David Griffin Photography » Environment

Contest! Win one of my exhibit’s prints

Dave — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:21:16 +0000

My “Places In Between” exhibit at Nashoba Brook Bakery ends at the end of August and as a way of thanking the bakery for hosting my photographs for the past few months I offered to give one of the prints away.

The bakery is running a contest/raffle and the winner gets to choose any of the framed prints*. There are 3 ways you can enter to win:

There is an email sign-up in the cafe
For Facebook folk you can “like” Nashoba Brook Bakery and then write a post on the “david griffin photography” discussion board topic.
Following @slowrise on twitter and re-tweeting “I want to win a David Griffin print from Nashoba Brook Bakery.”

The bakery will choose the winner at the end of the month, so don’t delay — September will be here before you know it!

My thanks to Jess and John at Nashoba Brook Bakery for putting this promotion together and I hope everyone will support their fine establishment while getting a chance to win a print.

All of the photographs are archival, fine-art prints, matted, framed, and ready for hanging.

* The large canvas print is not part of the contest. Sorry, it’s spoken for.

2010 Summer Workshops

Dave — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:42:51 +0000

For the past few years I’ve had the opportunity to teach several nature photography workshops to young photographers (age 8-13 or so). I work with the Water Wise Workshops, created by the Organization for the Assabet River – which teaches youngsters about the water cycle, plants and animals, and other topics related to living in a watershed such as ours — and I’ve been working with the local National Wildlife Refuges (Great Meadows NWR and Assabet River NWR) as part of their summer camp programs.

The workshops aren’t very technical in nature — my two main objectives are to instill a sense of respect for the environment that they are photographing (learn about your subjects, don’t stress animals, leave no trace) along with the basics of composition and stabilization. In my experience the two biggest disappointments people have with using small cameras are blurry photos and boring results.

Most of the participants have a genuine interest in exploring their environment and using the camera and it is rewarding to me, as a photographer, to help them a bit in coming back from wherever they go with, I hope, better photographs. The other main lesson I try to teach is that the best camera is the one you have with you (credit to Chase Jarvis for coining the perfect mantra on that topic) — and how, with a few things they probably have lying around the house, they can make their cameras even better (e.g., using a hacky-sack as a camera stabilizer for low-angle shots).

Here are a few more scenes from my 2010 workshops along with some portraits of a few of the participants. Normally I’d have more pictures, but most of my time was spent answering questions and creating challenges for them as we walked down the trails.

Thanks to the OAR and Eastern Mass. NWR Refuge Complex staff for making the workshop sessions a great experience for both me and the next Art Wolfe’s of the world.

Photographs into Watercolors

Dave — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:00:27 +0000

Many of us who photograph nature do so in the hope that it inspires our viewers to take a deeper look into the world around us. Of course there’s no exclusive hold on that desire to just photography – writers and artists around the world have similar aspirations. And so I was thrilled to be a contributing photographer to a project inspired by local artist and teacher, Cecilia Sharma, who gave our photographs to 18 local artists for their upcoming exhibition entitled “Season of Wonder and Renewal: Celebrating Spring through Nature Inspired Watercolors”.

The project was co-sponsored by the Sudbury Valley Trustees and the Friends of the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge and the exhibit was displayed at SVT from June 26-30 attracting over 100 artists and guests on the opening evening.

It was really fascinating to see how the individual artists interpreted the photographs. Here are a few of the photographs I provided along with the watercolor interpretations:

Shooting in the Dark – River Solstice

Dave — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 22:13:13 +0000

For the past eight years or so we’ve had this fun little event on our local rivers, River Solstice, that celebrates the longest day of the year. We’ve had our share of washouts, but most of the time Mother Nature cooperates. The location and the nature of the event make this a definite challenge to capture photographically. After a nice picnic on the lawn of the Old Manse (where the music performers typically have the sun setting almost directly behind them) a large number of paddlers descend on the Concord River at sunset to begin a flotilla of boats, most with lanterns, up to the Old Calf Pasture where a bonfire and drumming occurs. My goal was to photograph the paddlers making their way up the river.

So let’s be clear about the challenge: 1) subjects are gliding by on the river, 2) I’m in a kayak on the same river, 3) the sun has set and it is rapidly getting quite dark. Perfect! Let’s make some portraits!

The full set of images is available on my community gallery. In there you will see the progression of the evening’s light disappearing and I was left to find whatever candle or other light was nearby. There was a near full moon rising, but it really didn’t have much of an impact when I was shooting.

