A great year starts today!

Hope yours ends up on this side of awesome.

The best on earth ... at least for a day

Earth Shots is a photo web site built on a simple idea -- feature a daily photo that captures some of the best that our planet has to offer. Photographers may submit entries for the daily photo pick on the site itself or in a group on Flickr.

My shot of an icy, rocky Door County sunset is today's featured pic. It joins six previous winners over the past three years (see bottom of right sidebar).

Gettin' some publication love ...

Got two photographs appearing in magazines this month, but you'll have to operate in specific niches in order to see them. The Mortice and Tenon is an architectural mag published in the UK. The magazine features an article on barn restoration in the Midwestern U.S. My photograph of an 1840s vintage barn made the cover.

Communication Director is self-described as a mag that follows "the intersection of politics, media and communication." It is published in Germany. My photo of the Roosevelt University Symphony Orchestra and Concert Choir getting ready to rock out some Wagner accompanies the opening page of an article about "orchestrating" communication strategy.

More submissions coming up later this month. Hopefully more publication love to report on later.

All that jazz

Rob Parton

I've been fortunate enough to have an ongoing assignment for Roosevelt University in Chicago to capture images of the various performing groups at the school's Chicago College of Performing Arts. Earlier this week, I photographed the school's jazz emsembles at the Jazz Showcase, a landmark of the Chicago jazz scene.

The club is currently situated in the Dearborn Station section of Chicago, which looks like it could function as a location for a 1940s vintage movie. Since 1947, jazz luminaries have passed through the club, which has the photos and news clippings on display to prove it.

I arrived at the gig fully expecting to shoot the two school ensembles scheduled that night and not much more. What I forgot was that college-level jazz concerts usually feature professional guest artists who jam with the band.

So, while struggling all night with low lighting and a stage that limited my shooting angles, I got to hear some excellent players who thrilled a nearly full house -- Trumpeter Rob Parton, who also serves as Chairman of the school's Jazz Studies Department and leader of the ensembles, local Alto sax man and RU faculty member Mike Smith and the evening's featured guest, Tenor and soprano sax artist Dick Oatts.


Mike Smith (left) and Dick Oatts

The night's shooting was a delicate tightrope act -- I pushed the ISO as far as I dared and shot with an 18mm lens (so I could hand-hold the camera at shutter speeds of 1/30 of a second or so) and a 135mm 2.8 prime with a monopod for closeups. The slow shutter speeds increased the odds of motion blur (those cats moved while they played - you can see Mr. Oatts in action here), so I just kept shooting shot after shot, trying to time the shots to their movements and the music. Out of nearly 400 shots, I was able to keep about 150 or so. By the way, these shots are as original as the conditions allowed -- no cropping, just some slight levels adjustments and a trip through Neat Image noise reduction software.

Lots of processing and noise reduction ahead of me. For a change of pace, I'll be listening to classical music while shooting the college's Wind Ensemble tonight.

This picture makes me happy

Not that operatic death scenes are particularly cheerful. At least I'm pretty sure this was a death scene. After the woman sang her part, she collapsed in a heap to the floor, and then a burly doctor-looking dude came on stage and belted out "Morte!" then everyone else looked sad and sang some type of something in a minor key before the curtain came down.

You can probably tell by now that I don't know much about opera. The reason I'm happy is that I was able to pull off a very difficult photo assignment at Roosevelt University last night -- a student production of three scenes from famous operas that I only previously knew by name of composer and title. This one was written by a German French fella. ("Offenbach. Jacques Offenbach.")

Stage lighting that ranged from too low to too bright, weird color balances and lack of reliable auto focus at times (it doesn't work too well in near darkness) flew into the engines of Flight Automatic. I had to call "My Aircraft," grab the controls and guide the photo shoot to a safe landing in the Chicago River. This photo could have been a noisy, blurry mess (and a lot of shots were), but continuous evaluation and button pushing throughout the evening resulted in about 100 to 120 good photos (out of 300 shots taken).

Man, it could have been me singing that death song.

Missed It By That Much Dep't.: I received an e-mail from National Geographic Adventure magazine today. They're looking for hiking/biking/camping photographs taken in Newport State Park in Door County, Wisconsin. Wouldn't you know there is just one state park in the county in which I've never pulled out a camera? I referred the photo buyer to several other DC photographers whose work I admire. Ah, well.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Every so often, I sneak up on myself with a camera ...

... and take a picture of me. I was testing out a lighting configuration and needed someone to photograph, so I chose the only person in the room to be the model. Here's the process:

Set up a chair with a four-foot fluorescent lighting fixture ($9 at Home Depot) with daylight balanced tubes to the left and slightly behind a chair, white reflector to the right. Flash unit on camera set at 1/4 power bouncing off ceiling. Hang a sheet of light blue cloth behind the chair just out of range of the main light. Set focus on camera on back of chair. Set self timer on camera. Press shutter. Walk to chair. Sit down. Make a Tim Conway face into a mirror next to the camera. Wait for shutter to trip. Get up, walk to camera, evaluate the picture. Adjust light and reflector as needed. Reset self timer and repeat the above steps until an acceptable image is obtained.

