Blog

Sunny Day at Fernwood

Scott Gant — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:43:06 +0000

Spent a nice, but nippy, spring day at Fernwood Botanical Gardens. Spring hasn't decided if it's going to stay as the temperatures have fluctuated from hot to down-right cold. At least on this day it was nice, though the crowds haven't started to show up. Fernwood gets quite busy on the weekends during the summer months.

My Patient Stand-In

Scott Gant — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:26:52 +0000

When I'm setting up lights to test, I usually grab the closest model...which almost always happens to be my cat Awbee. She's very patient with my fooling around.

Sunset at Tiscornia Park

Scott Gant — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:23:55 +0000

This past Sunday I loaded up some gear and heading over to Tiscornia Park, on the eastern shores of Lake Michigan to shoot the sunset. I checked first with a great tool called The Photographer's Ephemeris which showed me pretty much where the sun was going to set and at what angle. So I was able to gauge where to place my camera to capture it going down behind the St. Joe lighthouse.

I got there a little early, but took a few shots here and there. Slapped on the ND filter to put an extra 8-stops of exposure to my settings so I could blur out the water a bit. As the sun got lower, more and more people showed up to take photos of their own. Seems it's a pretty popular spot.

Here are the results

Early Morning

Scott Gant — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 14:52:23 +0000

Got out early this morning to catch the sunrise. Unfortunatly, there wasn't much to shoot as I didn't scout the area ahead of time. I got a few mundane sky shots, but nothing of note. I did manage to grab this shot, which turned out okay.

My neutral density filters should be ariving from B&H tomorrow, so I'll be able to take some nice, long timed exposures in daylight!

A Few Cold Minutes at Lake Michigan

Scott Gant — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 23:20:00 +0000

Went out this afternoon thinking I was going to get in some HDR photography at the beach. The weather had other plans. You see, if you go out in 35 degree weather without any head or hand protection, you get cold very quickly with that wind whipping off of Lake Michigan. I didn't last but a few minutes. Just enough time to set up my tripod and take a few quick shots.

Next time...

New 27" iMac Calibrated!

Scott Gant — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:03:21 +0000

Just finished color calibrating the monitor on this new 27" iMac with my ColorMunki Display and WOW was it way off. One would have thought that they would have a better profile embedded as default, but since there's so many factors in getting a good calibration profile, I can see why it's off.

Now I can get to work editing the back-log of images.

Just when I think I'm out...Nikon Pulls Me Back In....

Scott Gant — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:58:25 +0000

Just when I'm about to pull the trigger on some new gear...Nikon has to go and announce a brand new camera that's kind of on the upper end of my price zone. The D800e (with no anti-alias filter...nice) was just announced and should be out in the middle of April, though it's filtered brother will be out at the end of March.

36 mega-pixel full-frame camera. While I'm not swayed by shear mega-pixels...as that's not always a sign of quality...this does look to be a very nice camera, quality wise. I'm going to have to think long and hard on my purchase decisions now as getting something brand new would have a longer life while the Canon 5D MkII is at it's end-of-life, production wise. While it's still a fine camera, it's update should be announced this spring. We're talking about a model that's over three years old now. But again, it's still a fine camera as-is.

Decisions decisions...

Happy 2012!

Scott Gant — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 07:34:47 +0000

We start off the new year with a bang....sort of. In my last blog post, I mentioned how easy it was to rent equipment for the two main DSLR manufacturers, and I put that to the test as I rented some gear to shoot a family portrait session over the Newyears weekend.

The Simpleman family were gracious and charming, giving the impromotu situation we were dealing with. It really was guerilla photography with challenges such as last minute location scouting and a certain 2 year old that didn't want much to do with having his picture taken. But it worked out well for everyone.

A History of Photography

Scott Gant — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 17:01:17 +0000

Eastman House Technology Curator Todd Gustavson takes us behind the scenes of various cameras that run the gamut from Daguerreotype to Digital.

Scott Kelby's "Open Letter to Adobe"

Scott Gant — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 20:45:26 +0000

Scott's open letter is about Adobe's decision to only allow owners of the most recent versions of Photoshop and Creative Suite to upgrade to the CS6 versions, when they become available. What that means if you didn't upgrade to CS5 or CS5.5, and are still on CS3 or CS4, you'll have to pay full price if you want to upgrade to CS6. This has put the many people into a financial quandry.

The rumblings across the blogosphere following an announcement like this often turn to changing software packages. GIMP always comes into play when people talk about full (and free) alternatives to Photoshop. While I applaud the work people have been putting into GIMP, it's just not an alternative to Photoshop. I have to rely on Photoshop as my main source of income, and since I work on it 9 to 10 hours a day, it's become an extension of my arm. No way could GIMP do half the things I need it to do. The same go for several other PS alternative packages. Some have very nice features, but no one package can replease Photoshop.

I also don't see GIMP ever getting past PS either. It's been around since 1996...that's 15 years now to surpass Photoshop in terms of usability and user base/usage (which is important when working in a workflow environment and exchanging files between clients with different color profiles for instance). It's always "one day this will be great" type of thing. Sorry, some of us have a lot of work to do and can't wait for that day. I do want there to be a viable alternative to PS because I don't like Adobe's practices, but GIMP isn't that alternative. It's been 15 years of "just wait until the next version!".