Jeffcable

I am giving away a FREE Jeff Cable photo print up to 24"x36"!

Thu, 23 Nov 2023 00:01:05 +0200

I am really thankful for all of you who follow the blog. So thankful that I have decided to give away one large print up to 24"x36" in size, printed on Canon lustre paper (one of my favorites).

All you have to do is go to my fine art website and enter your email address. If you have already entered your email on the site, I will automatically include you in the give-away. After Dec 15th, I will be selecting a winner, and will ship you ANY image that you select from the site. Yes, you can pick your favorite photo from any of the galleries and I will do the rest.

These prints normally sell for more than $400, but this is a chance for you to get one on me. I am excited for you to have one of my photos as a great addition to the wall of your home or office space.

Just click HERE and enter your email address. No need to do anything else.

I hope that all of you have a happy, healthy and peaceful holiday season.

__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.

_________________________________________________________________

Photographing the Beauty of Yosemite in Fall Colors

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 19:13:50 +0200

It has been quite a while since I have visited Yosemite National Park and this was my first time photographing the park with fall colors. Many months ago, I made reservations to stay at the Yosemite Valley Lodge on the valley floor and last week was the first available opening. It turned out to be great timing!

We left the San Francisco Bay Area very early in the morning to give us as much time as possible in the park. The first stop for me has to be Tunnel View - my favorite view of Yosemite. It is the most photographed location in the park, but a must capture. For this trip, I brought my Canon R5 body with the Canon RF 24-105mm lens and Tiffen Circular Polarizing filter. I also brought the Canon RF 100-500mm lens, but rarely used that.

Once we got down to the valley floor, we were blown away with the fall colors.

We walked around to get different views of Half Dome framed with the colorful trees.

Most of the water falls were at a fraction of their full volume, but Bridal Veil Falls still looked great. I framed this shot to get as much fall colors in the foreground of the falls.

You might be looking at this photo and thinking "Jeff - what were you thinking taking this shot?" Well...let me tell you. I took this shot from a bridge and when exposing for the trees and river, the sky was totally blown out (so bright that there would be no data to work with). I figured that the best way to capture this scene was to darken the scene to expose for the sky and then work the image in Photoshop later.

Believe it or not, this image is the exact same shot as what you saw above. I hit the "Auto" button in Adobe Camera RAW and it basically did all the work for me. Pretty amazing how much data was in the dark area. Right?

Yosemite Falls was little more than a trickle since we have not had much rain so far this year.

I love the variety of color in the trees.

We were walking through a parking lot and I saw this straight-on view of Yosemite Falls perfectly framed with the different colored trees.

The next morning we made the strenuous hike up to Vernal Falls which was totally worth the view. In the old days, I would have brought a tripod with me to capture the falls with a slow shutter. With these newer cameras with in-camera image stabilization, I am able to handhold the camera even at a half second exposure. I prefer the slower shutter speed which blurs the water. I framed this shot to show the people off to the right, to show the scale of the falls.

We climbed along the rocks as well, and took some portraits.

We did not see a lot of wildlife on this trip, but did catch a glimpse of this guy hanging out along the side of the road.

We had blue skies and no clouds on our second afternoon in Yosemite. Luckily, this part of the river was calm and allowed for perfect reflections. I climbed out to a clearing to get the clearest shot I could. The polarizing filter really helped to accentuate the colors and mitigate any glistening off the top of the water.

(Photo credit to Laura L.)

Here I am trying to get the cleanest foreground I could find.

This is the photo I was taking from that spot.

Yeah, I love taking photos!

This reflection photo of Half Dome was taken while walking the grounds of the infamous Ahwahnee Hotel.

When visiting Yosemite, it is quite common to see people on the valley floor using binoculars to catch a glimpse of the rock climbers on the face of El Capitan. This was one of the rare times I switched to my Canon RF 100-500mm lens to get a clear shot of these guys mid climb.

This is a tight crop of the shot above. These people are crazy! This climb takes 6 days to complete and the climbers sleep in hanging tents each night. At night, we could see the lights from each tent dotting the face of the rock.

I took this photo about 30 minutes after sunset. To the human eye it was really dark, but when leaving the shutter of the Canon R5 open for 5 seconds, the camera (on my Gitzo tripod) picked up all the details of the valley and a star in the sky.

It was really cold shooting at the this hour, but that was easily solved with a nice dinner, a couple glasses of wine and a big hot fire back at the lodge.

Many of these images are for sale on my new fine art web page. I encourage you to check out the new site!

__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. _________________________________________________________________

A BIG surprise that happened in Costa Rica!

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 21:39:58 +0200

One month from now, I will be back in the rain forest of Costa Rica leading another photo tour, but I never had a chance to share an awesome story with you all from the last trip! But before I get to this first time ever event on one of my photo tours, let me share some more favorite images from the trip.

Here is a photo of the great group of people on the tour. Everyone got along so well, the weather was perfect for photography, and we saw so much!

We saw all four species of monkeys in the area, but especially loved the Howler monkeys. not only are they fun to photograph, but they are amazing to listen to.

Click on the video above to hear them in action. They are SO loud!

It is a challenge to photograph these dark animals in a dark environment, but when done right, you can really see their details and expressions.

I always teach my guests to wait for the right lighting on the animals faces, and to look for the catch light in their eyes. This male (and yes, we know for sure that it is a male) was staring right at us for this portrait.

Most of the time we are pointing our cameras up into the canopy, but for this White-nosed coati we were at eye level.

The coati are pretty plentiful down in this region, but not always in the best positions to photograph. This last group had some of the clearest shots so far.

And, of course, we loved photographing the amazing birds. We found this one toucan hanging out in a tree about 30 feet above us. If you missed the blog showing the incredible Macaw, you can click here to see that.

I love this photo of all of us were pointing up and concentrating on the shot. (You will notice that almost everyone has an orange piece of gaffer tape on their loaner lenses. This is because I tape the sliding filter door shut on the lens hoods. It really bugs me that they slide open all the time.)

We came across a group of White-face capuchin monkeys who were swinging from one tree to another. In between their movement, they took a break to clean each other.

These monkeys move pretty fast, making it a challenge to capture them in a good pose.

On our visit to the local chocolate farm, we were joined by a large group of Squirrel monkeys.

Any time we get a chance to photograph babies of any species, we take full advantage of that!

And then there was the big surprise!!!

We almost always stop at this one beach to have lunch. While we were there, I saw that we had nice diffused light and offered to take portraits of each of my guests. I took this photo of Jason and Stacy and then took photos of all the others. Yeah - we were all hot and sweaty, but we didn't care.

One by one, I recruited them for photos. I thought that my shot of Karen and Mike seen here) was the last one in the bunch, but then Jason asked me if I could take a couple more of Stacy and himself.

Of course, I agreed, but as I was looking through the viewfinder I wondered why he was holding something in his hand. I thought it was a remote to his camera, but it wasn't. It was a wedding ring, and without me even knowing it, I was photographing a marriage proposal! (Hey Jason - you could have given me a heads-up on this! 😀)

As soon as I realized what was happening, I started hammering the shutter to grab as many reactions as possible.

It was an awesome moment, and everyone was caught up in it, watching this unfold in front of us.

