Picture of the Week, 6/28/10

Picture of the Week, 6/28/10: Seeing how this week we have our first named tropical storm, Alex, I thought I would mark the occasion by posting an image shot during Hurricane Hugo. For those who may not remember the specifics, Hugo reached category 5 status in September of 1989 and struck various Caribbean islands and eventually made it's way into South Carolina leaving in its wake a massive path of destruction.

I happened to be on my father's sports fishing boat in St. Thomas of the U.S. Virgin Islands when Hugo formed. Along with the boat's captain and the two fishing mates the four of us decided to confront the storm off Virgin Gorda in the BVI. It was a crap shoot deciding where to actually go and fortunately for us we made the right decision. Other boats decided the would stay in St. Thomas or go east to the island of Culebra or even Puerto Rico.

In Virgin Gorda we found a small bay lined with mangroves where we threw out all the anchors we had and tied all the ropes we could to the mangroves. At about 4 a.m. we were hit with winds of 110 mph that continued for a very long 8 hours. We could see boats around us loosing anchorage and being rag-dolled by the fierce winds; some did not make it. Fortunately for us the mangroves held our lines tight and help ease the strain on the anchors. We suffered some minor damage but nothing compared to the fate of so many others. Those that stayed in St. Thomas or ventured east took the brunt of the category 4 and 5 winds; the destruction was devastating.

I took this photograph at about 6 a.m. during the worst of the storm. I was able to walk out on the cockpit of the boat and snap several images with an amphibious Nikonis camera. Once back in the salon of the boat I removed the film from the camera and placed in a waterproof bag in case we sunk; the one thing I did not want to loose was that film!

So now we are back in hurricane season and while I don't wish one to hit anywhere near populated areas if one does and it finds me in the vicinity I'll be sure to have a camera ready--and some waterproof bags!

Picture of the Week, 6/22/10

6/22/10: (Because of recent trips to the Bahamas and South Carolina Picture of the Week has been on hold . . . we now resume.)

Great Isaac is a tiny rock island in the Bahamas with a lighthouse and a few abandoned buildings. The closest inhabited island to Great Isaac is Bimini, which lies 22 miles to the south. Flocks of terns and sea gulls, besides small reptiles, are the only living species on the island. The surrounding waters are beautiful and full of fish, perfect for diving and spear fishing.

In between diving I took a swim to the island and scrambled up the sea urchin filled rocks along the shore and to the top of the island where the lighthouse sat. There I came across a small abandoned warehouse and framed an image with my camera looking out a doorway. At the moment I was prepared to snap the shutter a tern came flying right towards the opened doorway; apparently this building was its home.

We both surprised each other but somehow I managed to press the shutter release and keep the camera framed and in-focus. It was an image that was not planned but simply by being prepared and having tons of luck on my side I captured a rather fleeting moment to the say the least!

Picture of the Week, 6/7/10

6/7/10: A quick summation of this week's Picture of the Week. I'll be joining these boys in the Bahamas for the rest of the week and there's a good chance that by the time you read this I've already dove in and I'm hunting for lobsters!

I am going to try my best to keep posting PoW over the next couple of months but I can't promise. Summer is here and I've got me a new pair of 'traveling shoes' to wear-in. Any one tired of all the BS the world keeps throwing at us is welcome to join me. Just look for the ball headed Cuban chewing on some tender lobster and drinking another cold one-- viva 'Cuba-Libre'! (w/ lime of course.)

Custom Surfboard Inlay

It took a while to come up with the right material, an image that would fit and figuring out a few printing technical issues but once I did my idea of laminating an original photographic Giclee print came to fruition. The finish product is both beautiful and stunning.
The actual surfboard is a 7'6" Firo hand shaped 'fun board' by Steve Firogenis of West Palm Beach, Florida. Steve was instrumental in working through several problem areas including resining the print on the board, laminating fiberglass over it and pin lining the edges of the image. The finish quality lies in the detail and that's where Steve is at his best.
If you don't look at this as an art piece the board begs to be ridden, which makes the piece even more fun in that it's an actual handcrafted surfboard ready to be waxed and taken out in the water, but how can you? Or can you? That's for you to decide!
I plan to create more of these "surfboard art" pieces, working with various
shapers that still handcraft their surfboards. Different board designs will be ordered and I will use a variety of images that lend themselves to the shape of the board, making each finished piece a one-of-a-kind, fine art creation. Because of the custom nature of the beast no two surfboards will be the same though each specific photo design will be a limited edition series. Each print will be signed, titled and numbered on the image so it can be seen on the board. This first board is the prototype to future ones and as of this moment belongs to me. Before the idea of inlaying a Giclee print I had designed this board to ride. I'm dying to use it though for now I best keep my desires in check until a collector comes along!

