with your home page address or send them a link and, in the privacy of their own home or office, at their own pace and, best of all, as you want to present who you are and what you do, others can learn all about what you do.

Still, for anything you want to present visually, nothing beats hard copy. I wanted a portfolio without the formality of a portfolio. Something that looks professional and allows me to put my best foot forward.  photographs in a leather-bound folio is not something people feel comfortable having you drop off with them. It’s too formal. It implies you are having a formal meeting right away. It turns showing someone your stuff because you love what you do and you want to share it into an interview situation.

A brochure or pamphlet didn’t quite cut it. It basically has a couple of well laid out teasers in the hopes of leading people to my web site any way.

Obviously, I enjoy photography. When I discover a photographer’s work I like and I’m interested in, whether it be Bill Brandt, Ernst Haas, or the work of many photographers like the portraits found in National Geographic over the past 100 years the medium I enjoy viewing a body of work in most is books. Nice high quality photography books with heavy paper and brilliant prints. It allows you to enjoy and mull over a favorite photograph or leaf through and soak in an entire body of work.

Books are how I have discovered and enjoyed my favorite photographers my entire life from my first Namu (the Killer Whale) National Geographic book when I was three years old until now. I realized that to present myself as I wanted to be seen, I would need to make a book.

At the time, my web site host SmugMug had associated themselves with a self-publishing company called Blurb. I trust SmugMug. They have excellent service on their web site and ezprints, the printer they use for online orders, produces some of the finest quality prints I have ever seen. When they said the Blurb books were ‘gorgeous’, I felt it was worth the risk to download the software and drop $50 on a copy of my very own self published book.

The software was easy to use. So easy, one could view it as somewhat limiting. It was full of attractive templates where you simply plug in your photographs in the picture part and type your text in the text boxes. Though I say ‘limiting’, all the classic looks for a photography book are there and you do have a nice selection of layouts, text, and colors.

I uploaded my completed book, got the highest quality paper possible (which limits the number of pages I can have in the book) and ordered my first copy. Then I waited…and waited. Shipping was slow. A little over two weeks.

When my book finally arrived, my wife texted me at work. She said I would not be disappointed and it was indeed beautiful. She was right. I have about five National Geographic books featuring their photographs and the print quality in my book matches it. It is expensive, but if you want to show off your work looking its best in a book, then blurb is definitely worth it.

Click on the picture below if you would like to see how they promote my book on their web site.

$50,000 Worth of Arts Training in Convenient Blog Form

Listen up.  What I am about to impart to you is one of the most important lessons I learned in college.

Of course, me being stubborn and slow on the take, it took several years after I graduated for those important lessons to sink in and for me to to realize how phenomenally smart my Professors are.

The lesson of the day begins with: Trees. Well, and an e mail from Mom.

First the trees in question.

Entering Lake Harris

When my site first went live on the internet, I, of course, had friends and family looking at it. My Mother e mailed me telling me she enjoyed the site and that some photographs she liked while others did nothing for her. She also was nice enough to inform me that I had cut off part of one of the trees in my Entering Lake Harris photograph.

Like any aspiring artist looking for helpful constructive criticism with a sincere desire to improve, I grew defensive and angry and tuned her out.

Why angry and defensive? Because, it was her idea I cut off that bit of tree. Well, not directly, but she wanted me to finish college sooo badly because it was sooo important to have that BFA (along with the huge GSL that went with it) and that is where I learned to do it.

Let’s go back to my sophomore year and a younger Morgan.

Our Color and Design class had been given the assignment of going to the library to look up several famous artists and observe their efforts. I believe they were all paintings.

At the tender age of 20, I knew everything. I knew those colorful basic shapes and squiggles  painted by artists whose work sells for millions in fine art galleries was the demented scheme of a bunch of hacks. It was all modern art. It looked to my knowledgeable young mind like a kindergartener’s finger painting that belonged hanging by a magnet on some proud mother’s refrigerator. Not something worthy of praise hanging in The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I halfheartedly leafed through the rest of the assignment and left the library for more important pursuits like drinking beer, chasing girls, and bemoaning the fact that I was a genius under pressure with very important feelings and that nobody understood me.

Next day in class, the art teacher asked me something along the lines of, “Did you understand why I had you look at those paintings?”

I said, “Not really.” She asked me to explain so I gave an example. My apologies if I do not recreate this scene exactly. It was many years ago and I may be messing up some details.

Anyway, I explained that I did not think the art she had us study was any good.

“For example,” I said opening my notebook and illustrating with a pencil, “one artist just painted a couple of circles on the canvas like this.”

