When I first started out as a Pro (or trying to earn money to be a Pro) I decided to concentrate my photography on three areas- wildflowers, forests and harbors. There wasn’t much fore thought into this decision, there was no market analysis or saleability review on my part nor did I look into the future and try to predict where these three areas of concentration might lead me. I just know I loved wildflowers, forests and harbors, it was that simple.

It was a good decision. In all of my photography and in all of my books I have included lots of photos of wildflowers and forests and I am still drawn to them and enjoy photographing them. Harbors though, while I still love to wander around in them, have never been a big seller for me. I use photos of harbors in my introductory shows but I don’t think I have ever sold one (probably because I have never sent them out to be considered for sale!). So why is it that I keep taking pictures of harbors? I think it is the colors.

No matter the time of year or business of the harbor there are always bright colors to be found. You can go on the drabbest of winter days or the rainiest of summer days and there are colors every where in a harbor. This is in contrast to most other outdoor subjects that have definite times of the year when they are prime and other times of the year when they are nonexistent. Try photographing wildflowers in November or forests in the heat of summer and you will soon be craving the bright, eternal colors of harbors.

Finally, after 25 years as a professional photographer, I have a project, The Lobstering Life, that will actually pay me to photograph the colors of the harbor. This book will not only be full of colorful lobstering gear but also full of colorful lobstermen but that is for a different post. Today I am happy to wallow in the bright and sometimes bizarre colors found in the harbors of the Gulf of Maine. Hope you enjoy them too!

My new book is out!

It has been a long time coming- about 5 years- but the wait has been worth it. I am very happy how it turned out and hope you will be as well.

The book can be ordered at any bookstore or ordered from me if you would like it signed. Please email me - dmidfoto@sover.net -if this option interests you and I will let you know how soon I can get one to you.

We Shoot Horses, Don’t We?

So how do you go about photographing a running stallion? Before I tell you the hows lets review the wheres, whats and whys. Last week (early June) I was employed by a thoroughbred horse farm, Pin Oak Stud, in Kentucky bluegrass country to provide all the photographic images they would need for all their advertising in the near future. This is the fourth time I have done this for Pin Oak and while it is an incredibly beautiful place to take pictures I am ‘under the gun’ the entire time I am there. The pressure to create at my highest level can make dull light or uncooperative animals very stressful, very frustrating and not much fun.

Why is it stressful? Because it is not my usual kind of photography, that’s why. No, not the subjects- big animals and beautiful landscapes are what lots of people photograph. This is stressful because I usually photograph to please me but at Pin Oak I am photographing to please others. This means that doesn’t make any difference if I think the picture is magnificent, if they don’t like it is no good.

The other reason it is so stressful is because for a picture to be considered useable the horse has to be in the perfect body position with an imposing posture and formidable attitude. This means many, many of my pictures were rejected because a leg was too high, the knee was too bent, the ears weren’t turned properly, an eye wasn’t bright, the mane was flying, the tail was too high, the back legs were too spread, a leg was too straight, too curved, too under the body, to low, too wide, the neck was too curved, the belly too long, the nose too long, the stride too long and on and on and on. Getting a good picture was like looking for a needle in a haystack without knowing what a needle looked like.

Luckily, I didn’t have to pick the pictures I just had to take the pictures. My job was to get pictures that were properly exposed, appropriately composed (all horse, nothing else) in beautiful light and most importantly, in focus. Their job was to pick the ones they liked. So I took a lot of them and they picked a few of them. I took about 5500 pictures in 5 days, 5000 of which were just of the three stallions (or studs). Of the 5000 they considered about 50 images and really liked (translation: were going to use eventually) no more than 5 of each stallion. That’s one tenth of one percent of the pictures I took of the studs. Now you know why I took so many pictures.

The important part of this process for me was learning not to care which pictures they fell in love with. I just cared that they fell in love with some. I had no attachment to any of the pictures so whatever they said, no matter how picky and inconsequential it seemed to me (translation: ridiculous) it didn’t matter. I was bullet proof from criticism as long as they liked some pictures of each stallion. This is not as easy as it sounds but it is necessary when you are taking pictures for someone else and you don’t know what they are really going to like.

