One of the advantages of working in digital is that the sensor captures everything that it can capture.  While I may set up my mirrorless camera to show me a square, black and white image on the rear LCD screen, the camera records a color image across the entire sensor.  When I download that raw data (my RAW file), I have all the data to do with it as I please.  At best, my computer knows how I shot it and sometimes it will show me a square image (sometimes not, though I don’t know why).  But, for the raw files at least, it shows me all of the images in color.  I have to convert them to B&W on my own.  Which means I always see my images in color on my computer regardless of how I “saw” them out in the field.  That leads to today’s images.

Back in my large-format film days, I used to joke that I saw in black and white, and that I only saw in color when I was getting paid.  That was true back then, but not nearly true now.  Still, for as much as I talk about learning to see again in black and white, my recent efforts at the Japanese Gardens reminded me that in addition to seeing, there’s a lot of developing skills in black and white that I need to re-learn as well before my B&W images are as good as they should be.

The trip to Pro Photo Supply wound up being what we’d expected.  And that wasn’t good.  Both camera and lenses (yes plural) wound up on their way to Fuji for inspection/repair.  Fortunately, we’d brought our backup camera, which meant I could still photograph at the Japanese Gardens on Saturday morning.  Unfortunately, we hadn’t brought the L-bracket for the X-T1.  So I had a choice - hand hold the images, or hold the camera in place on top of the tripod head.  Knowing the type of images I’d want to be making, and the slow shutter speeds they would entail, I opted for the imposed constraint of holding the camera in place on top of the tripod!

Given we were up in Portland photographing last weekend, and that we’re planning trips out  for next weekend and the fortnight after that (cross your fingers), this was a weekend to do prints.  While Ann and I discussed how to approach doing a massive printing marathon session to try out all of the sample papers we have, we decided the wiser thing to do was to make a couple of images using some smaller-sized 5” x 7” paper we picked up last weekend to see how smaller prints looked.

Ann and I had some business we had to do up in Portland (buy more photo paper!), and, given that the cherry blossoms were out in our neighborhood, we decided to make it a photo trip as well.  And where better than the Portland Japanese Gardens?  Photographically it turned out to be a weekend of constraints - self-imposed and otherwise.

On the second day of our Yosemite Adventure, right after I messed around in the snow and rocks, I mentioned that after I extricated myself I had to go find Ann.  As I approached her I noticed the two trees that are the last image of the post.  But as I approached those trees (happy that Ann’s camera was pointing in a different direction) I realized that she  was trying to photograph an interesting rock that had a very elegant slot in it.  She eventually gave up on it, not making a single shot, and headed back towards the main trail while I photographed the trees.

Ann won’t toot her own horn, but nothing’s stopping me from doing it (not even Ann’s evil-eye).  So put your fingers in your ear because the blast is coming!

Ann and I are thinking of heading up to Portland next weekend, so when Ann said she had some errands to run and asked if I just wanted to stay home I said, “Sure, if you don’t mind.” I immediately knew what I was going to do - PRINT!  I had been thinking of what I wanted to print next throughout the week, and decided that I really needed to check out some of the matte papers that we have.  This was the perfect opportunity!

The following morning started nice and early and there was barely a stir in the campground as we were rolling out, hot breakfast in our stomachs and coffee cups in hand.

During our Redwoods trip, Beast sprung a leak.  After the penthouse had been up for a few hours in a light drizzle, we found a puddle of water on the cover to the shower.  Checking things out, we noticed that the fabric on the rail was damp as well.  Nothing to do but call Sportsmobile when we got home.  Given that it was covered under warranty, and we could pretty much schedule an appointment any time we wanted, we decided to take advantage of the opportunity and made an appointment for a Thursday.  Why Thursday instead of Friday? Well, that gave us Friday and Saturday morning in Yosemite!

Today’s answer:  To better understand your own work. 

This week’s print comes from our Spring 2017 trip, taken at a location neither of us knew about until the day before we got there - Snow Canyon State Park.  It’s another one of Utah’s incredible state parks and if you’re ever in St. Georges on the way to Zion or Brice Canyon, it’s worth a detour, whether for a drive-through, a morning (afternoons get hot!), or a relaxing couple of days away from the crowds of the National parks.

A week or so ago I was listening to a writer on NPR.  She was discussing how she crafted stories and explained that she has to figure out the ending of the story before she could really move forward with the writing.  Once she had the ending, then everything else just seemed to fall into place.

I’m just the opposite.  I have to begin at the beginning.

Photographing the Redwoods in the snow was quite unexpected.  But as one can easily imagine, it is an incredibly beautiful place to simply be.  From our first steps into the grove we were in awe.  It’s also a great place for a shooting the shooter segment.

If you’ve been following the blog at all, you know we came across some very interesting weather our last day and a half in the Redwoods.  Who would have figured that we’d see snow of all things?  We knew we were going to have a variety of landscapes to photograph, and that the weather was going to be constantly changing, but snow?