Rick Norsigian, a painter from Fresno, Calif., has come forth with 65 original glass plates for photographs made by Ansel Adams — all thought to have been lost in a fire in 1937.
Norsigian purchased the box of plates for $45 at a garage sale in 2000, and has since been trying to prove his belief that they belonged to America's most famous photographer.
Experts have finally confirmed as much. Moreover, the photographs are from Adams' early career and give historians and enthusiasts a glimpse into his development as an artist.
The images cover some of Adams' favorite locations, including Yosemite, the Carmel (Calif.)Mission, a rocky shoreline point in Carmel, and San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf.
Norsigian is capitalizing on his investment (now valued at over $200 million) by selling prints to museums and collectors.
A NASA satellite-mounted camera has spent the past eight years photographing Mars in the most precise detail ever, resulting in a high-res composite map of the planet's surface that the agency has just released.
The Mars Odyssey spacecraft made 21,000 photos of the planet's surface using a thermal infrared camera known as THEMIS (Thermal Emission Imaging System), along with what I hope was a very sturdy and secure tripod. The images were stitched together by collaborating teams at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and Arizona State University's (ASU) Mars Space Flight Facility in Tempe, Ariz.
The map can be accessed by the general public, either online or by downloading the approximately one gigabyte of files that make up the complete terrestrial picture. This is the same map that researchers are using to study the Mars surface.
A Britain-based research team in Sri Lanka has successfully photographed a Horton Plains slender loris, previously thought to be extinct for more than 60 years.
Since 1937, four unconfirmed sightings of a loris have been reported, but this is the first photographic evidence that the species is still alive (if not well) in the Asian island nation. The loris is listed among the top 5 most endangered primates in the world.
I just returned home from a ten-day journey shooting in Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park. It was a great trip that's left me with 4,700 photos to wade through and edit. Eventually some of those images will appear on this site; in the meantime, you can get some previews on my "Photographs of Chris Nicholson" Facebook page.
While in Yellowstone, I photographed plenty of wildlife, from bison and elk to sheep and chipmunks. So I was interested to see an article on CNN.com this morning about how to photograph while on safari (specifically, in Tanzania).
The article is somewhat basic for pros and serious amateurs, but all the advice is sound for anyone looking to make images of wildlife. See "Tanzania: Making the most of your photo safari."
Speaking of photos of oil (see my blog post from two days ago, "Oiling Up the Camera"), here's another news item about photographing the Gulf slick:
According to Newsweek, reporters, photographers and TV-news videographers covering the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are reporting that they are being denied access to the damaged shoreline and clean-up areas. The press is claiming they are being specifically targeted, being actively blocked from covering the disaster by British Petroleum while other parties are not being as stringently held back.
They add that even when they are allowed access to the spill area, it's only under the oversight of BP and/or the Coast Guard — on BP or Coast Guard boats and aircraft.
Today's news is filled with footage of British Petroleum trying to cap their oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. So it seems fitting to mention another effort around the spill, that of a group of volunteers who have been using kites, balloons and helium-filled trash bags to produce aerial images of the oil affecting the shores of Louisiana.
The group, called Grassroots Mapping, is educating people about how to create makeshift aerial-photography setups in order to document the damage to the environment (along with other projects, too).
Though satellite-based cameras have been monitoring the spill since the deadly oil-rig explosion in April, simple camera-and-kite setups can produce images with resolution up to 1,000 times better than the satellites can.
In my ongoing series of blog posts that are dramatically late in being posted, here's a news item from CNN.com:
Joel Sartore is a photographer who has traveled the United States documenting plants and animals in danger of extinction. His work of 69 threatened species — including red wolves, wolverines and plovers — appears in the new book "Rare: Portraits of America's Endangered Species."
According to Sartore's website, "Some of [these species] are likely to go extinct without people ever knowing they existed, and the goal of this book is to give them a voice. Part of a multi-year project documenting Earth’s vanishing biodiversity, Rare shows what we stand to lose if we don’t act now."
In support of the book, a photo exhibit of the project will be running at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C., until October 11 of this year.
While in Florida last week I again made a photo-gathering trip to Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which has quickly become one of my favorite places to shoot.
In the afternoon I drove out to a remote spot toward the northern end of the refuge and made some photographs to build a QuickTime VR movie.
A QuickTime VR uses stitched-together photos to create a 360-degree scene. Using your computer's mouse, you can see everything as if you were there — it virtually puts you right in the middle of the landscape.
I haven't been blogging in a few weeks because I've been busy with setting up a photo show, moving, traveling, traveling some more, and finishing moving.