The Rush of Water

Crazy Hollow

There's this vine engulfed tree that for months and even years has captured my imagination. It sits not far from my house and I drive by it periodically. I've asked those that life near it about it but they know very little. All I know is that this tree sits on an empty, sand filled lot and is clothed in a strange vine.

No one is sure the type of tree it is nor of the vine. All anyone knows is that the tree still stands and the vine no matter how many times it's cut back just keeps on growing. No matter, I'm only interested in the visual essence of this tree.

Being that the tree sits in a non-descriptive lot surrounded by homes, power lines, sand and other nearby trees it isn't a subject that is easily isolated and photographed. However, I was looking for more than a tree snapshot and for the longest time I couldn't figure out what.


Eventually I figured it was time to shoot before someone bought the lot and unearthed this piece of nature's sculpture. At my wits end I called upon a friend who had shot with me once before and asked if she would pose by a tree. She agreed and a day later began shooting.


Technically I decided to underexpose the background and use one light source with a large beauty dish. A Zork lens was used in several of the images to create spacial distortion. The vine had always given me the creeps and once I began shooting I focused on creating both a mysterious and frightening feel to the images.







It was a real challenge and for that very reason that I wanted to photograph something out of my comfort zone and to simply push me into creating, good or bad. The purpose was not to create an award winning set of images but to simply challenge myself and to that end I did; still though that crazy tree has not loosened its grip on my imagination.

Postscript: Two months later I drove by the lot and the tree was gone!

Picture of the Week, 5/24/10

5/24/10: So what makes a school of mullet swim at a frantic pace and jump out of the water? Well, I might have one answer.

It was a beautiful September afternoon at Reef Road in Palm Beach, Florida that saw glassy four foot waves rolling in and a plethora of surfers maneuvering to ride them. The conditions were excellent for water photography and with water housing in hand and fins on feet I swam out to capture some of the action.

As the afternoon rolled on I began to notice large black shadows moving underneath the surface of the water, which I immediately took to be large schools of fish. This is a common site along the shores of South Florida during the spring and fall as schools of fish migrate up and down the east coast of the United States. The point being, I wasn't worried.

Suddenly however the black shadows start moving erratically and quickly and then out of the depth of the shadow large numbers of fish (mullet in this case) begin jumping out of the water; this is something they're not normally known to do unless of course they're being chased by large predatory fish. It could be snook, tarpon, jacks and even sharks that are hungry for mullet. I had no clue what spooked the mullets but suddenly I was surrounded by this frenzy.

I called out to the surfers to come lend me a surfboard to float on but for some reason non came. It was literally raining mullets all around me and there was nothing I could do. Fortunately my instincts to photograph this spectacle took over and thus the shot you see here, which I must admit is rather rare. Still, I had no idea what was making the mullet behave so erratic. However at one point I submerged my camera completely under the water and pointed it downward beneath my legs and snapped a photograph expecting to see more mullets in the image.

That evening I downloaded the images to my computer and took a quick glance at them. It was then that the answer to the original question came to light. In the one frame where I poked the camera underneath me and snapped the shutter I saw a large school of mullet with a big hole in the middle of them and in that hole swam a six foot bull shark. He was no more than five feet away, totally unbeknownst to me but not to the mullets and obviously not to the surfers that fail to come and lend me a board!

Camera used was the Nikon D3 with the 14mm f/2.8D Nikkor Lens inside an SPL splash water housing. Exposure was 1/500 of a second at f/4.5 at an ISO setting of 200.

