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Glassy Calm, originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

I’ve just delivered final images to a Colorado advertising agency which recently contacted me to shoot for a real estate development campaign they are working on. This is the image that will be appearing on billboards, magazines, brochures and newspapers around central Texas some time in early 2009. I strongly suspect you will hardly recognise it in the final copy since their creative people have some exciting Photoshop plans (hence the large expanse of water in the foreground).

We had scouted the location a week before the main shoot on a grey, drizzly Saturday morning. After 6 months of drought, it was rather annoying that the weather broke on the one week I needed sunshine and it remained grey for a week. A week the following Monday, however, the weather was beautiful, the air cold and crisp and the lake deserted as we took the 30 minute run from Lakeway Marina up to the location in a rented ski boat.
The client asked for shots as low to the water as possible. The boat was a couple of feet above the water and even lying along the side and holding the camera as low as possible, I couldn’t get the best angle. Given that I had no intention of dropping my Nikon DSLRs overboard, another plan was needed and I came up with a scheme involving my Powershot G9 and a monopod to get a lens about 2 inches above the water. I attached the G9 to the monopod and tilted the head back as far as it would go. With me holding the camera strap and the client holding the monopod, we lowered it over the side of the boat and, using the 2 second self timer had just enough time to get the camera into position before the shutter fired.
While it seems ironic that the chosen image should be the one taken with the older, smaller, compact camera rather than one of the DSLRs I was also shooting with, I do really love the water in this shot. We sat around for a few minutes after getting the boat into position to let the ripples die down and it really made a difference.
I’m looking forward to January and seeing what the creatives in Denver manage to do with this one!
For comparison, here’s one of the other shots that I rather liked and which I processed “for myself.” I shot everything handheld, lying along the side of the boat and using 3 shot, 2 stop brackets to allow me to generate HDRs later.

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Lake Travis Promontory, originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

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Gulf Fritillary Feeding (cropped), originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

I took this photo a couple of years ago and am posting it just now since VFXY Photo’s weekly theme is “Macro”. This was one of about 3 good shots I got in an afternoon at my mother-in-law’s house outside San Marcos. It was taken with a 70-300mm lens with 56mm of extension, using the zoom to adjust focus (I find this works a whole lot better than using the focus ring for some reason. The camera was set to manual focus since autofocus doesn’t work too well at these close ranges and with this lens/tube combination).

Forbes magazine has an article this month on Luminary Micro and our CEO Jim Reinhart. Check it out here.

A few weeks ago, Jim Goldstein, a California based landscape and nature photographer whose work I really enjoy, challenged readers of his blog to buy physical prints from two or three other photographers whose work they enjoy then write about the experience. The point of the exercise is to introduce people to the idea of photography as art and also have them thinking in terms of financially supporting the photographers whose work they enjoy. Given that I have been selling art prints online for a couple of years, this seemed a worthwhile project so I set myself the task of actually buying and hanging some photography taken by photographers other than myself.

After dithering for a few weeks, I finally found my opportunity last weekend while visiting a local art fair hosted by Central Presbyterian Church. Exhibiting at the fair were Jim Beckett and Pete Holland, two photographers whose work I was extremely impressed in and whose photographic tastes are very similar to my own.

Jim’s work concentrates mostly on landscape and architecture. His handling of light is exquisite – foggy shorelines in Oregon, rays of light shining through cathedral windows, shrouded details of steam engines – and his compositions beautiful. I purchased two small prints from him – “St. Peter’s Basilica; Rome” and “Calliope: Between Songs” – and offered to exchange further prints if he would be interested.

Pete, who I realised part way through our conversation, founded the very well respected Holland Photo here in Austin, is currently working with HDR techniques and has produced some outstanding landscapes using them. He was also showing a collection of nature macros. We talked at length about the challenges of HDR and I bought an outstanding print – “Painted Desert, Arizona”. This was a part-exchange transaction and I owe him one print from my gallery once he lets me know which he wants.

