Dave Cesari posted a new set of photos on #2 Photo shoot images (See the side panel for the link.) These photos of Dave’s are not cell phone images.
Today I continue to think about the camera in my pocket – my cell phone – Those cell phones are something – Did you know that you can trigger the shutter on them remotely – several different ways – If you are interested, let me know via a comment – I want to do more on these pages to help you leave comments cause those club members that post here love to get comments – For now you can always leave a comm on this page! I will see that the person who posted the photos you commented on get your comments.
Back to cell phones – I down loaded an ABC App and now I can watch ABC news on my phone – no need to sit in front of a tv needed.
I spent an hour hunting my car at the Orlando airport a year or so ago. Thursday I went straight to it due to my cell phone photo.When out and about I like to be sure if an animal might get run over I stand-by until it is safe – then go home and show – on the cell phone – what I did – just so they say “You’re a nice guy”When I go home from being out and about with my cell – I like to study what I saw – first 7 years big growth, next 25 less so, then next 40 much less – I am still pondering why? Some day will do more research.When out and about, seeing a face in a cloud last only seconds some time – but I captured this one for many years – Do you see the face – maybe a dog face?? look in the center of the photo! The dog is looking down – southeast I would say.Oh my – as you swing out and about – enjoy taking some of your sightings home to enjoy in the leisure of your home – use the cell!
Wildlife photography requires thinking beyond the shutter speed, f-numbers, telephoto, white balance, etc.Dave Cesari wrote a little of his thinking on how his blind saves him on equipment lugging effort. (See the bottom of this page.) I wanted to get you thinking about why have a blind in the first place.
For successful wildlife photography, there are things to think about even if you do not have a blind – but they may prompt you to build one. . You must think about how you smell, to the animal, that is. You must think about the animal’s constant fear because other animals are out searching for food.Yipes, says the first animal “I am the food.”
Photographers have to think about the inner makeup of animals if they want to get close enough for a good photograph.
For example, some animals see mostly in black and white. If the photographer does not move, in black and white, the photographer blends right in to the background. So, the animal thinks – no problem – that thing I see is just a 5’8” tree stump or a tall skinny rock.
But move just a twitch, let the wind send your human smell, rustle your camera case cover, vibrate the ground with a heavy footstep and the animal now knows you are not just a 5’8” tree stump. The animal is gone, because they can hear, see movement, smell, and feel vibrations so much better than we do. Photographers need to think about hiding all that from the targeted subject so that the animal sees only a tree stump or a rock.
The blind is just like a big rock sitting there. The animal says “No problem” rocks will not hurt me. Most of your smell stays inside, your movements are not seen, and your sounds do not really leave the blind. So, say I, to get a good wildlife photo you have to be lucky or you have to hide inside a rock.
Dave Cesari wrote: Jim, Here are some pictures I thought you might use on your new blog. They are a kind of a how to or how I did it. This is what we use to shoot the Wood Ducks and Ring-necked Duck I sent you. (Click “2. Photo shoot images” in left sidebar then to “older posts” at bottom of the page.) This is the photo blind we built a few years ago. I thought a few shots of the blind and the interior would be interesting. I got tired of lugging a heavy tripod out there. I got the idea to mount tripod heads directly to 2X4s screwed to the front wall. Works great. No more need to carry a tripod out there. There is also a shot of a friend in the blind behind his camera. Cold and windy here today only 35 degrees F. with snow flurries on and off all day. Dave
04 28 2019 Dave Cesari04 28 2019 Dave Cesari04 28 2019 Dave Cesari04 28 2019 Dave Cesari04 28 2019 Dave Cesari04 28 2019 Dave CesariOh my – as you swing through life, study the inner makeup of your targeted subject – even if your subject is a human you may learn a lot.
On the sidebar there are links that you can go to. Each of the four links has recent updates.
I will try to devote this page to thoughts on photography and the TGO Photo Club. I will attempt to update it weekly. Please send me your thoughts on photography topics I could research and write about.
Photography has so many opportunities for different focus. Consider just a few: Competing with other photographers, selling photographs, for sharing with family, for sharing through galleries and blogs, as illustrations for a writer, as a digital art form, for documenting nature, for recording history, or just to learn something new – the list goes on. The list even includes “Just to have something to do.”
