 For my first thirty years I was the writing guy: good at English in school and college, Masters in Literature, and a working journalist for The Irish Times and other publications in Ireland, the US and UK. And I’m the author of a a book of travel literature (that doesn’t have any photographs in it).
Even my entrance into the world of technology came because I could write – in this case, training materials teaching people how to use Microsoft products (God help me).
This might seem like a lot of wasted time, or at best lots of irrelevant experience.
But since I’ve been pursuing photography more seriously over the last four or five years, I’ve come to see that a lot of the things I learned writing have been very useful when I have a camera in my hand. (more…)
Christmas Eve might already seem a long way away as we head into mid-January, but I’ve just had a chance to look through some of the pictures I took around Canyon Road that cold night a few weeks ago.
It’s a Santa Fe Christmas Eve tradition to light farolitos – nothing more than a night light in a brown paper bag weighed down with sand – and the area around Canyon Road hosts thousands of them, and hundreds who bundle up to come out to see them.
There’s a beautiful simplicity to them, especially if there’s snow on the ground. So here’s a blast of good cheer for you.
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Before 2009 disappears entirely from memory, there’s just time for me to follow up my pick of my 2009 personal work with these favourites from my work for my fantastic clients.
I was lucky enough to meet some great children (and their parents) over the year, and we ended up with some lovely images.
Here’s to a great 2010 to all of you.
Happy Holidays, everyone.
With the end of the year fast approaching, I’ve put together a baker’s dozen of my favourite personal photos from the year. I’ll do a similar list of favourites from my client shoots in the next few days.
So here they are, from scraped knees to Our Lady, from rainbows to foggy Mazatlan. And I hope you all have a peaceful and warm holiday period.
Just a quick update on my whereabouts: back in Santa Fe after a Thanksgiving trip to San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Above (and below) are shots from the California Academy of Sciences – a great place to visit with kids of all sorts of ages.
We stopped in at the beach in Half Moon Bay, too (as you can see), but for some reason I didn’t get too many shots of San Francisco itself. Go figure.
If you’re taking pictures of boys, you have to move fast. The brothers I did a portrait shoot of recently in White Rock were no exception – aged nearly five and seven, they were chasing around like mad, clambering over boulders and not very interested in me at all.
Which is how I like it. We’d chosen the crags at White Rock as their family likes to climb, and giving the boys space to be themselves seemed a much better idea than cramming them into smart clothes and a studio.
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Sorting through the images from the Open House day at Tumbledown Gymnastics studio yesterday. Had a great day, and here are some sneak peeks.
  
Tomorrow starts a week of shoots at Tumbledown Gymnastics Studio, and in preparation for shooting in pretty dodgy light, I ordered a little something from nice folks at borrowlenses.com – the Canon 135mm f/2 L lens.
To check it out, I accompanied my long-suffering daughter on her exploration of the arroyo beside our house, and grabbed some images.
This is far from a full review, but I really like it. It’s pretty small (at least on a 5D) and unintimidating (although the hood is a chunky addition), which helps in certain situations.
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John Naughton retells a moving story on his blog concerning the death of Austro-British writer, wit, restauateur, politician and broadcaster Sir Clement Freud, told by his daughter Emma:
He had, she said, “a perfect death”. On the day in question, he’d been to the races (at Exeter), had won on the horses, had a good lunch with his “second best friend” (apparently he was punctilious about ranking his friendships), and was writing his column (about the Exeter meeting) for a racing newspaper when he dropped dead in mid-sentence. The next day, Emma and her Mum woke up his computer and found that the last words he’d written were “In God’s good time…”.
Like many an impatient Aperture user, I recently took the Lightroom 3 Beta for a spin. What follows is an informal review of my experience of Lightroom 3 Beta as a long-time Aperture user, and Apple Certified Pro in Aperture.
I mainly looked at the adjustment settings rather than the organizing or exporting options.
I hadn’t looked closely at Lightroom 2, so many of the things I liked about Adobe’s product were probably there in the earlier version too.
My overall view is that Lightroom includes some very valuable adjustment features that Aperture 2 gets nowhere near. The rumoured arrival of Aperture X (the rebranded Aperture 3) means I’m not making any snap decisions, but the revised Aperture needs at least to match Lightroom’s strengths to stay competitive.
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We were up at Embudo Station the weekend before last, savouring the good weather and autumnal scenery.
Being down by the river is also a pleasure in largely dry New Mexico, but being there when the leaves were golden was an added pleasure.
The place has recently changed hands, but the food in the restaurant was good, and the coffee shop a welcome addition since I was there last.
Definitely worth a stop if you’re on your way from Santa Fe to Taos.
 
Like many people, I’ve been using Chase Jarvis’ cool Best Camera app for processing and sharing photos taken on my iPhone.
One of the export options is to upload the image to the Best Camera site, where there’s a running stream of uploads in real time from everyone using the application. It’s very cool in itself, but there’s also the option to view and vote on the ones you like.
Out of this a Best Photos list is created, and I’m happy to say that the picture you see above (taken while walking our dog from the office one day) has been happily esconced in the Best list for the last few days, and has had well over 200 views.
You can see more of my iPhone shots in this set on my Flickr page.
Just back from a great trip to Tent Rocks – or more accurately Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument
Our four-year-old was with us, so we did the Cave Loop hike, staying down in the valley, rather than the tougher hike up to the top.
But it was beautiful nonetheless, and throw in a picnic back at the trailhead, and you have a very happy family.
I’m delighted to announce the launch of our latest website – it’s for Jeff Henig, an American travel photographer based in Japan, who specializes in shooting cultural and religious festivals across Asia. You can check it out at www.jeffhenig.com.
The challenge
When Jeff first contacted me, he had a blog in one location, a Flash-based portfolio online somewhere else, and a Photoshelter site for his stock archive. He was doing a good job keeping them all up to date, but each had a different look and feel, and navigating between them was confusing for visitors.
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