Open image in Photoshop Elements. Throw the kitchen sink at it. Someday when I have time, I'll explain "kitchen sink" photo processing. It involves inverted layers, tone compression, color saturation/desaturation, vignetting, gaussian blur, texturing and unsharp masking. I've explained many of those individual techniques on my photography tips blog. As in the case of this photo, you can combine those actions to your heart's content.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

My year in review

Okay, so I’m a little late in posting this, as year-end reviews are usually posted, well, at the end of the year. But I ran across a quote by Ansel Adams that got me thinking. The dean of American nature photography once said, “Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.” Of the hundreds of shots he made annually, if St. Ansel managed to capture about one good picture a month, he was a happy man.

I estimate that I easily took more than 3,000 photographs last year, maybe closer to 4,000 (I made the jump to digital photography – I never would have been anywhere near that output with film). So, did I end up with 12 pictures that I could call “significant?” I’m defining “significant” as a photo that breaks new ground in some way, whether it’s a technical, artistic or technological jump.

Herewith is a collection of my significant photos from 2008, beginning with the photo at the top of this post. It's significant in that it was one of the first digital photographs I ever made after more than a decade of shooting film only. Shortly after getting a Fujifilm Finepix s700 for Christmas, my wife and I took a trip to Door County, Wisconsin. I was still getting acquainted with the camera when I shot the Sturgeon Bay Canal Pier Light just before dawn. Plenty of mistakes in the picture, but plenty of potential, too. The composition makes up for some technical problems (focus, noise). A cleaned up version of this photograph will be published in this year's Door County Visitor Guide.

Technical and technological achievement. Capturing a nearly full moon (technical) and inserting it into an existing photo via Photoshop (technological).

Being in the right place at the right time. The odds of that happening increase the more you actually get out and look for pictures. And don't miss a chance to shoot photos when it's foggy.

If the clouds are doing something dramatic, grab your camera and get out there.

Pictures don't have to be complicated.

Right time, right place, dramatic clouds, simplicity all in one picture.

Let the picture evolve. This park sits at the end of a pathway through a wooded area in Fish Creek, Wisconsin. I took photo after photo as visitors came and went, then kept the photo with the most interesting configuration of silhouettes.

Backlighting from a nearby window combined with a sheet of plack foam board with a string of colored lights inserted, Lite Brite style.

Drama in the sky, stillness in the water.

Exploring macro and natural light using a sheet of black foam board as a backdrop. Shot outside in the shade on a sunny day.

Same black backdrop/shade configuration as previous photo. This daylily was one of many growing by a neighbor's garage.

We all walk a path that takes some twists and turns. I had already taken a number of shots of the winding road when a gentleman out for a walk passed by. We exchanged greetings and I waited for him to make his way to the top center of the composition.

These 12 photos represent a whole lot of learning in a year's time. Three of them are award winners, several have been published and together they've garnered more than 30,000 online views.

Click on pictures to enlarge. Photographs © 2008-2009 James Jordan.

Not even pictures are safe anymore

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Bureau of Standards announced today that due to the general slowdown of the economy, a picture is now worth only about 800 words, down from its longtime level of 1,000 words.

"It's an indictment on the economy as a whole when something as dependable as a picture can be devalued by 20 percent," stated Frank Carlisle, director of the Bureau of Standards' metaphor division. "We were caught off guard entirely. There are critics who believe we should have seen it coming when a bird in the hand dropped to 1.73 birds in the bush, but hindsight is 20/15."

Many within the photography industry are calling for government intervention to pump a fresh influx of words into the system to shore up a picture's worth, but many policy makers are taking a wait-and-see attitude. "You can't just rush in to shore up leaky numerical metaphors without some assurance that their long term management will correct the problems that caused their devaluation in the first place," said a high ranking official in the Library of Congress.

"In situations like this, a miss is as good as 4500 feet," stated the official. "When a stitch in time plunged to saving only seven and a half, the sewing industry managed to right itself and the current rate of 8.875 stitches saved is now back to right around the established high water mark."

The Bureau of Standards offered no timelines for a picture's worth to rise back to its former level. "Until a picture recovers its word-to-image ratio, we suggest using 1.2 pictures in place of just one," said the Bureau in a statement released shortly after its initial announcement.

Photo and bogus news story © 2009 James Jordan.

Going for it

I'm making the jump from a serious hobbyist photographer who occasionally sells a photo or lands a picture taking gig to hanging out my shingle that I am open for business. My shingle has been hung out in the online marketplace - you can check out my new Web site, which displays photographic samples in various categories.

The nifty Flash interface was built by a friend (who was downsized out of his job at the same time I was - if you need Web design work done, he's your man.)

The web site also features a new blog that covers various aspects of the world of professional photography.

So ... I'm available for assignments in portrait photography, event photography, product photography and stock photography in and around the Chicago suburbs. I'll be featuring those assignments on the new blog and occasionally here. But this place is still home to my personal photography efforts.

We'll see what the new year holds. Onward and forward.

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.

Got art?

When it comes to my photography, I pretty much take the same position that the current (and soon to be ex-) governor of Illinois takes: Everything's for sale!

High quality photographic prints are available for practically any photograph on this photo blog or my gallery on Flickr. You can even get them in black and white if you prefer.

A high-quality 8x10 photographic print is $19. A 16x20 print is $49 and if you have a lot of wall space to fill, 20x30 prints are $62.

Not sure where to start to select a photo? A good place to browse is my photo stream at Flickr. You can browse my most recent photos or check out my photo sets on the right hand side of the page to find a picture to your liking.

Then leave a comment here expressing your interest or e-mail me at jjrdns6[at]aol[dot]com and we'll get the ball rolling.