Photography by John Corney

Irvine Fine Arts Center All Media Juried Exhibition

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:24:19 PST

Dead Tree in Rocky Desert Landscape
(c) John Corney 2011

My photo of a dead tree in a rocky desert landscape taken in Joshua Tree National National Park this past April was accepted for this year's juried "All Media Exhibition" at the Irvine Fine Arts Center. The exhibition runs from this Friday, November 18th until January 7th, 2012. An opening reception will be held this Friday evening from 5pm until 8pm, with an awards ceremony at 6pm. Because of another commitment, I will be there only until about 6:30pm, but if you have time and live close, why not come by and enjoy the exhibition featuring 55 artworks in multiple media from artists resident in Southern California.

Irvine Fine Arts Center

14321 Yale Ave

Irvine, California

Joshua Tree National Park

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 21:39:11 PDT

Joshua Tree National Park

Joshua Tree National Park is located in southeastern California. It was declared a U.S. National Park in 1994; it had previously been a U.S. National Monument since 1936.

It is named for the Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia) forests native to the park.

The park covers a land area of 790,636 acres (319,959 ha) or 1,235 square miles – an area slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island. A large part of the park, some 429,690 acres (173,890 ha), is a designated wilderness area.

Straddling the San Bernardino County/Riverside County border, the park includes parts of two deserts, each an ecosystem whose characteristics are determined primarily by elevation: the higher Mojave Desert and lower Colorado Desert. The Little San Bernardino Mountains run through the southwest edge of the park. (Wikipedia: Joshua Tree National Park)

Safari Park Photos

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 21:37:24 PDT

Licky-Loo Giraffe at the Safari Park

On my most recent visit to the San Diego Zoo's Safari Park (formerly "Wild Animal Park"), my friends and I took a "caravan safari", which took us inside the perimeter of the park. We got to feed giraffe and rhinos from the back of the truck, and if you were up for it, you could even rub a rhino's tongue!

Here are a few photos from the day: San Diego Zoo Safari Park photos

If you're interested, here's a link to the Safari Park's Caravan Safari

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Art Deco Architecture, South Beach, Miami

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 22:05:07 PDT

The Congress Hotel, South Beach, Miami

South Beach, Miami, isn't famous just for the beach and big, colorful cocktails. There's also block after block of colorful art deco buildings.

On a recent visit I did a photo shoot down Ocean Drive. I've put together a gallery of some of the photos I took. Take a moment to check out my photos of South Beach's art deco architecture.

Note: with the slideshow on pause, you can use your left and right arrows to move through the photos at your own pace.

Corona and Cocktails, Miami

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 21:15:59 PDT

Cocktails and Coronas, South Beach, Miami

Corona and cocktails, South Beach, Miami. Party!

If you've been, you'll recognize this enticement to party at any of the myriad bars that line Ocean Drive.

South Beach Lifeguard Station

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 16:12:16 PDT

South Beach Lifeguard Station

When I was in Fort Lauderdale for the opening of my exhibition in May, my friends and I took the opporunity to take in the sights and sounds of south Florida's Atlantic coast. Of course we visited Miami, and here's a photo I took of one of the fabulously colorful lifeguard stations on South Beach.

Viewing RAW files in Windows Explorer and Photo Gallery

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 18:39:21 PDT

If you shoot in RAW like me, and use a Windows computer like me, you might like to download Microsoft's RAW file viewer. The download will work on both Vista and Windows 7 machines (sorry XP holdouts).

With this installed you can view your RAW files when using Windows Explorer or the Windows Photo Gallery. Sometimes if you are just looking for a photo that you want to quickly locate, installing this on your computer will save you having to fire up Photoshop Bridge or Lightroom to view your RAW files.

If you are sitting there scratching your head wondering what the hell RAW files are, here is an interesting article on the differences and pros and cons of RAW and JPEG files.

What is Bokeh?

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 18:28:33 PDT

A couple of photos I took of columbines at the Huntington Library gardens recently have such beautiful bokeh effects that I would like to talk about bokeh today.