Of course, she said yes and he put the ring on her finger. We all celebrated with them.

I had them hold the ring out away from them, focused on the ring instead to their faces, and took this photo.

The rest of the trip was so special for them to have this magical moment in the rain forest.

On our day of macro photography, I had an idea. This one frog sat in the same spot for an eternity, posing for us as we took turns taking it's portrait. I asked Stacy if I could borrow her ring, and gently placed it on the frog's head. It still did not move, so I took this fun shot to share with them. (And no, the frog was not harmed in any way during the taking of this photo.)

I have done countless photo tours, but never had anything like this happen before. It was a really special moment, taken in a really special place, and we were all glad to be witnesses to it all. Now the big question is...are we all invited to the wedding?

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

Photographing the Blue Angels Over San Francisco!

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 00:25:56 +0200

The weekend before last was Fleet Week in San Francisco and the main attraction is always the Navy Blue Angels. I have photographed them before, but it has been 5 years since I have made it to the show. This year I made it a priority to get back there to capture new images of these amazing pilots in action.

A lot has changed in the last 5 years, and I wanted to try my newer camera gear. Last time I photographed the Blue Angels, I was using the Canon 1DX MKII DSLR camera and I really wanted to try photographing the same subjects with the Canon R5 mirrorless camera. I chose this camera for the fast frame rate and the high resolution images. Normally I always shoot to both card slots, but since the CFExpress cards are so much faster than SD cards (and I knew I was going to be shooting a lot of burst images), I chose to remove the SD card and only shoot to the faster card. This meant that my buffer would clear fast and I could shoot endlessly without having to wait for the camera to catch up.

In 2018 I used the Canon 100-400mm lens and this time I used the Canon RF100-500mm lens to have a little more reach.

It was a VERY rare day in San Francisco with temperatures in the 90s. That never happens in my home town! I placed myself in a position hoping to get good photos of the planes in front of the Golden Gate Bridge and also over Alcatraz. As photographers, our job is to tell a story, and the story here was that the Blue Angels were flying over San Francisco. There is no better of telling that story, than showing them over these iconic spots. This is one of my first photos, with one of the planes flying in front of the bridge, and clearly showing the heat coming off the back of the engines.

This is one of my favorite photos, with four of the planes in front of the bridge with the trailing smoke streams.

I found that the subject tracking of the Canon R5 was awesome for grabbing these planes in focus. I set the ISO to 400 which gave me a shutter speed of more than 1/4000 sec for most of the photos. I figured that I would need a very fast shutter speed due to the speed of the planes going by.

I tried my best to get tight shots of the Blue Angels, but also wide shots like this one (which I cropped to look like a panoramic image).

I also did my best to capture them from all angles.

I saw this plane coming in just above the north tower of the bridge (from my perspective) and zoomed in tight to get a photo.

With the 45 megapixels of the Canon R5, I can zoom in and see so much detail!

This is the same image cropped even tighter. You can read the name of the pilot on the side of the jet.

The reason I like shooting with a zoom lens like the Canon RF100-500mm lens is that I have the range to shoot in tight, but also pull back and shoot wide like this.

Even though I have the larger Canon 200-400mm lens with a built-in teleconverter, that lens is too large to handhold in a high position like this. I find the Canon RF100-500mm lens easy to handhold for long periods of time.

I love capturing the Blue Angels when they present cool repetitive patterns in flight.

It took me a while to get a photo of one of the planes over Alcatraz, but I wanted something better.

I spent a lot of time turning the camera from horizontal to portrait position.

I love the trail of smoke behind this plane, showing the angle of attack he took as he banked over the Golden Gate Bridge.

Once again, I got the planes flying over Alcatraz, but there was a lot of smoke in the air, so the shot was not as clean as I was hoping for. The quest continued...

Thy flew almost directly above us, giving a great view of the bellies of the Navy jets.

As I watched them split off, I quickly zoomed the lens back from 500mm to 200mm to capture the patterns in the air.

I never really got a super clear shot of the Blue Angels over Alcatraz, but really liked this shot of them forming a great pattern over the old prison.

As the show ended, all six of the Blue Angels made one last pass along the San Francisco Bay and in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. A chance for a nice shot of these magnificent pilots and machines in front of an iconic location.

They made one last low pass in front of the crowds before heading off into the distance.

I was really glad that I used the Canon R5 to capture these images. Even though my Canon R3 has a faster frame rate, the increased resolution of the Canon R5 lets me zoom in and see so much detail. Here is a tighter crop of the same images. You can clearly see each pilot and how they are carefully judging their distance from the planes at their sides.

I hope you enjoyed seeing these images as much as I did capturing them.

Two days after this show, I lead my first photo tour of San Francisco and we had an awesome trip. I will blog those images soon. It went so well that I have just added another SF photo tour for 2024. If you would like to join me next year, you can get more information on my photo tour page.

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

Up close and personal in Costa Rica

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 20:48:26 +0200

I will be heading back to the rain forest of Costa Rica late next month. That photo tour is sold out, but I have new tours scheduled for 2024 if you would like to sign up. In today's blog post, I am sharing with you some of the close up photos from the last trip. Some were taken with the Canon RF100mm macro lens and others were taken using the Canon RF100-500mm lens, which does an amazing job of focusing up close. On this trip, I decided to leave the Canon R3 at home, and took the Canon R5 and Canon R6II bodies.

I love these close up shots, because it shows you detail that one might miss otherwise.

On our "macro day" we had a chance to photograph this helmet lizard. I have photographed this type of lizard before but never seen one with a dark blue eye. To capture this, I zoomed the Canon RF100-500mm lens to 370mm to just get the upper part of the body. When capturing the whole body (head to tail), the blue eye was not as noticeable.

If you have followed my blog for a long time, and seen other images from Costa Rica, you know that I love photographing the red eye tree frogs. Since I have captured thousands of images of these little guys, I now look for interesting positions that they might be in. I really liked the way that this frog was positioned on the plant. Mainly it's foot placement and the way that it is looking out towards me. This photo was taken with the long lens.

This is the same frog photographed with the Canon RF100mm macro lens. When getting this close, you can see much more detail and more vibrant colors.

This frog was just hanging out and not moving much. This allowed all of us to easily capture images from all different directions. Straight on...

...and profile. Which lens do you think I was using to get these photos? If you guessed the macro lens, you would be wrong. 😀

I was testing pre-production units of the new Crucial x9 and Crucial x10 solid state drives (which are my new go-to drives). I wanted to take some "lifestyle photos" of these drives in the rain forest, and decided to have a little fun with one of our little models. I put the drive in front of this dart frog and waited for it to hop on for a ride.

Whenever we take photos of the snakes, we always use the longer zoom lenses. Our handler placed this Eyelash Viper on this mossy log and I encouraged everyone to wait for the tongue to come out and shoot at that moment.

In between photographing the reptiles, I always encourage my guests to look around capture the beautiful foliage. I was photographing this plant when I saw this insect flying into the frame. I quickly changed my focus to my new subject and took this shot.

