Off to South Africa

I'm sitting in airport in Knoxville TN waiting to board plane. By this time tomorrow (11/29) I will be in Johannesburg South Africa. By the evening of Monday, will be in Kruger NP.. I am going to attempt to publish some while on the road, with some images, if possible.
Stayed tuned.. Two weeks in South Africa will be stunning and hopefully come back with lots of great images..

Bill

Weighing in on Health Care Debate

Ok, most of what I write here is usually nature and philosophically related. I hate politics and usually don't like to get caught up into political debate. Many times it is a struggle of one power (read money) against another power (read more money). I have always thought that we should have terms limits across the board (yes, that includes the Supreme Court) and maybe, just maybe, we would have more statesmen (and stateswomen) come forward to serve their country, not the politician with agendas to fill and pork to send home. We would also have to have election reform because you cannot get elected without lots of money backing you (and usually one of the parties, but don't get me started on our party system!).

What has brought me out to want to voice my opinion is the health care debate. So many of us are tired of paying huge prices for health care and being totally at the mercy of the insurance company. We all want affordable health care. But the plan ahead of us thinks that by putting slight pressure on insurance companies that they will mend their ways.. HA. If you are old enough, think back to when insurance was to cover going into the hospital or catastrophic injuries. ER visits were covered because people usually only went to the ER for true emergencies. Doctors office visits were reasonable, medicine didn't cost as much and tests weren't as sophisticated and expensive.

Insurance companies came in and said we can cover all of this, just pay us a bit more.

And they did and everyone one seemed happy. Most people didn't know that the coverage they now had greatly increased the hospitals and physicians overhead. Now it seems there are more people working in hospitals and doctor offices to keep up with the billing and insurance paperwork than actually are there to help you feel better. And I have never met a "poor" insurance executive.. If you want to see a great video, go to http://pol.moveon.org/insurance_execs/?id=17285-2656214-4O57_7x&t=2 and see Will Ferrel talk about health care reform.

Medicine is a healing art. We need to decrease the big business aspect of medicine and decrease the cost of medicine in this country. Having a single payer system with possible supplemental insurances is something to think about. Look at the French system. Are we too proud to realize that our system is broken and we need to look around at ones that are working? We as Americans also need to step up and claim some responsibility. Many of the diseases are self inflicted.. Look at our habits, our diet. If we took better care of ourselves, our health care cost would go down and this has nothing to do with access to health care. This has to do with taking charge of your own life and eating better and exercise more. This 2 things would lead to healthier Americans and less health care costs.. It's up to us.

I have not been a fan of Michael Moore and his films.. To be honest, I haven't seen any of them. But his newest film on Capitalism also strikes at the heart of medicine. He made a film on a single payer health system, but we don't have unlimited resources to run any and every test on any person that wants it. To say health care is a right is placing the emphasis on in the wrong direction. It is a privilege that we enjoy by the prosperity of living in the this country. But to abuse ourselves abuses that privilege and to expect all of us to pay for a person's choice of lack of self control when it leads to adverse health is wrong. A single payer system will only work when we are also made accountable for the health care choices we make.

When we look at nature, there is hope. We can change and have a rebirth. Just like the butterfly, it takes stages to reach the beautiful flying jewel we see. We are at a stage where we have to make a choice of responsibility or self indulgence. The fat cats of big business would love to see us more self indulgent, because they will just get richer.. But there is still a choice!

Training for Wildlife Photography

Practice makes perfect. If you are want to capture moving wildlife, but need some practice, sports is a great way to practice. I have shot mainly soccer and football(some tennis, baseball and track) and it helps to see how your equipment works, especially if you are making a big trip to Africa to shoot wildlife. During an expensive trip is not the time to learn how your equipment works. It is best to learn how it works, get familiar with all the controls and also have a good idea about outcome of an image before you take a trip.

In shooting sports, I use a monopod, because I'm moving up and down the touchline (sideline for those of you unfamiliar with the most watched sport in the world, soccer) and have to be able to jump out of the way of a ball or player headed my direction. I use VR on my Nikon 200-400 and usually zoom out to watch action and zoom in when I see what I want. I always pre shoot some images of players to make sure my exposure is not blowing out highlights. I shoot in A priority and watch my shutter speed to make sure that I have enough speed to capture action sharply. Watch your image count on your card, it's a shame to have 5 images left and start ripping off what should have been 10-20 images and miss the best action because your card is full.

I have gotten some great shots of soccer and football over the years and know that it helps when I am focused on shooting wildlife action. It helps if you have kids that play sports. My oldest son played HS soccer and my middle son plays HS tennis and the youngest is playing HS football (and hopefully soccer in spring). Rob Sheppard, a great friend of mine, has done the same thing with baseball and soccer, his 2 kids sports. He has advanced to college soccer as Sammie now plays in college. You can hone your photography skills while being involved in your child's life. Pretty much a win/win situation. To see some images from my most recent football shoot, go to www.flickr.com/photos/bcphoto3/ .

