We paid a visit to a friend’s winery today. As it turned out, our friend popped in to drop off a couple cases of bubbly for the tasting room.
With the exception of a quick hello couple weeks ago at the gas station, we haven’t seen Matt in several months.
He told us that he’s bee really busy in the cellar making wine because the volume of the harvest this year is more than 2007, 2008, and 2009 combined!
Sleep well you awesome wine vines… You’ve earned it! See you at bud break in a couple months!
Who are we kidding? We’ll pop in to check on you soon!
Top 2 with the 5d and 24-70 with manual settings. Bottom 2 70D, 24-70, all auto settings and built-in flash.
It was cloudy, as you see, and close to magic hour and the light changed quickly. I tried to shoot manually but I couldn’t get the 70D to do what I wanted.
I know all the photo bloggers make a big deal about how you want “total, and complete artistic control from manual, man. You’re not a real photog, not a real artist unless you do!”
Yeah, that’s bullshit.
It’s like saying to a carpenter, “Uhhh ya know, dude, unless you’re pulling a nail from your teeth, putting that pointy bit down, swinging a hammer, hitting that nail on the head and repeating, you’re a not a real carpenter. Those nailguns are for phonies!”
I know plenty of working professional photographers who will shoot automatic when working some gigs when they can’t find the light, or the light is changing too fast to keep up.
It’s part of the tool, and I, as the artist, can use whatever feature on that camera I want to get the image I want. It is a choice.
As a native of the Philadelphia area and a lifelong Eagles fan, I was quite happy today when my Birds 1) beat the Cowboys, 2) clinched the #2 seed in the NFC, and 3) Saquon reached the 2,000-yard mark.
So, in honor of my Birds, we’re taking a little train ride today.
A few years ago, maybe close to 30 now, I picked up a Bachmann limited edition train set that modeled the legendary Liberty Bell Special. For the past 10 years or so, every Christmas it has run under our Christmas tree.
What’s the Liberty Bell Special?
In 1915, the Liberty Bell went on tour. It traveled west to Seattle, then down to San Francisco, San Deigo, and back east across the southern routes, eventually returning home to Philadelphia.
If your French isn’t up to snuff, that’s “Four ducks flying in the air” from the French version of the “12 Days of Christmas.”
With this project, I’m finding that I use one camera to find the shot and then use the same settings on the other one. This is mainly to compare the two bodies and see how they do in the same circumstances.
Technically, they say you get a full-frame shot with the 5D. All that means is it’s equivalent to something shot on 35mm film.
The 70d is a crop sensor that doesn’t give you the same size image as a full-frame and increases the magnification on the lens.
Those are general explanations, so if you disagree with what I’m writing, I’ll let you fester with that.
Anyway, I’m sticking with this year’s tree again. It’s only going to be up for another week or something so, ya know.
The top shot is from outside using the 5d with the 24-70.
The bottom two are the 70d with the 24-70 and a little closer.
I think I mentioned that I’m shooting both RAW and JPEGs for this project simply for speed and ease of keeping on track. In the case of the JPEGs, there’s no external processing, just what the camera catches with the in-camera style settings. At some point, I may go back and process the RAW files but I have no plans for that at the moment.
Anyway, the second shot is with the Monochrome in-camera style. The third is the, I think Fine style.
I saw the I ❤️ New York ornament on our tree today and thought I’d go with this.
In my work on my documentary about the wines of New York, Paul Brady got us an interview with John Dyson, owner of Millbrook Vineyards.
John is also the guy who is responsible for the Farm Wine Act, which legalized winery tasting rooms in New York and has since become a model for other states on how to implement tasting rooms statutorily.
He is also responsible for the I Love New York tourism campaign. I have video of him explaining how it came to be. I’ll put that up later once I finish an edit I like.
But for now, here are today’s pics.
5d70d
I haven’t changed my camera’s settings or lenses, so these were rather quick once I decided on the story.
It is the same philosophy Phil Collins used in his drumming.
Sometimes, it’s not about showing off chops or experimenting with technique but supporting the song, or in this case, the story.
365 Photo Projects are a relatively simple concept: Take one picture, every day. Depending on who you ask, you should post them somewhere. Others will say take them and put them in a folder.
I’ve tried doing this several times over the years … The past ten years, actually.
I got my Canon 70D 10 years ago. I bought it on February 27th, 2015; got it on March 3rd; and it took me a couple days to figure out how to work it so my first picture was taken on March 7th. I was scared, for some reason.
It was my first real camera. I’ve had several smaller ones over the years, but this was the first one with interchangeable lenses.
I’ve wanted one since I was a kid but never could afford it. My brother had an AE1 and a photo lab in the basement. I’d flip through his copies of Popular Photography and dream about all the gear I wanted to get when I grew up.
I couldn’t help but dream.
Canon has an office right off exit 8a of the NJ Turnpike. They have a billboard, that, every once in a while, would have a new camera or maybe their lens collection. Just to get a glimpse of that was heaven. All those years driving past it on the way to pick up or drop off my daughter… Again, all I could do was dream.
My mother died on January 19th, 2015, 4 days before my 46th birthday. I don’t remember when we actually buried her, the date but about a week or two later, I started looking at cameras and the desire started burning within me to get one.
I finally snapped because my mom was dead, and I saw my life passing me by. I’m not too sure what my wife said when I actually brought it home. The fear of what she’d say contributed to the delay in my taking that first picture.
The first picture taken with my 70d.
I went through all the blogs trying to figure out how to use this thing. Eventually, I came upon the 365 project idea. And, for the next several years, I’d start and stop them.
Historically, my problem has been stuff would come up. Maybe I’d get involved with some photo or video project that would take over. I’d find sites with prompt ideas and I’d get tripped up with them.
Oh, and post-processing was always a drag. I’d take all these pictures and, because I didn’t know Photoshop or Lightroom very well, I wouldn’t feel comfortable posting any of the pics.
I have tens of thousands of pictures and never could be bothered to process them. It’s a lot of work when you don’t have a workflow and have to develop or learn one. Just did a file count, and it’s in the neighborhood of 22,000 pictures that I’ve taken.
So, this time around, I’m going to take both RAW and JPGs. I have no idea why I didn’t think of this sooner. RAWs will give me all the data if I want to process them, and JPGs will allow me to publish them quickly.
So, here’s what I’m going to do.
Use both my 70d and 5d Mark 4 to take a similar version of the same shot.
Try to use the same lens on each camera for each shot.
Take 1 picture each day for a year.
Post the JPG from each camera each day.
Feel free to adapt what I do, but make sure I take and post 1 picture from each camera daily.
Noted exception for traveling
5d with 50mm lens70d with 24-70mm lens
For starters, on this Christmas day, we have a shot of an ornament on our tree of a couple dancing. My wife and I danced a lot today. We don’t normally, but this was before our annual viewing of “White Christmas.”
