Website in the making and more...

A friend has graciously offered to work on a custom website for my photography, so I hope to have this up and going sooner than later. Although, this means I need to get myself out and taking more photos.


I also plan on donating some prints, either 11x17s or 13x19s to some upcoming events to be raffled off to raise money for various organizations. More to come on this soon.

New gear on the way...

After much deliberation, confusion, and scratching my head for an weeks on end I made the plunge for the Singh Ray Vari-ND 77mm filter to use in my landscape photography. This filter gives you up to 8 stops, allowing you to blur aspects of motion in your photos. This will work exceptionally well in shooting waterfalls, oceanscapes, and so forth. I decided to go with the Vari-ND rather than the Vari-N-Duo for both price (~$100 difference) and the fact I can mount my thin circular polarizer to it and control glare as needed.

I hope to post a full review on this filter after I get back from Stone Mountain State Park shooting the Cascades and Hidden Falls at that location.

Canon EOS 50D w/grip - Sold.

Enjoy Josh!


I think I'm going to focus on full frame for now until I get some revenue built up to work with wildlife. under 10k clicks (probably about 7k), slight scratch around the ISO button from loading/unloading the camera with the 500L back in January. perfect otherwise. I'll include a 2GB Sandisk Extreme III card with it as well.

More photo stuff...

Just letting everyone know that photos are now available in the store at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. Select 8x10 prints are there now, with more hopefully to be featured and I should be expanding to 11x14s for the store.

Prints - Soon available!

Finally, I've got the Canon PIXMA Pro9000 Mark II printer up and running with good proofing results. I am planning to begin cranking out 8x10", 11x17", and 13x19" prints. All will come in a precut mat w/ backing board in a clear sleeve. I can negotiate prices if you are ordering multiple prints.

Base prices* for now will run as follows (does not include shipping costs):

8x10" - $25
11x17" - $50
13x19" - $70

*these prices are standards and do not reflect the price of each print - please inquire about any select piece of work until the site is up and functional.

B|W images – Eno River

 

Made a quick trip to the Eno River State Park today to check out some new parts of the park.  The water level was up and a bit dingy, and the light wasn’t playing in my favor.  I started playing around with B/W in camera settings and liked what I was getting.

Here are a few images from today.  I had to work at the smallest apertures  the 24-70L and 70-200L would give me plus my Heliopan circular polarizer.  I can’t wait to get a Singh Ray Vari-N-Duo filter!

Enjoy

Canon releases new Rebel T2i with 1080 video and 18MP

DPreview has an initial report with photos of this new camera. More can be seen here:

Canon Rebel T2i at DPreview.com

Vista's blogger...

I blame this crap-o-la program for a lot of grammatical errors....from now on I'll be doing this exclusively from the web or with plenty of review time....

ugh, going back to make some structural changes on the more recent posts...stay tuned folks.

End rant.

Inspirations…

Ever wonder what drives a person to do what they do? World renowned photographer Art Wolfe has stated that Ansel Adams was a big inspiration in his work as a nature photographer. Ansel laid down a foundation for nature photography today, meticulously working in a darkroom dodging and burning his exposures to create incredible images during his era. Today we are able to merely plug in our memory card and in a few hours we can upload, process, post and print a day’s work.

From my few years behind a camera, I owe a lot of my inspiration to groups of nature photographers that readily post their adventures and photographic tinkering to online forums. I can say with confidence that my learning curve in all aspects of photography has increased exponentially with my time spent reading and interacting at FredMiranda.com. This site has to be one of the most well rounded sources of information for all genres of photographers at various skill levels.

Recently I picked up a copy of Outdoor Photographer Magazine, thumbing through and stumbled upon a great article featuring photographer Ian Plant (www.ianplant.com). Ian’s work is a collection of once in a lifetime photographs that wow and awe their viewers. I’ve become particularly interested in the way he’s captured the landscapes along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Along with Ian, his colleague Jerry Greer is a very inspirational contributor to their nature photography community Mountain Trail Photo (www.mountaintrailphoto.com). This site is a phenomenal resource for photographers interested in creating stunning images of the natural world. Although their photo workshops can carry a hefty fee, I think in all regards it would be worth it.

It has been nice having friends and coworkers that have been involved in the hobby for some time or working towards pursuing photography as a career. They have been those folks I turn to for answers, for the ability to interact with new equipment hands on, and to help me in the pursuit of regional photo opportunities. I still have to say the one person that I owe thanks to for me picking up a camera is a local wildlife photographer with a knack for working with reptiles and amphibians. The next time you come across a copy of Wildlife in North Carolina, you may find one Todd Pusser with the cover shot or writing and photographing for an article on the natural history of North Carolina’s wonderful wildlife.