Okay, now for the hows. Here is the situation. I am inside a paddock with a stallion, two grooms and the farm manager. This is not something I recommend you try. Stallions are fully operational horses if you get my drift. Plus, it is still breeding season so all the stallions are flooded with testosterone. This makes them, like any male in a similar condition, unpredictable and just a wee bit wild. This is why fences were invented. Never go inside the fence with a stallion unless you are prepared to either run for your life or listen to someone who knows the horse better than you do.

The paddock (a big, fenced pen) is about half an acre in size but because of the late afternoon light I can only photograph about one third of it. Anywhere else the light is either crummy or terrible. The grooms are positioned at either end of the paddock to keep the horse moving. Clifford, the Pin Oak manager stands with me to make sure I don’t do anything really stupid, like walking away from him and to tell me when the horse is not looking right (ears up, tail too high, etc). When I am ready the grooms clap their hands and the horse starts a fast gallop around the edge of the paddock.

I have about 5 minutes to get all the shots I can get. After 5 minutes the horse is too sweaty and the veins on his neck become too pronounced. My Nikon D300s is set on auto white balance, high-speed shutter release, Aperture Priority, Matrix metering, -.3 auto-compensation and continuous autofocus. I have it on Ap. Priority to make sure I get the maximum possible shutter speed. It seems counter intuitive but Ap. Priority will always give me the maximum shutter speed based on the minimum acceptable depth of field. With a running horse I know f5.6 will give me enough depth of field for the horse to be in focus. So I keep it on f5.6 and let the camera pick the appropriate shutter speed. If I were to use Shutter Priority I may be getting too much depth of field (and a slower shutter speed) or too little (what’s the point?).

I am using my trusty Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 ED zoom lens with vibration reduction because I am handholding the lens (Clifford didn’t think a tripod inside the paddock was a good idea). This is a very fast focusing lens and very bright so I have the greatest chance of getting good pictures. I am also using the center autofocus point and composing bigger than I normally would because I am not trying to compose the shot, I am just trying to get the entire horse in the picture, in focus and properly exposed. Everything else I am letting the camera take care of.

As the horse runs circles around me I wait for him to come into the nice light. I am only going to photograph him when he is in the nice light. I don’t care what he is doing the rest of the time; he is not in good light so I won’t take pictures. When he gets in the good light I concentrate on aiming the autofocus sensor on the middle of the horse. This gives me a big target and also gives me the best chance of not cutting of his tail or his front legs. I also watch his ears and his tail as I pan with the horse and listen to Clifford critique what he is seeing. If he is happy and the ears are forward and the tail is not higher than horizontal I hold down the shutter and blast away. If his tail is too high or ears are back I don’t shoot. I don’t need to get volumes of pictures I know I am going to delete.

While I am shooting I don’t have the foggiest idea of what I am getting. At 6 frames a second the action is too fast for me to be able to tell if one frame is better than any other. When the horse leaves the shooting zone of nice light I stop, reposition myself and wait to do it all over again. This pause also allows the buffer, which fills up after each burst, to empty and my head to clear and stay in the game. Six or seven laps around the paddock and the horse is done and I have shot 250 to 350 images.

It takes about 45 minutes and 1000 images to do all three stallions. As the horses are given baths and put in their stalls I am in the office downloading the cards into Lightroom to do the initial edit. At this point I am just looking for obvious flaws –misfocus, cut off feet or tail, bad leg position, etc. I am a quick and ruthless editor. Any flaw goes into the trashcan because I know they only want perfect shots. By the time Clifford walks in to the office I have 100 or so images of each horse for him to look at. He reduces the number down to about 20 per horse, which I then do a quick crop and basic processing (a touch of black, clarity, up-exposure) for him to have a closer look and narrow the pictures down to about 12 per horse.