We can use expensive long telephoto lens or we use simple snap and shoot equipment. Some of us will never post process – they want to show it as the camera saw it. Others may want to use the computer to create truly fake images from the photograph they snapped.
The TGO Photo Club will try to serve the interests and foci of all these people. We will hold meetings for all. Then, we my have smaller groups meet to serve “birds of a feather.” That is my current thinking – but I sure need your thoughts.
So, let us all think about club activities for when we return to TGO in the fall.
Send to me at jimbrubaker@earthlink.net these three items:
Your summer photos for me to post and share
Things you want me to research and print here on this page
Your thoughts on our 2019/2020 meetings and photo shoots
Note – Bob Hazlett added photos to “What are we doing” but read on before going there.
My answer is: “Art and photography are essential to the human spirit for many reasons – Here are 3 reasons:
Photos makes you look: It’s hard to walk by a photo and not look at it. And then it makes you really look at it and wonder…everything from “what were they thinking?” to “who were they?” and “what are they doing?” them maybe wonder, “why did they do that?” Look at Susan’s snapshots of a family event.
04 18 2019 Susan Hubbard
They give you a connection with the photographer and the subjects – what was their feeling at that moment – joy, laughter, empathy, desire, wonderment……..
Photos take you places: Look at the colors in Davids Wood Ducks, the eyes staring at you, the droplets of water from the beak. You can almost taste cool moist air from the lake, sense the stillness, and the see the emerging spring. So, again, photos give you a connection with the photographer. You will almost be there and sense the feeling of the photographer at that moment – joy, peace, wonderment…….
04 18 2019 Dave
Photos help you learn: Observational learning is the process of learning through watching others and then being influenced by the behavior’s that were observed. By looking at the photos of others we obverse all kinds of things – From learning what mastering the skills of photography can produce – like a perfect image, to learning how others have better enjoyed social interactions with family by sharing snapshots with each other and friends – like Club members.
The TGO Photo Club, in the winter in Florida, helps us better enjoy this human-spirit essential. But we have at least 6 months without meetings. So, I said I would help members continue to share during the summer through my blog.
Here is my new format to this blog:
“What are we doing” – Many of these photos will be shot with little set-up time. It is an unplanned happening that tells the story. Here, even the cell phone camera is a wonderful tool to help you socialize with friends and neighbors by showing them “what they were doing”. Through the web, Club members should be encouraged to share stories about what they are doing – Including photos taken with cell phone cameras and pocket-size cameras at any summer activity. Sort of a Wheel of Fortune “What are we doing”? Skills of art like composition, tone, texture, etc. are always important but what I want to encourage here is to tell a story of your activity when it happens.
“Photo shoot images” – Some photos I deemed to have been shot while waiting for it to happen – maybe sitting in a blind, maybe with tripods, and complex equipment. The camera is a wonderful tool to help you socialize with friends and neighbors by sharing “what they saw”. Through the web members should be encouraged to development and improve their skills with “planned” photo shoots – produce beautiful photographs of natural and man-made objects. A planned photo shoot where you have time to practice skills of art like patients, composition, tone, texture, etc.
“Digital photo art” Some examples of photos that succumbed to the extremes of post processing! Since I enjoy learning to create my own mental (maybe demented) version of digital art using photographs and PhotoShop – I can not help but try to make this website encourage Club members to develop better skills in digital post processing.
Therefore, send me images to share: Send them to jimbrubaker@earthlink.net If you can resize them to be 600 pixels high, it will make my job easier. And send 6 or less per e-mail. If re-sizing is not easy at your end – send them anyway – I am sure I can deal with it. THANKS – Lets see where all this will take the Club this summer.
Oh my – as you swing through life tell us, with photos, what you are doing – it is the social thing to do
As TGO Photo Club members migrate to their spring/summer/fall activities I am going to attempt to offer a forum for members to share the joy of their activities with other club members. I want to help them tell their story through photos – stories snapped with their cell phones – or stories snapped on the spur of the moment using their cameras that just happened to be with them.
I will try to have two Club pages on this website throughout the summer – 1. The TGO Photo Page that you can click on in the left hand column and 2. The TGO Story Page that for right now will be this page that you are reading.
