Channeling William Eggleston

I constantly am fighting the battle in my personal photography to be a generalist.  I love being a jack of all trades but when I am shooting what I like I all too often am just shooting flowers.  Nothing wrong  with shooting flowers but I don't want to be know as that guy that only takes flower pictures.  I look at lots of different photographer and William Eggleston is one that I really admire because he photographed such common everyday scenes.

I walked by the Aramark loading dock coming in to work and the light,  colors, texture and just the look and feel made me think of William Eggleston.  So here is to being a generalist.

"I am at war with the obvious." - William Eggleston Photo notes-  I shot this photo with a Nikon D2Xs and a  40mm F2.8 macro lens.  I am always a little taken back  when I get phot  os that I really like using equipment that is so old.   The fact is 8 year old cameras are digital dinosaurs but they still can take amazing photos.

134/365 Bird Watching for Credit

5-14-2013

I spent the morning with Dr. Nathan Mills and his  Intercession Bird Watching class.  We spent our time out on the western section of the Searcy bike trail.  Shooting the birds with a camera was fun.  I used a Nikon D2Xs in High Speed Crop mode with a Nikon 80-400mm zoom which gave me the equivalent focal length of an 800mm lens. 

 The class had to identify the birds that they saw, I had it easy I just had to photograph the birds.  These are just a few of the birds that we found this morning.

iPhone photo of the day from Harding Place.

86/365 Violas with a macro lens

3-27-2013

 These violas are in flower boxes on my back porch.  I see them every morning as I leave for work.  I have a bunch of photos of them from my iPhone.  Today I had a Nikon D2Xs and a old MF Nikon 55mm F3.5 macro lens.  I still am working on controlling depth of field with the macro lens.  When you focus so close the depth of field is extremely narrow.  I like the warm tones of the cloudy color balance.

74/365 Daffodils with a Nikon

3-15-2013

 This morning Jalen and I had to stop by Walgreens to get a prescription and we got side tracked next door at the Black House.  The Black House is a very old Searcy residence that is now the local art gallery.  I have photographed their daisies many times but this is the first time to notice the daffodils.

 I took several photos with my iPhone as well but I am trying to push myself with this photo a day thing and using a real camera pushes me.  Having a macro lens is a bonus when using the Nikon and the 55mm macro on a crop sensor camera (D2Xs) is a great lens camera combo for flowers.

The right lens on the right body

Sometimes you just need to get the right lens on the right body. I have had the Nikon 80-400 zoom as my long telephoto lens for about 5 years now and it worked ok. Today I shot that 80-400 on the D3s body instead of the old D2Xs and it was a whole new experience. I don't know what the difference is but the 80-400 is much happier on the D3s which is good with me. I had Jalen shooting with me today and noticed that he is left eye dominate. Never had noticed that before. I like shooting baseball with Jalen, he keeps me looking at things with a new sense of wonder and joy.

Spring is Coming

Walking across campus today with a D2Xs and a Nikon 12-24mm lens I spied these bushes blooming. I don't normally take such photos with such a super wide lens but I kinda liked this one.

New Cameras Ordered

Today we ordered two awesome cameras for the office. We are updating our p/s camera from a Nikon 5700 to a Canon Powershot S3. The S3 has a 12X image stabalized zoom that also shoots video. We are also updating our Nikon slr to the Nikon D2Xs.