I did this everyday I was at Pin Oak so I ended up with 50 to 60 strong images of each stallion. When the person in charge of Pin Oak’s advertising came over to review the pictures she eliminated all but 5 or 6 shots for each horse. There were many pictures that I thought were beautiful that were never seriously considered because of a flaw I never saw. Oh, well, such is life photographing on assignment.

I just heard from Pin Oak Stud. The powers that be love one shot of their best stud and two of each of the other studs. That’s five shots and five shots is plenty. Oh, there were lots of other, non stud images they liked but I will leave that for my next post.

Hello Everyone!

Sorry for the delay in my postings. I did a long workshop in the Pacific Rim National Park on the west coast of Vancouver Island two weeks ago followed by an odd week long virus that knocked me out of action for a bit. But now I am back and firing away and the picture of health once again.

This last week I have been down in the Lexington, Kentucky area photographing at Pin Oak Stud, the thoroughbred horse farm that I photograph for their advertisement needs every few years. This is the first posting of several I will share telling what it is like to photograph on assignment, under pressure to produce. As a teaser I will include some of my favorite images. I will put more up this weekend.

I shot about 5500 images in 5 days. They are keeping 350 of them. there are many, many beautiful images that they don’t want because the position or posture of the horse is not perfect. A horse calendar publisher would be thrilled with these pictures but they are not horse people and horse people have very specific ideas on what a horse should look like. More on that later.

Hope you enjoy these pictures, stayed tuned for more!

What struck me most strongly about Bhutan was the generosity and friendliness for the people. We spent most of our time in country exploring the backroads away from the main tourist areas. This is because it has been my experience that in popular tourist spots the locals become jaded and adversely affected by the throngs of strangers. but if you  get away from the touristy areas you get to see the ‘real’ people and more importantly experience the ‘real’ people.

So every day, while the other tourist busses were heading off to yet another monastery or temple our bus would head to the countryside and look for villages, markets, farms, anything off the beaten track. Then we would stop, spread out and spend a couple of hours just hanging with the locals watching what they were doing, interacting with them as best we could and enjoying the experience.

Photographically, the secret to getting these intimate portraits is to spend time with the person before you start taking pictures. I would always sit and watch, try to compliment them, just hang out before I started taking pictures. And I never took any pictures unless I had permission to do so. The more time you spend with your subject the less aware and self conscious the person is going to be and thus your images will be more personal and thus more powerful and intimate.

So here are some more faces of Bhutan. I’ll post some environmental portraits from Bhutan shortly.  Enjoy!

Here is just a quickie teaser from my trip last week to Maine for the lobster book project. I’ll post some Bhutan pics tomorrow.

I call this picture ‘Wrinkled Butts.’ Look closely, you’ll get it.

I know I have said and written about this many, many times in the past but it is worth repeating. Not because you all don’t understand it but because just like me we often get distracted and conveniently forget about it. What am I talking about? Light, Baby! It’s all about light. And when you are desperate or fighting bad luck or bad weather we all tend to forget all things important. We are so happy just to be out taking pictures we tend to ignore small things like the quality of the light. We are photographing. At Last!!! Don’t bother me about the light. I’ve got pictures to take!!!

This is exactly what happened when Brenda and I were out photographing along the Maine coast last month. We were having no luck with the weather or the light but the subjects we found were great. This didn’t stop us from taking lots of really mediocre pictures though. We blasted away all the while trying to turn down that little voice in our heads telling us that the photography was pretty stinky.

And finally, late in the afternoon at the little harbor town of Corea after a day of heavy overcast and driving rain squalls the sun came out on the horizon and lit up the boats in the harbor. What a difference. We had just enough of our brains left to anticipate the breaking sun and move around to the west side of the harbor to get the best light. And those were the best outside shots we got that trip. Five days on the Maine coast and we got 5 minutes of light. Such is the Lobstering Life.

Hello Everyone!

Well, it has been a long time since our last chat but now I am back and ready to go. Where was I for the last 3 weeks? I was on a PAW photography tour to Bhutan and it was great! We toured all across this beautiful, mountainous country, spending most of our time out in the country off the typical tourist route. We never knew exactly what we were going to see or even do each day but we found amazing things everyday and our cameras were smokin!

