kuryan_thomas

I'm saddened to see the negative posts elsewhere in this forum about Ethan and Dry

Creek. I have no reason to

disbelieve those posts. I can only say that I've bought 5 profiles from him and they were

excellent, and he treated me very well. Once he called me and talked to me about a

possible problem in my Epson 2200 based on the target I'd sent him. That sort of thing. I

got the feeling he was a really nice guy and he cared about doing right by his customers.

That's why I'm sad to see that reputation destroyed.

 

I guess I'll try Chromix now. I hope that if Ethan is ill, he recovers soon - and I hope he can

restore his reputation too.

 

Thank you all for your responses.

Thank you. Yes, I checked the site - their order page is still up, but I've had no luck contacting them either by email or voicemail. I couldn't find a vacation or absence notice anywhere on the site. There is a line that says they are on "summer hours," which really makes me wonder how long it's been since they've updated their site.

 

I'll give them a few more days to return my contact attempts, because I really like doing business with them. If anyone has heard from them recently, please let me know. Thanks.

Has anyone had profiles made by Dry Creek Photo recently (past few weeks)? I always use

them for my profiles, but my recent attempts to contact them have gone unanswered for

some time. Usually they respond immediately.

 

I don't mind waiting for them if they're on vacation or something, but I'd like to confirm

they're still in the business before ordering new profiles.

 

Thanks very much.

The Nikkor 20 is a fantastic lens. You will not regret your purchase.

I remember seeing a program on The Learning Channel about, among other viral diseases, hantavirus. A woman was interviewed who contracted hantavirus after vacuuming the decomposed remains of a mouse. I got the impression that one does not require prolonged exposure to contract the disease.

 

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I also remember that the symptoms of the disease involve the lungs filling with fluid until the patient cannot absorb oxygen. Or, to put it bluntly, you drown. This seems to put it in a different league from Ebola, which is a hemorraghic fever. However, I'm not a virologist, so I don't know that for a fact.

I've always wanted to take a photograph of my hand and enter it in a nature photography contest, just to see what would happen.

At the risk of diverging away from the topic, I agree with Glen on Web photos. That's one of the reasons I never comment on photos in the IMAGES thread, although Dan Smith's Tarantula almost got me to change my mind.

 

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One of the problems I find with Web photos, which I view on 24-bit Matrox Graphics (Windows) or Sun Creator 3D (Solaris) systems, is that although the full range of colors is present in 24-bit systems, the full range of luminosities rarely is. The contrast does not match even a decent 1-hr photo print, never mind a slide.

 

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Call me old-fashioned if you will (after all, I'm a ripe 36 yrs old, old by Web standards!) but I find that the Web is not a great medium for non-textual material. Sure, it makes audio, video, and photographs accessible to people who would otherwise not see or hear them, but mostly I find that Web non-textual material is strictly to get across information and not looks or artistic value.

 

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As does Glen, I hasten to add that I don't mean, "The material is devoid of looks or artistic value," just, "The Web isn't the place to judge anything other than the information content of such material."

 

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OK, now I'll wait for the flood of email that tells me to adjust my monitors correctly.

InfoSeek found Maria Zorn; Lycos did not. I visited her page; she has just two photographs on exhibit, and neither is a "blurry" picture.

 

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Unless I'm overlooking some link on her page?

I'm not sure if this is a nature related question...

 

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Has anyone here tried those artistically wind-blurred photographs of trees/leaves/flowers? If so, do you have any techniques or pointers to pass along?

 

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I've tried a few and they just look blurred, not artistic. What quality of motion in the subject should I look for?

I enjoyed the Landscape book the most, but that's probably because landscapes are my interest.

 

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By the way, I think "The Art of Photographing Nature" is by Art Wolfe, not John Shaw. Actually, Art Wolfe and Martha Hill.

I've seen some spectacular panoramic shots of fall color, where you don't see the tops of the trees or the bottoms, just a riot of leaf colors. The angle covered seems to be fairly wide, probably 60 degrees or so, but you can make out individual trees, i.e., it isn't a long distance view of hills or mountains. From extreme left to extreme right is a few hundred feet.

 

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Thing is, I've never seen this in nature, at least not around here in Southwest Virginia (the Blue Ridge Mountains, supposedly famous for fall colors). Here, the trees all seem to turn at widely varying times; for instance, looking out over my woods from my window, I see some isolated yellows and reds and lots of green in between. If I wait a few weeks, there'll be bare trees where I now see colors.

 

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If I look far away at the distant hills, I see a spectrum of colors, but that's because I'm taking in such a huge area. The photos I'm talking about are not at such a faraway perspective.

 

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So, my question is, what conditions are necessary for expanses of riotous colors? Is it species variation? Weather? Luck?

The Blue Ridge Parkway, close to my home, is famous for fall color. I haven't been there this fall. I do plan to go, but the crowds and traffic are usually more than I can stand, especially when compounded by the "tripod effect," discussed in the Original Q&A section of photo.net.

 

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On my own property, the maples are turning bright red. It seems a bit early for this far south. Those oaks which are turning are turning brown.

 

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I may just stay on my own lot this year and look for photo ops down in the ravine below my house.

My wife and I were discussing just this on a nature/photography hike we took yesterday. We were wondering if viewers of a "nature" photograph have a right to expect that the photograph shows exactly what the photographer found (not necessarily what he or she saw, of course, since composition often implies selective vision).