Let me just interrupt my own story by saying, at this point, I felt like I was done. I had illustrated that I had done the homework assignment and actually given it some thought. She really ought to have moved on to the next student and let me sip my coffee and nurse my hangover in peace.

Instead, she said, “I believe I know the painting you’re referring to. It is very famous and actually looks more like this.

I shrugged. Hadn’t she gotten bored with pestering me yet?

“See?” She said. “The way you just drew it is ugly space. There’s dead empty space all around the circles that does not tie in to the objects at all. The way the artist did it is beautiful space. By cropping the circles  the artist has drawn you in to the visual dialogue between the two focal points and there is no static dead space surrounding the circles in the frame.”

Uh, yeah, sure.

“I don’t think you understand what I’m saying.” She said shaking her head and leaving my table.

She was right. I did not.

Years later, I do understand. I’ve seen it a million times. It is the photograph the co-worker shows you taken on a cell phone of what (s)he saw last weekend. It is all over Flickr. It is the boring static photographs a friend shows you of their ocean cruise with subjects ‘bullseye’d’  in the center of the frame. It is not art. It is not photography. It is a snapshot.

Oh yeah. Want the most important lesson I learned about art with my hoity toity BFA from my elite school? Here it is:

Whether visual art is good or bad is in the eye of the beholder and a matter of opinion. Whether or not an effort is art at all is defined by indisputable laws of composition.

That being said, I did not need to shoot the photograph the way I did. I could have shot just one tree centered and alone on the rippling waters of Lake Harris creating a feeling of isolation. I could have pulled back my focus and, yes, included all the branches of all three trees without including the shore on the right at all creating a more serene look.

I remembered my laws of composition. Cropped the image on the left and included the shore on the right ‘flowing’ off the frame to create a rhythym with the repetition of pattern created by the three trees to suck the viewer in and make their eye move from left to right to, hopefully, want to study the photograph more closely.

The bird perched on the third tree to the right symbolizes the eternal struggle between good and evil. Kidding!

Anyway, Mom did not like it. Maybe you love it. Maybe you hate it. Maybe you couldn’t care less and this is way to long a blog entry on a black and white photograph of three trees.

This leads me to something I learned from many years of attempting to create art in one form or another:

Making art “right” can be learned. Making “good” art?

That’s something else.

An Apology to Gypsies and My Failure at The Lady of the Lakes Renaissance Faire

In November of 2007, I took my digital camera to the Lady of the Lakes Renaissance Faire to photograph what, to this day, is one of Real Florida Photo’s most popular galleries. A year later, I went back. This time armed with several of the best manual focus 35mm film bodies ever produced and tons of film. The performers were fantastic, the patrons looked great in costume, the vendors were spot on and in character, the shows, mock battles, and tournaments were funny and dramatic. At the end of the day I had gone through about $200 worth of film and processing. Well worth it. It was a great day. I could not wait to see my results. This would go down as one of my best days of shooting ever.

The film came back from the developer and each and every photograph I took that day was…awful.

Who is to blame? The harsh midday light of Florida on a sunny day?

Afraid I can’t do that. Shooting in the blinding glare of the Florida sunlight is old hat to me. A lot of my best pictures have been taken in this light. Like a pro baseball player who has been catching pop-fly’s since he could walk, “The sun was in my eyes” is not a legitimate excuse. I know the drill: minus one to minus two stops on my old film cameras in bright sunlight. More than that, I’ve shot this event before and with a lot better results.

Maybe blame the kid at the photography counter at Colonial Photo & Hobby? Now that is tempting. My return to film photography was recent and he was the one that handed me those ten boxes of film in the first place.  I had gone there asking for a print film that, “gives saturated colors like a slide film.”

He said that’s not really available. Then he hesitated. He finally shrugged “welllll…this one is close.”

Aaaaand, I trusted him.

Bad move to take advice from a kid who wants to get you out of the way so he can peddle more digital cameras.

Still, I know better than to trust the kid at the counter at this alleged “Pro” lab. Don’t get me started on my experiences with them.

Finally, I realized there is only one factor in this equation I can blame for such a catastrophy.  In the time honored tradition of photographers since 1892 there is only one thing that can be blamed when taking bad photographs.

The Eastman Kodak Company.

What?

You didn’t think I was going to say me did you?  Oh please.

To give blame where blame is due I blame Kodak for producing Ultra Color 100UC. Sure I had bright spots and shaded spots in the harsh mid day sun in my original shoot of the Renaissance Faire. This time it was SO MUCH worse: Blown out highlights and, otherwise, too dark darks. No way for a happy medium between the two.

