Random Thoughts of a Photographer

Closing down Blog

2016-12-09T08:58:00.003-08:00

Effective the end of December 2016 I am closing down this blog.

I want to thank all of those that have read this blog over the years. I have enjoyed writing about photography and artistry as I have learned my craft. I hope each one of you has learned something new from my blog at the same time I was learning from other photographers.

I have found that this blog is slightly redundant from my other web sites and no longer warrants updating.

I will still have my main gallery of photography at randyjacksonimages.com and I will still display a subset of my portfolio on Fine Art America

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Beautiful Alaska - The Inside Passage

2016-11-04T20:15:00.004-07:00

In August of this year my wife and I had the opportunity to travel to Alaska on a Princess Cruise. The fifteen days we spent off the Alaska coast and traveling in the interior of Alaska provided a look into a most beautiful and rugged part of the American experience. The Inside Passage is referred to as the route along the Alaskan coast that leads from the Vancouver area along the coastal towns and ending the port of Whittier, Alaska.


Sunset at Sea

While most of our travels were along with many other tourists from around the world we did get to see and photograph a unique slice of wilderness that is rarely seen by those of us confined to the lower 48 states.

Our first evening at sea out of Vancouver, B.C. brought us down to earth and into vacation mode with a fantastic sunset over the Canadian shoreline looking toward Alaska. After our first night of cruising we approached the small town of Ketchikan, our first step onto Alaskan land.

This was a most beautiful site as we sailed into port before dawn and witnessed the pink glow of the rising sun over the hills. Ketchikan is a tourist town during season but is best known as the "Salmon Capital of the World".


Ketchikan at dawn

From Ketchikan we went on an excursion called "Lighthouses, Totems and Eagles" and that is what we experienced.


Guard Island Lighthouse

I was surprised to learn that their are lighthouses all along the shore of Alaska. Makes sense when you think about it with a need to protect ships from rocks and shoals.

Magnificent Eagle

We did see some totem poles on the excursion, but the highlight was the great Bald Eagles that were pervasive in the area. We were traveling in a small boat with local guides that were familiar with the area.

The Bald Eagle is America's National bird and is truly a huge magnificent creature. They are so regal looking out over their domain. I wanted to also include below the original un-cropped photo that was made at some distance with my 400mm zoom lens. This view shows what a photographer has to look for in making an image.


Un-cropped eagle image

This image was captured on a Canon 6D full frame camera that makes it possible recognize an amazing amount of detail and resolution in an original capture. You can see when I enlarge the picture I was able to retain the detail in the feathers of the eagle and in the bark of the dead tree limb.

Our next port of call was Juneau, the capital of Alaska. Juneau is a de-facto island city with no mainland roads into the community.

The hauntingly beautiful Mendenhal Glacier is 12 miles from downtown Juneau. A short bus trip took us to Tongass National Forest and the huge, 13.6 mile long Mendenhal Glacier that has a negative glacier mass balance meaning that it will continue to retreat in the foreseeable future.


Mendenhal Glacier

The glacier is very popular with tourists and features a large visitors center that has historical exhibits and ranger presentations for all to understand the history and ecology of the glacier.

People I've Met - George Wallace

2016-07-08T08:28:00.000-07:00

This is a photography blog, but photography is a story about vision that comes about as a result of how a photographer sees a subject. I have lived an interesting life over the last 40 years. During this lifetime I met or saw several famous people. These interactions added to my life experiences that brought me to a stage of life that added to my vision or at least to how I reacted to the vision.

This series of articles is about my short interactions with these people. Just because I have met these people doesn't mean that I was famous or involved in organizations at a high level. I was just a worker bee in several causes that brought me into the circle that exposed me to the famous.

George Wallace was a symbol of everything I hated about politics. The segregationist Governor of Alabama he was famous for standing in the door of the University of Alabama to prevent black students from enrolling.

In 1972 he was a candidate for President of the United States when he was paralyzed in an assassination attempt on May 15, 1972. I was an alternate delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach that year and Wallace spoke from the convention floor on July 11th.

George Wallace (Public Domain Photo)

I had observed speeches from Teddy Kennedy and Shirley Chisholm that year but the speech from this horribly wounded man was just as charismatic as any I have ever heard. While I did not support his populist views (I was a a McGovern delegate), I still applaud the spirit of a man that has principals to pursue his ideals to the point of potentially giving his life for them.

I can remember the buzz on the floor of the convention when we heard that Wallace would be speaking. The Utah delegation (my state at that time) was seated in the front row of the convention and security was the highest that I had ever seen. All of our bags and briefcases were searched and their were hundreds of uniformed and undercover security personnel surrounding the podium. It took quite a while to get Wallace to the stage and then up to the podium so that he could speak. Keep in mind this was just two months after the assasination attempt.

Never the less, the audience was very respectful and we all listened to every minute of his speech. This was truly one of those lifetime events that I would remember forever.

People I've met - Cesar Chavez

2016-07-01T07:48:00.000-07:00

Public Domain Photo

Cesar Chavez has always been one of those men that I most admired. In 1962 Chavez formed what would be the United Farm Workers Union.His aggressive but non-violent tactics made the American farm workers struggle a moral cause with national support. By the 1970's his tactics had forced growers to recognize the UFW as the bargaining agent for 50,000 field workers in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Florida.

In 1973-74 I was working as a community organizer in my home town of Artesia, N.M. with a group of municipal workers that were on strike. A delegation of 5-7 people from our organization (affiliated with the United Steelworkers Union) were invited to a small church on the west side of Albuquerque to meet with him.

After mass at the church our group met with Chavez to tell him about our efforts in Southern New Mexico. We met for about an hour and I can remember everything about this remarkable man. He was very short and was very soft spoken. When we shook hands I can remember that I was shocked that his hands were very soft (I was expecting the hands of a farm laborer).

Public Domain Photo

When he spoke I was taken with the charisma that he exuded. He asked pointed questions about our tactics and our results and we discussed what we wanted to accomplish. He was very attentive and I left the meeting with a renewed faith in what we were doing and our moral imperative to keep going.

Cesar Chavez died much too young in 1993. While my interaction with this great man was short it left me with a lasting impression of what men with good hearts can do if they put their minds to a cause. For thirty years Cesar Chavez dedicated himself to the problems of some of the poorest workers in America. The movement he inspired succeeded in improving working conditions and worker safety throughout the Southwest and Florida.

People I've Met - Jimmy Carter

2016-06-18T12:06:00.000-07:00

This is a photography blog, but photography is a story about vision that comes about as a result of how a photographer sees a subject. I have lived an interesting life over the last 40 years. During my lifetime I met or saw several famous people. These interactions added to my life experiences that brought me to a stage of life that added to my vision or at least to how I reacted to the vision.

This series of articles is about my short interactions with these famous people. Just because I have met these people doesn't mean that I was famous or involved in organizations at a high level. I was just a worker bee in several causes that brought me into the circle that exposed me to the famous.

In 1978 I was working as a lobbyist for the Communications Workers of America (CWA). Each year the CWA would have a political convention in Washington, D.C. where the delegate would meet with their state representatives to espouse the political agenda of the CWA.

Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, 39th President of the United States) had been elected in 1976 with the help of labor unions. On April 5, 1978 many of the delegates were invited to a reception in the White House to meet the president and hear a major policy speech. This was not a small intimate group, there were from 300-600 people invited.

I had been on a tour of the White House where we were shown down the corridors of the main floor with a line of tourists behind velvet ropes and heaven forbid if you needed to sit down on one of those Duncan Phyfe chairs.

Being invited to a reception is a totally different experience. It is like being invited to someones very nice house. The velvet ropes were down and we were allowed in many of the rooms on the State Floor of the White House. Many of rooms were set up with wine and cheese trays.

I was thrilled with the special cheese ring that was included on the trays and got the recipe later ( Rosalynn Carter Cheese Ring). I was in the White House from about 1 PM to 5 PM.

