[I heard an interesting article on NPR this evening. All but 3 of the pay phones in New York City are being replaced with WiFi Kiosks. A search on the web uncovered this NYtimes article.
I've had an affinity for pay phones for some time. I spent quite a bit of my engineering carier building telephone networks and installing private telephone systems. I don't have any good images of pay phones as when they were plentiful, there was no reason to photograph them and then they disappeared and belatedly I wish I had. LIke Book stores and Newpaper vending machines, I fear they are now really a thing of the past.
While we don't have the colorful red phone booths like the British, there's something about the sleek glass booths of day's past that just invites a photograph. Oh well, time marches on.
OK the second in yesterday afternoons work with Focus Stacking.
This time a shot of a small Acorn. Shot with a 105 micro at f\5.6 with an extension tube attached. About twice life size. Shot on a sheet of black plexiglass to get the reflection. This is a 41 shot Focus Stack processed in Zerene Stacker Software.
I spent the afternoon shooting some focus stacks using my stack shot rail. This is an example, which can be fine tuned some more in photoshop, of a branch from the yard. I used a extension tube with my 105 micro lens giving me about a 2 to 1 magnification. 41 shots processed in Zerene Stacker.
The equipment for bird photography can be very expensive. Part of this is the nature of the business, photographing small moving objects requires long telephoto lenses and effective autofocus systems Beginning bird photographers would be well served with a good cropped sensor camera body and 400 mm f/5.6 lens or a 300 mm f/4 lens with a 1.4x teleconverter. By applying several common sense strategies you can acquire such a system at a reduced cost.
There are many foggy mornings in Southern Louisiana. This is very fortunate! I love to photograph Foggy Cypress Scenes over the water. The limited vision afforded by the fog enables the trees to be seen against a stark white background. Even better, mornings with low lying fog allow the photographer to create stunning images of the fog appearing to be on fire.
As I write this, Southern Louisiana is in the grips of an unusual cold snap. Not the kind of weather I would go wandering around finding things in nature to photograph and certainly not the kind of weather I want to be out on the water. I would argue, however, now is the most important time for my photography and the success of the shooting season is dependent upon much of what I do now.
For the May tour, nesting season was in full swing with excellent conditions at both the Millers Lake and Jefferson Island Rookeries. Millers Lake has a huge number of nesting birds in stark contrast to last years poor showing.
Every year brings another batch of "must have" digital cameras, ever increasing resolution, faster autofocus, better high iso performance, etc. But some of the most memorable images were made decades ago, some with low resolution digital cameras, some made with ancient film cameras. So what is the role of the camera and the role of the photographer, my take on this subject.
The second Louisiana Bird Photo Tour was held from the evening of May 12th through May 16th. The weather was great and photo opportunities were numbers. Continue to read the highlights and see a slide show of my best images for the tour.
An update on photography at Lake Martin. While the birds are not yet back near the road and many of the price landscape locations are now blocked, Lake Martin is still worth a visit if you're in the area.