The word "bokeh" comes from Japanese, meaning "blurred". It became popular in the late 1990s to use the word to represent the blurred portions of a photograph that are beyond the depth of field.

Bokeh is pronounced "bawh-keh". Or, if you prefer, like the "bo" in bone when pronounced with standard American accent, and "ke" as in Ken.

Purchase Print of Columbine Flower with bokeh background

Bokeh varies depending on the lens itself, the aperture setting, and the light on objects beyond the depth of field of the in-focus subject.

I took this photo with a Canon EF24-105mm f/4L lens. The focal length was 105mm, and the aperture setting was f/4.5, which means the aperture was wide open. This is the kind of aperture setting you use for a shallow depth of field with the subject in focus and most everything else out of focus.

If you're near-sighted like me, here's a good way to get a better understanding of shallow depth of field. Think of it as looking at an object close-in with your eyes wide open. This is your eyes' "wide aperture setting". You can see the close-in object fine, but everything else in the distance is blurred. If you want to see what's in the distance more clearly, what do we do if we don't have our glasses handy? Yep, that's right; we squint, closing up the "aperture" of our eyes! The same thing happens with a lens when you increase the f-stop number on your camera and close up the eye, or aperture, of the camera; more of the scene comes into focus, what is known as "deep depth of field".

As I mentioned above, apart from shooting at low depth of field (low f-stop setting on your camera resulting in a wide aperture opening on the lens), the lens itself contributes to the bokeh effect too. This particular lens creates appealing bokeh. Other, less-expensive lenses I have do not render bokeh as attractive as this lens.

Typically you also need the out-of-focus background to have some highlight points which are lit.

So why not give it a shot yourself. Set you camera to a low f-stop setting (wide aperture on the lens), frame your subject with a background that is beyond the depth of field and with some light on it, and see what you can come up with.

This and another photo of a columbine with attractive bokeh can be seen in this collection of photos that I took recently at the Huntington Library botanical gardens.

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Long Beach Gay Pride 2011 Pictures

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 22:39:37 PDT

A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence,
Long Beach Pride Parade 2011
© John Corney 2011

June is LGBT Pride month in America with the celebrations kicking off in Southern California with the Long Beach Pride Festival towards the end of May.

These celebrations provide great opportunities for photography, with lots of color and expressions of diversity reflecting both the LGBT community and American culture.

I managed to capture pictures that ranged from gay dads with their 14-week old daughter watching the parade quietly from the sidelines, to the always-outrageous "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence". Oh, and the usual contingent of Christian protestors.

Please enjoy my selection of pictures reflecting the diversity of gay pride, Long Beach, 2011

P.S. I have recently added Google's +1 button to the other social network buttons you will find at the top of every page of my blog. Please consider clicking the +1 button on any pages you would like to recommend. Thanks!

National Wildlife Federation 2011 Photo Contest

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 20:52:23 PDT

American Avocet
© John Corney 2011

Oh boy, time is starting to run short to get my act together and put together some photos to enter into the 2011 National Wildlife Federation's annual photo contest. (Closing date is July 14th)

I know many of you out there enjoy photographing wildlife, and it doesn't have to be photos from an African safari for this contest. There's even a category for shots taken in your backyard.

Prizes
A total of more than $20,000 in cash prizes and other gifts will be awarded to the top entries selected by the editors in seven categories. Two $5,000 grand prizes; first prizes will be awarded in each category and in youth division; second prizes will be awarded in each category and in youth division. Winners will be published in the December issue of National Wildlife.

Categories
•Baby Animals (NEW!)
•Backyard Habitat
•Birds
•Connecting People and Nature
•Landscapes and Plant life
•Mammals
•Other Wildlife

Levels of Competition
•Amateur
•Professional
•Youth

So why not join me in submitting some of your best photos of the great outdoors. Here's the link to the 2011 National Wildlife Federation Photography Contest

More Photos from San Joaquin Marsh

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 19:46:28 PDT

Egyptian Goose at the
San Joaquin Marsh May 2011

I just added several more photos to the San Joaquin Marsh gallery starting from image 35.

