…join me in the search for the simplicity found on the other side of complexity!
I love it when two seemingly unrelated areas of my life collide with positive results.
Monday and Tuesday we had 9 inches of fresh spring powder snow in the mountains around Missoula, so Wednesday morning I headed for Snowbowl, our local ski area.
I enjoy winter photography as much as the skiing, so I took along my 20D, fitted with an 18-200 zoom. I like getting back into the silence of the woods and photographing the peace and serenity of snow, trees, and blue sky. (more…)
” I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841 – 1935)
Associate justice on the US Supreme Court (1902 – 1932).
Sometimes Holmes’ wonderful, elegant, and often elusive “simplicity on the other side of complexity” comes not from external system improvements, not from better technology, but from simple practice. You’ve experienced this. Remember riding a bicycle? Now remember learning to ride a bicycle? (more…)
I don’t vacuum my office as often as I should. Okay, I only vacuum when someone’s coming to visit, and we haven’t been getting many guests the last couple years. So I’m careful to vacuum out my PC’s at least once a year. After all, they live on the floor. As does the dog. And the cat. And my boots. And the furnace cold air return duct. In short, I know my PC’s live in an unclean environment. So every New Year’s day I have a calendar reminder that pops up and tells me to clean them. (I run 3 tower PC’s, an old one, a new one, and a Linux box for fun.)
Cleaning a tower PC is quick and easy. I power each PC down, unplug the power cord, and open up the side. I carefully use a vacuum hose to suck out the obvious dust bunnies. I suck the dirt off the external fan grills. If there is dust on internal fans or components, (more…)
There is an inverse relationship between depth of field (DOF) and f-stop. As you reduce your lens’ f-stop, going from f/2.8 down to f/16, f/22 (and even f/32 and f/45 on some lenses), your DOF increases. When shooting a macro photo this increased DOF is very tempting. It is easy to crank the aperture down as small as you can if you are using strobes, or if the subject is motionless and allows long exposure times with a tripod.
Then why not do it!? After all, you’ll have a better image because more if it will be in focus, right? Well, yes, you’ll have more DOF, but. . . you won’t necessarily get a better photo. The smallest apertures on a lens rob you of that razor sharp edge detail that helps create a really stunning macro photograph. This sharpness is technically known as “acutance”.
Asparagus with Snap!
Why does the sharpness decrease with smaller f-stops? (more…)
I love to hike, and always carry a camera to record what the day brings. But a a single frame often doesn’t do justice to the view from a Montana mountainside. The magic is in the experience of taking in the entire vista, focusing, one by one, on myriad different details.
So I often shoot panoramas – comprised of somewhere between three and forty frames. Once home, I download the images and using either Photoshop’s Photomerge or Hugin, stitch them together. But it’s a MONSTER – often 30 MB or larger. I can reduce it to an e-mailable size, but then you can’t see those great details! So that means the image is held captive on my drive.
Watching a TED video last weekend, I bumped into a solution that frees my land-locked panoramas.
Photosynth.net lets you (more…)
Thanks for dropping by! As this blog develops I’ll be bringing you useful bits of how-to knowledge aimed at speeding you in your search for the simplicity on the other side of complexity!
What will you discover if you sign up? (more…)
