Golden Girls

As we rolled south from Shidoni Foundry, the conversation turned to wild horses.  Several months ago, a couple of us were shown where wild horses roam. 
When Kathy gets an idea in her mind, it takes a hard grip to wrench it away.  We had talked many times about 'going on a horse shoot...'.  After Jackie help me win an award for Lavender Dawn, she came on board as well.
But several circumstances - operation, moving, etc. - prevented shooting horses on location.
I suggested, "Jackie, turn at this next intersection and get over on the eastern frontage road.  We might see some horses..."

To our amazement, a small band was directly ahead in the field near a new housing development.  Soon, we were out of the car and among ‘em, cameras clicking.
Between that first wild horse shoot and now, Kathy had a recent, major back operation.  While she was along to shoot, she wasn't allowed to drive yet.
We quickly began to shoot in our individual directions. 

Jackie enticed the young colt with some hay, hoping to shoot a real, exotic close up.  Locals tend to bring hay to feed these wild animals.  In a subsequent picture, the colt got his feet to the top of a little gully’s edge - then stopped, front feet braced.  I could imagine him feeling, "I don't know this gal; she's really quiet.  Can she be trusted?"



Kathy wanted to get up sun; a caretaker, I kept a close eye out in case she got in trouble.  In evening's final golden sheen of magic light, I got about three shots of Kathy and her favorite paint horse...
Seems like this picture really says it all, "Golden Girls, finally, with a lot of water under each individual bridge, we did get our first wild horse shoot.  Doesn't it simply whet your appetite for more?"



As for me, I feel Kathy’s having the chance to wander free, to celebrate with her camera, to shoot wild horses - I watched her happy, about 15 years old, and in her own gorgeous element.

May I share a Praise ~ Each of us had good fortune this day.  From Shidoni to Wild Horses - part of the magic of gorgeous shoots in such different environs!

Shidoni's Color Scapes

Shidoni Foundry, a fascinating photo adventure, is located in Tesuque, NM. With a museum, a yard full of unique shapes, and deep fascination of a roaring, hot metal pouring room, the foundry is a mecca for photographers.
Some 20 of us spent an excited Saturday wandering Shidoni. It was like we were on some other planet...

Pouring Hot Metal

Metal workers, clad in metallic heat reflection gear, seemed ghostly shapes from a science fiction novel. Were they really Klingons?






Here we've just retrieved a red hot iron cask full of flaming, molten metal. It's interesting ~ the man on the left, although some distance from the cask, reflects lots of heat.
Here's a close up ~ they set the cask on a base to cool slightly. I find it fascinating that flames are coming up off the liquid metal.






Notice the cooler cask rim after workers set it in the crane-mounted pouring device. It's only the second pour for this set of shapes. I was lucky enough to catch a splatter shot - don't you love the flaming hot metal streaking away across the sand below? The roaring sound of the heater drowned any talk within earshot - unless shouted!






It's almost like Fourth of July fireworks; oops, really, it's just some Klingon warship factory. Wouldn't want to get one of those flaming metal streaks caught in an open top boot...

We've seen how metal figures are cast at Shidoni's Foundry. Now, let's look at physical manifestations of this incredible process.

Outdoor Shapes

Outdoor figures seem from other worlds ~ yet with their own picturesque beauty.
From an eagle in a pond fishing, to a red box, to an abstract silver figure, then another dark, distant eagle... Shidoni’s yard is fascinating! Would beings from another world cheer?
Our image is a high dynamic range (HDR) mid-afternoon composite.
Our poster is color-coordinated - more subtle, pastel colors are chosen from within the image to create a complementary boundary.

Was this art or science fiction? The entire pouring shoot took about five minutes.

Forums and Firmware

In the midst of thinking like a Windows Explorer guru, I’ve been battling with one BIG vs many little Lightroom catalogs. If you can make an easy folder for each new project (blog, story, individual shoot, multiday shoot, workflow, etc.), then, should you carry that 'individualist' logic forward into Lightroom? I've been using individual folders for new projects for quite awhile. But, with a recent iPod, I've also been consolidating singles, albums, and podcasts into playlists, a simile to main catalogs, working catalogs, and collections.

Lightroom Forums are a planet-wide group of photographers interested in maximizing Lightroom use. From newbie to guru, a reader benefits from all levels of discussion as they grow into advanced use of Lightroom. I finally found a thread titled, "Should I be using multiple catalogs?"

It was like walking up this dry creek, looking for small, occasional loose flecks of gold, rounding a corner, and finding a dike containing a handful of gold nuggets the size of your thumb (almost wrote fist…).

Brad Snyder, Lightroom Guru and Moderator, posted,
"I think the most common arrangement among workflows I'm aware of, is a combination of 'working catalog' and Year/Month/Date 'archive catalog'. That is a single small scratch catalog used for active work (presumptively for max performance) and a large master catalog used for archival/retrieval.
"If you intend to use LR as a Digital Asset Management system, it doesn't make sense to break it into multiple chunks, requiring duplicate efforts of keyword, metadata and collection maintenance, and synchronization."

This response is similar to many during the month-long discussion about multiple threads.
I think in individual projects, some of which extend over long periods of time on the same image set as it evolves; I also do lots of work on a laptop; looks like it's really time to learn mechanics of creating an idea in a working laptop catalog, then using the Import Catalog function to combine working catalog and server’s master Lightroom catalog.
As if it was just that easy...

Nikon D300 Firmware Update 1.1
October 27, 2008, Nikon released a significant firmware upgrade.

There's a page of improvements. In my opinion, they boil down to Increasing ISO Sensitivity, Adding a Copyright Symbol, a Visible Value of High ISO NR, Improved Focus Acquisition Performance, and Noise Reduction under Manual Exposure at Bulb Shutter Speeds.
Installation instructions are clear; I find it takes a few minutes and perhaps 1% of battery to install these updates.

Both forums and firmware update significantly broaden efforts of a digital photographer to function with improved efficiency.