PHOTOGRAPHING
It is great pleasure to read in an international forum that my photographs are pretty.
Thanks to all positive remarks because - as everybody- I need some support to continue in my process of evolution and to deliver better results in future.
Mark Smyth is praising his divine NIKON tool and I think that the most substantial support of us is a modern superb camera. Because photographing plants is so important discipline for our hobby, I want to inform you about my own struggling path from the state of a beginner to an advanced one.
First 20 years of my rock gardening I was not able to invest my money towards good camera and to buy expensive films. East German ORWO films, which had terrible colours, were our films in communist Czechoslovakia. When sister of Josef Jurasek bought him new Nikon camera I was surprised how it work nicely (it was in 1986, when we for the first time collected (at Ala Dag) Draba acaulis and Convolvulus compactus for the catalogue of Jim Archibald).
After that, with a help of Rudi Weiss I bought second hand Pentax camera in Germany. The results were better but still with many mistakes.
The most spoiled films were with photographing white or yellow flowers in a limestone mountain. White objects are so much reflecting light that it is fooling cameras and the result are burned whites and ugly pale photos (you can see these burned photos even today as product of compact cameras). Pictures were often not sharp enough.
One reason was that I needed my first spectacles!
General improvement started in 2000 when Joyce Carruthers and me bought new SLR cameras in Las Vegas after some troubles in wilderness of Nevada. I bought new body of PENTAX and Joyce preferred CANON EOS REBEL. Later Joyce bought me new lens PENTAX 100mm Macro. Some of our slides were really good but again the amount of spoiled ones in mountains was tragically high (you must photograph in intensive noon light in Utah or Anatolia etc.)
The end of our lost battles and the permanent stress of amateur photographer were in 2006 when Joyce bought digital SLR Canon EOS 400 and I bought the heavy-duty tripod. I just got my first personal computer from Prague Club of Rock Gardeners (as the new editor of Skalnicky) and I learned slowly how to ride this PC machine. But soon I master all the useful tricks with controlling whites in the camera and I loved plenty of the results!
What was not good enough I improved in Photoshop of Canon, Adobe or Picasa 3.
For permanently busy Joyce is easy to deal the duties: I am now the photographer and she is great lecturer.
Last week I looked sadly at my Pentax 100mm Macro lens and decided to invest money and to buy digital body for it. I was lucky! The technicians of Pentax camera developed something really progressive so I bought expensive brand-new PENTAX 20K D which fits to my “older” lens and which shall do plenty great photographs for the oldie of my class.
Three samples (pictures of the new PENTAX 20K) are enclosed, but this superman’s camera need long study and practice.
Maggi says : click the photos to enlarge them
