© Eleanor T. Culling
A few words about my photography and this site.
Fall Color Photo Safari in Colorado - early October 2004
See links to four slide shows from my home page.
I used the Canon Digital Rebel SLR** with two lenses
18 - 55 and 55 - 200. Virtually all shots were bracketed and Photoshop
CS's
Shadow/Hightlight feature was used on many to 'finish' them since
we were
shooting in bright sunlight much of the time.
I've now purchased the 10 - 22 super wide angle lens for this camera.
End of December 2005 - a new Canon Digital Rebel
XT came my way. August 2006 brought
another delightful camera - the Sony DSC-H5 non-SLR at 7.2 megapixels.
I'm going to the outback of Australia for the month of October and
absolutely can't take any more than the simplest bit of gear.... not
even a tripod, I'm afraid. While on a trip
to Glacier and Waterton Lakes National Parks in august I fell in love
with this camera because it is so easy to switch back and forth from
color to B & W. I shot much more B & W than usual.
This page is disjointed!
I'm too lazy to rewite it, sorry.
Go to the bottom of the page for the
latest entry.
March - April 2004 trip to Western Australia May 20, 2004 - home from my trip long enough to have a number of photo galleries prepared for your viewing. Begin at my Home Page I did not take a regular SLR with me but rather my new Canon Digital Rebel SLR and the SONY MVC - CD500 as a back up. While on the beginning of the trip the Rebel seemed to be failing me until I realized that I had to rechage the batteries much longer than shows on the charger! The SONY was a fine replacement until the Rebel was working correctly again. I think I probably took more than 1000 photos during the 5 weeks I was away. I've been using Ulead's Photo Explorer 8.0 to sort and organize them and BatchThumbs to rename to represent the areas visited. |
Hike to Wharariki Beach New Zealand
May 2004
Previous thoughts (2003):
Nowadays when I travel I like to always have several cameras with me. On some occasions I really only want prints so I have a Pentax ZX-5N with a 28 - 80 zoom. It's a fun camera because it takes panoramas (using only a portion of the 35mm negative) which is great when there is too much ski or an uninteresting foreground. I have a zoom that goes to 200 but it's often too heavy to travel with. So is a tripod ... tripods make photography on a trip too serious, and take up too much time, especially if I'm with a non-photography friend.
"Stop the Press" !!! Rewrite
this page. I no longer take a film camera with me. for Christmas in
2004 I purchased an Epson 4" x 6" PictureMate printer. It
does such a fantastic job with digital prints that I now longer take
the Pentax system. The two cameras now are the SONY MVC CD500 as a
backup to the Canon Digital Rebel (first version). As of August 2005
I am learning 3D stereo photography and using the light weight SONY
for that purpose.
For the past several years digital photography has come
into my life and given me a whole new outlook. I started with a Canon PowerShot
350 that saved images on a tiny 2 megabyte CompactFlash Card, I upgraded to a
SONY DSC-D700 and in 2000 joyfully acquired a SONY MVC-CD1000 which, for the
most part, is great fun to use and produces much better photos. It is only capable
of 2.1 megapixels but, because all my work is for the web, that is enough! This
camera stores its images on a 3 1/2" CD-R disk which goes right into the
CD tray .. or I can upload the images directly into my computer at
home. Better yet, I can upload them into my laptop and, if I'm traveling alone,
I can edit and organize the photos in the evening. (I'm afraid this camera is
no longer available and the new SONY disk-based model doesn't have the same zoom
range .... which is too bad. I have it now ...the MVC-CD500... but am
truly struggling with focus problems).
**Stop the press!!! Rewrite this page! A new camera has been acquired!! A Canon Digital Rebel ... interchangeable zoom lenses and a depth of field preview buttom. These are wonderful capabilities which many of us gave up when we first ventured into digital camers. This is a Digital SLR. As soon as the shot has been made you can view the histogram to check the exposure and immediately shoot the photo again if need be. Luckily this thing came with a 1 Gig card and great batteries so it seems that I can take a gazillion photos using all kinds of bracketing, compostions etc. with no more worries about running out of 'digital' film or power. The only draw back on my next trip is that my laptop won't have enough space ... there are always CDs to put them on.
