David's Images of the Day Photoblog
Views of art from around the world
Caught Taking a Self Portrait – Reflection in “Sphere With Sphere” by Arnaldo Pomodoro. Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Image taken with a Leica X2 camera (ISO 100, 24 mm, f/4.5, 1/160 sec).
To end a great two-day visit to Paris, I went on an impromptu Photowalk in Parc de Bercy with photographer and friend Thomas Paris. I had been on photography trips before with Thomas in Patagonia (Photo Workshop in 2010 with Thom Hogan) and most recently Tromsø, Norway earlier this year chasing the Northern Lights. In his spare time Thomas Paris leads Photowalks in Paris. I was staying at the Pullman Bercy Hotel – a modern hotel in Paris that caters to foreign tourists. We walked to the local Parc de Bercy. Spring had arrived in Paris. The trees were green, and flowers in bloom. Lots of locals with families were walking through the park enjoying the warm late afternoon sunshine. The park was bigger than I thought. We passed through a gate that separated an area only opened during the day and heard some drum music and soon found a group sitting in a circle watching a man and woman doing what looked like slow-motion martial arts moves choreographed to the music. I had read about Brazilian Capoeira before, but never seen it in person. The following images were taken while watching the performance. Notice at least one other photographer working the performance.
After a long day of travel – Overnight on British Air from Tampa to Gatwick, then Gatwick to Barcelona we made it to the Semester at Sea MV Explorer. The ship was not docked at the location that the SAS folks indicated, but we saw it in the taxi when we got near the port. Once on board we found our cabins and had dinner. We spent the morning visiting Barcelona. The weather was great with blue skies and fluffy white clouds. Our first stop was the Sagrada Familia Cathedral. There were many, many tourists visiting the unfinished Cathedral. My parents had online tickets to visit the inside of the Cathedral. If you plan to visit, get the online tickets – it will save you a line that was blocks long. I went to find Xavi, a friend and fellow student from 30 years ago when I went to Graduate School at Caltech. We had a great lunch of Tapas at Cerveceria Catalina. Xavi also recently retired and is spending his time traveling and doing photography: Xavi’s Blog. Then back to the ship for our mandatory safety drill before sailing off to Monte Carlo, Monaco.
On the second full day of the northbound Hurtigruten voyage, the ship only stops in two ports: Trondheim (06:00-12:00) and Rørvik (20:30-21:15). Having six hours in Trondheim allowed us to spend some time to see the city. Our first stop was at Nidaros Cathedral. The exterior of the cathedral is a target rich environment for religious statues and gargoyles. But it was cold outside. I would love to go back with a perspective control lens to record all sides of the exterior of the cathedral. After leaving Trondheim, we stopped at Rørvik. The ship only stopped for 45 minutes, so we only had a short time to visit the Rørvik Coastal Museum.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this series of posts, I am getting ready to revisit Norway. At the time of the 2007 trip I only had a DSLR for about 6 months. There were many things about it I didn’t know – I was very early in the learning curve. By reviewing and analyzing the old images, I learn from my mistakes. When I look at the images that I took during that trip I cringe knowing that I could have done a better job – composition, exposure, focus, etc. I typically include camera settings with the description to help when I analyze the images. Since then cameras have improved significantly. Likewise the software used to process the images has improved. The new software lets me fix or improve the older images, and in some cases I have reprocessed the images. One of my goals for this upcoming trip is to take fewer, but better images. Comments and criticisms about these images are welcomed.
Five years ago I completed a photography workshop on the Big Island of Hawaii with Thom Hogan. While on the way to the airport to catch our return flights, we stopped at Lighthaus Camera. Coincidentally, it was “Black Friday” and everything was on sale. We noticed that the store just received their initial shipment of the newly released Nikon D300 camera. Three or four of the workshop participants purchased the cameras on the spot. I have to admit that mine was an impulse purchase. Over the next four years, I took nearly 55K images with the camera (2007: 3164 images; 2008: 20371 images; 2009: 29355 images; 2010: 919 images; 2011: 628 images). This was my last Nikon DX sensor camera. Since then all of my Nikon DSLR cameras had full frame FX sensors.
The last shooting location for the workshop on that day was at Hawaii Tropical Gardens. I reprocessed an image Onomea Water Falls using Nik Silver Efex Pro.
