Photo Musings

Merry Christmas to All!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 24 Dec 2018 16:06:00 +0000

The holidays have slowed down my posting, I'll be back in a week or two.

Centennial Village

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 12 Dec 2018 17:30:00 +0000

Two weeks after our visit to Georgetown, we headed to Greeley, Colorado to visit Centennial Village. Centennial Village features over three dozen historic buildings, spanning the years from pre-settlement to the mid-1900's. There are also costumed interpreters to tell you what life was like during the different periods. I decided to take all of the photos in black & white to keep with the historic feeling.

More to come next week.

The Hotel de Paris

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 23:25:00 +0000

Last week I briefly mentioned the Hotel de Paris Museum in Georgetown, Colorado. This week is all about it.

The hotel was opened in 1875 by Louis Dupuy, a Frenchman with a rather colorful past. From the website: "The Hotel de Paris had indoor plumbing with a washbasin in each room, as well as electric lighting, which replaced gas lamps in 1893. Dinners were served in the dining room on Haviland china from Limoges, France, with elegant linens and imported glassware. The menu included steaks from cattle raised on Louis' ranch in North Park (a short distance from Kremmling), delicacies such as oysters, and anchovies in olive oil imported from France."

One amazing thing about the Hotel de Paris is that, because of the limited number of owners before it became a museum, about 95% of the furnishings and contents are original.

The dining room is beautiful, though the kitchen may be my favorite room.

Visitors are allowed to tour just about every room.

A table in one of the larger guest rooms.

Books in Louis' study.

That's it for this week. There will definitely more of Georgetown, and the hotel, in the weeks to come. Next week, however, we travel to Greeley, Colorado.

Another Week, Another Month

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 26 Nov 2018 21:25:00 +0000

So, in my last two posts I covered June and July of 2017, and showed some photos as I began my move from Nikon to Fujifilm cameras. This post will feature some of the photos taken in August, but there are so many, it may end up being two or three posts by the time I'm through.

Starting off with the First Friday Gallery Walk in downown Fort Collins.

Then we made another visit to Georgetown.

We made our first visit to the Hotel de Paris Museum, and I took so many photos that I'll have to show them in the next post.

When you work in a place that sells military surplus, you're bound to see some odd things.

August 21, 2018 was the "Great American Eclipse." Fort Collins was not in the path of totality, we experienced about 95%, I could have driven a couple of hours north to be in the path of totality, but from what I heard from people who did about the ridiculous traffic and how long it took them to get back, I'm kind of glad I didn't. I also don't have a really strong telephoto lens to get a high magnification photo, so I decided to shoot a very wide-angle lens instead and make a composite of different phases of the eclipse, from just before it started through peak.

So, next week I'll be back with photos from the Hotel de Paris Museum in Georgetown, and then the week after that will be photos of Centennial Village in Greeley.

Back Again

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 19 Nov 2018 21:22:00 +0000

So, in my continuing effort to play catch-up with this blog, I'm going to endeavor to post once a week with photos from my switch from Nikon cameras to Fujifilm. The plan right now is to go month by month, with the occasional post for something special. We'll see how it goes.

In the last post I showed photos from June of 2017, my first month shooting Fujifilm. Today we move on to July, starting out with Fourth of July fireworks. One really nice feature of many new cameras is built-in WiFi, so the camera can be remotely controlled through an app on my phone or iPad.

The following weekend I took Jill up to the little mountain town of Georgetown, Colorado, and after that first visit, she was ready to move. Georgetown is an old silver mining town, with lots of buildings dating from the 1870s and '80s, many cool little shops, and very friendly people.

This place just screamed "mountain town" to me.

That month we took our youngest on her first college tour at Colorado State University here in Fort Collins.

There's a really funky used book and record shop in town called the Bizarre Bazaar. Jill found a couple of hardcovers from the Outlander series, so it was a successful outing.

Wrapping up this post with a photo from Old Town Square. Fort Collins has a public arts program called Pianos About Town, where local artists paint pianos spread throughout downtown.

OK, that's it for now. Next week, August!

It's Been Far, Far Too Long

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 11 Nov 2018 20:06:00 +0000

I don't really know what happened, I was pretty good at blogging regularly, then I went more than a year between posts, and then I went almost two years. A lot has happened in that time, not all of it worth talking about, just life. From the photographic standpoint the big news is that after more than 20 years as a Nikon shooter, I have switched to a Fujifilm mirrorless camera, the X-Pro2. I still have some Nikon gear to sell, if anyone's interested.

I'll talk more about the switch in future posts (I swear there will be more posts soon), but for now I'm going to share a few photos from my first few weeks with Fujifilm, from June 2017.

