Six months?

     Wow!  It's six months ago that I started this blog, but I haven't been blogging very much since then.  However, this blog is about photography so the good news is that I have been shooting.  Shooting as in shooting pictures.  I've been photographing kids, babies, their moms, and brothers & sisters who are graduating from high school.  I've also been clicking the shutter on birds and beaches up on the U.P.  Some of those pictures have been added to my web page, blainepaulphoto.com.  Please check them out!
     If you'd like you or your family to be pictured on holiday cards, this is the time to pose for me out in the falling leaves of October or the "in between" time in November.  I love this time of year for the way color is reflected in the golden light of autumn.  This is a recent view out my window of our cabin up North.

     The  thing about the bright colors of fall is that they don't last.  That is true of most things in our lives:  good or bad, happy or sad, time marches on and today is replaced by tomorrow.  Photography, like some other forms of art,  allows us to be reminded and to remember what is happening at one specific slice of time.  The beautiful changing of the seasons is just one example of what I love to capture with my camera.
     Light is continuously being reflected on fleeting slices of time.  My camera doesn't speed things up or even slow things down.   What it can do, though, is to freeze important moments in time, to help remind us what things looked like at a day in the life.  For example, my camera can remind us of the year when your high-schooler approaches graduation or when a child passes milestones in life:  birth, one week, six months. You get the idea.  I get the idea.  That's why I love what I do.
     So enjoy what's left of October 2014 and I'll try to check in more often on this blog thing I've started.

I need a pad man!

     Photography bloggers should really write about photography, right?

  So far in this very young blog I’ve been mostly complaining about the weather but now that there is some obvious color outdoors, I have some color to play with.  The daffy’s are in bloom, a beautiful line of tulip await me on a new strip of garden.  Migrant birds are headed this way in a hurry so I’m writing this on the new Windows tablet that I invested in to couple with my photography.  Actually, that’s a lie.  Rain began yesterday and is still coming down as I write.  Even the tablet thing is a lie; this is being written on my full size Window’s 7 laptop I use for business matters.  The truth is I did buy a Windows tablet to use for photography.  The problem is, it turns out that it’s not so great for what I wanted it to do.

     I don’t know when the trend toward tablets in photography began, but surely it began on the iPad.  I don’t have an iPad, have never had one, but I do have an iPod touch so I know about all the iPad apps and how cool (and sometimes fun) they are.  Not only are they cool, but some of them are really useful. allowing the shooter to use the tablet as a lightmeter, an iintervelometer, a DOF calculator, editor, et cetera.  So, I came to the conclusion that a tablet was an expenditure that I could justify.  Then the question became which operating system:  iOS (iPad), Android, or Windows?

     The iPad was the most obvious as I knew there were plenty of apps and I had already used some of them on my iPod.  However, I have an Android phone and knew that many if not most apps were also available on an Android pad and there were a lot of hardware choices available there.  Then there was the Windows option; I know the OS and I have used Windows Mobile devices since the days of Windows CE 1.1.  I have to say, though, that the OS on Windows tablets are a far cry from the systems the phones or PDA’s ran.  The tablet I bought was the Windows Surface 2 and its OS is Windows 8.1 (not the Window’s 8 RE that so many have experienced and hated).

     Let me give you a brief comparison with its main competitor, the iPad.  Physically, it’s a tall tablet (10”, width of 7”) and about twice the thickness of the latest iPad my wife has. If you buy the cover/keyboard which is sold separately, it doesn’t really need a case.  One of the uses for this bit of hardware is to show clients examples of my offerings or their own proofs displayed in various ways.  Once you get past the “Start Page”, it’s great for that. There are a couple apps good for that.  But not like for iOS or any android system.

 Since the Surface is really a computer in disguise, I can run the full version of Lightroom (which is lucky since the new Lightroom app is iPad only).  I’ve loaded Windows 2010 for work when I travel, and I’m debating about adding Quicken/Quick Books and other Windows applications.  Applications, not apps.  So I’m still a little cool on this pad of mine.  More about it later.

Photo Hibernation

     It's nearly May and I'm still in Outdoor Photography Hibernation.  April in this part of the U.S. can often be characterized as part of the Mud Season.  No outdoor friends I have like the mud season because it is just so drab and ... boring.  This year mud season is lasting longer than usual but finally I'm seeing some color start to emerge from below and above.  The first daffodils are popping up, the goldfinches are putting on their pastel jackets.  This morning I noticed for the first time that the salmon-pink buds of the big maple on the edge of the back garden are adding color to the emerging spring. What's missing?
     Looking at the metadata from warblers the past few years tells me that they should be here or at least on their way by now but no one wants to be the first to the party this year.  I should be preparing gear if I want to catch their arrival.  I have a new bit of gear to test on the birds of spring, a Cam-Ranger.  It helps photographers to use our cameras on remote by linking the view of a digital camera to a remote (like inside or up to 100 feet removed from the scene) computer or tablet.  Supposedly, it allows zoom, aperture, shutter-speed and focus to be controlled off-site.  If my description sounds tentative, that's because I've had it for months and haven't yet learned to use it.  So why am I blogging instead of learning and gearing up?  Good  question. Guess I should post this and start tending to color capture preparation.

  Later,  BP

It's mid-April,

     It's raining, it's chilly inside and out, so I thought I might start a blog; just to see what it feels like to be a "blogger".  So far, it's not unlike journaling, keeping a journal, which is something I've done almost continuously since my teens.  No one reads my journals - not even me - unless I'm looking for a bit or scrap of information that I might have written about or alluded to in the past.  For example, consider an ornithological bit, the great white heron.
     Among those who can distinguish a heron from a crane, I wonder how many people know there is such a thing as a great white heron and it's not just another name for a great (white) egret?  I did some research on the topic back in grad school in the early 1990's, so I can go back to my journal from the time frame and it will either have useful information or it will point me to a folder or binder where I would have kept the information.
     Understand that in the early 1990's we were just making the transition from paper reprints, hanging files, and the like; to Portable Document Files, scans, and JPEGs. Analog to digital.  As far as my journal, I did flirt with keeping a separate, digital "journal" on a floppy disk, but it didn't feel right, not tangible.  I needed something more palpable and besides, I kept going back to earlier entries and editing them.  I've always liked pens and papers for their own qualities, so I was still journaling my thoughts and notes in a physical notebook.  I still keep a personal journal and it is pen or pencil on paper.  As with my social stationary, the pen and paper get a little better, and the journals are standard refills that I pop in and out of a leather cover.  It's all very tactile.
     Now, here I am, "blogging".  The big difference is that the blog won't deal with thoughts on life & death, the tilt of the earth, or how I'm feeling a little older everyday when I roll out of bed.  This blog (journal) will deal with photography.  I'll write about preparation to make the right photo, taking the photo itself and what I do with the RAW file or exposed film that comes from my camera.  I'll praise some things (Nikon D800) and snub others (Nikon D800).  Today was just a matter of getting started.
     I hadn't planned to start a blog today, or on any other particular day in the near future.  But it's April - that cruel month - and somehow I got to this start page.  It felt like the right thing to do, so, Blaine Paul Photography now has a voice beyond images.  Business is slow so I hope to make the website, www.blainepaulphoto.com , and the blog a little better as the first flora of spring struggle in the garden to create the colorful backgrounds I'll use for Class of '15 Senior portraits.

Later,
BP