I don’t consider myself political – I have almost no use for politics and strictly try to avoid them whenever possible.  They don’t make for good conversation, nor for good peace of mind – any such discussion only brings to light the failures of the system, and soon after, most people’s inability to politely debate a topic.

But like it or not, conservation has become – and maybe always was – a highly political field.  Or at the very least, it is highly entwined in politics.  After all, we depend on government administration for much of our conservation efforts.  And unfortunately, conservation does seem to have become a lame duck of late (pardon the pun).Since childhood, I’ve had a deep love of nature and science.  It comes from growing up in rural Vermont, amid a great deal of nature, with wood and field right out my back door.  And more importantly, from growing up with parents and family who all had a healthy respect for nature, and who were only too happy to share their passion and knowledge with me.

But still, I’d never considered myself a “conservationist.”  That seems to be one of those highly political words.  It brings to mind the likes of Rachel Carson, John Muir, and John MacDonald, among many others.  Interestingly enough, most of the big names in conservation seem to be artists – and I suppose that is only natural, as those of an artistic vision are more likely to recognize the wonder and beauty in the world and want to cherish it.  But just as interesting is the fact that all such people seem to end up with some political contact.

So perhaps wading into the swamp is inevitable if you want to make a difference?

Except now, in this current day, conservationism really has become so entwined in politics that it has been corrupted.  Like a great knot, it’s hard to see how you’d untangle the two – and in the process, so much of conservation’s support is now handled by the very forces that imperil it.  Do we want companies like BP contributing money towards conservation efforts, while at the same time readily dismissing safety protocols that could avert environmental catastrophe?  Or should we unquestioningly take their blood money, because we need all the help we can get?

It seems that we’re damned either way.

And nobody is yelling about it any more.  In the past people yelled.  There was outrage.  But where is the outrage today?  We as a society are happy to dedicate our attention to Lindsey’s newest prison sentence, to Brad and Angelina, to the latest church scandal.  But we simply don’t seem to care about the destruction that goes on each hour to the world around us.

Bring it up, and you are countered by the force of the almighty dollar.  Temporary jobs are more important than lasting clean air.  And the justification is: “Let the world fix itself.  It always does.”

Well, yes, in the past, the world “fixed” itself.  Although it might do us good to consider that those fixes involved natural disasters.  Now we’re adding man-made disasters faster than we can keep up with them, but somehow the world is supposed to keep up?  We’re exempt from having to help?  We are actually so arrogant as a species to allow that we’re the only form of life on the planet important enough to save?

So what happens when we’ve killed off everything else, killed off the seas and the lakes and the lands?  Just how are we supposed to survive then, alone on a poisoned world, with the natural filters and mechanisms destroyed?

If this comes across as disjointed and rambling, then I apologize.  It’s not yet all clear in my own mind, and it’s certainly a hard idea to express in whole.  But there are some parts that I do know for sure.

I know that we need to stop being lazy in the way we live.  We need to make a conscious effort to conserve resources.  To reduce the amount that we use at home & work each day.  One at a time, in little ways, it does add up.

I know that we need to discover some humility, to admit that we’re royally screwed up, and most of all, to stop thinking that as the top link in the food chain, we are free from responsibility for our actions.

I know that we need to find out outrage, and voice it.

And I very much suspect that it’s time to start thinking of myself as a conservationist.  To wade into the swamp.  All of us should – all of us who take our relaxation and recreation in nature, who find solace and inspiration in the wild.  If conservation has lost it’s edge, it is because we have grown lazy and let it grow dull.

That needs to end.  We need to whet it.  We need to regain that edge.

18" and counting

So in an attempt to keep myself from climbing the walls, here are 10 ideas for photo-related things to do on a slow/snow day:

1. Keyword and backup your files. Yes, it’s enough to make you want to shovel the walk again instead, but it has to get done.  Better to do it on a snow day than waiting until a sunny weekend when you could be out actually making photos.

2. Submit to photo stock sites. Whatever your feelings on micro vs. macro stock, the fact is that most of us have a lot of good photos sitting around on hard drives that could be earning us money, even if it is just a quarter per download.  Hey, if it’s just sitting there anyway, you might as well be making something off it – think of it like interest on a bank account; it’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.

3. Join Model Mayhem. Alright, so perhaps you don’t actually have any photos to load to a stock site.  Model Mayhem is a good place to start, where you can connect with models and other photographers.  Unlike your roommate, who hides when you pull out your camera, folks on Model Mayhem actually want to have their picture taken.  Gaining some solid contacts there will make it much easier to go out and shoot a photo like this:

Got models?

4. Harass your roommate. On the off-chance that your roommate isn’t sick of you using them as a model, you can always try to recruit them into working with you.  I’ve got that great idea that waiting until after sunset and heading out into the snow could look really cool; use a single off-camera Speedlite to light the subject and drag the shutter to let the background fill in.  Of course, it will be much gentler on everybody if the snow has stopped falling for this.

