Photographic meanderings

Just outside Yosemite National Park on the eastern boundary is Hoover Wilderness, Inyo National Forest. As you leave the entry kiosk on Tioga Pass (Elevation 9945′), you’ll eventually come to the turn off for Saddlebag Lake on the left. Take the water taxi from Saddlebag Resort ($11 round trip, $5 for dogs or children, $4 per overnight backpack, $7 one way, no wet dogs allowed on the boat, no exceptions!), and go wander among some of the most dramatic scenery in the Sierra Nevada. Be sure to bring sunscreen, sunglasses and bug spray.

One of the dangers of putting your work online is that eventually, someone, somewhere is going to use your work for their own purposes. I’ve been lucky. I’ve actually collected payment from a publisher for using one of my images on the cover of their book. I’ve also had to tell commercial travel blogs to remove my images from their websites.

It’s hard to decide where to draw the line. What is acceptable use of my work? If there is money involved, I want some. That means if you send a copy of the image file to a professional printer, he’s getting paid, and so should I. If you print it on your own printer, I really don’t mind. If you want to use it in your “free guide to the parks”, you have sponsorship, and I want to be paid. If you want to print it out for educational purposes, fine, with one exception: don’t try to use my images to teach “intelligent design”, or creationism.

But how on earth am I supposed to troll the entire interwebs looking for unauthorized use of my images? There are only so many hours in a day, and I’d rather be taking new pictures than looking for ones I’ve already taken.

Which leads me to the point of this post: There’s a new, free service available to photographers. ImageRights will do the tedious trolling of the internet for you, and present you with a weekly report of up to 10,000 images for free. Further, they will go after copyright infringers and split the compensation amount with you for 50/50.

I’ve signed up. I’ll be reporting on what they find. I am not affiliated with them in any other way.

…and enjoy the view. Summer has truly arrived in the Sierra Nevada, and that means way more time away from my computer. I’ll be posting less frequently over the coming weeks. Not to worry, I won’t stop completely.

Chasing Rainbows, originally uploaded by Tom Lowe @ Timescapes.

Tom Lowe of Timescapes is spending time in the eastern Sierra making a feature-length time lapse movie. Be sure to follow him on Twitter (@timescapes) or at his website, Timescapes.org.

Wishing Tom and his apprentice Nilo the best of luck and light for his shoot.

My friend Dawn Endico asked for a black and white version of the moonbow–and I was doubtful; “Seems counter-intuitive, lunar rainbow=color!” was my twittered reply. I was wrong. Lots of drama, and this is closer to what most of us were seeing last night.

It’s important to remember that the human eye is limited at night; depending on the sensitivity of the cones and rods in our retinas, most of us can’t see color clearly at night.

Moonbows do contain a full spectrum of color. But for me, at best I see only faint hues, and most times I just see a white arc. Last night I actually saw relatively intense colors for the first time!

I owe an apology to the lady who stepped in front of my camera to take a flash photo; I said that the flash was messing with my long exposure, and could she step to her right? Turns out, her flash illuminated the tree on the left, and the person on the right perfectly. I’m sorry, you actually did a good thing!

The park videographer Steve Bumgardner was also there last night; Watch for his video on Twitter!

I’ve long admired the art of lightpainting, but it often lacked a certain something: Color. Sure, you can use gels, or different types of flashlights, but still you’re limited to a very narrow range of colors. Not any more. If you have an iPad, download this app:

Flashlight by John Haney.

It’s free (yay!) and very simple; It makes your iPad screen into an adjustable light of just about any color you want. It’s a soft, diffused light, which means an even coverage with no hot spots. The downside is that it will take longer to lightpaint larger items.

Give it a try!