What hurt the most, was this series getting away.

Here’s what happened:

The Flogging Drummers Began to Drum

The Gypsies Danced and Danced

…and the dark areas were too dark and the bright areas were too bright and there was not enough in the middle to make a cohesive photograph. I have over a dozen or so great photographs of gypsies dancing and they all look like this. It would have been one of my favorite series ever, if I had only shot it on another film.

When I said I wanted a film that acted like slide film, I did not mean all of the bad aspects of slide film, particularly blown out highlights, with none of the good. Print film should have more range than slide film. I swear the Kodak UC line had less.

Here’s the shot that hurts the most though. It would have been one of my all time favorites. Instead, it’s a white over-exposed mess. Like a fisherman talking about the big one, this will forever be, “the one that got away” to me:

Gypsies Pose for the "Faerie Box"

They say a photographer should never make excuses. I researched this film after the fact and several photographers have warned to never use this films outdoors. Yes, I should have looked into it ahead of time. Would  have been nice to know that earlier. Would have been nice of the “Pros” at Colonial Photo and Hobby gave me that vital little tidbit of information before I burned a dozen rolls in the midday sun though.

Things have changed. Kodak has released a new film that is as miraculous as 100UC is, well, whatever it is.  It is called Ektar 100 and I can’t imagine using anything else in that range. I apologize to gypsies, royalty and knaves. To flogging drummers, jesters, the most noble of royalty down to the washing well wenches. This year, I’ll be ready.

2009 Chiefland Watermelon Festival

“Look at ‘em. You can’t just eat away at the watermelon…”

“…you’ve got to bury your face down in there, right down to the rind…”

“…like that one there! He’s got the idea!”

And so the narration went from two older gentlemen standing behind me as I photographed The Chiefland Watermelon Festival’s watermelon eating contest. That passionate sports casting alone was well worth the over two hour drive.

It had started on a whim. As you can see from my site, I have plenty of photographs of Florida.  Upon closer examination, you may notice that these photographs are mainly from Mount Dora and neighboring towns. My site was not named “Real Mount Dora Photo”, or “Central Florida Photo” though. It was named Real Florida Photo and though my home town and surrounding area is beautiful enough for a lifetime of photography,  it bothered me that I had not taken many photographs of the “real” Florida far from home.

One night I announced to my wife, Jennifer, that I wanted to begin photographing different aspects of Florida’s agriculture since that has been such a big part of Florida’s economy and identity for most of the history of the state. It’s not easy being married to an aspiring photographer.  After finding out what was currently in season (watermelon) Jennifer found out the Chiefland Watermelon Festival was coming up in two weeks and the plan was set to attend.

We drove across some of the most beautiful countryside and farmland I have ever seen on that rainy morning. The view on the drive would have been worth a photography excursion itself  but I did not want to miss the parade.

The Parade was a lot of fun and, of course, had enormous small-town charm. There was an armada of John Deere Tractors.

There were Little Watermelon Queen Contestants

There were bloodhounds barking at the crowd.

There were barefoot Watermelon Queen contestants.

There were the Chiefland All Stars

Watermelon Queen Contestants Throwing Candy

There was a Little King of Watermelons

More Watermelon Queen Contestants throwing candy (though I believe this one may be a reigning queen)

The throwing of candy was a huge hit with the kids. They really ran for it. Halloween in June!

There was a funny vehicle that was loud…

…and did crazy spins and wheelies.

Plus, there were more Watermelon Queen contestants…

…perfecting their classic beauty queen parade-waves to the crowd.

By the way, have I mentioned yet that Watermelon beauty queen contestants and reigning beauty queens were featured prominently in the Chiefland Watermelon Festival Parade? That’s because one of the main events of the Chiefland Watermelon Festival is to crown the new Chiefland Watermelon Queen…and I missed it! I dragged my wife out of bed on a day off before sunrise, drove for over two hours and STILL do not know who the reigning watermelon queen is.

One thing that I did not miss was the abundant free watermelon, provided by local farmers, that was everywhere. It was good. I was telling some co-workers about the festival and they complained that the watermelon was not good in Florida. This watermelon was. Watermelon was free to everyone attending the festival and, when I say everyone…

…I mean everyone.

One of the highlights for me was the Watermelon auction. I do not believe I have ever seen a real auctioneer live before and this gentleman was amazing. With machine gun rapid speach he sold prize winning watermelon to local business owners and politicians.

