Ok so maybe the title is a bit unfair. I’m sure if I had spent some time in Norway during the Spring or Summer, it would not have been quite as gray as it was in February. The interesting thing, from a photography standpoint, is that Norway in the Winter has very, very short days. Sun rise is generally after 8AM, and sunset is before 5PM. It’s even shorter in January, so I shouldn’t complain. But when you are there to work, you really don’t get much sunlight to work with for taking photos, and the sunlight you do get is actually very gray. The sun never gets that’s high in the sky, and never seemed to be very bright at all.

So, you don’t get a lot of “golden hour” type photos. There really isn’t that sort of light in Winter.

Still, when work sends you there, you have to ask yourself, “how likely is it that this will be my only chance to ever see Oslo”? So, gray or not, you drag yourself out and shoot, and generally try to make the most of it. At the end of the day, I’d rather have some ok photos of the places I got to see and be able to share them with you, than to not have any photos to share what I did during that week, no?

Anyway, you can see all the photos I posted over at Flickr.

Yes, this is me catching up with all the photos I took since the beginning of the year, finally! We spent a weekend down in Savannah back in January. I have never been before, but had always wanted to get the chance to shoot some of the old historic neighborhood. I knew the squares would provide some great opportunities, not to mention the old houses, the Spanish Moss, and on and on.

The city did not disappoint.

Even the weather did not disappoint, with the sun being out bright, and providing a nice counter to the canopy of the trees all around the area. When you throw in a cathedral, a riverfront, and numerous parks and cemeteries to explore, what is there not to love for a photographer?

All in all, I enjoyed the visit to Savannah and would definitely go back. It’s a fun place, there’s a ton of great places to eat, drink, and have fun, as well as some great history and natural beauty. So even if you aren’t looking for a great place to take photos, which Savannah very much is, you should consider a visit. When we go back, I think we need to schedule a ghost tour, and perhaps some time to relax and enjoy a  drink or two.

You can check out the full set from the weekend over on Flickr!

One of the great joys of living near the mountains, and also in the mild climate of South Carolina, is the chance to simply take any random Saturday, grab the camera gear and do a little hiking/photowalking/exploring around the area, even in the middle of January.

Back before my work traveling got crazy, and I didn’t even have time to post photos let alone spend as much time outdoors as I would like, we headed out to the Blue Wall Preserve, a nature preserve that happens to also be part of the Palmetto Trail. It was a gray day, and maybe not the best for getting interesting shots, but it was also warm and easy enough to drive up there and walk around without getting chilled, which makes it automatically 10 times better than trying to get out and shoot photos in some other areas of the country.

Even with the grayness though, there’s always a chance to experiment and do some interesting things with a camera, and a chance to experiment around a bit with adjustments in Lightroom to either make up for the gray, or get some nice black and white photos.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a Winter day. You can check out the handful of photos I posted from this trip over at Flickr.

An annual tradition around here is to put together a Flickr Set of my favorite photos from the past year. 2012 was a busy, busy year and brought about some very unexpected changes for me professionally, ones that caused our lives to be much different than we expected too! Your personal life can’t help but be impacted when you start traveling as part of your job.

So, for the year 2012, here are my favorites pics. Click the play button to view as a slideshow, or simply browse through all 42 of them at your own speed. You can also view them on Flickr if you don’t have Flash available.

As I look forward to 2013, I realize that for all the traveling I do, I rarely bring anything more than my iPhone for taking photos, and rarely even pull that out. I need to change that. I should be trying to take advantage of being in different places and try to create more photo memories of those trips. Granted, it can be hard to do when you spend all day in front of a group of folks, but I should be thinking more about taking photos while out walking around as opposed to waiting until it’s vacation time and I have my DSLR with me. At least that will be the goal, so perhaps the collection of 2013 will have more iPhone/Instagram photos as I capture what I happen to see!

Thanks for following along here on this little site, whether you’ve been here for years, or just discovered it in 2012. I hope 2013 is going to be a great year for you!

A couple of observations about shooting at the beach over the Christmas weekend:

1. Off-season is a great time to photograph a beach. It is much easier to get landscape and seabird shots when they are only a handful of people within sight of you along the beach.

2. On the other hand, the lack of people can also be detrimental. Sometimes it’s the lone figure that can help give the shot a sense of scope. Sometimes it’s fun to get some photos of people playing in the surf. You don’t get those in the Winter months!

