Photographing

Like many people, I took casual photographs for most of my life, usually shots of my family or my travels. About fifteen years ago my wife and I got interested in birding and that hobby soon lead me to take photography more seriously. Along the way, I converted to digital photography (I especially liked not having to pay for the film processing for all my experiments). After using early digital point and shoot cameras for several years, I decided to try a DSLR and bought a Canon Rebel XT and a couple of lenses. I was still busy with work, so my learning was mostly limited to vacations and birding trips - those were the times when I could really concentrate, practice and learn. Most of my efforts were on getting better and better bird photographs. This lead to long lenses, tripods, and dealing with the exposure trade-offs required for capturing images of birds that were often far away and moving.

When I was first doing birding photography, there was not a lot of effort spent on composition since getting a sharp image of the bird seemed to be hard enough. However, after some time I did start to get more interested in composition, and in photography of other subjects, particularly in an artistic way. A major step in this direction was a trip that my wife and I took to Italy. The trip was lead by an artist and a photographer who ran a week-long workshop based in Casperia, a hill town in Umbria. At this point my wife was a couple of years into her post-corporate career as a pastel artist and she convinced me to join her since the trip combined art and photography. I learned a lot both from the trip leaders and from the other attendees, most of whom were quite accomplished.

I was still working at that point, so my photography continued to take a back seat to my career in software design and development, but I was definitely hooked. Starting in the fall of 2009 I have been taking a monthly class with a professional photographer and teacher, Laury Eagan. Laury is a very good fine art photographer and her teaching emphasizes composition, exposure, color and texture. I really enjoy doing the class assignments and hearing her critiques of my photos and those of the other students. As with the workshop in Italy, it is also very productive to have the interaction with the other students. I retired in 2010 and I have been able to spend a lot more time with my camera and the software that processes the images that I capture.

Equipment

I am now on my third Canon Rebel DSLR, a T1i. I have enjoyed all three cameras (I also had anXT and an XTi). Each step up through this line of Canon cameras has been very satisfying. I have stayed with the small sensor Canons because I have a couple of EF-S lenses that I like and I also like the increased effective focal length, especially for wildlife shots. My current favorite lens is the Canon image stabilized EF-S 15-85mm (f3.5-5.6). I probably take at least half my photos with this lens. Before I got that lens, my most used lens was a Tamron XR Di 28-300mm (f/3.5-6.3). It has a great zoom range and is a very useful lens. I have to say that I have had some problems with the zoom mechanism, but Tamron has fixed it for no charge. My best long lens for wildlife shooting is a Canon EF 300mm L (f4.0) and I sometimes use it with a Canon 1.4 extender. I also have the great Canon 50mm f1.8, a Tamron 11-18mm wide angle (f4.5-5.6), and a Canon 100mm f2.8 macro. I have to admit that I have not spent enough time with these other lenses. I tend to use them for specific situations rather than try to really understand all their capabilities, but I am determined to do more work with each of them.

I use Lightroom 3.0 for my processing and I am still early in learning all the features of this very capable program. I did some earlier work with Photoshop CS2, but I never really invested enough time in the program to get comfortable with it. I kept going back and forth between CS2 and Picasa because Picasa was so much simpler and faster to use. However, I did want more image processing features that Picasa offered so I decided to try LR. I do miss the layers capability occasionally as I work in LR, but I like the image management and processing features of LR so much that I don't think I will go back to the CS line. I have also just started to try some HDR processing using Photomatix. This has been a lot of fun, and the plug-in interface for LR makes it very easy to move images back and forth between LR and Photomatix.

Shows

- March 2012 - "Eyesights" 9th Annual Open Juried Art Show

Guild of Creative Art, Shrewsbury, New Jersey

- February 2012 - "Phone-Ography"

The Gallery 13, Asbury Park, New Jersey

- January 2012 - "Member Salon"

Belmar Arts Council, Belmar, New Jersey

- December 2011 - "2nd Annual Affordable Art Exhibition"

The Gallery 13, Asbury Park, New Jersey

- December 2011 - "Annual Member Show"

Guild of Creative Art, Shrewsbury, New Jersey

- October 2011 - "SQ + SQ x 2"

Frame to Please Gallery, Red Bank, New Jersey

- October 2011 - Annual Open Juried Show

Guild of Creative Art, Shrewsbury, New Jersey

- June 2011 - "The Power of Color" Juried Photography Show

- April 2011 - 7th Annual Jersey Shore Juried Art Show

Belmar Arts Council, Belmar, New Jersey

- March 2011 - "Eyesights" 8th Annual Open Juried Art Show

Guild of Creative Art, Shrewsbury, New Jersey

- January 2011- 30th Annual Juried Photography Exhibit

Crooked Tree Art Gallery, Petoskey, Michigan

Guild of Creative Art, Shrewsbury, New Jersey

- May 2010 - Laury Eagan Student Show

Guild of Creative Art, Shrewsbury, New Jersey

- March 2010 - "Eyesights" 7th Annual Open Juried Photography Show

Guild of Creative Art, Shrewsbury, New Jersey

- March 2009 - Eyesights 6th Annual Open Juried Photography Show

Guild of Creative Art, Shrewsbury, New Jersey

- November 2008 - All-Members Show

Guild of Creative Art, Shrewsbury, New Jersey