Some
new thinking about prints.
Paint Shop Pro is my imaging program of choice.
Sure, I own Photoshop, but PSP seems so much more logical and is a lot quicker,
at least for me, to use. I used to like to work with black and white prints in
a darkroom ... and this has brought back that fun and excitment .... a "digital
darkroom". Sometimes I work with the images from the digital camera and
sometimes I use my Epson Perfection 1200 PHOTO Scanner."Stop
the Press!!! I now have the epson R2400 I think I can share my work with
more friends through the Internet than I ever did with slide shows. Read
about image editing with Paint Shop Pro v.8. And here's a more recent article
about the latest version,
v.9 (These are out of date now. See the Resources Page for much more revelant
material for 2006.)
Here's a recent article that I wrote after attending Digital Days put on by SONY and Jasc (the makers of Paint Shop Pro). Paint Shop Pro Album is a great program for organizing your photos, browsing through and/or printing them. It is a fine program for someone who is just starting out in the 'digital darkroom', but who might not be ready for a full fledged image editing program. A review and tutorial for Paint Shop Pro Album.
Stop the press!!! Rewrite this page!... I'll now have to really learn Photoshop CS if I wish to work with the RAW files that the Canon Rebel can take. RAW files have to be processed much the same as film had to be processed.
Stop the Press... this is no longer true! There is a really fine RAW Conversion program RAWShooter Essentials, free from Corel the company that has purchased Jacs's Paint Shop Pro. In Septemeber 2005 Paint Shop Pro X will be be my image editing program of choice again. I will not upgrade to Photoshop CS2 - this is not true... I did upgrade!
Panorama Factory from Smoky City Design is my choice for stitching photos (both digital or scans from prints). You can see good examples of stitched photos in the Woolmers Estate section of Tasmania here on my site.
The images in this site are often a bit slow to load .... that's because I don't want the file sizes to be so small that quality is lost. I'd like to present them even larger ... but that's not too practical. I hope you will set your monitors at 1024 x 768. Most Internet viewers have their monitors set for 800 x 600 and that's just not wide enough for what I want you to see. E-mail me if you need instructions for changing the settings for your monitor!
AOL and Netscape Users are asked to read this page.
The photo galleries aren't meant to necessarily cover a subject completely. I never would have seen so many and varied places in Tasmania in March of 2002 and 2003 if I had tried to do a complete study of each place or activity. See my HOME page for the subjects that I am now persuing.
The presentation of the galleries is not always the same. I'm always experimenting. My web design program of choice right now is Dreamweaver MX 2004. I'll be using this site, as I did with my earlier site "Leavenworth ETC" to try out ideas before I show them to clients.
July 2006 update: My photography world has changed. I now use the Canon Digital Rebel XT and I have upgraded to Photoshop CS2. I am much more interested in making prints, used an Epson1280 - 13" x 19" printer. For my 70th birthday I purchased an Epson R2400. Workshops I have attended include Colorado Fall Color with John Shaw and Joe Van Os, Navajoland with Alain Briot. I've fallen in love with the red rocks of SW USA and have photographed there four times within the last year and a half. A trip to Glacier N. P. and Waterton Lakes N. P. is planned for August 2006 and a month of touring and photographing in the far northwest of Australia in October.
March 2007 update: I really do want to take my photography skills to the next level. Although I'm not really dissatified with my work to date.I have three photo trips planned for this year. One is an Elderhostel photo exploration on the Oregon Coast in June. The next two will be with Travel Images a couple from Oregon who take only 7 clients. The first will be in July to the European Alps and later Vermont Autumn in October. Another new camera is in the bag... this time the Rebel XTi and a Canon 70 - 20 f4 zoom. I'll shoot nothing but RAW + jpg and will use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to 'process' the RAWs. See my photoblog #16.
I hope you enjoy my work. I'd appreciate hearing from you. Ask me questions, too, about any of the trips ..... I have been to New Zealand ten times and can give you lots of suggestions. Australia... 5 times.
My personal Style Alain Briot suggested this exercise and I found it useful before teaching a basic photography class early in 2006.
All photos are Copyright Protected by
Eleanor T. Culling, 2002 - 2007
Let's Travel!
