I am now selling prints of some of my photos at Redbubble.

I forgot my other cameras, so I used my cell phone to capture a three-shot panorama of this sunset. After some Photoshop work, it’s not too bad.

I recently added a “People” gallery to the photo gallery page.
There aren’t many photos in it yet (I’m not a people-person) but I do enjoy portrait and event photography sometimes.
I’ll have to dig through my photo archive and see if there any more worthy photos I can add.

I’m working on a series of photos, and the first (experimental) shot was done with a cellphone camera. A week later I re-shot it with a Canon G9. Both are color photos. The difference is amazing. Read the rest of this entry »

“Men have become the tools of their tools.” -Henry David Thoreau.
I’ve added a “Tools” page to the site with three handy scripts to help plan a photo trip. One will calculate depth of field for various camera setups, and one will calculate sunset and sunrise times. Another will calculate the moon phase and photograph exposure time. There are other scripts like these on the web, but I’m trying to make these simpler to use.
Thoreau may have been right.

What happened to “UnnecessaryBeauty.com”?
Well, I never really liked that name so I changed it. Your old links and bookmarks will still work, they are just redirected to this new site.
If you have a link to U.B. on your website, please change it to this new one. Sorry for any confusion or hassle.
Thanks.

Photo 2118 is one of my favorite. It’s an owl hiding in a tree, with only one eye in sharp focus. It was a “happy accident”.
Read the rest of this entry »

On the main gallery page I have added a Featured folder that will have new and favorite photos. Also there is a new Crystal sub-folder in the Artistic folder. This will hold photos using a crystal prop at the beach.

For many years I have been trying to photograph lightning and rainbows. Usually I dont have my camera, or it’s not safe, or some other reason prevents me from getting the shot. Last week I was on vacation and was able to capture both. No, not at the same time.
I was staying at a cabin in Lake Louisa State Park when a thunder storm came through in the evening. I set up my camera on the porch and made several 30 second exposures of an active part of the sky.

A few days later I was at another park when a storm came through. This one produced a nice rainbow.

It was an enjoyable vacation.

I made a new subfolder in the Artistic folder called Shelly.
These are photos of a conch shell I used as a prop on the beach. I have used it before with the 20D, and some of those shots are in the Nature folder. The new ones in the Shelly folder were shot with the 5D, except for one that I reprocessed from the 20D.
Some of these shots were made from two shots with different focus, and then combined to get large depth.