Here’s the link to the evening’s pictures: http://community.dmg-photography.com/2010-river-solstice

What follows are a few highlights of the evening plus some technical details for those that are interested. I encourage you to look at the full gallery mostly because it clearly shows that the current generation of DSLR cameras are capable of some pretty amazing photographs in some relatively challenging conditions.

The evening starts with a picnic and music on the lawn of The Old Manse in Concord which overlooks the Old North Bridge. I tried to have some fun with the strong back and rim lighting the setting sun provided.

The kayak and canoe “parking lot” was pretty full…

Some folks were watching the moon rise in style…

The sun has set, the singers are making their way along the river to the Old Calf Pasture for some pagan fun, and the flotilla of boats begins working its way up the Concord River…

My friend Julia Blatt, who heads the Massachusetts Rivers Alliance, was paddling with her hubby…

Night quickly overtakes the river… I think a number of people were kind of shocked that I was taking photographs — and probably assumed that everything I was doing would be a blurry mess. (I knew otherwise…)

Here we are at the Old Calf Pasture where a bonfire is ringed with torches. The sound of ceremonial drums pierces the darkness. (And drowns out the sound of mosquitos, which are pummeling everyone — or at least me…) For reasons that I won’t go into here, I don’t hop on land and photograph the fire circle despite it being an obvious target of opportunity for great images…

Technical notes:

All photographs were shot with a Canon 7D. Nearly all were taken with the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS, although there are a handful (which I hope are obvious) that were taken with the 24-70mm f/2.8L. All shots are handheld, all but the picnic shots are from a kayak. Due to the rapidly changing light I opted for aperture priority exposure. (If you need me to tell you what aperture I was using most of the evening you probably shouldn’t bother reading the rest of this…)

As the sun sets the camera is set to ISO 1250, then 2500. If you aren’t familiar with shooting on a small New England river, you should be aware that it is similar to being in a hole. The shoreline is typically lined with trees and long before the sun sets you are in shadow. A few minutes after it sets, it just gets plain dark – especially if there are no clouds to reflect light straight down. So it was a matter of a minute or two before I cranked the camera to ISO 6400.

Exposures vary from 1/100 (if there’s a bright lantern) to 1/20th of a second. Image stabilization and years of practice shooting from a kayak kept my throw-aways amazingly low. And a quick shout out to the 7D’s autofocus! I used center-point focus because I know that is typically the most sensitive part of the AF array. Half the time I was hunting for a subject in the viewfinder. If the camera found anything at all, it did a great job of holding focus while I did the final composition and shooting. (This is the primary reason why I didn’t bring the 5DMk2 to this project — it’s low-light AF is, um, “sub par”…)

In the case of these photographs however, the camera only did half the work. A significant portion of the image quality comes from Lightroom 3′s new image processing and noise reduction capabilities. As I cranked up the ISO on the camera in the field, I had a commensurate increase in the luminance noise reduction in Lightroom. Quite frankly, tack sharp images were not my goal. Moving subjects in a dimly lit area don’t feel sharp to our eyes, so I didn’t feel any need to try to bring any particular sharpness out — the default sharpening of Lightroom fit the bill most of the time. Most of the night images had the Luminance noise set to 45. A few, including the young lady at the beginning of this article, were bumped to 64. I knew from reports and the beta testing that the noise reduction was going to be impressive, and it served me well for this assignment.

The processing of these images varies significantly depending on the lighting conditions. The look for the photographs taken after the sun set was achieved by adding fill light and then raising the black point to restore some contrast. I really didn’t want to raise the exposure of the whole image as the scene was, in reality, quite dark — but rather mimic what the human eye does by selectively increasing the luminance of the subjects. A bit of vibrance and a dash of clarity round out the Lightroom processing.

There you have it, a new branch of photography: action portraits in the dark.

July 2010 Wallpaper

Dave — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:33:49 +0000

Wow, it seems like the days are getting shorter and shorter… I hope your summer isn’t flying by as fast as mine is — these are days we should be savoring. While we pound away at our daily lives trying to make a difference or just getting by, this photo reminds us that there are others out there working on smaller, but no less beautiful projects.

If you like this image you can download it to your computer and use it as your desktop wallpaper. A few of the common screen sizes are available:

Download the 1024×768 version here.

Download the 1280×1024 version here.

Download the 1680×1050 version here.

Work of 1000 Premiere

Dave — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:39:17 +0000

On a rainy Saturday evening the documentary “Work of 1000″ held its premiere viewing at the Richardson-Mees Theater at Lawrence Academy in Groton, MA.

