HOLY BUCKETS!!!

 Jim Deitchler sends a couple more winners. I have never seen this many eagles in a tree at once.

                        (Click on the photo to see it bigger)
More comments from Jim:
Getting these pictures was just unbelievable.  It all started on Febr. 25 and finally only a few stragglers remained by Mar. 15th, so I had a shooting bonanza.   It was cloudy the first 3 days, so when I got up the fourth day of shooting, I looked for stars in the sky when I went out to get the newspaper. No clouds!!  Greet the dawn is what I did, with the sun behind me I went to town.  I was shooting with a 70-300mm.  These guys were 35-40 yards away.  Just posing for me.  I am sending 2 of over the 1500 I shot in the 2 1/2 weeks.

                    (Click on the photo to see it bigger)

Jim Deitchler Sends Along a Winner!

He sends along this bit of information with this very nice, high quality image of a Bald Eagle.
"The eagles landed in Mills County near our town.  This is one of my favorites.  Thanks to you I was able to get a great shot."
Hey Jim, send more information and more pictures in the future. You're the first submitted photo on the blog. Well done.

Just click on the photo to see full size.

Photo Safari on Saturday, 4.2.11

Next Saturday we continue with our Adult Education classes at Madhaus Gallery. The first of four different classes offered in photography... The Digital Studio Safari, as listed below. To sign up go to this link:   https://commed.dmps.k12.ia.us/wconnect/ace/currentclasses.htm

Digital Studio Photo Safari

Indoor photography using the digital camera, with an emphasis on individual and group portraiture. Learn about using existing and inexpensive portable lighting kits to make portraits in a variety of situations, regardless of the type of camera equipment. Learn about the use of environment and portable backgrounds, including instruction in natural and artificial light conditions. Students will photograph subjects in portrait situations and also will have a segment in the workshop, learning how to process and retouch photos using Adobe software products. Note: class is held in an upstairs location.  

And then it all went black.

I got a little cute last night while chasing powerful thunderstorms across southcentral Iowa. It was the west side of Winterset and a large, dark, swirling storm cell had passed just north of town. I chased it, watching menacing dark finger-like clouds, dipping down, but never turning into a tornado. 

On the way back into town I saw two large storm cells heading toward town from the southwest. I headed into town, but not before seeing this sight, between the storms, the sun setting over highway 92, heading west toward Greenfield. I stopped, shot into horizontal rain and then drove toward the orange globe.


Big mistake. The southern cell went north, the northern cell dipped south and collided right over me. Hail, wind and hell. Quite a night.


Quite a sight!

You can see more at the desmoinesregister.com
Go to the Photography Blog. 

Influences: Cubism and Basketball

I posted the bottom photo on the Photography Blog on the Des Moines Register site two weeks ago. But I wanted to go deeper. 
Art is about influences. Those who affect my work vary across disciplines, Seneca to Picasso, Homer to Buck Naked and the Bare Bottom Boys. Below is a genius work by Pablo Picasso, Bather with Beach Ball, painted in 1932. What works in this abstraction, for me, was the deconstruction of surfaces of the figure and proportion, but that he left some recognizable formal images to allow the eye to delight in not what it sees but feels.

So, I was sitting under the basket a the recent Boys State Basketball Tournament, in Des Moines, and tried to find the same type of abstraction: recognizable forms while allowing the flailing of the basketball players, going for a rebound, to become something other than human. This is just a beginning point for me, trying to abstract with the moving form, the sudden light of a strobes in the rafters giving evidence to humanity, the slow shutter speed making something quite different in it all. I'll keep you posted on progress.

Tomahawk Missile Away

Here's one from the archive. Aboard a U.S. guided missile frigate in the Adriatic Sea, back in 1999, I had a first generation NC2000 digital camera with me and made 1MegaPixel image of a night launch of a Tomahawk Cruise missile from the bow of the ship. 

The United States, as part of an international coalition, was attacking targets in Belgrade, Serbia, as part of their mission in and around Kosovo. It's a rough image, but seeing that U.S. forces launched another 110 of these against targets in Libya today, appropriate.

Carp are flying!

If you go to YouTube and look for videos of flying carp (or if you click on the video to the under "Favorite Videos" the first one at the bottom of the list to the right) you see how this amazing picture came about. 


More and more I find myself shooting video with the left and and still photos in the right hand.