First click on the TGO Photo Page to see Dave Cesari’s NY spring snow and birds enjoying the snow at his feeders. Dave wrote: “Hi Jim, A lovely spring day here in upstate NY. The plus side is it makes birds come to the feeders. A Cardinal, Fox Sparrows & a Morning Dove. Dave”
Then scroll down – In the future, I hope to get photos from Club members so that I never have to use my own photos again. I want to provide this space for club members to tell their story with each other.
To get started, I will post a few cell phone photos that tell you my story of last week -seeing things in the great outdoors right here around the Great Outdoors – all taken within the last week or so with my cell phone while I spend most of my spare time enjoying The Great Outdoors’ great outdoors.
The prescribed burn in the St Johns area along our Nature trail.Lots of equipment and people needed to make it happenI caught Doug Jensen – a club member – doing a documentary of the burn – sure was fun and educational watching him workOh my – I looked to the left and saw these green bananas, which at my age, I never buy. – Have you walked the great outdoors and found these bananas?How about this – did you see that expression – “I do not see a gator, do you?Oh my – Being watched by the man in the sky!Seven young pigs at play – Just squealing and chasing each other – jumping around like young kids in the school playgroundThen Mom saw me – Somehow she communicated that to the little pigs – and off they went – I called it Pig Language or was it Pig Latin? (Maybe “Go Hide” is “Ogay Idehay”)Oh my – as you swing through life tell me of your fun through snapped photographs – I will post them to share with club members
Over the next 6 months, I am hoping to post slide shows, once every two weeks, with photos from TGO Photo Club members as they enjoy their summers. Being that you all are residents of The Great Outdoors (TGO) – an RV, Golf, & Nature Resort – The TGO Photo Club is betting, during the summer, your travels and experiences offer some great photos to share. The Club wants to provide you a new on-line way to do that sharing.
As a test of one approach, I created a 1 minute 30 second slide show using my own photos from summers on Drummond Island. Tell me if you can view it on your computer, phone, and iPad, (jimbrubaker@earthlink.net). If this approach works, you could send me photos, and like “Show and Tell” at our winter meetings, we could continue to “Show and Tell” during the summer.
First check out Dave Cesari’s Nuthatches and Woodpeckers – click TGO Photo Club link in left hand column.
Then com back here and see a “Show and Tell” of a DRUMMOND SUMMER:
Oh my! Let me post, for all Club members and other viewers to see, you swinging through summer.
I have again accepted a leadership position in the TGO Photo Club, after a 2 year rest.But, it is so much fun to help the wonderful members of that organization practice their sport – photography.
Technically we are in such a wonderful time. Look at Donald Wyllie’s photos of the local airshow. (Click on the TGO Photo Club link in the left hand column).His skill and the equipment he uses show us views of the planes in action that our naked eyes and our floating minds could not see. I love the action he captured.
Photo by Donald Wyllie
Not quite like Donalds equipment he used to get the great shots of the planes in action, but, today we can do so much with the cell phone camera.
One of my thrust in the Photo Club will be to get everyone who has a cell phone to become photographers – to share their daily experiences and inspirations with their friends – pull that cell phone out of your pocket and snap life – share your thoughts and emotions with friends.In our mobile lives we need to stay connected somehow and the cell phone helps us do that – You know it does because you see that device next to the ears of people everywhere – But, do not forget the camera adds an other dimension to the connectivity that talking can not brings to our lives – That aspect is “showing and seeing”.
I have 10,603 cell phone photos stored on my icloud – somewhere up in the sky. I enjoy the outdoors a lot. Did you realize that half of what you see when you are outdoors is sky. I scanned a few of my recent cellphone photos – made me smile and I wanted to share them with someone –I choose you, my blog readers, to see a few of the clouds my phone stored in the iCloud – just a snap of my life as I look to the sky each day – enjoy:
In case you wonder what this is, it is the sky reflected in the glass top table in our screened-in porch where we have lunch each day.Down the street walking – beautiful sky – and see one half of what I see is sky.Wind shaped contrailWhat do you call a rainbow cloud that is not bowed?I can not look at a cloud without seeing an image – often I see fish eating fishMaybe the sky is more than 50% of what I see when outdoorsOr when biking with HeatherOr when watching Heather watch the Alligator swim by our back doorof course you can use the Cellphone to capture other images – this interesting shaped bird poop on the wallor to remember what kind of egg whites I am to purchase at the grocery storeor to remember where I parked the carOr to marvel at this big rattle snake too chicken to cross the sky reflected in the little ditch – he turned around and headed back toward meOh my, as you swing through life go outdoors and study the top half of your view.