At one time Amy Carter came home from school and went up the grand staircase to the living quarters. Spread throughout the rooms and at certain doors were very large formally dressed Marine guards that were tasked to keep the quests from wandering through another area of the house. One impression I had was that those famous rooms in the White House (Blue Room, Red Room, Green Room) were small just like in a real and regular house. I did sit in those Duncan Phyfe chairs and in fact did drink a little wine as a sat (maybe a little more than a little).

Around 4 PM the President came into the East Room of the White House and delivered a major policy speech (I don't remember the subject at this time, just like a regular house guest). What an honor to be able to be in the home of President of the United States.

While I did not get too close to the President I was impressed about how confident he acted and how gracious he was about invited me and my group into his house.

As I mentioned at the top of this post I have met some famous people in my life but these interactions were small and should not imply that I was buddy's with the famous.

People I've Met - Muhammad Ali

2016-06-10T21:31:00.002-07:00

Public Domain Photo

Today I have witnessed the memorial ceremony for the life of Muhammad Ali, the three time heavyweight boxing champion, peace activist, philanthropist and self-proclaimed "Greatest". Ali died from the ravages of Parkinson's disease on June 3, 2016 in Phoenix. To hear Billy Crystal and former President Bill Clinton eulogize a truly great man.

In 1973 I was working as a community organizer in Logan Utah. I was active in the Democratic Party as a precinct chairperson and was active in environmental issues in Northern Utah. Muhammad Ali was invited to speak at Utah State University. Ali had just had his suspension overturned for draft evasion that him kept him away from the ring at the peak of his career.

While I was active in the environmental movement I had not had a lot of contact with the civil rights movement. I attended the speech and sat at the rear of 15,000 seat basketball arena. My first impression was to hear the crowd chanting "Ali, Ali, Ali" and then "I am Ali, I am Ali". I'm not sure that I quite understood the "I am Ali" chant, but learned more about that later.

Muhammad Ali, bounded down the aisles to the stage and worked the crowd into a frenzy with his charisma and poetry. I heard him speak the famous quote “I’ve wrestled with alligators. I’ve tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning. And throw thunder in jail.”.

I was excited after the speech to know I had witnessed something special that day.

Later I learned that the "I am Ali" quote was a chant for those supporters of the champ that were stating their support for living their lives in the principals that Ali espoused.

I was quite impressed the rest of life with that short interaction with a great person of color that had risked all in support of their principles.

Photographing Portraits with LED Lights

2015-08-20T17:04:00.001-07:00

One of my great challenges is management of lighting for a traditional head shot portrait session. My favorite lighting is a continuous lighting product using inexpensive LED lights. Continuous lighting means that the light is turned on the subject all the time instead of briefly lighting the subject with a flash or strobe.

1/100 sec at f/4.0, ISO 640, 50mm

I have both kinds of lighting, but the LED's provide a very easy way to measure the exposure exactly the way they will look in the camera.

The lighting shows the main key light on the subjects left side, a hair light to highlight the top of the head, a reflector to bounce back some of the light on the right side of the face and a small light below and behind the subject to illuminate the backdrop.

The diagram below shows the lighting for this portrait shot from a recent photo shoot

The "Key" light, or the main light is created from three LED lights mounted together to provide more light from inside the softbox.

The softbox is a Westcott Apollo softbox that is designed to be used with flash strobes, but I have attached the three LED units to the triple holder that will fit inside the softbox and will provide about 2400 Lumens of very soft diffused light.

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Each of the LED units has a A/C adapter installed in order to run the light off of regular power and not have to worry about changing out batteries.

The hair light is a single LED unit that is screwed into the end of a boom arm and this provides a diffused light above the head. This LED unit also has an A/C adapter. Sometimes I add a small fabric softbox made for the LED units to further diffuse the overhead light.

The final lighting touch is another of the LED units placed on the floor beneath the subject and pointed backward to light up the center of the backdrop. I also sometimes add a white reflector on the side opposite of the key light to bring up the light ratio on the shadow side of the face.

This particular lighting setup is very inexpensive, fairly portable and provides a good quality of light for portraits. The costs are shown in the chart below. The total cost, if I had to buy everything new from Amazon would be $ 586.99. I purchased many of the components over several years and only had to buy the LED lights to change to this most current configuration.

The prices above will change over time, but the affiliate links below will have the most current price information for those links.

Lightroom 6 is Here!

2015-04-23T11:34:00.001-07:00

On April 21st Adobe released the much anticipated Lightroom 6. Actually they released two versions of Lightroom: Lightroom 6, the stand-alone version and Lightroom CC, the version included in the subscription service Creative Cloud. On the release date both versions are mostly feature identical, but as time moves on the CC version will receive more updates and improvements. One major feature that was not included in Lightroom 6 were the Lightroom Mobile features.

It appears that Adobe is moving toward a subscription only based model. In my case, the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography bundle at $9.99 per month worked out. However, you still have a choice with Lightroom 6 although I think losing the mobile features would be a major detriment.

The major improvements in this new release included: HDR Merge, Panorama Merge, Performance improvements, Facial Recognition, Filter Brush Improvements, Adding to Collections on Import, Slideshow Improvements, CMYK now supported in soft-proofing an Pet Eye Removal.

While the performance enhancements are hidden from view they are remarkable. In my limited use of the new product I have seen up to a 200% increase in speed on some tasks.

You can now perform an HDR Merge from within Lightroom and it is impressive in its simplicity (as compared to third-party products) and its speed of operation. I tested the feature with some of my HDR images and it worked great. One of the great features of the HDR Merge is that the output is to a DNG file (in other words, it is a full dynamic range RAW file that you can adjust and enhance in Lightroom just like a regular image).

Another new feature of the new Lightroom is Panorama Merge directly from Lightroom.

With this feature you can combine multiple photos into a panoramic image to create a wide angle view when you don't have a lens that will capture the entire scene. Again, the output is to a full RAW DNG file that can be further enhanced in Lightroom.

This is such an amazing implementation that it seems like it has very few limitations. I saw today a post that said a photographer had created an amazing medium format, 18 photo, HDR panoramic image in Lightroom 6. This file ended up being 705 megabytes in size. See the story at: http://resourcemagonline.com/2015/04/i-just-made-a-medium-format-18-image-hdr-panoramic-image-with-lightroom-6/51338/

The next major feature of the new Lightroom is Face Tagging or Facial Recognition. This is an extensive feature set that allows you to identify and tag people in your photos. It would be very helpful for those sports shooters that have to caption their images for production.

While the process to set up the facial recognition seems a little cumbersome I think it might be useful in some situations.

The remaining new features including adding a filter brush to the Graduated and Radial Filters making it easier to create a mask that fits exactly what you want. The Performance Enhancements are probably the most important new feature, but not one that you see on the surface. Many of the performance increases are created by passing off processing to your GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) on your graphics card. This allows Lightroom to keep on working while the graphics card processes your task.

Other improvements were made to the Slideshow module with the ability to pan and zoom into a slide making it look even more professional and to allow extensive new music options. You can now add to an existing collection as you are importing your images. Those of you who take pet photos now will have a feature (in the Red Eye Removal section) to remove those glowing eyes in your pet photos. And finally you can now do a soft proof with a CMYK color space.

All in all this is a significant upgrade to the Lightroom brand and continues on a path to have Lightroom be able to do almost everything that you need to do as a photographer in one package.

One strange thing happened when I first installed Lightroom CC. It would not run! Several people reported the same thing and it did not matter whether you were on Mac or PC. Adobe has posted a simple fix to the problem and it worked for me: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1822807

New Paintings

2015-04-16T12:41:00.001-07:00

After a long drought of painting I have several new paintings being published this month. All of these paintings are 16" by 20" gallery wraps with gel embellishment. More of the techniques later in this post. The subjects of the paintings highlight the spring time in Arizona with two related with Cactus League Spring Training, and one scene from the Wildlife World Zoo in Litchfield Park Arizona.

Three time baseball All-Star Yu Darvish is the subject of this painterly rendition of an original photograph taken during the 2014 Spring Training season in Surprise, Arizona. At 6' 5" and 215 lbs Darvish creates an imposing figure on the mound. This particular composition shows what an opposing batter sees from home plate as the determined pitcher sends a 98 mph fastball down the lane.