Included are stills from the photo video I posted in my previous post featuring the American Avocet attacking the Mallard duckling.

Of note in the new photos is one of an Egyptian goose. Yes, a little far from home, but it appears these exotic birds are escapees from zoos and/or private collections and now establishing themselves in this area. The first recorded sighting I found online for the San Joaquin Marsh was from May 2009.

Egyptian goose at Wikipedia

Avocet Attacks Mallard Ducklings

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 05:57:43 PDT

Most of us have probably experienced some kind of aggressive bird behavior such as being bombed by a parent bird with a nest full of chicks.

I guess it's good to know that birds don't just pick on us humans. In a recent visit to the San Joaquin Marsh in Irvine, CA, I captured this American Avocet dealing to some Mallard ducklings. I put the drama together in this video for your "enjoyment". Best viewed in "full screen" mode.

Matilija Poppy Art Prints

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 21:25:54 PDT

Matilija Poppy Prints

Matilija Poppies are beautiful flowers with crepe-paper like petals and an egg yolk center. They are currently flowering abundantly at the San Joaquin Marsh here in Irvine, California. I currently have 3 Matilija poppy art prints available.

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Pictures from a Quinceanera

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Tue, 17 May 2011 21:45:58 PDT

Quinceanera Birthday Girl
© John Corney

Here are a few pictures of a quinceanera birthday party that I took back in 2006. It's the kind of thing I wish I could do over now that I have much better camera equipment. However these pictures from the quinceanera aren't too bad all things considered.

The Quinceañera (sometimes also called Fiesta Quinceañera, or simply quinces) is the celebration of a girl's fifteenth birthday. This birthday marks the transition of the girl from childhood to young womanhood.

The quinceanera girl is dressed almost like a bride with young attendants and a tiered cake that resembles a wedding cake.

The celebration of the quinceanera is a wonderful representation of the diversity of life and culture in America.

Pictures from a quinceanera birthday party

Bolsa Chica Wetlands, Huntington Beach, California

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Mon, 16 May 2011 20:52:34 PDT

Dowitcher
© John Corney 2011

The Bolsa Chica Wetlands in Huntington Beach, California, once was and is again an estuary. An estuary is a body of water where fresh water meets and mixes with saltwater, and for many decades the Bolsa Chica estuary was cut off from the sea and drilled for oil. Construction on a bridge on Pacific Coast Highway began in 2006 to allow for the opening of the wetlands to the sea once again which happened in 2008. In addition, over 60 oil wells and associated machinery and pipelines were removed.

The Bolsa Chica Wetlands is a great place to visit any day of the year, but in the winter and into the early spring you will find many migratory birds wintering over.

Here are some photos of birds at the Bolsa Chica Wetlands that I took this past April.

Bottle-Nosed Dolphin Surfing Boat Wake, Florida Everglades

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Tue, 17 May 2011 05:59:23 PDT

Bottle-Nosed Dolphin
© John Corney 2011

I recently visited the Everglades while in Florida for my exhibition opening. I took an Everglades Day Safari which included a boat ride on the Everglades National Park where I photographed this bottle-nosed dolphin surfing the wake of a passing boat.

If you are visiting southern Florida and interested in visiting the Everglades, I can recommend the Everglades Day Safari. It is very informative and you get to ride an air boat up, another boat that takes you for a 2 hour cruise of the Everglades estuary where this photo was taken, and walk in a cedar forest. The website for the day safari is http://www.ecosafari.com/.

Soaring Over California

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Fri, 13 May 2011 13:40:39 PDT

Brown Pelican Soaring Over Bolsa Chica

I recently went to the Bolsa Chica estuary in Huntington Beach and managed to get this shot of one of the many brown pelicans that flew back and forth to the sea.

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Flowers for Mother's Day

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 07:26:58 PDT

Mother's Day is on Sunday May 8th this year. Of course you can always send her some flowers again that will look great for a few days and then wilt and end up in the trash. She'll love them, of course, but why not give mom some flowers that will last this time round?