Get out there and practice and spend some time with your kids..

Window with a view

As I was sitting at the computer, transferring files (in LightRoom), Joe said, "Hey Dad, there's a deer eating your wildflowers in the front yard.".. I went to the front window which overlooks the yard and flower garden and, sure enough, a doe was comfortable downing my wildflowers like I had set a buffet table for her.. I grabbed my 200-400 and handheld out the window (ISO 400 with VR turned on) and started snapping.. She ambled her way down the yard and then paused to leave us a present.. Talk about lack of gratitude for not chasing her of or putting out things to scare deer off.. I might have to rethink this open attitude about deer in the yard if they are all going to be this indignant about eating out.. still seeing the flock of turkeys in the neighbor.. Rebecca wants me to catch one to fatten up for Thanksgiving.. Might not be a bad idea..

ARRGGHHH, Lightroom

Ok, it's my fault, but I just spent the past day reconnecting folders that I moved outside of Lightroom.. For those of you using Lightroom, a word of caution, move folders (within a HD or to different HD) within Lightroom.. Otherwise you will be reconnecting for a while.. So, the big HDs are up and going, but transferring everything (and making sure there are backups) is proving to be a painstaking task.. Once this is done, it should go smoothly from here on out..

Some of you may know that I lost my father to an accident this April (actually the accident was in September 2008, but he held on for a long time) and then my niece in May.. It is amazing how emotional drains like this can really affect your creativity.. I am just getting back into the swing of things and hope this fall will be good for photography and my soul..

I am putting together teaching for 2010 and am working on the website now... Have a trip planned to South Africa in December with 2 friends.. One is the editor of Nature's Best for Kids, an online publication (now, started out as a print publication). Hope to bring back great images of Africa and maybe some unusual images ( light painting and HDR and time lapse).. We'll see how things work out..

Here is the last in the Jewels found.. Monarch in full glory..

PS-- have moved 300+ GB so far.. on my hard drives...

More Jewels

Ok,

Initialized two 1.5 Terabytes HDs last night.. Started at 445pm and the computer was still working on them at 11pm.. Now comes the task of moving currents images to HDs and importing all those older images into Lightroom.. Each has 1.36 TB of storage capacity after formatting..

Will begin transfer today.. If takes a lot of time, then will try to start before going to bed each night and hopefully wake up each morning with transferred images..

In following along with found jewels, this Monarch chrysalis is from a time I went out and found monarch eggs and raised them to butterflies.. Great experience and several images from that are among my best selling images.. Several books, more than several magazines have run images from this series..

Enjoy.

Jewels while converting

No, not religions or sex, but converting images from multiple hard drives to one hard drive (with 2 backups).. I have just gotten three 1.5 terabyte drives to put in my Burly Towers and will be pulling all my images together onto one drive (the other 2 are backups).. I still have lots of older digital images that have not made it into Photoshop Lightroom (v2) yet and this will allow me to organize everything efficiently in Lightroom and into one large photo folder..

If you are a photographer and are wondering how to manage your images, look no further.. Lightroom is the way to go.. Apple has an alternative-- Aperature, but most photographers have jumped on the Lightroom bandwagon.. Most everything you need to do to an image can be done in Lightroom, and without knowing how to use Photoshop (which can be very daunting to the uninitiated).

I will post some stats as I go through the conversion process.. I'm hoping to find some more jewels like this one ( Monarch caterpillar).. I will actually be posting 2 more stages over the next 2 days so you can get a glimpse into the raising of a monarch butterfly..

Stats today before jumping into conversion are

RAW 1 -372 GB,

RAW 2- 80 GB,

PSD - 65 GB,

Legacy - 400 GB

HD 3 and 4 - 40 GB

So a total of 800 GB of images to be transferred.. After transferring I will have

1 Photo HD

1 PSD (Photoshop work) HD

1 Movies HD (these are HD movies I've shot and Time Lapse Movies I create)

1 Work HD (teaching files, Website files, created music for slide shows, articles, book manuscripts)..

These 4 HDs will be backed up each time new data is written to them.. Each one will also be backed up once a week with a removable drive and store offsite... This is the triple redundancy that you will here about when talking to IT (read computer geek) people..

Should be fun.. I will also share backup software I find to make the automatic backups easier.. But remember, I'm on a Mac, so all you who haven't converted to the Light, I might not know what's best for the PC, but I will look around for you guys too... Or you can go down to the Mac store and pick up your first Mac.. tell them Bill sent you..

Backyard Wildlife

For about a week I have been seeing a flock of turkeys in our neighborhood. Yesterday I found and turkey feather in the driveway.. This morning while coming home from errands, the flock was ambling across my neighbor's front yard.. I have made it a practice to keep my photo bag and tripod in the back of the car to be able to shoot at a moment's notice..