This painting starts with processing with several digital art software products that allow me to create impressionistic brush strokes following the lines and patterns in the original image. I simplify the detail of the photograph to capture the essence of the scene and then I intensify the colors and create brush strokes like an original painting.

The painting is then produced as a Giclée print on a canvas medium. I then embellish the print with a clear gel medium to exaggerate the brush strokes and impart an impasto effect to my paintings that exude a third dimension. Utilizing traditional artist's brushes and palette knives the resulting brush strokes emphasize the lines and form of the original photograph. This method creates an original one-of-a-kind piece of art.There will be no two paintings that are alike. Each canvas is numbered into an edition and hand signed.

The next painting in the series is a composite rendering of historical baseball photos and newspaper articles with more contemporary images taken during Spring Training at Surprise Stadium in Arizona. The composition is celebrating Surprise Arizona Baseball. With elements from my portfolio of images surrounding Surprise Stadium and baseball in Surprise combined with newspaper accounts announcing the Kansas City Royals and Texas Rangers coming to Surprise. Additional public domain images from baseball's past fill out the composite story of Surprise Arizona Baseball.

The third painting is a rendition of Flamingos at the Wildlife World Zoo and Aquarium in Litchfield Park Arizona.Hiking through the park on my self guided safari I was able to capture some special shots of the Flamingo Lounge overlooking the popular restaurant on the premises. The American flamingo is a homeothermic endotherm, which is an animal that basically keeps a consistent temperature that is regulated within its body. Like all flamingos, it lays a single chalky white egg on a mud mound, between May and August; incubation until hatching takes from 28 to 32 days; both parents brood the young for a period of up to 6 years when they reach sexual maturity. Their life expectancy of 40 years is one of the longest in birds. Adult American flamingos are smaller on average than greater flamingos but are the largest flamingos in the Americas. Most of its plumage is pink, giving rise to its earlier name of rosy flamingo and differentiating adults from the much paler greater flamingo.

Today, Wildlife World Zoo and Aquarium displays over 2600 animals representing more than 400 species to nearly 400,000 visitors, including some 75,000 students annually.For more than 30 years the well regarded zoo has been known for its wildlife conservation efforts. Too often we fail to recognize the beauty of these remarkable gems in our backyard. I have passed that location literally hundreds of times over the years, but on this day the sheer beauty of the overall scene grabbed my heart before I pulled the camera up to my eye.

A New Backup Plan

2015-02-07T08:51:00.000-08:00

Along with the new year I discovered that my main disk storage for my photography was exhibiting some flaky behaviors. I have utilized a Drobo (Generation two, USB 2.0 version) for my primary storage of my raw and processed images.
By strange behavior I mean that it was forcing itself into a disk rebuild as if a drive had failed. The rebuild was successful without replacing the drive, but it caused me think that I should upgrade my data storage solution sooner rather than later.

A Massive Amount of Images

Now I have a lot of images from a decade of digital photography. I have over 121,000 images. I organize by images into several folders based on my usage of images. I use Adobe Lightroom for my primary photo editing platform. After capturing an image I use Lightroom to bring it into my computer in an "Original" folder organized by date. I load all images in the DNG format. After bringing in the RAW files I select the images I am going to process further with Lightroom tools and then I use Lightroom's editing tools or I use Photoshop or other software to further process the images into my production photographs or art products that I print for exhibitions.

My original storage solution was a Drobo 4 bay unit with a USB 2.0 interface. It was configured with two 1.5 Terabyte Western Digital Green Drives and two 2 TB green drives. With a total storage capacity of 7 TB of storage Drobo's proprietary "BeyondRAID" architecture provided 4.53 TB of usable storage. An explanation of BeyondRAID can be found on Drobo.com:

"Drobo’s BeyondRAID technology solves the fundamental issues that traditional RAID can’t. Built on the foundation of traditional RAID, BeyondRAID adds a layer of virtualization that chooses the correct protection algorithm based on data availability needs at any given moment. Since the technology works at the block level, it can write blocks of data that alternate between RAID protection levels.
If you need to add storage capacity to a Drobo, simply insert additional disk drives or replace the smallest disks with larger ones – no need to change RAID levels, purchase a new storage array, or go through the complex administration of pooling RAID groups."

A more detailed technical explanation can be found Drobo's e-book " Drobo Technical Innovation" that I have made available on my Dropbox site at Drobo e-book on Dropbox.

My Old Backup Plan

To back up that amount of data I was making a full backup of all my critical folders utilizing Acronis True Image 2014. The backup files were stored on an Internal 2 Tb disk on my computer. As my photo collection grew I started experiencing more and more issues with storage space. I knew I would have to buy more disk. The other problem with this scheme is that I had only one backup set. If it was corrupted I didn't have any backup.

My New Backup Plan

I first purchased a new Drobo, the newest USB 3.0 version of the technology with four bays. I populated the bays with Western Digital Red Drives, designed for NAS storage. These are amazing units that really solved a lot of problems I was having with the time it was taking to perform a backup. I found I was averaging about 4 times the speed of my Gen2 Drobos. Next I purchased a
Western Digital My Book, 4 Tb, USB 3.0 backup.

My new storage solution was a Drobo 4 bay unit with a USB 3.0 interface. It was configured with four 3 TB Western Digital Red Drives. With a total storage capacity of 12 TB of storage Drobo's proprietary "BeyondRAID" architecture provided 8.17 TB of usable storage. I effectively doubled my storage capacity.

The original idea was that I would make a complete backup to take offsite to my Safe Deposit box. After installation I decided to use the My Book backup as my primary in-house backup. After making several backups of my original Drobo I reformatted the drives to get rid of any bad sectors and used the four original drives as a disk pack that I removed to the Safe Deposit box. The resolved most of my space issues and provided additional fast backups for my weekly and daily backup tasks. I will refresh the offsite backups once a quarter. I backup my Production and 2015 folders daily with an incremental schema (backing up only what is changed for a series of 5 versions and then creating a new full backup to start the process all over again. I also upgraded to the new Acronis True Image 2015. After some initial problems with True Image I finally got it to working reliably and it seems a little faster than the previous version.

I have provided some links below to the products mentioned in this blog post. I would like to note that the price on a Drobo Generation 3 with USB 3.0 (List price of $ 349.99) is at the lowest cost I have seen it since the product was announced.

A New Year

2015-01-28T15:00:00.002-08:00

My last post was about lifetime learning and my unofficial New Years resolutions (even though this is almost February 2015) are centered around doing more shooting or at least adding to my photography portfolio each and every month. I also am going to be learning more about my artistic mission by repeating some of my courses on Kelby One, Lynda.com and Photoshop Artistry. I have talked about those before and they have more training than I could ever cover but certainly courses that would strengthen my skill levels. Another project I am doing is to join a group called Awake. This is Sebastien Michael's new year long endeavor to move 1,000 people from around the world into a new level of artistic creativity. This course will not necessarily be about the techniques of art and photography, but more about the reasons that successful artists succeed.

While it is still a little fuzzy to me I believe in Sebastien and know that he has the skills to portray a new way of thinking about our craft. A few words about Photoshop Artistry, the course I have been studying for the last two years. In this course I learned to work through dozens of pro-level techniques while compositing my own creations — achieving a profound expertise and absolute familiarity with the tools and methods that enable me to pursue my artistic vision without constraint. The courses covered everything from masking to blend modes to selective blurring.

The art piece on the right shows some of those techniques where I composed two of my photographs: a butterfly from the Phoenix Botanical Gardens and a stylized part of a sculpture of reaching hands that I captured at a resort on the grounds in Sedona. I added some textures, some words and some vector graphics and blended them into a pleasing presentation.

The second piece of art that I created, based on Photoshop Artistry was a portrait of a dear friend from Santa Barbara that I captured one Christmas morning and proceeded to transform this beautiful young woman into a sophisticated vision in a Europeon style background.

