David Bergman, photographer for Sports Illustrated, has put together a 3 and a half minute video containing 1300 or so of the 1800 images he took during the recent Florida/Alabama football game in Atlanta. By my reckoning, he was shooting an average of 1 frame every 3 seconds during the 90 minutes of play but, given the amount of dead time in a football game, I suspect that when things were moving, he was running at 5 or 6fps almost constantly. Take a look at the video, though, since it’s beautifully done.

“>
The Religions of Austin, originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

I found this was a rather fun grouping of antiques in a fascinating shop on west 6th Street in Austin recently. As one commenter on Flickr pointed out, it’s really missing one of the major local religions, though – Longhorn Football.

I’ve just finished The Moment It Clicks by Joe McNally, famed New York photographer and photojournalist with credits in just about all the big publications you care to mention (National Geographic, Newsweek, Time, etc.). I read the 256 page book in 2 sittings and am happy to report that this is the best photography book I have read in years. Note that I said “read” rather than “looked at”. Not only is the book full of beautiful images but McNally’s collection of anecdotes, technical details and background information provides a really enjoyable read. His “guy-next-door,” “let’s get together for a beer” style is really engaging and refreshing compared to so many other rather stuffy art photography books. There’s no artistic B.S. here.

This is not a textbook but it is chock full of great information – technical details of lighting and composition, psychology tips for dealing with subjects, equipment hints and tips. Above all, however, the combination of down-to-earth narrative style, interesting stories and astonishingly good photographs makes this a must-read for anyone aspiring to greater heights in their photography.

“>
LBJ Ranch Doorbell, originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

Last Tuesday, I spent the afternoon visiting the Lyndon Baines Johnson Ranch outside Johnson City. This was one of the tours organised for a group of foreign students who are visiting Austin during the Christmas break as part of the Christmas International House program.

Despite the fact that I’ve lived here for 14 years, I had never visited the ranch before. What a wasted opportunity! The park holds not just the ranch house but also a working farm modeled on the original 1915 homestead and staffed by excellent guides in period costume. As per LBJ’s instructions, the main ranch is still run as a going concern breeding a herd of Herefords so there are cowboys and cattle to see. The park also includes LBJ’s birthplace, the family cemetery, the one-room-schoolhouse where he started his education and the main “Texas White House” though the only room here which is open to the public currently is the office. Overall, it’s a great place to visit and outstanding value for money – the park is free to get into and the only fee is a mere $1 to take the (albeit short) guided tour at the Texas White House.

We only had a couple of hours to spend there but I’m already planning to go back on January 3rd to spend some time photographing the area.

This shot is of the doorbell to LBJ’s office which I found rather charming (and well-polished!).

I’ve just stumbled upon the work of Tim Tadder. Wow! This is photographic artistry at its best – great subjects and composition, stunning lighting and unbelievably good post processing. Check his work out!

In my quest to learn more about lighting and work on some “people pictures”, I returned to the Strobist web site yesterday to poke around and see what all the fuss is about. I had looked at the site a couple of times before but didn’t do a lot of searching and figured it was just another blog. Delving deeper, however, I find that I was totally wrong – there’s a ton of really interesting information hidden away (OK – not actually hidden, but linked in an area near the bottom of the page) there. How could I have missed this earlier? In particular, the Lighting 101 section is exactly what I was looking for. It’s a structured, easy to understand series of articles introducing equipment and techniques for using off-camera flash lighting and has proven to be an absolutely riveting read. Couple that with the inspiration I’ve gleaned from Joe McNally’s fabulous book, The Moment it Clicks (a birthday present that I am reading during the Christmas break) and I’m well on the way to being extremely fired up about trying some flash-and-reflector photography in the near future.

“>
Red Laces, originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

Here’s another image from Jack and Noel’s wedding last week. This was grabbed quickly during the reception and shows the back of one of the bridesmaids’ dresses. The lighting was provided by a single on-camera flash bounced off the low ceiling of the reception room and, pretty much by luck, the resulting angle was perfect for bringing out the texture in the laces. I’ve boosted the contrast a little but but, aside from that, this hasn’t had a lot of work done on it.

“>
Merry Christmas!, originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

A very Merry Christmas to all our friends and family around the world!

In reading some other blog last week, I was introduced to ClusterShot. This site offers a convenient way to make your Flickr photos available for sale under a general-purpose royalty-free license. The interface is clean and easy to use both from a photographer’s and buyer’s point of view and the basic idea of the site is excellent so I’ve added 164 of my favourite images there and made them available for sale. Currently they are all set up such that the potential buyer has to make me an offer but I could (and probably will) set up individual photo pricing over time.

I get the feeling that the site is not currently heavily used since, if you search for “texas”, “austin”, “scotland” or “guatemala” currently, you will find that I dominate the rankings.

“>
Harpsichord, First Presbyterian Church, originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

I’m rather enjoying the opportunity to go through all my old shots now that I’ve imported them into Lightroom and am checking all the keywords. The image you see here has an interesting story behind it. It was taken in the sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church in Austin where I was a member for around 10 years. The current church building was built in the early 1970s but elements from the old, downtown church were incorporated into the new building, including a wall of beautiful stained glass along one side of the sanctuary.

The church also had a wonderful music program and ran regular concerts, one of the side effects of which was that you could often find fascinating musical instruments on temporary loan in preparation for some performance or other.
In this case, the fascinating instrument was this gorgeous harpsichord made by Gerald Self of San Antonio.

Given the lighting in the Sanctuary, it wasn’t possible to take a single shot and capture both the stained glass and the detail inside the instrument so I shot several brackets and later masked them together in Photoshop to produce the final image. Rediscovering the original JPEG files this week, however, I pulled them in to Photomatix to see what it would do and I ended up with this rather nice result. The settings I used on this picture were intended to give a pretty natural looking result and I think it worked rather nicely.

If memory serves correctly, the original version of this image was used on the inside cover of the FPC member’s directory for 2005 or thereabouts.