Archive for category Photography

Photo Essay: Old Dominion Hounds (November 27, 2010)

This photo essay is posted at KLM Images.

Twist & turn

Zigzag

The eye of the viewer can be guided by actual lines in an image, or by implied ones.

These two riders are stacked up on a slanted hillside watching hunting in the lower field.  Your eye naturally follows them down starting at the rump of the near horse and then reversing at the lower one.  It’s possible the horses are standing still, but the placement of the legs and movement of the tails creates doubt, so you follow the potential movement left and then right, instead of just left along the hillside and out, as you might if the far rider were absent. Read the rest of this entry »

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Photo Essay: Rappahannock Hunt (December 11, 2010)

This photo essay is posted at KLM Images.

Landscapes

Stacked ridges ending in the Blue Ridge (HDR)

I am far from satisfied with my skill at capturing landscapes and am constantly experimenting for better results.

In this essay, I post-processed some of the images for high-dynamic range (HDR) contrast, so let’s look at the results.

Ordinary cameras are more limited in their ability to respond to contrast than the human eye.  We see very well in both dim light and blazing sunshine, but for a camera we must choose those conditions in our settings or be disappointed.  Depending on the settings, the camera decides to set the exposure to maximize the overall utility of the resulting image, but this reduces the range of absolute darkness and absolute brightness compared to our own vision.  The theory behind HDR is to take multiple versions of the same image with different exposure settings, then blend those together so that the overall exposure is much broader than the camera can capture on its own, and closer to what we actually see. Read the rest of this entry »

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Photo Essay: Loudoun Hunt West (December 5, 2010)

This photo essay is posted at KLM Images.

Cropping for action

All charm and tilted motion

I typically come down on the engineering side of the analysis vs artistic spectrum, and this manifests in my photography as wanting to see the whole scene: the entire horse and rider, the full pack of hounds, and so forth.  This is an artistic fault, I firmly believe.  I know this because, whenever happenstance intervenes and forces a moving target to be cropped in ways I would never have planned, I am often much pleased with the results.

When I stand too close to the action with a particular lens and try to get something useful anyway, the image is reduced to its essentials.  I don’t need to see the top of the rider’s head or the details of the horse’s legs to enjoy this shot.  Read the rest of this entry »

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Photo Essay: Snickersville Hounds (October 31, 2010)

This photo essay is posted at KLM Images.

Carving up the space

Dominated by the curve of the pond

The curved edge of the pond in the first photo eats a nice semicircle out of the left of the scene.  That alone would make for a pleasing composition, but see also how the grasses curve with the pond, and so do the bodies and especially the tails of the hounds.  Everything reinforces that fundamental curve.

Gothic linear divisions

In the next photo, we have linear architectural elements made up unexpectedly of living creatures.

The accidental formal postures of the hound and the rider, aided by an almost straight horizon, create an inner rectangle and draw the eye into the open space in the back left.  Nothing is moving; all is potential. Read the rest of this entry »

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Photo Essay: Blue Ridge Hunt (October 2, 2010)

The photo essay is posted at KLM Images.

Nature vs architecture

Fox in the midst of architecture

The front gates of the Blue Ridge Hunt kennels have two lovely metal fox silhouettes mounted on top.  The kennel building is nothing but straight lines, of course: bricks, bars, shingles, and all the other architectural elements, but we get just that bit of nature which gives it personality.  Whenever we look at the kennels there are hounds behind the bars (this is their home), but the foxes run free along the top of the gates.

Architecture surrounded by Nature

In a more natural context, these two does disturbed by the hunting activity retreat past the barn.  The barn is aligned with and echoes the nearby Blue Ridge mountain that ascends behind it, but is dwarfed by it as well.

Though the lighting is attractive on the gable end of the barn, our eyes are drawn to the moving deer. Read the rest of this entry »

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Photo Essay: Old Dominion Hounds (September 25, 2010)

The photo essay is posted at KLM Images.

The scale of mountains

It's a blue wall, but is it big?

One of the pleasures of living in the Piedmont area of Virginia is the constant presence of the Blue Ridge Mountain.  It’s not a high ridge in this part of Virginia, but it is unavoidable.  Though I see the ridge constantly in hunting situations, I find it a challenge to render well in photos.  Often it is in silhouette because of the time of day or just simply flattened by the lens and made insignificant.

It’s a cliché that a landscape can often benefit by objects in the foreground, either to serve as a point of interest or to provide scale.  In the second shot, I was standing lower than the stable, which was on raised ground.  Without the stable (and the fence) in the picture to provide perspective, it would not be clear that I was looking up at the mountain. Read the rest of this entry »

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Photo Essay: Ashland Bassets (April 16, 2010)

The photo essay is posted at KLM Images.

Complicated events

Waiting for another hunt to finish

This is a just-published essay from an event of a few months ago.  There is a 4-day pack trial of basset hounds where several hunts come and compete in various pack formations (3-couple, 5-couple, 7-couple) actively hunting rabbits and being judged for hunting effectiveness.  This particular essay is the second day, with the 3-couple (6 hounds) competition.  Day 1 is published here; days 3 & 4 will be available here & here.

At any time during the course of the day, there may be one pack just finishing hunting and exiting the hunting area, one pack beginning to hunt, another pack waiting its turn, and yet another pack out taking some exercise.  The participants largely know each other and have done this for many seasons, so they are not confused by the activities, but a photo essay sampling all the activities in order can’t help but be bewildering to less knowledgeable viewers compared to, say, a foxhunt.

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Overview: Resolution, Pixels, File Sizes

I will attempt to make a bewildering topic a bit more intelligible in this overview.

Example of screen resolution at 72 ppi (see below for larger)

What I’m going to cover

I’ll take you through a bit of what happens inside your camera, how pixels are stored in an image file, how image files are stored on a computer, and how to choose the right resolution for different usages.  I’ll be generalizing with a heavy hand to keep the explanations as simple as possible.

I will use one of my cameras (Canon 50D) as the example.  It’s a standard dSLR camera, the sort with removable lenses.  If you’re using a camera phone or a point-and-shoot, all the same considerations apply, but some of it is hidden from you or not accessible.

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Photo Essay: Old Dominion Hounds (September 4, 2010)

The photo essay is posted at KLM Images.

Can you spot the camouflaged hound leaning on the horse?

Lovely hounds

This was the first day of cubbing for the Old Dominion Hounds.

As sometimes happens, all the hunting activity took place off-stage, from the perspective of the car-followers.  We got to watch them leave and return, and in-between there was much appreciation of the lovely scenery and occasional faint echoes of hounds and horn.

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Who is your audience?

…and what do they want?  A complicated question.  Here are some initial thoughts.

Photo essays – the subjects

Although I have done some straight commission work, more interesting to me is the work done with no particular customer in mind.  For example, when I cover a hunting meet, I don’t know in advance what sorts of shots I will get, nor who might be interested in them.

At the opening meet of the season

Junior handler with her basset hound

Not surprisingly, some of the customers are the subjects in the photos.  They enjoy seeing pictures of themselves having fun or all dressed up for a special event.  They are fond of their horses, their hounds, and their friends.

And then there are the kids, who may or may not see the photos online but who have parents and grandparents.

Read the rest of this entry »

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