Welcome to My View

Hello and welome to My View for Monday, July 22, 2008.

Last week, I posted an image titled “A Little Piece of Savannah”. I did this because I found myself missing being in Savannah, the city that has become a second home to me.

That feeling — of missing — has continued this week. Maybe I’ve gotten too busy with “things” lately, but I have a strong feeling of missing. This past Friday night, I had the pleasure of watching The Trainwrecks open a Jerry Jeff Walker concert at Atlanta Botanical Gardens. Seeing the guys and spending a little time with them and their families helped the feeling of missing. In the next couple of weeks, another friend of mine is visiting Atlanta from Savannah and we’ve planned some things to do one day. And, that will certainly help.

Isn’t it also amazing how small, seamingly insignificant actions help relieve the feeling of missing? Things like just sitting and watching the sun rise, or taking the dog for a long walk, or going for a jog, or taking the time to actually get out and do something creative with my camera. Maybe it’s not so much a specific place, like Savannah, that I’m missing. Maybe I’m just missing a part of me.

I went back through the same folder this week and found another little piece of Savannah. This one is of one of the many lovely squares that dot the city — one of the reasons that makes Savannah the beautiful and welcoming city that it is.

Maybe I need to take a little break, leave all the “things” I’ve been doing here in Atlanta for a while, gas up the car, pile in all the camera gear and head south for a week or so to see if I can find the part of me that is missing. What do you think?

May you never get so busy that you begin to miss part of yourself.

Your comments and suggestions are most welcomed and help me grow as an artist and a person.

Thank you for visiting My View.

“A Little Piece of Savannah #2″

Savannah Georgia
Canon 5D; 50mm 1.4 lens (fixed focal length); ISO 500; 1/90 second; f/2.8; handheld

Please take a look at the 2009 Workshops that have been announced. Watch for more soon.

Hello and welome to My View for Monday, July 14, 2008.

As most of you know, I spend a good bit of my time in Savannah in the spring and fall of each year teaching workshops. This lovely city has become a second home for me.

I’ve not been down for a visit since mid-May of this year. And, although it’s only been two months, I found myself sitting outside last night missing Savannah.

So many of the homes in the historic district have stairs that lead up to the front door of the home. As in most cities, sitting outside on the steps in the summer is a customary way to spend some time on a summer evening.

Looking through some images I’d taken on previous visits to Savannah last night, I found this one. I can easily imagine myself sitting outside on the steps on these summer evenings, soaking up the atmosphere that is Savannah. It’s not quite like being there, but I have an active imagination.

I hope that you are all enjoying your summer evenings on “your steps”.

Your comments and suggestions are most welcomed and help me grow as an artist and a person.

Thank you for visiting My View.

“A Little Piece of Savannah”

Historic District, Savannah Georgia
Canon 5D; 100mm 2.8 macro lens (fixed focal length); ISO 1600; 1/20 second; f/2.8; handheld

For those of you who are interested, I’ve started listing the 2009 Workshops. The Foundations in Photography for Women was such a success last year that I’m am offering it again for 2009. More listings will be posted in the next few weeks.

Hello and welome to My View for Sunday July 6, 2008.

Craig Tanner, one of my best friends and the person with whom I teach most of the workshops with which I am involved, passed an important milestone last week. He completed his first full year — 52 weeks — of posting images most every day on his photography blog, Light Diary.

Having been at this for only six months myself and posting once a week, I know what a huge time commitment this is. I want to offer my sincerest congratulations to Craig on this accomplishment and for continuing to teach and inspire all photographers with his photo blog. And, I want to personally offer my sincere gratitude to him for continuing to teach, encourage and inspire me in my career as a photographer and for giving me the enormous opportunities that he has.

Once of Craig’s mantras is that productivity = creativity. If you take the time to browse Craig’s Light Diary, you will quickly see this is true. Not only is he extremely productive, he has produced some of the most creative images I’ve seen in the last year. My most favorite of these is his series of the Port Aransas pier.

Craig, thank you for giving all of us a full year of inspiring photography. Thank you for being such a dear friend to me and for continuing to inspire me to be a better photographer — and a better person — every day.

Congratulations on your first year of Light Diary!!! I anxiously await another year of your most beautiful work.

“Craig”

Sweetwater Creek State Park, Georgia, June 2008
Canon 1Ds Mark II, 50 mm lens, f/2.5, 1/60 sec, ISO 320, handheld
Combination of two images to simplify the background

Thank you for visiting My View.

Hello and welome to My View for Tuesday, July 1, 2008.

While visiting St Louis last week, I managed to get in a couple of afternoons and nights of shooting the Jefferson National Expansioin Memorial, better known as The Arch.

I’d been shooting the Arch and abstracts of it for a while when I noticed the colors of the lights of the city reflected in one of the bases of the Arch. The patterns of the lights intrigued me. I shot several images of the light patterns and chose two images that I combined to get this one. The combination of the two images better show what I remember of the scene that night.

I welcome your comments and suggestions as they help me grow as an artist and a person.

Thank you for visiting My View.

“Reflections of St Louis”

St Louis, Missouri, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, June 2008
Canon 1Ds Mark II, ISO 3200, Lensbaby 2.0 lens , 1/45 second , hand held.
Combination of two images

Hello and welome to My View for Monday, June 30, 2008.

