Big voice, tiny pipes!

It’s amazing how much volume this little fellow can generate. Not much bigger than my thumb yet he can be heard a block away! Pretty soon he’ll be helping to raise this year’s first brood but for now he’s just chillin’.

Don’t let the silent thief ruin your day!

Pretty soon now I hope to get out and check the status of a nest site used by Red-tailed hawks that I’ve been watching for a few years now. But first I’d like to offer a tip!

If you have not had your intra-ocular pressures tested recently and regularly you are playing with fire. Permanent vision loss due to high pressure within the eyeball may be prevented but you must be tested by a trained medical professional with the proper equipment.

January is National Glaucoma Awareness Month. Glaucoma is often called the silent thief of sight because symptoms may not be discovered until some vision has been lost.

I’m not a doctor but I’ve lived with this disease for some years now and I’m taking this opportunity to remind you of the dangers of not being tested for symptoms of Glaucoma. Make the appointment now! I want you to see and enjoy my photographs!

George Jones

Yes, he took the bribe!

A few sunflower kernels proved to be just enough bait to coax this little fellow into posing for me.

Sometimes I find the need to resort to trickery to coax a bit of co-operation from my feathered subjects. With a fresh early snowfall, the first of the season, there was an opportunity for photographs of my backyard crew trying to cope with mother nature’s newest blanket.

A handful of sunflower kernels was all it took to generate a little interest and give me the chance for a nice shot. This Black-capped Chickadee was very quick but pretty determined to get every morsel as he returned several times to the perch.

I burned a lot of frames but eventually got one I found pleasing and you can see the full frame here. There was a Downy Woodpecker that also showed a lot of interest in the sunflower kernel but I wasn’t fast enough to get a decent shot. Maybe next time!

Free to fly

And to think I almost didn’t go! I would have missed a nice picture and a fine ending to a compelling story. A female Bald Eagle would certainly have perished without the compassion of a fisherman, Craig Kimball, and bunch of caring people including Raptor Recovery Nebraska, Inc.

Denise Lewis of Raptor Recovery Nebraska, Inc releases a female Bald Eagle to the wild after 5 months of recuperation from lead poisoning. The eagle was found by fisherman Craig Kimball who contacted the Nebraska Humane Society who turned the bird over to Raptor Recovery Nebraska, Inc .

After the bird was released it wasn’t long before she was soaring high overhead and soon was being harassed by a much smaller winged creature who obviously didn’t care about the eagles ordeal. There’s nothing like a happy ending!

I enjoy photographing birds. Click here to see some of my pictures. All  photographs on this blog are © George Jones unless otherwise indicated.

Circles and lines and shadows

Repeating patterns of lines and circles evoke a subtle hypnotic energy to old railroad equipment. I doubt the effect would be as strong without the razor edged sunlight flooding the scene.

A blazing summer day and derelict railroad cars revealed an interesting composition. No belching steam nor billowing clouds of smoke to seduce the camera slung around my neck. Just faded memories…evidence of past utility.

Shaping Space

 

Strong backlight gave this image a velvet painting like quality.

From my archives, I find a well timed moment during rehearsal at Creighton University some years ago.  I wonder if Beth and Bill are still dancing?

Little successes!

After months of try, try again.  I got a decent scan of one of my old, difficult negatives.  It was a photograph made at a dance practice more than 30 years ago but one that I never quite got around to printing for exhibition although I like the image very much.

The key was getting a scan that held detail from all but the brightest highlights to the shadows.  Just playing around with the settings in the VueScan software I use revealed a neat little curve feature. I was able to tame a small but crucially overexposed area of the negative.

I tried dragging the pointers around and watching the results change but it was a slow process on my old Mac.  On a whim I tried typing different values directly in the scrubber boxes instead of dragging pointers and I was able to find a set of parameters that made a preview I thought would work.

The karmic choreographer provided me this vision. All I had to do was trip the shutter.

After a bit of work in Adobe Camera Raw in Lightroom 2, LightZone, and finally Photoshop Elements I got a print I was happy to frame. So kudos to Ed Hamrick’s VueScan 8.5.01 for teaching me something about handling difficult negatives.

The links provided in this post are provided as a courtesy for readers.  I don’t work for the entities mentioned nor do they work for me.  The photo itself links to my online gallery.

…tantalizingly close to something fine.

I was climbing a fire tower in a northern Louisiana forest when I made this photograph. To this day it remains a favorite and an example of what I call foto graphically fine art.

While climbing a fire tower on assignment in a northern Louisiana forest, I happened to glance down and spotted the ranger’s shadow dancing on the wall of the shed. I made  a couple of exposures and continued on with the assignment.

The exact nature of the assignment escapes me but this image stuck with me, indelibly etched in my memory. It’s one of my lifelong favorites. At some point I submitted it to Camera 35 magazine’s Critique column. It was accepted as one of the subjects for the May, 1971 column. The print I submitted was cropped much more loosely and that was an issue with the critic. A tighter crop does focus ones interest more precisely on the graphic elements.

The esteemed Mr. Lou Bernstein, who authored the column and has since passed on, called it, “…tantalizingly close to something fine.” I’m still trying to get there.

Scanner Misery

A pleasant fall day as the sun was setting found me near Falls City, Nebraska.  I was out with a couple of freinds making photographs.  The textures of the abandoned fields and long shadows called out to me.  I still have a work print of this image but my goal is to make a good inkjet print of it.

The trouble with moving images from one format to another is the loss of quality one incurs. If you don’t have good equipment, or good technique with what you have, the results are sometimes less than you would like. Much as I like this image I can’t say I’m happy with the conversion to the digital state.

But I’ll keep trying until I feel comfortable putting it on paper. One day I’ll figure out the delicate art of scanning negatives and transparencies.

I used an old 6x6 Yashicamat for this shot.

One of my favorite photographs.

An homage to Edward Weston.  Shot in about 1979 on 120 roll film.  Talking about film seems so strange nowadays.  Back then I often used a Polaroid SX70 to get an instant proof.  Pretty expensive but the  colors of natural objects as rendered by the SX70 media was mysteriously magical!  As I recall I burned up a few frames of Kodachrome on this setup as well.

I finally got a reasonable scan of the original negative and now I’m trying to make a decent inkjet print.  I’ve got a ways to go yet but I consider the shot a success. You may click on the image to see a larger version in my online gallery. Enjoy!