This is the first photo I took with my X-Pro2. I was sitting on the couch playing with the camera and Cinder settled in on the arm next to me, so, of course, I took her photo. The result blew me away, it was shot at f/3.5 @ 1/20th of a second at ISO 3200 and it is so clean and sharp I find it hard to believe.

These next photos were taken as I wandered Old Town Fort Collins, getting comfortable to a new and different camera. I'd been using my previous camera, a Nikon D300, for over 10 years.

This photo was taken using what quickly became my favorite color setting on the X-Pro2, Classic Chrome. Fujifilm calls their color settings Film Simulations, and bases them on various Fuji films like Provia, Velvia, Astia, etc. Classic Chrome isn't based on a Fuji film, it is believed that it is meant to emulate Kodachrome, but Fujifilm couldn't really call it that.

And a few more Classic Chrome images from one of the farmers markets in town.

And that wraps up June 2017, and my first two weeks as a Fujifilm shooter. Next time, July!

I'm Still Here

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 23:02:00 +0000

So, as you may have noticed (or not), I haven't posted anything in a while. Actually I missed an entire year.

This, of course, was not my intent.

Life happens, time passes and sometimes things get away from you. I never intended to be so quiet for so long and hopefully I won't be as absent in the days to come. More details about what I've been doing, and what I haven't been, in future posts.

For now, just know that I'm still around.

Ruth

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 19:51:00 +0000

I got together with my friend Ruth on October 13 for a great portrait session as part of my series of portraits of local artists. She may argue that she's not an artist, but she is a very creative person with eclectic tastes and she's learning to play the sitar, and that's just cool.

I had two ideas going into the session, first to photograph her on her front porch and then playing the sitar on her recently renovated patio.

Ruth's house faces south and I was originally planning on using the setting sun behind her on the porch, but the better background was looking east so I had to make some changes. I really liked the hops growing on the trestle on the side of the porch, and there were some large trees in the background blocking out the neighboring houses. I set a flash on a tall light stand in the front yard to backlight the leaves and give the illusion of early morning, or late afternoon, sun. I set a large softbox up high, about six feet in front of Ruth as the main light and my friend and assistant Jill helped block the sunlight coming in from the west.

One thing I'm doing with my artists' portraits is trying out new techniques with the photography. With my portrait of Maggie I used multiple exposures and a single flash to create more interesting light than I could have done with a typical lighting setup. With Ruth, I decided to try a "stitched portrait," taking several overlapping photos using a lens with a narrower angle of view than would normally be used in the setting and then "stitching" them together in Photoshop, much like what is done to make panorama landscape images. There are two benefits to this technique: you end up with a much larger, higher resolution image and, more importantly for me, the shallower depth of field of a longer lens, with the wider angle of view of a shorter one.

Here is a photo taken with a 24mm lens at its largest aperture of f/2.8

And here is the stitched photo taken with a 50mm lens at it's largest aperture of f/1.8

The stitched image is not quite as wide as the one taken with the 24mm lens, mainly because the flash didn't fire on the exposure for the middle right side of the set. Here's the stitched image before cropping, it's easy to see what's missing. Also, the next time I try this, I'm going to be sure to use a tripod so I can make things a little more even on the top and bottom.

After we were done on the porch, we moved to the patio for something a bit different.

This is probably my favorite of the photos with the sitar. All of the photos on the patio use a fairly simple lighting set-up, a large softbox on camera left, a second flash up high on a light stand behind her (also on camera left) to act as a rim light, and a third flash for the background located on camera right.

And with that, here's one last photo.

I had a senior portrait session yesterday, so look for a couple showing up here soon.

Pinhole

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 19:07:00 +0000

On Sunday, October 5, 2014, I took part in a pinhole photography workshop as part of The Center for Fine Art Photography's 10th anniversary celebrations. The workshop started with everyone making a pinhole camera and then we went out and made paper negatives. Later that day I scanned the negatives and inverted them in Photoshop to make the final images.

My new camera. Start with a one-quart paint can and drill a hole in the side, about two inches from the bottom. Cut a one-inch square out of a soda can and poke a small hole with a pin in the center, spinning the needle to make the hole smooth and round, and finish with fine sandpaper to eliminate and rough edges. Tape the metal square to the inside of the can, be sure to center the pinhole in the larger hole in the can before securing with electrical tape. Use another piece of electrical tape to cover the hole on the outside of the can, this is your shutter.

