virginia_john_mybusiness

<p>I don't think there is any right answer here. Back in the day I spent about a month with Ansel Adams in Yosemite (he and Virginia had a home there since her family started the hotel there before there was a park). In that month we went to a number of locations -- all of which Ansel was familiar with. Over that month he exposed one sheet of film.<br>

On the other hand, if you are a working photographer shooting for a customer, be it a bride (or her mother) or an art director, you are shooting to their taste and capturing every nuance that might suit is important.<br>

Shooting for yourself at a location you may not get back to, you might take a lot of exposures.<br>

I'm planning a three day shoot in Arizona. I've been to the Grand Canyon many times (I have a place in Arizona). I'm visiting two places I've never stopped to photograph - one that has been photographed hundreds of thousands of times -- Horseshoe Bend and another more remote location. <br>

I have been working on my shooting plan for ab out a month now and I'm not close to being finished. I may not take any images at Horseshoe Bend. I'm struggling to come up with an image the I want to capture that hasn't been done many times before. There are a couple of locations along the rim of the Canyon that I will shoot from if the light and atmospherics are right. The remote location that I've never been has been photographed before by quite a few, but it is not like the slot canyons or other locations that produce the same shots again and again. I will probably shoot more there than anywhere else.<br>

Knowing what you want to capture -- "pre-visualizing" the image, to use Ansel's term -- is important to me. Before I go to a location I try to know as precisely as possible what I'm shooting, how I'm going to capture it, what the final image will look like after processing.<br>

I will still shoot enough to ensure I capture what I need to get that, but very little will be random. There are those opportunities that do present themselves unexpectedly and disrupt the best plans -- sometimes delightfully.<br>

On the other hand, I don't know how many times I have gone out to shoot for a day or two and never tripped the shutter. </p>

<p>Way back in the day, I used to add a prop to slow down the process to make sure everything, including the focus (everything was manual focus then) was correct. I would light and smoke a cigar on the set -- try that today. Actually, a cigar really gets in the way, and that was the point. It slows everything down. I found that taking it slow, making sure everything in front of the camera was right, the art director or creative director was happy, everything behind the camera was right took a great deal of attention to detail. Manual focusing is part of that. The advantage we have today is that you can instantly see your image and determine if you got it right and if not repeat the process. But taking your time, and probably doing it several times (we no longer are paying for film or processing) is certainly something to build into your practice.</p>

<p>I guess as a long time Apple user I can't imagine using a PC. I use to work at a PC/Microsoft office and they are so 20th century.</p>

<p>I had Nikon Fs during that time, but had all of those lenses and love each one.</p>

<p>I should clarify my response. I wasn't anticipating doing any final processing while traveling... just determining whether or not I had the image I wanted. I would leave Photoshop for back home and just load Lightroom on the laptop.</p>

<p>I'm making the same decision for myself. I have been an Apple user for years. My system at home has an Xserve at the top with 24 TB RAID drive on top and several iMacs under it with a number of multi TB external hard drives. For travel, I'm thinking of getting the smallest Macbook Air with 8GB of RAM and an external drive with about 500 GB of storage. That would be good for about a week of travel. If I needed more, I would consider an external DVD drive to make hard copies of my work.</p>

<p>They can always damn with faint praise!</p>

<p>Only if they really want to learn about photography!</p>

<p>With digital photography comes a whole suit of issues about managing technology from the camera through the lens match (focus), through the file format, through the color protocol and software. I doubt that any of your problems are related to the camera. There are so many variables to understand and manage. Getting it right is not as easy as it once was. It truly is a systems management issue. Missing just one function can throw the whole thing off.</p>

<p>It was my Sigma 10-20 (on my D7000), but I fallen in love with my Nikkor 10.5 f2.8. I do like the wide viewpoint. Both tend to push my imagination.</p>

<p>My guess is that these are from your developing process. Do you develop your own film or send it out to a lab? These look like the kinds of laminar lines left when the developer flows over the film if it is not agitated properly. I remember this from my early days in the darkroom so very long ago.</p>

<p>I think they ought to sell dozens of these.</p>

<p>I got my first Nikon in about 1960 and can't count how many I've had since. I have absolutely zero interest in this one, maybe less than zero. </p>

<p>Just so there is no confusion -- the Virginia in my name is a location -- not a gender.</p>

<p>I think smartphones will take over the snapshot market -- but not the photograph market. That you can capture an image with your phone and immediately message it or email it around the world is something your camera does not do.</p>

<p>I think that nudes may be one of the most challenging of subjects, because it can also be the most trite. Men will ogle regardless of the merit of the photograph. It is hard to get past the ogle factor to the merit, if there is merit. It is also very hard to present anything original. Technically presented images simply are not enough. Personally, I enjoy the humor of David McCracken's images. The nude painting has been around as long as there has been art. I suspect it will be true for photography. Doing something new and truly meritorious with this subject is a very difficult challenge.</p>

<p>There are lots of days I feel out of focus, too.</p>

<p>Wait up guys.. wait up... I know I can get this image through two tin cans and a string... I know I can... </p>

<p>We can't remember what we look like and don't recognize ourselves in the picture when we see it!</p>

<p>As systems get more complicated, so do the opportunities for faults in the system. I never had these kinds of problems with my pinhole cameras!</p>

<p>Scott is absolutely right about what is behind the camera. Photographs are made between the ears, not in the camera. The camera can only start to capture what the mind conceives.</p>

<p>I would figure out a budget and include good used cameras in my selection process. D300s, D7000s, etc.</p>

<p>Have you tried a hard reset? </p>

Collaborative effort between my son and I -- his image, my processing.

Part of a series we are working on/<div></div>

Collaborative effort between my son and I -- part of a series we are

working on. His image, my processing.<div></div>