KenElevenShadows

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

When I was developing film in college, the general rule was that a print made from a frame of 35mm film should not exceed 8x10 inches (~200 x 250 mm) otherwise the film grain would be noticeable. With the 20.2 MP full frame sensor (36x24mm) on my Canon 6D, I have printed images as large as 16x24 inches (~400x600mm) with no noticeable digital grain. ...and I think you should be able to go larger - and probably quite a bit larger - than that with a 20.2 MP full frame sensor.

That, I did not know. Unfortunately, I don't have the budget to replace my Digital Rebel XT, so I'm stuck doing it the old way for now. Actually, you may be able to connect your Canon anyway. This is just off the top of my head. There's probably other options as well: The Eye-Fi is an SD card that wirelessly transmits your photos to a smartphone, laptop, tablet, or other device. http://www.eye.fi/ I know Nikon has a WU-1b Wireless Mobile Adapter, which is a USB dongle that lets you establish a wireless connection between specific Nikon digital cameras and a smart mobile device, both iOS and Android, so perhaps there's something similar for Canon? With this dongle, you can send your images directly to your smartphone wirelessly. There are also numerous wired options via USB, and you can simply mount the iPhone to the hot shoe of your DSLR if you wish. And while you can obviously easily transmit your photos to your smartphone for connectivity, that's just the beginning. You can use your smartphone as a controller for your camera as well, which is particularly effective when running apps for facial recognition, triggering your camera via sound, doing time-lapse of varying sorts, or various other things.

Absolutely. I use Photoshop CS4. Lightroom is excellent, and I'd use that if I weren't already so used to using Photoshop. If I were just starting, I would probably gravitate toward Lightroom because I think it's more intuitive than Photoshop. Either way, you're all good. I shoot in RAW too and won't shoot any other way. But RAW files need massaging just as any good film negative needs massaging (in processing). I've never seen a RAW file that could not be improved by simple processing.