Of course there was plenty of fantastic food including fried alligator tail and award-winning barbecue. I’m afraid I had to have both.

There was a watermelon seed-spitting contest but it was hard to get good photographs of this. Watermelon seed-spitting is not an action-packed sport and you kind of had to have been there. I was bummed out they did not have the greased-pole climbing contest and hope they bring it back.

There were also activities for the kids.

If you are looking to visit one of the most beautiful parts of the state and would like to experience rural Florida and meet warm, friendly people, Chiefland Watermelon Festival boasts small town charm at its best.  Of course, the watermelon can’t be beat.

Winner! 2009 Chiefland Watermelon Eating Contest.

Picture of the Day: The Last Seven Gallery

I have had complaints that I don’t update my site enough. This stems from two problems.
The first is that I am trying to make the site less cluttered and more easy to navigate so that interested visitors can immediately get to the good photographs they want to see.
The second problem is, well, I don’t update my site enough.
For regular visitors, and to encourage more regular visitors, I have created a gallery called The Last Seven. It is a slide show where a new photograph is posted daily every day of the week. Once the following week rolls around, that photograph is replaced by a new photograph. This means seven new photographs per week.

Some are from the archives and, though I liked them and thought they were good, they were just not quite good enough to make the final cut. Many are new pictures I have taken recently.

Click HERE to visit this gallery and come back often because it completely changes every week!

Amigo! Alligator! Tales of a World Full of Art Directors

You step outside your door, camera in hand, prepared to acquire the ultimate capture; a photograph to set the visual arts world on fire. You are not alone. The world is simply brimming with art directors.

Usually these helpful advisors take the form of small children that either

1) Think your time, effort, and film are much better spent photographing them and perhaps their friends acting goofy or

2) “I want to try it.” because, though your hundreds of dollars of photography equipment looks extremely cool, it is very boring watching you use it when they could be looking cool peering through the viewfinder and pressing the  button to hear the satisfying click of the shutter snapping.

There are plenty of adult artistic directors too.  On a recent shoot in Lake Eola Park in Orlando, Florida, I had  half a dozen homeless people, that previously were simply hanging out in the park for the day,  acting as consultants excitedly telling me where all the swan’s nests were and where the cutest newborn critters could be found. 

When I first made the switch from digital photography back to film, one of the major items on my ‘to do’ list was (and still is) to get the definitive image of an Alligator. Since I was able to understand the English language and the inevitable “what do you want to be when you grow up?” question, I would proudly respond, ” A paleontologist!” As many young children who give that answer to that question, I did not really want to learn the extensive knowledge of Latin or spend my days under the brutal desert sun unearthing, one speck of sand at a time, a dinosaur skeleton with a delicate brush which are several of the real required geological disciplines for that profession. I wanted to be amidst the gnashing teeth and blasting volcanoes of our planet’s violent past.

Therefore, I was very excited to end up in Floirda where the backdrop of exotic foliage looked, to me, like the scene from a favorite Smithsonian Institution poster of when Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth and there were enormous reptiles still roaming the landscape.

Alligators are tough, though. They’re common in the deep south. There’s tons of photographs of them. Still, the siren to an aspiring photographer, is that there are not so many good photographs of them. To photograph an alligator is not enough. I’m trying to get the definitive photograph of one of these beasts. Something with visual interest in the foreground, and maybe the background, that makes you want to say, now there is an alligator.

I’m still working on getting this shot.

One evening at sunset, on the shores of Lake Dora, I was close. it was a beauty lounging on the shores; nearly twelve foot long. 

(S)he was in my sights. There were cattails and tall Florida swamp grass in the foregroung, the gently lapping waves in the background. In the viewfinder of my Pentax ME Super was the perfect composition painstakingly taking shape. 

While crouching behind my tripod peering through the viewfiner, I heard the exclamation, “Amigo!” yelled with a thick spanish accent.

“Amigo!”

“Hey Amigo!”

“Amigo!!!“

Finally this increasingly urgent exclamation from the man behind me annoyed the beautiful specimen of an Alligator sending it to swim to another shore.

I slowly turned to glare at whoever was yelling, to see a hispanic man pointing excitedly now that I was finally paying attention to him.

“Alligator!” he exclaimed grinning from ear to ear and gesturing at the retreating beast.

I turned back to the reptile and clicked off a shot of this huge specimen swimming  across Lake Dora with the sun setting in the background.

It is one of the better pictures I have taken.

To all the armchair artistic directors who have pointed me in the right direction on what I should photograph:

Thanks Amigo.

