White Christmas

I've been out of town for a while. That will be the subject of future posts.

But I arrived back here in Asheboro for what was for me personally a significant event.

I'm 61 years old and I've never seen a white Christmas. Until this year.

We don't get a lot of snow here in central North Carolina. Half an inch is enough to panic the area into total gridlock and shut it down for over 12 hours (January 19, 2005).

Pentax *istD, Tokina  ATX-Pro 28-70f/2.8, ISO Aperture & Shutter Speed not recorded.

 


Bad weather makes good photography. This old farmstead is up the road from my Mother's home. I took it in 2005, the day after the storm paralyzed Raleigh with a half inch of snow.

This year we got two inches starting at about 6:30 pm Christmas Day. I saw it when I went out for my annual "Christmas Day Chinese Restaurant" dinner. The news says the last time the area had snow at Christmas was 1947, two years before I was born.

Pentax K20D, Tokina ATX-Pro 28-70f/2.8, ISO 400 1/250sec @ f/8.0

I took this one out the sliding door at my apartment here in Asheboro, NC the next morning, on Boxing Day. It's not much to look at really, just a back yard with a little bit of snow and the church next door, but for me it's a small Christmas miracle.

My Kitchen Timer

One of the problems with being a bachelor is having to eat your own cooking. You can live strictly on soup out of cans, microwave meals and fast food take-out but it gets really old. Especially if you're doing it for years and years. Sooner or later you're going to go in the kitchen and actually cook something.

And eating pre-prepared food is expensive. The economy being what it is and my budget being what it is, I can't afford to dine out every meal. Good home cooking costs less and it's better for you. 

Eventually, you're going to get to a place where you need to cook something for a certain length of time, like boiling pasta for exactly 7:00 minutes to get it perfectly Al Dente. Which is where the kitchen timer comes in. Set it and you don't have to watch the clock like a hawk to ensure you get the right time. You can let your attention wander to other things, like getting the sauce to the right temperature and toasting the bread. A good timer is an essential tool for kitchen multi-tasking.

I'm living in an apartment down here at school. I've brought about half my kitchen utensils, pots & pans and dishes down here. The rest of my stuff is still at home. But I've only got one kitchen timer ... or so I thought.

Pentax K-20D, SMC PENTAX-DA 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 AL II, ISO400, f/5.6 @ 1/8 sec

I don't do much "darkroom" processing right now, just the occasional roll of B&W film. I use a hybrid system where I scan the negatives and make digital prints.

I can load B&W film onto the reels and place the reels inside the processing tank using a dark bag. Once the top is closed, I can perform the rest of the process right there at the kitchen sink.

So the timer serves dual duty.

The pasta was delicious BTW.

Something to be Thankful for

I'm only about a week late. I had a little bit of a rough patch in my life recently.

But I'm getting through it with a little help from my friends. And I want to say thanks to all of you.

I'm also thankful for these folks:

Pentax K-20D, SMC-DA 18-55f/1:3.5-5.6 ISO 100 1/100@f/8

This is the VA Medical Center in Durham, NC. It's just a snapshot really, no great work of art. I've no pretention that it's an image of any significance in the greater scheme of things. But this is a photography blog, and that's a photograph.

The picture is not important, but the VA Medical Center means a lot to those it serves. I'm lucky enough to be among them. I recently spent almost a week there and they are some of the kindest, most caring people you will ever meet. They take their mission to serve the Veteran most seriously.

Because of their care, I got to have a quiet Thanksgiving at home.

It looks like I may get to stick around for a few more Thanksgivings to come ... and Christmas, family birthdays, anniversaries, school holidays ... all the reasons for family to get together.

And that is something to be thankful for.

Creating a Signature Brush in Photoshop

Start a new blank file - File|New from the menu - and fill it with white.  300x300 pixels should be adequate or you can make it larger to give yourself more working room and crop it to size later. The final image created for this demonstration is cropped to 300x104 pixels.

You can make your brush with the Type Tool or create it free-hand with the Brush Tool. I chose a combination of free-hand and text for my brush.

We'll get the easy part out of the way first.

Set the foreground color to Black. Create a New Layer, choose the Type Tool and hold down ALT while you type 0169 using the numeric keypad.  When you release the ALT key you get a copyright symbol "©".
[Apple gets off easy. It's just  Option+G].

