Panasonic announces firmware update for the LX3

Panasonic announces firmware update for the LX3 that improves white balance performance HERE

New Photography Workshop to Oregon

At long last! Announcing a photography workshop to my home state of Oregon. We will see The Columbia Gorge, Oregon Wheat Country, Hood River, Portland, and more. September 23-27, 2009 Check it out HERE. Photos by Keith Skelton

Time Lapse Photography

During our photo workshops we try to photograph the stars at least least one night if the weather and location are good. Here is a nice example of time-lapse photography capturing the Milky Way rising by William Castleman, a professor of veterinary pathology at the University of Florida.

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.

Here is his explanation of how he captured this video:
The time-lapse sequence was taken with the simplest equipment that I brought to the star party. I put the Canon EOS-5D (AA screen modified to record hydrogen alpha at 656 nm) with an EF 15mm f/2.8 lens on a weighted tripod. Exposures were 20 seconds at f/2.8 ISO 1600 followed by 40 second interval. Exposures were controlled by an interval timer shutter release (Canon TC80N3). Power was provided by a Hutech EOS203 12v power adapter run off a 12v deep cycle battery. Large jpg files shot in custom white balance were batch processed in Photoshop (levels, curves, contrast, Noise Ninja noise reduction, resize) and assembled in Quicktime Pro. Editing/assembly was with Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9.
The stock anti-alias (AA) filter blocks a range of red wavelengths so the camera will render desireable skin tones. 656 nm is one of those wavelengths that also is emitted by emission nebula (star forming gas nebula). The replacement filter permits passage of 656 nm so that emission nebula can be recorded.
Contrast and brightness have been increased to make the Milky Way more stunning in the video. However, standing in the field at the Texas Star Party with dark-adapted eyes with the Milky Way overhead is a very stunning experience. Many first-time observers remark that the rising of the Milky Way looks like storm clouds coming in over the horizon. When the Milky Way is overhead it casts shadows. You can hold your hand up and move it around and see the shadow move around on the ground in front of you. It is a moving experience the first time you see the Milky Way that brightly in the sky. Fort Davis, Texas is at 5,000 feet altitude with very dark and transparent skies.

LENS - A great new photo site from The New York Times

"The New York Times introduces Lens, a photojournalism blog that intends to present some of the most interesting visual and multimedia reporting: in photographs, videos, audio slide shows and any other medium that fits — our format."

A Nation Emerges: Sixty-five Years of Photography in Mexico

A Nation Emerges: Sixty-five Years of Photography in Mexico represents the work of 30 known Mexican, European, and American photographers, as well as that of anonymous photographers, with over 600 images.

Photographs of Mexico from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century from the special collections of the Getty Research Library at the Getty Research Institute.

Unknown, Portrait of a Huichol man, ca. 1910.

Panasonic DMC-GH1 - A true Hybrid.

I never thought I'd be shooting seriously with a still camera made by Panasonic (the LX2 and LX3) Now comes a very interesting beast called the DMC-GH1 Interchangeable Lens SLR Digital Camera. It has 12.1 Megapixels, comes with a 28-280mm telephoto lens, 1080p Full HD AVCHD Camcorder, full-HD Movie Recording in AVCHD, compact, Mirror-Free that is based on Micro four thirds design. Also available is a 7-14mm lens.

It has full time live view and lets you adjust the shutter speed and aperture any way you like when shooting movies with stereo sound. You can record images with a 4:3, 3:2 or 16:9 aspect ratio. It also shoots in RAW and JPEG and with many custom modes. The specs say the camera only weighs .85lbs.

For those who own Leica and Voigtlander lenses there is an adaptor made by Milich (GT Lens Adaptor) that opens up the use of dozens of manual lenses with fast apertures. It is usable on the Panasonic G1 and I presume will work with the GH1 which opens up many possibilities shooting video.

The price of $1,499 was announced today and it will be released in June.

Pictures HERE

Fourth Annual Monument Valley Photography Workshop

It is that time of year again when we schedule a photography workshop to Monument Valley, Arizona/Utah (October 8 -12, 2009). This year, we will not only photograph Monument Valley locations, but also visit Natural Bridges National Monument and the nearby Anasazi Indian ruins. Check it it out HERE at Arizona Photography Workshops.

PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHTED BY KEITH SKELTON

Verve Photo

Verve Photo - Documentary Photographers.

This is a great list of documentary photographers. And there is quite a few of them!

MASTER PHOTOGRAPHER SERIES: Mathew Brady

"Mathew Brady arrived in New York City at the age of sixteen. Soon after taking a job as a department store clerk, he started his own small business manufacturing jewelry cases. In his spare time, Brady studied photography under a number of teachers, including Samuel F. B. Morse, the man who had recently introduced photography to America. Brady quickly discovered a natural gift. By 1844, he had his own photography studio in New York.

Brady soon acquired a reputation as one of America's greatest photographers -- producer of portraits of the famous. In 1856, he opened a studio in Washington, D.C., the better to photograph the nation's leaders and foreign dignitaries. As he himself said, "From the first, I regarded myself as under obligation to my country to preserve the faces of its historic men and mothers." He became one of the first photographers to use photography to chronicle national history.

At the peak of his success as a portrait photographer, Brady turned his attention to the Civil War. Planning to document the war on a grand scale, he organized a corps of photographers to follow the troops in the field. Friends tried to discourage him, citing battlefield dangers and financial risks, but Brady persisted. He later said, "I had to go. A spirit in my feet said 'Go,' and I went."

"Mathew Brady did not actually shoot many of the Civil War photographs attributed to him. More of a project manager, he spent most of his time supervising his corps of traveling photographers, preserving their negatives and buying others from private photographers freshly returned from the battlefield, so that his collection would be as comprehensive as possible. When photographs from his collection were published, whether printed by Brady or adapted as engravings in publications, they were credited "Photograph by Brady," although they were actually the work of many people.

In 1862, Brady shocked America by displaying his photographs of battlefield corpses from Antietam, posting a sign on the door of his New York gallery that read, "The Dead of Antietam." This exhibition marked the first time most people witnessed the carnage of war. The New York Times said that Brady had brought "home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war."

After the Civil War, Brady found that war-weary Americans were no longer interested in purchasing photographs of the recent bloody conflict. Having risked his fortune on his Civil War enterprise, Brady lost the gamble and fell into bankruptcy. His negatives were neglected until 1875, when Congress purchased the entire archive for $25,000. Brady's debts swallowed the entire sum. He died in 1896, penniless and unappreciated. In his final years, Brady said, "No one will ever know what I went through to secure those negatives. The world can never appreciate it. It changed the whole course of my life."

Despite his financial failure, Mathew Brady had a great and lasting effect on the art of photography. His war scenes demonstrated that photographs could be more than posed portraits, and his efforts represent the first instance of the comprehensive photo-documentation of a war."

There is a wealth of photographs in public domain from the Civil War available from The Library of Congress.

The ruins of Galligo Mills, at end of Civil War.

Chan Chao

"Chan Chao's family left Burma for the United States when he was 12 years old. Eighteen years later Chao returned to Burma with the intention of rediscovering and reconnecting with the culture and people he had left years before. Twice denied a visa by the Burmese government, Chao eventually made his way to the Thai-Burmese border where students had established several camps to launch guerrilla attacks against the military regime that controlled Burma with the goal of restoring democracy to the country. With the knowledge that Burma's military junta is one of the world's worst human rights violators, Chao's portraits are remarkable for the sense of calm and tenderness that he draws out of each of his subjects. Each portrait is made from an intimate distance, generously placing each subject in the center of the frame surrounded by the soft focus of the lush jungle beyond. In many of his portraits the subjects hold simple objects: a sickle, a saw, a large piece of fruit, a live chicken. These simple objects provide an elegant solution to the problem of portraiture where individuals are often unsure of what to do with their hands, and in that uncertainty convey stiff and formal poses. But the objects are also disarming because they signal the activities of a simple agrarian life, not one of armed resistance. This contradiction plays heavily into the power that each image conveys, because each person that Chao photographs displays a remarkable range of honesty and emotion that seems to long for a return to the simple pleasures of family, work, and relaxation --not another night of firing rockets or setting land mines."

Photograph by Chan Chao