Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre: "Ballroom, Fort Wayne Hotel" from their series "The Ruins of Detroit"

How is it that only just now did I find Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre’s “The Ruins of Detroit?”  I know I am not even close to the first person to link to their Web site in awe.  Nevertheless, I feel it’s important to direct people reading this to their gallery.  It’s a collection of images of “people without people,” and reminds me of Stephen Wilkes’ Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom, which has been a great inspiration to my own landscape and architectural photography (landscapes of buildings, really).

Of course, the subject matter between my own work and that of Marchand and Meffre or Wilkes is entirely different.  It is their style that is particularly wonderful because there is a great deal of self-expression in the image, but the style invites the viewer into the image.  The photographs are not difficult to read.  Quite to the contrary: the haunting–and hauntingly beautiful–photographs of Marchand and Meffre communicate clearly the dire conditions of Detroit.

And that the images are well-composed documents of light and shadow doesn’t hurt matters.  While some may argue that ugly subjects must be made to look ugly for them to affect social change, I believe that people are too-often beat over the head with message-laden ugly images, and become desensitized to them.  What Marchand and Meffre offer is a fresh perspective that invites viewers to see the beauty of the decay before realizing the ugly social ramifications of spaces like these in urban America–scenes like these belong on movie sets, not on our streets–and what it means for the thousands of people who aren’t pictured.

Tags: architecture, Detroit, ruins
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Christmas Meadows, Mirror Lake Scenic Byway, Utah (Aug. 2009) | Canon 5D Mark II and Canon 16-35mm f/2.8L II lens @ 35mm; three exposures combined for HDR.

I’ve been going through my photographs from Utah, and found a few images I intended to blend together to form high dynamic range photographs.  The above is one such image, made on a tripod at 100 ISO and f/16, with my shutter speed going from 1/2 second in the first exposure to 1/4 second, and finally 1/8 second in the third and final image.

I blended them together in Photomatix last night, and then applied curves and selective color, as well as a healthy dose of “local contrast enhancement” (Unsharp Mask @ 15%, Radius 60).

Fittingly, it was made at a place along the Mirror Lake Scenic Byway in Utah named “Christmas Meadows!”

Update: Here’s one more from the same evening and location.  Oh, and I’ve got a panorama or two (finally) coming together to post here as well.

Christmas Meadows, Mirror Lake Scenic Byway, Utah (Aug. 2009)

Tags: High Dynamic Range, landscapes, nature, Utah
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First of all, I’d just like to wish all of my readers happy holidays.  Up here in Wisconsin, where I am with my family for Christmas, the weather has brought us some snow but will be back with rain tonight.  Looks like our white Christmas will be washed away soon!

José Luis Rodríguez's The Storybook Wolf

My dad just sent me a link to an article I thought I should post on here concerning the winner of what used to be called the BBC Wildlife’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year (WPY) competition for 2009, José Luis Rodríguez and his photograph “The Storybook Wolf.

The WPY is possibly the “best,” certainly one of the very biggest nature photography competitions that is held annually.  I was thrilled when one of my images from Bosque del Apache NWR became a finalist two years ago, as 32,000 entries had been submitted!

This year, the top award went to an image that, while visually interesting, always struck me as odd.  Rodríguez never said that  “The Storybook Wolf” was not baited–indeed, the story behind the image on the WPY Web site explains the process that he said he went through to acclimate wolves to fresh meat left for them in a corral, and gradually setting up a remote flash and camera.

However, at issue now is whether the story itself is factual–was this a wild wolf, as Rodríguez stated, or a captive animal,and was it really photographed on a rancher’s private land, or at the Cañada Real Center zoological park near Madrid?

These are the questions that the contest itself is now asking, according to Suomen Luonto (Nature of Finland) magazine.  The full article is available here: http://www.suomenluonto.fi/bbcs-nature-photo-competition-judge-admits-winner-photo-investigated-due-to-fraud-allegations.

Nature photography contests like WPY insist that images not be made of captive animals.  The staged situation in this image has bothered me, but was not in violation of the contest.  While manipulation of the image in post bothers some people, I think that manipulation of the scene and subject is a far greater offense.

Tags: contests, ethics, nature
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Moonrise over the High Uintas Mountains, Utah, Aug. 2009 | Canon 1D Mark IIn and 400mm f/4 DO IS lens with 2x TC; exposed 1/125 sec. @ f/11, ISO 400

I’ve been going through more photographs from the past four months (since the fall semester of graduate school began) that I simply didn’t have time to process–I could make them, download them, and move on to more urgent projects.  While in Utah this past August, car-camping with my girlfriend and her parents in the High Uintas Wilderness Area, I began to experiment with night photography.  I went with the closest subjects I had to work with: the trees surrounding our campgrounds, the clear skies, and the bright moonlight.

I especially wanted to create nighttime images–whether they ultimately “looked” like they were photographed at night or not–with static stars.  The stars begin to “curve” after 30 seconds of exposure as the Earth rotates your tripod for you.  This means that the long exposures need to be less than 30 seconds, which means that high ISO becomes critical.

Moonlight through the trees. Canon 5D Mark II and 16-35mm f/2.8L II lens @ 16mm; exposed 117 seconds @ f/11, ISO 800

This is a good example of why you want the shutter speed to be faster, but not necessarily open up your aperture to give the sensor light.  In this case, I wanted a “starburst” effect from the sun moon between the trees, and I wanted a nice, blue sky behind my silhouettes.  Unfortunately, I had not yet begun to experiment with ISO above 800 for this type of image, and the stars are streaking and  “muddy” as a result.  However, it was a good learning experience, and got me thinking about another attempt the next night at something a little crazier.

Night turns to day. Canon 5D Mark II and 16-35mm f/2.8L II lens @ 16mm; exposed 30 seconds @ f/5.6, ISO 6400

As it turns out, the trick to making moonlight turn to “daylight” is a fairly obvious one: set the white balance to daylight (5500 K).  After all, the moon is simply taking the sun’s light and reflecting it back at us.  The time exposure takes care of the sky, and the moon was at my back, illuminating the trees.

One of the best tricks I learned is to use the camera’s Live View function and a good light, in this case my Inova X5 flashlight, to manually focus on one of the trees.  I would then make an exposure and check for critical sharpness on the back of the camera.  The flashlight trick really, really helps, but it wouldn’t work without Live View and the ability to zoom in to 100% (the actual pixel level).  The viewfinder was just too damn dark.

Tags: moonlight, night photography, painting with light, time exposure
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I’m at home in Racine, Wis., and have begun the process of filling in the missing keywords, re-ranking, and re-organizing my photographs from fall 2009 in my Lightroom database.  I keep finding images that only got one star that should have been two, four star images that should have been three, and so on.  When I got to my photos from MU’s homecoming parade, the eyes in this image lunged out at me.  I had to work up the image (tone and crop, mostly) and post it up here.  I’m sure I’ll uncover a few more “lost images,” and will be sure to post them here.

Kaitlyn Peacock, 13, from Chamois, Mo, prepares to march with the Chamois High School band in the University of Missouri's homecoming parade through downtown Columbia, Mo. on Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009. | Canon 5D Mark II and 85mm f/1.2L II lens; exposed 1/4000 sec. @ f/1.8, ISO 100

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It took some time to think things over, and to go over my portfolio with my classmates on Thursday afternoon, but I’m finally happy with this update to my portfolio of “single” photojournalism images–a much needed refresh.

Tags: portfolio
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