Type in the year and then your copyright message. Because we put the copyright on its own layer it will be easy to go back and change the year to the next year when we need to.

If you're on a laptop, you'll need to use your special function to choose the numeric keypad overlay. Remember to turn it off afterward so you can continue to type.

Once you have your text created, you can size it to fit with the Move Tool. Check the box that says "Show Transform Controls". Hold down SHIFT and drag the corners to keep it proportional.

Now comes the fun part. Create another new layer, choose the Brush Tool and sign your name.

You can use a pen tablet or the mouse to write your name. If you don't have a pen tablet and can't write well with the mouse, get a cheap caligraphy pen from the art store and practice writing your name on copy paper. When you get good at it, write it large a single time on one sheet. Tape it to the wall where it will be evenly lit and photograph it with a digital camera.

If your hand writing is as execrable as mine this may take some time. I ended up having to do it on multiple layers and paste the best parts together.

Save your work as a Photoshop .PSD file so you can come back to it later when you need to change the year.

Turn off the eye next to the background layer. CTRL+Click the signature layer. CTRL+SHIFT+Click the copyright text layer. Both layers will now be selected. Alternatively, you can merge the two layers after saving the file. The key is the background layer is still there, but invisible.

From the Menu select Edit|Define Brush and give it a clever name like "Copyright Brush".

And there you have it, a ready made signature for your images.

It's a brush, so you can sign your images in any color "ink" just by setting the foreground color. An acceptable gold color comes from R=98, G=89, B=1.

It's re-sizable using the square bracket keys, and you can use the "Fx" palette to emboss, embellish and gussy it up if you want to.

Building the Book

I've mentioned before that I am a student in Portrait Studio Management at Randolph Community College. The curriculum is intended to give us as much experience as possible creating the products we'll need to be able to sell our clients if we're actually going to make some kind of living from the business of Photography.

Our current project is creating a presentation Wedding Book.

http://www.albexus.com/

Each student is required to create six pages as if we were putting together the entire album for a client.

I created a template for a 10"x10" album with true panoramic pages. It's essentially a 20" wide x 10" high page configured for 300 dpi.

 

I added guides at 1/2" in from each edge and guides for the horizontal center and for the center line between the two pages. I can add an image to fill the background or use solid colors.

The individual images are copied, pasted, re-sized to fit and then saved as a PhotoShop .PSD file.

The current book is a little cramped because I'm trying to jam the whole wedding, about 55 images, into six pages (12 sides). In the real world I'd have about twice as many images and 4 times as many pages to display them.

When the page is finished I convert it to sRGB, flatten it and save it as a Quality 12 JPEG and it's ready to FTP. I retain the .PSD files because, once again in the real world, I'd soft proof the book with the client before committing it to the printer.

Maddy

One of our assignments in portraiture is photographing children on location.

This is Maddy.

Pentax K10D, Tokina ATX 28-70f/2.8, ISO 100, f/5.6 @ 1/60 sec

Lessons Learned:

Take your vitamins. Two year olds are ACTIVE!
Do not try to photograph an active two year old anywhere near a water feature.
Grandma makes a good baby wrangler. Two year olds always come when Grandma calls.
Judicious application of Gaussian Blur makes a "romantic" portrait and can conceal certain problems (see lesson 2 above about water hazards).

Have fun.

Canyon de Chelly

Pronounced "Canyon de Shay", Canyon de Chelly National Monument is a unique part of the National Park System.

It's located on Navajo Tribal Trust Land owned by the Navajo Nation. They call themselves the Diné (the people) and the canyon is their home, while park is administered by the National Park Service. Access to the canyon itself is restricted. Visitors may travel inside the canyon only when accompanied by Park Rangers or authorized Navajo guides.

Pentax *ist-D, Sigma 300f/2.8, ISO 200 1/.500 @ f/3.5

The one exception is the White House Ruin trail.

Six miles from the visitor center, the trail descends 600 feet from a rim overlook to the bottom of the canyon, and across Chinle Wash to the base of the White House ruin, abandoned about 700 years ago. The Navajo call the Puebloans who lived here "the Ancient Ones". The walk down to White House ruin takes about 30 minutes, but allow two hours for the round trip.

You'll see frequent signs reminding photographers not to photograph the local people or their dwellings without their permission.