These are but two of the new art projects that I created in 2014, but are indicative of many more that are to come.

You can also join up to the Photoshop Artistry course at the link above. Let me know and I will see if any discounts are available.

Lifetime Learning

2014-11-11T20:24:00.001-08:00

One of the precepts of my success in business and photography has been my attitude of "lifetime learning". Those of you that know me have observed that my life in the technology world was characterized first by knowledge and certifications about each technology that I was associated with. Most of that learning was through non-traditional means such as books, seminars and short training sessions. I had achieved much success by the time I was in my 50's. By the late 1990's I had noticed that my lack of a college degree was hampering my further rise as a technology manager. I embarked on a rather frenzied mission to get my Bachelor's degree from the University of Phoenix. I got my degree of Bachelor of Science in Information Technology in 2001. As a mediocre student in high school (back in the 1960's) I was quite surprised at how well I embraced the university environment and classes. I graduated with honors as the top student in the IT division. I then went on and tackled my Master of Arts Degree in Public Administration in 2004 at Webster University, once again graduating with Honors and a 4.0 GPA. From that time until after I retired in 2011 I went back to learning from newly expanding internet based methodologies that would be considered more non-traditional. I continue on that path each and every day. My post-retirement career would be in the field of photography (my non-job passion for the previous 20 years). I did not choose to get a formal degree in photography (mainly because of the cost). I do think that I have carved out a good path to learn, explore, perfect and future proof my knowledge base. I continue to learn from several different Internet web technologies and am always exploring more ways to learn each week.

The first of those learning sites is Kelby One (kelbyone.com). Kelby One is an offshoot of Scott Kelby's Photoshop User magazine and a part of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. I signed up for Kelby Training (its earlier name) when it started and was able to maintain my discounted membership from those early days. At first there were very few courses and the production values were fairly low. As time progressed and Photoshop User enterprises continued to succeed they increased the course catalog, instructors and quality into what it is today.

Kelby One has over 10,000 courses ranging in length from 20 minutes to over 4 hours. Most courses are around an hour in length. They cover categories of Photoshop, photography, video, Lightroom, design, business and inspiration. Every week more courses are published and the course content is expanded to cover the leading edge of technology in all those categories. Kelby One is tied closely to the Adobe product line, but not exclusively and have been expanding their course offerings. You can learn more about Kelby One at: http://kelbyone.com/

Current pricing information and benefits are included in the screen shot on the right.

My next major learning portal is Lynda.com. They are similar to Kelby One, but cover more technology disciplines including Information Technology, business software, marketing, development and audio and music. Lynda's courses tend to be longer with many in the 3-5 hour range. Some of the instructors are the same as those on Kelby One.

The pricing is fairly high, but nothing like having to pay for a 4 hour seminar and you get access to the entire course catalog. The highest price option includes project files that are used in the instructions. I don't pay for the project files (choosing the 2nd tier product) and it does not seem to matter a whole lot.

You can browse the site at: http://www.lynda.com/member.aspx

The production value of the videos is very high and I have been able to learn many technologies on the site.

The two web sites above are the major players in the technology learning marketplace (but not necessarily the only ones). I also subscribe to a couple of smaller but more specialized web sites.

The first is http://steeletraining.com/index.htm, Phil Steele has a very laid back style of teaching and goes into just as much detail in his courses a Kelby One or Lynda. However, his courses tend to be a little less expensive. For instance the Lightroom Made Easy course (that I subscribe to) is now priced at $ 39.00 (he has specials all the time and that is a good way to grab some specialty courses.

Phil Steele also recommended another course that I subscribed to and that course was most instrumental in the training that I used for my advanced photography fine art. This knowledge expanded my knowledge of Photoshop techniques and advanced my artwork to new levels. That web site is: http://photoshopgrunge.com/.

This is a massive web site from photo artist Sebastian Michaels with over 60 videos that cover the details of a most interesting art and photography form. Many of my fine art pieces that I exhibit in galleries is a result of this web site and training.

The modules cover the art of photo compositing in great detail and include hundreds of resource downloads that I use in my art.

They also have a Facebook site where the artists can discuss techniques and submit artwork for critique. You can see it at:
https://www.facebook.com/PhotoshopArtistry

The cost of this course ranges (depending on the current discounts) from $ 99.00 to $ 497.00 with the current cost being around $ 297.

I also use YouTube.com for lots of free videos, including some from the sites listed above. I also download (and purchase from Amazon Kindle) many e-books and tutorials that I load on my iPad for reading during the day.

So, when you embark on a lifetime of learning you will see the benefits that a learning lifestyle can add to your well being.

Lifelong learning guru Nancy Merz Nordstrom advocates lifetime learning as a vital ingredient for the Baby Boomer lifestyle or anyone in their “after-50” years. “When you look at the benefits gained from keeping your mind sharp, it’s incredible. Lifelong learning is like a health club for your brain. And an active mind can stimulate physical activity and keep your spirits high."

Courtesy of her groundbreaking book, “Learning Later, Living Greater: The Secret for Making the Most of Your After-50 Years” published by Sentient Publications (ISBN: 1-59181-047-7) Nordstrom offers the Top Ten Benefits of Lifelong Learning.

Lifelong learning leads to an enriching life of self-fulfillment.
Lifelong learning helps us make new friends and establish valuable relationships.
Lifelong learning keeps us involved as active contributors to society.
Lifelong learning helps us find meaning in our lives.
Lifelong learning helps us adapt to change.
Lifelong learning makes the world a better place.
Lifelong learning increases our wisdom.
Lifelong learning creates a curious, hungry mind.
Lifelong learning opens the mind.
Lifelong learning helps fully develop natural abilities.

DIY Art Cart from PVC Pipe

2014-09-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had issues with transporting your art from one show to another. After years of wrapping my art in blankets and bubble wrap or foam and then laying them in the back of my Chevy HHR to only find that they are getting chipped on the edges or arriving with broken glass frames.

I started looking for a cart to transport my art and I looked at laundry carts, Rubbermaid carts or even other types of carts, all of which did not fit into my car. I finally decided to build my own custom sized art transport carts that would fit both my art and car space with the seats folded down. I decided on a size that was 18" by 42" to allow two units in the back and with a size that my largest art (30" by 24" could fit. It would need casters to roll into the galleries.

This is what the cart looks like after cutting, gluing and assembly.

Looking at some of the detail of the assembly.
I had Home Depot cut the plywood to my size (18" by 42") which they do for free (up to two cuts free).

Below you can see the Three way connector at the top of the unit.


3 way connector

You can remove the printing on the pipe by using Acetone (danger of vapors) or sanding (much elbow grease) or you can paint over them with white spray paint. Or you can leave them, after all its your cart for your purposes.


4 way connector

And finally, you can see the detail of the table caps attaching to the plywood and the casters on the bottom for mobility. All in all it is a very easy build requiring cutting of the pipe to your sizes, gluing the pipes together and screwing in the table caps and the casters. I also placed screws in all the end pipe connectors to strengthen the "handles" that would be supporting the entire weight of the cart and the art when moving it in and out of the car or truck. The glue might have held but I wanted to make sure it did not deconstruct in the middle of an art show.


Table Cap from the top

Table Cap and Caster attaching to plywood

I purchased all my parts from Home Depot but I could have gone to Lowes too. Three of the parts had to be ordered online because Home Depot did not stock them in local stores. I ordered online and had them deliver to the local store with free shipping. I used 3/4" PVC pipe in order to keep the weight down. It ended up weighing 15 lbs.

One small note on the parts list. While I wanted to use 3/4" PVC pipe the "Formufit Table Screw Cap" only came in 1' as its smallest size. So I had to purchase a 1" to 3/4" adapter (converter) to down size the table cap to fit the 3/4" PVC.


