Photo of the Week - August 22-28

The most viewed image at BlueLionPhotos.com for this past week was an image I took while on safari in Botswana.  We had a wonderful sunset which coincided with our stoping for a "sundowner" (a sunset drink & chance to stretch legs out of the safari jeep) so I could set up my tripod and capturea great scene. As I set up the tripod, the giraffe decided to walk by and add it's distinctive silhouette to the scene. Some days you just get luckier than you deserve!

This image is available for purchase as a print or as a card set from my store at Etsy.com. The link is http://www.etsy.com/shop/bluelionphotos.

ENJOY!

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The Blue Lion Store

As of today you can find Blue Lion Photos on the shopping site ETSY.COM. Today the store opened with seven prints for sale (http://www.etsy.com/shop/bluelionphotos). In the near future, you'll be able to purchase a wider range of images (and sizes) as well as greeting cards. Take a look and purchase a Blue  Lion print for a friend or loved one!

My "Bluebird" of Happiness

The Camera Critters post for this past week is one I took on safari in Botswana during July,2006. This bird is a Lilac Breasted Roller and is one of the most colorful birds in the world. It is often claimed to be the National Bird of Botswana, but my research was unable to "officially" confirm this very widespread claim. Regardless, it was a stunning sight to see and I am incredibly grateful that our local guide,Willie, spotted this lil' fella and I had enough telephoto glass to capture it.

When I give slide shows, audiences invariably "ohh & ahh" at this bird more than most of my others. The "cute" factor combined with  the stunning colors of the Lilac Breasted Roller make this a real winner of a shot.

Click on the image for a larger view!

Ode to the last roll of Kodachrome.........

As many of you may know, Kodak stopped manufacturing Kodachrome film last year after a 74 year  run.  




A bit belatedly I heard about a really inspiring project. World renowned photographer Steve McCurry (Most of you know his famous National Geographic cover photograph of the "Afghan Girl".) was entrusted with the FINAL roll of Kodachrome film  and had to decide what images to capture with the final 36 ( or 37 if lucky) exposures of the most famous film in the world. The story is fascinating so I am reposting the article from the Associated Press here. Below that is a link to NPR's coverage of his event. I hope you all enjoy! Feel free to share  your thoughts & comments!

De Niro, Brooklyn, India on last Kodachrome roll

By BEN DOBBIN (AP) – Aug 2, 2010

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — What should a photographer shoot when he's entrusted with the very last roll of Kodachrome?

Steve McCurry took aim at the Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Central Terminal and a few human icons, too. Paul Simon, the singer-songwriter synonymous with the fabled film's richly saturated colors, shied away. But Robert De Niro stood in for the world of filmmaking.

Then McCurry headed from his base in New York City to southern Asia, where in 1984 he shot a famous portrait of a green-eyed Afghan refugee girl that made the cover of National Geographic. In India, he snapped a tribe whose nomadic way of life is disappearing — just as Kodachrome is.The world's first commercially successful color film, extolled since the Great Depression for its sharpness, archival durability and vibrant yet realistic hues, "makes you think," as Simon sings, "all the world's a sunny day."

 Kodachrome enjoyed its mass-market heyday in the 1960s and '70s before being eclipsed by video and easy-to-process color negative films, the kind that prints are made from. It garnered its share of spectacular images, none more iconic than Abraham Zapruder's reel of President Kennedy's assassination in 1963.

But Mama Time is taking Kodachrome away, and McCurry feels the tug of nostalgia even as he loads Eastman Kodak Co.'s last manufactured roll into his Nikon F6, just as he's done "so many tens of thousands of times."

From that moment on, "there's a certain amount of observation and walking around — exploring, hunting, moving," McCurry said of his craft. "It's not all about taking pictures. It's about appreciating this world we live in for such a brief amount of time.

"I thought, what better way to kind of honor the memory of the film than to try and photograph iconic places and people? It's in (my) DNA to want to tell stories where the action is, that shed light on the human condition."

Betting its future on digital photography, Kodak discontinued the slide and motion-picture film with a production run last August in which a master sheet nearly a mile long was cut up into more than 20,000 rolls.

 McCurry requested the final 36-exposure strip. After nine months of planning, he embarked in June on a six-week odyssey. Trailing him was a TV crew from National Geographic Channel, which plans to broadcast a one-hour documentary early next year.

 National Geographic magazine is considering doing a spread on McCurry's trip that would include a handful of images. All the originals are destined for air-conditioned safekeeping at the George Eastman House film and photography museum in Rochester.

McCurry relied on a digital camera to help evaluate composition, perspective and light, but choosing the moment to press the shutter was pressure-packed. Even seasoned photographers have a hard time knowing when "you're going to get that one emotional component to the picture," McCurry said.

His nerves were jangled again when he had to run the loaded camera through airport X-ray machines in Italy and Turkey. One security guard joked, "'Oh, take a picture,' which was kind of funny because we were trying to make every frame count."

McCurry returned to old haunts in western India where "color is important culturally," drawing on Kodachrome's magical power to subtly render contrast and color harmony in depictions of Ribari tribespeople in Rajasthan and Bollywood luminaries in Mumbai.

