A.D. Drumm Images, LLC – Landscape, Portrait, and Fine Art Photography in Rochester MN Photography

I posted earlier about my Canon S90 purchase. Here’s a shot I’d have been a bit reluctant to take with my 5D MkII. First, it would be tough to hold it and take the shot one-handed. Second, I could drop it – yikes! I think we were in Des Moines when I took this shot, but I have similar photos taken at highway speed. The 70 mph wind makes things a bit challenging, especially when the wind is swirling around the bike and a quartering headwind makes the actual wind speed perhaps 20 mph higher. Tip: work slowly, be certain something is being held in place before letting go, pay attention to what you’re doing.

This was a cool bridge, apparently fairly new, over the swollen Des Moines River. This was taken pretty much in the middle of the day, so not the best light, but the high contrast and blue sky seem to work with the architecture.

We attended Wing Ding, the international Gold Wing Road Riders Association annual rally. One of the program highlights was Clint Ewing doing some stunts on a Honda sport bike. He was pretty remarkable, and I was able to move in nice and close to the parking lot where he was performing. In fact, I was standing well onto the parking lot for this shot – as you might imagine. This was a real test of the S90. I found the tracking-focus setting which seems to have worked pretty well. This was shot in Av mode (aperture priority) and in RAW mode letting me make all the processing decisions in Lightroom. That’s my preference, certainly.

Clint was routinely standing the bike up nearly vertical and was often on the edge of toppling over backward. He has some sort of idle adjustment on the side of the bike which he’d use to help hold the engine speed during maneuvers.

This sort of shooting highlights the shortcomings of a point-and-shoot camera. The crispness is not quite up to DSLR standards, nor is the overall focus. Considering the size of the lens and the cost of the package, though, it’s quite amazing. Think about what this camera is doing. I didn’t happen to find and turn on continuous shooting, but even if I had, I believe it only shoots about one frame per second. On my DSLR, I’d have been in continuous and just holding down the shutter button, filling the buffer.

In fact, this is where a camera like the 7D shines with a good 8 fps rate. Or the 1D Mk IV at 10 fps.

Another common event at Gold Wing rallies is the light parade. Some owners spend countless amounts adding various lights around their bikes. The advent of LED lighting gives them the option of installing many lights, mostly hidden from view, with terrific brightness, and at a pretty low current draw. There’s little worry of overtaxing the charging system of the bike.

I shot the light parade in full manual. I was a bit worried about noise if I set the ISO too high, but the new noise reduction in Lightroom 3 was up to the task. I probably could have pushed it further. Shooting this sort of photo with a less adept P&S would have been tough, I think. I feel at home in manual mode and the S90 came through for me.

Here’s a shot taken at highway speed. The camera isn’t designed for motorcycling, so I had to remove my right glove to operate the camera, as you can see. Gloves make good flags – I had to hold onto the glove carefully to ensure it continued the trip with me. Lynne’s bike has a driver backrest with a small zippered bag on the back. I’d unzip it, carefully remove my glove, and stow it in the bag. Then I’d zipper it mostly shut before pulling my camera out of my pocket. My first attempt, I found that the strap for the camera was nearly useless as a safety catch for the camera. The strap just blew off my wrist. It has no adjustment for cinching it down. It now sports an overhand knot to keep it in place.

As an Ohio native, I’m always happy to see one of these signs. Traveling the roadways of the US, there are many places where you aren’t certain if you’ve crossed state lines. One of the worst is between Illinois and Indiana near Chicago. But most (all?) interstates entering Ohio greet travelers with one of these signs.

There is a silly story to accompany this shot. I had it in mind that if Lynne was driving when we entered Ohio, I’d try to take a photo of the sign. When I knew we were approaching the state line, Lynne was driving, so I pulled out my camera and prepared. Not a trivial undertaking, as I’ve explained. I just waited patiently. Okay, this should be it – the sign should be close. Hmm. What’s going on? I know there is a sign on this highway, as we’ve passed it many times.

Oh! I’m one state ahead of myself. I was watching for the sign, but we were crossing the Illinois/Indiana border! Good grief. I guess it’s good that I wasn’t operating the bike just then. I don’t know where my head was.

During our Columbus visit, Lynne and I spent a short while at Sharon Woods Municipal Park, not far from where my folks live. Back when I was in college at OSU, a friend and I would ride our bikes up to this park and do one or two laps of the trail there. I learned about dive-bombing red wing blackbirds there. It’s a very effective scare tactic to ward off predators, unless the predator is a human who realizes a bird isn’t going to actually hit you at high speed.

All in all, the S90 came through for me. It’s unlikely to accompany me on any real photo shoots, but for a camera I can throw in my pocket, I’m pleased with its performance.

As we are about to leave on a motorcycle excursion, I was contemplating what camera (and lenses, etc.) to take. I decided it was perhaps time to invest in a point-and-shoot that would be compact and light. If I could put it in my pocket, better yet.

There seemed to be a few cameras that fit the bill. I’ve been watching Canon’s Gline for a while, the latest of which is the G11 which many photographers like. It provides a lot of control, shoots in RAW mode, and is relatively small. But, it really doesn’t fit into a pocket very well. This led me to the S90 which (if you can believe what you read on the net) shares the same 10 Mpixel sensor and provides a similar level of control in a slimmer package.