We used Ilford B&W printing paper to make the negatives. Since it wasn't really designed for this type of application the paper is not nearly as sensitive to light as film, exposure times can be quite long. We estimated the sensitivity of the paper at about ISO 4 and calculated the pinhole was about f/128. My exposure times for the five photographs I took ranged from 16 seconds to almost five minutes.

Below are my five photographs, first the negative and then the positive image that has also been flipped to correct for the inverted negative.

I've never done pinhole photography before, but I will do it again and I know my little paint can won't sit around idle. I'm also thinking about trying paper negatives in my 4x5 camera that has been gathering dust for far too long.

I'll have another post coming next week with images from a portrait session with my friend Ruth.

Stay tuned.

Maggie

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 16:00:00 +0000

Maggie in her living room, with a few of the pieces she was working on.

Several years ago I got the idea of doing a portrait series of local artists, and this summer I have finally started work on it.
My first subject was Maggie Kunze.

I've known Maggie for many years but didn't really know what type of art she made. She calls it "Farkle," a contraction of "fun" and "sparkle."
What she does is cover objects in broken pottery, ceramics and glass, as well as buttons, beads and other small objects.

These days Maggie does most of her work in her living room, but once upon a time, she got a bus.

Maggie and her bus in her back yard.

Maggie tells a great story about getting the bus from a couple of old hippies (who used to live in it west of town), driving it home down some steep and twisting roads with questionable brakes, and the painting party she held once it had arrived at its new home. Originally she had used it as her studio, but it got too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter and she eventually moved her work into the house.

Maggie in the Shrine.

Maggie also has a "Shrine." The shrine used to be a carport, but now houses a collection of found pieces, artwork and oddities.
Many pieces were gifts, the rest were collected or created by Maggie herself.

When I saw this space I knew I had to photograph it, and I knew I had to find a way to make it visually interesting and not just a jumble. I have heard about a technique which was called "single flash, multiple exposure" and decided to try it. What it entails is locking the camera down on a tripod and taking many photos, lighting different parts of the scene with each frame. When you're done, you put everything in Photoshop, blend all the layers together (this photo has more than 30 different layers for all of the lighting components alone) and keep making adjustments until you get the look you're going for.

Or until your eyes are so tired that you can't focus any more.

Here's the base exposure of Maggie. Everything looks flat and uninteresting.

The first thing I did was darken the overall scene and give a bit more contrast between Maggie and her surroundings.

Here's my assistant lighting something hanging from the ceiling.

And here's that element blended with the base layer.

Here's the base layer with the Hamburgler lit.

And here the red flowers and lamp on the right side of the table are added.

And, once again, the finished photo.

When I had finished working on the photo, I posted it on Facebook. It received more "Likes" than any photo I had ever posted, and brought a few new followers to my business page. What meant the most to me though was a comment from Maggie: "Thanks Patrick=feel you GOT me-and that ain't easy!" I couldn't ask for a better compliment.

This turned out to be an interesting experiment, I think I'll try this technique again.
I have some other things I want to try, I just need to find subjects for them.

Hopefully soon.

The Kidd Family

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 25 Aug 2014 15:00:00 +0000

I was approached a few months ago for family photos by a co-worker who had recently become a mom. I've done a few family sessions over the years, but have never photographed a one-month-old before. We met at their home one evening after work and spent some time with their little man.

Hayley

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 14:00:00 +0000

Wow, I haven't posted in seven months! I knew I've been bad, just not that bad.

But now I have some things to blog about.

Back in May of 2013, Jax Outdoor in Fort Collins hosted a portrait lighting seminar by Tom Bol. We were short-handed that day so I didn't get to help out much with the class, let alone take more than a few photos. I did take one photo that day that inspired me to arrange a portrait session with Haley, who was one of the Jax employees who volunteered to model for the workshop. We talked about a session a few times but never got around to doing it until a few days before she graduated from Colorado State University and left town, almost a full year after the original photo was taken.

The photo I took that day during the workshop was an outdoor portrait with a bright blue sky, but for some reason it inspired me to want to make a low-key black and white studio portrait. During the session I shot both color and black and white. I have much more control over the look of the black and white when converting color images, but shooting black and white at the same time give me quick confirmation that I'm going in the right direction.

The photo above looked in black and white almost exactly like I had envisioned upon seeing the color photo from the workshop a year before. What surprised me was that I ended up preferring the way it turned out in color.

We finished up the session by going in the opposite direction with a much brighter background and a bit lighter mood.

After graduation, Haley went home to Alaska for a few weeks and then took off with a one-way ticket to Europe. She's still there. Lucky girl.

Many thanks to Nicole at Contemporary Photography for letting me use her studio after hours.

There will be more posts soon, I have two more in the works.