 

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The specific question we wondered about was, suppose while photographing a stream, I decided that a leaf I saw on the bank would look better on a rock in the stream. Is that OK? My wife thought it would be OK as long as the leaf was from trees that would occur there anyway --- in other words, don't put a leaf from a jacaranda tree on a rock in a stream in Yellowstone. I was not so sure that the whole thing is OK. I think viewers have a right to expect that nature photographs represent nature as you find it, not as you wish it were. But that's me.

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I seem to have screwed up the HTML on this page somehow. I apologize and I hope this fixes it. Now I understand why Philip does not want embedded HTML in his forum!

What the...? I can't get anything more than the first line of my response posted!

 

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I add my voice to the chorus recommending the 3021. However, for floral photography I urge you to consider the

<a href="http://www.kirkphoto.com/tripods.html#bogenmod">Kirk-modified version</a>.

 

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Kirk is a respected manufacturer and reseller of camera accessories. They modify the 3021 so that it can go flat on the ground for floral close-ups. The Bogen warranty is not voided.

 

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I own one and am completely satisfied.

Let me try again; I'm having difficulty getting my response accepted by the server.

 

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I add my voice to the chorus recommending the 3021. However, for floral photography I urge you to consider the

<a href="http://www.kirkphoto.com/tripods.html#bogenmod>Kirk-modified version</a>.

 

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Kirk is a respected manufacturer and reseller of camera accessories. They modify the 3021 so that it can go flat on the ground for floral close-ups. The Bogen warranty is not voided.

 

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I own one and am completely satisfied.

I add my voice to the chorus recommending the 3021. However, for floral photography I urge you to consider the

<a href="http://www.kirkphoto.com/tripods.html#bogenlow>Kirk-modified version</a>. Kirk is a reputable manufacturer and dealer of camera accessories. They've modified the 3021 so that it goes flat on the ground for low-level floral photography.

 

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The Bogen warranty is not voided.

 

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I own one and am quite happy with it.

Have you tried Playbird magazine? (Rim shot.)

 

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But, all seriousness aside, I've seen nature books that contain such photographs openly displayed on the shelves of morally upstanding bookstores. And nature shows on TV feature mating birds and animals quite regularly.

 

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I've never seen a calendar or poster that showed birds doing the wild thing, though.

I came across a box turtle in the woods on my property today, and I really would have liked to use a flash. I had no idea what the effect on the turtle would be, so I refrained, making do with long exposures (fortunately, the turtle was sluggish).

 

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In general, are there any guidelines for the non-intrusive use of flash on animals? I can see that flash on a bird's nest is bad. Other than that, any hints?

For flower photography, I've found the Micro60 to be not that great. There is too much in the background (the view is too "wide"). I use the Nikkor 80-200 f/2.8 for a lot of flower photographs and it does really well. It doesn't come anywhere close to 1:1, though.

 

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My next purchase will be the Micro105, from everything I've read.

 

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Be sure you have a good solid tripod.

 

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Good luck.

The Schneider is well worth the $109 it costs at <a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/">B&H Photo and Video</a>. The total cost of loupe and light-table is held to a reasonable level if you follow Glen Johnson's <a href="http://db.photo.net/com/philg/photo/evaluation.html">advice on buying a Porta-Trace light table</a> rather than the breathtakingly expensive JUST models.

I own a Nikon SB-26 flash unit and I'm thinking of using it to overcome motion blur from wind in floral photography. Why is flash never recommended as a solution to this problem? If indeed it is a solution, should I use flash as key lighting or fill lighting? Or does it depend?

About three years ago I sold my Nikon FM body at consignment for about $190. It was in very good working order. I'm sure it had DOF preview and multiple exposure. I don't remember if it had MLU. Of course, it didn't have AF, and metering was restricted to center-weighted.

 

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This was the best of about four offers received by the used camera dealer. For reference, I live in a small college town; that may tend to lower the price level.

My friend and I were on a birding/photo tour of Grand Tetons and Yellowstone mid-May last year. We did get some good birding, but the weather was not the greatest for photography. It was raining with heavy overcast skies all the time we were there. I did get a decent shot of the Tetons across the sage fields in Jackson Hole with the peaks covered in heavy dark clouds, but precious little else.

 

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The rain was so relentless and endless that we just gave up after a few days and headed south to Utah, where the Wasatch did cough up some good photographs (as well as some dippers in the mountain streams).

 

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Be sure to go to Jenny Lake to view the Tetons up close. When we were there last year, the lake was still frozen: with the overcast skies and the low clouds covering the Teton peaks, I couldn't get anything really inspiring, but your weather luck may be better than mine.

 

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There was a LOT of snow still on the ground in Yellowstone. I suppose this year there will probably be even more.

 

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After visiting the Grand Tetons, I realized that until you see that part of the US, you've really missed out on something. The weather did nothing to dampen my sense of wonder. There was so much incredible scenery, I started to suffer from scenery overload after a while.

 

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Enjoy yourself!

My friend and I are taking a photo/birding trip to the SW (5/29-6/9). We're flying to Phoenix and hope to get to Bryce, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, and Bosque del Apache NWR. I will be birding and trying to photograph landscapes (without visual clutter, I hope!), and my friend will be birding.

 

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Have you any tips you don't mind passing on? Are there any "don't miss" locations? Time of day, that sort of thing?

 

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I can't afford all the Photo Traveller Guides for the Southwest. Which of the volumes would be most useful for me?