Hello and welcome to My View,

On my week and a half long trip recently, I spent a couple of days in St. Louis, Missouri. I had never spent time there before and never seen the Arch. It is truly an amazing structure. The ride to the top is not as claustrophobic as I’d thought it might be — of concern to me because I am claustrophobic.

This image of the Arch was taken around 8:45 PM CDT with the Lensbaby lens.

Your comments and suggestions help me grow as an artist and a person.

Thank you for visiting My View.

“Golden Arch”

St Louis, Missouri, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, June 2008
Canon 1Ds Mark II; Lensbaby 2.0; ISO 3200 0.5 secs; hand held
Combination of two images with different focus points

Hello and welome to My View for Saturday, June 28 2008.

Hello everyone,

I hope you are having a great weekend.

Thank you very much for your patience with me as I’ve been traveling for the last week and a few days. I got home in the wee hours of the morning this morning. I managed to find a day or two to actually take a few photographs as we stopped for a couple of days on the way back.

In the next couple of days, I will process some of these images and have at least two posts for My View to catch up with the one I missed last week.

Have a great Saturday and Sunday!!!

Thank you for visiting My View.

Hello and welome to My View for Thursday, June 19, 2008.

I’m writing this week’s post a few days earlier than Sunday as I will be traveling for the rest of this week.

In the heat of the summer in the South, we all often go out in the evenings in search of cool spots in the city, a little oasis if you will.   In Atlanta, we are fortunate enough to have several such spots in the city with fountains of various styles.   There is nothing like flowing water to disperse the heat of the day.

In our lives when things heat up, perhaps we would do well to search out a quiet cool oasis where we can cool off, rest and reflect, allowing the heat to dissipate.

This little oasis is Woodruff Park in downtown Atlanta.

Wishing you all a cool little oasis when things heat up in your lives.

Your comments and suggestions help me grow as an artist and a person.

Thank you for visiting My View.

“Woodruff Park”

Canon 1v mounted on tripod; Fuji Velvia 50 film, scanned and processed in Photoshop CS2
28-70 mm 2.8L lens

Hello and welome to My View for Sunday, June 15, 2008.

As summer creeps in on us here in the south, the spring flowers give way to those that thrive in a warmer environment — a progression of blooms that continues until very late summer.

The universe offers us all a steady progression of blooms during every day of our lives. Sometimes we miss a spectacular blossom by labeling it a weed, rather than accepting it as the lovely flower that it is, meant just for us.

This image was taken at one of Roswell, GA’s historic sites, Bulloch Hall.

May we all enjoy the progression of flowers that are constantly coming into our lives.

Your comments and suggestions are most welcomed and help me grow as an artist and a person.

Thank you for visiting My View.

“Bulloch Gardens”

Bulloch Hall, Roswell, Georgia
Canon 5D mounted on tripod
16-35 2.8L lens at 31mm; ISO 100; f/4.0; 1/350 sec

For a little amusement, please visit the You Tube video that my web designer put up when she had too much time on her hands.

Hello and welome to My View for Sunday, June 8, 2008.

Summer has arrived here in the South. Which means Spring, and all of the beautiful flowers that bloom here in the Spring, has just ended for this year. And, we do have a lovely display of flowers in and around my neighborhood. I’m fortunate to have great gardeners as neighbors. They provide me with beautiful flowers and I provide them with photographs.

This image of a bearded Iris was taken a couple of years ago in one of my neighbor’s gardens.

May it keep our memory of spring alive until it comes around again.

Your comments and suggestions are always welcomed and help me grow as an artist and a person.

Thank you for visiting My View.

“Inside the Iris”

Roswell, GA March 2005
Canon 1v body, Canon 100mm 2.8 macro lens, mounted on tripod.
Fuji Velvia 50 film, scanned and processed in Photoshop CS2

Hello and welome to My View for Sunday, June 1, 2008.

Summer seems to have arrived here in the South. Yesterday, our temperatures approached 90 degrees for the first time this year. Sitting outside with my dogs, I found myself swatting at mosquitos. Things slow down in the South in the summer. The heat and humidity force us to do that.

Thinking about the long, hot summer ahead of us reminded me of last year’s long hot summer. I was in the marsh of the south Georgia coast during a two-week period where the temperatures reached 104 degrees for two days. I went back through my files and found this image that I took late one evening, at the very end of the trip, after the sun had set and the moon was already rising. The cooler night air was slowly sinking in all around making the marsh much more bearable and showing all of it’s beauty. As I was processing this image today, the sounds of the Porgy and Bess lullaby, “Summertime” kept running through my mind.

Summertime, and the living is easy
Fish are jumping, and the cotton is high
Your daddy’s rich, and your ma is good looking
So hush little baby, don’t you cry.

One of these mornings, you’re gonna rise up singing
You’re gonna spread your wings as you take the sky
But till that morning, there’s nothing can harm you
With your daddy and mammy standing nigh

May your “living be easy” this summer.

Your comments and suggestions are always welcomed and help me grow as an artist and a person.

Thank you for visiting My View.

“Georgia Marsh”

North Hampton River, August 2007
Canon 5D, Canon 28-70 2.8 L lens at 47mm, mounted on tripod. 1/90 secs at f/8.0, ISO 800

Because there is so much detail in this image, I’m including a link to a larger version of it.