Flower Macros and Other Outdoor Photos

Very early on I discovered the beauty in things we otherwise ignore, like the sun shining through the leaves of a tree; closeup shots of a rose in a floral arrangement, or flowers on plants in my yard. Grabbing a camera I think helps us to appreciate the little things in life that we should not miss. Here are a few of many photos that I have taken on such subjects:

Photographing and viewing these subjects is also a way to work off stress, a win-win in my book!

How To: DIY Photo Light Box

Light Box Photography

If you have an Ebay account and put items up for auction from time to time I'm sure you can appreciate the problem that I have had in finding the right lighting conditions to accurately photograph sale items. You have to deal with glare, shadows, and other factors which can inaccurately depict the product. Obviously a poorly photographed product might not move very quickly, if at all.

There is also the problem with camera equipment. Not everyone has a DSLR with multiple lenses, filters, tripods, remote shutter releases and all the other things that camera buffs collect for their expensive hobbies. I would would venture to guess that a good percentage of folks have probably even ditched their old digital point and shoot cameras, mostly because smartphone camera technology has become so reliable. For many people, their phone, or perhaps their tablet comes equipped probably the best camera they'll likely ever need for taking snapshots.

I've been taking community college courses and online classes on photography for a few years now and was aware that people who photograph food, art, jewelry and other types of items for publication in magazines, blogs and other web sources all use the light box technique. It's the best way to capture a subject with defused light, that is, light which is even scattered over the subject with little or no unintended shadows.

There are professional studio kits that can be purchased for such shooting, but they can be very pricey, in the $80-150 range. If I were a big-time seller of products on Ebay it might be worth the expense. I am not, however. I do like to tinker though with hobby-type projects, particularly in the summer when I am decompressing a little from the long school teaching year. So I came upon this type of photography in my discoveries with my cameras.

Making a light box requires a box, a box cutter, tape, poster board, glue, tape, and some white muslin cloth. If you don't have muslin, an old clean tee shirt will do, or even gift wrap tissue paper. There are short videos available which are very helpful. I'll post one in this blog as a follow-up.

As for lighting, as the video suggests, LED lighting is probably the best, as they mostly give off white light. Two desk lamps with LED bulbs work just fine. I shot this Asian soup bowl subject in the light box that I constructed with two battery-powered LED auto hazard lamps and my cellphone camera:

There are camera light kits which may be purchased online for stronger lighting, but they don't have to break the bank either. I found a pair of desktop photography lamps on Amazon for about twenty bucks. For less than $50 you can have a miniature studio for product or hobby photography that will produce great results. If you are into photography and looking for some new ideas to explore I invite you to give this a try!

Photography Projects

One of my "newest" hobbies is photography, though I have actually had an interest for many years. I've always been a bit of an experimenter and found that photographing animals, landscapes and food in natural and artificial light has real appeal for me. Perhaps one day I'll also want to learn more about people portrait photography but right now non-people portraits hold my attention most.

For example, a simple trip to Reid Park Zoo in Tucson recently yielded these interesting animal portraits:

The secret to getting these shots really is patience (except for the camel, who seemed eager to pose!). You end up shooting dozens of shots before find the right one. Hooray for digital cameras!

I've also been working with diffused lighting, as food photographers use to highlight food subjects in mouthwatering ways. For shots like this I built a simple light box by taking an 18x18 box and cutting out 16 inch windows on three sides and covering two opposing windows with white muslin cloth. Camera lighting is fairly cheap; you can buy a couple of 600 lumen LED table lights for about $20.

Fill the back interior of the box with the non-glossy side of a poster board and you have a white infinity. For this shot of a rather ordinary slice of Pizza Hut pizza, a couple of boneless chicken wings and two cheese sticks I bought a wooden wall plaque from Michael's to suggest a table, set a small plate of the food on it and placed a fork nearby, shooting from the top window of my light box. The effect is that of a gourmet meal and a pretty cool shot!

