Capture Cincinnati is a legit local site.

I bookmarked this site when it first started taking off but I didn't join it until last month. I wish I would not have waited! This site is pretty neat. You don't have to be a photographer or anything. You can just sign up to view local shots and vote on them. Its a good way to pass the time and see some good work.

Natural Selection. A story of my OCD and deleting.

I had someone ask me what my keep to throw away ratio was while shooting. I told them that it was somewhere around 5-10%. And then they asked me, "Is that good". I responded with, "What does that mean"? I think the definition of good is not something that one person can tell another in respect to how many shots a photographer keeps out of any given shoot. If you keep ten or fifty it does not matter. Neither one makes you good or bad at what you do. We all have our own style.

Typically when I go out on a shoot I will bring a small 1GB card so I can limit myself to the amount of images that can be shot. In my mind I think using a bigger card like say a 8GB allows you to spray and pray too much and that can make you a bit weak overall. When using a 1GB card I will constantly delete images while I am shooting to make more room just by taking a quick glance at them. If they do not strike me right away they get pushed off the cliff to join the rest of the garbage.

Once I get home and upload them to be edited.......now that is where the real OCD starts. I glance over every single image (which will not be over 63 since I use a 1GB card) and if any of them stands out and says "I DON'T APPEAL TO YOU" well, It joins the rest of the garbage too. Of the remaining survivors I will go thru and do a quick edit on all of them to make them pop a bit more. After that I go back to step one.....and to the garbage bin they go. By now I am usually down to about 20-30 shots. This is where the strongest fight to survive. I will go more in depth and start really editing them down and then I can see which ones have the most weakness. Then guess what? GARBAGE!! By the end of all this madness I force myself to delete all but 10-15 even if one of them seems like it looks good. I only want to keep the strongest.

This all might seem a bit crazy to some but it makes sense to me. It is my style. I am sure I have deleted a more than a few good shots that could have sold or that could have been liked by someone else but that is the price I pay. I think we all have our own way of doing most things in life and there is no wrong or right way. In the end, the only thing that matters is you.  

Ripley Ohio Bicentennial time capsule opening.

I took the short trip back to my old stomping grounds to see what was inside of this 100  year old time capsule. Apparently back in 1912 they thought it would be a good idea to crimp the lid shut..............not such a good idea. Anyone who lives or has lived by the river knows that it floods at least every few years and a crimped lid under the ground will not last more than a few years let alone one hundred. There were still some neat things in there that survived the water damage. Here is a sneak peak at the items.

Moscow, Ohio. The tornado aftermath.

I went into the over half destroyed town of Moscow, Ohio today. If you are not aware it is a small river town that got hit by a EF3 or close to EF4 tornado. As I walked into town all I seen were people working to rebuild and people standing around offering water or fresh cooked food. This little town is resilient to say the least. It was an odd feeling being there. There is a mixture of sorrow and hope both floating in the air at the same time. The thing I seen that made me step back for a moment was a child playing in the debris of what used to be his yard. I did not attempt to capture that for privacy reasons and legal reasons, but it was a strong moment.

I walked from one end of town to the other and you can almost see exactly where the tornado came from and went to. It is an amazing site. I only stayed for about an hour. I did not want to make people feel as if I were intruding. On the way out I stopped by the smallest church I could find and talked to the pastor who was standing outside offering water and food for free. Instead of taking anything from him I gave him all the money in my pocket and told him to give it to who ever he wants or spend it on more resources. They need it more than I do. We take for granted what we have and today was a wake up call for me personally. If you can I would ask you to donate what ever you can to the town.

Here are 15 images from what I seen.

Nikon D1 or Nikon D1nosaur, whichever you prefer.

So my first digital dslr camera was the Nikon D1. I bought it years after its first release. When it first came out in 1999 it was around $3000 or more, I think I paid about $350 for it. It was an ok first digi slr for the money I guess you could say. I used it mainly to learn all the features of the Nikon digital world and also so I could learn all the pros and cons of post processing (as I was used to film at the time).

The major drawback for me was the TERRIBLE battery life. I had like 3 or 4 batteries and each one would only stay alive for about 30 minutes if the camera was in use. The frame was similar to a small tank tho. You could drop it, forget it on the roof of your car in the winter, or let your friends borrow it for the night and not have to worry about it being broken. I think everyone who is new to and wanting to learn digital photography should buy a D1 for a few months, then just hock it on Ebay afterwards. You don't want to keep it and use it for good unless you are some sort of weird "I like to use crappy stuff and revolt against society" sorta person. 

Either way, the pic above was one of the first keepers from my D1 era. Notice my horrid black and white conversion and how the grass looks like asphalt. I will give this attempt one kudo....the rock walkway looks decent. My complaints are not from the camera, they are from my novice post processing skills at the time, and the fact that I didn't know what an f-stop was.

In closing, I would like to buy another D1 just to have. I could sit it on my stand and look at it so I could be all nostalgic about the past. Then I could get mad at it and throw it against the wall. I might take a few pictures with it thru a mirror so I could use them in my Ebay gallery as I re-sell it.

Red and White

I am sick of seeing red and white!! So a friend of mine works at my old home towns newspaper said to me, "Look! There is a cardinal in the snow, better take a picture of it". It was an inside joke to his co-worker who was present. I thought nothing of it until my mom mails me a picture a week later from the front page of that paper of a cardinal in the snow. It seems this is either a growing fad or it has always been around and I am just not paying attention. I am in a few camera clubs and about once a week during the winter months I am certain to see a post of a CARDINAL IN THE SNOW. 

I see where the contrast of colors make for a decent photo but come on, there are so many more options out there to capture. What about a blue jay or a crow. Are these birds not superior enough? I think they could both whip a cardinal in a one on one bird fight.

It is my new years resolution to never in my life take a picture of A CARDINAL IN THE SNOW. I put that in caps because it is my only way of visually sending the message of me screaming like a bat in the sunlight. Speaking of....that would make a good front page picture.