Saint John the Baptist
Another of my favorite things to photograph are Cathedrals. It’s not an expression of religious faith that drives me to pursue this but instead it’s a deep appreciation of the immense architectural beauty that can be found in many of the cathedrals around the world.
On a recent family trip to Savannah Georgia, I wanted to go to the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. This particular cathedral was built in the mid-1800s and I had seen photos that led me to believe it was truly spectacular. Many times, when I go to a cathedral, I’m not questioned by anyone and I’m able to do the photos I want. This time, I was in store for a challenge.
Before going to a cathedral, I always check to see what the mass schedule is and I try to go between services to avoid as many people as possible. When I first arrived at St. John the Baptist, early one afternoon, there was a wedding in progress. It was raining that day and there wasn’t a lot for us to do outdoors. So, we went to a local museum and then had some awesome ice cream at Leopold’s.
I decided to go back to the cathedral, this time I’m greeted at the door and am told the wedding photographer is still taking photos of the couple. But I could go in so long as I didn’t interfere. I was really surprised they were still doing photos after several hours but maybe they were just being thorough. I went in and was amazed at the beauty of the cathedral. After taking it all in for a few minutes I shot a few photos while trying to stay out of the way of the wedding photos. But, I left somewhat unfulfilled, I couldn’t get the shots I wanted and going back would be difficult because I was running out of time.
I woke early the next morning, Sunday, and went back to the cathedral. I got there about 7am and the first mass was at 8am. As I went in, a custodial person greeted me and asked if I wanted to take some photos (I suppose the camera and tripod in my hands tipped him off). I said yes but asked if the lights would be turned on anytime soon, he took care of that for me and then I had the run of the place. After a few minutes, I heard the organist rehearsing up in the balcony. I really wanted to shoot a few photos from the balcony but hadn’t been able to get up there and now the organist was there. After about 20 minutes, the custodian swung by where I was and asked how I was doing, and just then I heard the organ stop playing. I told the custodian I was doing fine and asked if it’d be possible to go in the balcony. He relayed my request to the organist who, then, came over to me. He said I could go up to the balcony but I needed to be finished within 15 minutes because he didn’t want anyone up there when folks started arriving for mass. I thanked him and assured him I’d be done in less time than that.
A little persistence paid off and I finally got the shots I wanted. It was time to go meet the family for breakfast!
Gary's Print Shop
Today, I'm happy to announce the opening of my Fine Art Print shop on Etsy. This is something I've been planning for some time and I hope you will enjoy the items I'm offering.
You can find Gary's Print Shop at the link below.
**Grand Opening Sale**
The first five(5) customers will receive a 2-for-1 special. If you buy one print, you can select another print of equal or lesser value for free. In order to take advantage of this offer, you will need to contact me directly and tell me what you want for the second print.
Please let me know if you have any comments and/or questions.
Wa-Hoo-Wa!!
(Click on any image to see a larger view)
What do you do when you’re in Charlottesville on a fall weekend and the University of Virginia (UVA) Cavaliers are playing a home game? You go to the game! That’s what I did yesterday. My daughter, a third-year student at UVA, and I saw the Cavaliers play their rival Hokies from Virginia Tech. Unfortunately, for Wahoo nation it hasn’t been a very good year and they finished their season with a loss to the Hokies.
Since I was going to the game, I decided to bring the camera along and try my hand at doing some of those panoramic shots you see from a lot of sporting events. To start with, I should point out that when doing panoramic shots, your results would be better (higher resolution and overall better detail) if you shoot vertical shots vs. horizontal shots. I won’t bore you by posting all six of the vertical shots I did but this is one of them.
I made sure, while holding the camera steady, to start at the left side of the view that I wanted and then I rotated to my right, making sure there was at least a 25% (eyeballed) overlap of each image. It took me six shots to get the angle of view I wanted. I used my wide-angle zoom lens for this and it was set at approximately 18mm.