Another Wedding

Part of the Portrait Studio Management curriculum at Randolph Community College is the Mock Wedding. For some students the Mock Wedding will be the first opportunity to put all of their training together into a single "real world" experience. The Mock Wedding allows students to photograph their "first wedding" in an environment where it won't cost them too dearly if they have problems.

Sort of a dress rehearsal for what you face in the real world.

Pentax K20D, DA SMC 18-55, ISO 800, f/5.6 @ 1/10 sec

It's your average small intimate wedding. One bride, one groom, one best man, one maid of honor ... 12 wedding photographers.

With a very few exceptions, all of the parts are taken by students. The wedding party is made up mostly of first year photography students, and the wedding is organized by second year students with massive amounts of assistance from a few former students.

One exception is the clergy.

We held this years Mock Wedding at the Church of the Good Shepard in Asheboro, NC and the minister gave a talk on wedding etiquette for photographers. The most important lesson I learned from her is to make sure the prospective bride & groom  provide a copy of the church's photography policies early in the negotiations for the contract.

This gives the couple the opportunity to avoid surprises, and allows the photographer to advise the couple whether the venue is going to permit the kind of photography they want.

Mostly the Mock Wedding is a chance to show that you know your equipment from the point of view of what can go wrong, what can you do when it does go wrong, and what backup equipment to have along. By this time in your career, you should know your equipment backwards and forwards. If you do, you'll sail through the Mock Wedding.

If you don't, the Mock Wedding will make your shortcomings abundantly clear.

Why Two Lane Photography?

I spent 15 years as a field service tech. The company I worked for promised our clients an on-site response to  their problems within 24 hours - 7 days a week; 50 States, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. There were 58 of us to provide that level of service.

I covered a 625,000 square mile territory; the eastern two-thirds of the State of North Carolina, and provided backup for the technicians in Georgia, western North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee.

Needless to say, I stayed on the road a lot. Averaged 1500 miles a week just getting there.

And a lot of "there" wasn't on the interstate. Nor could you use the national highway network to get from point A to point B. Not unless you wanted to add a whole lot more miles and a lot more hours on the road. So, I became very familiar with two lane county roads and state highways - the ones that could get me where my customer was located without adding another hundred miles to the trip.

I went in all kinds of weather, every season, year in and year out. And I began to see the light, the sometimes limitless vistas and the natural beauty of the landscape as I passed through it. I've had a camera of one sort or another since I was 8 years old, but along the way the journey I was making inspired me to move my photography up a notch. I started carrying a 35mm SLR camera along with me and stopped occasionally to photograph what moved me.

And still managed to make good time.

HDR image - Pentax K20D, Sigma EX30mmf/1.4DC ISO 800 @ f/8 +1.3 -0.3 -1.3

Sometimes, the quickest route took me down this road.

This is the Blue Ridge Parkway, somewhere between Roaring Gap in North Carolina and Fancy Gap in Virginia. If you want a location more specific than that, you'll have to go find it for yourself. It's right after sunset. I love this time of year. There's something special about autumn light in the Blue Ridge.

First "Official" Wedding

I finally got the opportunity to shoot a wedding. This is what I've been going to school for, preparing myself to shoot weddings and portraiture as my source of retirement income.

Pentax K20D, SMC DA18-55, ISO 400, f/5.6 @ 1/50 sec - AF 540FGZ flash, PTTL at -1 stop

I was actually second shooter, so I gained experience without the pressure of having to be responsible for the whole thing I'd have had as the primary. Still, I wanted to do the best job I could, and I think I did well.

All things considered, it went remarkably well. I only had one fumble, when a set of spare batteries I'd brought proved to be defective. Fortunately, I was carrying four sets, and it only took me a couple of minutes to figure out what was wrong and get a functioning set installed.

I shot in RAW+JPEG and copied the jpegs off onto CDs for the couple before leaving the reception. Filled 3.5 CDs. I was worried that I wouldn't have enough. Next time I'll carry DVDs.

I'm pleased with how it turned out. I made fewer mistakes the first time out than I anticipated and the mistakes I did make were correctable on the spot, so I feel I was able to give the customer good value.

Washington, DC

We had fall break at school this past weekend, and I drove up to Northern Virginia to take the Washington Metro into DC. I have an assignment for class to create a 360 degree panorama and went to the National Mall for the opportunities it presents.

I've had some images in my head for a while and I thought while I was up there, I might try to do something about them.