The film is about a self-admitted “ordinary” person, Marion Stoddard (below), who pushed relentlessly for the cleanup of one of Massachusetts’ most polluted rivers, the Nashua and ignited an environmental movement in Massachusetts and beyond.

I encourage everyone reading this to visit the “Work of 1000″ website to learn more about the film and the various educational resources built up around it.

The film was produced by Susan Edwards and directed by Dorie Clark. Bob Nesson was the DP and it was edited by Keith Wasserman.

Here are a few photographs from the premiere and the after-party…

That’s Marea Santos, who was orchestrating the evening.

Ed Howe and John Coté (Perpetual e-Motion) performed the theme song for the film live and also got people dancing at the party afterwards. Fiddle, guitar, and didgeridoo… what could be better?

Executive Producer Susan Edwards and her husband Phil Rogers.

Ed Howe playing the fiddle.

Susan Edwards (producer) and Bob Nesson (DP)

Celebrating our Wild & Scenic Rivers

Dave — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:04:57 +0000

Here in our little corner of the world this weekend is Riverfest – a celebration of the Wild & Scenic rivers in our area: the Sudbury, Assabet, and Concord Rivers. Sponsored by the River Stewardship Council for these three rivers, there are activities that occur all week, but especially this weekend.

To see a complete list of events visit http://www.sudbury-assabet-concord.org/riverFest

The Sudbury Valley Trustees sponsors a photography contest each year at this time. Last year I was lucky enough to snag a first place photograph and this year the above photo was selected for second place in the rivers category. (I think I’ve featured this photograph on the blog back in April when the flood waters were eating away at my backyard.)

There are opportunities to visit SVT at Wolbach Farm this weekend to see the winning photographs — I’m heading over in a few minutes to see them in person.

A slightly different version of this image is part of my “Places In Between – The Assabet River” exhibit currently on display at the Nashoba Brook Bakery in West Concord — so if you can’t make it to Wolbach Farm this weekend, head over to the bakery and grab a scone and a coffee.

Recent scientific studies indicate that getting outdoors can greatly improve your outlook on life : so shut down that computer and head out and enjoy our wonderful rivers – they will feed your soul.

2010 Earth Day Parade

Dave — Mon, 03 May 2010 19:42:22 +0000

This past Saturday Concord, Massachusetts held its annual Earth Day Parade. The Organization for the Assabet River participated in the parade and I was there to capture a few images from the event.

More photos from the parade can be found on my community site: http://community.dmg-photography.com

I shot some video of the parade and hope to make that available in a day or so.

May 2010 Wallpaper

Dave — Sun, 02 May 2010 13:31:16 +0000

May arrived here in New England with a warm breeze and a beautiful Spring day. This month’s wallpaper is an abstract water scene taken in my backyard in Maynard, Massachusetts.

If you like this image you can download it to your computer and use it as your desktop wallpaper. A few of the common screen sizes are available:

Download the 1024×768 version here.

Download the 1280×1024 version here.

Download the 1680×1050 version here.

Earth Day and Your Printer

Dave — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:12:41 +0000

Somewhere around this time is Earth Day… maybe it’s today. Frankly, for me, every day is Earth Day so I’m not all that juiced about designating a particular day for it — but it’s blatantly obvious that I’m not in the majority of how people think about and treat this planet, so calling attention to it is a good thing.

So here’s my Earth Day post… These are my Epson 2200 printer cartridges. I’ve had my printer for 8 years now and I’ve never tossed a printer cartridge and, as you can see, I’ve gone through a few. I wasn’t sure what to do with them, but tossing them in the waste stream wasn’t going to be part of my printing workflow.

Starting this year I’m bringing 10 cartridges a month to Staples where they will help recycle the little devils. Staples pays you $3 per cartridge, so that’s $30/month for me to purchase new inks.

If you print a lot, please find a way to recycle your consumables — whether it be through Staples or likely a dozen other ways. Simply tossing them into the wastebasket isn’t helping anyone.

Oh, and if you want to go a step further, consider using GreenPix paper from Red River Paper. This is a photographic paper made from recycled stock and works really well. I’ve printed notecards on it for many years now and feel better that these items, which typically aren’t hung on walls, at least are on their second life through the consumer system — and might be on their way to a third.

You can do this and a hundred other reduce/reuse/recycle things in your life for whatever reasons float your boat. Mine are in the background of the photograph above – my wife, my grandson, and the river they are paddling on.