Art Cart ready for art

Parts List and cost of parts

PVC Art Cart Costs
	Quant	Each	Total	Note
18" x 42" 1/2" Plywood	1	14.93	14.93	Cut at Home Depot from 2' x 4' sheet
10' 3/4" PVC	3	2.56	7.68	Home Depot
Formufit 3/4 in. Furniture Grade PVC 4-Way Tee in White	4	2.30	9.20	Ordered online from Home Depot
Formufit 3/4 in. Furniture Grade PVC 3-Way Elbow in White	4	2.04	8.16	Ordered online from Home Depot
Formufit 1 in. Furniture Grade PVC Table Screw Cap in White	4	2.53	10.12	Ordered online from Home Depot
1" to 3/4" PVC Adapter	4	0.89	3.56	Home Depot
Christy's 8oz PVC Pipe Cement	1	5.97	5.97	Home Depot

Total Cost of each cart			$ 59.62

A Survey of Photography and Fine Art

2014-09-18T19:59:00.002-07:00

You are invited to a unique 90 minute program about the intersection of photography and fine art by pro photographer Randy Jackson called “A Survey of Photography and Fine Art” will be held on October 8, 2014 from 6-7:30 PM at the West Valley Arts Council’s ARTS HQ in Surprise. The survey of major topics of photography as fine art include: Getting the Shot, Equipment, Post Processing and Advanced Art Techniques. Jackson will provide real world examples of his art; how it was created, how it was processed and the meaning and future of the field. Please RSVP to (623) 935-6384 and drop me an email that you are coming to randyjacksonimages@cox.net.

Shooting Clouds

2014-08-04T14:36:00.001-07:00

It's that time of year where Arizona is in Monsoon Season. That means that the weather is changing each day with the increased dew points bringing in afternoon and evening thundershowers (or massive dust storms called "Haboobs"). Unlike the rest of the country these weather patterns are usually short lived and result in amazing cloud formations. Sometimes the clouds are dark and foreboding, but mostly they just generate beautiful billowing cumulus clouds with blue sky beyond. Now, why are clouds so important to a photographer? Many times in the Southwest photographers are faced with beautiful scenic panoramas that are surrounded with clear, blue sky that is, frankly boring.

Storm Clouds Backlit by the Sun

As a fine art photographer I like to have my images reflect the most pleasing of compositions and that means that a boring or overcast sky would need to to replaced to make the best looking large fine art image. Many afternoons during Monsoon season I will drive five minutes down the road from my home to capture a library of cloud photos that can be used to impart a certain look in a photograph being created at other locations.


Arizona Sunrise

Other times might require a sunrise or sunset mood over a scene. I sometimes shoot real estate shots for local realtors and these often require sky replacement to enhance the image.

A side by side comparison of one of my photographs with sky replacement. What a difference it makes.

Avalon Bay with Clouds


Avalon Bay Overcast

More examples of cloud pictues that I have taken this month.

I currently have about 700 cloud images in a folder that I can use in a variety of circumstances to enhance an image. The beauty of Arizona is that many locations that I shoot come with their very own beautiful cloud formations in the shot as I originally capture it.

Small LED, off camera, battery and AC, bright, cheap

2014-07-20T17:07:00.001-07:00

The holy grail of off camera lighting is to have a small unit, bright, inexpensive and works with either battery or AC power. Until recently the major component of AC power was driving up the cost of LED lights. Quite recently I discovered several components available on Amazon that could make for a great off camera LED light. For several years I have used a battery powered light from Amazon, the Newer 160CN. I paid less than $40 for several of the units, but they only worked on batteries (6-AA) and they had to be changed about every 3 hours during a shoot.

Very recently I found that Amazon has started selling an add-on power supply for CN-160 light. This power supply has an AC to DC Switching Power converter that attaches to a dummy battery component that converts regular AC power to 7.5 v 2 amp DC power to power the LED lights. The light is rated at 5600K, 660 Luminous flux (according to the manufacturer). It is pretty bright and when aggregated together is good for just about any studio purpose.

It is very light weight and does not require you to modify the light and you can still use the batteries if you are on location. This part costs less than $16.

This makes a complete AC powered LED light for around $56.

I also picked up another part: a Triple Hot Shoe Adapter that will allow me to aggregate two or three of the LED light into one adapter to place in a soft box or umbrella setup to increase the overall light and soften it at the same time. The triple adapter is less than $16 on Amazon.


Triple Holder with 3 LED lights (lights not included)

The best I have seen for an AC powered LED light is around $600-$900 for some of the more well known brands.

This unit would be ideal for a small head shot production facility and provides continuous lighting with very good color rendition.

UPDATE (September 19, 2014) I just bought a

NEEWER CN-216 216PCS LED Dimmable Ultra High Power Panel on Amazon and this power adapter also works on CN-216 (the CN-216 provides about a 1/3 brighter light than the CN-160.

My love/hate relationship with the Epson R3000 Printer

2014-07-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

An many of you know I have posted several articles about the Epson R3000 printer. I have been very impressed with the quality of the prints and they have been great for fine art prints in art shows that I have been featured here in Arizona.

However, I have now given up on the printer after only 2 1/2 years of usage. I have detailed the ongoing issues with maintenance of the printer in previous blogs and was able to overcome most of the problems. But finally, the head clogging (ink clogging the heads) made it so that I could not get a reliable print from the printer. I sent the printer off to an Epson Authorized repair facility in California (I could not find an authorized dealer in Arizona) and received a quote back that was for more than the cost of a new printer. The main issue was in the print head itself. On the Epson R3000 unit the print head is NOT a consumer replaceable unit-it must be replaced by an authorized dealer and the cost for the dealer for the print head alone was around $400. Add the labor and that placed the repair quote for more than $700.

After getting the quote I started to research my options and I could have just bought another R3000 printer, but I thought why should I reward Epson for designing a printer that I could use for less than three years.

So, I looked at the Canon Pixma line of printers. Their reviews said they were on the par with the Epson products. But, a big difference was the print head on the Canon Pixma printers is a consumer replaceable unit with a cost of under $100. The Canon Pixma Pro line is similar to the Epson R3000 and 3880 line of printers with the Epson 3880 being a wider format printer. The Pro 1 is a 12 ink printer, the Pro 10 is a 10 ink printer and the Pro 100 is an 8 ink color printer. The Pro 1 and Pro 10 printers were a little over my price range (list price of $999 and $699 receptively). I chose the Pro 100 printer at a list price of $499, but B&H Photo had a $300 mail in rebate for the printer at the time I purchased it. That made the price to me about $199! You can see the specs on the printer at:

http://shop.usa.canon.com/shop/en/catalog/printers-all-in-ones/professional-inkjet-printers/pixma-pro-100

I received the printer about a month ago and have been totally impressed. The quality of the prints is on par with the Epson inks and it seems that the ink usage is a little better than the Epson. The printer is quite heavy (43.2 lbs) and is built like a tank.

The specifications include:

Printer Type	Wireless Professional Inkjet Printer
Features	AirPrint Auto Photo Fix II Borderless Printing Optimum Image Generating System Photo Printing Grayscale Photo Printing Wireless Printing
Print Speed (up to)	8" x 10" Image on A4 with Border: Approx. 51 seconds seconds⁶ 11" x 14" Image on A3+ with Border: Approx. 1 minute 30 seconds⁶
Number of Nozzles	6,144
Print Resolution (Up to)	Color: Up to 4800 x 2400 dpi⁴ Black Up to 4800 x 2400 dpi⁴
OS Compatibility	Windows® 7, Windows 7 SP1, Windows Vista SP1, Vista SP2, Windows XP SP3 32-bit Intel processor Mac OS® X v10.5.8 - 10.9.x⁷
Standard Interfaces	Wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11 b/g/n) Ethernet Hi-Speed USB PictBridge (Cable not included)
Ink Compatibility	CLI-42
Ink Droplet Size	Picoliter Size 3pl
Ink Capacity	8
Paper Sizes	4" x 6", 5" x 7", 8" x 10", Letter, Legal, 11" x 17", 13" x 19"
Paper Compatibility	Plain: (Plain Paper, Canon High Resolution Paper Super High Gloss: Photo Paper Pro Platinum Glossy: Photo Paper Plus Glossy II, Photo Paper Glossy Semi-Gloss: Photo Paper Plus Semi-Gloss, Photo Paper Pro Luster Matte: Matte Photo Paper Fine Art Paper: Fine Art "Musem Etching"; Other Fine Art Papers CD/DVD: Printable CD/DVD/Blu-ray Disc For additional compatible papers, click here
Maximum Paper Size	13" x 19"
Output Tray Capacity	Auto Sheet Feeder: 150 Sheets of Plain Paper 20 sheets Photo Paper (4"x6"); 10 sheets (Letter/8"x10"); 1 sheet (A3+) Manual Feeder: 1 sheet of Photo Paper (all sizes)
Noise Level Approx	Approx. 38.5 dB(A)
Physical Dimensions	27.2" (W) x 15.2" (D) x 8.5" (H)
Weight	43.2 lbs.
Power Consumption	19 W (2.3 W Standby)
Warranty	1-Year limited warranty with InstantExchange Program. 1-Year toll-free technical phone support.¹⁴
Software Included	Setup Software & User's Guide CD-ROM PIXMA PRO-100 Printer Driver My Image Garden¹²: Full HD Movie Print, CREATIVE PARK PREMIUM¹³, Fun Filter Effects and Image Correction/Enhance are accessed through My Image Garden Print Studio Pro Quick Menu

