David's Images of the Day Photoblog
One of the first pictures I took while attending a workshop with Thom Hogan in Hawaii five-years ago was this small yellow bird in a palm tree. The workshop group was sitting outside at the hotel getting an orientation for the next few days. Ultimately, I was able to identify this bird as a Saffron Finch — which turns out not to be native to Hawaii.
As the year comes to and end, and I try to reflect on everything I have done and everywhere I have been — all I can say is WOW!. The year started out with a great photography trip to Patagonia with Thom Hogan. We will ignore the extra few days we were held hostage in southern Chile. This was followed by the Ultimate Travel Workshop II on the Semester at Sea M/V Explorer lead by Michael Mariant. This started in San Diego, and then stopped in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama (including a transit through the Panama Canal), Costa Rica, Honduras, Belize, Mexico, and ended in Fort Lauderdale. My parents were along for this trip. I then attended a Workshop in Death Valley, also lead by Michael Mariant.
There have been a number of challenges at work. We shut down our San Francisco operations which included part of my group, and thus no more regular trips to California. We ended the year achieving (and exceeding) all of our objectives. I also attended a work sponsored executive retirement seminar. It is hard to believe that I have been working long enough to even consider retirement, but then again maybe I could spend more time working on photography.
This year I expanded beyond my Nikon cameras and lenses — adding a Leica X1 and Leica V-Lux 30 P&S cameara. NAS did add a couple of lenses to the kit (500 mm f/4 VRII and 600 mm f/4 VRII telephoto). Also at the end of the year I added a Nikon 1 V1 (mirrorless) camera body with the 10 mm f/2.8 lens, the 10-30 mm lens, 30-110 mm lens, and the 10-100 mm lens. I am looking forward to the FT1 lens adapter so I can use this camera body with a telescope.
Looking through my image database, it looks like I took something over 120K images this year — a new record for me. It also meant that I needed to update my digital asset management strategy. Lightroom is good, but can’t handle this many images. I’m currently testing Media Pro (Phase One). Capture One Pro (also Phase One) is now my primary image processing workflow, although I still am using Adobe Photoshop CS 5 and many Nik, OnOne, and Topaz plugins. I also needed to update my image storage and backup strategy after some hard drive failures. I’ve moved to a couple of Drobo disk arrays (16 TB) on and off-site.
Plans for next year? Thought about, but I didn’t sign up for the Semester at Sea Enrichment Voyage to the Carribean and Brazil (including a trip up the Amazon river). Thinking about a Hurtigruten cruise in Norway to see the Northern Lights, Nikonians Ultimate Travel Workshop III (San Diego, Central America, Peru – including Galapagos Islands), and also a trip to Cuba. If none of this works out, maybe it it time for a road trip out west. The White Ram (Roadtrek RV) is anxious for a road trip!
After dumping Facebook last year when my account was hacked, I joined Google+ this year. Google+ is a better platform for photographers. I really like the Daily Image Themes, and have been contributing a number of images.
Image of a Green Gecko taken during the Thom Hogan photography workshop on the Big Island in Hawaii I attended four years ago.
10,000 Hours to Become an Expert. Over the last couple of days I have seen several blogs referencing that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in a subject, activity, profession, etc. Thom Hogan and Mike Hagen have related this to becoming a photography expert. Thom Hogan pointed out that 10,000 hours is 40 hours/week for 5 years. (About as long as it took me to complete my PhD studies in Organic Chemistry). This could be doubled if visualization/acquisition of the image, and post processing are separate areas of expertise. Unless totally committed (and not having a day job to pay the bills) how many folks have 10,000 hours to commit to becoming an expert in 5, 10, or 20 years? I have always taken on new challenges every few years, both professional at work and outside of work. It was about 5 years ago that I decided to take on photography. From my point of view, the technical side was easy (but still requiring a lot of work and practice). For me the artistic side is the challenge. I have had several teachers/mentors (Winston Hall, Thom Hogan, Michael Marriant) over the past 5 years. One thing I learned from Winston was to share a new image every day (and thus my “Image of the Day” postings) and then learn from the feedback. Thom Hogan also pointed out today you also need to accept and learn from failures. If you don’t like one of my images, let me know.
Back to my “Images of the Day”. Another hot summer evening in New Jersey. Each of my tomato pots on the deck took 2 gallons of water. As I was sitting out on my deck I took some images of a young fawn, a grey cowbird, and Harvey the backyard rabbit. All were taken with a Nikon D3x camera and 600 mm f/4 VR lens. Because the D3x camera has a 24 MP sensor, I was able to do significant crops and still retain significant detail. I will break this into 3 posts (one for each animal) because of the number of images.