I have a great line-up of bright and colorful flowers available in my collection that can be printed and framed, or printed on canvas and given to Mom this Mother's Day. It's the kind of flower that will last and cry a cheery "Hello, Mom! I love and appreciate you!" for years to come.

Purple-Pink Ranunculus Flower
Flower Art for Mother's Day

The flowers in my "Art for Japan" gallery are currently being offered at a reduced price, and I am giving half of the net proceeds to charity. So it's a total win-win all round. Mom gets a colorful artwork to hang on her wall, you get a discount on my usual pricing, and the Red Cross gets a donation towards its relief efforts in Japan. What's not to like?

So this year, shop for Mother's Day in my Art for Japan gallery.

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Exhibition at Artist Haven Gallery May 2011

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 21:09:21 PDT

Fuchsia

My first-ever gallery exhibition will be held at the Artists' Haven Gallery in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from May 1st through May 31st. I will be exhibiting with 7 other artists in a group exhibition. I have 6 floral artworks in the exhibition.

I will be attending the "Meet the Artists" reception on the evening of Saturday, May 7, 2011 from 6-9pm. If you can make it, please come and say hi and enjoy the complimentary wine, hor d'oeuvres, and desserts.

The event is open to the public. Attire is casual. The gallery is located at 2757 East Oakland Park Blvd, Fort Lauderdale, FL.

All 6 pieces are printed on Hahnemuhle photo rag paper, doubled-matted, framed with a 2-inch black frame, and glazed with non-glare arcylic.

The 6 pieces I will have on exhibit can be viewed in this gallery: Artists' Haven Gallery Exhibition May 2011

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New Zealand Mountain Landscapes

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 18:57:34 PDT

Mount Ruapehu Landscape
Purchase Print

If you're a "Lord of the Rings" fan you will be familiar with the mountain landscapes from New Zealand in the movies. The mountains featured in the Lord of the Rings are the "Southern Alps" of New Zealand's South Island.

The center of the North Island features three volcanoes clustered together and on New Year's Eve 2010 I stopped to photograph them en route to Lake Taupo.

You can see my landscapes featuring two of the mountains, Mount Ruapehu and Mount Ngauruhoe in this New Zealand mountain landscape gallery.

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Ranunculus Flower Art

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 20:07:36 PDT

Red and Yellow Ranunculus Flower
Purchase Print

It's hard to believe that the modern ranunculus flower, which these days can be such a complex bloom in terms of color and form, is related to the humble buttercup. According to Wikipedia, the Latin name means "little frog", purportedly because of the frequency with which the wild plant is found growing near water.

From experience I know that ranunculus are easy to grow in your garden provided you add dirt, water, and lots of sun.

Here is a gallery of ranunculus flowers I have captured this spring.

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Art for Japan 1 Month Sale

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 22:24:13 PDT

It was one month ago today that north-eastern Japan was devastated by a massive earthquake and tsunami, to be followed by the on-going release of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Soon after the earthquake I made an offer to donate all net profits from the sale of my artwork "Momiji - After the Tsunami" to the U.S. Red Cross Japan fund for the rest of the year.

Scan above QRC with your smartphone
to go to Art For Japan gallery

Tonight I have added several of my floral artworks to the gallery and have discounted the price for the artworks. I will donate 50% of the net profits from any sales from now until May 11th 2011 of any of the floral artworks in the Art for Japan gallery.

Psychologist Dr. Riichiro Miwa of Los Angeles has been working with other psychologists in Japan to build a repository of psychological resources to meet the psychological needs of the vicitms of the various disasters.

Over the weekend I colaborated with Dr. Miwa to produce the following video slideshow consisting of my floral artworks accompanied by Japanese voiceover of a relaxation/breathing exercise. This video will be part of the repository of resources being established.

The website on which Dr. Miwa is collaborating can be found at http://jishinshinrigaku.blog60.fc2.com/.

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2011 Epson Pano Awards Contest Closing Soon

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 09:04:44 PDT

Only 1 week until close of regular entries!

Entries are now open for all professional and amateur panoramic photographers with US$25,000 in cash and prizes!