On one of our free mornings, I decided to walk through the grounds of the resort to see what fun wildlife I could capture. Yeah, I know...some people might wonder why I would keep shooting after almost a week of teaching photography, but the passion runs deep and I love what I do! This young Iguana was hanging out on a branch down by the pier. I leaned over a railing, zoomed the Canon RF100-500mm lens all the way to 500mm to get as close as I could, and grabbed this shot. Because I was so close (maybe 6 feet away) and shooting at 500mm, I was able to get really narrow depth of field, with the focus mainly being on the face of the animal.

Almost anywhere you go in the rain forest, you will be treated to butterflies, and they come in all shapes and colors.

Whenever I take groups to the rain forest, I always include a visit to a local "farm" where they grow and make chocolate. Although this stop is more about the culture and a little less about the photography, there is still plenty to shoot there. Many times we are joined by White face monkeys in this location (which did happen on this trip, but those images will come in another blog post), and we always see cool insects. I saw this fly on top of this flower and loved the shiny green body against the yellow flower pedals. It is a simple photo, but one of my favorites from that day.

We saw this Dragon fly taking a break, and I wanted to zoom in to show the amazing patterns in it's wings. Again, this is something we don't usually see when they are flying around in the distance.

The majority of people who go with me on a photo tour to Costa Rica are excited to capture great images of the monkeys, sloths and birds. This just shows you how much more there is to photograph in this beautiful region. Come join me in 2024!

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

Having Fun with Photoshop!

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 21:56:18 +0200

A couple of months ago, I had just finished photographing an event here in the Bay area and had some extra time to visit a friend in the area. When I walked into their house I immediately noticed that something was wrong. It turns out that Mike had been stung by a bee right on his right eyelid. Ouch!

His family suggested that, since I had all my camera gear with me, I should take his portrait. I grabbed my Canon R3 with the Canon RF 70-200mm lens and took some photos of Mike against his kitchen wall. After taking the photo, I told him that he looked like he had been in a boxing match. We all had a good laugh and that was that. Well...until I had an idea.

When I got home and downloaded all the images, I saw the images of Mike and thought that it would be fun to put him into a boxing scenario. What better than a "Rocky" poster! I searched the Internet and came across this Rocky III poster at a pretty high resolution. Now it was time to have fun.

I removed Mike's face from the background and resized it to fit over Sylvester Stallone's face. At home I have a Wacom Intuos Tablet which makes it way easier to manipulate the process.

Since this was on a separate layer, I could paint in his face without leaving any obvious lines between his jaw and the original neckline. I got really lucky that the light on Mike's face (coming from a nearby window) matched the direction of the light on Stallone.

After looking at the photo a little longer, I decided that I needed to enhance the redness of Mike's right eye. I created an adjustment brush, increased the saturation of red and painted that in. After having a good laugh to myself, it was time to share the image with Mike and his family. I texted them the image and they thought it was hysterical.

Since I have the Canon Pro-4100 printer in my office, I had to take the image and print it poster size!

I have a bunch of 24x36 inch frames and saw this as the perfect gift for them. A couple of weeks later I framed it and brought it over to them. Now the big question is, where do they put it in the house? Mike wants it front and center in the house and his wife wants none of that! That makes me laugh even more.

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

FIXED LINK: You can finally purchase Jeff Cable Photography images on my new website!

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:21:03 +0200

Sorry - the first post had a bad link. Trying this again! :)

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I have been a professional photographer for almost 20 years, and I have amassed quite a collection of images from all over the world. For so long, people have asked me how they can purchase my photos. and I never had a good answer for them. Honestly, I just did not have the bandwidth to make them available for print. All of that is changing now. I have been working with Art Storefronts to make my photos available to purchase. You can purchase inexpensive novelty items, paper prints ranging from 8x12 to 60x40, metal prints, gallery wraps, acrylics and more.

To launch the new website https://fineart.jeffcable.com/. I am offering 20% off everything.

I have gone through 20 years of photos and added my favorite images from Africa, Costa Rica, Europe San Francisco and more. You will find everything from wildlife to cityscape photos. I am really excited about the new site since it is really clean and easy to navigate.

Currently you will see three categories of images, Wildlife, Nights Around the World, and Travel.

Within each of these categories is a large collection of my favorite photos.

You can even use the color pallet to the top left to choose images within a certain color range to suit the environment of your choice.

As you can see, there a lot of options for you. Everything from gift items to museum quality large prints.

I encourage you to enter your email for the fine art site, as I will not be automatically adding you from this blog mailing list to the other. The fine art mailing list will remind you of special offers that you may otherwise miss, even though they will be posted on my social media channels.

I have tried to keep the prices reasonable to make these affordable gifts for yourself and your friends.

I hope that you enjoy the new site and find something to compliment your home or business!

- Jeff

__________________________________________________________

Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!
_________________________________________________________________

You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

_________________________________________________________________

If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
_________________________________________________________________
Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.

_________________________________________________________________

You can finally purchase Jeff Cable Photography images on my new website!

Tue, 05 Sep 2023 21:13:54 +0200

To launch the new website (https://fineart.jeffcable.com/) I am offering 20% off everything.

Currently you will see three categories of images, Wildlife, Nights Around the World, and Travel.

Within each of these categories is a large collection of my favorite photos.

You can even use the color pallet to the top left to choose images within a certain color range to suit the environment of your choice.

As you can see, there a lot of options for you. Everything from gift items to museum quality large prints.

I have tried to keep the prices reasonable to make these affordable gifts for yourself and your friends.

I hope that you enjoy the new site and find something to compliment your home or business!

- Jeff

__________________________________________________________

Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!
_________________________________________________________________

You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

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QNAP NAS update: Moving 1.5 MILLION images from the old Drobo!

Wed, 30 Aug 2023 23:38:02 +0200

I am interrupting my Costa Rica blog posts to bring to you a long awaited post about my data storage transition. Way back in February of this year I wrote a blog post telling you all that I was making a huge transition from the Drobo NAS system (now out of business) to the newer and far superior QNAP system. Back then I had just installed the two new NAS systems, but had not moved any data.

I had many people (most of whom were using Drobo) write to me and ask how the QNAP transition was going. I told them that it was too early to tell, and that I had a lot of work to do before I could give them a fair and honest answer.

Here I am about 6 months later and I have been using the system non-stop. I apologize for taking so long to write this follow-up review, but there was a lot to do in between then and now. Some had to do with the data transition and some was just the back-to-back photo tours. No more excuses! Let me tell you what I have found, both the good and the bad.

Initial Setup

Let me start with the install of the boxes. I had two NAS systems to set up, one of which would be my main storage and one which would be my offsite destination. I had a whole bunch of the Seagate IronWolf 20TB hard drives to install, and I also purchased a couple of M2 SSD drives to increase the overall speed of the drive access. Installing the drives was simple enough, and powering up the QNAP boxes was a piece of cake. I did have to make some phone calls to the support team when I got stuck, and they were very helpful getting me up and running.

My goal was to transition all 1.5 million photos (and other data) from the Drobo NAS to the new QNAP TVS-h874 NAS. This process took a REALLY long time. I would transfer one year of data at a time and I think it took me the better part of two weeks to complete the process.

