First Strobist Experiments

Finally got the last pieces of my strobist outfit (the SB600 needs a hot shoe adapter to allow a PC connection to the pocket wizard). I went out and photographed this bush last night

1/13 Sec at f 4.0

27mm (Nikon D70 CCD)

ISO 250

I like the tone of things - a bit more depth on the front bush would be good - but I needed to blend in the background without too much blur.

North Vietnam Slides

I'm now going through images from Northern Vietnam looking for 'stock' imagery to add to kirkjones.info. I came across these 2 images; the first is actually from Southern Vietnam, somewhere outside of Long Hai, the second from somewhere north of Hanoi. The more I go through my images, the more I'm finding that people have made up a large part of my photographs.

I've always been fascinated with people and the variety of faces that are out there. From an early age I traveled and haven't stopped. I can recall a face after 10 years but a name will elude me after 5 minutes.

Organizing photographs / digital and film

I'm beginning to pull stock images from old film negatives and slides. Currently, I'm up to 300+ images heading towards the film scanner - a chore that I'm really not looking forward to. I try and keep the coolscan running all day when I work, switching over to change film every 5 - 10 minutes. This works fine, but for upwards of a few hundred images, this can be pain staking as well as a mental chore to keep remembering to go back and change film. At least the old darkroom days are over...

I spent some time this weekend speaking with another photographer about the changing landscape of photography - the fact that digital has made creating images much more obtainable for the general public. I think 'democratization' of photography has taken place; before only people willing to drop the $$ and time could break into the world of still photography. Although amateur's have always been present within photography, the cost of film, processing and color printing has always been a deterrent towards advancing visual complexity and technical ability wihthin traditional photographic boundaries. To put it simply - it cost way less to take 1000 images now then before, thus upping the potential to 'get better'. Pros used to be the only people that could burn through 20 - 30 rolls of slide film. Now, with a reusable storage card, some batteries and a place to preview an image, a fairly high quality print can be obtained at Target for roughly 6 bucks...