5. Setup Google Reader. If you haven’t played with Google Reader, then you’re missing out.  I only got mine setup a couple of weeks ago – I say “setup” like it’s hard or something, but it isn’t – and I already love it.  You just plug in the feed links to your favorite blogs and Reader keeps an eye on them, collecting new posts and displaying them all in one place.  It makes it easier to keep track of the dozen or so sites that I watch, and instead of surfing all over the net I can read it all on one page.

6. Clean your gear. This is another of those all-too-often neglected tasks, but face it, your gear gets dirty.  Body oils all over the camera, smudges and water drops on the lens elements, that filter that you dropped in the mud last month and have ignored since…  Get out the lens paper & cleaning fluid and give the glass a once over.  Check all the lens and body contacts.  And use a damp, clean T-shirt to rub down the camera body and clear off any grime.

7. Record the snowstorm. This may seem like a Captain Obvious idea, but it’s surprising the number of people who will go out to dig out their cars, end up commenting on how lovely the world really is with all that snow blanketed across it, but never actually shoot a photo.  Why?  Get your snow gear back on, take the kids and the dog, and go back outside and play!  Take pictures of the playing!  It’s okay if some of them are snapshots – the point is to preserve the memory, and not every album photo has to be a perfectly-crafted work of art.  It’s okay to just have fun!

8. Give your palm tree a bath. Okay, so this isn’t strictly a photo-oriented idea, but nobody likes a dirty palm tree.  And it kind of gets the whole tropical island theme going.  After it’s clean you can get out a few limes, crack the Cruzan, and put on your Buffett albums.  If you can’t actually be in the Caribbean, you can at least party like you are!

At the top of my list of holiday loathing is the ever-present, annual Christmas photo cards. (Least this sound hypocritical after my last post, let me explain; the Family Christmas Photos I just did are a special community/charity event. That’s fine. It’s my OWN family’s photo card that I hate doing.) 

I have to wonder if other photographers have the same experience I do, which generally includes my mother remembering that she wants the photo taken, say, 5 minutes before I’m supposed to get in the car and drive 300 miles home after Thanksgiving. Yes, that would be after the gear is already packed. It also includes rounding up the rest of the family – all 3 of them, if you include the cat, and we usually do – followed by some complaints about their current attire, a short argument about what said attire should be modified to, stomping up the stairs to go change the attire (or in my case, digging yet another bag out of the trunk), and finally assembling the now-completely-pissed-off crowd in the living room and telling them to smile (while my brother holds the cat, who would rather claw his face off than be present for another of these sessions).

Yeah, right. At this point, I’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of making a photo that doesn’t look like the people in it are about to go for each other’s throats.

It’s the old self-timer & dash method, everybody grits their teeth as the strobes go off, and after a couple of frames the subjects mutiny and leave. Repack the gear, repack the trunk, assure mom that the picture will come out fine, and hit the road.

I spent the next 300 miles trying not to thing about the festering image on my flash card. And how next year, I’d like to hog-tie everyone in Christmas lights, stuff a bow in their mouth, and really have a memorable photo.

Few among us haven’t, at one time or another, pointed a lens skyward and shot a few frames. Most of us have done it many times. On a basic level, the moon adds an element to landscapes; it fills in a portion of the sky, taking away dead space. And of course the romantic notions associated with it translate into the photo as well. All this is completely understandable.

But yet we keep returning to it. We keep looking up with our longest lenses at night, zoomed in as far as possible. At 300mm, the moon takes up perhaps 10% of the frame (the rest, naturally, being utterly black). That’s beyond minimalism – there are few such subjects we’d bother with. Yet we persist in shooting frame after frame, cropping, doing any manner of trick to make the moon larger in our image.

Let’s face the facts: one moon shot looks essentially like another, shot through a telephoto lens against a black sky. Certainly the phases can lend variation to the overall scene, but in the end we all have, stored away on our hard drives, a dozen moon shots from different days, all looking pretty much the same. And yet we keep doing it.

I did it the other night. I was packing up to leave, actually had the camera back in the bag when I thought, “What the hell.” I took it back out, mounted the telephoto, and took another few moon shots.

The 300D was my very first DSLR, and pretty much my second or third digital camera of any kind. I remember how excited I was when I ordered it – what a significant investment it was at that time in my life. Now I shake my head a little, looking back at it’s ugly body shape and terrible silver plastic, at the tiny LCD screen on the back and the 30k rated shutter life.

Canon changed the market with the 300D and at the time it was an impressive piece of gear. But, oh how far we’ve come since then. Shutter life has improved by a factor of 5; megapixels have tripled; continuous shooting and buffer speed are worlds beyond; and we now regularly shoot at ISOs that used to be the maximum, reserved for emergency sightings of Bigfoot and UFOs.

We all play the game of “what will we say in another 25 years?” What will cameras be like then? I for one refuse to speculate (although unofficially, I tend to think we’ll still be using some recognizable form of the DSLR). What interests me more than speculating on the future is looking back on the past, at where I’ve come from.

I remember the first gig I took that involved lighting – photographing antique furniture for auction. The client was a more distant family member, but it was still a big gig; it stretched out over two years (he had a lot of antiques). When I first started, I was using Home Depot clamp lights on PVC stands. By the second round, I had a cheap Quantaray hotshoe flash, and two even cheaper ($10 each) optical-trigger booster flashes, now on the PVC stands with homemade umbrellas (think rain umbrella and silver spray paint.) Together with the old Rebel, it wasn’t pretty, but it worked.