I titled this post as my love/hate relationship with the Epson R3000 printer and I have to honestly say that it was a very good printer for the way I used it for 2 1/2 years. If I would have expected to only get that amount of time with the printer I probably would not have purchased it or I would have purchased the larger 3880 version and got a few more years use. Of course, the 3880 has the same issues as the R3000 regarding the print head, but the 3880 does have a user replaceable waste ink reservoir that is not present in the R3000. That may have increased the lifetime of unit. But I did not know any of these issues when I purchased the printer.

This post is certainly only my opinion of the printer and I want to state that other users my have a different experience than I had. Perhaps the marketplace for ink jet printers is such that one should expect to replace the unit with a new one every two years and maybe that is acceptable to some buyers. I have an expectation that is grounded around a HP LaserJet that I expected to run for 5 years or more. I don't want to start a fight on the internet about this issue. My opinion is only one person and it may or may not be representative of other photographers. I just want to urge all of you to research your purchases carefully and buy according to those opinions that are from your experience or from those that you trust.

The Story of Popular Sports Photos

2014-07-03T12:37:00.001-07:00

I have been most fortunate in being able to photograph some of the most famous athletes of our time. Sports photography is a most specialized form of photography. While most any camera and lens combinations can capture good sports photos, great sports images require cameras that can capture images with a high burst rate, a fast shutter speed and a lens that is both fast, sharp and able to shoot in low light.

One of my most popular photographs is of All Star and future Hall of Famer Josh Hamilton sliding into home while he played for the Texas Rangers (he now plays for Los Angeles Angels). I have been honored with the ability to photograph MLB's Spring Training games at Surprise Stadium in the Cactus League.

This iconic image shows Hamilton sliding into home during a collision with Henry Blanco of the Arizona Diamondbacks in a Spring Training game on March 23, 2011. This type of home plate collision has been diminished with new rule changes starting in the 2014 season. Ironically Hamilton broke his arm in the regular season missing 7 weeks of the season before returning in time to help the Ranger's in the World Series (losing to the Saint Louis Cardinals in 7 games).

Credentialed and professional photographers can shoot from the playing field in "photographers wells" that are located in and next to the dugouts on each side of the field. The closest well to home plate is approximately 50 feet from the plate and at the same level as the field. There is another well inside the outfield side of each dugout that is slightly recessed below the level of the field, but not as low as the bottom of the dugout.

The camera settings for this shot were 1/2,000 sec, f/4.0, ISO 200, 200mm shot with a Canon 7D and a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 IS II USM lens. The fast shutter speed stopped the motion of the ball in mid-air and froze the dust particles flying up from Hamilton's cleats. The sharpness of the lens is evident in the detail of the large tattoo on the forearm of Hamilton.

In baseball the first most important factors in a professional level sports image is the speed of the shot (I captured 9 frames in the sliding sequence in 2 seconds with the money shot being the 3rd frame in the set). The second important factor is the reach of the lens and its sharpness level. The Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 IS II USM is considered one of the fastest and sharpest lens in the Canon line.

I set my camera on high speed continuous shooting. In my experience, for professional level baseball players, I try to time the start of the shutter clicking when I see the pitcher start his windup. This might seem early, but today's pro baseball pitchers are throwing so fast that this is the only way I can come close to capturing the ball in the frame around the batter. This allow for some delay in my reaction time and then I can start the sequence of the capture frames. Now I shoot with a Canon 7D camera that has a burst rate of approximately 8 frames per second. This assumes I am shooting with raw or jpeg settings (not raw plus jpeg which takes longer to save to the compact flash card). In baseball I generally get 4-9 frames before I stop the sequence of shooting.

The next shot I wanted to highlight in my sports series is a shot I made of Andre Agassi playing in the Championship Round against Todd Martin at Surprise Stadium in the Cancer Treatment Centers of America Tennis Championship (Outback Champions Series).

Tennis, like baseball is a photographers game of access and position on the court. In this case, I was credentialed by Surprise Tennis Center to be on the court for the championship round meaning I was sitting on the court almost dead center of the net. The challenge, as in all of sports shots is one of shutter speed, burst speed and in this circumstance overcoming the afternoon sun.

The camera setting were 1/2000 sec f/5.6 at 300mm, shooting with a Canon T1i camera, and a 75-300mm f/4-5.6 USM lens. This was early in my career of sports shooting, but showing that you don't need the highest end of cameras to shoot sports at a professional level.

I set my camera on high speed continuous shooting. In my experience, for professional level tennis players, I try to time the start of the shutter clicking when I hear (yes, I listen for the crack of racket on the ball) the serve. This allow for some delay in my reaction time and then I can start the sequence of the capture frames. Now I shoot with a Canon 7D camera that has a burst rate of approximately 8 frames per second. This assumes I am shooting with raw or jpeg settings (not raw plus jpeg which takes longer to save to the compact flash card). In tennis I generally get 6-14 frames before I stop the sequence of shooting. I tend to keep shooting after the return in case I get a great look of triumph or defeat.

This is another shot showing Agassi in the same match on the opposite side of the court.

A sampling of other sports shots I have captured over the years are displayed below.

John McEnroe


Anna Kournakova

Yu Darvish


Paige Mills-Centennial High School

The Story of Sedona Fall

2014-06-30T02:09:00.000-07:00

At some time in a photographer's career there comes a series of photographs that set the bar for all of those that are to follow. For me, Sedona Fall is one of those photographs. This popular photograph has so many of the characteristics of a great image. First of all, it is defined by the light, the sun peaking through a hole in the clouds to illuminate a shimmering brilliance of fall colors. The light is what grabbed me first as my wife and I were driving back into Sedona from Oak Creek Canyon on Thanksgiving day.

Getting the Shot

“It always starts in the camera!”. There are many photographers that say that it—that illusive perfect photograph—is only about what you capture in the camera. I am not a purist along that line of thought. I believe that the camera is an important part of capturing what you see with your eyes. Today’s cameras have the ability to come very close to capturing what a human eye can see. But, I believe that what the eyes see and what the brain processes (the emotion of a scene) are far more that the mere technical ability of a camera sensor to process. Visualization and planning for the photographs are important. For instance, that beautiful sunset you captured yesterday will be replayed in your mind with much more intense colors as soon as it has faded from your view. I will start with one of my most popular photographs “Sedona Fall”.

Photo 1 - Original Out of Camera

This [photo 1] is what the original looks like right out of the camera.

Photo 2 - After Post Processing

And this [photo 2] is what I believe that my mind saw on beautiful Thanksgiving afternoon. Sedona Fall, the story: On Thanksgiving Day 2008 my wife Valerie and I had enjoyed a fantastic feast at the Los Abrigados Resort in Sedona.

