Check out my "Image of the Month" category!

I have added a new category list on the blog. I took the idea from a friends blog. I now have a category called "Image of the Month" where you can see my favorite image for each month. If you choose a month from the list you will be directed to the blog from that month which has my favorite image in it. So check it out and let me know what you think, I only have 2 months in the list so far so be patient. This blog will always be a work in progress so continue to check it out. As I find new and interesting things to add to the blog I will write a post letting you know about them.



Photoman



You didn't think I would let you off that easy, did you? I have to give you something to look at that I think is either cool, beautiful, amazing, intriguing, mesmerizing or well you get the idea. This is a photographers blog so I am obligated by the "Photographers Code of Conduct". I believe if you had a copy of the code, which you don't as it is top secret, you would find it in article 36.8, subset C-II, fpn (fine print note) d. I am pretty sure that is the article for the code my book isn't handy and I am going by memory. All professionally trained photographers are required to memorize the code but few of us remember it all. Enough of that lets get to the subject at hand. The image above is one of my favorite. This image was shot in my dinning room, the flower was a part of an arrangement that we had received for something, I can't remember what. I was just messing around and I put the vase on the floor and turned out the lights and started painting with light. This is one of the results from that session of messing around. I think I just broke another code, a photographer is never to admit that he/she was just messing around when they made a great image. OOPS I hope no other photographers read my blog. If the wrong photographer sees this I could be removed from the photographers guild. This image was shot with a Canon 10d and a 28-135mm IS lens. Focal length 135mm, ISO 1600, SS 1/40th F/5.6 using painting with light technique.

Photoman

Covered Bridges

When I was a student at OIP&T (Ohio Institute of Photography & Technology), one of my assignments was to choose a photographer and copy their style. This was a black and white film class so we were to choose from photographers of the past. These projects were some of my favorite, I love to learn about the photographers upon whose shoulders the foundation of photography as I know it is laid. One of the more famous and obvious choices is Ansel Adams, my initial decision was to choose him. I really love Ansel's work, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that Ansel was to obvious a choice. I ended up choosing Edward Weston, though not as famous he and Ansel were close friends. They were both great photographers though Ansel is more widely known today. In class, our teacher would show slide shows of different photographers work, so that we could see their styles and decide who we wanted to emulate. I almost chose Elliott Erwitt, his work is very comical and whimsical in nature. When we came to Edward Weston he showed us a series of Weston's tastefully done nudes, which I thought were very good images but not something that I wanted to try and do myself. After the nudes he showed us a series that Weston had done on American Barns. This series really struck me as interesting, I had been wanting to do some photos of the covered bridges around Greene County and this would fall right in line with the project. The only negative was that it was winter and the scenery in Ohio during the winter months is not really very photogenic. Not to mention that it is cold out and I wanted to shoot from in the rivers to get the best view. Did I let this stop me? Of course not, what self respecting photographer would let cold weather and cold water stop him from getting his shot? O.K. don't answer that question, I was being rhetorical. In Greene County there are 6 covered bridges and I shot them all. The project turned out pretty good but I can't share the images with you today. They are all film and I haven't taken the time to scan them and make them digital yet. I do have a shot of one of the bridges that I will upload, it was taken in the summer so the grass and trees are green. The images I used for my class project show bare trees and gray skies. One of these days I'll scan them and upload them for you to see. I may write tomorrow about another photographer of the past that I learned about in my history of photography class. She was before Ansel and Weston and she photographed the wild west state of Montana, or maybe I'll tell you more about Weston. Who knows, tomorrow I may change the topic to something totally different, that is why I like this blog, I can talk about whatever I want.

Photoman

Ohio State Parks

A while back I had a post titled Shoot the Hills, it was during this post that I mentioned the Ohio State Parks. I also mentioned then that my family and I love to go camping. We do most of our camping in an Ohio State Park, though we sometimes camp in private campgrounds. The Ohio State Park system is made up of 73 State Parks, most offer camping of some sort. We (my wife) like the more developed campgrounds with electricity, flushing toilets and showers. I love to photograph nature and the parks are in some of the most scenic parts of Ohio. They are nothing compared to Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon, but I enjoy them none the less. I have visited 19 of the parks and have camped in 8 of them. My 2 favorite parks are Hocking Hills State Park and Shawnee State Park. I like Hocking Hills as it is the most scenic and has the best hiking trails and I like Shawnee as it is also a very beautiful park and offers an abundance of wildlife opportunities. Shawnee's nature center is leaps and bounds above any of the other parks nature centers, I enjoy visiting it almost as much as my girls do. The image above was shot just outside Shawnee's nature center on the backside of the spillway of the lake. I love this image as it reminds me of fun times and the beautiful blue summer skies of Ohio. Mohican State Park is my wife's favorite park to camp in. My favorite part of Mohican is the river that runs through the campground. It is very shallow and runs quite slow so it is perfect for tubing. I love to sit in a tube and drift down the river, I could do it all day long. My family would rather swim in a boring old swimming pool, why would you want to swim in a pool when you can float down a river and see the beauty of God's creation as you float past it? I hope you enjoy learning a bit about the Ohio State Park system, if you would like to learn more you can visit their website at http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/Default.aspx?alias=www.dnr.state.oh.us/parks.

Photoman