Finally, I'm back. And boy, do I have lots to catch up on with this blog.
First, let me mention more about the aforementioned show. "Coming Up Tulips" is an exhibit of some of my photos on canvas at Cafe Atlantique in Milford, Connecticut. The show will be running through the month of May.
From the show’s Artist Statement:
“Coming Up Tulips" began as an article about photographing a subject in different types of light. The end of that project morphed into the beginning of another: a two-year creative exercise in hyper-focusing on a very particular theme. Rather than targeting just nature, or just plants, or just flowers, the aim became to make different compositions of just tulips. The result is a collective portrait of a spring flower in its many colors, sizes and stages.
Two of the prints in the show are also on this site: Tulips and Spring Tulips. The rest will be posted within the next week or so.
If you're in the area, please feel free to stop in and have a look.
Just a reminder that the deadline for ordering prints for Mother's Day is fast approaching. Because I'll be traveling in the coming weeks, and because I personally oversee the production of every print, all orders need to be in by April 22.
Choose a print that reminds Mom of someplace or something special — her most memorable vacation spot, the beach where she married Dad, the state her family called home, her favorite flower.
Remember, prints are issued in certified limited of 25, and are made on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, one of the highest-quality photo papers in existence.
(Gift Certificates are also available, and I can usually deliver same-day. No order deadline for those.)
Please feel free to contact me with any questions.
Reasons are aplenty to buy prints as gifts, limited only by thought and imagination. And Mother's Day is a great time to show your love by giving the gift of art.
Choose a print that reminds Mom of someplace special — her most memorable vacation spot, the beach where she married Dad, the state her family called home, her favorite flower.
If any of this sounds like something Mom would enjoy this year, don't delay — the deadline for Mother's Day print orders is April 22.
Remember, prints are issued in certified limited editions (most are editions of 25), and are made on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, one of the highest-quality photo papers in existence. For more information about quality and so on, see About the Prints.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions.
I love my Nikon D2x. I love my Canon G10 pocket camera. I even love my old Miranda 35mm film camera that my dad passed on to me when I was a kid. But this might be the coolest photo-making machine I've ever seen: the Pet's Eye View Digital Camera.
Want to see what your dog (or cat) sees all day? Clip this camera to its collar, set the interval timer, and a photo will be taken every one, five or 15 minutes.
The Pet's Eye View Digital Camera sells for $50 though the website linked above, but retails for less elsewhere around the web.
Doing photo work at night (shooting moonlit landscapes, star trails, etc.) presents a number of obstacles, including the difficulty of setting up and setting cameras in the dark. Flashlights are of little use because you need both hands to work with a full kit of photo gear.
Photographers faced with this nocturnal challenge generally use a headlamp to see their way around. Yeah, that solves the problem, but it's also a little overkill.
For a solution that's a little less — well, dorky — I used to like LED caps, such as those sold by LL Bean. But those look a little odd, too, in that these tiny globes poke out from the front of the brim.
Then a few weeks ago I discovered a great new solution: LED clip lights.
These lights, made to clip onto a baseball-style cap, provide 14 lumens of light in a small package that pivots, resists water and stows away easily when not in use. And because they fit on any cap, you can use it no matter what hat you have with you, rather than needing to carry a specific one.
Energizer makes the model I've tried, and they make them in white, green and UV light.
A friend of mine passed along a link to a great online store for anyone interested in fun photo-related items: Photojojo.com.
Just a few of the many products the site offers:
Eyeglasses with a discreet built-in video camera
Frames that make prints look like Polaroid pictures
Tiny creative filters designed for camera phones
SD memory cards that provide wireless dumping of your image files
A camera case that looks like a bowling-bowl bag
The store has plenty more, as well.
Many of the site's items make great tools, toys or gifts for photographers of any level. And even if you're not in the mood for buying, the selection is pretty fun just to browse.
According to the BBC, a camera lost at sea for 16 months has been found and returned to its owners.
South Africa's Barbara and Dennis Gregory accidentally dropped the camera over the edge of the cruise ship Queen Mary in 2008, and assumed they'd never see it again.
Enter Benito Estevez, a commercial fisherman from Spain, who found the camera in his nets while trawling the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Europe. Estevez examined the memory card, found five photos intact and posted them online in an effort to discover the camera's owner.
It's been about eight months since I've publicly marveled at the images produced by the Hubble Space Telescope, so it's high time I get my head out of the clouds and back into space.
FoxNews.com this morning published a photo essay of the Hubble's best space photographs from its nearly 20 years of scanning the stars. The collection features stunning imagery of galaxies, gamma-ray bursts, nebulae, quasars, supernovas and more. Well worth checking out.