An Issue

Once I got everything moved over, everything appeared to be perfect, with one hiccup. When I attempted to search for a folder on the drive (using my Mac Studio), the folders could not be found. It turns out that the NAS was not indexed. The crazy thing is...there is no easy way to re-index a drive from a Mac, so I had to research a way to make that happen. Once I figured out how to make that happen, it took another 5 days! And this problem has not been completely resolved. There are still times when the indexing goes haywire (where I search for a folder, it shows the folder, I click on it, and it opens a completely different folder) and I have to force a re-index. This process generally takes a couple of days (in the background), which is a real nuisance since it slows the drive to a crawl. I have searched the Internet for answers and this seems to be an issue with the Mac and many NAS drives. I am hoping that someone at Apple can help me resolve this.

How I Work On My Files

Originally I had thought that I would use the QNAP NAS as my main working drive, but I have decided to use the new 4TB Crucial x10 SSD drive as my main drive. I chose to make this change for two reasons:

* The Crucial SSD is incredibly fast, much faster than accessing the QNAP drive over Ethernet.

* In case the indexing problem happens again, I can still work with the SSD without any delays while I re-index the NAS.

Setting Up Remote Synchronization

In the previous blog post, I showed the two QNAP units side by side. My next step was to copy all of the data from the QNAP TVS-h874 NAS (primary drive) to the QNAP TS-832PX NAS drive (which would be my offsite drive). The QNAP support people helped me connect the two boxes together and start the synchronization. I knew that the synchronization had to first be done locally (on the same network), because trying to sync up 1.5 million images to a remote location over the Internet would take forever.

That process took another 3 or 4 days, but I did not have to do anything. We started the sync and I let it run.

At that point I needed to drive the second box to my remote location, which is a couple of hundred miles away at my brother's home. Once I got the second box powered up at my brothers, I once again leaned on the QNAP support people to help me with the remote sync settings. This process was so simple and painless. I was amazed! With the old Drobo unit (using their Drobo DR software), the user interface was terrible, the process was painstaking and it failed all the time. I have been dying for a reliable system for keeping my data safe in more than one location. Now I have it.

The User Interface and Features

The user interface for the QNAP is all browser based and is very straight-forward. I have not used most of the icons you see above, mostly using the HBS 3 Hybrid Backup Sync app for the remote synchronization. I do use the File Station application at times, but mainly use the Mac Finder to find what I am looking for.

This is what the File Station interface looks like. A simple interface for viewing the files and folders stored on the NAS drive.

There are numerous applications which can be installed on the QNAP NAS drive. I have installed a couple of apps (for the backup and remote access). I have been tempted to install the media streaming app (just for fun), but have not done so at this time.

The Control Panel is where I set all my settings for the NAS unit, with me generally using the "General Settings" more than anything else.

Within the General Settings, I can check the status of all the drives. In this screen shot, you can see the status of the two internal SSDs and all the Seagate IronWolf 20TB hard drives.

As I mentioned earlier, I am using the the HBS 3 Hybrid Backup Sync app (no additional charge for this) for my remote synchronization. I have this application running on both boxes and performing a synchronization every morning at 1am. It has been running for the last 6 months without any issues or failures. This means that I have all 1.5 million images in both places for extra security, and it stays up-to-date constantly. This is a huge peace of mind for me (and my clients).

When I was using the Drobo DR software, I would constantly bug the development team at Drobo to give me some sort of interface to show the progress of the synchronization. With the Drobo, there was almost no way to see if the synchronization was successful or how much data was transferred. They never fixed that issue, creating times when the sync process was broken for months without my knowledge. With the QNAP Sync log, I have an easy way to check the status of my sync to make sure they are happening.

If I click on one of the items in the Sync log, I can see more details of that particular process. In the example above, I can see that on Aug 28th, 54GB of data was sent from my TVS-h874 NAS drive to the TS-832PX NAS drive hundreds of miles away. It took about an hour to synchronize the 4914 files.

Since we are on the subject of remote data, I have to talk about one of my favorite things about the QNAP NAS drives, and one of the biggest differences between the old Drobo system and these new units. I am talking about the ability to easily access ANY of my files from ANYWHERE in the world. Drobo did have the ability to access their NAS drive from a remote location using a web browser, but it was painfully slow. There are many times when I am traveling and need to access images for a client. When searching for a file on the old Drobo NAS, it would literally take me 15 to 20 minutes to locate a file since the interface was brutally slow. With the QNAP drives, I can now find that same file in less than a minute and I LOVE that! Not only can I check files on my local drive, but I can access the remote drive as well.

Oh, one more thing. There is another feature of the QNAP NAS that is not critical but which I really love. That is the auto backup of my camera roll from my phone any time I get in range of my WiFi network. This means that I do not have to do this manually, and I don't have to rely on iCloud or other services to backup my photos and videos from my iPhone.

Conclusion

When Drobo started showing signs of their pending demise, I was in a panic. I had ALL my data on their boxes and both the company and the units were failing. I literally lost sleep worrying about this problem. I pride myself on having every digital image I have ever taken (the keepers), and having them in two locations. I even tell my clients about this setup so that they know I will have their images safe for years to come.

I can tell you now that the panic is gone and I am really happy with the new QNAP solution. I have not only replicated what I was doing with the Drobo units, I have surpassed the functionality and usability by far! It is not an inexpensive solution, but it is something that is vital to my business. As a professional photographer, our data is everything, and keeping those images safe is critical. I am now sleeping better at night.

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The first time doing a dolphin excursion in Costa Rica!

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 20:19:11 +0200

I have been leading photo tours to the same area of Costa Rica for many years now, and the itinerary has stayed very much the same with a couple of small changes. Some of the changes were conscious changes made by me (based on my guests feedback) and others were made out of necessity. One of the excursions that my guests enjoyed was a visit to an animal rehab area. Unfortunately that sanctuary has been shut down and so I needed to come up with a different excursion for my photo tour. One of the best parts of the sanctuary visit was the boat ride across the bay. I really wanted to keep that as part of my tour, to share this awesome experience with my guests. Working along with my contacts at the resort, we decided to replace the sanctuary trip with a whale and dolphin watching trip. And it turned out to be awesome!

Let me share the images and story of our amazing morning on the water.

The first question I always get from my guests when I tell them that we are going to be on the water is "How rough will the water be?" Because we stay within the bay and don't venture out into the open ocean waters, it is almost always very calm. We boarded a boat around 8am and headed out looking for whales. I saw this guy fishing from a kayak and loved the calm scene and all the blue colors working together. As you can see, we had nice overcast skies which really helped to avoid harsh sunlight and shadows.

After 20 minutes or so, our captain and guide spotted a mother whale and her young calf. We cruised along with them for while, capturing photos of their backs, but never got a good shot of their heads or tails.

Getting a nice shot of their dorsal fins is fine, but gets old fast. It was time to move on to see if we could find some dolphins.

We headed back into the smoother waters of the bay and same across this sea turtle who made an appearance for a quick photo.

We also tracked a couple of white-footed booby, but were determined to find dolphins!

After 30 minutes of searching, we saw spotted dolphins out in the distance. I was VERY excited to see the dolphins for 4 reasons:

1. They have been my favorite animal since I was a young child.

2. It was a large pod with a lot of activity.

3. They were not just swimming, but jumping high into the air.

4. I wanted my guests to have great photo opportunities.

I was shooting with the Canon R5 camera and Canon RF 100-500mm lens. Because the high resolution of the Canon R5, I could crop in on the previous shot to get this image. It is less than 1MB in size, but still decent. I liked the "S curve" of the body but really wanted to see more of the face.