Pentax K20D, SMC Pentax DA18-35 II, ISO 100, f/8, 119 sec.

Pentax K20D, SMC Pentax DA18-35 II, ISO 100, f/8, 30 sec.

Pentax K20D, Tokina ATX-Pro 80-200, ISO 100, f/8, 2 sec.

Sunrise 10-10-10

I took a break this past weekend to spend some time with my first love, Nature Photography.

I scouted the location at Cades Cove in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park on Saturday so I'd know where I wanted to be when sunrise came on Sunday. I had a particular location on Sparks Lane that I wanted to photograph as the first rays of morning sun broke the rim of surrounding mountains.

Cades Cove is not open to vehicle traffic until after sunrise, but you can park in the main parking area before dawn.  I made it to the Cades Cove entrance gate at 6:00 am and walked to my chosen location to set up and await the sun.

I did not allow for the fact that due to the surrounding terrain, the sun would not actually break the horizon until some time after official sunrise. While I was waiting for the light, another park visitor drove his monster pickup truck up and parked right into the middle of my scene.

Plan B.

I had taken my 300mm lens along even though my aim was to make wide angle scenic views capturing the morning fog, directional light and emerging fall colors. As I was relocating to a new position, I noticed some vague movement out in one of the fields. I mounted the 300 and set my tripod down.

I managed to capture two frames. This crop is approximately 1/4 of the first frame.

Pentax K20D; Sigma 300mmf/2.8; ISO400; f/5.0 @ 1/30sec

I didn't get the shot I wanted, but I'm happy with the shot I got.

Besides, now I've got an excuse to go back.

A Little Photoshop Magic

I am always on the lookout for ideas to aid me in improving the presentation of my photography. One of the problems I've encountered is an inability to truly represent the range of tones in some image. 


Case in point - This is the Colorado 145 just south of  Telluride, mid-October 2007. I took the San Juan Skyway Scenic Highway from Durango north to Silverton and then around back south headed for Cortez. It was a blustery, dark cloudy day, without much scenery because of the thick storm clouds .. until I hit this stretch of highway. The sun broke through and the aspens burst into glorious gold.

I've never been able to do justice to what I saw. Everything I ever tried with the image resulted in a dull lifeless image. I either couldn't get the brilliant gold foliage or I couldn't get the brooding cloud cover shrouding the mountains.


Until I found a tutorial on Luminosity Masking by Tony Kuyper. 


http://goodlight.us/index.html


Luminosity masks are a series of Photoshop actions Tony came up. Luminosity masks are self feathering and make the kind of selective adjustments I was looking for in this image possible. 

The image above has two masks applied to curves adjustments layers - one for the highlights, and one for the shadows following the instructions Tony gave for creating the Luminosity Masks. 

I won't go into details, you should see Tony's tutorials for yourself.

Window Light

Been away a while.

Caught one of those "sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head with a fever ... " colds, as the ad jingle goes. Used the advertised product and it knocks me right out! So while the cold does its thing, I'm off visiting never-never land.

In the meantime, the world continues on its merry way and school assignments have their due dates.

Which brings me to the Window Light portrait. 

Window light can be a beautiful light that wraps around your subject. Look for a good northern window so as to soften the effects of direct sunlight. If your light is large enough and your room has light colored walls you might not even need to add a fill.

I made this portrait of my mother using the large north window in her living room.

Technical details, for those who are interested, Pentax K20D, ISO 400, Tokina ATX-Pro 287 at 70mm, f/6.3. Metering the window, I got 1/80 sec at f/5.6 + .5.

I did use a fill light, a Vivitar 285HD bounced off the ceiling on the other side of the room, triggered by a CyberSync. The strobe is set to YELLOW which automatically gives f/4, for about a 2:1 ratio.

And then I took mom out for breakfast and some nice Sunday morning conversation.

The Business Portrait

One of the essential tools in the photographer's kit is the Business Head & Shoulders portrait. The business portrait can lead to further opportunities to photograph the client's family.

Begin with a clothing consult. Advise the client to wear simple, professional clothing to the sitting.

For men, that means a light blue or off white shirt and a solid color, middle to dark tone suit jacket and a conservative neck-tie. If a man has a heavy 5 o'clock shadow, he should shave again.

Women should wear a middle to dark tone pants-suit with a light color top underneath. Makeup should not be overdone.

