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..