Category: Nature

A Forest for the Trees

Fifteen years ago, traveling with an underwater camera meant carrying a dedicated camera system and housing along with all my scuba gear—two full suitcases and a carry-on bag. These days, the cost and aggravation of transporting that much equipment can pretty much ruin the idea of traveling at all.

Last year, I bought a DIVEVOLK SeaTouch 4 Max housing for my iPhone 15 Pro Max, along with a red filter and a few other little doohickeys I thought I might need. Compared with the cost of housing any of my APS-C, full-frame, or medium-format cameras, it was ridiculously inexpensive. So inexpensive that I reread the reviews to make sure the housing wasn’t made from Swiss cheese or cardboard.

Before 2023, I hadn’t been diving in eleven years. My dive gear—and I—were old, crusty, and out of practice. But getting back into the water with a camera was life-affirming and immediately comfortable, like getting back on a bicycle. By streamlining both my camera system and dive gear, I was also able to reduce the cost and stress of traveling to a single suitcase.

There was one problem.

It occurred to me that if the housing failed at depth, the phone inside it—my lifeline to the digital world and the place where I stored nearly everything I needed for the trip—would probably flood. Getting home could become interesting in all the wrong ways.

So I went to Back Market and bought a heavily used iPhone 14 Pro for about half the price of a new phone. That would become my underwater camera. If it didn’t work, I could still use the iPhone 15 and hope for the best.

Since buying the setup, I have photographed dives in the Florida caverns and on the reefs of Bonaire and Dominica, with no complaints whatsoever.

When I made this photograph, there was a fair amount of sargassum in the water, and visibility was cloudy. The original image was drained of color and predominantly blue. It was pleasing, but not quite the photograph I wanted.

The pilings already felt less like a human structure than an underwater forest, with the divers drifting between them like unfamiliar wildlife. I converted the photograph to black and white, then added a little clarity and contrast in Lightroom. The monochrome treatment separated the light, sediment, divers, and encrusted columns more clearly while preserving the murky atmosphere that first attracted me.

Although I had brought both a video light and a red filter, I found myself loving the black-and-white renderings from this location. Removing the color seemed to make the underwater world stranger, quieter, and somehow more timeless.

All in all, the DIVEVOLK housing—and my decision to trust an Apple phone as an underwater camera—has been one of my best photographic purchases in recent years. I love the results I am getting, and DIVEVOLK is firmly on my radar as I continue rebuilding my underwater photography system.

Weeping Sunflowers at Solstice

Well, it’s that time of the year again. The shortest days bring the least amount of light into our lives and most everything that grew over the summer is dead, sleeping or suicidal – like these poor, pathetic sunflowers. Looking at them, I wanted to crowd fund some therapy for them, but instead I did what any heartless photographic voyeur would do, I exploited their trauma with a picture.
When I pressed the shutter button, I knew that the image would be backlit, but I expected more color in the image from Kodak Portra 400, which is usually so delightfully vibrant. I was surprised and happy however, that the suggestion of color, rather than an overt blast of chroma, adds to the sense of the loss of light in the world at this time of year.
Shooting film on antique cameras never ceases to bring surprises and joy for this camera geek.

About the photo: This was taken with a Plaubel Makina 67 medium format film camera on fresh Kodak Portra 400. The camera is a unique joy to shoot with and the f/2.8 lens is unheard of in such a small portable package.

Darkroom Fun With Lightroom

This photo is my favorite visual analogy of how I felt emerging from the pandemic. I felt like the boat – beached, abandoned, broken, and a target for pigeons. I spent a lot of time on this negative in the Fleisher Art Memorial Darkroom, working contrast filters and dodge and burn techniques in order to bring up the clouds and minimize the shadows enough to bring detail, but without losing the mood.
This version is what I replicated in Adobe Lightroom, which is so much faster and intuitive. Still the darkroom teaches these concepts so much better. Both tools, the darkroom and Lightroom make me a better photographer in different ways.

