Orta Lee Cameron

Recently I was given a few very old images of Orta Lee Cameron (better know as my Grandma) to restore. Looking at these images I started to think how interesting it is that we associate people only with our own personal experience with them. For instance with my Grandma I have always known her as the caring person who was always there to take care of me with a smile. She was always the one person I could run too if everything was falling apart. Whenever I visualize her in my head it is in my personal frame of reference though, a woman in her golden years of life. Never do I see here as (in physical form) as a different person. With looking at these images I am reminded that she was also a child not some much different from my children now. She was also a young woman about to experience love for the first time (with my Granddaddy). I am left thinking about the hundreds of other pictures of her that represent the history of my family. It is great that we have this media of photography that can capture not only an image but also one’s emotion and sense of being in time.

This all got me thinking, in the future how we will reflect on the past? Will we still have hard prints of images like the generation before us or will everything be digital. Will we be concerned with the older images or will they be forgotten and erased for the latest and greatest profile pictures. In the past people cherished family pictures because you only had a few and they usually were one of a kind. Now everything is digital and you can have hundreds of images at a click of the button. Does this devalue the images? Are pictures going to be less important to a family’s heritage? Time will tell. Me I still miss the days before digital where you had to work in the dark room for hours on one print. Man I’m getting old!!!

Sandhill Cranes 2011

It’s that time of year again. The time where I pack 100lbs of equipment into an off-roading vehicle, drive down to the Platte River at Kearney, NE at 4:00 am and shoot images of the Sand Hill Cranes. When we arrived in Kearny, at about 6:00 am, everything was still dark. We went to our usual hot spots to scope out if the birds were there. We ended up finding a good number at our usual location, War Axe. When the sun came up it was hidden behind a sky full of clouds. Finding ourselves a little bummed, we jumped into the car to scout out some other locations as we waited for the clouds to clear. The clouds did clear about a 1/2 hour later and we had perfect lighting for the rest of the day.

The best time for taking images of these birds is when they have left the riverbed after sunrise. It is this time that they go to the fields to eat spent corn from the earlier harvest. What is really nice about this time is that it is the time they play and dance. They communicate by dancing and throwing corn stalks into the air. This is what I love to photograph. The birds are so eloquent and graceful in their dancing. This is also the most difficult time to photograph them because they are really edgy and fly away for the smallest disturbance. I was rewarded this year because I spotted a Leucistic Crane dancing. These are cranes that are often mistaken for albinos because they are all white. Instead of missing the pigment of color, which would make it albino, they have the gene to make their feathers all white. Being very rare I was pleased to get an image of one spot on.

At the end of the day we gathered on the bridge close to the Minden Exit to watch the cranes return to the river for the night. Regretfully the birds were flying in east of our location so we were unable to get decent pictures. This was until the moon came above the horizon. When planning the trip I decided to go on a weekend with a full moon. This provided a great backdrop for some night photography. All I needed was for the cranes to cooperate and fly in front of the moon for a nice silhouette. Well the cranes had other plans. It seemed as though they were trying their best to fly over or under the moon leaving me empty handed. I had just about given up when one solitary bird flew right where I needed him to go. I pushed the shutter release and nailed the shot I have been waiting for, for several years. With that the day was over and it was time for the long trip back to Omaha.

We will end with the technical stuff. This year I rented a 300mm 2.8 IS Prime Canon L Series lens. Attached to this was a 2.0 Canon extender. This extender dropped my 2.8 to a 4.5. All this fun stuff was mounted to a Canon 20D. With the lens, extender and the cropped sensor on the 20D I had about a 960mm zoom. Last year I used the same body and extender with the 400mm 2.8 Prime. That lens was awesome but really cumbersome, needing a tripod for almost every shot. I am the kind of photographer who likes to run and gun, the 400mm was so big that this was not possible. The 300mm provided great optics with less weight and smaller lens size. This gave me great versatility, which allowed me to capture some really great shots that I would have missed with the 400mm lens.

My Wife

The other night my wife helped me out with a little side project. This project includes macro pictures of lips in different positions such as smiling frowning and so on. Well since she was all done up I decided to do a few head shots of her as well just for the fun of it. With looking at these pictures I realize how lucky I am to have her as a wife. I will publish some of the macro lip pictures in the near future.