As we got closer to the pod, we were able to grab images like this without having to do heavy crops.

This one dolphin jumped so high, facing us and leaving a trail of water off of it's body! This is one of my favorite photos from the trip. I was excited to see that numerous of my guests captured the same jump. It was just AWESOME!

Here is a tighter crop of the same image. This one is going on the wall at my home (and I will be offering this and many other images for sale soon).

They just kept performing for us.

We estimated that there were more than 100 spotted dolphins in this pod.

The more mature spotted dolphins show spots on their under belly. you can see that in this image.

Here is another favorite image from that morning and the photo tour. Actually, there are numerous images from this excursion that are in my all-time favorite image collection.

After spending over an hour with the spotted dolphins, we started to make our way back to the resort, when we came across a small pod of bottlenose dolphins. They came over and rode the bow wave of the boat. At this point, many of my guests had stopped taking photos and were just sitting on the bow, enjoying the show. As soon as I saw them right in front of us, I switched to my Canon R6II which had the Canon RF 24-105mm lens on it. I also happened to have my Tiffen Circular Polarizing filter on the lens, which helped to cut the glare and get better images of the dolphins in the water. I stood up and shot images over the heads of my guests.

Then I decided to put the camera down and enjoy this for myself. I did take my iPhone out and grabbed a short video to remember the moment. You can see that HERE.

As you can imagine, this excursion is staying on my Costa Rica photo tours from now on! I hope you can join me on an upcoming trip to see this for yourself.

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Capturing images of Scarlet Macaw in the rain forest of Costa Rica

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 21:19:39 +0200

I know this is crazy, but I have made 3 trips to the rain forest of Costa rica in the last 9 months and have not blogged any of the images. Heck, it is one of my favorite places to take photos, so I need to share these with all of you.

For today, I am going to focus (pun intended) on the Scarlet Macaw. I personally think that this is one of the most beautiful birds to photograph. We see them every day on my photo tours to the Osa Peninsula, but getting them low and in an unobstructed view is a little more of a challenge. Getting great shots of them in flight is even more of a challenge. Every time I head down to the Osa I challenge myself to get better photos of these amazing birds.

I teach my guests to try and get photos of the animals without harsh light in the background. In this case, we had a couple of macaw hanging out in outer part of a tree, and the light was perfect. We had overcast skies which acted like a giant soft box in the sky. As nice as this image is, I have always wanted to get good shots of these birds in flight.

I captured this photo of this macaw with a nut in his mouth (which I really like), but the challenge with scarlet macaw is that photographing them from below means that we do not see all the great colors on their backs.

On my most recent photo tour we came across 6 macaw that were taking turns grabbing nuts from this one tree. Once again, the light was perfect.

We found a nearby slope which gave us a higher vantage point, and all we had to do was set our cameras properly and wait for them to grab a nut and fly off.

I was using my Canon R5 with the Canon RF100-500mm lens. Since most of my guests were using similar gear (on free loan from Canon) I recommended that everyone set their cameras to a fast burst mode, animal detection for focus, ISO 3200, at f/7.1, and a shutter speed of 1/2000 sec. For those of you wondering why we were at f/7.1, this is the best aperture the Canon RF100-500mm lens will do at 500mm. Once set, we waited for the jump.

We all had a great time capturing images as they grabbed their food and then departed. It was so predictable.

There was one spot where the birds would fly and the background was all far away, and dark. This gave us great separation between the bird and the foliage in the background.

Like an air traffic controller, I would call out to my photo tour guests just as the birds were about to take off.

Just as the macaw would push away from the tree, we would all fire our cameras in high speed, hoping to get great color and action. I think I took more than 500 images during this time, but I know one of my guests (you know who you are Jason 😀), took many thousands!

These last two photos and some of my favorites. I love that we were able to get a high enough position to be at eye level with the birds, and really see the colors in their feathers. As always, I look forward to the next trip to see if we get even better photos of these colorful beauties.

As I mentioned in the last blog post, my trips to Costa Rica are sold out for 2023, but I just added new photo tours for 2024. You can find those on the tour page.

Tease - My next blog post with images from Costa Rica will feature something new and really exciting!

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Come join me on new exciting Photo Tours!

Fri, 04 Aug 2023 19:39:51 +0200

I have just returned from yet another amazing photo tour in Costa Rica. We had an awesome group and captured countless breath taking photos worthy of printing and sharing. I will be sharing many of those images in upcoming blog posts.

In the mean time, I wanted to let you all know about upcoming photo tours for this year all the way out to 2025.

First and foremost, I have a photo tour in San Francisco that is happening in a couple of months and I have openings for this 3 day trip. We will be shooting both day and night photos, in all of my favorite locations in my home town. You can find more information on this trip HERE.

In Feb of next year we are heading back to one of my favorite places in the world, Tanzania! If you have not been to Africa, you owe it to yourself to get there! We have this trip on the schedule along with a 2025 trip. You can find more information on these trips HERE.

Last March we traveled to Japan to photograph this incredible country surrounded by the cherry blossoms. We will be doing this trip once again in 2024. You can find more information on this trip HERE.

As I mentioned, we just got back from the rain forest of Costa Rica and had a blast. The second trip of 2023 is already sold out, but I have now added two new trips for 2024. You can find more information on these trips HERE.

Last October we went Indochina to visit Vietnam and Cambodia. At that time, we could not get into Laos (still closed due to Covid), but now we can go there and we look forward to seeing all these places again in 2024. You can find more information on this trip HERE.

For the first time ever, I am doing a photo tour to Greece. I am partnering with M&M Photo Tours on this tour (and many others), and they have been there many times. This trip is on my bucket list and I look forward to photographing this amazing area with all of you. You can find more information on this trip HERE.

We are heading back to Botswana in 2025. This is another favorite area for me. Not only are we doing land safaris, but we spend a lot of time on the Chobe River, which gives us the chance to photograph elephants, hippo, fish eagle and so much more from a low angle. You can find more information on this trip HERE.

Last, but definitely not least, we are making our first ever trip to Peru in 2024. This trip is already sold out for 2024, but I will be adding another trip to see Machu Picchu and all the other great locations in this country for 2025. The dates are not set yet, but please let me know if you are interested in going on a future trip to Peru.

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Paris 2024 Summer Olympics - Exactly one year away!

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 22:21:09 +0200

For most people, when the Olympics are a year away, they think "I look forward to watching the Olympics next year", but for me, when the Games are a year away, my stress level goes up a little. This means that I have a short window of time to complete the rest of my planning.

Just to give you context, the process started more than a year ago, with me applying for my credentials. I got my confirmation from Team USA back in February that my request was approved, with the level of credentials I requested. Now the real work begins.

I got an email reminding me of the one year countdown, and it reminded me to log into the Paris 2024 Extranet site to check on everything. The one thing I need to lock down right away is my housing. As always, I will be photographing many different sports while at the Olympics, but my primary team will be USA Water Polo (Men and Women). As it turns out, like in some of the previous Summer Games, the competition will change to a different venue and location once the teams reach the medal rounds. This means that I will have two primary locations to account for.