The weather was overcast with periodic showers throughout the day. I had with me my new Canon Digital Rebel, my first digital camera with a whopping 6.3 megapixels. We decided to take a drive up Oak Creek Canyon in hopes of getting a few photographs. The weather was providing little assistance in lighting for any good photographs. We got a few shots of low hanging clouds around the Slide Rock area, but decided to head back to town.

As we crested over the last hill dropping into Sedona I saw the most amazing light on the oak trees lining Oak Creek. I quickly pulled off, across traffic, to a small turnout and started looking at the scene. As you can see in the Google Street view snapshots the pull off area was fairly small, but looked out over the city of Sedona with the Red Rocks in the background.

Google Earth snapshot of location

Google Street View

I had never seen the leaves on the trees this late in the fall, but this year was extremely hot and remained so late into fall. A couple of times in my photographic life I had seen light shimmering off the leaves and reflecting the sun that had peeked through a hole in the clouds. I knew this light was fleeting and it was necessary to shoot quickly before the light dissipated. We both jumped out of the car and I grabbed my tripod in case I needed to take a longer exposure.

I took 18 frames at various shutter speeds and apertures. And then, just as quick as the light lit the trees like they were on fire, the light dropped behind the clouds and turned the scene into a monochromatic mush. I have gone back to that location on Thanksgiving ever since and have never seen the combination of leaves still on the trees, the unique coloring of the post-fall colors and the spectacular light that made the leaves shimmer and glow. After this series of images I continued to shoot around the Bell Rock area getting more quality photographs. These examples show how God can show off his most beautiful creation after a thunderstorm and rain. This is one of those photographs that a photographer gets once in a lifetime.

Camera Information: 1/640 sec, f/5.0, ISO 100 at 43 mm on a Canon EOS 18-55mm kit lens on a Digital Rebel (300D) 6.3 megapixel.

The "Story Behind the Photo" series will tell the story of how I captured and processed several of my most popular photographs. These individual segments will be compiled into several instructional seminars that are schedule to be performed in Arizona starting in September of 2014. Watch this blog for further information on both the stories and the seminars.

Quotes about Photography

“To photograph is to hold one's breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It's at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers

“I take pictures because I enjoy capturing the enduring beauty of God’s creation. I've taken thousands of photographs over the years and many of my photos occurred because of something I call the “Moment of Light.” That mystical moment in time, while standing in the beauty of nature, when the framing, the lighting, the peak action, and the colors all come together...and at that instant I press the shutter to capture the image for all of time.”

― Randy Jackson

Arizona Butterflies

2014-06-23T15:30:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity to visit Butterfly Wonderland recently to see their 10,000 square foot conservatory with hundreds of butterflies flitting about a humid rain forest-like vista of wonderment. Butterfly Wonderland is within the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, where reverence for the natural world is so integral to their culture.

Exiting off the 101 Freeway at Via De Ventura and heading east, the first thing you see is this lone set of buildings housing the Butterfly Wonderland exhibition.

The conservatory houses the live butterfly exhibit and volunteers guide you inside through air lock doors that prevent the butterflies from escaping.

The butterflies are amazing with every color in the rainbow gracing their bodies. Strolling through with small steps to avoid stepping on anything alive you can view multi-colored tropical plants for the critters to feed on.

I captured most of these shots with 70-200mm lens to allow me to get up close to frame the beauty. I was struck by the humidity in the room and it sapped my strength after only a couple of hours.

The room is quite large with misting throughout and small ponds and streams through the lush foliage. I could stand in one place and turn 360° around to get 30-40 shots from any one position.

The photos below show some of the shots I made at the Wonderland:

I think that any kind of camera can get shots like this including an iPhone camera. You just need to get close enough to frame the whole butterfly in the picture.

Below are a couple of books about Butterflies on Amazon:

Lightroom Mobile - The Best Thing Since ...

2014-04-18T16:17:00.002-07:00

Adobe has released the long awaited Lightroom Mobile for iPad. As a professional photographer I utilize Lightroom as my primary tool for post processing of images. I also utilize my IPad Mini for many tasks both in photography and in my life and leisure. I try to use my IPad to show my portfolio to friends and customers but have struggled with a good workflow to bring images into the IPad and to have an elegant platform to show my photography.

Lightroom Mobile is a very good version 1.0 effort to bridge the gap between my desktop PC and my IPad. Installing and utilizing Lightroom Mobile is not quite as simple as downloading an app from the App Store or ITunes. First, you must have the newest version of Lightroom (version 5.4), Second, you must have an Adobe ID and be a subscriber to Adobe Creative Cloud.

The app is free and is an enhanced benefit to Creative Cloud (CC) members. I am a subscriber to the Photoshop Photography Program of Creative Cloud (Until May 31, 2014 it is $ 9.99 month at: (https://creative.adobe.com/plans/offer/photoshop+lightroom?promoid=KKVFF).
This is a great deal for any photographer to be able to have the absolutely newest versions of Photoshop and Lightroom. When you compare the yearly cost of a subscription with the cost of software upgrades every other year (the previous process), it works out to be more cost effective in the long run.

Overall, the look and feel of Lightroom Mobile is very simple and it syncs up very well with the desktop version of Lightroom. In fact, the synchronization is very fast and almost hidden in the background as you work with the applications. The overriding concept is that you set up collections in your desktop PC and then you instruct Lightroom Mobile to slurp up all the pictures in any of the collections you have triggered to move to Mobile.

In order to setup the linking of Lightroom and Mobile you have to turn on synchronization in the Identity Plate (in the upper right corner of your desktop Lightroom).

Matt Kloskowski has created a great "getting started" tutorial on Lightroom Mobile. Check it out by clicking on this URL: Getting Started on Lightroom Mobile

I have mixed feelings about Lightroom Mobile: first of all it works quite well for me, but because it requires a subscription to Creative Cloud it might not be useful to everyone. Since I already have a Creative Cloud membership and I focus on Lightroom 5 as my post processing application of choice and it does provide a really slick way to synchronize my Lightroom favorites with my IPad it is a great choice for workflow.

Spring brings Softball

2014-04-07T19:18:00.002-07:00

As many of you know from over the years I photograph high school softball. This is one of the sporting venues that I really appreciate. To be able to see these very talented and athletic young women out on the field of play doing a really great job for their teams. I started out with softball photographing some of the teams that had daughters of friends from work and church. Now, I just do it because it is a joy to see these women come of age in an athletic endeavor and some go on to get college scholarships to universities and colleges across the nation.

In this photo from last week Willow Canyon's Lexi Rogers slides into third base with Centennial's Tayler Paradiso defending. Looking at the form of both athletes shows that they are well coached and dedicated to their sport.

The batter in this shot is Centennial's Paige Mills, a player I have been photographing since she was a freshman. She is a pitcher and first baseman for the Coyotes and has signed a letter of intent to attend Utah State University, a Division 1 school in Logan, Utah.

Centennial's new pitcher if junior Katelyn Foster.

Willow Canyon's talented Sabrina Jimenez is another player I have been photographing over the years. Sabrina is a senior and team captain.

The power hitter below is Centennial's Avianna Davis.

In this photo, Willow Canyon's Lexi Rogers defends second base against Centennials Avianna Davis.

Spring Training 2014 - Opening Day

2014-03-01T09:35:00.002-08:00

As many of my readers know I photograph many of the Cactus League Spring Training games at Surprise Stadium. The opening day this year was February 27th and I was there. Cactus League games provide baseball fans with a unique intimate view of the teams at the start of each season. With fairly small stadiums and with site lines that are close to the field a fan has the chance to get up close to the "boys of summer". You can see in the picture below how close the fans are to the field.

I photograph Spring Training both as a sports photographer and a community cheerleader. I love the pre-game festivities with the introductions of local people that help with the games and to showcase some amazing National Anthem talent. Sharett Miller is shown singing the National Anthem on opening day to the left.
Not to mention the amazing athletes, both young and old, that I get to capture on field. I have just started this season of shooting and will soon have some exhibitions of my photographs at Gifts To Go in the Barnaby Street Shoppes on Bell Road.

