End of November

With winter closing in. This is the month my wife describes as existing in "two shades of brown." Toss in a little blue sky and the occasional snatch of color here and there, and it's not too bad.



Photographs taken at Jelke's Creek Bird Sanctuary in Sleepy Hollow, Illinois. I plan to revisit the huge old tree throughout the month of December.

Photographs © 2010 James Jordan.

Zooooom

Hi. Remember me? The guy who used to post 20-25 posts a month here? Yeah, that guy.

I was photographing storm clouds rolling in over a corn field out in the open countryside west of Chicago way back in September. Shooting in between passing cars. Finally I thought, why not? I waited for the next car to come by and shot just as it passed. For no other reason than that it might make for an interesting shot.

I pretty much missed autumn as far as getting colorful fall pictures for myself. Most of my weekends were taken up with photography gigs and my weekdays with processing pictures. And it doesn't look like things will ease up any time soon. Not that there's a problem with that. I'm thankful for the work, much of it repeat business and referrals from happy clients. Gotta love that.

Not sure about the fate of this blog. It may wind up going the way of other abandoned blogs. Maybe I can come up with a theme for the winter months and post a series of shots here. Maybe it becomes a showcase for the professional stuff I'm currently doing. Dunno for sure.

I'm now into by-the-seat-of-the-pants video production. Picked up a client that keeps me busy producing short videos. Getting some inquiries for making more videos from here and there.

It's an interesting ride and I'm happy to see where it takes me.

Katie

I spent the month of September shooting pictures for a lot of people. Nothing wrong with that, but I was kept so busy, I didn't have time to make any pictures for myself. I did get to go out this past Saturday and do some landscape shooting just for me. Didn't come back with too much worth keeping, but it was good to get out and play with possibilities.

One of the things that going out on Saturday helped with was a senior portrait session on Sunday. Once the fairly standard selection of senior picture poses were in the bag, I experimented with environmental portraits, and I'm pretty happy with the results.

Nearly every shot from the session is lit with flash, but in such a way as to blend in with the late day sunlight. Sometimes the flash was the key light with the sun adding an accent. Other times I let the sun be the main light while filling in the shadows with flash. Katie's mom is standing just to the right of the larger tree in the picture above, holding a flash unit aimed at her daughter which was fired with a wireless trigger. Had there been no flash, the right side of Katie's face would have been dark.



For the most part, this was straight-ahead, no diffusers, stark nekkid flash. There wasn't alot of choice because a diffuser or umbrella would have gotten blown away by pretty strong winds. But it worked.



Besides helping to balance the ambient sunlight, the flash adds a little catchlight in the eyes, a little sparkle, a little life. Nice.

Photographs © 2010 James Jordan.

Back again for now

Some people are beginning to wonder where I went off to. The posting here has been slow to say the least. I've been right here where I've always been, but growing increasingly busy -- when you're trying to make a living as a freelance photographer, busy is a good thing. The only problem is that when you're busy, you wind up making nearly all of your pictures for someone else. Since I haven't had much of a chance to make pictures for myself, the frequency of new images appearing here has suffered.

I had a chance to get out and make some pictures for myself over the Labor Day weekend, so at least for a couple of weeks there will be fresh stuff to see here. It will definitely be a hodgepodge of stuff -- nature, people, landscapes.

Today's picture is a quickie. For years I've driven up to Door County, Wisconsin and back and each way, I'd pass a sign for Sheboygan Falls. And I'd always wonder if Sheboygan Falls had a waterfall. It does. Quite a few, in fact. The photo above is of the top of a series of cascades that cut through the town.

I was passing through the town on the way to somewhere else and stopped by the falls. I wanted to use a slow shutter speed to blur the water, but didn't have a tripod with me. So I jammed the camera against a railing and experimented with shutter speeds. One-quarter seemed to do the trick. I would have preferred one-half second or longer, but I couldn't get that long of an exposure without showing some camera shake.

Just a hint of fall color in the trees. We've made the turn into September and the turn of autumn is not far off.

By the way, if I'm not here, you might be able to see some of my most recent work appear on Flickr and my Facebook photography page.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Dried lace, tree and prairie grass

In that order, in diminishing degrees of focus. Late afternoon light (which comes dreadfully early this time of year).

Shot with 50mm f1.8 lens. Love the shallow depth of field this lens provides. Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Autumn journey

If you haven't noticed, today's image is a little different than what's usually posted here. Or is it?

The photographs I make and share with the world are not so much depictions of things -- they are depictions of the feelings created by viewing those things within a particular setting. At least that's the goal I have in mind when setting out to create pictures.