The preliminary rounds for water polo will be held in Seine-Saint-Denis, outside the center of Paris.

The medal rounds for water polo will be held in La Defense.

This means that I need to select a press hotel (subsidized rates) that is located where I can easily get to both sites. Google Maps shows that the two locations are approximately 20 miles from each other with a 30 min drive time. But this travel time could vary depending on whether I am using a press bus or the metro.

I have already reached out to the Accommodations team in Paris to determine my options.

The next thing I will work on, after I have figured out the housing, is my contract with the team. But since we have worked together for many years, I am not too stressed about that. And once I can book flights (since the airlines don't book out one year in advance), I will get that locked in.

I am very excited for Paris Olympics for many reasons. The first and foremost is that it will be the first Olympic Games in a long time where we hopefully do not need to worry about Covid. For those of you who have followed me through the past couple of Olympics, you remember the massive challenges I faced going (and not going) into those. The second reason I am excited about these Olympic Games is that they are located in Paris! If it is anything like the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, the locations and backdrops could be amazing.

Rendering from the Paris Olympic Website

And for the first time ever I hope to be photographing the opening ceremony outside of a stadium! If you have not heard, the Paris Organizing Committee (POCOG) is going to have the opening ceremony on the Seine River, with each team floating down the river with their teammates. This is the first time ever that an opening ceremony will be held outside of a stadium. This should be very cool (although potentially a logistical nightmare for those of us who need to get back to the press center right away to post images right away).

As we get closer to the Games, I will keep you all up to date on the plans, the challenges and the successes.

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Photographing the Sensorio light exhibit in Paso Robles!

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 00:55:42 +0200

Last month I made a visit to Paso Robles, California which is an area known for it's wineries, breweries and olive groves. But I really wanted to visit the area to see the Sensorio light show, which is a really cool site to see. The Sensorio light exhibit is a walking tour which comprises of thousands of solar powered fibre-optic lights which line the local hillsides, and are constantly changing in color.

I have seen photos of this in the past and really wanted to see it for myself.

I took this photo at 8:52pm after the sun had set and the lights and colors were becoming really pronounced. But wait a second..let me start from the beginning.

We purchased tickets well in advance, and arrived early enough to relax and watch the sunset. While the sun was still in the sky, I wanted to walk around to see some of the 15 acres. I brought my Canon R5 camera with the Canon RF 24-105mm lens. They do not allow tripods or "professional cameras" to be brought in to the area, but I figured that my one camera and relatively short lens would be allowed, which it was. (More on this in a minute)

I loved the way that the bare bulbs looked with the setting sun behind them, so I got down low and captured this image.

As I always teach to my photo tour guests, a good photographer looks in all directions for photo opportunities. I turned around and saw that the moon was visible behind me. I walked to a spot where the moon would be just above the tree and grabbed this frame.

After walking around the area for half an hour, we decided to get some wine and cheese, sit down, and watch as the sun set and the lights became more visible.

It was almost 9pm before the sky darkened and the lights really came into full effect. At this point, we started our walk. Typically it can get very hot in Paso Robles, but our visit to the area was perfect with really nice weather during the day and a cold evening. It actually got so cold that we were huddled by the fire pits before heading off on our walk.

There were so many places to stop and watch the lights, that I had a hard time figuring out where to capture my photos. I typically looked for good leading lines and trees as my supporting subjects.

As I turned in different directions I would get more (or less) light in the sky. I was also using exposure compensation in the camera (between -1 and -2) to darken the scene.

I did this for two reasons:

1. It darkened the sky to a deep blue color.

2. I kept the colored lights from being overexposed.

I did most of my photography at the blue hour, which allowed me to still have nice color behind the trees.

Since I could not bring a tripod with me, I had to rely on the in-body camera stabilization, lens stabilization, and me holding the camera steady. Most of the images you see in this blog post were taken with the following settings:

Mode: A/V

ISO: 3200

Aperture: f/4

Exposure comp: -2

Shutter speed: 1/4 sec

During the retouching process, I would increase the exposure when needed and then run Topaz DeNoise on the images to take out any of the digital noise (grain).

Honestly, these newer cameras have such amazing stabilization that I am often shooting handheld at really slow shutter speeds with amazing results!

It was now 9:06pm and I was able to capture the colored lights, the blue sky, and the moon in one photo. This is one of my favorites of the night.

Just 5 minutes later, we lost the blue skies and I was now working with the grey/black sky. I had also taken most of the images that I wanted, so I decided to try something different. For this shot, I changed the camera settings to ISO 1600 (at f/4) which gave me a half second exposure. I pointed the camera at a nearby tree and then zoomed the lens out during the 1/2 second. This created the light streaks that you see here.

From the same location, I changed the camera to ISO 3200 (still at f/4) which gave me a 1/4 sec exposure and I twisted the camera to give me a different look.

I saw all these lights winding their way up to a tree and thought they made a perfect leading line. I turned the camera to take a vertical image and really like this one. I just wish I had taken this during the blue hour, as I prefer the deep blue sky to the muddy black sky you see here.

This photo was taken at 9:12pm and was the last image showing any light in the sky.

When walking all the way to the back of the exhibit, they have some interesting light sculptures, including these light towers made out of wine bottles.

This is a close-up view of the wine bottles.

Also in the back area is a new display called "Fireflies" where almost 10,000 lights are blowing in the wind. Each of these clusters has flexible "tentacles" of lights which dance in the wind. It is really beautiful.

I took tight shots of the fireflies but also zoomed out to catch images like this one, with the sculptures, the tree, and the moon.

These last two photos were taken at close to 10pm. The light you see in the background (top right side of the image) is light pollution coming from buildings in the distance. This image was taken handheld at ISO 3200 (like most of the others).

This photo was taken at with the Canon R5 at ISO 1000 with a shutter speed of almost 3 seconds. For this shot, I rested the camera on a rock wall, set the 3 second timer, and avoided any shaking of the camera during the exposure.

If you live in California or have a display like this in your area, I would really recommend visiting. And if you do visit, I hope you will take your camera and have as much fun as I did!

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New 3-day San Francisco photo tour!

Tue, 27 Jun 2023 21:39:08 +0200

I have been teaching photo tours all over the world for many years now, but have never taught in my home town. I have photographed in San Francisco so many times, and every time I do, I think about hosting a photo tour in this amazing city.

Well, the time has come for me to share my favorite photo locations in San Francisco with my guests!

I picked the month of October, since the weather is usually at its best during this month. The tour will begin on October 9th and run through October 11th, and we will be photographing day and night. Here is the tentative itinerary for the trip.

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Day 1:

Golden Gate Bridge (numerous locations)

Palace of Fine Arts

Baker Beach

Lands End

San Francisco Bay

Night: Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin Headlands

Day 2:

Painted Ladies

Lombard Street

Fishermans Wharf

Coit Tower

Night: Wide shots of the San Francisco skyline and bay

Day 3:

China Town

City Hall

Haight Ashbury

Golden Gate Park

Bay Bridge

Night: Sunset shots over the city

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All of this is subject to change, depending on the weather and other factors, but suffice it to say that we will see all the best that San Francisco has to offer.

Here are some images of locations I will be taking you to:

Of course, you can't photograph San Francisco without capturing the Golden Gate Bridge.