Once back to my computer, I brought the six files into Photoshop and used the Photomerge option to stitch the six images together to form one image. There are other photo editing tools out there that will stitch together images for panoramas, I use Photoshop because that’s what I’m most familiar with. Once Photoshop was finished with the stitching, I did a little tweaking to the contrast, lighting and sharpening to finish the image that you see here. One additional thing I could have done was to crop the photo to make it look more like a panoramic view. But, I didn’t want to lose a lot of the sky and foreground so I left it as is.
Next time you’re in Charlottesville, go check out the Wahoos in action. Hopefully, you’ll get to sing the Good Old Song and do the “Wa-hoo-wa” yell.
I welcome your comments and/or questions about this post or anything photo related!!
East St Louis Toodle-Oo
(click on any image to see larger view)
A previous job used to require me to travel to St. Louis. I had been intrigued by some of the nice nighttime skyline shots of St. Louis I’d seen and on one trip I set out to do my version of the St. Louis skyline.
In order to achieve this shot, I knew I would have to make my way to the east side of the Mississippi River to East St. Louis, Illinois...a place I’d heard isn’t the safest place at night. And when do you think I was planning on going to get the nighttime skyline shot that I had in mind? It seems the riverfront property on the east side is owned by a local casino, the Casino Queen, and the local railroads. Being proactive, I called the casino’s security office and asked permission for my photo op. I was told, “No problem, have fun!” The night came for my adventure, off I went with backpack and tripod in hand. I’m walking towards the sea wall, past the “No Trespassing” signs, and just as I’m about to go thru the sea wall towards the water’s edge a white van pulls up with a couple of security guards. For some reason, they were curious about what I was doing and they asked if I didn’t understand the meaning of the No Trespassing signs! I informed them of my intent and that I’d been told by the casino’s security it was “ok!” The guards seemed to enjoy my story and then told me one of their own. To sum it up, they said if I didn’t leave I’d be arrested for trespassing! Given those options, I left...very disappointed. The next day, I was downtown St. Louis and I decided to try a different approach to shooting the Arch. I used my wide angle lens and positioned myself as close as I could get to the corner edge of the arch and still be able to get the entire arch in the shot. I came away with this “different” perspective of a national landmark. But, I hadn’t given up on my original quest for a skyline shot.
Before my next trip to St. Louis (about a year later), I called the Casino Queen security office and asked for a supervisor. I was going to plead my case hard and request written permission to do the photography I wanted to do. The person on the other end of the phone listened to my plea for consideration and then said, “You don’t need any permission, why don’t you just go to the new park...it has an observation deck that’s perfect for what you want!” At first I didn’t believe what I’d been told but after a little internet research I realized she was telling me the truth.
When I arrived, I couldn’t wait to make the trek to the Malcom W. Martin Memorial Park to see for myself. Sure enough, there was the St. Louis skyline right in front of me, as if it was handed to me on a platter. There was only one little “gotcha,” which I’m sure the city of East St. Louis did just to frustrate photographers like me…power lines, power lines, and more power lines running thru the skyline with no way to avoid them! Fortunately, I was able to remove the power lines in Photoshop and I finally had my St. Louis skyline shot. In the end, something I tried so hard to get was just served up to me. It was actually kind of unfulfilling after putting forth so much effort.
The next time you're traveling along Interstate 64 and you see the Arch, take a moment to reflect on its significance. It represents where Lewis and Clark began their journey which became instrumental in the westward expansion movement in the U.S. Enjoy being in the heartland of America!
Lighthouses
Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse
I love to photograph lighthouses! There are approximately 700 lighthouses in the U.S. and 57 of those are in Maine. On a recent trip to Maine, I made plans to photograph several lighthouses, some I hadn't shot before and some I'd shot a few times. In this blog, you can click on any image and you'll see a larger size of the image.
Sometimes I'm asked why I'll shoot something that has been shot so many times before. My feeling is every photograph of a subject is different in some way. And, this couldn't be more true when you have the pleasure of shooting along the Maine coast. The weather impacts the lighting and the lighting is always different every time I return to a location.