Regular entries are open until next Friday 15th of April 2011. Late entry period April 16th to 30th (there will be no discounts for multiple entries during this time)

•double the prize pool of 2010!•an exhibition of the winners and top scoring images at the PMA Photo Imaging Trade Show in Sydney, June 2011!
•a new VR/360 section
•prizes will also be awarded to runner up and third in each category
•no limit on the number of entries allowed per entrant

My entries are in. How about yours? Don't miss out!

www.thepanoawards.com

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Are you ready for a hard drive failure?

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 19:58:39 PDT

Today’s posting is definitely not a pretty picture. Actually, it’s something quite ugly; hard drive failure or any other such “computer crash” that puts you at risk of losing your precious files.

One of the biggest challenges for the photographer is having enough storage space for the safe-keeping of his or her image files.

There are a couple of challenges to deal with.

First is the amount of disk space that will be required to store an ever-growing number of files. Unlike the days of film, with digital photography we all enjoy the luxury of essentially zero cost per image. If you are anything like me, that means you take way more exposures than you would have in the days of film when we all were painfully aware of the cost of each press of the shutter button.

So the second challenge is not only coping with our ever-expanding digital file “waistlines”, but secondly, ensuring we have good backup of those files should the worst happen.

When I first started out with digital photography, I started to accumulate multiple external USB drives for my backups. After a while this got to be quite a hassle with a growing array of drives of ever-greater size cluttering my desk and closet. Then at a class I went to given by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, the instructor mentioned in passing that he kept his files on a DROBO. After the class I made a point of searching the web to find out more about this mysterious, robot-sounding thing.

Basically a DROBO is an enclosure into which you insert multiple hard drives in separate bays or slots within the enclosure. When connected to your computer, however, your DROBO appears as just another “volume” (disk drive) attached to your computer. In other words, it looks like you just connected one external hard drive. The DROBO software handles all your files for you and creates in real time a backup version of every file you save to it. All your files are distributed across all the disks in the DROBO so that there is a backup copy of every file somewhere on a different disk; never are both copies of the same file on the same disk. (You never see you files as duplicates, by the way; to you it just looks like you have one copy of each file as per normal).

This “redundancy” is all handled effortlessly by DROBO in the background, and ensures that if one of the hard drives in your DROBO fails, all your files are still safe because there is a second copy somewhere on the other drives. Should this happen, you are prompted by DROBO to remove and replace the bad drive with a new one.

I'm not kidding; this actually happened to me last week, when a not-so-old Western Digital 1TB drive went bad, which prompted me to write this post.

For the first time in my life I didn’t panic or worry about losing any of my precious files and wonder if I had a current backup; I simply replaced the hard drive with a new one and in the background DROBO took care of shuffling the files so that redundant copies of all the files were once again created spread over all the disks. This took several hours, by the way, but since it’s happening in the background, you just keeping working away, not troubled by all the work DROBO is merrily doing in the background.

The other great thing about a DROBO is that the storage capacity can be expanded as needed. As space gets used up, DROBO will prompt you to replace one of the drives with a larger one. I think my second generation DROBO can go up to something like 16 TB. Thankfully, I'm not there yet!

So if you’re a serious amateur photographer or a pro looking for a way to not only cope with the growing size of your collection, but also wanting to be able to sleep at night knowing that at all times you have a backup of your files, think about investing in a DROBO.

I use a second generation 4-bay DROBO. These models are cheaper and still available at DROBO and also at Amazon. If I were starting over though, and had the money, of course I would go for the latest versions which allow for USB 3 connections.Speed thrills!

Disclosures:
I have not relationship with DROBO; I am simply a satisfied customer.

I am an Amazon affiliate, and any purchases at Amazon.com initiated using links on my website will result in my receiving compensation from Amazon.

Visit the DROBO website at drobo.com or shop for DROBO and your other storage hardware at Amazon.com.

Art for Japan

noreply@blogger.com (John Corney) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 21:24:34 PDT

Momiji

I am going to donate all net proceeds from any sales of this work for the rest of the year to the American Red Cross Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Fund.

I have titled the piece "Momiji" which is the Japanese word for the autumn leaves of the maple tree.

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