Multimedia

This blog came from an assignment for my multimedia class. 

Other assignments have concentrated on learning to create multimedia content for photographers. This is my first multimedia slideshow produced on assignment.



It uses Flash for those who are phobic about that sort of thing. Don't know if we'll get to the level of HTML to produce this without Flash this semester, but I expect I'll eventually have to learn that.

I don't really want to be a web designer or programmer.  I just want to make consistently beautiful photographs that people want to buy, so I can support myself and make more beautiful photographs.  

A Studio of My Own

I've been accumulating photographic tools for a while with an eye to setting up a studio. Mostly I keep an eye out for things on sale at bargin prices.  One of my local independent dealers had Matthews stands on sale for $30, so I bought two of them. Another time they had the Matthews backdrop stand kit on sale for $80, so I bought it. Ten by twenty painted backdrop 50% off of $100.

I buy used whenever I can find good equipment that's been well taken care of at bargain prices. A pair of Bowen 400B Monolights in a case with stands, cords, sync cables (including a spare PC to Household) and 3 umbrellas ... $200. A pair of Paul C. Buff White Lightning 10000s with Bogen stands for $50 each.

Used Vivitar 285HV strobes and Quantum Battery 1s.

There's not much more than $500 in the whole setup.I put together a small, portable setup in my apartment.

Backdrop stands bracket my work table. Backdrop conceals the work table when I'm shooting.
Main light Paul C. Buff White Lightning 10000 @ 2/3 power shooting through a 30 inch umbrella.
Fill light is one of the Bowen 400B Monolights @ half power bounced off the other end of the room.
Hair light is a boom mounted Vivitar 285HV on a Wein optical hot shoe slave.
Background light is a Pentax AF 500FTZ (built in slave) sitting on the floor.

I've got a friend who patiently stands there while I pull focus & get the lights balanced.

... and the finished product.

I can see there are some things still to work out.

These lights are powerful for this size room. Even with them dialed down, I'm using a fairly high aperture, which increases depth of field. Throwing the background out of focus is going to take some work.

For those who care about the technical details: Pentax K10D, smc PENTAX-DA 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 AL II @ 55mm, ISO 100, 1/180 @ f/11

The Air Show

Winston-Salem's Smith Reynolds Airport hosted its 2010 Airshow September 11-12. Saturday turned rainy and many of the scheduled performers were no shows.

Looking at the news, more of the acts were there on Sunday.

I enjoyed the show, but didn't get to photograph the one act I really wanted to see - the Tora Tora Tora bomb squad. I saw them at Seymore Johnson AFB's Wings over Wayne in 2009 and hoped to photograph them at Winston-Salem to try out some techniques I'd learned since.

Photographing old war birds can be difficult. If you get the shutter speed too high so that the aircraft is tack sharp, you freeze the propeller and it just doesn't look right. You need about a 1/125 sec exposure to get just enough blur in the propeller.

A Handy Tool for Photographers

If you're going to display your work, it looks better matted.

If you hope to sell your work it HAS to be matted.

Doing that well requires tools. In addition to a good mat cutter, I found a software tool to make planning the cuts much simpler.

It's a free-ware program called MatWorks written by photographer Giorgio Trucco.

 Giorgio Trucco's MatWorks 

MatWorks has a simple graphical interface. You enter values (in inches) for the Mat size and choose from Portrait, Landscape and Square layouts. Enter values for Print Size and layout and Image Size and layout. Choose your matting style from Centered, Bottom Weighted or Double Bottom Weighted - single or double mats - and enter the dimension (decimal fractions of an inch) that you want the mat to overlap the image and the top mat to reveal the bottom mat.

Click the button to calculate and it shows an image of what the finished mat will look like along with detailed cutting measurements for the back of the mat.

Simple to use, precise and best of all FREE!

While you're at it take a look at some beautiful landscape and nature photography on Giorgio Trucco's web site:

http://www.gt-photography.com/portfolios.html

Shelley Lake

Shelley Lake is a popular north Raleigh recreation area. The attraction is the green-way around the lake. It's a two mile asphalt path, part of Raleigh's green-way system.

Officially Crabtree Watershed Dam #13, Shelley Lake is part of a massive flood control system in the Crabtree Creek watershed. The lake acts as a hydraulic shock absorber whenever there is more than usual rain. The outlet structure automatically limits the rate at which water can flow downstream from Lead Mine Creek.