The image above is Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse. It's probably one of the most photographed lighthouses in the world. It's located in Acadia National Park near Bar Harbor and I go there every time I'm in the area.
Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse
The above image, also of Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse, shows a completely different mood than the first. Both images were shot near sunset. At the time of the second image, it was foggy so there was no sun.
Portland Head Lighthouse
Another of my favorite lighthouses is Portland Head Lighthouse located just outside Portland in Fort Williams Park, Cape Elizabeth. This photo was taken about an hour before sunset and as you can see this photo has a fair amount of drama in it, thanks to some cool clouds and great light. I really like to have a little drama in my images while staying true to what the scene looked like when I was there.
Portland Head Lighthouse
In today's world of digital photography, there's more to it than just the photography. While taking a photograph is without a doubt the most important part of the photo process, post-processing has also become very important. Regardless of what you use, whether it be Photoshop, iPhoto, or something else, we all do some level of post-processing with our digital images before they are complete. In this image, all I did was use Photoshop and OnOne's black & white plug-in to create a black & white version of the image above. For me, the look and feel of the image is completely different even though they are basically the same.
Pemaquid Point Lighthouse
All the little towns in Maine are so picturesque and it's hard to not spend a lot of time in one place. My recent trip to Maine was the first time I had been to Pemaquid Point Lighthouse. I was hoping to get to Pemaquid well before sunset. However, the light was falling fast and Pemaquid was a bit down the road. After finally arriving, I went down on the rocks to get this shot. The tide was out which was good but you can see it was dusk and I had missed the sunset. This image turned out fairly well despite missing the sun. There was very little post-processing involved in this image. As I came back up the rocks, I found a nice surprise.
As I came off the rocks and started wandering around the side of the property, I came upon the lighthouse keepers cottage. It was small, very plain, and I don't think there was any part of it that was plumb to the land or any other part of itself. All of this made the cottage a fascinating subject. So, I shot away. The final image is a black and white, except for the selective color of the porch light.
Pemaquid Light Keeper's Cottage
Pemaquid Point Lighthouse
I finally finished shooting the keeper's cottage and made my way around to the lighthouse entrance. By this time it was pretty dark, so much so that I had a difficult time focusing my camera on the lighthouse. I couldn't be sure if I was getting my shots in focus or not and my flashlight was in the car, far enough away that I didn't want to go get it. So, I waited for some folks to leave who were parked pretty close behind me. As they got in their car, I asked if they'd mind turning on their headlight's high beam so I could lock in the focus. Once they were gone, all was good. The starburst of the light was created by stopping the aperture down to get a better depth of field, which I thought I needed due to my inability to focus! :)
Tenants Harbor
The first morning, my plan was to go to Marshall Point Lighthouse. Some of you may remember the Marshall Point Lighthouse from the movie, Forrest Gump! Sometimes when you're on vacation, it's tough to drag yourself out of bed early enough for a sunrise shoot, but you don't get those shots lying in bed. So, I was up early and on my way to Marshall Point. As I was driving along, I realized I wasn't going to make it to Marshall Point in time for sunrise. Just as I realized how my poor planning had done me in again, or so I thought, I came upon Tenants Harbor. I quickly stopped and Tenants Harbor became my sunrise shoot for the day. The nice thing about being in Maine, it's pretty easy to improvise and find things to photograph when your original plan doesn't work out.
Marshall Point Lighthouse
Shortly after sunrise, I made my way to Marshall Point Lighthouse. It looked just like in the movie but was much smaller than I expected. It's located off the beaten path and it took me a few wrong turns and back tracking to get here. I don't think you'd get lost and wind up here by accident...but it'd be rather fortunate if you did.
It was low tide so a lot of the surrounding rocks were exposed. For a different perspective, I made my way out on the rocks for a different look at Gump's light (see below image). One thing about these rocks in Maine...they're not very forgiving if you happen to land the wrong way on one! :)
Marshall Point Lighthouse