There are many vantage points which give you very different photos of this iconic structure.

The Cable Cars (and learning how to motion pan them - like this photo)

The Palace of Fine Arts

The Painted Ladies

Downtown

Chinatown

Some really great lessor known areas.

Views of Alcatraz

As I mentioned, we will be taking photos during the day and into the evening.

I even have the option for my guests doing an optional aerial tour of San Francisco. I have a good friend who is a pilot and does aerial tours of the city. I have flown with him numerous times, capturing images during the day...

...and after sunset.

I can help arrange the optional aerial tour for any of my guests.

The cost of the tour includes:

* Hotel

* All meals

* Photo instruction (of course)

* Luxury transportation and a full time driver (so we don't need to worry about parking)

* Security (good to have in many locations and at night)

* Loaner camera gear from Canon

The cost is: $3950.

I put this on my web site a while back and have already had 4 people sign up. We have room for 6 more people. If you are interested, please contact me to grab one of the remaining spots.

I have also added new photo tours to some of my favorite places, like Costa Rica, Africa, Japan, Indochina and more for 2024 and 2025. You can check those out HERE.

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Printing big and BIGGER with my Canon printers!

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 18:31:03 +0200

In the last blog post, I talked about the importance of color calibration. I also said that I would follow up that blog post to cover the final step in the process...printing.

For the last 8 years I have been relying on the Canon Pro-1000 printer. This printer has been an absolute work-horse for me, printing the bulk of my 4x6, 5x7, 8x10 prints for clients, and really anything up to 16x20. Then, about 6 months ago I added the larger Canon Pro-4100 printer to my arsenal so that I can print REALLY large images.

Actually - I have three Canon printers if you want to include my multifunction printer (to the left), which I generally only use for printing documents and scanning. The Canon Pro-1000 printer is right next to my computer for easy loading of smaller photo paper.

This is the Canon Pro-4100 printer taking up a lot of space in the office, but worth it. I posted this photo of my granddaughter and I (taken by my daughter-in-law) on social media last week because it is one of my favorites. I had to print that one big!

But I am getting ahead of myself here. Before I talk about the printers, I need to further explain the importance of color calibration as part of the printing process. Regardless of whether you are printing on a large format printer or a small one, the color calibration is really needed because nobody wants to spend the money on the ink and paper only to find out that the colors and brightness are off. Having the Spyder X2 connected to my computer means that, not only are my colors going to be correct both on screen and from the printer, but also that the brightness of the monitor will be set so I can properly set the exposure levels before the images is sent to the printer. With this combination, I have complete confidence knowing that what I output will be accurate, without having to reprint over and over.

Unlike many photographers, I do not use Adobe Lightroom very often, but instead choose to do all my retouching directly in Adobe Photoshop (using Photo Mechanic for all my culling and organization). Once I have done all the retouching in Photoshop, I then choose which printer I am going to output to. Most of the time this determination is made strictly on the size of the final print. If the print is going to be smaller than 16x20, then I still default to the Canon Pro-1000. Anything larger and I use the new Canon Pro-4100, which can print all the way up to 44" wide by 100 feet.

Some people have asked me why I decided to get the Canon Pro-4100. Honestly I got this beast for the following reasons:

1. I have always wanted to be able to print my images really large, to frame and put in the house.

2. I periodically have clients who want large prints and I like being able to create them quickly.

3. I had a corporate client who wanted images printed for an office building, and it seemed more cost effective to print them here than to order a large quantity from my color lab.

One of the features I love the most about the Canon Pro-1000 is the paper loading system. Unlike many other printers, this one uses a vacuum system to pull the paper in. My previous printer (from another company) would bring paper in crooked all the time, creating a lot of waste and frustration. In all my years using the Pro-1000, I have never once had the paper go in off angle. The Canon Pro-4100 uses paper rolls, and has also been perfect in the loading and printing department. Even the process of replacing a roll is incredibly easy. I just put the roll of paper onto the bar and the printer does the rest.

As for the quality of the prints, they are always remarkable. The colors are perfect and the resolution is museum grade. There is nothing like seeing your favorite images printed in the highest quality and large!

For both printers, my favorite media is the Lustre paper and I use this 90% of the time.

These are some of the photos that I printed for the office building. I generally lay them down on the ground for a couple of days to get the curl out of the paper (since they are coming off of a roll).

Ever since getting the new printer, I have been having fun framing favorite images and putting them up at the house. When I get tired of them. I switch them out for new ones.

If you are interested in getting any of my photos in a large print, just send me an email and tell me which image (any from my web site or blog) and I can print that for you at a reasonable price. Then you can enjoy these large photos as much as I am. 😀

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The importance of color calibration - especially when printing images!

Wed, 07 Jun 2023 22:53:58 +0200

This blog post is one I have been meaning to write for at least 6 months, and I just never got around to it. It involves an important topic for all of you out there who want to create the best photos possible. We all invest in great cameras, lenses and other accessories, but many fail to finish the process in the proper way.

As I have always said, almost every image needs some finishing, whether it is slight tweaks to the exposure, shadows and highlights, white balance, or removing distractions in the photo. This can be done in PhotoShop, Lightroom or other editing programs, but there is a step that should be done before this happens. This step is color calibration.

I take the time to frame a shot, choose the best ISO, aperture and shutter speed and am excited to get back to my computer to see what I captured. But how do I know that my computer monitor is showing me the proper brightness and colors? Without color calibration, I can not trust what I am seeing on my computer.

Think about it...if my monitor is not calibrated and is over saturating the reds, then I would be removing some of the red in the retouching process. Then when I go to print the image, the red color would be under saturated and the image would not look it's best.

For the last 10 years, I have been using the Datacolor Spyder calibrators to assure accuracy in my images. A couple of months ago, Datacolor sent me a prerelease of the new Spyder X2 calibrator to try prior to it's launch. I found that this new calibrator makes the process so easy and fast.

The software is designed to make the process easy for any user, not needing to be a color expert (which I am not). Each step of the way I was walked through the choices, and then I hang the calibrator in front of my display and let it do it's thing.

The calibrator even measures the ambient light in your room, and helps you set the proper brightness for your monitor prior to doing it's thing.

You can watch as the Spyder software generates many different shades of each color, with the device measuring that each step of the way. Once the calibration is complete (which only takes a minute or so), you can see the difference between the uncalibrated monitor and the calibrated monitor.

You can see the calibration happening here:

And you can see the difference by clicking the video above or by clicking here.

The Spyder comes in two different versions, the Spyder X2 Elite and the Spyder X2 Ultra. If you have an HDR monitor or a newer monitor that has "high-brightness" you will want the Ultra ($30 more), otherwise the Elite will do just fine for you. Either way, the Spyder X2 will cost you less than $300. and it will make a big difference to your images.

I find that the Apple MacBook Pro laptops hold their calibration pretty well, but I choose to run the Spyder software on my computers every three months to make sure they stay calibrated.

For many years I have been printing my images (4x6, 5x7, 8x10 and up to 13x19) on the Canon Pro-1000 printer, and as of 6 months ago I got a Canon Pro-4100 large format printer. When I am using higher cost paper and ink for these printers, I want to know that my images are color corrected prior to printing them. More on the new printer in my next blog post!

