Category Archives: Morning Musings

Morning Musings

Morning Musings (8/17/14)

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If you don’t already follow The Online Photographer (or “TOP”), wander on over there and take a look. The slightly idiosyncratic blog often offers articles and commentary that provide interesting insights and which might make you look at things a bit differently. I read it regularly.

I’m mentioning TOP this morning because of something I saw there recently, a “something” that is directly related to this post, namely the TOP posts shared as “The Morning Coffee.” These are typically relatively short posts on a variety of subjects and at least giving the feeling of being somewhat informal posts written over a cup of coffee.  Hey, I’m usually up early. I drink coffee. I like to write. Hence my own new “Morning Musings” series. We’ll see where it leads.

My “musing” for today relates to something from my recent trip to New York City. The brief story — likely to be expanded upon soon in other posts — is that I got to spend about a week wandering around Manhattan and Brooklyn with a camera. I had been thinking about doing some handheld night street photography for some time, and I had the opportunity on this trip. On one particular night, after emerging from a musical performance at a club, we headed off toward another performance in a nearby park. As we walked, hours after sunset, I pulled out my smaller “street” camera with a f/1.4 lens, raised ISO to 1600 or 3200 and started shooting. The ability to do this — shoot handheld in the middle of the night — was incredibly liberating. I’ve done a lot of tripod-based traditional night photography, but the technology of these newer cameras lets us shoot the night in an entirely different way, capturing quickly appearing subjects and conditions in ways that were essentially impossible only a few years ago. (Photos upcoming in the next week or two.)

Musing written. Coffee consumed. Now off to make some photographs…

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Morning Musings

Fauxtoshopping

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Seems like the word for using Photoshop to “fake” an image might be “fauxtoshopping.” Just thinking out loud…

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

G Dan Mitchell: Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email


All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Morning Musings

Unsolicited advice to the Epson printer division

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I’m spending afternoon installing Mac OS X 10.5.8 on an external boot drive along with my second install of CS4 so that I can print photographs for a client. Despite liking the way my Epson printer USED to work before the Mac OS X 10.6 update, I’m now seriously considering making my next large format printer purchase this fall from HP or Canon.

Epson, if in fact you do not plan to support certain serious printers with drivers for newer versions of major operating systems used by your customers, there is a right way and a wrong way to deal with this.

RIGHT WAY:

On your web site, post a list of printers (and other products) that lists the point in time after which you will no longer provide support and updates. This should be done at least one year prior to ending support. At the end of the support period you should release one final update bringing the drivers to current levels of compatibility. With this information your customers can make decisions about how to deal with the EOL of the products. A real professional courtesy would be to contact owners of these machines using the contact data you have. If handled correctly, you would benefit from considerable good will from customers treated with this sort of respect, and many would make plans to update to newer versions of your products. This is how responsible companies handle product natural obsolescence.

WRONG WAY:

Post incorrect and non-functional instructions and drivers at your site. Post no information about your plans to provide (or not) drivers and updates. Be sure to be completely silent about your intentions. When users discover – with absolutely no warning from you – that their printers that worked yesterday do not work today because you won’t take a bit of time to update drivers… ignore them. (I’ve sent two emails to Epson through the support area of their web site… with no response.) When a customer of yours finally does connect with a real person, be sure to insultingly tell them that they shouldn’t expect support of their too-old non-professional product – that will give them a nice feeling about how your company supports its customers as they consider making future printer purchase. This is how companies who don’t care about their customers handle natural product obsolescence.

(Update: As a temporary solution to the problems that I’ve been having with Epson print drivers and Mac OS X 10.6, I have installed the older Mac OS X 10.5.8 and a copy of CS4 on an external drive. I reboot off the external drive to print…)

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

G Dan Mitchell: Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email


All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Ideas, Morning Musings

About Shooting the Familiar

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I was just thinking a bit more about today’s photograph and how it (I hope!) illustrates something I’ve learned about my own photography – as much as I like to visit and photograph new places, I think that I enjoy more getting to photography and know more deeply a few places that I visit regularly.

The photograph was made in a place I’ve visited literally dozens of times… in the past year alone. I’ve walked past this exact spot carrying my photo gear too many times to count. I’ve even stopped and looked at this spot and thought about making a photograph more than once. On a couple of occasions I have made a photograph, only to realize that I hadn’t quite figured out how to shoot this little scene.

But I keep going back to this now-familiar place. Sometimes a visit turns out to be a bust photographically, and I just return with the benefits of some quiet time walking in the hills. On another trip I may discover a new thing – rock, tree, view, bird – that I hadn’t seen before. On this morning – a foggy morning like many others I’ve seen in almost this exact spot –  several things came together at once, unexpectedly, and it a way that will likely never be repeated. The hills were still a bit green but with enough brown to suggest the familiar colors of the approaching California summer. A few flowers were blossoming in the foreground. The atmosphere was in that magical state halfway between fog and sunlight, and the light through the moving fog created some definition on the hills and grass.

I happened to be in this very familiar spot at the right moment in time, happened to look up, and happened to see something in this scene that I had probably not seen until this day… and I got a photograph of this familiar place that I like because I was there, I know the place well, and I was attentive to my surroundings.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

G Dan Mitchell: Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email


All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.