Picture of the Week, 5/10/10

5/10/10: I'm traveling on the South Island of New Zealand and come upon some good waves with a few surfers riding them. I hang around to check things out when I befriend a local surfer. We talk and he learns that I'm traveling around with my son taking in the sites and looking for new experiences. Hearing that he tells me of a foot path along a creek in from the ocean that leads to a waterfall and pool where some 30 or so baby seals are left for the day by their mothers while they go feed. It's kind of like a day care and the baby seals spend the day having a great time playing in the pool.

Of course we hiked to where the hidden foot path was and made our way through a forest to the waterfall and pool and lo and behold there they were! It was amazing to see them playing, jumping and basically being young kids. At one point as I'm taking photos I get a feeling that something is near me and when I take my eyes away from the camera and look down I find a curious seal looking up at me. I gently put my hand out and the baby seal comes and lightly nudges it like if to say 'ah, you humans are so cute'. And just as I had befriended a local surfer a short while earlier now a local seal was befriending me--what goes around comes around!

Nikon D300 with a Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 lens was used and shot at 1/80 of a second at f/2.8 with ISO set at 640 and an exposure compensation value of -0.7. The NEF RAW file was converted using Nikon Capture NX2 and further processed with Photoshop CS3.

Picture of the Week, 5/17/10

5/17/10: Classic; Soulful; SOUL ARCH! That's Blair Markham during the epic "Halloween Swell" of 1991 at Wilderness, Puerto Rico. I'll never forget this swell nor will anyone else who witnessed it. The day before this photograph was taken I was in Palm Beach, Florida when the "Perfect Storm" formed off the northeast United States. Boats were sunk and people died but to surfers it was a time to witness ocean swells of giant proportions and for some a time to test their skills and strength at paddling into and riding seldom seen waves.

The waves off Palm Beach were simply too big and out of control for most but maybe a couple of surfers. The waves were so big that they closed off the island to motor vehicle traffic as pounding waves inundated beach side homes and roads. I knew that it would not take very long for the swell to make its way through the Bahamas and down to the Caribbean. Consequently I boarded a red-eye flight out of Miami and into San Juan, Puerto Rico. I arrived on the west coast of the island at 3:00 a.m. and within a few hours I was preparing to swim out at Wilderness.

Only a few surfers riding their big wave guns made it out that day. One of those, a little known Coast Guard cadet by the name of Blair Markham, was also able to paddle out at Wilderness except he did it on a classic long board; a board more apt for the soft rollers at Waikiki than the monsters hitting Wilderness. To see Blair take off on eight to twelve foot 'Wildo' was inspiring enough but to see him handle the waves with style, class and fearlessness was something totally unexpected and absolutely remarkable. This particular image epitomizes his entire session and will forever be equated, at least for me, with the Halloween Swell of 1991.

I used a Nikon FM2 camera body with an MD-12 motor drive and a 105mm lens attached to it that was all encased in a custom water housing made by Jim Bailey of Sea Research. Fuji Velvia film was used and most likely shot at 1/500 of a second with the aperture set at 5.6. The only other equipment needed was a pair of good swim fins.

Picture of the Week, 5/3/10

5/3/10: First of all this image was made in Charleston, South Carolina; now the fun part! I asked these boys to walk past this mural as they bounced their basketballs and I quickly snapped three frames. As you can see the basketball transforms into the letter "O" in the word "pastors", perfectly placed between the dots; cool, huh? Of course, all this was done in the computer with Photoshop, nothing real here. Come on, what are the chances of actually capturing an image like this in one pass? Well sorry digital gurus, you're dead wrong!
The image was shot on film and it wasn't until I processed the roll and laid the slides on the light table that I realized what had happened. I was pleasantly surprised and the magic of photography that has been lost in the digital age once again reappeared. You may call this pure luck and maybe you're right, however, I call it putting yourself in a place to be lucky!

For those interested I used Professional Kodachrome 64 (PKR) with a Leica M6 and 35mm f/2.0 Summicron-M. (Those were indeed the days!)

Picture of the Week, 4/25/10

Strong composition, balance and symmetry plus a bit of drama adds to the allure of this image that was recently made on the North Island of New Zealand. In addition the calmness and reflection of the water helps to soothe the otherwise dramatic elements (weather, dominant graphics, bright light) in the picture.

A Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 12-24mm f/4 G lens with focal length set at 12mm was used. Shutter speed was 1/400 sec, the aperture was f/10 and the ISO was set at 200. Metering was set to Matrix.