Our daughter wrote recently in her blog entry called PHOTOholic “So now I take pictures whenever I can of my family. I am known in my family as the picture nazi.” It reminded me so much of myself. When we had a young family I would constantly be taking pictures. Since it was the days of film I didn’t take nearly as many as I would today with a digital camera, but still enough that people would complain. Ann’s mother would often say “I hate it when you take my picture”. And yet those pictures over the years are one of the main links with the past and each year they increase in worth.

As many, I moved into taking video. But video is a very different animal. It takes a lot more time to edit and it is more difficult to share, more difficult to sort through and throw out way you don’t want. The video tapes sit on the shelf and are almost rarely used, while the still images are viewed frequently. I came to the conclusion that video was a diversion and for the most part stopped using that format so I could focus on still images. The videos I do create are mostly done with still images anyway.

So Sara, keep on taking those photographs. You can never recover what you did not capture. Your children will grow so fast that you only have one fleeting moment to capture each of them at this stage of their life.

Here are some images from our daughter’s blog which clearly demonstrate she has far greater talent than we do in capturing those precious moments:

GRANDPARENTS

SISTERS

SIBLINGS

Categories: Photography
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Crater Lake was formed by a volcano and is the deepest lake in the United States. It has not water inflow or outflow so the water in the lake is only from the local snow fall. It is one of the clearest water bodies anywhere and the deep blue from the depth of the water. The picture above is a merge of 3 photos. Click on it to see it enlarged.

This was our first time to visit this National Park. It was less than a two hour drive from Medford. We arrived in the morning and took some pictures from the area near the Crater Lake Lodge. Ann was shooting with her Nikon D70 with 18-70 mm Nikon lens and Franz with his Nikon D300, using both a 18-200 mm Nikor lens as well as some Nikkor prime lenses.

All the photographs were processed through Adobe Lightroom. Little changes were needed however. Only Photoshop CS3 was used for the photomerge at the top.

Nikon D300, 22 mm lens, ISO 200

Nikon D300, 24 mm prime lens, ISO 200

Nikon D300, 18 mm, ISO 200

Nikon D70, 70 mm, ISO 400

To see how well the Nikon 18-200 mm lens did compared with the 24 mm prime, I have added two photos of each into one image. Click on the image below to view enlarge so you can compare.

This may not be a good way to evaluate since the scene is different and each had a different post processing. In any case when I do a 1:1 image, the both look equally good. If you need a highly enlarged and identical images to see a difference, maybe that difference is not so important in the first place.

We then got on our bikes and started to bike around the lake. Franz carried the Nikon D70 on a backpack so we could take some photos from different locations. He started out trying to take it in a simple case but that did not work since it would swing to the front when leaning over to pedal so he returned to the car and took his LowePro Sling 200. That bag is a bit large to carry a single camera but it worked, but not ideally. To carry a DSLR on a bike, a back pack is best, preferable one made for biking such as the Camel Bak bags.

The LowePro Sling 200 has the stability strap (you can see hanging in the photo below) to keep it from swinging to the front but it was still too much on one side to cycle easily with.

We ended up going half way around the lake but had to turn back because the rim drive road was closed at some point due to snow. Can you believe, snow in July!

On the drive back to Medford we stopped at the Rouge gorge to take a few more pictures. It is hard to capture water falls. Franz put on a 24 mm prime lens that would stop down to f22 and he set the D300 to shoot at the lowest ISO setting. Setting the camera to shoot in Aperature Priority mode still resulted in a shutter speed that was too fast to blur the water. A neutral density filter would be needed. Also brining more than a table top tripod would certainly have helped. But since that was all he had, he proped the table top tripod on the top of the fence as you can see below.

Ann just balanced her Nikon D70 on the fence post.

We had a great time and hope to visit Crater Lake National Park again. You can see all our pictures at our SmugMug Gallery by clicking here .

Categories: Landscape Photography
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