I'll post some Youtube videos of people building light boxes in the near future. It's not hard at all to do, inexpensive and the results are pretty awesome. The really good news is that you don't even need fancy cameras to do a project like this, which is very effective if you are a seller of small products on Ebay for example. A cell phone camera can be equally effective!

Star Wars The Force Awakens Thoughts (Caution - Contains Spoilers)

I saw the original Star Wars in 1977 and remember it being unlike anything that I had ever seen before. Apart from the special effects, lightsaber fights, dogfights between X-Wing Fighters and Tie Fighter the thing that most impressed me was more pedestrian - the chemistry between the three main characters. So despite all of the wonders of film technology on display in 1977 I was more hooked by the strength of the casting than anything else. Moviegoers cared for Luke, Leia and Han and identified with them in a significant way.

That feeling was reinforced in the subsequent films, but especially in the best of the three original films, The Empire Strikes Back. That film was Harrison Ford's show and he delivered big time. So in the world of Star Wars, for me at least, the central character was Han Solo, and the charisma that Ford brought to that role.

Character development was the missing element in the three prequels which followed. Those films were marred beyond repair by boring political backstory, lifeless characters and often wooden dialogue. The insertion of the stupid Jar Jar Binks role in The Phantom Menace felt more vaguely offensive than comic. The lack of any real action simply reinforced the reality that there was no spark at all between any of the main characters. Furthermore the performances of both of the youthful Anakin Skywalkers were often nearly unwatchable. They surely would and probably did cause the most devoted Star Wars aficionado to throw his toy lightsaber at the screen! There definitely was no Han Solo-like character to save the day.

So that brings us to the new film by director J.J Abrams. I saw it this past weekend and certainly felt the excitement others report in seeing action finally returning to the series. Yes we have seen most of this before in the original productions, but it was done with obvious care and respect for those films. Actually this may also be viewed as a weakness of the film as well - we have seen this all before - but it works if the characters and their interactions are compelling. Indeed those character interactions were quite engaging, at least to me. But once again Han Solo is a central figure, and Harrison Ford frankly stole the show for me.

Therein lies the real weakness of the film and the planned series. Han Solo is murdered by his son, Rylo Ken. The actors playing Rey, Fin and Rylo Ken are certainly not wooden, but can they sustain a whole film on their own? If Han Solo and the edginess he brings to the role are not present would this film have received the number of positive views that it has? We can't answer that, but we will find out because now Solo has been killed off. Obviously the filmmakers are counting on the return of Luke Skywalker to be the most compelling factor in the next film, but that's hard to measure when you consider the very odd ending of this film. Abrams used almost the entire film to build up Luke's exile and mysterious whereabouts on an incomplete star map, but the final scene felt tacked on. A wordless meeting between Luke and Rey, who holds out his long lost lightsaber for him as the credits begin to roll just doesn't quite have the cinematic or emotional payoff that the scene demands, in my mind, but then I am no filmmaker. I'll eagerly await to see what they do with this story.

Tackling the Tri-Tip in the Slow Cooker

The tri-tip cut of the beef brisket can be a challenge to home cooks, perhaps so much so that many might choose to not deal with it at all. The cookbooks tell us that the cut can be grilled, but honestly, I have not had great success with that method. The problem is that the cut is very lean, with not much marbling. I don't care for rare meats, so cooking only until pink inside is not my cup of tea.

I have done much, much better smoking this cut, however. It always comes out juicy, tender and beautifully seasoned. But of course, there is smoker setup time, temperature control and clean up afterward. If I have time these steps are no problem for me at all; however this weekend, I had grandpa duties with my 4 month old grandson and didn't want him to smell like a pit-master when went he home on Sunday, so my next obvious choice was to use my slow cooker. It's an easy recipe, and left me plenty of time to visit with the kids:

INGREDIENTS

1 2-3 lb. beef tri-tip, well trimmed (most grocery store cuts are already trimmed well).
2/3 cup of your favorite barbecue sauce
1/2 cup beef or chicken broth, low sodium
1 large onion, sliced thin
2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp. liquid smoke
1 tbsp. chili powder
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp. vegetable oil
salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

Turn on the slow cooker and set to low. Mix the liquid ingredients with the chili powder and set aside. Salt and pepper both sides of the tri-tip. On medium high heat, heat the oil and brown both sides of the beef until a nice crust forms on both sides. This should take 6-7 minutes.

