My photos of running water

These photos were all up one of the Cottonwood Canyons in SLC, in the late afternoon (after 5pm). This made the light really nice and soft. I used shutter priority, and set the shutter at 1/5. Slight enhancement in Lightroom.

Try photographing running water. Just slow your shutter down, and make sure your camera is on a something that won't move. You need the crisp focus of something not moving (like rocks) so the blurred water looks like you made the photo that way on purpose, rather than just blurry photos. I know, I definitely got some of those too.





Not bad for a point-and-shoot photographer hopping around the rocks in dress shoes.

My drive up the canyon

I had a wonderful drive up a canyon from Salt Lake City this week.

Brooklyn Bridge

Something to aspire to with aerial photography

Please look at this aerial photography. By hand. From a balloon. Above Everest. Now this is some aerial photography that I aspire to.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1201090/Everest-revealed-British-balloonists-breathtaking-panoramic-shot-worlds-highest-peaks.html#ixzz0LvSga7WN

He took this picture using a hand-held 35mm camera with a wide-angle lens while standing in the balloon's wicker cabin.

Mr Dickinson, of Budleigh Salterton, Devon, said: 'This photograph is one of the finest I've taken, and I'm immensely proud of it.

'It took several minutes to set up - I was in the stratosphere and carrying bulky breathing apparatus - and I wasn't sure it would even come out.

'So when it was developed, and it came out like this, you can imagine my delight. It's a scene that I'll remember for the rest of my life.'

(via @jimmacmillan)

Kite eating tree

Its started out harmless. I just wanted an aerial photo of the lighthouse. I mean, how many aerial photos are there of light houses, especially this one.



But my disregard for the trees was my downfall.



And resulted in a climb, a struggle, snipping strings.


And finally I stuffed the kite in my hooddie for safe keeping and scored victory over the tree.

Photography is easy, and hard

From Paul Graham:

It's simply a way of recording what you see -- point the camera at it, and press a button. How hard is that? And what's more, in this digital age, its free -- doesn't even cost you the price of film. It's so simple and basic, it's ridiculous.

And...

It's so difficult because it's everywhere, every place, all the time, even right now. It's the view of this pen in my hand as I write this, it's an image of your hands holding this book, Drift your consciousness up and out of this text and see: it's right there, across the room -- there... and there. Then it's gone. You didn't photograph it, because you didn't think it was worth it. And now it's too late, that moment has evaporated.

via kottke.org