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Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.

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Canon gear on sale now - Up to $700 off!

Wed, 31 May 2023 21:12:05 +0200

I just got word about new Canon rebates with some really great deals. One that jumps out immediately is the Canon R6 camera which was selling for $2299 is now available for $1599! They also have the same rebate on the Canon R6 kit with the RF24-105mm f/4 lens, which sold for $3399 and is now available for $2699.

Check out all the deals by clinking on the image above or HERE.

Happy shopping everyone!

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Memorial Day Photos: San Francisco National Cemetery

Tue, 30 May 2023 03:46:38 +0200

Today is Memorial Day and I thought it would be appropriate to pay my respect to those who have made it possible for us to have our freedom. I looked back and found some of my older images from the National Cemetery in San Francisco (from a blog post I did ten years ago) and also have added some new photos that I took yesterday.

The first two photos were taken back in 2013. It was the first time that I visited the cemetery after the volunteers has placed flags in front of all 32,000 tombstones.

For this image, I used a fish-eye lens to capture the flags at the entry of the cemetery.

On my previous visit I was there on Memorial Day and had a chance to photograph some of the military who were in attendance.

Yesterday the cemetery was mostly empty. Since I had just finished shooting an event, I had many of my cameras and lenses to choose from. I decided to use my Canon R3 with the Canon RF 70-200mm lens. I got down low to capture the flags and show the repeating pattern of the endless headstones.

I also looked for graves that had been visited. I shot from a standing position...

...and also got down low to highlight the tribute.

I did not just take photos. I also walked around and fixed some of the flowers and flags that had fallen over and took time to read many of the names of the fallen.

As I walked around, I was looking for repeating patterns in the background. I took this photo at f/3.5 to have the first stone in perfect focus, but let all the stones in the background go out of focus. This photo highlights the name and information.

For this photo, I waited for the wind to blow the flag in the foreground, and focused on that. I took this photo at f/5 to have both the flag and the stone in focus.

There are some military who are buried with flat headstones at grass level (like you can see in the first photo). I got down low to the grass to highlight only the repeating pattern of the flags.

After spending an hour or so in the cemetery, I was about to leave when I saw these geese walking through the grounds. I saw these two that were walking towards the flags and waited to take photos until they got close. It almost looks like they are paying their respects.

I got back in my car and was driving out when I saw this goose walking. I lowered my passenger window and framed my shot, and just as I did, it took off. I like that this is a different view within these hallowed grounds, with a little bit of life amongst the fallen.

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Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!
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If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Cuba, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.

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Japan Photo Tour - Part 2 - Kyoto, Osaka and more

Tue, 16 May 2023 14:39:40 +0200

As you saw in the last blog post, we started our Japan photo tour in Tokyo and then made our way to Nikko, We had overcast weather for most of the first part of our trip. Unfortunately, we visited Mt Fuji, but the weather was so bad that we never got a glimpse of the majestic site. But the overcast skies and rain drops did not keep us from visiting some great sites and getting really nice photos.

Instead of taking wide shots, I showed our guests how isolating subjects up close would make for better images in this weather. This photo was taken with the Canon R6 MK II and the RF 24-105mm lens, under the cover of an overhang (to keep us out of the rain). With the low and flat light, I took this opportunity to slow the shutter speed to 1/15th sec to get some motion in the water coming from the dragon's mouth. I framed this shot to include the dragon (as my main subject), but also include the cherry blossoms and pagoda in the background.

Our next stop was Kyoto, and it was the first time that we had no rain in the forecast. We arrived in Kyoto in the evening and had a nice dinner. As we were walking back from the restaurant, I saw that the Kyoto Tower was lit up in these great colors. I suggested that we do night shots, using the tower as our subject and the wet, reflective streets in the foreground. We walked to a nearby temple and used that as our shooting location. I really loved this location and was hoping to shoot this same image at blue hour the following night. My plans were made, but the tower was lit in white, devoid of this great color. It turns out that the first night was a special lighting to honor breast cancer awareness.

Kyoto is known for all the amazing temples, and we really enjoyed photographing these. On this morning we visited the Golden Pavilion. I was really happy to see the nice clouds in the sky and great reflections in the water. Really nice shooting conditions! I used the Canon R6 MK II, RF 24-105mm lens with a Tiffen circular polarizing filter to accentuate the contrast in the clouds and the reflection.

We spent hours walking the grounds of the Golden Pavilion, enjoying the nice weather and capturing the beauty of Japan.

The next day we went to an area just outside of Osaka, which had endless cherry blossom trees. As we walked around the trees, it was hard to stop photographing their colors.

At one point we started shooting up into the sky. I saw the sun coming through the blossoms and used this as an opportunity to teach the starburst effect (using a low aperture and placing the sun in the right spot). Fun stuff!

I saw these young ladies dressed in traditional clothing and had to get their photo. They had just purchased some sweet treats and happily showed them to me.

I had heard about this next stop and was excited to photograph the tall bamboo trees and the Toril Gates and the Fushimi Inaru Shrine.

Due to the cherry blossoms being in full bloom, the area was packed with visitors, tourists and locals included. These walkways were VERY crowded but I really wanted a clean shot without people the frame. As I walked up the pathway, I thought that this was not going to be possible. But then I noticed that even though there were two open rows of these gates, people were only going up the right side. People assumed that the opposite side was for people exiting the area, but that was not the case. Once I figured this out, I went back down and walked up the left side to get this clean shot.

More cherry blossoms...

We saw this woman posing for photos, and many of us chose to shoot our own images of her from different angles. I decided to use this tree as a "frame" above her.

One of our last stops was to the Himeji Castle, which was built in the 1300s. Once again, we had great weather. Our group split up, allowing everyone to walk the property to find their own favorite photo locations. I saw this hedge with vibrant red leaves and thought that it would make for a perfect foreground to the castle. For this photo, I got down low to the leaves...

...and i this photo, I raised the camera a little higher to show more of the trees and a little less of the red leaves. This really shows how shooting at a slightly different height can change the composition of your image.

Our last night in Japan was spent in Osaka, where we went to visit the Glico running man. This is one of the most well known landmarks in Osaka and has been popular for the last 80 years. While waiting for the sunlight to diminish and the billboards to light up, we all broke out our phones to capture video and time-lapses from this location. I saw one of our guests (Dave) standing still amongst the fast moving crowd and had to capture this. I slowed the shutter speed of the camera to 1/6 sec and held it as steady as I could above my head.

I did not really understand why this was a tourist attraction, but took the photo anyways. There were literally thousands of people taking photos of this billboard.

In order to capture this billboard differently than everyone else there, I slowed the shutter down and twisted the camera to get this spinning effect. It is different and I like the uniqueness of the shot.

And I forgot to post this cool time-lapse video from the Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo on the last blog post. This is the busiest intersection in the world.

Click HERE or on the image above to see the time-lapse.

Overall it was an amazing chance for all of us to experience the beauty of Japan and I really look forward to getting back there next year. Hopefully I will get a chance to see Mt. Fuji next time around!

If you would like to go with us, please click HERE to get more information.

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Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!
__________________________________________________________________________
If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
__________________________________________________________________________
Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Cuba, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.

__________________________________________________________________________