Mielke Photography

Reflections in Light

Originally uploaded by BCMielke

This photo was captured while enjoying dinner on my birthday at Flemings. This white wine was truly a Conundrum. The wine maker never touts the direct proportions and this blend of grapes was surprising from what is normally found in California. Sauvignon Blanc grapes from the Napa Valley, Muscat Canelli from Tulare county on the Central Coast, and Chardonnay and Viognier from our vineyards in Monterey County. are the grapes, but what is the blend. The wine was enjoyed and so was the reflection

We traveled to Columbus, OH for my BiL graduation from THE Ohio State we spent some time doing some window shopping and scouting for a resteraunt to eat at this evening. This scene was found outside the Worthington Inn which is registered as a National Landmark. I don’t know what that means, other than it is an old building.

I have in my later years gotten over enough a slight fear of heights to be able to hike and many more precarious situations. I don’t exactly if it was a fear of heights, but more of a loss of control issue. I would concentrate on all that could go wrong instead of think that my fit will hit the ground, not slip and that will cause me to plummet to my death. I never really got a bruised leg or a broken ankle. It always ended in my death. I can say after some time of hiking and also being above 10,000ft for more than once, even hiking across this narrow passageway below I have never plummeted to my death. I have however bruised, sprained, twisted and even bled, never plummeted though.

For those that may wonder where I have been, well the summer just got away from me. Between Children, Traveling for work, work itself and moving into a new office, life has been very busy.

I’ve thought of many things I wanted to blog about, but haven’t had a moment to put my fingers on the keyboard to capture my thoughts. Hopefully that will change in the upcoming weeks.

Travelling with two children can always be a challenge. If you get out of the car to eat you will have at least 30 minutes. If you don’t and opt to make up some time on the expressway you will have crumbs all over your vehicle or worse.

On our Spring Break trip today travelling to New York we opted for the former. The car itself was already messy enough. Along I-90 just to the east of Cleveland we stopped at the RedHawk Grille. We couldn’t have enjoyed our meal more.

The restaurant is located right next to the Quail Hallow Resort. I was under the delusion of the golf course located there and in the process we discovered next to it this gem of a restaurant. The food was very good and the service was excellent. There was a full bar made of wood, which would have been nice to sit at and watch the basketball games on the numerous wide-screen TV’s. There also was a dining room in back that could easily hold 100 people. Every important there was also free-wifi. That seemed to be a little slow, but I suspect it might have been because of the party in the back.

Oh did I mention the service? Punkin ordered a small pizza which the brought out when the rest of the meals arrived. The waitress told us that the cook had accidently burnt the edges and that she had broken off the edges and sent it out, but that another was in the oven and would be out shortly. Many places might try to just let the meal fly and see if the person complained. Not here.

The pizza arrived and the cook was out to deliver it. She apologized in person and quickly let us know that both Buddy and Punkin would be given Ice Cream if it was OK with their parents. After the meal was over a very nice Sunday was delivered with whipped cream and a maraschino cherry on top in a to-go container.

To further distinguish them from others. The cook chatted with us for a while as bathroom runs were made. The cook called another guy over and was telling them to win my daughter a free teddy bear out of the crane drop. This is the game where you move a motorized crane around amongst a large group of stuffed animals and other things.

When you get above the item that you want and believe it is in the correct place you drop the crane to pick up the item and pray at the same time. The guy obviously had some trick with working this out, because in his first pass he dropped the crane, got the chosen bear and gave it to my daughter.

For a good meal and a good time if you’re in the area, choose RedHawk Grille.

I’m slightly disappointed this morning as I watched the news.  I was riding my bicycle at the health club something I’m not fond of anyway, but as most know that read this I find myself having to take a break from my morning runs due to a hurt Achilles.  Hopefully in 3 weeks time I will be back out there pounding the pavement.

The good news is that it has gotten me working out with weights once again at the local gym.  On one such visit I found myself mindlessly staring at the TV watching Obama talk on the Jay Leno show about a wide range of topics. 

The subject of his bowling came up and Jay poked a little fun at him for his lack of ability on the lanes.  President Obama then made a crack that said it was “It’s like — it was like Special Olympics, or something.” 

Or something is correct.  As I sat on my bike peddling away I winced.  Not the worst thing I have heard for certain.  It saddens me somewhat to think that an intelligent man like Obama when asked a simple question and when he wants to poke fun at himself the arrow in his brain that whirls around for humor.  The little dial that we all have reaches into the slot that says, “Make fun of intellectually and physically handicapped people”

There are many directions my little missive could take me from there.  I could talk about the comments of Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder.  He lost his job and justifiably so for his comments and linking sports performance to slavery. 

Don Imus is another who lost his job for his comments about black women and a derisive comment about their looks.

I don’t expect to compare the two above incidents with what President Obama said, his comments weren’t in the same league as what Mr. Imus and Mr Snyder said.  Still I get back to the twirling humor wheel in his head.  He didn’t reach for something uplifting as a 3rd grader could beat him.  He reached for people most conceived with physical, emotional and mental handicaps. 

From many reports Obama apologized quickly to the Chairman of the Special Olympics Tim Shriver even before the show was aired.  I applaud him for recognizing quickly that what he said was demeaning.  Oddly enough he had met with Maria Shriver the daughter of Eunice Shriver who founded Special Olympics the day before.  I’m sure his apology had help  from many of his handlers, but regardless he did apologize.

I would have thought he would have learned something from the race he was in against McCain and Palin just a few short months back.  Sarah Palin’s own child has Down Syndrome.  He also is a person of color and has grown up with many iconic moments culminating for many with his election as President.  I go back to his spinning wheel for humor.  His wheel not only stops, but he embraces at making fun of people who in most instances like him didn’t have any choice, but to be who they are, act how they act and compete at the highest level they are able and succeed.

