Take a Walk on the Weird (and Goofy) Side

This past weekend I went up to a huge air show in Rhode Island (more on that in an upcoming posting) and had a great time. On the way home we decided to take a wander along the coast of Narragansett Bay and revisit some old haunts. One of those old haunts was the tiny and beautiful little town of Wickford, Rhode Island, a town I love but haven't visited in a few years. There is something about the little harbor there that just attracts me and the town is full of amazingly beautiful old New England homes (it appears one whole street is being renovated with historical accuracy and it's just gorgeous).

Anyway, we wandered up and down several streets looking for the main commercial wharf (I completely forgot which street is was on), but eventually found it and it was just as pretty as I remembered. Beautiful as the harbor is, the thing that caught my eye (actually it caught my girlfriend's eye and she pointed it out to me) on the commercial wharf was this character (a halloween mask--I think it's Nixon--and fowl-weather gear over wood frame) hawking fresh lobsters. I love this kind of whimsical folk art and I'd photograph it everyday if I could find it. Left to their own devices people are incredibly imaginative and the person that created this "Lobsterman" obviously has a terrific sense of humor (and probably sells a lot of lobsters because of it).

Finding weird little vignettes like this is mostly just a matter of slowing down and paying attention to where you are. I was in such a hurry to see the view of the harbor from the end of the wharf that I drove right past this guy at first. Once I realized how cool he was with the late afternoon sun on his face and wearing his very hip shades (not to mention his blue hand), I spent about twenty minutes shooting him from every angle.

If you're traveling this summer, whether you're in a small town or a big city, you'll probably see stuff just like this. One summer while driving through Maine we stopped at an antiques/junk store and there was a great life-sized plastic cigar-store Indian on the front porch and I took several shots of it and they ended up being a spread in my book The Joy of Digital Photography. Tourist towns seem to foster this kind of visual insanity, maybe it's the locals' way for dealing with the crush of summer tourists. When you do find something fun to photograph, don't be shy about shooting it. The folks artists who create this stuff are generally not shy and they love the recognition.

If you're looking for something fun and different to shoot this summer, give yourself an assignment to find some inspired insanity--you'll have a great time looking for it and you'll probably come home with some completely original pictures.

Recover Your Lost Cameras (and Cell Phones)

Knock-on-wood I've never lost a camera or a cell phone (although I lose my cell phone around the house almost daily), but I'm sure it happens to people everyday. Your odds of getting that camera or phone back are, I would imagine, pretty dismal even if you have a name label on it or have your name etched into it. I just discovered a service, however, called TrackItBack that claims to have an 85-percent success rate at returning their members' lost possessions to them.

This is how it works: For a small fee (ranging from $9.95 to register a single cell phone to $149.95 to register 20 different items) you register your valuables with the company and they send you stickers to place on the items. If you lose your camera or lens or cell phone and someone finds it (and sees the sticker) they call a toll-free number and are given instructions for returning the item at no charge. They can even drop it off at a "safe" location (a UPS store, for example) if they don't want to be bothered shipping it.

As a reward for their honesty they are given a quantity of TrackItBack stickers and a free membership to the service. You can also register to give the finder a specific cash award--but it's not required. Does the service work? Apparently it does. Not only do they claim to recover that 85-percent of lost registered valuables, but a television station in Chicago tested the labels by intentionally losing two cell phones in the city--and both were recovered within two hours. There is a news video of the experiment on the site.

By the way, the service works in many places around the world including the United States, Canada, Mexico, much of Europe, parts of South America and South Africa and Australia. And I'm sure the service will grow. It seems like $9.95 is a small price to pay to recover an expensive point-and-shoot camera that you've left in a restaurant or airport. I'm going to contact the company today to be sure the service works for DSLR and larger cameras and if it does I'll register a few of my cameras. They also sell registered tags for your luggage--and that could be a real trip saver!

If you end up using the service and have to put it to work, let me know and I'll publish your experiences.

Follow this Blog

Believe it or not I've been posting to this blog almost daily for nearly eight months. While I've had to skip a week or a few days here and there to take care of writing and photo assignments, by the end of this week I will have posted more than 180 entries. Amazing.

I'm pleased that there are now almost 40 followers to the blog, as well. But according to Google I can grow that number just by asking more people to follow--so let's give it a try. If you occasionally view this blog but don't follow it on your Google home page, you can begin to follow just by clicking on the "Follow" link in the right margin. There is also a good help page on what following means and how you can choose between following publicly or privately.