Thanks Todd, for inspiring me to adopt a serious hobby and strive to become better day by day. My bank account however, scorns our friendship!

"Negative ghostrider, the pattern is full"

Ugh, still processing photos and finding more that I like. A leftover from the snow geese session - these two were on the approach to the flooded fields. Crappy light that day, but its one of the better selections during my opportunity with these awesome birds.

Moving forward

I hope to purchase a professional photography account soon, likely from the folks at Zenfolio (http://www.zenfolio.com) so that I can begin showcasing my work in a more professional manner and allow interested parties to actually purchase photos through the site - Thus the banner added to the top of the blog :)

I've also been debating on migrating this blog over to Tumblr, seems to be a bit more user friendly and I like what I've seen so far. Not guaranteed, I'm just thinking about it....

I am currently working to plan a 2 or 3 day waterfall trip to western North Carolina this spring, primarily one site in Ashe county, a few sites in Wilkes and Watauga counties that are in close proximity to one another and accessible. This may potentially turn into a workshop if it works out well, but no promises. If you're interested and serious about putting in some significant shutter time and some early mornings, please contact me.

¡Bienvenidios Panama! – Part VII – End of the mainland

We stood at 430m, looking up into a steep hillside with dense vegetation and seemingly endless darkness just beyond the tree line. Welding a machete, Lalo took up the hill, our guide telling us that he wanted to explore this area, that maybe there would be better habitat and the chance to find our bushmaster. My feet weren’t looking forward to this hike – the undergrowth restricted us in our direction, ducking and sometimes nearly crawling through the leaf litter to avoid thick vines and low branches. In any environment in North America, I wouldn’t have thought twice about what I was doing. This being my first time in Central America, it was constantly running through my mind that anywhere I put my hand could potentially be a resting place for one of the common venomous species, the eyelash viper, Bothriechis schlegelii.

Eyelash vipers are a polymorphic species, ranging from a brilliant solid yellow, reddish green, to a mottled brown. They easily disappear in their surroundings, often residing 1-2 meters above the ground waiting to ambush lizards and frogs. The majority of human encounters with this species seems to be from trudging through the rainforests. Although the venom from these vipers isn’t known to be life threatening, bites to the hands, arms and even the face have been reported resulting in necrosis of the tissue around the bite location.

I think I would have had a difficult time weaving through this labyrinth of trees and vines without any gear, but I was cursing my choice to bring a small camera store with me. My pack created a very high center of gravity on these hillsides, and trying to limbo under branches just made things worse. I was slipping, sliding, damn near falling down in an area I could barely see 10 feet in front of me. Our guides and the rest of our group kept trudging on, I was doing all I could to keep up with them. Between the trail coming up and this horrific hillside, I’d probably rolled my ankles a dozen times by now. Still, the only thing racing through my mind was that the next limb I grabbed while slipping or my fumbling through the forest was going to lead to a bad introduction between me and an eyelash viper in the trees or a fer-de-lance on the ground.

just as we were trying to navigate our way around a steep hillside, our guide was flipping small debris on the ground and he paused and took a step back. He’d caught a glimpse of something under a leaf, took a step back and flipped it again. Lying there in a wonderful example of camouflage was a juvenile hognosed viper, Porthidium nasatum. These small vipers are somewhat common in Central America and are one of the contributors to envenomations. This find as a very cool encounter and pretty much worth all the agony I had just put myself through. We kept on searching after a few moments of relishing our late night find, but nothing else turned up.

I was thoroughly relieved when we decided to make our way back down to the trail we’d ascended on. Although some of the group and our guides were still searching out snakes and frogs along the trail, I was very eager to get back to the SUV. I worked my way down the trail, waiting for the others to catch up. Fortunately, the finds that I missed out on were more common species, but I still regret not taking more time that evening to contribute to the searching and photographing. We all began to move down the trail, only pausing to search the large rocks along the path.

By the time we made it back to the car, I nearly collapsed. My ankles has swollen so much I had to loosen my boots before getting into the car. I think we all were spent, obviously me more than others. After shedding my pack and each of us throwing back about a gallon of water, we all began to crack smiles and laugh about our hike. We hadn’t found what we’d hoped for, but the experience was a great one and was one of the best parts of the trip.

Green eyes don't lie...

It's nice to see wildlife that doesn't have an outstanding fear of humans. This cormorant was cooperative on a cold morning at Lake Mattamuskeet NWR. Gotta love those emerald eyes!