NEW BLOG/WEBSITE!

Hi there!  Just wanted to let everyone know that I've officially launched my new website (which now has the blog embedded on the site itself)!  You can find the new website at www.fmkphoto.com.  So this will essentially be the last post at this particular place.  Any future blog posts will be at www.fmkphoto.com/blog.  You can also subscribe by email on the new blog as well.  Please make a note of the new web addresses.

Thanks!

Brian

Nelson Mandela - Robben Island, South Africa

When I learned of Nelson Mandela's passing yesterday I admittedly had a moment of sadness. But it quickly turned to celebration when I remembered this iconic and inspirational man.

I don't want to get into too much history (you can read a ton of stuff about Mandela and apartheid elsewhere) but in short Nelson Mandela was a lawyer who became a political prisoner in 1962.  He was accused of conspiracy to overthrow the government.  He served 27 years in prison (mostly on Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa).

Upon his release in 1990, Mandela began negotiations with the president to end apartheid and establish multiracial elections for the country. He then became South Africa's first black president.  He restructured the government to embrace unity and as they say the rest is history.

As you may know, last year I spent some time in South Africa.  I had a chance to visit Robben Island and wanted to share a few snap shots with you.

Robben Island Cemetery. 

This is the limestone quarry where the prisoners would spend all day mining for lime to be used to pave the roads on the island.

This cave at the quarry was excavated by the inmates and served as a bathroom, break room, and lunch area, all in one.

This is a rock pile that Nelson Mandela started at a prisoner reunion on the island in 1995.  They all, one by one, put a rock into the pile at the Lime Quarry.

This was our tour guide.  One of the coolest parts of the tour was discovering that he was an ex-prisoner himself.

The entrance to one of the prison cell blocks.

Here he displayed an enlarged version of the prisoner's ID cards.

A stroll across a courtyard brought us to where Mandela was held captive.

 Here is the prison yard outside the cell black where prisoners like Mandela were allowed to garden.

 Nelson Mandela's cell.  8 feet by 7 feet with a straw mattress and a blanket.  The toilet was a covered bucket.

After Mandela's release from prison in 1990 he appeared on this balcony at the Cape Town City Hall.  This is where he gave a speech declaring his commitment to peace and reconciliation with the white minority.  Mandela said that he would continue as "a purely defensive action against the violence of apartheid."  He hoped that the government would agree to negotiations so that "there may no longer be the need for the armed struggle" and insisted that his main focus was to bring peace to the black majority and give them the right to vote in elections.

If you find yourself in Cape Town, South Africa make it a point to visit Robben Island.  It is certainly a humbling yet inspiring experience.  The attributes that come up for me regarding Mandela are, patience, courage, mindfulness, empowering, peaceful, respect.  I am reminded of how successful we can be when we embody those things.  And as I said at the beginning, although we may feel a sense of loss over his death, this is truly a time to celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela.

Thanks for stopping by!

Bobbi & Janine Engagement - The Montage, Laguna Beach

I had the privilege of shooting Bobbi and Janine's engagement photos a few days ago at the Montage in Laguna Beach, Ca.  They are such a fun loving couple.  And their daughter Reese made the shoot that much more fun.  Here's some highlights.  Enjoy!

 And their daughter Reese.  Adorable.  If you need a lesson on how to smile, talk to Reese.

 Can't wait to shoot this wedding!  Thanks for stopping by!

Aubree Lee - One Month Old

Meet Aubree Lee!  Just one month old.

Love her smile!

 "I'm leading the revolution!  Who's with me?!"

Love this one.  I got her smiling in the background...

One of my favorites.

 Posing for the camera is a lot of work...

 Thanks for stopping by!

Cathedral Peak Sunset Panoramic (stitching multiple images in Photoshop)

Cathedral Peak Sunset Panoramic

Cathedral Lakes, Yosemite National Park, Ca.

Here's another from the Cathedral Peak area.  This is sunset with an afternoon thunder storm clearing.  Once you get up above the lakes the vista looking out towards Tuolumne Meadows (just to the left of the peak) is amazing.  You can probably see past the northern boundaries of the park.