His journey ended in July in small-town Parsons, Kan., the home of Dwayne's Photo, the last photo lab in the world that processes the elaborately crafted color-reversal film. Dwayne's will close that part of its business in December.
 "It's not a process like black-and-white that hobbyists could do in their own dark room," co-owner Grant Steinle said, warning Kodachrome hoarders "they really need to get out and shoot those pictures" and perhaps shift over to newer lines of slide film like Ektachrome and Fujichrome.

 In McCurry's roll, one or two exposures were a little off, but he was pleased with the results. In one self-portrait, he posed next to a Kodak-yellow taxicab bearing the license plate PKR 36 — the code name for Professional Kodachrome film; in another, he's sprawled on a hotel bed at journey's end.


McCurry has a personal archive of 800,000 Kodachrome images he takes good care of. But in late July, he chanced upon a batch of 1969 and 1972 Kodachromes he'd put in storage in Philadelphia long ago and forgotten about. The discovery got him reminiscing about his days as a hungry photographer hopping from Amsterdam to Africa to Soviet-era Bulgaria.

 "Not only was the color really good, but they were actually not bad pictures," McCurry marveled.

"Imagine leaving digital images in a hard drive and coming back 40 years later. Would anybody be able to read that data? That's the great thing about film. It's a self-contained object. You hold the picture up to the light and there it is."

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved




National Public Radio Coverage

Kaikoura Sunrise Follow up ..... LOBSTERS!

Several folks have emailed me asking for more information about what the "lobsters" I mentioned in the previous post really looked liked. to satisfy curiosity I am posting this image I took on our tour of the lobster packing plant that cold packed the live lobsters for ground transport to Christchurch and then via air to Hong Kong and other large Asian cities.

To give you a size reference, the feet you see in this  are size 11 US sneakers! While these are large lobsters, they were certainly not the largest we saw there. These lobsters were cooked and given to us as a gift. Had we ordered them in a Hon Kong restaurant, we were told the price would be several hundred US  dollars!

Photo of the "Week" - August 1 - 15

Greetings friends, I am back from  my 10 day backpacking trip to the Pecos Wilderness of New Mexico with my students. The trip was a great success as both the students and the  weather were best described as "sunny". While being  gone, I was curious as to which of my images would garner the most views. The  winner for this "week" is from my trip to New Zealand last  July.

This image I call "Kaikoura Sunrise". It was taken on the last day of my 2 week photo tour of the South Island of NZ. The fishing village of Kaikoura is a couple  hours north of Christchurch on the NE coast of the island. In my experience, the town is best known for two things. First it is the place to go to see sperm whales. I had the chance to see and photograph them  one morning as we motored out to the Kaikoura Trench (depth > 3000 feet) to watch the whales surface and then dive back to the depth to search out their favorite prey, giant squid. The other thing Kaikoura is known for is the "lobster" industry which catches and packages these "crayfish" (the local name) for consumption in the finer restaurants throughout Asia. Unlike the Maine lobsters many Americans are familiar with, these are generally larger version of the Spiny or Rock lobster often seen in warmer Caribbean waters.

Luckily for me, the winter weather in NZ was wonderfully crisp and clear that week and this last morning in NZ was no exception. We staked out a spot on shore that showed promise the previous  morning and we we not disappointed as the early rays of the dawn really lit up the cloud bank and brought out brilliant oranges as well as creating a rich tapestry of texture on the underside of the clouds that were part of the "Northwest Arch" - a ridge of high pressure that was pushing the clouds with urgency from the NW to the SE. As is often the case with sunrises and sunsets, the explosion of color was short lived, but once captured it can be enjoyed forever. After an amazing tour of the South Island, this was a fitting farewell to  one of my favorite places on Earth.

For any of you who may be interested in taking a similar trip to New Zealand I have to put in a plug for my guide, Phillip Bartlett who runs Capture New Zealand Photography Tours. He is a consummate gentleman who made every detail of the trip relaxing and enjoyable. From the important things like having  food & lodging squared away and knowing THE spots to get  great shots to the details of opening every ( and I mean EVERY!) door  for me, Phillip was as professional a guide as I could have hoped for. His website is Capture New Zealand Photography Tours The video on his front page  features myself and  fellow photographer Josh (from Australia) - I'm the one in the red fleece.

Cheers till next time!

Blue Lion's Photos of the Week (July 27-August 3rd)

As I am about to depart to the wilderness of New Mexico for a 10 day backpacking trip with the freshman members of my school. I'll be out of touch  until August 14th, but thought you might appreciate a new feature here - "The Photo of the Week"! I look at all the images I have posted on the Blue Lion Photos website and can see which ones have drawn the most attention. The sources of views  vary widely from mentions of other blogs to Facebook fans, to postings I make at various photography websites, to Google searches. All these combined, give me the most viewed image of the past seven days.  For this time period, the most popular image is "Spires of Justice". This image was taken on Scott Kelby's 3rd International Photowalk in Denton Texas.  I loved the texture of the bricks as the sun was sinking lower in the sky and side lighting them to  bring out their uneven texture.Despite the sinking sun, the sky remained a rich shade of blue as it lost some of it's  lighter tones.

I hope every enjoys this image and I'll see you back here after  August 14th!

"SPIRES OF JUSTICE"