A Well-Watered Garden

What comes to mind when you hear "a well-watered garden"?  Lush greens, vibrant colors of spring flowers?  Kind of the exact opposite of what we have been experiencing through the last few months of winter.

To be well-watered, your garden needs a reliable source of water.  A lake, river, or even a spring provides the moisture your garden needs to produce the lush greens and vibrant colors.  

This month's calendar shot is from Magnolia Plantation and Gardens outside Charleston, South Carolina.  From their website "Founded in 1676 by the Drayton family, Magnolia Plantation has survived the centuries and witnessed the history of our nation unfold before it from the American Revolution through the Civil War and beyond. It is the oldest public tourist site in the Lowcountry, and the oldest public gardens in America, opening its doors to visitors in 1870 to view the thousands of beautiful flowers and plants in its famous gardens."

My photo was taken April 12, 2014 while on a long weekend photo outing with the Eastman Camera Club,   I have hundreds of photos from Magnolia Plantation and Middleton Place just down the road.  The photo at the bottom of the March calendar page is from Middleton Place., as is the December photo.

Middleton Place

Middleton Place

We were there in April to enjoy and photograph the Azaleas in bloom.   The gardens come alive with brilliant oranges, reds, purples, and whites.   Both plantations are wonderful places to visit and photograph in April.

One suggestion if you go -- try to go on a weekday and get there as early as possible before the crowds descend.  If you can be there on a cloudy or rainy day it will be even better.  The clouds may keep some people away and a cloudy day is perfect for this kind of photography.

Magnolia Plantation

You can bet they are diligent in watering these gardens to keep the shrubs and trees as beautiful as possible.   What about you?  Are you feeling well-watered or is your soul a bit scorched?   As Isaiah said, The Lord can satisfy your needs and renew your soul like a well-watered garden.   Unlike man-made gardens, His spring of renewal never runs dry. All you have to do is ask.

Cades Cove Methodist Church - The Living and Enduring Word

I've been slacking.  I haven't written anything about the photos in my 2015 calendar yet this year.  And February is almost gone!   As I write this our third big snow storm of the month is rapidly approaching.  I think I'm ready for March and the promise of spring.

The photo for February was taken from the pulpit of the Cades Cove Methodist Church in the Smoky Mountains National Park.   John D. McCampbell, who was a carpenter and the pastor,  built the church building in 1902 in 115 days for $115.   How's that for a church building campaign?

The building featured two front doors, a common feature of architectural feature in the 1800s, which allowed men to enter and sit on one side of the chapel and women and children on the other.  In a move that may have raised some eyebrows at the time, the Cades Cove Methodist Church permitted its congregants to sit where they pleased instead of separating the men from the women..

The church was affected greatly by the Civil War.  Divisions among the congregation during both the war and Reconstruction resulted in a church split and the formation of the Hopewell Methodist Church, which not longer stands.

Today the Cades Cove Methodist Church is visited by hundreds of people every day.  We were there on a cold early Spring day and pretty much had the church to ourselves.   With no light other than what came in through the windows, the photos required a long exposure time.  However, those long exposures meant everything outside the windows was completely washed out.  I created a High Dynamic Range (HDR) photo by combining 7 different shots with exposures ranging from 0.4 seconds to 30 seconds.

I wanted the words in the Bible to be clear and even readable in the photo.   I also wanted the back of the church and the trees outside to be in focus.  To get that extreme depth of field I used a very small aperture of f/22.

All this photo needs is for the pews to be full of people in the clothes of hard working farmers from the early 20th century.  They might have been listening to a sermon on perishable vs. imperishable seed.   The Word was on that pulpit in 1902 and it's still there today.

The wide photo at the bottom of the calendar page for February is also from Cades Cove.  It was taken from the loop road looking across the cove to the mountains to the south.   You can't find a prettier place in the park.

Getting In Focus

A few weeks ago I had surgery to remove the lens in my right eye that had become cloudy due to cataracts.   I had been living with blurred vision in that eye for a few years and it had finally gotten to the point where it needed to be replaced.  My vision in my left eye was good due to the glasses I wear, but there was no corrective lens that could compensate on the right side.