Family Photos

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 06:00:00 +0000

PJ and Haley

Last week the work of Elena Shumilova, a Russian mother who makes magical photographs of her children, was all over the internet.

Foggy Day by Elena Shumilova

The photos reminded me of a blog I discovered last year called
You Are My Wild, a cooperative effort by 14 photographers documenting their children.

One of the photos from week 52 of You Are My Wild

I started thinking about my step kids, how fast they're growing, how much I've already missed and how much I want to make sure I'm there for them in the future. I also thought about how I want to make sure to photograph them while I can. So while I'm sure they'll be annoyed with me for frequently pointing a camera at them, I hope they'll be happy to have the photos when they're older.

Out walking with my family on a ridiculously warm January day

Everything Old Is New Again

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 02:26:00 +0000

Last week Nikon started shipping a new camera, the Df. What makes this camera so appealing has nothing to do with its specifications, there's nothing groundbreaking, or even particularly new, but I want one. The camera was definitely designed to evoke an emotional response, and in that it succeeded. When I unboxed the camera at work I felt something familiar and all I wanted to do was take the camera out and play. I think Thom Hogan said it best: "...the Df isn't a camera people need, it's a camera that people want."

I haven't been able to do much with the Df yet, there's only so much you can do in the store, but I did take a few photos with it. This photo of Sam, my department manager was taken with an 85mm f/1.8 lens, shot wide open at 1/160 at ISO 800 with the camera set to "Monochrome". There's just something about this camera that makes me want to shoot B&W.

I hope that sometime after the holidays I'll be able to borrow this camera from our Nikon rep and I can give it a real test.

I Can't Believe I've Been Gone For So Long

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 02:23:00 +0000

It's been over six months since I posted on this blog. I wonder if anyone will still read this. It's been a busy year so far, I got married, moved and am still planning a wedding and party in just over five weeks. Yes, we are already married but are still having a ceremony
and how can we not celebrate with our friends?

This past Sunday, while Jill was working, I got Haley and Cody out of the house for a few hours and we went to the Rist Canyon Mountain Festival. It was nice to get out of town, gain a little altitude, get some fresh air and take a few photos.

Rich With Friends were the day's musical headliners.

A demonstration by a Larimer Sheriff's K-9 team. Apparently the dog thinks of the man in the bite suit (yes, that's the official term)
as a "great big tennis ball to throw around."

There were a few classic cars on display. I'm not sure if I've ever seen a Hudson before.

I'll try to do better about keeping the blog up. Hopefully things will settle down this fall.

Haley

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 05:23:00 +0000

I developed the second roll out of the borrowed Bronica today and this is the frame I was most looking forward to seeing. It was shot with a 150mm lens, wide open at f/4 to give me a nice, shallow depth of field.

Film

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 16:53:00 +0000

Last year was not a particularly good year for me from a photographic standpoint. I took some photos but didn't really challenge myself and I didn't pursue and portrait business at all.

This year I'm hoping to change one, if not both, of those. I've started out the year by borrowing a medium format camera from a friend and shooting film. Yes, film! I've only gotten one roll developed but, so far, so good.

Trying Something New

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 04:16:00 +0000

I've been really bad about posting to this blog lately so I'm trying out the Blogger app on my iPad.

I'm not overly optimistic that ill get the look out of it that I normally do, but we'll see.

For now I'm just going to post a couple of random photos.

I'm in Denmark!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:21:00 +0000

Well, my photos are anyhow. The Danish soccer website Fodbold for Piger (Football for Girls) has used some of my photos in an article about Camilla Kur, one of this year's players for the Colorado Rapids Women.

Until next time.

A Little Jazz

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 18:00:00 +0000

Last week was A Fort Collins Jazz Experience, the fourth annual, and terribly named, jazz festival here in town. There were several days of events and concerts, ending with six concerts on two stages downtown Saturday night. This year they did things a little differently, there were fewer performances on Saturday and they started at 5:00 pm instead of the 11:00 am of previous years. This was both bad and good, bad because there was much less music to listen to but good because we weren't baking all day in temperatures that hit the upper 90s. As usual I combined my listening to the music with photographing the musicians. More photos to come.

Until next time.

An Apple A Day...

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 18:00:00 +0000

I arrived at work one day recently to find a crab apple sitting on the counter so I did what anyone would do, I photographed it.

Until next time.

Shooting Film

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 18:00:00 +0000

Last month I actually shot a roll of film! That's not really as great an accomplishment as it sounds since the film had been loaded in the camera for almost three years without one exposure being made.

My friend Jay lives out of state and left me his Mamiya C330 to play around with and to be the go-between in case either of us heard of someone looking to buy it. So far no buyers, let me know if you are interested.