Another I-cannot-think-of-anything-useful-to-say-so-I'll-write-a-sensationalistic-headline/article-using-only-my-limited-experience-as-an-example-because-I'll-get-lots-of-hits-and-my-boss-will-be-happy-regardless-of-whether-I-look-like-a-nitwit article. Guys like this actually get paid to write crap like that? In a world that this idiot imagines, let's play out a few scenarios, shall we? You're a photographer. A couple pays you $5000 to photograph their wedding. You pull out your iPhone and exclaim loudly, "Not to worry, even though in ideal light it's virtually indistinguishable from a modest Panasonic GX1 point and shoot, doesn't handle low light well, is unable to control depth of field because there's no way to control aperture, and it cannot withstand intense editing, it's networked! The world no longer needs cameras!" You're a photographer. Sports Illustrated wants you to take some photos of an important playoff game. Showing up at the game, you pull out your iPhone and exclaim loudly, "Not to worry, even though in ideal light it's virtually indistinguishable from a modest Panasonic GX1 point and shoot, can't control depth of field because there's no aperture control, doesn't handle low light well, or withstand intense editing, blurs like anything, doesn't focus quickly, has serious lag time so I'll miss all the action shots, can't use a flash or fire speedlights, it's networked! The world no longer needs cameras!" You're a photographer. The newspaper wants you to cover a riot. Showing up at the scene, you pull out your iPhone and exclaim loudly, "Not to worry, even though in ideal light it's virtually indistinguishable from a modest Panasonic GX1 point and shoot, doesn't handle low light well, or withstand intense editing, blurs like anything, doesn't focus quickly, has serious lag time so I'll miss all the action shots, can't use a flash or fire speedlights, it's networked! The world no longer needs cameras!" You're a photographer. Your fashion editor wants you to shoot some photos of some hot new fashions with supermodels. Showing up for the fashion shoot, you pull out your iPhone and exclaim loudly, "Not to worry, even though in ideal light it's virtually indistinguishable from a modest Panasonic GX1 point and shoot, doesn't handle low light well, or withstand intense editing, blurs like anything, doesn't focus quickly, has serious lag time, can't use a flash or fire speedlights, has no detail, is too dark, and has such low resolution that it cannot be blown up into the magazine spread, poster, or billboard ad that you want, it's networked! The world no longer needs cameras!" You're a photographer. Reuters wants you to capture a civil war in Somalia. Showing up in the war zone, you pull out your iPhone and exclaim loudly, "Not to worry, even though in ideal light it's virtually indistinguishable from a modest Panasonic GX1 point and shoot, I won't be able to capture anything because there's camera lag and doesn't zoom and doesn't have much detail, it's networked! The world no longer needs cameras! Wait, what? There's no coverage here in Somalia?" You're a nature photographer. You pull out your iPhone because you're going to take a beautiful long exposure photo of a waterfall. Oh, whooopsie, this looks like complete shit and looks awful as a gallery print. No one's going to buy this because it looks like everyone else's snapshot. But hey, it's networked! The world no longer needs cameras! You're a night sky photographer. You pull out your iPhone because you're going to take a beautiful long exposure star trails photo at night. After trying desperately to figure out how to mount your iPhone to something stable, you give up, No matter, hey, it's networked! That's all that's important in a camera. You focus. Oh, wait...you can't. See, the damned thing won't focus because it's too dark and doesn't have infra-red like those "dinosaur" DSLRs used to have. But hey, no matter, it's networked...and if it were ideal light, it'd be virtually indistinguishable from a modest Panasonic GX1 point and shoot, which wouldn't be able to take a decent night sky shot either. Okay, well, we can't focus, but surely we can open the aperture and let in the miniscule amount of light that the stars in the sky give off...but oh wait...no, what aperture control? You can't see anything. You can't focus. You can't see any stars. But hey, you can take a blurry selfie in which my face looks as white as a ghost out here in the desert. Oh, but there's no cellphone service in the middle of the desert. No connectivity. You're outta luck... You're a photographer. You and Steve McCurry are working on assignment for National Geographic. As the African sun is dipping below the horizon, you see a number of bushmen walking home with their catch. It looks gorgeous. Hopping off the jeep, you pull an iPhone out of your pocket and start taking snapshots of blown-out skies and very dark bushmen. Steve doubles over in laughter. Yeah. That'll work. By the way, does this "writer" even know that most modern DSLRs can be easily networked and many have wifi?

Thanks, Michael. 16251, it's really fantastic. Because of my interest in night sky photography, I've sought out more and more places like this, which in turn has brought me to fantastic places and greatly increased my love of nature and the night sky. I wish I could go to places like this more often, but at least I get to go.

http://www.elevenshadows.com/travels/ancientbristleconepineforest-2013july/images/2698_kenlee_bristleconepine-20sf28iso3200.jpg "Touch The Sky" Reaching for the Milk Way amongst the oldest trees in the world, some existing before the time of Buddha, live high up at 11,000 ft./ 3350 m in the White Mountains of California. Title: Touch The Sky, Plate 2698 Photographer: Ken Lee Info: Nikon D7000, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens.

I really like this watch photo, Mike.

My girlfriend doesn't take that many photos anymore, a shame since she has a good eye for it. But at some point, she kept saying, "Your photos look great...they're enough." So she doesn't photograph so much anymore when we go on trips. ~~~ Just to throw it out there, you can take fantastic photo gallery quality photos with a modest DSLR or four-thirds camera (and sometimes, less than that, although that's less commoon). We're talking several hundred dollars, not several thousand. It's primarily the person taking the photo and the vision, aesthetics, and technique they bring to the table, not terribly unlike music. At any rate, the lens plays far more of a part than the camera in terms of image quality. Also not terribly unlike recording music, right? The lens is the microphone, and the DAW is the camera. Sure, the DAW or the camera matter, but much less than the lens or the microphone in terms of quality of image or sound.