The photo above started as a contrasty, lens flare-y, moderately underexposed shot of the hillside, the tree and the hiker against the afternoon sun. I punched the contrast even further, added a background photo layer of dried field grasses (blurred beyond recognition), then added another photo layer of stone tile to add some texture.

The result is an image of a person leaving the comfort of a life that is past (note the windmill in the lower left) and beginning an arduous journey into an uncertain future that grants no promises (note the dead tree) while at the same time harboring hope that things will work out well (note the bright sunshine amid the chaos).

In many respects, this photo is a self-portrait.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Portrait of November #5

An autumn tree situated on a glacial kame, Glacial Park, Ringwood, Illinois.

When I was in art school, one way the instructors taught us how to make better choices regarding our illustrations was to force us to use a limited pallete of colors. It helped instill some discipline when confronted with hundreds of possible choices regarding color and prevented too much of a reliance on any one particular color in our work.

Every so often I try to limit my photographic options to break an over-reliance on a particular mode of operating. I pretty much live with a wide angle lens on my camera. During the visit to Glacial Park, I put a 55-200mm zoom on camera and forced myself to view the world through a tiny 200mm window. With all the possible views available at the park, I wanted to forego wide-angle shots in favor of detailed "pieces" that could convey the sense of the end of autumn and the onset of winter.

I think that for the most part, I succeeded.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Portrait of November #4

I wonder if Stephen Covey is a photographer? The second of his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is "Begin with the end in mind." I find that I employ that nugget of advice practically every time I trip the shutter on my camera. I usually have a very well developed idea of the finished version of every frame I snap. That vision guides my choice of settings on my camera and the frame that I capture is well within the range of that which I envisioned. Usually.

As I considered these two subjects at Glacial Park in McHenry County, Illinois, I imagined that these two photos would "sing" with a deep twilight sky in the background. The only problem being that at the time I took these, it was three o'clock in the afternoon on an overcast day. I took them anyway, intending to lay in some color later.



The sky color came from another photo taken in precisely the conditions I imagined -- deep twilight on a clear evening. I sampled several areas of the sky in this photograph that I took last summer and used the colors as the basis for a graduated fill, which was layered and blended over the nearly white sky in the two photos above.

I used to be a photographic purist who only accepted what came out of the camera, for better or worse, with no manipulations afterward. Back then, I probably wouldn't have taken these photos in the first place, and if I did, they probably would have gone unpublished. These days, I let my vision be my guide and when necessary, employ Mr. Covey's sixth habit -- Synergize.

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

Portrait of November #3

More photographs from Glacial Park, north of Ringwood in McHenry County, Illinois. If you're wondering why I placed the subject where I did in the frame, the answer is simple -- I didn't have much choice. A brisk, chilly wind tossed the seed head back and forth. Since I was using a telephoto lens, I had to chase the pods back and forth, snapping as I went and hoping for a good shot. As it turned out, this shot was the most sharply focused of the several that I took.



The second photo was much easier to accomplish. The wind was gusty, but not enough to move the fallen branches (thankfully). I took my time and composed the shot to juxtapose the diagonal lines of the fallen tree against the verticals of the foreground grass and background trees which continue to live while the dead tree returns to the earth to nourish future flora.

Photographs taken with white balance set to "Cloudy" to add warmth and color to the scenes. Levels adjustments and slight color saturation added in post processing. Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

Portrait of November #2

"Great minds run in the same channel." Or is it "All fools think alike?" No matter. Over at Listing Through Life, Roger is posting photos from Glacial Park that were taken the same weekend that my wife and I visited. Rog shot up the place on Saturday, I ionized a memory card there on Sunday.

We took our photos in basically the same weather and lighting conditions -- overcast. Roger had the foresight to visit the place on a warmer day. I lost the feeling in my face about a third of the way through my visit.

What's interesting is the way we're approaching the photos -- pretty much the same things photographed in similar conditions. Roger decided to embrace the monochrome -- since the palette of November is limited to begin with, why not take it further by going black and white?



Me? I decided to try to wrest every bit of color out of the landscape that I could. I set my camera's white balance to "stun." No wait, that's my phaser. White balance was set to "Shady" to pump some warmth into the photos and take advantage of the amber backdrop of prairie grasses. And -- confession time -- I pumped some additional color into some of the photos via Photoshop. None of the photos posted thus far have been enhanced. I'll let you know when I post the color boosted pics.

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

Portrait of November #1

Over the weekend, my wife and I hiked a couple of the trails at Glacial Park, just north of Ringwood, Illinois, near the Wisconsin border. The area has been described as "biological eye candy" and I can see why. The park is a mixture of rolling kames, prairie, ponds, kettles, bogs and oak savannahs. Nippersink Creek meanders its way through the northern reaches of the park.