The main reason that I want more followers isn't so that I can start a cult :) but so that I can see what types of readers are reading the blog, what information might be most useful to them and also so that I can follow their blogs. One of the things I like most about blogging and the Internet in general is just being able to read about other people's lifestyles and interests around the world. And I do read every single profile of my followers (you can find a link to my complete profile in the right margin), mostly just because I'm curious. When I teach online (I'm not currently teaching online but I may go back to it soon), I'm always really happy to see that I have students from all over the world. In once class I had students from something like 10 different countries!

So please, if you have a Google account, think about following this blog. And if you have friends that are interested in photography, show it to them.

About the photo: By the way, I shot the above photo at Lighthouse Park in East Haven, Connecticut with my Nikon D90. This is a beautiful park that is only about 20 minutes from home and yet I've only visited it a few times. The day that I was there I shot around 150 photos of the lighthouse from a variety of different angles over a period of about two or three hours. The park was so beautiful at sunset that I was kicking myself for not having shot there before. I'm thinking of using a half dozen different photos from the shoot in the update of my book The Joy of Digital Photography. All the shots were made the same day and each photo shows the lighthouse from radically different vantage points.

Read More About Mammatus Clouds

In my last posting I talked about photographing an unusual cloud formation after a thunderstorm on Friday. Coincidentally over the weekend I was reading Westportnow.com, an excellent community blog that covers daily events in Westport, Connecticut and to my surprise and delight there was a posting about and a photograph of the clouds. According to the co-editor of the blog they are called "mammatus" clouds and their appearance was so startling that a group of people who were visiting an art gallery reception were lured out to the street to view them.

I'm so glad that others saw these rare and beautiful clouds and that others photographed them. I also found a posting called "Mammatus Clouds Forever" on a blog called Gothamist that includes a great gallery of reader photos! Apparently seeing these clouds in the Connecticut and New York area was quite an event.

I also found photos of them on the NOAA site. I'm really very psyched that I saw these clouds and I hope that I see them again soon. So next time there is a big thunderstorm, get outside and look up--you never know when you'll be part of a cloud photography happening!

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Just the other day I posted an entry here on the importance of always "being prepared" and tonight I broke my own rule. Let me tell you what happened.

Earlier this week I read about a huge air show that's happening up in Rhode Island and decided it would be a great thing to shoot for one of my books, so I've spent the past few days getting cameras ready, making a hotel reservation, etc. Because of this my cameras were in my office, packed for the road or getting charged up. It had been stormy all day and, in fact, I had stood out on my sidewalk with a few neighbors, Connie and Joe, admiring the incredibly intense storm clouds that were forming. Just as they left the lightning began and it started to pour. A few minutes later I decided to go out and grab a burger and since it was still pouring out, decided not to take a camera along. Big mistake!

I bought the burger and then went and sat down by the Housatonic River to watch the departing storm. As the storm began to break up, I looked toward the mouth of the river and noticed there was a large rainbow trying to form. It started up and faded about a half dozen times but then the sun burst through the clouds and the rainbow soared up into the sky. To my amazement it formed a perfect arch and I could clearly see both ends at the horizon and the complete arch--a site I don't recall ever seeing by that river before. Oh, and did I mention I didn't have a camera with me? The rainbow was beautiful, but fortunately (for my dignity) it wasn't a brilliant radiant rainbow that demanded to be photographed. Still, with the river full of sailboats at anchor and the dark sky surrounding it, I surely would have photographed it if I could have.

OK, so fast forward about a half an hour. It was time to go home and as I drove up my street I looked up into the sky to see one of the most unusual cloud formations I'd ever seen--anywhere. It looked like an artist had just dabbed the sky with a thousand puffs of white paint--all shaped almost identically and all looking as soft as cotton. I ran inside unpacked a camera and looked out the front window toward the west to see how the clouds were doing--gone! So I went to the bathroom and there they were, scutting toward the southeast and now dipped in a beautiful golden light. I only had time to shoot off a few dozen quick frames before the sun set completely and the light vanished.

The clouds weren't as fascinating looking as they were when they were in the west a few minutes earlier, but still they were very pretty. I shot the two photos here from my bathroom window--not the place where I normally shoot nature scenes from (though I've done it quite a few times). So I didn't get the rainbow shot, I didn't get the puffy clouds, I still managed to get a few interesting shots.

And I learned a lesson: pay attention to your own advice! By the way, I shot the top photo with a 70-300mm Nikkor and then switched to an 18-70mm for the second shot. The top shot looks more like what I saw when the clouds were in the west, but I like the impact of the wider view.