This is a 4 image vertical stitch.  If you don't know what that means I'll try and sum it up. I basically shot this scene, from left to right, with 4 vertical images.  So when I uploaded them off the camera there were 4 different images that in and of themselves probably didn't look like much. Then I use a feature in Photoshop CS4 called  Photomerge (which is under file then automate). It automatically aligns the 4 images together to get this end result.  I started with 4 vertical side by side images and now I have one horizontal image. Make sense?  It's a lot more complicated to explain than it is to do.

I like using "stitching" because it gives you larger images (good for printing) and you can manipulate the limitations of your lenses. What I mean by that is if I had taken one full frame image of this scene (horizontally) it would only be the size of my sensor and megapixels (which happens to be full frame and 21.1 MP). So my whole image would have been about 5,600 by 3,700 pixels.  Now by using 4 images and combining them my new image is much larger at 11,000 by 6,100 pixels.  I can get a much bigger print out of that resolution (it's really more than twice as big as if I had done this with one shot).

Also as far as manipulating my lenses - it's a little more subtle than how it sounds.  If my lens (I used a 16-35L here) could not get wide enough of a shot as I wanted, it's useful to tilt the camera 90 degrees and shoot three, four or five or more frames vertically and then stitch them.  In layman's terms - let's say my camera sensor captures 4x6 inch images (ignore the math here - we're just dealing with the shape).  So when the camera is sitting upright (normal positioning) the shape of the image would be 6 inches across and 4 inches high).  When the camera is sitting on its side the image would be 4 inches across instead).  So let's say the scene I wanted to shoot called for a horizontal image in the end but the trees or the sky was just too high up to fit it into that frame.  I could rotate it so that the 6 inch inch side of the image was now vertical giving me more room to capture that tree or sky or whatever.  Obviously the image isn't a horizontal one anymore so I would have to sacrifice the scene on both sides of that image if I left it like this.  The work around is to do a few consecutive images in a row and then stitch them together in Photoshop.

There are some things that you need to know before shooting like this - that I found out the hard way about. Polarizing filters don't work well when you're moving the camera over such a large area of a scene.  Remember that polarizing filters only work when they are 90 degrees from the Sun.  So if you're covering 180 degrees of a scene you're only going to get half of it polarized leaving parts of the image, such as the sky, to be different tones and shades.  It creates a mess to fix in post.

Also getting everything to be at the right angle can be a challenge.  A tripod is a must obviously but having the right head can really make a difference in keeping things level.  What might look like a good guess as to where to frame the next shot it might be slightly tilted.  The end result is you'll have to crop the image down quite a bit to get it framed correctly.

Overlapping your images is also important.  A good rule of thumb is when you are framing your consecutive shots overlap the area you shot prior by at least 1/3.  This gives Photoshop more information to work with and also ensures that you don't leave out anything.

The Photomerge feature in CS is really very simple.  It does everything for you and I've had nothing but great success with it.

Happy 4th of July!

Today is Independence Day.  I woke up to relative silence this morning.  Surely the calm before the storm.  Tonight's sky will be filled with colorful explosions and my dogs will likely be cowering under the bed.  It wasn't long though before the first fireworks burst within earshot...at 830 AM..  I know we founded this country on war and maybe we're not ready to move past that but I like to celebrate this country in a slightly different way.

Every year around the 4th of July I hit the trails in the High Sierra for some backpacking.    Last week it was Cathedral Lakes in Yosemite National Park.  Although there are many equally breath taking landscapes, it's tough to find more beauty than this.  It's not so much the geology as it is the emotions.  When I sit at a place like this, meditate and look on in awe I am transformed.  Then I compose my photographs to remind me of that sense of Joy I felt as I stood in all its grandeur.

I am grateful to be born in this country.  But with that gratitude comes a sense of responsibility.  I am reminded of what Viktor Frankl (Holocaust survivor) proposed with the Statue of Responsibility to be erected on the West coast opposite the Statue of Liberty.  Frankl wrote, "Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness."

I have the freedom to be responsible.  In that is the balance of enjoying freedom.  I celebrate Independence day by remembering the joy and the potential of this country.  It's always there but sometimes I have to get out of the city to see it.  That's why my photography is so important to me.  I can relive that Joy anytime, anywhere.

Happy Independence Day U.S of A.