latoga's Motion Blur

Monday, August 11, 2008

All Good Things Eventually Upgrade

Upgrades happen. They happen to cameras. They happen to software. Today it happened to this blog.

latoga's Motion Blur has moved on to become latoga photography. Same great photos. Same great musings about photography. New address: www.latogaphoto.com. New look and feel.

If you were subscribed to the feed on this blog, it has automatically rolled over to the new blog address. Motion Blur will live on as the name for the feed of my photographs only posts at latoga photography. So make sure you're subscribed to the right feed...

See you on the other side!

Sunday, August 03, 2008

Photo: Manzanita Snack Time

Earlier this weekend, while hiking to the summit of Mount Tamalpais (Mount Tam), I was able to capture this shot of a local resident. We were leaving the summit when the Manzanita bush right next to the trail started to shake. My wife and I stopped to see if we could find the shaker. Here was a local chipmunk, no longer than 3 inches, scrambling up to the top branches to grab a berry and scoot back down into the bush to eat. It was very difficult to try and capture this image, between shooting up into the sun, the sun washing out the branches, and then getting the chipmunk in focus and not one of the nearby branches. Eventually, persistance paid off!

I realized this morning that I'm lacking photos in my wildlife photography portfolio on the website (there wasn't even a pure wildlife portfolio yet!). For some reason, the wildlife photos that I have taken have never made it up to the website. I'll have to work on addressing this moving forward...

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Photo: San Francisco Over the Headlands

This weekend I'm getting to play tourist in my own back yard. My brother and his family are in town kicking off a week long trip down the California coast. We started off the weekend in Marin. It was a sunny clear day, a perfect day to visit the top of Mount Tamalpais (Mount Tam). The view from the drive up to the summit as well as the summit were amazing. On the way down, I pulled over and zoomed in to take this picture of the San Francisco. Even with the harsh mid-day light I knew I could do something with the image. Black and white it was.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Mystery Kitchen Item

A few weeks ago I did a product shoot for a friend of mine. He had designed a really simple and needed kitchen item and wanted some product shots done of a close-up of the item as well as the item in use. It was great fun re-building a kitchen in my studio. I knew I was keeping those small granite remnants around for some thing...

Above is the close-up of the kitchen item. Any guesses as to what it is or what it does? (stay tuned for the answer in a few days).

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

HDR And Our Expectations of Photography

This topic has been burning a hole in my head or the past two weeks. And I get a gentle reminder every few days in the form of another comment arriving in my inbox.

Back around the 4th of July holiday, Mark Graf had a posting about some playing with HDR he was doing. He posted an HDR variation of a previous photo of his. Mark's goal was to collect some feedback on what people thought was the better photo (see his posting for my exact thoughts). Mark does some wonderful wildlife and landscape photography and the general consensus of the two images was that the original was better. The idea of "what is the core reason everyone thought that the original was better" has been bouncing arond my head since his posting.

When I was returning from my recent trip to Chicago, I was passing through Denver International Airport and happened to stop in a Seattle's Best Coffee. They have this huge photo that is part of their advertising behind the counter, it's a view of the Public Market neon sign from downtown Seattle, but it's taken near evening and has wonderful mood due to the exposure and low dynamic range (lots of dark areas with highlights just around the neon).

This got me to thinking about HDR and how the typical response to an HDR photo done badly is "it doesn't look natural" (especially with landscape photography). Yet, I've also heard this statement applied to HDR photos that were done really well. But the statement usually comes from someone who is not a photographer, so they are usually uttering their initial impression. This impression has come from years of viewing images and having been conditioned to expect a photo taken near sunset to have lots of dark areas and a low dynamic range. Yet, if they were standing next to the photographer when the image was capture, their own eyes would see much more range than the camera captures.

So, this got me to wondering about how much our expectations of photography are based on our conditioning of the technical limitations if the craft. As the technology changes and advances (something that we have been in the midst of for the past 5-10 years, like never before) are these changes happening faster than the consumers are able to accept them? In 5-10 years from now, will the same person who complained about the "un-nature looking" HDR photo, complain if it's a LDR photo?

Interesting mind trip to think about how conditioning of the audience affects our work, our decision making process about our photography, and our industry of photography...

Monday, July 21, 2008

2008 Q2 Links of Thanks

Wow, July is mostly past and I haven't had a chance to put up my quarterly links of thanks. With my trip to Wisconsin and Chicago at the start of the month and then playing catchup on so many fronts upon my return (one of the joys of going on vacation) this got pushed back a bit.

Now that I have been doing this for a few quarters, it's interesting to see changes in the top referring sites. Some sites that I haven't used in a while, like Photo.net still appear in the top 20. I also started using Twitter in the last quarter and was surprised at how high it appeared in the rankings right away (mostly thanks to the great tool TwitterFeed). I also started using FriendFeed at the same time; it's interesting how more people tended to click through on my photos on FriendFeed than on my blog postings.

(Rankings from last quarter, if any, appear in parentheses after each site.)

latoga's Motion Blur Referring Sites

latoga Photography Referring Sites

Note: These stats were collected by Google Analytics for my two sites. Any referral sites that are obvious web based email services or IP addresses were removed.

Monday, July 07, 2008

Photo: Lindbergh Beacon Shines Bright (JPC-04)

The Palmolive Building in Chicago is capped by the Lindbergh Beacon. While the building is considered one of the finest examples of Art Deco architecture in the world, the beacon sits atop a 97 foot tower on the roof of the building and was originally donated to the city in 1929 to guide airplanes to Chicago--at 2 Billion candlepower, airplanes could see the beacon over 200 miles away. The beacon was turned off when taller buildings were built nearby and in 1990 the original beacon was donated to the Experimental Aircraft Association museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. In 2003, as part of the building's adaptive re-use, the beacon was brought back to life, though only shining out on Lake Michigan.

When I saw this beacon from my friend's boat on July 4th, I knew I had to include it in the July Photo Challenge of lighting fixtures. Even at half the power of the original beacon, it's one massive light fixture! I liked the idea of adding a historic feel to the image by making it a noisy black and white; thought most original renderings of the beacon don't include the John Hancock Tower.

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Photo: Ferris and His Shadow

Taken from the top of the Ferris Wheel at the Taste of Chicago. My wife laughed at me, becuase as soon as I saw the Ferris Wheel I told here to keep some tickets in reserve, she knew I wanted to go on it just to get pictures! Guess I've become predictable...

Saturday, July 05, 2008

Photo: Spire and Flag (JPC-03)

As we were taking the boat out one night, we cruised along the waterfront and I spotted this image. The combination of the holiday lights on the Sears tower and the American Flag light CNA building in downtown Chicago made a nice backdrop for the waterfront walkway lite by the streetlight.

Photo: Holding on Tight

A few of the blurry photos from the boat trip out on the lake for the 4th of July came out with a bit of creative feel to them. Click through on the photo to view more. The blue and Red spire at the left one third is the Sears Tower. They light the antenna at the top of the building Red, White, and Blue for the holiday weekend. Looking at this photo makes my head hurt even a day later...