I pulled out the 200-400 Nikon (eat your heart out Canon users) and my D700.. I decided to use my monopod (usually only use it for sports, but it fit this situation) and started working my way closer.. Finally got a good shot.. I'll spread some corn out in the woods in my back yard and see if I can lure them in closer.... Who knows, if they stick around for a while, maybe we'll have wild turkey for Thanksgiving....

Wandering around the yard

In between watching DreamWeaver video on Lynda.com yesterday, I wandered around the yard looking for images to shoot..

I came across this flower (from a plant that I keep trying to pull out of my flower bed).. I reminds me that sometimes we try to deal with things before we know fully what they will become.. and sometimes the final result is a work of beauty..

Trying to be patient and look to the future and not be in a hurry to change something we don't fully understand or appreciate yet is a trait I am working on in my own life...

and it's funny how art really does imitate life... or is it life imitates art? Enjoy...

Boy is my back sore.. We've been renovating our waterfall/ pond and I took the mortar and rock that we took out of it to the landfill and unloaded the pickup by myself by shovel and hand, all 1900 pounds of it..

Made it harder to bend over and squat today when I was outside shooting some flowers and designs in the yard..

I was going to share one of those today, but I played with my images from Canada and one of my HDR (High Dynamic Range) images came out very nicely.. This is a combination of multiple exposures (in this case 5 different exposures)..

I use Photomatix Pro to combine them ( I used to do this in Photoshop, but Photomatix is much easier and quicker)..

After a couple of people said "wow" when I showed off the image, I thought it would be nice to post.. Just one of the types of photographic techniques I will be teaching in some of my classes in 2010..

I saw a wonderful movie the other night with my Rebecca.. "Julie and Julia".. As Rebecca says, it is not a chick flick but a food flick.. I disagree on both accounts.. it is a flick about challenging yourself and learning about yourself and overcoming obstacles, no matter what.. I have picked up the gauntlet thrown down in the movie (at least in my head and life) and am rising to the challenge. I am going to be offering teaching again about photography, digital photography and Lightroom (with a little Photoshop thrown in) starting in 2010.. I am working on the dates and schedule right now and should be posted soon on www.billcampbelldigital.com.. I have also challenged my self to make images at least 5 days a week.. I would like to post an image every day, but right now with the strain of still working a lot in the ER, 5 days is a good compromise.

As a nature/ travel and fine art photographer, I find myself always thinking about light and lighting.. Maybe that's where my son gets his love and joy of lighting from.. He runs the lighting at church, local playhouse and other events around town.. Has lightboards and lights of his own and still has time to play HS football.. We shot a staged image of him this Sunday after service for the local newspaper article on kids doing volunteer projects.. I am so proud of him and what he does and his convictions.. I love to teach adults photography, but this next year I will probably offer at least one session for teenagers.. Still in the works so keep looking..

Here is Joe and his passion...

Is bigger better?

Ok, it seems that in the country that bigger is better.. Cars, hamburgers, sodas; they all come in larger sizes and it seems that advertising has programmed us to think that more is better.. Maybe that's why we have fallen into the economic mess that our country is presently struggling to dig out of.. This all brings me around to my present dilemma. I had been shooting with the Nikon D2X until the D700 came.. the D700 has essentially replaced my D2X (anyone want to buy a used D2X?).. When the D3 came out, it was a great camera but the pixel size was about the same as my D2X, so why bother.. I decided to wait until the D3X came out.. Hence the D700 in the mean time. Now the D3X is out, I find my self struggling with the cost vs megapixel dilemma.. Talking to friends, the D3 is a great camera and the D3X might not be up to speed in the higher ISO the way the D3 is.. And for a nature shooter, the D3 is faster... Can I justify larger files for more money and slower speed, if the quality of the files falls some at higher ISO.. I'm planning to go to South Africa in December, so the decision needs to be made soon... Or Nikon could just give me one of each to use! Tune in later for more on the megapixel debate..

Return Not from the Dead

It seems that turning 50 has been a whirlwind of emotions and events, none really having to do with passing the half century mark.. Within the past 18 months my life has been a roller coaster ride (well, most of it low points with very few "wee" moments). Divorce, death (father critical injured then 7 months later dying, 14 yo niece dying suddenly 5 weeks after my father), buying house, moving (just within same town), sharing custody of boys, dating again after 25 years, finishing book project.. Really wish some of this had been postponed or never happened.. But that's life and you just push forward and keep on going.. In the vein of keeping on going, I am trying to start back up my teaching in 2010.. Along with taking on new photographic challenges (people, commercial, selling more fine art prints).. A new website (actually 3-4 sites) will be up and going within 2 months.. a new billcampbellphotography, a new billcampbelldigital, a photoshelter image licensing site, and a book site to purchase the Smoky Mountains Photographer's Guide and, when it is printed this fall, the Cumberland Trail book.

Thanks to all my faithful friends who have been concerned and emailing and calling.. I am surviving and 2010 will be a year of thriving, not surviving..

Bill