WOW wow wow!! If you have a digital camera, get this book!

A picture of a classroom full of Buddhist boy monks adorns the cover of my new book, spurring brisk sales. The 5-star reviews are in by the top Amazon reviewers

Here's the fabulous review from #3 ranked Amazon reviewer, Joanna Daneman:

5.0 out of 5 stars
WOW wow wow!! If you have a digital camera, get this book!
May 22, 2009

By Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER) (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

I have been doing photography as an avid amateur for 40 years. I've done everything from 35mm to medium format and digital, developing my own film, printing and now, using digital enhancement software.

This reference is really great. You can learn how to enhance people, colors, blur backgrounds to focus on your subject, and how to make other artistic adjustments. There are 101 projects, each on 2 pages, laid out with excellent illustrations and how-to.

Some of the projects are: adding action, eliminating converging lines (buildings heading to a pointy top due to your lens), adjusting light and shadow, adding shades of whites to snow scenes, backlighting, composition of landscapes, using a polarizing filter, This short list is just to give you a flavor of what's inside.

I like this book so much, I'd say that, other than a copy of Photoshop Elements 7.0 and a good digital camera, this book would make a complete set of what you need to take great photos. This book will teach you how to focus on what you see and how to manipulate it to get what you want. Absolutely wonderful!

Get wowed; get the book.

Order a copy of the book today!

Muslim Women

Most photographers would admit that Muslim women make good photographic subjects. It's kind of an irony that they do because in strict Islamic tradition images of people--men or women--are prohibited.

The flowing headscarves are compelling in a frame, and when you have two or more Muslim women, they are sure to be dressed alike so you get some interesting repetition.

I felt like this post was appropriate today when President Obama is reaching out to the Muslim world. His visit and speech in Cairo evokes peace, but rumbles with discord. The mixed bag of feelings of a U.S. president as a centerpiece of the Muslim world, I think, is a good thing. Once you have an assortment of feelings on the table, you can straighten them out, tossing out the irrational ones.

Big Bear Zoo

What's a small town like Big Bear, CA doing with a zoo? Well, it's kind of a rescue center for Alpine animals. Animals like owls, beavers, bobcats, bears, lions, raccoons, foxes and eagles reside at the zoo.

The grizzlies at the zoo, for example, went through one-too-many garbage cans at campgrounds and other recreational areas at Yellowstone National Park. After "three strikes" by the bears, the bear police comes to pick them up, and some of them ended up at the Big Bear Zoo.

In the image above, an owl gazes in a dark room, which is one of the zoo's attractions.

Other than the fences through which it's difficult to photograph, the place is a ten!

BTW: The image was taken at 1000 ISO in a near dark room. I used a Canon 5D with a Tamron f/2.8 70-200 mm lens.

Loonapix

I created this at Loonapix.com. Pretty cool...
It's a free site.

Mama Don't Take My Kodachrome Away

Watch this, it's uplifting and the photographs are timed with the lyrics (I think...)

Everyone Loves a Belly Dancer

Who doesn't love a belly dancer? This woman just couldn't get enough of my photographing her. It was lovely. Oh, how I love willing subjects!

No one really knows how belly dancing got started, but some have speculated it began with the Greeks. It was believed to have something to do with religious rites.

In Saudi Arabia, the dance isn't to be seen by men at all. If men can't see it why do they bother with it at all?

Just in case if you want to speculate more about the history of belly dancing there is a time line of the art, which details the evolution of the dance.

Belly dancing in California, as you can see from this picture, can be performance art, as it's staged in Santa Monica Place, a bustling shopping area on the coast just outside of Los Angeles.

Why No Posts?

Missing the islands...

It's an economic fever that runs high. Very little traveling for this Digital Traveler. The economy is giving my back account indigestion. I'm hoping to go on some more trips so I can get this blog going again. In the meantime, I guess I'll have to enjoy California! It's not such a bad place.

Collage Created in Picasa

 

Pictures from Matt

2 pictures
View Album at Shutterfly

Old Ways Left to the Elements

Fast forward 50 years--the year: 2049. The place: Pioneertown, CA. Instead of seeing this old typewriter, which sits among other relics in Pioneertown, CA, you'll see the type of laptop I'm working on right now, the MacBook Pro.

I'm wondering what my laptop will look like in 50 years. Will it sit outside for passersby to recall a past era? Will Pioneertown still be there? Will there still be an Apple Computer Company?

L. C. Smith, the company that offered this once-shiny black typewriter has been long gone. This company, run by the Smith brothers, started out making guns. In 1893, they started making typewriters and went on to be very successful.

This typewriter (above) was probably made in a factory in Syracuse, N.Y. around the turn of the last century.

Just over 100 years later, typewriters are no longer made. The only ones left end up either at museums, thrift stores or out in the wild, like this one.

Tell me, please, have you ever typed on a typewriter?

Bag-on-Head

Is this a Caribbean thing, or what? Balancing a bag full of goodies on top of your head is no easy chore, especially when you're carrying other things with both your arms.

I dare anyone on the Internet to try this trick. Go ahead and see how far you can walk with a bag on your head.

I snapped this image quickly when my camera was set at f/5. It has some softness in it as well as some white out, which disappoints me.

I have delusions of grandeur with every photo I take. I close my eyes and see it on the wall of some New York museum or gallery.

This photo won't make it though. I had to move so quickly to catch these women (they were walking at a very brisk pace) that my camera shook because of both the hot, humid weather and my heart pounding running after them.

Musing about Margaret

It seems that Margaret Cho has taken to the guitar. She's workin' on records and writin' songs. You can hear her singin' here. While I'm not a critic of guitar playin' singers, I do have a bit to say about Margaret's singin'. It's only so-so. She seems a bit out-of-tune.
I was thinkin' that maybe she should stick to comedy.

I can remember seeing Margaret decades ago running around her parent's store on Polk Street in San Francisco. At the time the neighborhood was a spicy mixture of gays and Asians. Too bad today, it's one of the most run down neighborhoods of the city.

As for the pic above, I shot that when I was attending a screening of the television pilot of Sordid Lives at the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. I had been shooting around the city for my book, "50 Greatest Photo Opportunities in San Francisco." You see, I was in line with my big ass camera. A friend of mine had volunteered for the festival and knew everyone who was working there. A photographer was supposed to film Margaret on the red carpet. Well, the photographer didn't show up. My friend had told the head honcho that I was a photographer. I got pulled from the line and immediately started shooting. The fun part is that I got to go backstage and shoot the whole cast of the television series.

Okay, so shooting that wasn't like shooting at the Academy Awards, but it sure was fun.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Two-Humped Camel

Shot this two-humped camel at the San Diego Zoo. I panned the zoo in my zoo review over at my other blog. While gaining access to many animals for photographs is a chore at the zoo, there are some animals that can wonder right in front of your camera. One such animal is the two-humped camel, or the Bactrian camels of Mongolia.

These camels grow to a height of 8 feet and weigh well over 1000 pounds. Unlike Arabian camels (one humpers), the Bactrian wonders wild through the Gobi Desert in Northwestern China. They've been around forever--since 2500 BC.

So what's inside those two flabby humps. Well, you got it--fat, not water like one would think.

I've got a great pic of the other kind of camel--the Dromedaries-- the one you find in the Arab world. This one-humped camel is domesticated and can carry heavy loads long distances across the desert.

You just gotta love camels!