I spent much of the past two days photographing Canaveral National Seashore and the neighboring Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge on Florida’s east coast.
I produced about 1,800 frames of work, a majority of which covered the dozens of species of birds that live in or migrate to Florida during winter: blue and tricolored herons, white ibis, great and snowy egrets, roseate spoonbills and more. My other work covered the myriad marshes, saltwater estuaries, coastal dunes, alligators and sunsets.
This was my first visit to either of the preserves, and I hope it won’t be my last. The area has become one of my favorite Florida photo subjects, right up there with Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve.
I'm about to fly to Florida, where I hope to photograph Canaveral National Seashore at length, and possibly the Everglades as well. I'll also likely succumb to the temptation of photographing from the window of my JetBlue.
As I go, let me leave you with this note of historical interest: The year 1909 marked the first time an airplane was photographed from the sky. The photo was made from a hot-air balloon at Italy's Centocelle Field.
Just a quick note to mention that I'll be posting a whole bunch of new photos to NicholsonPrints.com within the next couple of days. I'm not sure exactly when the photos will be online, but it will be before the deadline for ordering prints for Christmas (Dec. 14).
The new photos (some of which can be seen on my "Photographs of Chris Nicholson" Facebook page) are mostly from 2009 shoots in New England.
Here's a fun photo-related listing on eBay: A used camera lens more expensive than most people's new cars.
The item up for auction is a very rare Canon 5200mm f/14 lens. That's 17 times more powerful than the 300mm lens I use for doing pro tennis photography.
It weighs over 200 pounds, is over six feet long and rests at two feet high. Just to move this lens requires at least two people.
The current asking price? $45,000.
To see (or bid on) this piece of relatively monstrous machinery, view its auction page on eBay. But look quickly; the sale ends tomorrow.
A man bought a print of "Bryce Canyon In Morning Sun" because he and his wife had just returned from a great hiking vacation in that national park.
A woman bought a print of "Australian Hay Bales" because her brother likes ... well, hay bales.
And there are plenty of other great reasons to buy prints as gifts, limited only by thought and imagination. Choose a print that reminds someone of a special place — their favorite vacation spot, the beach where they were married, the state their family hails from.
Which brings me to my next point: the deadline for holiday print orders is two weeks away.
For prints to be received by Christmas, orders need to be in by December 14 (though I can entertain rush orders for a few days afterward). Gift Certificates, of course, I can usually deliver same-day.
Remember, prints are issued in certified limited editions (most are editions of 25), and are made on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, one of the highest-quality photo papers in existence. For more information about quality and so on, see About the Prints.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
A local friend of mine, artist Mike Falcigno, has been featured in the Connecticut Post newspaper.
Mike creates models, paintings and other art in the fantasy/horror genre, largely in the mold of old monster movies. And he often creates them for new monster movies. I've often been impressed with Mike's work; he is meticulously successful at maintaining and realizing a clear and impeccable artistic vision.
With the holidays upon us, several people in my life have joined the annual tradition of asking me about cameras that would make good gifts. In the past I rarely had much advice to offer, as the gap between pro and consumer cameras was so great that the former had little resemblance to the latter; in other words, I knew very little about point-and-shoots.
Alas, technology has changed. Today the market bears a (very) few cameras with price tags low enough for consumers, but image quality good enough for pros. That's not to say pro photographers use these on paid shoots. But they do use them as emergency back-ups and to have something they can carry around casually.
So here's sort of a little buyer's guide for the best pocket cameras around. I won't get into specifics of features and such, because that can be found ad nauseam around the web; this is just a quick guide to what I would consider buying. The price range for all of these is about $500.
Canon G10. This is a great camera, but Canon just ceased production. You can probably still find it in some stores, but not for long. This is a camera well-regarded by pros, and will be a hot eBay item for the next year or two.
Canon G11. Canon's new model to replace the G10, but it's not entirely an upgrade. The only real positive advantage over its predecessor is that it handles low-light situations slightly better, and the "improvements" haven't been perfected. If you're shooting mostly in daylight outdoor scenes, try to stick with the G10. If you can't find a G10, the G11 is a perfectly acceptable substitute.
Nikon P6000. Its reputation almost parallels the G10. It's smaller, thus slightly more portable and certainly more storeable, but also the lens doesn't zoom quite as far.
Canon S90. Smaller than the others mentioned. Not quite as good either. But if pocket portability is important, this model allows for that. Thought it's the camera I'd least recommend among these four, it's still good enough to mention.
