Shooting For The Moon

 

It has been much too long since I've posted new content here - nearly 5 years in fact.

I'm starting out 2022 with putting more effort into my photography. This involves a few key things that I've done or intend to do.

• Getting out more with the camera - at least once a week.
• Posting more on Instagram and my Facebook page (from these more frequent outings).
• Refreshing my website.
• Creating a new YouTube channel with the intent to begin posting content.
• And, might as well include, posting on this blog.

The above photo is a recent one that I posted. I received a question on lens and camera settings, so I wanted to go ahead and expound a bit on the answer here.

The Total Experience

So, this past Monday, August 21, 2017, there was a total solar eclipse across the United States. Like any good photographer, I saw it as an opportunity for photos.

Since Monday, I have seen a lot of amazing images of the eclipse. Sadly, mine really don't measure up fully. Living in the path of totality is great, but despite my initial aspirations of heading somewhere scenic for the event, all the hype surrounding it helped make the decision for me to stay home.

My family and I sat in the backyard and watched the whole thing. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the moon start to cover the sun, and then to experience the moment that it fully covered the sun. The drop in temperature and light levels as the sun was more and more covered were amazing to witness. My children even went in to get blankets as things started to cool off.

I started taking photos from the very beginning, and didn't stop until the sun was completely uncovered once more. I didn't have a set interval for the photos, and manually triggered the camera when I felt I should. I had decided that, as much as I would love to get some amazing photos, that I was going to concentrate more on just experiencing it, while getting some photos along the way.

My setup was fairly simple. I don't have equipment to auto track the movement of the sun, although that would have been helpful. I shot with my 70-200mm lens with a Tamron 2x teleconverter, and obviously used a tripod. I had purchased, from Amazon, a small sheet of solar film that I made into a filter for my lens. For triggering purposes, I use an app call DSLRDashboard on my phone. This allowed me to remotely trigger the camera, as well as access a live view image to assist in adjusting the camera as necessary. I used auto exposure bracketing, to help ensure that I would get a good exposure. By setting the 2 second self-timer on the camera, it automatically fired off all 3 exposures each time.

The above GIF is the result a quite a bit of work in Lightroom and Photoshop. Much of that work was manually aligning the images since I don't have a tracking device. It's not the spectacular images or videos that you've seen elsewhere, but it is something. The file size is larger than I had expected, so hopefully it loads well for you.

The Facebook Ad Experience

On April 8th of this year, while wasting some time on Facebook, a notification popped up. Facebook was offering me a $30 coupon to "boost" my post of the photo seen here. Well, if they're going to let me do it for free, then I'll definitely take them up on it.

I set it up to last 7 days and use the full $30. If nothing else, it would give me a chance to see whether or not boosting a post was worth it, and it could provide some material for a blog post, this blog post.

Natural Light Photography, Good or Bad? | Part 1

The other day my wife and I were discussing, in a round about way, portrait photography. She mentioned a photographer that many people she knows have used to take portraits of their children and/or family. My wife pulled up this photographer's facebook page to show me some of the photos presented there. This particular photographer stated that they were a "natural light" photographer. It got me to thinking what this means, and whether or not that was a good thing.

My Experience With A Borrowed MeFOTO Tripod

Recently my wife and I made a trip to our nation's capital city, Washington, D.C. While my wife was going to take part in a conference, I was going to be a tourist and, hopefully, get some great photos along the way.

I knew that I wanted to take a tripod with me, but I wasn't sure that I wanted to take my trusty old (but big) Manfrotto. With that in mind, I asked my friend, and local photographer, +Marty Hegr, if I could borrow his MeFOTO tripod, which I had seen him using on a few photowalks that we had attended together.

Below are my thoughts:

Children's Portraits | Hannah and Preston

Tuesday evening I had the opportunity to make some outdoor portraits of these two young children. I thought I'd go ahead and share a few favorites, giving their mom a chance to see some before the final product is delivered.

Anatomy of a Portrait | Off Camera Manual Flash

One of my favorite techniques, now that I understand it and realize how easy it is, is off camera manual flash. My eyes were opened to this technique last September when I attended WPPI U in Portland.

This is something that I can use for a more formal portrait shoot, or I can use it for the casual playground portrait such as the one above. It's quite simple and something that I am happy to have in my arsenal.

Making of a Photograph | More of an Adventure Than You Might Think

Some people seem to think that all photographers have to do is push a little button. Often the making of a photograph is much larger adventure than they could even imagine. Above you can see what has come to be one of my favorite images, the making of which definitely included an adventure. I'd like to tell you about that adventure.

Bald Eagles and Me | Craig Pifer Photography

While I don't consider myself to be a wildlife photographer, it is certainly something that I enjoy when I can. I don't have the long telephoto lenses of the great wildlife photographers, but I can certainly aspire to that. I do my best with the shorter focal lengths that I have, and occasionally get what I believe to be a decent photo.

Today's excursion to the local Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge certainly yielded good results for me. Please continue on for the story and more photos.

Operation Photo Rescue

Life sometimes has a roundabout way of providing opportunities.

My Favorites of 2012 | Craig Pifer Photography

It seemed like the popular thing to do, compile a selection of photos from the past year that you believe to be your best, or maybe just your favorites.