I will post a number of images and stories here drawn from Bhutan so look forward in the coming days for lots of new posts.  For now, I will include two of my favorite images: Prayer flag forest & Window portrait

In Bhutan as across all of the Himalayan region, prayer flags are placed in windy places such as on bridges, poles or mountain passes so that the wind may blow the inscribed prayers and blessings to all parts. This 11,000 ft. pass was thick with flags creating a magical, in motion forest of vibrating color.

T

There is no better light for portraits than window light. This image reminds me of the scene in the movie, The Sound of Music, where the Mother Superior is singing “Climb Every Mountain.” Okay, a bit of an obscure reference but I am sticking with it. It was a beautiful situation and the kind woman was a wonderful, dear soul.

Stay tuned for more!!

The Top 10 Things You Probably Shouldn’t Say

10. “I probably shouldn’t say this but…”

9. “ You’ve gained some weight.”

8. “I just spent a hour reading Top 10 lists.”

7. “Oh, I thought you were a man.”

6. “Wow, my fungus is really spreading!”

5. “Did you just fart or are you cooking something?”

4. “Put that back on, I’m begging you.”

3. “You’d be surprised what you can hide in your body.”

2. “My mom is a better kisser.”

1. “Is that as big as it gets?”

The Top 10 Ways to Waste Your Time

10. Making it bigger

9. Hiding things in your body

8. Reading Top 10 lists

7. Listening to Sarah Palin

6. Waiting to procrastinate

5. Making resolutions

4. Discussing resolutions

3. Arguing about ridiculous resolutions

2. Fighting with that idiot about resolutions

1. Disposing of the bodies of idiots

0. Thinking about new Top 10 lists

The Top 10 New Top 10 Lists

10. Top 10 Ways to Better Spend Time

9. Top 10 Ways to Better Spend Money

8. Top 10 Ways to Better Spend Your Money

7. Top 10 Wives to Spend Your Money

6. 10 Top Guys to Spend Your Money

5. One Sneaky Bastard and One Wife to Spend Your Money

4. One #%&!#@% ex-Wife to Spend Your Money

3. Top 10 Estate Planners to Hide Your Money

2. Top 10 Wonderful Off-shore Banks

1. Top 10 Ways to Live in Paradise with a Top 10 Babe

The Top 10 Things You Shouldn’t Say to Photographers

10. “That’s actually just a decoy.”

9. “It was really good here last week.”

8. “ Yep, everyone comes out here and gets the same shot.”

7. “This is the first time it’s been closed.”

6. “I won. I said your camera wouldn’t float.”

5. “My 8 year old boy has a picture just like that.”

4. “Well, I’m sure when you come back it’ll be just the same.”

3. “Do you mind if I ask you some questions while you’re shooting?”

2. “No, really, you’re gonna love shooting this wedding.”

1. “Yep, that place is owned by a guy in the mob.”

The Top 10 Worst Photographers

10. Filter Guy

9. Mrs. Talker

8. Dr. I Know Better

7. Mr. Name Dropper

6. Obsessive equipment Guy

5. King Forever Film

4. Mrs. Not Pay Attention

3. Professor Blowhard

2. Been There, Done That Bozo

1. I Made This Much $$ Guy

The Top 10 Things Not to Do on Vacation

10. Call home everyday

9. Look at the weather at home everyday

8. Bring your laptop to the beach

7. Stare at women in bikinis (unless you are over 80 yrs. old)

6. Bring toddlers to restaurants (unless they are on the menu)

5. Admit your name is Muffy, Buffy, Itsy or Bitsy

4. Buy a home there

3. Drive like you drive at home

2. Wear your bathing suit to go grocery shopping

1. Wear a Speedo anywhere (other than under something

Top 10 Words that have Lost their Meaning

10. Congressional Oversight

9. Essential

8. Lite

7. New and Improved

6. Unique

5. I Promise

4. Good for You

3. Special

2. Age Appropriate

1. Trailer Hook-up