Today, I’m going to start a series of posts about tips for improving your digital photography. With each tip, I’ll also point you to one of my favorite websites. It might be related or unrelated, but either way it will be interesting. So, let’s get started with tip #1.

Taking pictures of wildflowers is cliché for the most part. I don’t care, I still take tons of them. The biggest tip for making your wildflower images stand out is it to get down! Get down – really get down with the flowers.

A gopher’s eye view make the subject come alive. This is a prospective that the casual photographer often ignores. There are a couple of advantages the strategy provides.

First, it forces you closer to the subject. This is always a good thing.

Second, you will find your options for backgrounds increases exponentially! The typical, shot from eye level flower photograph, usually will have the ground as the background. Shooting from angle even with or even below the flower allows you to include sky, clouds, other out of focus flowers, and even possibly people in your flower compositions.

Third, when you are crawling around on the ground you just might see a unusual composition like this one. It is the backs of a patch of Arrowleaf Balsamroot.

Well that is it for tip #1. Tomorrow, I’ll let you in on an easy way to calculate the exposure for shooting pictures of the moon on a cloudless night. The first clue is that your camera will think it night time.

Oh, I almost forgot, here is a link to an exceptional forum of photographers brought together by Chris Marquardt who produces the great podcast “Tips from the Top Floor”.

Tips from the Top Floor forums.

Material World
Website and book

Peter Menzel’s photographs the possessions of various families from different parts of the world. Peter has them empty their homes and he arranges them and their possessions for a formal portrait. The juxtaposition of families from industrialized nations and the developing world is alarming and enlightening.

Peter has several other projects that are worth checking out. One based on what families eat in different parts of the world called Hungry Planet that looks quite interesting.

This is a superiour example of using photography to put forward important social questions.

Winter Sun Pillar

Here is a group of green/eco/tree-hugger links the will perk your interest. We’ll be back to discussing photography tomorrow.

• Pulsar announces water heater using microwaves. This is a tankless system that has “super-heating” capacities and the potential to dramatically reduce enery consumption.
• Hybrid windsurfing and alpine skiing on snow. Looks like tons of fun. Skiing for flat landers.
• Baltic Rocking Horse. A simple design, Shaker – like in style.
• Hand made simple toilet. Wow! I don’t think pooping can get more low tech without just digging a hole and shitting in the woods.
• Martin Robitsch Schaschlik – designer of a fascinating concept for a knife holder.

Original

“Whenever we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
John Muir

Owl pellet containing the fur and bones of a field mouse.
Link to original image.

I’m thankful…

• That my dad and mom happened to meet and were still in love when I was born.
• That Rob Sherrill wrote that radiology journal article that brought me to Northern Idaho where I meet my true love.
• That she still sees something in me.
• That my mom passed her “happy” genes on to me.
• That I have a safe and wonderful home.
• That my dog Boykan, likes to take me for walks in the woods.
• That even in spite of me, my health is excellent.
• That I have a strong spiritual practice.
• That I have supportive spiritual friends to help me.
• That I live near Moscow, the liberal center of Idaho. The arts community is superb and the Moscow Food Coop is the best. I visit the coop every time I’m in town.
• That I left behind my former life of petty crime and drugs. To this day I can’t remember what caused me to stop. It was probably my embarrassment and shame when the police brought me home to face mom that last time.
• That I can use photography to express my creative side. Thanks Mr. Peppler for getting me started.
• That you are reading this blog.
• That I managed the minefield of my youth which initially was headed in a very bad direction. Some of my friends probably didn’t make it.
• That sleep is easy for me.
• That the old gruff Mr. Hooper, my high school drafting and wood shop teacher, had the same high expectations of me even though I was in special education. His expectations motivated me to excel.
• That my high school vocational education teacher was both a friend and a mentor. He saw abilities in me that I didn’t know I had.
• That Chuck took me in when I was drifting around Bend Oregon and showed me a path to get my life back on tract. Thanks to Chuck I got involved in radiology which has lead to many of the best things in my life.
• That I live in such an advance technological age.
• That spirituality is gaining the critical mass needed to turn the course of humanity away from conflict and suffering.
• For Kookaburra Liquorice – yum!
• For Linux and how it has enriched my experience of computing and freed me from the jaws of Redmond.
• That Siddartha Gautama blazed the trail for me.
• That people like Mark Shuttleworth and Nicholas Negroponte see the value in personal computing and work to put it in the hands of children around the world regardless of their ability to pay.
• That coffee was invented.
• That the world has conspired to support my life. I have such a precious opportunity – I must use it wisely.

My results

I was a little surprised by the results of my test. Especially bad is the “If everyone lived like you, we would need 6.1 planets.”

http://www.myfootprint.org/
CAUTION: THIS QUIZ MAY SURPRISE YOU, SHOCK YOU, OR MAKE YOU THINK. PLEASE REMAIN CALM…BUT NOT TOO CALM!!

Photo by Will Simpson
Link to Original

Steve over at stevepavlina.com has a great posting on tithing. I’ve excerpted a small portion here. For those unfamiliar with tithing, it is the practice of giving away a portion of your income. How you give it away, to whom you give it to and what portion is a personal dilemma.

I was raised in the Mormon tradition and they emphasize the practice of tithing. As child I resented it because it was forced on me by my mom and her church. I felt I was being unfairly taxed. I felt I was getting less by giving a portion of my earnings. I never understood the value of tithing until much later in life. Plain and simply, giving returns more value than getting. Now that I’m working on manifesting true wealth in my life I feel the best way to start is to start giving myself away more and that means tithing.

Benefits of tithing include:

* Overcoming scarcity thinking. Tithing helps you develop a greater sense of abundance. By giving away 10% of your income, you’re programming your subconscious to believe in abundance thinking. This can make you more open and receptive to receiving money. If you think abundance, you’re more likely to experience abundance.
* Supporting a worthy cause. If the money you tithe is put to good use, you can financially support a cause that’s important to you.
* Achieve greater wealth. Whenever you earn more money, your tithes increase as well, so your cause(s) receive greater financial support. This can be extremely motivating for some people.

Visit Glashaus by clicking on above sketch

One of my favorite voyeuristic pastimes is to look through artist’s sketchbooks, so I thought I’d point to some here. Peter Hoffman is a talented artist from Cologne, Germany. He has done some fantastic colorful and futuristic work with CD slipcover design but I think his more simple illustrations and sketches are fabulous. He captures the look and mood of his subjects in a way that draws you in especially with this pen sketches.

photo by Don Kirby

If you are interested in photography of the Palouse, visit Don Kirby’s site and prepare to be blown away. Don is photographer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico with a passion for large format B&W photography. His coverage of what he calls the “Wheat Country” is spectacular. I think one of Don’s secrets is how he combines the land and the sky, the wheat/grass and the clouds in his compositions. He has a very identifiable style.

A couple of weeks ago I got the 2 disc set interview (one cd and one dvd) from Brooks Jensen the publisher of Lenswork Magazine. This set focuses on Don’s work in the “Wheat Country”. If you haven’t, you should check it out. Here is a link to a sample clip of his interview.
http://www.lenswork.com./lwi-007.htm