I decided enough was enough and took the camera with me one night when I went out with Jill and the kids. I was a little rusty, manual focus, manual exposure, no light meter (there's an app for that) and not really sure what the ISO of the film was (I guessed right at ISO 400). So here they are, all 12 exposures off the roll, presented in the order in which they were taken.

This one was tricky. Since the camera has a viewfinder that you look down into the railing was blocking the view of the musicians faces, so I held the camera upside down over my head to get an unobstructed view.

I wanted to get a photo of my group walking in front of me with a good view of the Northern Hotel sign, so I asked everyone to walk ahead while I framed the shot. Just as they did a guy on a bike stopped directly in front of me. I went around him and took this frame, not exactly what I wanted, but that's life.

I'm almost caught up on my blog posts, now I have to come up with some ideas. Anyone got any?

Let's All Go To The Drive-In

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 18:00:00 +0000

Way back at the beginning of May, Jill and I went to the Holiday Twin Drive-In here in Fort Collins. Yes, you read that right, we still have a drive-in! I hadn't been to a drive-in since at least 1993 and this was Jill's first time. We're hoping to get back at least once more this year. The appeal of the drive-in is not the movie you're there to see (the picture and sound are far superior in a regular theater) it's the overall experience. You're outside under the stars (if the weather cooperates), and while you are most likely sitting in your car (many people bring folding lawn chairs and I even saw an inflatable queen-sized mattress) it seems to be a more communal experience that the neighborhood multiplex. Many people bring their own food (we had a pizza from Whole Foods) but the snack bar had a better than average selection and the popcorn and soda prices, at least, were less than the regular theater. Plus your ticket price is for two movies, so if you can stay awake that long (we left at 11:45 pm during intermission) it's an even better deal.

Until next time.

Wandering the Streets of New Haven

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 00:57:00 +0000

After eating at Louis' Lunch, Andrea and I wandered the streets of New Haven for a while. We walked the areas that we used to spend time in back in high school and college. Many things had changed but at least as many had stayed the same. First we walked through some areas of Yale University.

We went to Cutler's Records, a New Haven institution that I hadn't been to in more than 25 years. I was saddened to hear shortly after my return to Colorado that Cutler's was going to be closing its doors this summer after 64 years in business.

It was cloudy with a bit of drizzle as we were walking and it eventually turned into a downpour. We ducked into a coffee shop to get out of the rain and as we sat and drank our chai I started taking photos out the window of the passers-by with umbrellas. I particularly liked the anonymity of this photo, making this man something of an everyman.

Just another scene I found interesting, right across from where we parked.

Until next time.

The Cheese Truck

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 18:00:00 +0000

One of the places that Andrea and I considered for lunch during our day in New Haven was Caseus, a cheese shop and restaurant that I had seen on the Cooking Channel last year. This is a place that describes their mac & cheese on their menu like this:"Chevre, Raclette, Gruyere, Cheddar, Comte, more cheese, crumbs, more cheese, more cheese, baby artisan greens," they don't even mention the macaroni! From what I understand they have their base five cheese sauce and then they add in whatever scraps and trimmings the cheese shop had from the day before, so the mac & cheese will always be different. That I have to try.

Well, we decided on Louis' Lunch, as featured in my last post, but we couldn't avoid Caseus. First, when wandering through Atticus Bookstore Cafe (a longtime favorite) I found the Caseus Fromagerie Bistro Cookbook, which Andrea snatched out of my hands and bought for me. (Thank you again for that) Our second experience with Caseus was a few hours later when we were walking back to the car. We noticed a large truck with the Caseus logo on it. My first thought was that it was a delivery truck but then I saw TheCheeseTruck.com on the side and realized it was a food truck! Now I have developed a fascination with food trucks over the past couple of years and one that was selling cheese could not be passed up. Even though we weren't hungry at the time we decided to see what they had and bring something back to my mom's house.

The menu is pretty simple: tomato soup, a grilled cheese sandwich (made on artisan bread with a mix of at least five cheeses), a sausage sandwich, salad and dessert. There are several add-ons to the grilled cheese, ranging from tomato to pulled pork and even mac & cheese!

We were in the mood for something sweeter so we went with one of their dessert options. It was a tough choice between grilled Nutella and banana or grilled peanut butter, banana & bacon sandwiches.

We chose the grilled peanut butter, banana & bacon sandwich and man was it good!

It was so good in fact, I made one for Jill after I got back to Colorado. Mine was good, theirs was better. I guess I just have to keep trying.

Next week I'll have more photos of New Haven but no more food. At least as far as I know.