When the rate of inflow from Lead Mine Creek exceeds the maximum out-flow the lake level rises to temporarily retard the flow and reduce downstream flooding.

Raleigh's green-way system follows the right-of-way easement for the sanitary sewer system. The bridge shown here uses the pylons that support an 18 inch sanitary drain where it crosses one the tributaries of Lead Mine Creek.

The adjacent Shelley Lake Park is actually the secondary spillway for the dam. Should the water level rise too high, it begins to spread out over the playing fields, eventually bypassing the dam as a wide, thin, slow moving sheet of water. It's a quite neat bit of engineering with no moving parts ... other than the flowing water.

http://www.raleighfree.com/shelley_lake_park.html

For the photographer, it's a miniature nature preserve in the heart of the city. Good site for photographing ducks, geese, turtles, herons and egrets. I've seen the occasional swan, and spent several weeks in 2009 photographing a Great Horned Owl's nest that was easily visible from the green-way.

Over the Labor Day weekend, I spotted a pair of Osprey's fishing the lake, although I have no idea yet if they're setting up residency or just passing through.

What's the product?

North Carolina has one of the best Community College systems in the nation. No matter where you live in North Carolina there's low cost post secondary education available if you want it. Some counties combine with their neighbors to host the schools, but there's a campus in every one of North Carolinas' 100 counties.

All of them offer college transfer courses for students who wish to go on to graduate from a four year college, but the focus is mainly on real world job skills ... they train nurses, machinists, automotive mechanics.

They offer adult high school, GED & ESL along with focused training programs to fit the needs of local employers and a New and Expanded Industry Training program to prepare students to find work in emerging industries - particularly computer & "green" technologies.

They also offer offer degrees in commercial & artistic production fields, which is where I come in.

I'm a photography student at Randolph Community College.

Just down the road a piece in Pinehurst, NC is Sandhills Community College where they have a number of agriculture programs supporting the local "industry" - world famous golf resorts. As part of their Landscape Gardening program the college hosts a botanical garden and demonstration landscape gardens, including this xericulture garden.


I had a requirement for a "product" shot using available light and I remembered this little garden. I shot it lit by the sky with just a hint of the sun peeking over the garden wall.

 
A couple of plates, a couple of wine glasses ... a wine bottle re-filled with cranberry juice since alcohol is not allowed on campus without a special permit ... and it became an inviting alfresco dining experience inviting the viewer into the frame.

Level Horizons are over-rated

... or what would H.C.B. do?

Really nothing more than a snapshot.

I was in downtown Greensboro, NC for a school project when I noticed the stairs on a nearby parking garage made an interesting pattern. It's the repetition of the curving stairs and the landings with their precisely placed light fixtures; the contrasting colors of the brick crosswalk and green railings echoed by the spiral of the parking structure ramp in the background.

I took the photo to study how I might best capture the lines and repetition in the architecture.

... but this gentleman came along at just the right moment.

To be or not to be ...

A wedding photographer?

Got to pay the bills somehow. 

I'm currently what's called a "non-traditional" student at a community college in in North Carolina, enrolled in a two year photography degree program. "Non-traditional" just means I'm older than dirt!

Randolph Community College in Asheboro, NC has one of the top photography programs in the nation, along with some of the lowest tuition. It's a program with strong fundamentals in darkroom, printing, finishing & corrections, medium & large format. studio lighting, design & composition as the foundation for the transition to a digital photography work-flow. I think it provides the best of both the film tradition and digital innovation.

http://rccphoto.blogspot.com/

I started my second year a week ago, and the pace is already fast and furious. The first week begins with a formal bridal portrait.

I was fortunate to find two lovely young ladies among the first year students who patiently posed while I fumbled through pulling it all together for the first time.

My sincerest thanks to you both - for your appearances in front of the camera and for your invaluable assistance behind the scenes. I learned as much, if not more, from your suggestions as I did from the assignment itself.

Yates Mill

My interest in photography goes towards nature photography and from that into travel. I enjoy seeing new places and try to use my photography to capture the beauty so that I might share it with others. Sometimes you don't have to travel far. It's right there in your own back yard.

An Introduction

I'm new to blogging. This is a learn-as-you-go adventure. I hope to use the blog to share my interest in travel and nature photography and thoughts on photography in general.