A friend of mine sent me two photos of “white stuff” and an “owl” from Drummond Island, Michigan. They were taken by Terri Dudun Hartman – on the farm where my horse Perla lived.
I do not have a Florida owl photo to show you right now but I do have some Florida “white stuff” to show you.
But first, click on the TGO Photo Club page to see Bill White’s animals in Wisconsin’s white stuff and Dave Cesari’s Florida Screech Owls – Wonderful photos!
Drummond Island zero degree white stuffFlorida 80 degree white stuffOh my, as you swing through life and if you are in Florida, smile – and if you are on Drummond, smile – You know what, smile wherever you are!
Linda Somers is featured on the TGO Photo Club Page – but first read, below, what I have to say about the club. Yes, my intent is to brag about our Club.
The Club invites you to join them and enjoy a wonderful group of people. We meet at the Nature Center on the first and third Friday at 1:00 pm. Ed Swan (321-269-3682) leads the meetings and organizes the agenda to accommodate a wide variety of interests in photography.
Read on – I’ll tell you of some of those interests:
You all know one of my hobbies is to take a photograph and use PhotoShop to change that photograph.
Using my iPhone, I took this photo in Havana, Cuba this summer. It is a Street Dancer performing for us tourists – I wanted to have you, the viewer, focus on the warm smiling face and her eyes. And I wanted to practice playing with monochrome in PhotoShop.So I changed the original iPhone photo using PhotoShop. Do you think I succeeded in getting you to focus on the warm smile and bright eyes.?
Lets look at more interests of TGO Photo Club members:
Photographer Dave Cesari, whom I really like and respect, says “If you do it right the first time you do not need to change it!” – Dave does get it right each time and post often on the clubs website – I love his works and his comment.
But say I, “By playing around with photoShop and attending club meetings, my mind is better trained on how to get the shot I want – It trains my mind to take a better photo in the first place.”
Another photographer, Nancy Presant, says, “I really enjoy our club.” Why? Because she gets to take club members on field trips to enjoy shooting photos in zoos, wildlife sanctuaries, on boat trips, and many others locations – I think she and some members enjoy the social aspects of photography.
Here is a candid shot – members deciding which phots to hang on which wall of the Manor porch. – Six walls, 50 photos and video/slide shows. Members brought in 50 photographs last Thursday. Photo hanging day was like a party. So, you see, we have fun often, not only on Nancy’s field trips.
Some of our members enjoy taking photos of wildlife. Every day you can find them photographing TGO wildlife at the nature trail bridge. Then, on a daily basis, they post their photos on the Nature Center’s Facebook page.
Some members want to learn to better use their cell phone camera to snap photos of their Florida home and send photos back to their family up north – maybe to rub in our warm weather a little:
Linda Somers could send this cell phone photo to her family up north saying …”I love seeing beautiful color – not that white stuff… Love You”
We, also, take great pride in hanging photos on the walls of TGO.
Check out the walls of our library – It is a one member show, by Jim Dick.
How about the back-porch of the Manor. Almost 50 brand new photographs by many members. Susan Hubbard, also, maintains a motion triggered video panel on one of the walls with dozens of member’s photos.
Here is an over-view of all six walls – There will be a big reception party on March 2. Come enjoy conversations with the photographers.
Do you know that the CSA office wall holds 10 photos by the club members:
Go see the wall in the CSA office. It is much better than my iPhone photo of the wall.
The Manor Lobby is decorated with 3 large photos by member, Doug Jensen.
The Manor Lobby is beautiful.
Hope I was able to show you what a great club the TGO Photo Club is and why I am so proud to be a member of it.
Join us in the Nature Center at our Friday meetings. Bring your ideas and your photos to share – anything from simple iPhone photos to precision photos from professional cameras – all are welcome.
If you would like to show us your photo techniques – Ed will find a spot in our Friday meetings for you to give us your insight. That is how it is – we learn from each other.
Note: the website in the Happenings is incorrect. The correct address is jimsdaily.wordpress.com Linda Somers is the featured photographer there today.
See you at our Manor Porch reception on March 2. Come meet the photographers.
Oh my, as you swing through life – swing by one of our meetings – see you there.
But be sure to look at the TGO Photo Club Page and at the older post of this page if you have not seen them.
