Category : Pilgrim’s Chronicles

Just when I talk myself into believing I can live without a D800, I have a shooting day like this!  I continue to be amazed just how wonderful this camera is when you use it with great care!!  Here is some of my best take from the SE Train Museum yesterday.  Some are HDR some single shots.  The web doesn’t do justice to how rich these files are with “extreme detail.”

 

 

This is why this camera is so amazing, look at this crop below out of this file above!

 

 

Wow, just amazing!  I’m really enjoying being with all my friends at Atlanta, hope you’ve had a great weekend!  What do you think Jim, is the location a winner or what???!!!!!  Join us for the Old Car Event and you can shoot this stuff too!!!

 

Blessings,

 

the pilgrim

O.K., I wasn’t actually working on the railroad, I was working at the Railroad Museum, the South East RR Museum in Duluth Georgia.  I was on my way to Atlanta for Imaging USA and decided to check out this museum we will be visiting during the Old Car City event.  R.C. Concepcion came up to join me and we worked on some HDR images and checked out the place!  I have to tell you the last time I was this excited it was when Jm and I discovered Old Car City.  RC and I shared my camera and it turned out all our images went on one card so he is downloading tonight, I will prepare some images tomorrow night!  I did take my point and shoot around while R.C. was shooting and will share some of those but I can’t wait to show you the HDR images from the D800 later in the weekend!

 

R.C. got so excited he has decided to join us at Old Car City!  He has been dying to shoot there and loved the train museum, it is making the Old Car City event look even more exciting than ever before!!  So here are some quick snaps and a portrait at the bottom R.C. did of me.

 

 

 

As you can see there is a great variety of things to shoot; trains, buses, and tons of close-up opportunities!  We still have a few spots, but now that R.C. will be joining us, those will go soon!

 

Blessings,

 

the pilgrim

 

PS  Now after a good nights sleep I decided to take these “point and shoot” images and do my simple HDR (look alike) processing, most are done in Topaz adjust, either; Spicify or Psychedelic.  I then generally reduce the saturation which gets highly magnified in these settings.   Wallah, 30 second HDR!!  Compare to the shots above with fairly minimal processing.

 

 

While these images don’t show the polish and finish of a Jim Begley or RC, HDR, but they take 30 seconds to a minute!  Better or worse?  That’s your decision, your the the viewer, critic, and recipient of the “attempted” art!

 

And a word about breaking the rules.  These are all made with a point an shoot camera, hand held!  Sometimes, it works………….

 

Alright, this is addicting, one more, the mail boxes done in Topaz Simplify, Oil Painting filter;

 

After above, before below;

 

 

 

I got up early this morning and headed to the laundry to take some stuff that needed cleaning, and as soon as I got a mile from the house I realized it was going to be a great morning to shoot!  So after a quick trip back to the house to pick up a camera, (D600 with the 24-120 lens). I headed back toward the laundry making a number of stops along the way.  The following images are some of my mornings fun!

 

This morning’s devotional was on sowing and reaping, and it really hit me in a phone conversation this morning,  how I’m reaping what I’ve sown.  Explain?  A student from a photography school in Atlanta, called this morning wanting to interview me for a school assignment.  We talked about the usual stuff and then he asked if most of my work was the result of an assignment or job using producers and directors.  I explained to him that the photographer he was describing was some other guy, not me.  I suggested he give Joe McNally a call on that question.  I started to try and explain to him how my photography gets generated and it made me realize more  than ever, that I’m living the dream. well at least my dream!!  I explained to him that my work is mostly grown out of what I find interesting and what I would like to share with others.  That though I had done “directed” assignment in my younger years I’m mostly now a very serious amatuer shooter, just looking for cool things to photograph.

 

Back to reaping and sowing, of course this is true of everything in life, if you treat others with respect, you will be treated respectfully, if you are kind, kindness will be returned, if you don’t mind hurting others, others won’t mind hurting you, pretty simple!  It extends into a photographers life as well, if you seek and photograph, (sowing), things for which you are passionate, that passion will appear in the results (reaping)!  I’m not suggesting that my work deserves praise, but it does bring me joy and I love the process, and the life.  Thank You Father for such a blessed life!

 

Blessings,

 

the pilgrim

 

 

I addressed the terrible shooting in Newtown, a few weeks ago, and I just received this from a  friend this morning.  It sheds new light on all the violence, I think it is worth some thought.  It may be that guns are not what needs to be banned!

 

In every documented school shooting since 1992, 78 instances, every single shooter, every one, was either on a controlled substance or coming off of one, this is the list:

 

Prozac

Paxil

Zoloft

Anafranil

Luvox

Cymbalta

Celexa

Lexapro

Welbutrin

 

Now all of these medications have their place and have helped patients who need them, but if people that are on these medications, that need to be kept away from guns, not law abiding, careful citizens.

 

Talk to your representatives!

 

Blessings,

 

the pilgrim