Sometimes images just happen. No planning. No conscious creativity. Last late summer I was rushing out of the house late to work as usual. And while packing and collecting I noticed sunlight shining though my living room skylight framing some favorite blue vases sitting on the pot shelf over the kiva. Mind you I had no idea what a Kiva was until I moved to Santa Fe New Mexico a few months prior. But there is was what I thought was gorgeous framing.

Sometimes images just happen. No planning. No conscious creativity. This seems to be my modus operandi lately.

January, it was snowing and I was enjoying an evening glass of wine. Standing at my front door watching the snow come down over the faux adobe across the street. I thought there might be enough reflectivity to capture something interesting despite being quite dark.

We are all hunkering down in our financial bunkers these days. 4 of my friends have been laid off or told their jobs are at risk. Its going to be very bloody for a while. And while feeling very sorry for ourselves, consider Iceland. As montypythonesque as that last sentence sounds, Iceland probaly doesn't come to the forefront of ones thoughts in these times.

I have been working for some time now restoring and archiving some very old prints of my parents and and relatives, ones of my parents when very young and several as teenagers before they met in Singapore. The project is one that I visit from time to time and frankly its been taking a while. Part of the project is learning the skills of image restoration. See my page on restoration.

I was having a quiet beer at my favorite late afternoon quiet do nothing place, Harry’s Roadhouse, in Santa Fe contemplating. Actually I was working using my iPhone to surf for material for a new website (www.nojobsurvivor.com) started by a friend and me. Firstly I was amazed how much I could do using my iPhone. Emailing of course, and surfing, checking relevant sites, references, checking images, and updating some material on Facebook for the site. As well as texting my partner deciding on content to go onto the site that evening.

I had a serious need for stress relief over the last few days. And I had seen some advice online that recommended visualizing a quiet stream or lake and going there in your mind. Bunkum says me but it did set me to thinking of how certain photographs help link places and mood and remembrance together. I find the photographic process therapeutic and rarely stressful. Its not real work and maybe not real life after all. An illustration is the image of a common Jay above. The picture was taken from the bank of Granite Lake in California, just above Lake Tahoe.

We all have seen the horrific images of the brushfires in Victoria, Australia. Thankfully my family in NSW are unnaffected. And there is not much more heartbreaking than seeing Sam the Koala take water from a fireman and also realize that some of the fires were deliberately lit. The impact of those Koala pictures is much greater when you realize that Koalas and most Australian native animals do not readily approach people as these injured Koalas did.

Hundreds of thousands of native animals were killed and more injured. The animal care agencies are overwhelmed as you can imagine.

Last year I had several opportunites to do some images I’ve always wanted to do, photographing clubs or concerts in low light. Due to various reasons life got in the way of taking up those opportunties. Until November.

I found myself in El Farol on a quiet Thursday evening, watching a female singing duo. They were a talented couple and in listening to them I started noticing the light.

Recently, I had a commission to photograph jewelery for a new custom jewelry maker in Santa Fe for her new website and the occasional brochure or flyer. This was a learning exercise for me in lighting. Jewelry is very reflective and requires perfect lighting to avoid excessive shadows and bright spots.

Occasionally I tutor in digital photography. I love helping people find their way through digital photography technology AND Tutoring challenges me as a photographer, forcing me to revisit the basics of photography.  Recently a "student" came to me to help him transition from film to digital. He had done some digital photography classes, but as he put it they just made his eyes glaze over. I'll call him Joe.

This image from a NASA satellite is just amazing and shows the extent of the dust storm over eastern Australia on September 22-23 2009. The image covers 25 degrees of lattitude which works out to be 1500 nautical miles north to south, or just short of 1800 statute miles. That makes the dust storm front somewhere around 1500 miles or so. Notice the southern edge of the storm is out to sea and covered by clouds in ths image and the northern edge is far northern central Queensland. (FXBUXTVG5J62)

Click the image to get a huge resolution version from NASA.

An Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle patroled the launch area as the Space Shuttle Atlantis roared into space on its final flight in May. Check out the shadow of the plume on the ground!

The full caption reads:

[bquote]Lt. Col. Gabriel Green and Capt. Zachary Bartoe patrol the airspace in an F-15E Strike Eagle as the Space Shuttle Atlantis launches May 14, 2010, at Kennedy Space Center, Fla. Colonel Green is the 333rd Fighter Squadron commander and Captain Bartoe is a 333rd FS weapons system officer. Both aircrew members are assigned to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C. (U.S. Air Force photo/Capt. John Peltier)[/bquote]

Most digital cameras offer image capture in the common image formats of JPEG and TIFF as well as RAW,  even the lowly most inexpensive point and shooter.  Nothing beats RAW for potential image quality. But in the past RAW was difficult to work with to get a great looking image. This is not true any longer.

TIFF files are higher quality than JPEGs, and JPEG files are smaller than TIFFs. File size might be an issue for you especially if you have older equipment. Large files take longer to upload to your PC and take storage space although these problems are not as much as a problem in these days of USB 2.0 and $100 2TB disk drives

If size is an issue then shoot JPEG. Remember though RAW files are also smaller than TIFF. For quality and flexibility in processing your images shoot RAW. I shoot RAW almost exclusively and you should as well. What are the the strengths and weaknesses of each of the formats TIFF, JPEG and RAW?