My vision before surgery

The thing that made the situation so frustrating for me is my right eye is my dominant eye and the one I use when taking photos.   I tried using my left eye to compose my shots and focus but found it just didn't work for me.  It was like trying to sign my name left handed.  

I could no longer tell if what I saw through the viewfinder was in focus on not.   If I could put the camera on a tripod I would use the LCD screen on the back of the camera to manually focus to compensate, but there are situations that made this impossible.  

Within hours of the surgery, I could see a drastic difference in my vision.  As the days passed I was amazed by the difference.   Everything was brighter and clearer.  It was like going from an old 1980s TV to a modern ultra high-definition TV.  The thing I didn't expect was the color change.  My old lens had yellowed over time and gave everything a yellow tint.  My mind compensated for it but now I can see the difference when comparing my right eye to my left that is still yellowed.

I've failed to adequately explain the difference in my vision. It's just hard to describe.   Then I realized I have the tools to show you the difference.

My vision after surgery

This is a photo I took this past Saturday.   The really cool thing is I was able to look through the viewfinder and manually focus on the bird.   This was the first time I've been able to do that in years.   I was a great feeling to be able to tell that my shot was in focus when I took it.  

I highly recommend the surgery for anyone dealing with cataracts.  It was quick, painless and amazing.  I only wish my left eye was bad enough to have the same surgery on that side.

What's My Go To Lens?

24-105mm f/4 L

I was asked today what my "go to" lens is.  It was easy because I know off the top of my head which one I use the most.  It's the Canon 24-105mm f/4 L lens.  It's a great general purpose lens.  If I had to take just one lens with me on a trip this would be it.  It's light, small, has a useful focal length range, and can produce some really nice sharp photos.


But what about the other lenses in my bag?   I saw a blog this evening by Patrick Endres that showed how often he used his lenses and showed the numbers in a pie chart. His top lens was the 24-105 as well.  Since all my photos are in Lightroom it took me all of about 2 minutes to see how often I used each lens in 2014.  Only photos I have kept are included, but the numbers should be representative of how often I use each one.

So, my guess was right.  I used the 24-105mm for 54% of my photos last year.  I was surprised it was that high.  I thought I would have seen a more even distribution across the 5 lenses.   What really surprised me was that I used the 300mm for only 3% of my photos.  That's 1% by itself and 2% of the time I used the 300mm with a 1.4x teleconverter making a 420mm lens.

300mm with 1.4 Teleconverter

So, have my habits changed between 2013 and 2014?   The 2013 numbers show that yes, the lenses I use have changed.   I used the 300mm 17% of the time and the 24-105mm only 45% of the time.    When I look at what I used the 300mm for in 2013 wildlife was a small percentage.  I used it as a general purpose lens shooting everything from flowers and starfish to steam locomotives and civil war reenactments.   I didn't buy the 70-200 until September 2013 so those numbers were down that year.

What does all this mean?  One thing it tells me is I don't have to pack all my lenses when heading out on a photo outing.   If I take the 17-40, 24-105, and 70-200 I'm going to have most all situations covered.  I will probably take the macro lens on most hikes to capture wildflowers and small critters.   But what about that 300mm?  Is it a bad lens?  Absolutely not!  In fact, it's one of the sharpest lenses I have, even when I add the 1.4 teleconverter.  It's much lighter than the 70-200.  If I hope to photograph wildlife I'm going to take that lens along.  Being a prime fixed focal length lens it's just not as versatile as the others.

My numbers in 2015 will be different.  We are planning a big trip to Alaska this year.  You can bet I'm taking that 300mm with me with hopes of getting some wildlife shots.

Stop and Then Don't Stop

A few times each winter it will snow in our region of East Tennessee.  The rule of averages says 71% of the time it will snow on a work day.  Nothing like sitting in the office thinking about all the photo opportunities that are slowly melting away.  This weekend we hit the 29% and got snow on Saturday morning.

It was a bit too warm in Kingsport for any accumulation of the white stuff, but less than 60 miles

away is Carver's Gap at 5,550 feet and Roan Highlands.  It's usually 8 - 10 degrees colder and they can get a lot more snow.   