You should apologize and not just to the leader of an organization, but to each person that competes.  You should however not just apologize, but that spinning wheel shouldn’t have stopped on that spot. 

Mr. President you should know better.

You can read more about this issue here.

     A chance opportunity to view the work’s of Galen Rowell provides a personal insight into his life

I’ve long had a desire to view world-renowned mountain climber and photographer Galen Rowell’s work.  Luckily enough, on a recent trip out west I happened to be near the Mountain Light Gallery, the gallery in Bishop, California that Galen Rowell established to exhibit and sell his artwork.

It was a wonderful thing to be able to walk around and experience many of Galen’s great photos as they were intended to be viewed:  Framed, matted, hung on a wall, and artistically lit, rather than in the confines of a magazine.

The wait was well worth it.  The famous photos where all there — “Clearing Storm Over El Capitan”; “Last Light on Horsetail Falls”; and my favorite “Rainbow Over the Potala Palace”. I spent well over an hour looking at all of his classics having seen many of them over the years in so many different magazines. Viewing them full size instead of on smallish magazine pages was a humbling experience. 

Sadly, Galen Rowell perished along with his wife Barbara in a plane crash in August of 2002.  The gallery also seemed to serve as a museum to him.  Among the photographs were some of Galen’s old film cameras and lenses, news clippings with his many accomplishments, pictures and clippings from his climbs of Half Dome at an early age, and his many ascensions to the summit of Mt Everest. 

There were personal photos of him and his wife Barbara taken by National Geographic photographer Frans Lanting.  Also spread out in different areas of the gallery were family photos as well as photos taken by Galen’s son who is just starting out in the “family” business.   There are little known photos of the surrounding area of Bishop — an area he knew well and hiked often. 

Enough can’t be said about both Galen’s climbing skill as well as his skill behind the camera. With the time I spent in his gallery admiring his iconic photographs along with his private family albums I felt  I got to know Galen personally and witness his love of the outdoors .

As I looked closely at the pictures — most, if not all, shot on film over the course of his 30 year career, I could make out many of the emulsions, having shot with them myself. Velvia, Kodachrome 64, some of the fine grain Kodak 25, I’m sure many other chromes where favorites as well. 

What I found interesting was how “soft” the images were. Having looked and scanned in many of my old chromes, I expected some of the softness having seen it first hand.  What I didn’t expect was in the hands of a master the images were still “soft” by today’s standards.  There wasn’t any pixel-peeping as there is now in Galen’s day.

Nowadays we are spoiled with our many different ways to sharpen an image.  Even more amazing is our ability for close viewing of each and every picture.  There are also multiple techniques for sharpening an image. Unsharp Mask, High Pass sharpening and even a Nik filter that does if all for you aptly named Nik Sharpener.  Those tools have all arrived in the digital age.  It’s possible that Galen Rowell may have never shot with a digital camera to take advantage of these. 

Moving through the gallery, I gazed upon a 5 foot tall, seemingly life-sized print of “Last Light on Horsetail Falls”.  Before this photo was shot there wasn’t much thought to how the evening light fell upon Horsetail Falls in the winter. 

Now there are many photographers each year who look at this date and make the trek out to Yosemite trying to top this once a year photo opportunity.  Most come away not even seeing this photo happen in real life for one reason or another. 

As I stood inches away looking into the waterfall, I was struck at how soft the image was.  This could be the greatest stretch of a 35mm negative when it was made.  Who really knows what photo paper
they might have used or how it was printed.

Today we would probably be wondering about the horsepower of the machine needed or whether the file touched Genuine Fractals to produce such an enlargement.  The pixel peepers throughout the Internet would be looking and proclaiming that something was wrong with the lens or maybe the camera. 

It brought to light for me what most have known all along.  It’s what’s in the image that counts.  Galen was capturing what today would be maligned on some Internet forum and it is just one of the many of iconic pictures from the master.  Today’s cameras are much better with resolution and sharpness, but they still need a skilled photographer at the helm for spectacular images.

I have included many of my images taken in the area around Bishop, CA .  It’s easy to understand why more than one photographer is located in this area.  It is just a magnificent area for photography.  My photos may not match up with those of Galen Rowell, but if you plan a visit in this area, take some time to visit some of the places on my list.  And let me know if you find some great spots on your own.

You can view the whole gallery here.  Please comment via email or inline at the blog.

I had some time on my hand as I was looking at the latest version of Photo-Mechanic. I started this shoot-out just to try the new version updates uploading portion to SmugMug. As I was sitting at my desk taking some test shots, I got the idea to see how each of my lenses at 50mm compares.

There has also been quite a bit of talk about how an image taken with a D3/D700 in DX mode can compare to one in FX mode. I have included in this test two lenses shot in the DX crop mode of the D700. As anyone can see I have far to many lenses in this lenght for anyone to own. Sad to say this doesn’t even cover them all. These are all 100% crops sized and send from Photo Mechanic using the included jpg inside of the NEF file. They were all hand-held.

The camera was set in Aperture priority mode and interesting enough even though the lite was constant the camera with difference lenses did select shutter speeds. The lenses test are as follows.

Nikon 50mm F1.4 D
Nikon 50mm AFS F1.4G
Nikon 24-70 AFS F2.8 G ED
Tamron 28-70 AF SP XR Di

I had hoped to also show the difference between the DX and the FX modes on the D700. Since my realy purpose of the test was to see how Photo Mechanic could reliably transfer files to Smugmug, I soon discovered that it was unable to transfer those files shot in the DX crop mode correctly. The framing was off on each of those.

Now onto the pictures.

Take a good luck and you can click on each image to go to the SmugMug page where you can look at each of the files in any size that you will like.

Take your best guess, I will upload the answers in another blog post shortly.