This was a borrowed camera shot and the biggest problem with borrowing a classic camera and a classic lens is that I usually have to go out and buy one after I’ve had a chance to play with them.

About the Photo: One of my favorite photography friends and my film processor of choice, Professor Gina Talley of https://www.femmefermental.com – lent me her 50-year old Nikon F2 camera along with a Nikkor 55mm f/3.5 Micro lens for my first post-pandemic vacation in Chincoteague, VA. The camera was amazing – it has a tactile feel that I can only describe as what a film camera should be. We discussed this and we decided that it had great ‘clickiness,’ which meant something at the time. The heft of the camera, the feel in the hand, the smooth throw of he film advance lever, the feel of the shutter button and the lovely sound of the shutter release all bring home a feeling of pure correctness. All though I slightly prefer the F3 due to its weight and its ability to be pure manual and also autoexposure – I like having options – I would rate this as one of my favorite 35mm film cameras.

The lens – the Nikkor 55mm f/3.5 Micro – is joy. It is primitive; It doesn’t have autofocus and you can’t meter through it, but it is one of the finest lenses I have used in the Nikon universe. I just had to buy both an F2 and a 55mm Micro after this exercise. Darn you, Gina!

Film used for this shot was Ilford HP5 400, it has a nice grain and I love it as much as Kodak Tri-X, well almost.

Unexpected Wildlife

Sometimes I feel like someone is watching me…

It’s kind of disturbing to look out your office window and see someone looking back at you, but it’s also OK, when you’re a nature geek. This cute fellow is a Screech Owl who spends his days sleeping in my tree, Just a few feet from my house, and on a busy suburban street. He’s a wonderful reminder that nature has been finding ways to integrate with us, and even though this is probably because the animals have no better option, it’s really nice to see them, at least until they break in and have a party in your attic.
Since moving into our home ten years ago in a very suburban neighborhood we have hosted a deer, several foxes, this owl, red-tail hawks, an opossum, and a racoon or two. I won’t mention the flying squirrels, but they are there and they keep coming back. Especially the we adopted – Squeakus. I’m a sucker for cute fuzzy tail and a long lens.

About the Photo: This one was shot with the legendary Nikon D500 camera and the under-appreciated (by the media, not by me) Nikkor 28-300 G Super Zoom lens on a frigid cold day. The owl did his best to look nonchalant as I worked in for a good shot. He was a good sport and patient model. I’d definitely work with him again.

I like to consider this one as an effective ‘two-beat photo,’ if you are going to use the terminology of Michael Rubin, the creator of the Everyday Photography, Every Day podcast and his book Photo Haiku. The first beat being an effective, high contrast photo of a tree in the suburbs, and the second beat, the punchline, if you will, being the discovery of the owl in the knot.

Cormorants at Niagara Falls

Sometimes the challenge in creating impactful travel photography is to isolate the photo from the environment. Originally I was taken by many cormorants occupying bare trees along the Niagara River. Try as I might, I could not compose a decent photo as the background and the subject matter were much too busy. Finally, I decided to zoom in on a just a few of the birds and carved this shot out of the background. While the entire scene would have been unremarkable, in the cropped shot the cormorants seem to be engaged in a meaningful conversation in their own blue universe.

Kingston, on the Hudson

Sometimes life throws you fog. When that happens it’s best to get out your camera. For this image, I used the old, trustworthy Nikon N90, Kodak Portra 400 Film, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 lens. The camera did a great job of metering a fairly tough image despite the fact that it is more than 30 years old. The colors came up great with the Kodak film. What amazing grain!

The Three Tenors

‘Even a fish would not get in trouble if it kept its’ mouth shut.’
– My Dad (Who once worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency.)

At the docks in Garibaldi, Oregon, after the fishing boats come in, I used a Fuji XT2 – the perfect travel system – to capture these stunning, back lit, dinner-to-be’s. In post-prod, I brought down the white heat at the top of the photo along with a touch of clarity to fill in some of the details.