KenElevenShadows

Wow, cool, that's awesome! Congrats!!!!!

Beautiful, sharp photo, by the way. It lets my spirit carry me.

I do so hate to disappoint... Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' Into the future Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' Into the future

Thank you so much, gentlemen.

Alright, since we have this thread, I thought I'd share some cool news.... My photo of the "Kill Bill" Church has been featured on the cover of "Location California," a publication that showcases locations for film, TV, commercials, and more!!!!! You can flip pages in full screen mode as you would a paper magazine. However, it's probably not as good for swatting mosquitos. I am on the cover, and my credit is on Page 6. http://issuu.com/lionsdailynews/docs/location_california_pt/1?e=1881560/6361968 http://www.elevenshadows.com/travels/tronapinnacleskillbillchurch-2013july/images/2235_kenlee_killbillchurch3-mojave.jpg

That's amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Looks so real!!!!!

Thanks, Ken. I do get finicky with precise focus which gets tricky when I shooting close-ups. It does. When it's closer, you can either stop down the camera or use "focus blending", which is essentially taking several photos while varying the focus and blending together the desirable "in-focus" parts in post-processing.I know how to do this latter one but have never actually done it, preferring to stop down instead. I try and avoid fussy processing quite often.

BTW, Bill, your photos on Flickr are all good and sharp, nicely focused and all.

Cool. Doesn't need it. It's great the way it looks. Gorgeous, and nice composition. Most processing I do is contrast, sharpening, some color correction (if necessary), that kind of thing. I consider this necessary, especially since I shoot from RAW, and all RAW files can use a little massaging.

That's an appealing photo, and it doesn't have to be fancy or processed. A lot of my stuff has very little processing, such as that last couple I posted. I'm not that into heavily processing my photos (and I'm also not that great at it! ). The most processing I do is "stacking" for star trails, and I think that's not even really considered heavy processing in terms of "fakery" because, well, it's not since it's just a means of capturing movement over a long exposure. I have a lot of admiration for people who do digital composites. It's art, to be sure, and some of it looks utterly amazing and obviously takes a great deal of talent and vision and creativity. It's just not my interest.

Today, I was listening to 1970s songs from famed Persian singer Googoosh. I like some of her early '70s stuff quite a bit. Gorgeous voice, beautiful and rich.

Thanks, Mike! http://www.elevenshadows.com/travels/india2013-himalayas/images/partone-begtodahhanu/8603kenlee_india-shantistupa30sf28iso200-2-700px.jpg

For this last shot of the night, I brought on the freak. I went really over the top with the light painting, highlighting the red cross and star and tires. I had fun doing this, letting it all fly. I actually was laughing a bit through part of the light painting. I like the demented haunted feel that this photo has. This is the old M*A*S*H site, where the TV show was filmed. Title: Haunted Ambulance Photography: Ken Lee Info: Nikon D7000, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens, Feisol tripod. 391 second exposure. http://www.elevenshadows.com/travels/MASH-malibucreekstatepark-2013-12/images/5346kenlee_mashtvshowmalibu-hauntedambulance-391sf8iso200-343am-flat2.jpg

If you're talking about earning a living from photography, no way, I'm not even close. If it's just simply making money, yeah, I sell prints, do occasional odd jobs, such as product/commercial photography, portraits, that kind of thing. And I've also unfortunately done two weddings as well, not my favorite thing. And I win money or items each year from winning photography contests, and since I have to declare that on my taxes, that absolutely also counts as earnings. Unless it's a family member who asks, I don't hand out my original or full-res TIFFs of my photos. Those are my photos. No one gets my full-res TIFF files unless they pay for the rights to use it. If they want a print, I upload the file to my photo store website and they can order prints from there; if they want a low-res web-ready photo, they can have that.

I hear that. I work and do a lot of music and all that also. I specifically block out time for photography, just as I do music. I put it on my calendar and tell people I've got plans that day. Or evening, as it often is with me. If I can't do music or photography after a while, I get cranky.

Linwood, thank you so much for your kind words!!! I don't know or remember the answer to your question. This photo was taken in March 2011 at the Catalina Bar and Grill. As an aside, while I was listening to Pharoah playing, I suddenly realized that I had this enormous smile, this big giant grin. His music is so alive and vibrant and makes me feel so good that...well, that was my reaction. I think I was doing it for a while before I took note of it.

And this is a shot of Pharoah Sanders, one of my favorite jazz guys, that I took at the Catalina in 2011 with a Nikkor 18-200mm VR lens and a Nikon D90 camera: http://www.elevenshadows.com/travels/miscellaneous/pharoahsanders-march2011/images/518pharoahsanders.jpg

I definitely use noise reduction to clean up stuff, both in photography and music. The thing is that it's an appealing composition that has a lot of depth. When I'm photographing gigs at clubs, I like to get right up on the person, sometimes even using a wide angle and getting right on them. I really like that connection and immediacy that I get from that which I don't get with a zoom. A lot of times for gig photography, I use a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4, which is good and fast. I guess I don't have this on another website, but this is a link of a photo I took with that lens: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=342966579126965&set=a.179430968813861.42733.131540163602942&type=3&theater

Yeah, it's an appealing shot because of the sense of depth, how the woman looks and her expression and how well it looks in B&W, which was the perfect decision for this image, in my opinion.

I recently bought my first ND filters. I got two 3 stop Tiffen filters since they are pretty cheap. I know what mean about the binding! I'll probably get some nicer ones at some point, but for the time being they'll do. So far, I've been using them so I can shoot at bigger apertures in bright sunlight, but I'd like to do some daytime long exposures too. And the thing is that Tiffens aren't cheap enough to be that cheap. I purchased three of them a while back, thinking they would be a good "mid-range" filter. I babied these things by keeping them in a padded pouch, and despite this, the glass simply popped out on one of them, and the other two jiggle within the metal casing, and all of them binded since they're not brass. No more. I didn't think they would be cheap enough to do this, but maybe with these things, either the thing to do is get those godawful cheap ones and buy several of them so when they bust you just take out a new one, or get high quality ones and just be done with it.

Hell yeah.

Nice!!!

I like B+W ND filters, and shoot with a six-stop filter. They're brass so they don't bind and they're solidly made. As you can tell, I like to get down low to the water and get the rush of the tide. And if I'm being pelted by offshore winds, sea spray, and sand and need to contend with shifting sand and tides and seaweed wrapping around the legs of my tripod, the last thing I need is for my ND filters to bind, which in my experience, some many non-brass filters have done in the past, such as Tiffen, which both bind and have slightly jiggling glass because the frame has loosened slightly.

Further proof that I shoot in the day time. These are long exposure photos of the California coast. http://elevenshadows.com/travels/mendocino-santacruz2012/images/611davenport4sf11iso1002-051813-gradfil-flat.jpg http://elevenshadows.com/travels/miscellaneous/secretcoast/images/1643mysterycave4-10sf10iso400.jpg http://elevenshadows.com/travels/miscellaneous/secretcoast/images/1670secretcoast2-6sf14iso400.jpg