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Taking a look back at 2017
The new year is always a good time to look forward and to look back, so annually I gather some of my favorite photos from the last 12 months and put together a little gallery. 2017 was a great year, thanks to the love and support of my wife Robin. I had many new adventures including showing my work at over 20 shows, several Florida trips, photographing the beautiful countryside and lavender fields of Provence, France, and a couple of trips to Oregon, highlighted by spending time in Oregon's desert photographing the total solar eclipse. I'm looking forward to an even more exciting 2018 and wishing everyone good health. Read More... |
| | Acadia workshop
One of my favorite National Parks is Acadia in Maine, so I'm sharing the great locations I have found there during a workshop June 2-6. It is a special time of year in the park, while most of the country is thinking summer, it is still spring in Acadia. The colors are vibrant and best of all there aren't many people there!
On top of Cadillac Mountain is the first place to see the rising sun in the U.S., the rocky shore is always magnificent and we'll photograph a hidden gem - a spectacular grove of white birch trees in deep bright green grass.
Of course we'll spend time in a lobster pound, visit quaint fishing villages and I bring my big flashlight so we can photograph a scenic lighthouse after the sun has set. I only have a few spots left but I hope you can join us. Read More... |
| | | There's something special about seeing water drops collide |
| | Photographing water drops as they splash and collide is just plain old silly fun. I've always been intrigued by high speed photography, in fact one of the few autographs I have is from Dr. Harold Edgerton, who pioneered using quick flashes to freeze moving objects. One of his most famous photos is of a bullet going through an apple. I know my wife wouldn't be too excited about me firing a rifle in our basement, so I'm sticking with water drops for now. It takes some special equipment to control the drops and triggering the camera at the right time. I think the best shots are when a second drop hits the splash created by another drop. Every splash is different and you never know what you are going to get. I'm doing several workshops so people can use my equipment to make their own fun pictures. See more photos and read about the workshop. |
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Photographic Creativity in Cape May
I'm hosting a special workshop the first weekend of May in the beautiful Victorian town of Cape May, NJ. Cape May is at the southern point of New Jersey where the Delaware Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean. It has long been a place to get away from the city and let the mind think about the better things in life. Cape May will be the base for what I hope becomes an annual weekend to let creativity flow and think about making photos and getting lost in possibilities. Check out the workshop details. |
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Photographing frozen water bubbles
I figure that if it is really cold outside I have two choices, cuddle up in a blanket all winter or get out and see what crazy things I can photograph. I like to be as crazy as I can most of the time so when the prediction was for -12 degrees in Vermont I thought I'd get some soap bubbles, see what happens when they freeze and photograph them. One of the hardest things was to find a bottle of kids' soap bubbles in sub-zero temperatures in Vermont. I finally found some at the fifth store I went to, a dollar store. I then did a little Googling and realized it would be just as easy to make my own soapy solution and in fact, maybe better.
The kid bubbles tend to be pretty thin and I needed to stiffen them, I found a formula online for mixing corn syrup with dish detergent and adding a little sugar to make even more crystallizations. I made several different mixtures and found that having an equal amount of Karo corn syrup and dish detergent added to about seven times as much water worked pretty well. I didn't see much difference when I added some sugar, so maybe I didn't add enough.
The hard part is not breaking the bubbles. Most of them did pop right away but I had the best results when I dipped the bottom of a wine glass in the solution and then the bubbles would stick to it. Once the bubbles froze they slowly collapsed within themselves, so I had to be ready to shoot as soon as the bubble started freezing.
It was rather windy, so I had to set up a little studio inside my unheated garage. It was -10 degrees in the garage but it still took a while for the bubbles to freeze. I used two or three flashes to illuminate the frozen bubbles and tried some with colored gels on the flash and used different backgrounds. Read more about the bubbles on my blog.
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