Aug 28, 2009

2009 NMSF Winning Images – Scenic Class, Professional Category


2009 New Mexico Sate Fair, Scenic Class Winners, Professional Category

Professional Judging
Tuesday evening, August 18, 5 judges, ~ 15 Enchanted Lens Camera Club volunteers, and a room full of excited New Mexicans judged and viewed images submitted as Professional Photography at 2009 New Mexico State Fair.
My long time landscape geology interest focused only on the Scenic Class. After an initial public judging, images were segregated by score, then presented again to judges in closed session.
This enclave discussed each image more closely – placing them in final agreed award order for public presentation. Each judge mentally prepared a short discussion of why this particular image won this particular place in the competition.
Once again, winning images appeared on an easel in front of our excited crowd. Each judge then vocalized closed forum discussions, superior image qualities, and why that image won such honors.
Our highlight is Best of Show award. Peter Davies, Best of Show Winner, was then asked to present his image and offer any wisdom garnered during capture, digital darkroom processing, and presentation.

I did not hear much of each presentation – I was busy capturing ceremonial shots to preserve and commemorate qualities and high honors of this event.

Guest Blogger
In the next several weeks, Pathways of Light is honored to host each winner presenting his or her victorious image. I've asked each winner to provide a small image, begin discussion with touchy-feely aspects of choosing that locale, image capture, then discuss their digital darkroom path to State Fair presentation.
To honor the State Fair judging process, we will present each image in the order New Mexicans observed this event; Honorable Mention, 3rd, 2nd, and 1st Place.

Lest We Forget…
OOPs – here are your award winners, in order, with titles…
HM Morning Glory Leslie Davis
HM Orange Creekside Jim Gale
3rd Sand Dune Bob Barton
2nd Shiprock Joe Bridwell
1st Wisdom of Trees Peter Davies

We anticipate these Guest Blogs will appear prior to State Fair opening September 11, 2009.
Enjoy…

Aug 23, 2009

Recent Things Adobe, etc.

Adobe's eSeminars Ended with a Bang Thursday!
Tom Hogarty, Lightroom Product Manager, provided an hour of insight to Lightroom 2. From that hour long video, I learned quite a bit but found two ideas particularly pertinent.
First, Tom turned clipping on in the histogram, selected a histogram which clipped on both ends, then moved his cursor inside the histogram and reduced clipping for both shadows and lights. When I tried the same thing on Adobe Camera Raw underlying CS4, this neat little facility was nonexistent. Huzzah, Lightroom...
Second, Tom showed us how to get to Adobe's Lightroom Preset Exchange. File> Plug-in Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+)> Plug-in Exchange… and choose your weapon. In simpler terms, the Preset Exchange lets you download user presets from around the planet. Actuation of these presets opens a broad, rich world of image conversion.

Adobe Camera Raw 5.5 RC
Then, to more add to Thursday's Big Bang, Hogarty, once again in Lightroom Journal, released Adobe Camera Raw 5.5 RC... with a fix to demosaicing the green element of Bayer Sensors.
Adobe also revised the install procedure for ACR 5.5. On Windows, you download some 83 Mb of zipped files, extract, and then click Setup.exe. Setup proceeds to decide what size CPU (32 v 64 bit), then install for that CPU… it takes a minute or so.

2009 New Mexico State Fair
Some 40 volunteers from Enchanted Lens Camera Club manned Intake and Judging portions of the photography show for the State Fair. With some 600 entries, our photography show was quite a success. While many State Fair programs are down perhaps 30% over last year, 'our' photography show remained flat. Last year we had 800 entries with 4 entries per individual. At 3 entries per individual this year, 600 is a pretty good number...
Enjoy...

Aug 12, 2009

Evening’s Allusion


Mountain Majesty, intimate landscapes, Bisti, Bisti Badlands, Farmington, NM

Mountain Majesty
©Joe Bridwell
An isolated mountain range
Springs forth from tundra
As you fly along
At 40,000 feet...
Deep shadows, strong prominent ridges, dark backslopes
Even a long, sweeping dry river valley;
Evening’s allusion

Scale
The allusion of an entire mountain range is a simple matter of scale.
If you're at 40,000 feet, this is, indeed, a Mountain Majesty.
If not, maybe your eye level is 6 feet above the ground surface. Yet, with low sun angle, small 3 to 6 inch high rock slabs, surrounded by pebbles and sand, support either grand allusion.

Another intimate Bisti image...

Speaking of Scale...
It's been my privilege to present these Bisti vignettes willy-nilly, but usually a minimum of one a week.
But the New Mexico State Fair is now calling; the Enchanted Lens Camera Club provides volunteers to man our photography show. We take in hundreds of photos, present them to a panel of judges, hang them, then take them down and return them to photographers from around the state.
As I'm quite involved in this process, I'm likely to be off-line until after the 20th...
Enjoy...

Aug 3, 2009

Bein’ Back Home Again


Storm across the valley, john denver, Canyonlands, Utah

Storm Across the Valley…
© Joe Bridwell
There’s a storm across the valley,
Clouds are rollin’ in
The afternoon is heavy on your shoulders…
…Hey, it’s good to be back home again
©1974, John Denver music & lyrics

White Rim Trail
A long, winding 4-wheel-drive road begins its steep descent near the Canyonlands Visitor Center at Canyonlands National Park, Utah. Late May storms and this vision quickly catapulted me from the car for a hand-held pano. Click-click-click ~ raw files flew on the card, capturing this resplendent scene, highlighting it by a brilliant exclamation mark striking distant mountain highlands far across the valley.
I could almost hear John singin’ somewhere down that lonely winding road. Some 18 months later, I was actually privileged to travel the White Rim…

Opus
Just as John’s soulful, easy listenin’ music could slip into a ‘forever memory’, so the soft pastel colors are emphasized by storm clouds reflecting early evening light. No matter where your eye seeks, there is another fascinating crevice or towering pinnacle to point it to more entrancement.
Of course, the metaphorical exclamation mark is a bit absurd; but, the rainbow seems to be like a Heavenly ribbon, accentuating a Christmas-gift sense to this marvelous image.
To show you how that day really went, with clouds, rainbows, and magnificent scenery, I hearken back almost a year and some 100 issues ago during early publication of Pathways of Light blog to Majestic Blessing

Tryin’…
John had a number of memorable hits which evolved around the theme ‘country boy’. My country boy is enhanced by a love for our planet and a long time familiarity with nature, rocks, landscapes, tectonics, historical geology, and wilderness. I am fortunate to live where such truly remarkable scenery frequently occurs.
With time, a few DLSR’s and trekking the wilderness outback, these intricate emotional balances reliably reproduce memorable images. Some capture distant scenes, intimate landscapes, a strummin’ guitar (as in this case), and/or the indescribable Bard…

It’s the combination of all my senses evoked by such images which keeps me out there, tryin’ to find another superlative Magic Hour, tryin’ to improve my photography, tryin’ to commemorate all those great times ~ well, just…
Bein’ Back Home Again!

Thanks, John! I was at Los Alamos when you penned the Storm Across the Valley song line…
Enjoy…