Finally my two weeks of travel are over I head home tomorrow. Yeah!!
I love to travel but when I travel without my wife, Lillian, it’s never quite the same. Without Lillian I’m always thinking this would be a great place for us to visit or she would love this spot. And when it comes to photography we feed off of each other. She sees things all the time that I don’t even notice. I always get better and more interesting pictures when we travel together. Of course when we photograph together it can be long days. Some places we go she’ll spend a long time trying to get the shot she wants, and some places we go I’m the one trying to get that right shot.
Traveling with loved ones wasn’t the only thing I wanted to write about tonight. I wanted to share a little of my experience here in Alabama. While here I visited a number of smaller state parks and nature preserves. I’m always surprised at how much one can find when one visits the smaller less traveled places. The big name places like Yosemite or Grand Canyon are beautiful but when you spend a little time looking you can find a lot of hidden jewels. One place I went to in New Hampshire a few years ago was park that catered to the weekend picnicker. The trails there were some of the best ones (photographically speaking) I found. So the parks I visited De Soto State park lots of waterfalls. Monte Sano State park and Nature preserve. I did lots of water work (kind a novelty for me since most rivers in my area go dry during the summer). In all the parks I went to there was flowers and butterflies.
I should have new albums up some time next week.
-Philip
Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 8:17 pm
I’m in Alabama right now on travel for the job that pays the bills. When I was done for the day I went out to a local state park, Monte Sano State Park. During the work day I had asked about Monte Sano and the reactions of those I asked seemed to be one of ‘oh yeah I guess you could go there’. But it ended up being fairly nice.
Monte Sano has a number of trails and enough woods to hide the noise and sights of the city just over the hill. There are plenty of trails so I expect to be exploring this park for a few days. There are a number of plants in bloom. The first trail I explored was an old railroad bed. It crossed a few small trickles of streams that will offer some interesting water shots if I can get there again.
Like so many places I’ve been, when you live next to something you become jaded to the beauty it can offer. It takes a fresh eye to see the beauty. Of course one can learn to ‘see’ and look past the familiar to find the mystery and surprise of discovery. That is a lesson I still am trying to learn.
Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 10:12 pm
I was reading the the most recent Outdoor Photographer and saw something that happens all the time on photography review sites that usually ends in a flame war. I was reading the article by William Neill about the definition of Landscape Photography and about defining and refining your vision through your portfolio. In the article he says (he is talking about the picture at the beginning of the article) “The foreground is purposefully not included so that the sense of depth isn’t too obvious. Any foreground would give the image a more literal ‘here’s where I stood’ effect.” In another article towards the beginning of the magazine Bob Krist says “.. a landscape photograph without a recognizably sized element- a human, an animal, a vehicle or even a tree- will lack a sense of scale.” It just seemed so interesting to me to have two articles seeming to have contradictory information. My first reaction was that when I give advice on places such as FredMiranda.com I give one piece of advice and someone else will say something completely different. The two pieces of advice are completely contradictory but because the people are giving advice from or to people at different levels of experience they are both appropriate. The advice similar to what William Neill is for some one with a lot more experience than the ones that Bob Krist is speaking to. Bob is speaking to the photographer who is still learning to look around and to plan their composition and should stick to the standard rules of composition. William Neill is speaking to the photographer whom composition is now automatic and now they need to look for new angles and are learning to know when to break the rules. So the point of this, not all advice is appropriate to the person receiving it (isn’t that obvious). Along the same line a few years ago I saw this flame war between two photographers on the best way to include a fence. The argument went on and on and in the end I think both were right. One of the photographers was speaking from the point of view of one still at the point where they should follow the rules of composition and the other was at the point where they could break the rules. When reading or giving advice don’t take it personally.