tom_schonhoff

<p>I was once told, very confidently, that "A" stands for Amateur and "P" for Professional. So there.</p>

<p>I have my own horror stories but none match that of the photographer who shot my brother's wedding. After the service he went through the usual routine; getting the bride alone, the bride's family with her, the groom's family, the whole group together... every combination in the catalog. Except one... He forgot to take a single shot of the bride and groom alone.</p>

<p>A snow monkey in Japan, February 2011.</p><div></div>

<p>Tom,<br>

Just before the tsunami I was in Japan shooting eagles in two places on Hokkaido. On the pack ice outside the harbor in Rausu you get white-tailed eagles and the massive Steller's sea eagles. Near the red-crowned crane sanctuary areas you get the same, mostly white-tails. In both places there are some feedings taking place that result in pretty spectacular interactions and close fly-bys. We struggled a bit with insane amounts of ice but even as things are I'd rush back to do it again.</p>

<p>Buddha's fire.</p><div></div>

Paris street shot.<div></div>

<p>Kyoto Japan, February 2011: chef rolling out the dough to make soba noodes at the Hoshinoya Hotel.</p><div></div>

<p>I've done three photographer-oriented safari trips with Andy Biggs and could not be more impressed. He limits groups to three passengers per Land Rover (one person per row) and ensures that the charter flights, where necessary, allow sufficient baggage for photographers to tote their gear. Our typical day would start before dawn and we'd be out there looking for animals well before the light was strong enough even ISO 6400. It's nice to be with people who fully understand why you might stay with a single animal sighting for only a moment or as long as a couple of hours - all depending on the light, the angle you're working or the potential activity of the animal(s) you're observing. I also find Andy to be incredibly friendly, as helpful as you want him to be (and this will vary by individual) and a real wealth of safari experience. <br>

<a href="http://andybiggs.com"><strong>AndyBiggs.com</strong></a></p>

<p>I'm heading to Greenland for a dogsled expedition in about a month. The normal temperature range is roughly from zero to five degrees fahrenheit (highs to fifteen). I've taken my D3's to the Antarctic Peninsula without too much trouble but have had them get balky below about 10 degrees F. Nikon's only answer to the temperature question is to note that their operating range has a low end at freezing.<br>

Has anybody done this kind of shooting and if so, do you find that simply keeping the battery warm is sufficient to beat the cold? I'm thinking about just keeping the batteries stuffed in an inner pocket and inserting it when it's time to go.</p>

 

You almost will not see Emperor Penguins on the typical route. There is a trip through Quark Expeditions (I took it this

past October) that takes an icebreaker through the broken pack ice to a place just east of the tip of the Peninsula called

Snow Hill Island, where a colony was discovered in 2005. That trip flies from the ship inland, anywhere from 5 to 30

miles across the ice, to reach the rookeries. Since the Emperors nest miles from open water you'll just not encounter

them - aside from spotting a lucky one or two coming or going near the water's edge - on most trips.

 

But don't be discouraged, because in many ways the King Penguins on South Georgia Island (which is included on many

itineraries, and hopefully yours) are slightly more photogenic and far more numerous in their colonies there. My only

advice would be to consider renting an 80-400mm lens (or a 200-400 or even a 500mm prime) if you can afford to do so.

Stopping 10 meters outside the fringe of any given penguin colony, you'll find that at 400mm or so you can isolate a

single bird far more easily than at 200mm.

 

Near Ushuaia you can and should spend time in Tierra Del Fuego National Park, which is close enough that you can

actually hire a taxi to take you there for a few hours. Find a way to spend the entire day there and park on the shores of

Lake Roca. Lots of beautiful birds there to photograph, including dusky and ashy-headed geese, black-faced ibis and

some ducks you won't see elsewhere. It's also pretty mountainous and pretty. Still, with that much time in Ushuaia I'd

consider heading into Patagonia for a day or two at least. I'm not sure you'll find quite enough to do otherwise, although

day trips via boat are commonly offered and I haven't taken any of those on my visits.

 

Max aperture concerns aren't really important for light gathering as the snow and daylight conditions will provide plenty of

illumination. However, shooting close to wide open helps to isolate your subject from the surrounding birds and can make

for much more dramatic shots.

 

Have fun. My guess is that you'll be blown away by Antarctica.

I've lost count of the "what lens" and "what settings" questions posted here, and certainly find myself asking

that kind of question pretty often when viewing a technically excellent photo. I've found that some of the

meta-data is preserved in the .jpg that is displayed but I have to copy it to my desktop and re-open it in Bridge

(or equivalent) to see.

 

Can photo.net recover and display this meta-data with images? It would really be a substantial boost to many of us.

