A Little About Me

I would probably have to consider myself a bit (maybe a lot) of a realist, in as much as I try to capture what I see. I don't usually delv into the abstract aspect too much. But, I do shoot various subjects, and will try a somewhat abstract or two. My primary interest is landscape photography. I love nature, not so much the city. Trees, creeks, streams, beaches, and mountains to name a few. While I mainly try to get shots without people in them, especially a LOT of people, one here or there does help for an accent. If I had to pick a "style" for my photography, I would maybe call it somewhat eclectic.

I did do a lot of black and white developing and printing myself, but I find that digital affords much easier control over the final image. No longer do I need a darkroom and I can work on adjusting images while I'm watching TV. Also, having only so many rolls of film with me made me think twice about many shots. So I probably missed a few opportunities in order to "save film" for the next spot. With digital, you can basically shoot as much as you like. You can always delete what you don't want to keep. I have plenty of memory cards to last a week or two. As much as I liked working in the darkroom, I don't think I would go back to it.

When traveling, I copy the day's images to my laptop, leaving the images on the card until I get home and save them to the desktop. This gives me a backup while traveling in case anything goes wrong with a card. If I need to free up a card, I'll burn the images to a CD then clear the card. I would highly recommend using a cloud backup for your images and documents, just in case something happens to the computer in the house.

I like to shoot scenics in the early morning and late afternoon when the sunlight is at its best. But so many times when traveling I find myself in places around noon, give or take, which makes it more difficult to get a nice scenic.

Animals are interesting subjects also, but many times the lighting is a problem, especially at a zoo. Many zoos have dispersed overhead lighting which does not help much for pulling out depth in images. If I'm lucky, there is a better chance of getting images with depth if the animals are outside and the sun is not high in the sky.

I like trains. The problem with them is that they are very large! It's hard to get all of a car in a shot and still get a lot of detail because of the distance you have to be to capture the whole car or engine. It's a shame that trucking and cars slowly killed rail transportation. Anymore, many of the railroad companies do not care for people walking around train yards or rails. Years ago there was not as much of a problem as there is now. Maybe back then people weren't as senseless and less respectful as they seem to be now.




The Bubbles at Jordan Pond, Acadia

This was taken at the Jordan Pond House in Acadia, Maine with a Samsung Galaxy S-III phone in panorama mode.
I believe the phone did quite well.
Jordan Pond is about 600 feet from the restaurant. The water level was low, so many of the rocks were visible.
In October of 2018 the water was high and only the two large rocks were visible.
The lake is a drinking water suppy for the area.



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All images © Bill Harbison - All rights reserved