Go on Safari in Your Own Backyard

While traveling to far-off places like Africa or Australia or visiting a national park to photograph wild animals sounds like a lot of fun, it's surprising how much wildlife there is in your own backyard--even if you live in a typical surburban neighborhood. In my little yard in Connecticut I've seen red fox, opossums (lots of them), raccoons, wild turkey, a few kinds of snakes (all harmless), woodchucks, skunks, turtles and even the occasional hawk. And that's not to mention the dozens and dozens of different bird varieties that come to my feeders.

The great thing about photographing animals in your own backyard, of course, is that you don't have to go anywhere to find them. Also, if you've lived in a house for a year or two, you probably already know the animals' habits and when and where you're likely to see them. The raccoons in my neighborhood, for example, rattle the garbage cans almost every night in summer at just about 2 a.m. The bunny in this shot has been my gardening pal for a few summers now. She comes within two or three feet of me when I'm weeding the veggie patch and I'm convinced that she likes human company. Even when I got up to run inside and get my camera the day I shot this photo, she didn't move an inch and while I was photographing her from about eight feet away (with a 70-300mm lens on my Nikon D90) she sat patiently munching the grass.

You can photograph most backyard animals with a DSLR and a moderate telephoto zoom lens or a zoom camera with a good zoom range (how I'd love to have one of those 20x zoom camera for doing this). I've had squirrels eating out of my hands within just a few days and you could probably photograph one of them with a wide-angle lens they're so close. If the animals are a bit more skittish, try baiting them a bit with their favorite snacks. If you hide some peanuts in an old stump, for example, every squirrel in the neighborhood will get the word; try to shoot them when they're not actually eating and the photos will look more natural. Water (bird baths and garden ponds) are another irresistable urge to most birds and animals; try setting up a birdbath or a small fountain in front of a simple background and you'll have a nice outdoor studio.

If you leave an old tripod next to the birdbath (or a bird feeder) for a few days before you plan to shoot, the birds will get used to it being there and it will help them ignore you. Also, shoot from a lawn chair if you can since the birds will probably ignore you if you're just sitting nearby. Inch the chair closer to the food or water ever few minutes and you'll be able to get within feet of them. You might also want to consider an inexpensive remote control (the one for my D90 is only about $15) and then you can operate the camera from a greater distance--some remotes let you work up to 50' away.

Photographing animals at night is a bit trickier, but in a future posting I'll turn you on to an amazing device that includes both sound and motion sensors to trigger the camera so that you can get almost any animal to take their own picture during the day or at night. And it's not that expensive.

Believe the Wildlife Warning Signs

The past few weeks I've been researching a possible trip to Yellowstone National Park this fall. It's a place I've always wanted to photograph and I need photos for a new book so hopefully this will be the year. While I was researching the trip I came across a page on the park's official site that gave some very serious warnings (including a video of elk attacking cars) about keeping yourself safe from wildlife and vice versa.

I take those kinds of warnings seriously (and so should you) because I've seen wildlife in parks do some very unpredictable things. Last year we revisited the Neil Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa, a wonderful prairie preserve that has a free-roaming heard of bison. There are signs when you're entering the bison area that warn you that these are wild (and big--they weigh in excess of a few thousand pounds) and unpredictable animals. People take the signs for granted though and somehow think the bison know that you're visitors and they'll remain calm in your presence.

Don't count on it. While we were driving (very slowly) up a gravel road, suddenly we saw a heard of 40 or so bison heading right for us and as they got closer, their pace picked up substantially. Within seconds they traversed several hundred yards and were heading right for our car (and the car in front of us--see the photo) and in a few more seconds we were completely surrounded by huge, snorting, excited bison. I have no idea what sent them off on a tear or why they ended up on the gravel road around us, but to unexpectedly be engulfed by dozens of two or three thousand pound wild animals (with horns) is a weird and insecure feeling. I have almost no fear (but lots of respect) of most wild animals, but this was still an unnerving experience--and we were in a car! I remember thinking that our Ford Explorer probably wasn't much of a match for one of these guys running at full speed. To make things even more edgy, there were a number of babies in the herd and parents are much more unpredictable when there are young nearby.

Fortunately the animals remained very calm and ended up just grazing and feeding their young almost within arm's reach. We sat for about a half an hour watching and photographing them at super close range and wondering what was next. Then, on some secret signal from one of the herd elders, they left as quickly as they'd come.

If you're traveling to a wildlife refuge this summer, pay attention to the warning signs, even if other people don't. Your lives and the animals' depend on it.