by benjaminjk | Apr 30, 2014 | photography |
So… funny story. I wanted to go shoot some waterfalls last weekend and I convinced the family that it would be a good idea for us to visit a waterfall or two on Sunday. We decided that Falling Water Falls was a good one. I had seen pictures of this waterfall online, and heard many people talk about it being awesome. I found directions, and a few GPS coordinates, so we packed up and left out after church. It was a little more than a 2 hour drive through the national forest to get to the fall. Two hours was a little more time than Andrea and Caitlyn wanted to sit in the car to begin with, so there was a little anxiety about the drive to begin with. After quite a while down a dirt road (Andrea thought we were lost) the GPS told me that we had arrived. Looking to our left, there was the most boring looking creek, there was just nothing interesting about it, and along it was this very pathetic looking set of cascades. The cascades were even a little ugly. Andrea looked at me and yelled, “ we just drove for two hours for this!” She seemed a little more than annoyed. Caitlyn as well. We got out and looked around, I was sure that we had just wasted four hours of driving. I figured I would shoot a few frames anyway…. We ended up driving down the road for about another ½ mile, we go around a bend and come up on a beautiful set of falls....
by benjaminjk | Apr 28, 2014 | photography |
This might be one of my favorite views in this Area. Two shots of the same place, one at night and one during the day.
by benjaminjk | Apr 27, 2014 | photography |
I got out of work a little early on Friday, so I used the opportunity to get out and shoot some eagles. There was quite a bit of activity at the nest over the next couple of days. This has been a pretty unique set of circumstance for me; I have had the privilege to see the eagles work around the clock to raise the 2 chicks in the nest. Now that they are getting much bigger, we can finally see them as they start to fledge. The partners are bringing more and more food to the nest, and one of the images that I still want to capture is one of the eagles carrying a fresh kill to the nest. That particular shot still eludes me, as I write this blog post. I have seen the eagle bring a kill in to the nest 3 times and I have been in a place to photograph it twice, but each time, I walk away with an underwhelming image. The 1st time, I had the camera in manual focus (I was shooting the babies in the nest, and they don’t move much) when the eagle flew up and shot the entire sequence with out focus. The 2nd time, I had just pulled up and missed the shot because my camera was still in the car. The 3rd time my shutter speed was just a little off and it is just a little too blurry. There is not much time left, the eaglets will be fledging soon, and the whole lot of them will be gone until next year, but we...
by benjaminjk | Apr 14, 2014 | Analog Camera, photography |
Digital capture has completely changed photography. The digital won, it is cheaper, quicker, and easier to work with, more accessible to everyone. There are almost no downsides when compared to traditional wet chemistry. For me however, there still is value to be gained from taking a craft and reducing it to the very simplest form, and shooting a view camera with large format film is kinda like that. The large format view camera is about as simple as a camera can be made. It is really not much more than a box that on one end holds a lens, and on the other end holds the film. You might think that tearing down your camera to the barebones basic might make operating it a little easier, and that the capability of the camera to make quality images would be less; but the exact opposite is what happens. Operating the camera becomes much more complex, and the larger negatives show even the slightest mistakes even more. The camera does nothing for you, except keep light off of the film. You have to focus and expose the image with no help for the camera. Tilt and shift further complicates the focus, and to make matters worse, trying to see an image on the glass can be incredibly difficult in bright daylight or dim situations. The camera itself is a quite large, heavy and generally awkward to set up and use. Completely dissembled and stored in my pack, it takes about 15-25 minutes to set up and get ready for a shot, so shooting in quickly changing light can be...
by benjaminjk | Apr 7, 2014 | photography |
After a hard winter, spring wild flowers are starting to pop up everywhere...