It has real M for manual and Av for aperture modes, and also shoots in RAW if you prefer that over JPEG. I do prefer. The G11 has a hot shoe which the S90 lacks. I contemplated that for a while but eventually decided when I need that much control, I’ll just use an SLR. This is supposed to fit the need for small and light. I briefly looked at the SX20 which was on sale for a seemingly good price at Best Buy. But it’s bigger and somehow doesn’t include RAW. As I looked at it, I had the impression I’d be better off buying one of the newer Rebels for only a slight increase in size and the ability to attach any of my Canon lenses.

This sort of purchase is tough. I want control. I want quality. Looking at comparisons between a good P&S versus a small camera with a sizable sensor, like the micro-four-thirds lineup, I wonder can I really make due with something like the S90. I had to decide what is the real motivation here? In the end, it’s small, light, and inexpensive (to not suck away money I’d like to spend on glass for 5D). The image is more the photographer than the technology, so accepting this, the S90 won.

I’ve taken only a few snaps so far, enough to try RAW mode in Lightroom, make sure my SD cards work, make sure I understand the basic handling of the controls and menus. The shot above was shot at 1/8s at f/5.0 using window light, and I’ve cropped it in pretty tightly. I have no complaints, and I have to say, I love adjusting white balance in Lightroom instead of relying on the camera’s AWB.

I thought I’d add a few words about Lightroom 3.0. I purchased the update as soon as it was made available. I wish Adobe priced Lightroom about $100 lower for new purchasers. The update price is not bad, but I think a lot of photographers, even strictly amateur or casual, would benefit.

Anyway, the huge feature for me with LR 3 is the new noise reduction updates. It’s miles above what was in versions 1 and 2. I use the Noiseware plug-in for Photoshop, but it’s frankly a pain to have to use this for a stack of photos which otherwise would be completely handled in Lightroom. Noiseware is still a more full-featured noise reduction system, but I’m sure that going forward, 90+% of my photos will have noise reduction using just Lightroom. It really is that good and the image above shows this. RAW images have no in-camera noise reduction, and even with the small S90 sensor, LR is able to produce a great looking result.

There are other features in version 3, some of which I’ve yet to explore. I’m sure I’ll use them, but this one feature was worth the upgrade. If you are fairly serious about photography, I think you could surely benefit from Lightroom. You just need to justify the initial price.

Courtesy of John Cohn

Although I know him mainly as a colleague, I like to consider John Cohn a friend. I see him only rarely, not counting watching him during the run of the TV show The Colony, as he lives out east. But his passion for life, his work, and science is motivating. There are too few people like John.

If you happened to watch The Colony, you may know that John lost a son a few years ago to an accident, a devastating loss any parent can appreciate, and one which most of us, fortunately, have not had to experience. John now distributes small stones bearing Sam’s name all over. He placed one in the water filter on the show, and I’ve seen images of “Sam Stones” in places like the Middle East. It’s a beautiful way to honor his memory.

This morning, I saw the photo of Sam in a post by John on Facebook. Today, Sam would have been 18. Looking at the picture, I was moved, and I began to think about what photography is and what it means for us. And, why we photograph.

Ask me this on any random day, and I’d tell you I use photography to express my inner artist. I strive to make images that move people, that express the beauty of our world, the joy in someone’s eyes, a smile. It’s an art form that demands technical knowledge and subtle attention to detail. It’s creative expression in the camera settings, the angle of the shot, the available and artificial light, and the limitless ways to form the pixels in post-processing.

But photography is much more. It’s a gift we’ve been given by the pioneers who created this medium, by the countless photographers, chemists, engineers, and inventors. I have known the story of Sam for a while, but today I was moved by his image. Today, Sam is not just John’s son, he’s the boy in this picture. Today, I know Sam in a way I did not yesterday.

Photography is how I know my grandparents, all of whom died before I was walking. I know my mother as a child with a doll because someone took a picture and that picture survived.

I know my father as an infant from a time when photos were certainly not ubiquitous.

Dad as an infant in 1916

Certainly, photographs take us places and show us other people, other cultures, wars, catastrophes. They show us magnificent vistas, oil gushing from the ocean floor, rover wheel tracks on the surface of Mars. But they are personal, too, and maybe even more, they tell the stories of our lives. They will provide our future generations a glimpse into who we are. Humankind has never had this before.

Visual arts are uniquely human and ancient. Photography was probably inevitable. Photography today is truly everywhere. We don’t need to remember to bring a camera – we have our cell phones. Cameras were something you had to think about. It’s why you’d develop a roll and find pictures from last year’s vacation that you forgot were still in the camera. Today, we snap a dozen shots of friends and upload them to Facebook or Flikr before going to bed.

Yes, we photograph for different reasons. We want a beautiful print to hang on the wall. We want to capture memories of a wedding or senior year. We want to show our friends what they missed when we went to the beach. We want to remember some happy time in our life.

Or, we just want to introduce the world to Sam, a loving son who left us way too early.