Well, I've followed all this advice closely. Here's the rub: Epson and Innova (and others)

provide .icc profiles for papers not included in the generic list provided in the Epson

driver, not even the Leopard Beta driver I downloaded from Epson. While I can get all these

papers to appear in the profile selection drop-down on the initial printing dialog, the

dialog box supplied by the driver (the one that appears after you click "Print..." in the first

dialog box) does not include them.

 

It sure seems as though the driver should be able to accept additional .icc profiles,

especially those tuned for the paper products sold by the very same company. Given that

they're stored in a directory structure and are in a standard format it appears self-evident

that this should be easy.

 

[sigh]

I'm using Leopard, Photoshop CS3, and a new Epson 3800. I tried today to set up to use Innova Smooth

Cotton paper, and downloaded their .icc profile - very helpful website, that. Well, I can copy the .icc file

to /users/[me]/library/colorsync/profiles - and even figured out how to open the "package" and copy the

.icc file to /library/printers/EPSON/InkjetPrinter/ICCProfiles/pro38.profile/Contents/Resources.

 

OK, hmm. My initial print dialog, next to "printer profile", shows this new .icc file along with all the

canned profiles that came from Epson. I select this, click "print..." and the printer *driver* dialog

appears. I make my various settings but in the "Media Type" dropdown there is no mention of the new

.icc profile. It does show Velvet Fine Art under the "Fine Art Paper" section but all three options there are

greyed out (and none exactly matches the one I downloaded.)

 

So it looks like the printer driver can't see the new .icc profile even though I put it in the user list and

stuffed it into the "package" (AKA "Microsoft Word Bundle") for my printer. The ColorSync utility doesn't

have any option to import or add a new profile either.

 

HOW do I get this to work?

I just returned from vacation and noticed my NEC FP1375x (six years old) output was looking pale. I ran a

couple of Monaco Optics calibrations but started coming up with very, very dark screens. Flipping over to

my mac on the same display looked OK if pale again.

 

Power-cycling the monitor resulted in the red gun being noticeably off-target horizontally on both the PC

and mac output. I fear that the device is toast - am I right?

This is disturbing. I'm convinced now that after going to the top-rated photo page, getting stuck and moving on, other sites begin to exhibit the same problem for me. This happened 2 days ago and I reinstalled IE thinking I had a problem there, but now I'm back again. Is there any chance that the script driving this page is making some setting changes to IE?

I have had problems for 2-3 days now on the top-rated images page. Only the images already in my local cache seem to display, but the browser doesn't seem to be timing out - it acts "done" with the page. Clicking any images results in a non-downloaded image as well. Refresh gives me all broken images on the top-rated page. Other pages, other images seem to work just fine.

<p>

My machine is a windows XP machine running the latest patches and updates, IE 6.0 with 128 bit encryption etc. No other sites are causing this problem for me.

I don't think that the answer provided will work for a forum posting with an embedded image. I've looked and cannot find a way to edit that posting. Help?

I made a mistake in uploading a drastically oversized image to the

forums today, but cannot locate the way (if any) to remove it. I

hate to both clutter the server and annoy visitors with a massive

image and wish there were a feature to permit either editing or

removing a posting and/or its attachments.

Here's that penguin shot, properly sized. Wish I knew how to delete the first post but can't find instructions. Sigh.<div></div>

This has been a fascinating thread, all the more so because it gets us away from the recent spate of photo-manipulations and back to the basics of photography - making, finding and celebrating images framed by the world that surrounds us.

<p>

On to the topic at hand... We tend to think that the characteristic features that instantly identify our subjects to us are their faces; we're tuned and evolved to see things that way. We see so much more, but our own recognition is obscured from us by the glare of the all-important face. We tend not to see, or seek out, all that we're capable of seeing so long as the individual stares out from the photo, demanding that we look them in the eye.

<p>

As I've shared my Antarctic photos with friends and family, a couple keep coming back to please me uniquely - both pictures of penguins shot from behind. They reveal the innate "penguin-ness" of each subject in a whole new way, stripping away the unique power of their faces to convey individuality to reveal so much more. Seeing them this way, I'm desperate to return and photograph them in new ways - choosing my subjects more by posture, shape and behavior to reveal both the more complete individuality of the birds and the archetypes behind them.

I've got four months until my first (and likely only) child arrives,

and I'd like to take a few photos in the delivery room to capture

those first moments with Mom. I've never done much work indoors and

never with flash (which I'd like to avoid here) so I need some basic

guidance on film and possible use of bounce or fill flash for gentle

effects.

 

What color transparency film is a good choice for these lighting

conditions?