This is an exciting year for both the Texas Rangers and Kansas City Royals in Spring Training. The Rangers are perennial pennant winners and the Royals have some young talent that provided needed leadership last year.

Yu Darvish

My first game shot shows the Ranger's starting pitcher, Yu Darvish winding up for his throw to the plate.

The game photographs in this post were shot from behind home plate (back of the screen). This is a unique place to shoot baseball. By focusing on the player in the field the mesh of the screen is rendered out of focus making it appear that I am shooting through glass or right behind the catcher. Not that I want to take a picture of a 90 mile per hour fast ball heading right for my camera.

Bruce Chen

The second game picture shows the Royal's Bruce Chen throwing.

And in my last shot of the post I show the Royal's All Star (2012), Billy Butler getting his first hit of the season off of Darvish. The fast shutter speed (1,000/sec at f/6.3) freezes the ball in mid air.

Billy Butler

Safe at 2nd base

As the Spring Training season progresses I will highlight more of my baseball visions from different shooting angles.

Epson r3000 printer maintenance

2014-02-02T07:33:00.002-08:00

For those of you that have been reading my blog for years you know that I have an Epson Stylus Photo R3000 inkjet printer and I just love it. The prints that I have made with this pro style printer are absolutely stunning. While its main limitation is associated with its 13" width, the print quality is identical to the larger format Epson line of printers that use the K3 style of inks with Vivid Magenta.

I purchased my printer in September of 2011 and have enjoyed years of trouble-free, although pricey, printing. Then a couple of weeks ago the printer started leaving streaks of ink on the printed pages (showing up initially when printing DVD covers). I started to research the problem and was startled to find out that the ink streaks are a planned obsolescence feature of this line and other lower end printers of the Epson ink jet printers. By this I mean that the engineers of Epson have built in a problem that is acting like a ticking time bomb inside the printers. As you normally print over the years the printer uses more ink that goes on the paper to clean the heads of the printer. This "waste ink" is deposited on a series of thin foam pads secreted below the print heads and eventually these pad fill up with ink sludge and cause the problem that I am describing. The feature (problem?) is described by Epson at the following link: Epson Waste Ink Pads.

What I did not experience is the anticipated "lock up" of the printer when those ink pads are deemed to be full. The brilliant designers calculate when your prints would be unusable and freeze your printer only to be released by sending it in to an authorized maintenance center for a costly clean up and replacement of the used ink pads. And "no" to your question if you can purchase the ink pads for your own DIY maintenance.

There are lots of blog posts and YouTube videos showing some solutions to my new problem and I decided to perform some of that DIY maintenance on my own knowing that I might damage my printer and then have to send it in to an authorized center anyway. The first thing that I did was to start trying to get rid of the ink that was causing my immediate problem. My research on Google was frustrating in trying to find exactly where those "illusive" ink pads were in my printer and whether I had access to them to try to clean up the ink. I stumbled on this information when I opened the cover to the printer and noticed the line of small, thin foam pads directly below the print head.

As I opened the top cover of the printer I looked at the bottom of the channel that the print head slides as it is printing. The grey foam strip with the holes (highlighted in red on the image to the left) is part of the ink pad that was soaked with ink when I first saw it. I donned rubber gloves and commandeered Q-Tips, toothpicks and a couple of pliers and gently starting pulling up the foam. The larger square on the left side was a separate piece and I placed it in a solution of Windex (the original version but I went cheap and got a store brand with ammonia and isopropyl alcohol. This solution immediately dissolved the ink and I then rinsed it in distilled water and let it dry. It was messy and smelly so use in a ventilated area! This picture was taken after I cleaned the foam and after I did ONE head cleaning. I was amazed at how much ink was used in a head cleaning and wondered why the foam had not filled up sooner. It already had a glob of ink where the printer head dumped ink on to the foam on the left side.

Next, I gently pulled up the remaining strip. This strip had little fingers of foam sticking down into holes in the carriage and I was real lucky that it did not come apart. I then soaked that strip in my solution and rinsed with distilled water and let dry. At some point I had to move the print head out of the way and I had to turn on the power to the unit and just when the print head started to initialize at startup I pulled the power plug off the back of the unit. That made the print head free to slide along the carriage out of way of my foam harvesting. I used Q-Tips to clean the carriage under the foam and used toothpicks to smash those little foam fingers into the holes to secure the foam strip to the carriage.

There was one more area that I had to clean and that was on the right side of carriage under where the print head normally rests.

Once I moved the print head to the left side it uncovered this rectangular unit that was perched on top of a spring loaded platform. I placed a couple of drops of my Windex solution and let it soak in and then placed small squares of Bounty paper towels (my research recommended a very good quality paper towel so that no small paper fibers would be left) to soak up in and used Q-Tips to absorb the rest. Be careful not to get the spring loaded platform out of square or nothing will work later.

Now, my next major problem was to fix the waste ink problem from continuing to fill up the foam pads. I found this product (for about $23 with shipping) on Ebay as the only American made unit. See it at: Waste Ink Tank on Ebay.

There are less expensive units, but it looks like they ship from from the UK.
This is an external tank that you attach to some existing tubes inside the Epson R3000 printer. You have to take off 4 screws on the back and there are good instructions that were sent with the unit and there are YouTube videos showing how to install the tank.

Once you have the back and side cover off you will see two tubes running along the side. You will need to pull them out of the grey connector and place the new Y-connector in those tubes.

I did have to drill a small hole in the back of the unit in order to have the newly installed tubing exit the inside of the printer and be placed into the plastic tube. I placed my exit hole on the back right above where the screw attaches, but some people exit the tubes out the side. I don't think it matters except you have to make sure that the ink container is below the printer as to prevent a back flow.

The syringe is for removing ink from the container and they suggested reusing the ink, but I don't think I will be doing that I will just toss it away.

The package I bought also included a link for some software that will be used to reset that counter that I expect will crop up soon stopping my printer from running. I have not used it yet so I can't describe how to use it.

I can't believe that Epson would design a high end printer with a built-in mechanism for obsolescence. Thanks to hundreds of people around the world that posted instructions and videos on how to solve this problem or I would have been required to send mine in for a $150-$300 service charge or to buy a new printer.

Disclaimer: The maintenance that I did as detailed above might have invalidated my warranty, if I had one and there is an extreme risk that damage could be done to the printer that might require costly repairs. You are advised to be careful when considering any of this kind of maintenance and to weigh the risks associated with such actions. Also, be very careful when working with any of the parts or tubes to prevent any spillage of ink. In other words, don't blame me if something goes wrong, I am warning you right here and right now.

The ads below are for products I have purchased directly from their manufacturers. You can sometimes get deals or better prices directly from Epson Store.

Introducing Stylized Custom Portraits

2014-01-05T07:24:00.001-08:00

Introducing Stylized Custom Portraits. I am now offering a new photography product that features a loved ones image surrounded by layers of unique and personalized objects of life.

In the example on the right the daughter of friends in Santa Barbara had recently graduated from Pepperdine University and had a lifelong interest in music. By surrounding the subject with those symbols of her life and other graphic elements an art product was created that could be produced on canvas or printed on photographic paper and framed for parents or grandparents.

Another example below shows another daughter transported into a setting reminiscent of a European village.

The whimsical butterflies in the background add to the popular grunge effect making another product suitable for gifting to parents, siblings or other relatives.

The artistic renderings can be created from custom photo shoots or can be created from a favorite photo or snapshot supplied by the client. The pricing of the product will depend on the source of the main subject and on the medium it is printed for publication.

For instance, I can create the main photograph during a studio photo shoot or a location environmental portrait or a candid shot taken at an event. I can also utilize a high quality photograph supplied by the client or parent. I can also scan snapshots into the computer in order to create a high quality jpeg.

I then take the core photograph and add other photos or graphical elements into layers in Photoshop^®and Corel Painter^® in order to blend those layers into a final product. See the following post to learn about the technique I use to create these images.

Contact me at randyjacksonimages@cox.net to receive a quote for your Stylized Custom Portrait.