The photo was taken while on the Illinois River near Havana, Illinois. The Illinois Dept. of Natural Resources was zapping the waters with electricity, trying to find the fish who have infested the midwest.

A Winner!!!

Stacey Trytek, of Ames, Iowa is a winner in the guess the celebrity contest. 

 

That is Steven Weber from Wings. (At the far right is Iowa basketball coach Fran McCaffrey)

If Stacey will send me her mailing address to johngaps@yahoo.com she'll get the prize. If you want to decide which card set you want, go to www.etsy.com, select the MadhausGallery store and check out the card sets. You'll see, they sell for $15 a set, so you can tell your mother that television watching over the years is paying off.

The next contest is not far off.

Who's that talking to John?

The celebrity on the left... who is he? Email me a guess at johngaps@yahoo.com
I'll give it til' 6PM on Tuesday. Everyone with a correct guess goes into a drawing for a free set of fine art greeting cards ($15 value). For extra credit name the guy at the far left.  Click on the picture to see it full size.

Arabesque Part II : The Movie

Here's a movie we put together on The Arabesque project. Elegant streams of smoke are redirected by classical music played through wind driven speakers. A new visual realization of timeless classics. A lovely piece of serendipity on a sunny winter's day in the studio.

A New Interpretation of Music

1. I call them The Arabesques. Using wind driven speakers, my cigar smoke is pulled through a nearby open window. As the smoke passes the speakers (with a black background) classical music is played and the notes result in a design in the movig smoke. 

The first one is Mozart's Magic Flute Overture.

The second is Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Very cool, very fun.

Another war story

It was the second day of the ground assault into Kuwait during the first gulf war in March of 1991. As an AP staff photographer, I was embedded and traveling with a group of combat engineers, VII Corps, attached to the US Army 1st Armored Division and 3rd Infantry Division (I hope 20 years and all that scotch didn't just make me transpose the units... I'm usually pretty good with division). 
We were tired from little sleep over 48 hours and almost constantly on the move. Other than finding a severed hand in the desert the day before (reportedly from someone who had tried to pick up one of the many unexploded bomblets lying around in the sand), there was little action. 


Then, on the second night, a battle. Several Iraqi tanks had been spotted and encircled by the infantry and armor and the battle was on. One shot from an Iraqi tank was answered by dozens of U.S. tank rounds and anti-tank missiles.


All through the night there were orange explosions as direct hits were scored. As the night endured, sleep came over me and I slide back inside our APC for a few winks. 


Suddenly I awoke to the unit commander, Capt. Scott Bickel, of Louisiana, nudging me with the butt of his rifle, saying, "Get your cameras and come with me." 


The back hatch opened and I followed the Captain into the sand, looking for the bomblets, hoping not to loose a foot. He walked ahead of me into the early dawn. It was cold and overcast due to all the oil well fires we'd see soon enough. It was southwestern Iraq and through all the shell holes and tank tracks there was little to see.


Suddenly a figure popped up out of a hole. I hit the ground and pointed my camera forward. Bickel knew what he was doing. The man held a piece of wood with a white sheet on it, signaling surrender. Then a dozen others popped up, kneeling with their hands on their heads.


These were the crews of Iraqi tank crews who had abandoned their targeted vehicles and fled for the cover of the sand nearby. There was still errant rounds flying high overhead as retreating tanks were being pursued and Bickel didn't want to risk the safety of his men in that environment, so he did what any good leader would do. He took the mission himself.


He got the Bronze Star for gallantry for that move, and I got to capture a little bit of history. 


More stories later. If you click on the picture you can see it bigger.

March Past - 1991

In March of 1991 I was a staff photographer for the Associated Press, working in a newly liberated Kuwait City, at the close of the first Gulf War. Here you see an execution being set up by Kuwatis who had decided to set up roadblocks around the city to nab fleeing Iraqi soldiers. I was asked if I wanted to photograph the Kuwati man executing the captured soldier. I declined and argued with them about not shooting him. I had a gun to my face but got this image before they shot him after escorting me out. It happened almost twenty years ago almost to the day.

The Power of Black & White

Every now and again I go back to the beginning, breaking an image down to it's composition, how the eye moves through an image and where it settles. Black & white is the best way to explore those properties in a photo, taking the inexact psychology of color out of the exercise. 
As a digital photographer I work in Adobe Photoshop and use calculations to make my black & whites from an original RGB color image.
If you want to know some tips in calculations, I'll be happy to provide an expanded answer.