I've had some special times photographing winter scenes up there, but not this time.   It was in the low 20s and the wind was fierce as you can see in the video below.   At one point, my glasses fogged up then the fog froze into a nice layer of frost.  Nothing like trying to see through frosted glasses.  There was no cleaning it off without getting somewhere warmer.  

There were about a dozen cars up there with a few people hiking up the trail and a couple guys coming down after camping out the night before.   The strangest thing we saw was a young lady getting out of the car next to us wearing a fur coat with a red dress underneath and a crown if what looked like ice crystals on her head.  She and her photographer headed into the woods to take Ice Princes photos.  We stayed out of their way and didn't stick around long enough to talk with them.   I hope she had some thermals on under that dress!  I'd love to see how the photos came out.

On the way up we had passed a couple photographic opportunities that looked interesting.  Not seeing a good place to turn around and wanting to get to the top I kept driving and said we would get them on the way back down.   One was a bunch of Cattails that were covered with snow on one side.  By the time we got back much of the snow was blown off the Cattails.   As the blog title says, I should have stopped on the way up.  A little further down we stopped at the second spot. 

What we had seen was a field of dried up Coneflower stalks with the round spiked heads of the dead flowers covered with snow.   They looked like some kind of new ice cream desert - an entire field of candy balls on sticks dipped in vanilla ice cream.  Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory in the Winter.  I got this first shot showing a bunch of the cold delights.

Coneflower Field

Of course I didn't want to stop there.   This time there was a gentle breeze and the temps were in the upper 20s.  Much more conducive to spending time and looking for other shots.

Getting in a little closer to the flowers, I could see the spikes left over from better days.

Snowflakes on Coneflower

Getting in even closer, I could see the individual snowflakes where the wind had stuck them to the flower head.   Be sure to click the images to get a full screen view where you can see the details.

I need to remember to stop when I see something I might want to spend some time photographing.  If I had listened to June we would have stopped on the way up (first rule of photography - listen to your spouse).  Once stopped I need to not stop at the obvious shots but keep looking for different angles, compositions, and photos that can tell a story.

Getting Out Of The Slump

Everyone has one from time to time.  That period where we are not doing our best and are having a hard time getting motivated to pull ourselves out of the slump.   Each year when winter rolls around I fall into a photographic slump.  I look outside and see brown and gray.   I don't see anything that makes me want to pack up my camera gear and head out looking for interesting photographs that might be waiting to be captured.   My camera can sit on the shelf for weeks at a time.

Today I have decided to do something about it.   I'm starting a weekly photo challenge put on by PhotoChallenge.org.  Each week the photo challenge authors will throw down a challenge in the form of a photographic theme.  The challenge is to go out and make a photo within the theme of the week.   The themes are designed to challenge photographers to try new things, get a bit out of the box, and best of all -- practice the art of photography.

I made my decision on day 6 of the first week so I had to move quickly.  The theme for this week is MACRO - KITCHEN.   I needed to quickly  make a close up or macro photo of something in our kitchen.   After spending about one minute looking around the kitchen this evening, I came across my subject for the week -- toothpicks.

Week 1 - MACRO KITCHEN - Toothpicks

These are in a little round plastic bottle designed so you can shake one out of the top at a time.  Taking the top off the bottle reveals a repeating pattern of miniture logs daid out in a spiral pattern.

I tried shooting this with my 100mm macro but the depth of field (DOF) was too small.  I couldn't get a photo with most of the toothpicks in focus.   I switched to a 70-200 zoom with a 36mm extension tube, which allowed me to focus closer to the subject.  This was taken at 200mm f/29 and then cropped down to a square image.

I'll learn what the next challenge is in the next few days.  I can hardly wait.   The slump is over!

My Favorites of 2014

At the end of each year, I like to go through my photos from the past 12 months and pick out my
favorites.

This year I have picked 15 and loaded them on my website - Favorites from 2014

These are my favorites, but probably not my best, photos of 2014. I picked them because they bring back good memories from the past year.  When I look back, all but one of these were taken while June was with me.  I always make better photos when she is with me because she has such a great eye.   It's why this is The Siggins Photography and not Richard Siggins Photography.   We may a great team and I wouldn't be half as good without her.

I hope you enjoy these.