In early autumn the prairie grasses turn a burgundy color. By this November day, it had settled into an amber hue. Large flocks of cranes circled overhead.



I had recently decried my annual photographic funk that hits in November. If ever there was a cure, this was it. What emerged from the day is a composite portrait of the month of November. While on the surface, everything appears still and asleep, if you look long enough, you'll see signs that life continues. The juxtaposition of the end of life and the continuation of it is what makes November what it is, and is what I'll present here over the course of the next few days.

Stay tuned.

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

Under the sunset tree

More abstract nature pics from Pingree Grove Forest Preserve near Pingree Grove and Gilberts, Illinois.

The area near these two northern Illinois communities has seen an explosion of new subdivisions going up in recent years. Glad to see that part of the plan was to preserve a few hundred acres of open space in the middle of it.

And I'm sure the wildlife that was displaced by all of the construction appreciate it, too.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Driven to abstraction

I've taken several walks with my wife through the Pingree Grove Forest Preserve in Plato Township in Kane County since it opened in October. The first couple of times, I looked for interesting objects to photograph and was pretty disappointed with the results. Literal representations weren't cutting it for me. So, the last time we wandered through, I looked for interesting patterns in the scenery to photograph.

These backlit arched stems and grasses caught my eye, so I caught them right back. A combo of late afternoon sun, which occurs way too early in the afternoon anymore, long lens and big aperture for shallow depth of field makes the picture.

More abstractions to come.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Autumn ivy

It's too late to see fall colors on the trees in southeastern Wisconsin. The leaves have fallen. But there are still patches of colors in other places. This was spotted on the exterior wall of the Stage Coach Inn in Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

For the most part, autumn has put away its coat of many colors and settled into something more plain and simple to await the arrival of winter.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

The view

A couple take in the view from a bluff overlooking Port Washington, Wisconsin. The dog would rather keep moving.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Main street

Port Washington, Wisconsin. Somebody's home town. And like every other home town, it has some residents who can't wait to leave it. Some who would never think of leaving. Some who treasure every day spent in that town, and others who let life pass as a blur.

I didn't have to stand in the middle of the street to get this shot. This was taken from a parking lot. A telephoto lens compresses the space and accentuates the downhill view. The wall of green beyond the houses in the upper left is a bluff that rises above the downtown area.

The view from there tomorrow.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Fright night

My wife and I had heard about the Pumpkin Walk that the village of Cedarburg, Wisconsin holds each year. Along with a fantastic array of Jack O'Lanterns along its historic main street, the local businesses stay open late to dish out treats to young trick-or-treaters.



I decided to try my hand at some camera trickery -- using a hand-held off-camera flash to capture the spooky fun. I set my camera's white balance to incandescent to give the ambient light a blue cast, then placed a full CTO (orange) gel over the flash to get a proper white balance on whatever the flash lit up. The flash was tethered via a pc cord to the camera. I held the flash at arm's length away from the camera and slightly above the subject.



It took a few tries to get aperture and shutter speed coordinated to balance the backgrounds and subjects (as well as perfecting my aim with the flash while composing the shot), but once everything was in place, I was able to fire away.



A complete set of shots from Halloween in Cedarburg can be seen in this set on Flickr.

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

Faded remembrance

What can I say? I like to wander through cemeteries. In a way, they're not much different than the living community save the silence of their inhabitants. There is evidence of class and status. Some were loved and respected. Some lived spare and simple lives. Some were nearly forgotten altogether.

There are stories. Stories of those who died too soon. Those who lived a long and full life. Those who served their country. Those who lived lives of ease. Those whose lives ran aground on the hard rocks of fate.

Some have friends and family that continue to carefully tend to their memories. Others whose monuments have outlasted those they left behind, the vestiges of their existence on earth slowly becoming one with the same.

Cemetery marker, Burlington, Wisconsin. Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Birch tree-o

A three-pronged birch tree in my neighborhood in Elgin, Illinois. Played with really narrowing the depth of field. This shot is a panorama of 38 separate images shot with a 135mm f/2.8 lens and stitched together with a software program called Hugin (free download). By the way, Hugin is nice in that it takes into account the focal length of your lens and camera sensor's crop factor before starting the stitching process to ensure that distortion in the final image is kept to a minimum.

The cemetery shot from yesterday was also made using this technique and was composited from 26 separate images. Useful if you realllllly want to separate a subject from its background.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Passages

Cemetery in Burlington, Wisconsin.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.