Autumnal Musings

 

Buckthorn, 2011

After making over 800 images in August at Muskets and Memories, I haven’t shot too much lately except for a couple of ruffed grouse.  I went up to Grand Marais for a few days, but between hunting, another *&#% injury and some of the worst weather I have seen up there, there weren’t too many “photo ops”.  Pouring rain one day and gale force winds the next.  What I did shoot wasn’t worth keeping even as snapshots.  Firearms deer hunting season opens this weekend so I’ll be staying out of the woods for awhile.  And soon it will be the holidays.

I have been looking at the landscape work of Lee Friedlander a lot lately.  You can get a very good sampling simply by searching him in google Images.  Finally, I broke down and bought his book Apples and Olives.  His work certainly changed my views on landscape photography.  I can think of a bunch of images that I would have done differently had I seen his stuff long ago.

Speaking of photo books, over the holidays I will be putting most of my photo books up for sale on amazon.com.  This is the “good stuff”, some of it out of print, and each book is in pristine condition with a dust jacket protector.  I will keep you posted as things progress.

I also discovered Kirk Tuck the other day.  Kirk writes an excellent blog entitled The Visual Science Lab and will be a regular columnist on The Online Photographer.  Great writing and photography as well as philosophical and think pieces.  Oh yes, and gear articles as well.  He has been trying out the new Nikon V1 and his images are impressive.

As usual, I’ve been thinking about smaller cameras.  There are getting to be a lot of options out there.  Besides the Nikon, I have been most impressed by the Fujifilm X10.  Depending upon the reviews, I might go for that one were it not for Fuji’s announcement of an interchangeable lens mirrorless next year.  Seems to me that Fuji is the company making the waves right now.  I like that.