You’re Too Stupid to Own A DSLR

There’s an old joke. An urban legend, actually, that originated on the internet over a decade ago. It’s about a computer tech-support specialist who gets a call from a particularly frustrating customer. The customer can not get his computer to work. After a series of questions, to which the customer gives obtuse answers, the computer tech finally finds out that the customer is in a power outage and that this is the real reason his computer won’t work. Not a technical difficulty. The computer tech instructs the customer to re-package his computer and take it back to the store he got it from.

The customer asks, “Is it really that bad”?

“I’m afraid so.” Replies the computer tech.

“Well, all right then, I suppose. What should I tell them?”

“Tell them you’re too stupid to own a computer.”

If you have never read this, you can find  a version of it in its entireity here.

I thought about this story a lot about a year ago.

I loved my digital single lens reflex camera (DSLR camera) so much, I suspect my wife was becoming  jealous of it. As those of you who own one already know, one of the biggest annoyances and greatest causes of neurosis on a DSLR is dust on the sensor.  The sensor is what used to be a frame of film but is now an insanely delicate small panel that captures the light/image that comes through the lens and records the information as a photograph.

The tiniest speck of dust, nearly invisible to the human eye, can show up as unsightly blackish-gray blobs on the final image. This was not a problem for one happy year of constant use of my camera. I only had two zoom lenses: one for wide shots, one to get closer to the action. I changed them rarely. It wasn’t until I began using prime (which are fixed focal length) lenses that this problem emerged again and again. The only thing worse than dust on your slr sensor is wet dust and, Florida being one of the more humid places in the world, their is nothing dry about anything as soon as you set foot out of your air-conditioned abode.

Every time you change a lens, a big benefit of owning an slr instead of a fixed-lens camera like a point and shoot, you expose it to this potential dust. In a state that is made up of sand floating on an aquifer, dust is inevitable.

The dust became so bad, I finally sent it back to the camera company (no longer under warranty) and they were kind enough to return my camera with a new sensor for the modest cost of $265.  Really, why tell your customers they’re stupid when you can charge them $265?

My camera came back so clean and new looking, I first suspected they replaced the entire thing. I enjoyed the use of my like-new camera for…one day. I was at a festival. I was by a lake. It was windy. After photographing people at the event with the zoom I had on the camera’s body, I looked at cat tails and tall grass by the lake and really wanted to take some fine art photograph’s of it with my 50mm/1.4 prime. I wanted to so badly I, you guessed it, switched my lens under the worst possible conditions.

Having twenty years experience as a shop craftsman for my day job, I’ve made pieces like a specialty cabinet or podium, so fine in their detail, so elegant in their design,  that they cost major corporations  tens of thousands of dollars. I’ve worked on sets and other projects for the themed entertainment and convention industries that have delighted, by now, millions of people. I make my living from working materials to perfection and eliminating the slightest flaws.  Certainly I was smart enough to clean my own camera’s sensor.

Wrong.

I tried blowers. I tried wands. Some showed little improvement. Some made the problem even worse. That dust became, to me, that infernal pink ring in Dr. Seuss’  The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.

Finally, in desperation, I looked across the room to see the computer owner’s weapon of choice: a can of condensed air. Oh yeah. That would definitely blast that pesky dust off of that sensor. I know you DSLR owners out there are cringing. I know you see that red circle with a slash through it neatly framing my Office Depot can of Cleaning Duster air. Hey, don’t worry. Look back up on my credentials as a craftsman. Just one quick blast and I’ll have the surface of that sensor cleaned good. There’s only one pesky speck of dust left. One quick blast and this terrible problem is gone for good.

Yeah.

What happened was I managed to blast a hair between the sensor cover and the sensor itself.

Yep, that’s right. Second sensor ruined.

That’s when I thought of the computer tech. I could just hear him saying, “You’re too stupid to own a DSLR”.

Ahh, the memory of the look on my wife’s face when I explained that I got one day’s use out of my $265 sensor but that it’s ruined again.

I thought of my first camera and how it was over thirty years old and worked great. I thought about film and how, though it does not have a lot of the conveniences of a modern DSLR, how the look of a film print blows digital out of the water.

I hit EBay and bought three camera bodies and four of the better prime lenses ever made for less than I would have paid for another sensor.

Now I’m making friends with film. It’s a lot harder to use, but it’s worth it. There’s a depth to the photography that digital, much as I loved it, can not capture. My photographs will be better than they ever could have been with digital for a myriad of reasons. Maybe that’s not so stupid after all.

The New Gear

Complete with knitted “lens condoms” courtesy of my wife, Jennifer