Tag: photography

June 13 Photography Club Presentation

The Pagosa Springs Photography Club will hold its June meeting on Wednesday, June 13, at the Community United Methodist Church, 434 Lewis St.  Join us for socializing at 6 p.m., followed by a brief business meeting at 6:30 p.m. Experienced photographers and those just starting out are welcome to attend

Our June  meeting will feature Randy McCormick. He is a lifelong victim of curiosity with a master’s degree in environmental education. Now semi-retired, he works six months a year as an interpretive naturalist, boat captain and backcountry tour guide at Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Naples, Fla. The rest of the time he calls the “greater metropolitan Pagosa Springs area” his home range. 

His presentation is titled, “Sea to Summit — We’re All Connected.” 

This program involves a photographic journey to the western Everglades on the southwest coast of Florida. So, how can this possibly be connected to Pagosa Springs, Colo.? If we look closely, we can see that many of the fundamental characteristics that underlie intact natural ecosystems are similar and can be experienced everywhere. The Everglades and the Continental Divide seem about as disparate as any two places on earth, until you learn to perceive it as different pieces of the same planet. 

Photography can be a useful tool that allows us to “see” that which is often obscure. John Muir said it best: “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” This presentation is an attempt at visual/conceptual macramé. 

Members are encouraged to bring up to 10 images to share with the group. This month, in honor of our recent field trip to the Cumbres & Toltec rail yard, and the Pagosa Springs car show, consider bringing photos on the topic “Planes, trains and automobiles.”

May Photo Talk & Coffee

coffee and cameraJoin us at 9 AM, Thursday, May 24 for coffee (or breakfast) at Cafe Colorado for our (almost) monthly Photo Talk & Coffee.

Bring some photos to share & discuss, either digital or prints. We will talk about photography, summer outings, and other topics, as determined by the group. Also, please bring your signed waiver for the Cumbres & Toltec outing on May 25 (or return by email earlier).

Cafe Colorado is at 565 Village Dr, just off Highway 160 west of Piñon Lake and east of McDonalds.

Tips for Photographing Star Trails

One of the topics I did not have time to discuss during last week’s presentation on photographing the Milky Way was making images of star trails. Ian Johnson has published some good tips and techniques for star trail photography over at Digital-Photography-School.com . It’s well worth a read if you are interested in this type of photography. Johnson discusses the basics of star trails, as well as composition, processing, light painting, and the effects of focal length and exposure times. It’s clear that this is an approach that is ripe for lots of experimentation and creativity.

I’ve learned one trick that works well for star trails if you don’t have an intervalometer, or like me, you are too lazy to use the one built into your camera. You do still need a cable release, though. Once you have your camera set up to capture the scene you want, set the camera’s shutter speed to the longest possible, without going into bulb mode. On my Nikon, this is 30 sec. Then, set the camera for high-speed continuous shooting. This is the mode that allows you to press the shutter button down and take photo after photo until you let up. Start the star trail sequence by locking the cable release to “on”. In this mode, the camera will take a 30 sec exposure, then another, and repeat until you unlock the cable release. The camera will fire away, shot after shot, until you stop it (or the battery dies). Using a wide angle lens, you probably want to let it go at least half an hour, and longer is often better. With a 50 mm or longer lens, a shorter time will give you good trails. Johnson walks you through the steps for combining the photos as layers, using the “lighten” blend mode in Adobe Photoshop. This will work in any software that uses layers and has the proper blend mode. I use a dedicated app called StarStax, which has several features such as gap filling (for the brief time between sequential images) and the ability to save out intermediate steps to create a time-lapse movie effect. StarStaX is free, but if you like it, the software’s author would appreciate some money for beer or coffee as a donation.

Another consideration is that you can control the apparent density of trails using the ISO setting on your camera. ISO 1000, for example, will give you many trails close together. ISO’s of 200 to 400 would give you fewer trails, mostly from the brighter stars. It’s another way to control the look of your image.

As with all nightscapes, knowing a little about the stars, planning for a foreground, and using some creativity will help you make great images.

Photography in the Dark, May 9

The Pagosa Springs Photography Club will meet on Wednesday, May 9, at the Community United Methodist Church, 434 Lewis St. Join us for socializing at 6 p.m., followed by a brief business meeting at 6:30 p.m. before our program. Experienced photographers and those just starting out are welcome to attend.

Our speaker this month will be Andy Butler. He will discuss techniques for night sky photography, particularly creating images of the Milky Way. Topics will include techniques for planning night landscapes featuring the Milky Way, photographing these scenes in single and multiple images, and processing the final images. 

Photography Club members may bring up to 10 images on  a flash drive to share and discuss with the group.

Photography enthusiasts at all levels of ability are invited to attend Club meetings at no charge for the first meeting. If interested, you are invited to join for annual dues of $25 for individuals, or $35 for a family membership

If you have questions about the Photography Club, please visit our website at pagosaspringsphotoclub.org

Organizing with the Lightroom Catalog

Egret Preening
Egret Preening, © Doug Coombs, dougsview.com

The Pagosa Springs Photography Club will meet on Wednesday, April 11, at the Community United Methodist Church, 434 Lewis St. Join us for socializing at 6 p.m., followed by a brief business meeting at 6:30 p.m. before our program. Long time photographers and those just starting out are welcome to attend.

Our speaker this month will be Los Alamos and Pagosa Springs based photographer Doug Coombs. Doug will present an overview of using the Adobe Lightroom catalog module. He will demonstrate exporting from the catalog to various file formats such as .jpg, .tiff, .psd and .dng. Additionally he will show how to export from initial catalogs made on a notebook computer, often while in the field, to a master catalog on an external drive. Finally, he will show a free Windows backup utility called SyncToy that is very useful for synchronizing backups across multiple internal and/or external drives in order to gain redundant backup copies of your photos. Doug is primarily a wildlife and landscape photographer. Doug is active in the Los Alamos Adobe Users Group, and the Los Alamos Photography Club. His images may be viewed on his website, http://www.dougsview.com. 

Photo Club members may bring up to 10 images on  a flash drive to share with the group.

For questions or information about the Photography Club, please use the contact form on our website at: https://pagosaspringsphotoclub.org/about/contact/. 

Upcoming Photography Club Activities

Chaco Phenomenon
Milky Way above Chaco Canyon © Andy Butler

Here are some of the activities we are planning this spring and summer for the Photography Club:

April 11: For our monthly meeting, Doug Coombs (http://www.dougsview.com/) will give us a presentation on tips for using Adobe Lightroom’s library module to import and organize photos on your computer.

May 9: Andy Butler will discuss techniques for night sky photography, particularly Milky Way photography. Later in the season, we plan to have a club outing to do this type of photography.

June 13: Randy McCormick will give a program “Sea to Summit—we’re all connected,” a photographic journey to the western Everglades on the southwest coast of Florida. If we look closely, we can see that many of the fundamental characteristics that underlie intact natural ecosystems are similar and can be experienced everywhere, whether in Florida or along the Continental Divide

Watch for our upcoming digital photo contest. We will officially announce the contest and rules by early summer, with submission around the first of August and display of the winners and other entrees at our September meeting.

Outings that we are working on include a photo shoot of the Cumbres & Toltec rail yard, a trip to the ghost town of Summitville and one or more summer outings for mountain scenery and wildflowers. Ideas for outings are always welcome!