3. Having shot beaches on both coasts, people on the West Coast have it easy. The sun sets over the ocean as opposed to rising on the East Coast. On the West Coast I could roll out to Ocean Beach in the evening, at Myrtle Beach you have to get up pretty early to really catch the sun out over the water!!

4. After you’ve gotten up and captured the sun coming up, and maybe taken a few other photos during the day, the beach is the beach. There are only so many pictures of the surf that I want to spend my time taking. Put the camera down and enjoy your beach vacation, or get off the beach and enjoy some of the surrounding area, like we did with Brookgreen Gardens.

As a photographer, can there be anything better than a place with decades old live oaks, various works of art laid out among a garden with water fountains, an old rice patty tidal creek, an aviary and a few Christmas decorations thrown in?

Plus, seeing, and photographing, everything also led to something along the lines of 5-10 miles of walking, giving you some much needed exercise during the holidays. I can definitely think of worse ways to spend the Sunday before Christmas. Angela and I both really enjoyed the chance to shoot there and spend all day exploring it.

Seriously, if you find yourself near Myrtle Beach, and get tired of shooting at the beach (more on that later….), Brookgreen is  a great place to get a variety of shots, and learn a little local history as well. You can see my full set over at Flickr.

Last week, while planning our drive to the beach for the holiday weekend, my wife noticed that we would be driving right through Bishopville, SC. She then informed me why that mattered, because she’s better at remembering these things than I am. It is the home of Pearl Fryar’s Topiary Garden.

Then, of course, she reminded me why that mattered.

We had seen a documentary about Pearl and the work he was doing in his garden a while back, and we both actually found it somewhat fascinating. Naturally, we would be stopping.

I didn’t really expect to see Pearl out and about, talking about his plants, and his sculptures, but it was a pleasant surprise to us to find him out doing exactly that.

As interesting, and different, as his work is, the highlight was easily listening to him talk about why he did certain things, or describe his very unique work as “just a bunch of cut up bushes”. Listening to him did serve as a good reminder that you can’t stand out if you just keep doing the same thing everyone else is doing. You have to be willing to try something different, to actually BE different than everyone else. Such a valuable lesson, no matter what your chosen vocation.

I am very glad we made that a stop at this small, out of the way, place. Sometimes, you have to be willing to go somewhere different in order to be reminded of important life lessons. You can see the rest of the photos from our short stop over at Flickr.

I was recently very disappointed to see that the tool I had been using, and had mentioned before, for copying photos from Flickr over to Facebook, had shutdown.

Since I had just uploaded photos to Flickr and wanted to cross-post them to Facebook so my FB friends could see them, comment and like them, I went in search of a new tool to accomplish something similar. Naturally, I found a good replacement, Social Photos!

It’s a bit more manual than I wanted, but it sure beats entering titles and descriptions all over again in order to have photos shared in both places!

Sure, we actually went to New Orleans back in October and I am just now getting around to uploading them to Flickr. As a hobbyist photographer, New Orleans is a great place. You can hit the French Quarter take some shots, pick up a good meal, continue out to St. Louis Cemetery, and wind down the day with some great jazz music. So it’s a great place to enjoy yourself, and get some great photos.

It also appeals to me because there is plenty of history, and above all, the city just keeps rolling along through all of that history. So not only do you get great views of things unique to the area, but you can capture shots that speak to history, even legal history.

Yeah that would be the same Plessy from Plessy v. Ferguson, at least according to our tour guide in the cemetery.

Anyway, if you get the chance, head down and bring the camera, but also leave the camera behind and hit Frenchmen Street for some good music, after you have a great meal from one of plenty of great restaurants, whether they are famous or little corner markets serving up Po’ Boys.

You can see all the photos over at Flickr.

It’s not quite dead yet, but it certainly is on the deathwatch. Given that fact, while I’m not quite pulling the plug on using Feedburner for the RSS feed from this site, or the email subscription to the site, I have switched the sidebar on the blog to use the original WordPress RSS feeds and the built-in WordPress Jetpack email subscription instead of the Feedburner ones. So new subscribers to the feed or the email list, will now be using those services instead of Feedburner, and I’ll be prepared ahead of time for what seems to be the inevitable shuttering of the service.

If you’re a current subscriber to either the Feedburner RSS or Feedburner email list, you may want to update those subscriptions as well. You know, just in case.

You’ll find links to do that on the sidebar, as well as links to follow on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus as well, if you’d rather do that.