For most photographers just starting out, the early years are tough. They’re filled with primitive, cheap, and DIY equipment. They’re filled with a lot of trial and error and steep learning curves.

But thinking back, they were also a lot of fun. There was an excitement to the whole thing that I feel is sometimes diminished now. Not that it isn’t still exciting – just that there is less of that “explorer of the unknown” element.

Or maybe I’m just thinking about it all too much.

I’m very amused right now. Some of the searches, I have to wonder how they ever led to me. I thought I’d share a few of the best:

“underwater karate” – I didn’t even know they did this.

“rate my girlfriend” – I’d give her at 10, but I suppose I’m biased

“karate cute or lovely or nice or sweet” – again with the karate? And who practices “nice” or “sweet” karate?

“rick sammon terrible photographer” – Well he is, or at least his book is terrible.

“fall leaf pattern for grade school” – Apparently I’m helping with science projects now

“setting up your living room” – BRENT Pennington, not Ty Pennington

“bad lighting” – Hopefully they’re not picking on me

“amazing outdoor shots” – I take this as a compliment!

“average living room” – Is mine really average? It’s nicer furniture than most first apartments have.

The main fault with the 50D, aside from its lack of newer, faster, better features, is the image quality.  The 15 megapixel sensor is just too large – cramming in the extra pixels cost it whatever advances in ISO performance it might have had.  It’s a good camera, and I’m happy with mine, but it’s not as good as it could have been.

So, the 60D.  I’m no expert on Canon; I don’t have any inside information, and I’m not announcing anything.  I’m simply responding to the rumored specifications that I’ve seen across the internet, with my take on them.  Mostly, this is just me voicing my opinion on the matter.

Most of the spec lists I’ve seen are the same as the one at Canon Rumors: same megapixels, expanded ISO range, faster frames, new processor, movie mode, and SD card storage.  Alternately, you can go with Photo Rumors‘ details: a 12MP APS-H sensor (1.3x crop), and a build closer to the 5D Mark II.  Both estimate a price of about $2000.

For that price, it darn well better be an amazing camera.

Lets look at the sensor first.  Going down in megapixels, from 15 to 12, goes against every other camera manufacturer.  Camera companies depend on increasing MPs as part of their marketing hype, especially to the consumer market, who isn’t usually as informed on the technology.  In the 60D, however, this decrease might be a good thing – 15MP didn’t work so well, but a smaller sensor coupled with increased ISO performance could be a great combination.  I hope for it, but I don’t expect it, again because it runs contrary to the marketing hype.  And as far as crop factors go, I can’t imagine Canon moving to 1.3x, which would render its EF-S line incompatible.  It’ll be 1.6 or full-frame; since the 5D I & II are full-frame, the 60D will be 1.6.

Like improved ISO performance, an improved processor is almost a certainly.  Movie mode is also likely, although I personally don’t see the point and wish they’d leave it off.  Again, I see this as a marketing hype feature, not a useful feature.  Professional photographers – the folks likely to drop $2k on a camera – are interested in performance.  They buy a high-end camera because it’s the right piece of equipment for the job.  Likewise, if they really want a camcorder, they’ll go buy a camcorder.  Putting one in the 60D will attract more hobbyists, but in my opinion, it just gets in the way.

SD card storage replacing CF cards is likely.  It will render my half-dozen CF cards useless, but it makes sense.  CF cards have issues.  For starters, they’re large, so their mounting bays are large.  They also mount to a series of very thin, very delicate metal pins – and if a single pin bends or breaks, it all stops working.  SD cards are smaller and depend on simple contacts – and since they’re now coming in most of the same capacities as CF cards, it’s all the more likely.  I don’t realish having to replace my collection of CF cards, but it would be an improvement.

The last point to consider is the battery.  Canon has used the same battery in the 300D, 10D, 20D, 30D, 40D, & 50D.  It works great, but it’s probably going to change.  And there’s a lot of talk – across several companies – about “chipping” the new batteries.  Which means that 3rd party batteries are out; the cameras won’t accept any battery that isn’t chipped.  The companies tell us this is for our own “protection.”  What it’s really about is greed.  They want us to spend $80 to buy batteries from them, instead of $25 to get them from a 3rd party manufacturer.

I usually restrict my upgrades to the odd-numbered models, so I’m not due until the 70D.  Unless of course the 60D is really stinkin’ amazing, I’ll be waiting.  And if the price projections are right, and it does run $2k, it had better be that amazing – otherwise a few hundred extra bucks will get you a 5D Mk II.

The following shots were taken Saturday evening and Sunday morning.  Personally, I prefer sunrise light by a small margin, although it is not as easily accessible, due to issues concerning alarm clocks.  Either way, we’d all do well to spend more time outside in this “magic light.”

What makes it “magic light?”  Think about the color temperature, the directionality, and the dynamic nature of it during this short window.  It’s unlike the light at any other time of day.  As photographers, this is the quality we are most concerned with – it’s all about the light.