For the second year in a row I did just that. Rather than just choosing a random number of images, and saying that they are my absolute best, I've chosen 12, one from each month, and am calling them favorites. They may or may not be my best images, but as I reviewed my photos they are the ones that jumped out at me. Perhaps in a month or two I would look back and choose a different set of 12.

Here they are in slide show format:


If you are so inclined you may purchase a 2013 calendar with these images here.

Wedding Photography Slide Show | Craig Pifer Photography

I recently put together a slide show of photo that I took at my brother-in-law's wedding last July. The included photos are from the rehearsal and dinner as well as from the wedding and reception.

They had another paid photographer, so I was just there as a guest, and father of the flower girls, but had fun getting a few shots anyway. Please enjoy the images.

Occasionally I Learn Something New

I was looking at this blog earlier and I noticed that it has been nearly a full year since I last posted. I'm sure I could come up with some great excuses as to why it's taken me so long, but I really don't have an excuse, I've just neglected it. Sure, I have great plans to add great content here, but then when it comes down to it I just don't make, or take, the time to do so. Maybe I feel that the content I have in mind isn't really that great after all. So, this post will keep me from going more than a year between posts, and brings you, the reader, a bit up to date on at least a couple of things.

Photography, Me, and Google+

For the past several months I have been spending time with a new social network, Google+. At first I wasn't real sure what to do with the account. In short order though I found that there were a lot of other photographers on Google+ and they were interested in sharing and interacting with each other.

I'm not going to tell you how to use Google+, or even talk about all the great features that are available to photographer, and other users. If that's what you are looking for, the Colby Brown has you covered with his Google+: The Survival Guide for a Photographer's Paradise. I highly recommend reading his post.

In fact, it was Colby Brown that really prompted this blog post. He recently announced a contest the required writing a short essay about why G+ is great for photographers. I wrote something, very short, and not nearly as articulated as I might like, but I've been thinking about it since then. This is an attempt to express my thoughts a little better, but I make no promises that I will succeed.

Preparing Images for Printing at Retail | LightScribbles

Rule one, or maybe it's one rule of blogging is to write about what you know. I think that I'm qualified to write about this topic. I've worked in photo retail for over 10 years, much of that time printing photos for customers.

I often see customers that bring in photos that are the wrong filetype, size, bit depth, colorspace, or any number of other possible issues. I'll try to address some of that and help you to get it right next time you take your photos in for printing or order prints online.

This is the image that I'll use to help illustrate this topic.

A Resolution for Better Photos | LightScribbles

A few years a wrote an article to offer my customers and fellow camera club members a better understanding of resolution and how it relates to digital images. It was intended as a beginners' guide of sorts, and not an expert technical reference.

I decided to update the article somewhat and offer it here on my blog. Hopefully it will be helpful to more people this way. If you notice any inaccuracies, please bring them to my attention so that I can have this article as complete and accurate as possible.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to leave a comment. I will update this post with additional information as needed.

Photographers, are you and your customers educated and informed about copyrights? | LightScribbles

This is aimed at all photographers creating images for customers, especially wedding and portrait. This is aimed at no photographer(s) in particular.

What do your customers know about copyright? Perhaps I should ask what you, as a photographer, know about copyright? This is an important issue that is as timely now as ever.

Getting the Big Picture | LightScribbles

Lake Tahoe - Emerald Bay

Occasionally, and I really mean just occasionally, I take a sequence of shots with the intention of putting them together to make one larger image. Then, occasionally, I actually get around to putting them together.

I always tell myself that I'm going to work on doing more stitched panoramas, but then I don't really end up doing it. It's not that it takes that much time or effort to put them together, and it only takes slightly longer to take a series of image instead of just one.

Adding Some Color | LightScribbles

This blog needs some color, wouldn't you agree? I like the dark theme that I have because I believe that photos will show up better on the darker background than they would on white or on a patterned or photographic background.

I mentioned that I would likely throw a few shots from the old Light Scribbles blog into the mix here. Since I'm needing some content that's what I'm doing today.

This was originally done on Novemeber 12, 2008. It is of a small handheld fan that has some colored led lights on one of the blades. The light pattern changes as the fan turns.

I hope that you enjoy this photo. I will be adding more content soon if all goes as I would like.

A Fresh Start | LightScribbles

I've been thinking about getting this blog started for a while now, so here it is.

A couple of years ago I made regular blog posts with recent photos that I had taken. I was posting at least twice a week, sometimes more. Then I got to the point that I was not enjoying photography as I once had, and I removed my blog.

Now I'm back and I'm going to do things a bit different. Instead of just posting recent photos on here, which I'm sure will still happen, I'm going to be sharing much more. I'm serious about improving my photography and making it the best it can be. If I learn something new, or rediscover something that I forgot I knew, I'll try to remember to share it here. Hopefully I'll be able to post a few things that help others learn too.

Basically this blog will be all photography all the time. It will be photos, photography instruction, my opinions on equipment, books, resources, etc. If I come across something that I really like, I'll be sure to share that. If I come across something that I don't like, or I believe to be a complete waste, I'll let you know that too.

Oh, remember that old blog that I trashed? Well, I still have the images on the computer, so expect them to make a return here, or at least some of them. I'll try to add them in gradually rather than flooding the blog with them all at once.

I hope that you'll join me on this journey and together we'll see what we can learn. Feel free to make comments about what you are seeing, and what you would like to see, here.