Talking to both these photographers and discussing their work was most enjoyable. The personal aspect of the transactions was definitely more appealing to me than, for example, buying prints directly from a web site. In addition to the physical prints themselves, I also have the stories behind them and more of an insight into the artist’s intent when making the pictures.

Last night I completed my October photographic art purchases in Book People where I bought a wonderful art photography book – “The Color of Loss” by Dan Burkholder. You can read more about this in the previous post on this blog.

So, three purchases from three excellent photographers in October. All in all, a very pleasant experience.

One of my greatest failings is that I buy books a lot faster than I read them. Typically, my book purchases are paperbacks or technical manuals but yesterday, for only the second time ever, I shelled out full price for an art photography book. The Color of Loss by Dan Burkholder is a collection of stunning HDR images taken in New Orleans following the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. The HDR technique is used beautifully by Burkholder to emphasise the texture of decay found in various previously-flooded buildings.

This is the first time I’ve seen HDR images published in this way and it’s refreshing to find that this form of the photographic art is now considered acceptable by at least one publisher (University of Texas Press in this case). If you enjoy taking or viewing HDRs, take a look at this book and see some examples of the technique at its very best.

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Pedernales Falls State Park, originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

Cameron and I had a great time last weekend at the annual Cub Scout Pack 101 All-Ranks Campout at Pedernales Falls State Park. The weather was glorious though 46F at night was rather a surprise. Compared to last year, the river level was extremely low. Whereas there was a decent waterfall last October, this year, there was barely any flow at all despite several inches of rain a couple of days earlier.

I spent most of my time chaperoning the boys of Den 4 so didn’t take too many pictures but did manage to get a few nice shots of the river and rock formations during our Saturday morning hike (post Scottish Highland Games and pre Pumpkin Carving). Here’s one showing a particularly picturesque, deep pool just below what was a raging waterfall last year.

I’ve found a couple of sites using my photos this week (which is perfectly fine since they are non-commercial and the photos are released on a Creative Commons license). My shot of the Santa Catalina arch and Volcano Agua in Antigua, Guatemala was named photo of the day at Travel in the know and a Spanish-language travel blog has written an article about “The unclassifiable beauty of Hamilton Pool” and illustrated it with a couple of my photos.

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Sierra Nevada, originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

I’m currently sitting in San Jose airport waiting to come home after the ARM Developers’ Conference where I was presenting for the last couple of days. I had hoped to get into San Francisco one evening but we didn’t have time so the only photography I’ve done was through the plane window on the outbound flight.

In the old, pre-Photoshop days, pictures I took from airliners were pretty much universally hopeless but thanks to digital levels and curves adjustments, they can now be a whole lot better. This view of the Sierra Nevada range was taken at about 9am just to the west of Yosemite. The lighting was spectacular and the many layers of depth really made a very appealing shot (to me at least). It’s just a pity that airliner windows are not even close to optical quality

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Charminar Interior, originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

This image is from my first trip to India a couple of years ago. I posted quite a few images from this trip at the time but now, going through the photos again with a fresh set of eyes, I am happy to find several shots that I overlooked the first time round. Thinking back, my original edit was done during a 5 hour wait in Delhi airport on the way home and I was rather tired so it’s not surprising that I didn’t do a particularly good job of grading the pictures.

Charminar is one of the hallmark buildings of Hyderabad and sits in the centre of a large road junction in the old part of the city. Despite its fame, however, the building is in a rather poor state of repair and graffiti is present on most of the upstairs walls (as you can see if you click on the image then chose “All Sizes” to see the large version). Despite this, however, I enjoyed the receding arches which I felt made a strong composition.

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Cumulo Nimbus, originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

I’ve blogged this image before but thought I would add it again since this week’s theme at VFXY Photo is “Storm Clouds”. Most people in our part of Central Texas would be quite happy to see a few of these since we have had very little rainfall over the last 6 months or so. While Ike drenched the areas to our south and east, we completely avoided any rain and remain in a very parched state.