Add some of the sliced onions to the bottom of the slow cooker and set the browned meat on top of them. Place the remainder of the onions on top and pour the barbecue sauce mixture all over the top of the meat and onions. Pour the broth along the sides of the meat for added moisture. Cover the the slow cooker with its lid and let it cook for 8 hours. If you are in a hurry set the slow cooker to high heat and cook for four hours. Don't peek!

SLICING

Pull the meat out of the slow cooker after completion of coking and let rest for five minutes. The tri-tip cut looks like a boomerang, with a long lobe and a short lobe. The mid-point of these lobes is the grain dividing line. It may be easier to cut the meat in half at this point. The short lobe can be cut from tip to the centerline cut of the tri-tip. The long portion has a grain the runs across the meat, so cutting along the long side of this lob will yield the best results. Cutting on the bias results in wonderfully juicy and tender slices, which can be dressed with some of the sauce in the bowl of the slow cooker and garnished with the cooked onion.

Serve with a dinner salad and nice crusty bread.

Digital Revolt or Nostalgic Whims?

The media is finally taking notice of a cultural trend this year that may be just the tip of the iceberg - the need of people to get away from the thumb-jamming, ear-pounding demand of our digital devices in order to find some quiet time for themselves away from their phones, tablets, laptops and computers. How many of us walk around all day long with a phone in our hands? And how many meals with family have we seen interrupted by one or all of the gathering disconnect from needed family time in order to text someone or respond to another text? It's maddening.

I was very interested recently to read several articles in the New Yorker, New York Times, Huffington Post and Business Weekly all talking about adult coloring books and their growing popularity. Several have been in the top ten in sales on Amazon.com, and the craft stores can't seem to keep them on their shelves. People are trying to find a way to just put those phones down, de-stress, and find a quiet way to discover some inner peace and creativity.

There are others, like me, who loved to draw and color as a child. I can remember many, many sick days as a youngster growing up when I couldn't go to school (I was sick a lot as a child) where I found comfort in coloring books. I also enjoyed working alongside my sister, whom was a year younger, on coloring projects, showing off our completed works to each other and our parents.

In May I read Thrive, by Arianna Huffington and even took her online course this summer. In her book and in the class Ms. Huffington preaches rest, sleep, meditation, and sorting out people "on our life trains" while putting limits on how and when we choose to marry ourselves to our devices. There were some excellent points to take away from this reading, so I decided to work on these things this summer while I was off from school. The meditation part was hard at first, because our minds are always running. Quieting your mind, I've learned, does not mean ending all thoughts. That's not really possible for those untrained in meditation. But by concentrating on our breathing we can begin to push some random thoughts away temporarily.

The other part of the process was finding projects to do, coloring and crafts, to help me move away from my cell phone. I searched around and found a great coloring set by Creative Designs, which I fell in love with. I have never been a graphic artist and certainly never took a art class, but these sketches are terrific, with suggested color schemes, which I could follow - or not follow. I will say these sketches were exactly what I needed to plug into my inner child. They were so much fun to complete! And the stock they are printed on can be framed, so I also made gifts of some as well. Here are two samples, both now hanging in my home office:

As for my craft side, I've always loved working with my hands. I found some kits and made four wall clocks, giving them out as gifts. These required mechanical clock parts, painting, wood, stain and a whole lot of patience. Here is a clock that I gave to my wife earlier this summer:

I can't say that these projects are for everyone. But I do know that at least for me they provided a much needed respite from my digital world, as well as the ever present television in my home. We all need these breaks; our culture has become so digitized into 140 characters that I fear we will no longer find the time to just talk to one another. Perhaps engaging in coloring or crafts can keep us connected to that very human behavior seemingly lost in the digital noise.