Month: October 2023

Twilight Moose

Posted on by John

Just as I had packed up my gear and was driving out of Lille Vildmose, I suddenly saw this great Moose bull. I quickly pulled over and had about five minutes alone with the big guy before other cars started pulling over and he decided to walk away.
I am actually quite amazed over this picture. It was twilight, I shot at 600mm with a shutter speed of just 1/80s at ISO 6400. Still, with help from Topaz Photo AI and the skills I have acquired in Lightroom over the years, I still ended up with an acceptable result. Even though the R7 is a crop sensor camera, it is still capable of delivering, even at high ISO.

Switching grooves

Posted on by John

When I started taking photography more serious, I mainly shot black and white photos. I loved a good black and white photo. To be fair, I still do.
And I also still love when I see a subject or scene that I know exactly how to capture in black and white.

But still I have noticed a change in the photos I post here on my site. A while back, the majority were black and white, now most of them are in color.

The reason for this is quite simple. I have switched groove. I am now primarily taking pictures of animals, either in the wild or on various zoos.
Animals usually have strong or distinctive colors, and while some animals photos can work in black and white, most of them deserve to be in color.

Switching grooves is not a bad thing. It is an evolution. The next step.
Instead of keeping in the same groove and starting to repeat yourself, or growing tired of what you do, you can try something else. It doesn’t mean that you can’t switch back to your old groove if you want to at some later point.
And if you switch back, maybe you will have learned something new, that takes your work to another level.

At the moment I still have a strong urge to photograph wildlife, but I can also feel a beginng yearning for the old days of picking up my camera, put on a 35mm lens or a Lensbaby, and go out exploring and capture new black and white sceneries.

Goodbye POTN

Posted on by John

When I first started getting serious with photography, I would have all kinds of issues that puzzled me, or that didn’t make sense to me. So, I did what I always do in such cases, I looked for like-minded online.

I quickly found photography-on-the.net (POTN). At that time a forum for Canon users. It was a forum populated by nice and helpful people, and it seemed to have answers for almost all my questions and funny interactions and comments as well.

later on POTN opened up for all kinds of cameras, and even then, no Brand-wars broke out.

Over the years I spent hours on that forum, slowly noticing that the interactions changed. Instead of a lot of post about people asking for help, it would be posts about specific cameras, lenses, bird photography etc.

I guess the people looking for answers were going elsewhere, or that all questions had already been answered.

Now Pekka, the guy who runs POTN has decided to shut the forum down, apparently around February 2024, to free up time for his other interests, and while I understand and respect his decision, I can’t help to feel a little sad, that a good forum with a lot of good users will now dissappear.

Goodbye POTN, you will be missed.