The right place at the right time - it takes planning and energy.

Today I saw smoke in the sky over the Las Vegas Strip. I had no idea what it was. There is so much construction, I thought it was a construction site. I went hunting.

As i got closer, I could see it was a large hotel - casino but there was no direct access. The police had cleared and blocked the Las Vegas BLVD.

I-15 runs parellel to the strip. It presents on unobstructed view of the hotels. I waited through the heavy traffic and exited on I-15. As soon as I turned I looked for a shoulder to pull off, rolled down the window and began to shoot. moved a little to get a better view.

I was the first to pull off, but not the last. 15 cars had pulled off behind me.

Being at the right place at the right time takes a lot of hard work and thought. It tkaes willingness to do what most people won't. You make luck - it doesn't just happen.

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To be at the right place at the righ time, you have tobe at the right place a the wrong time so many times. How many times? I don't know. Once you find a scene, a place, a face you know you need to shoot, do it a hundred times. That one "perfect" shot will seem effortless to the rest of the world. Only you will know how much effort it took.

When you see a photo of a mountain that takes your breath away, you will know how much it took to make the miracle happen.

Respect your work and others. It takess persistence and that takes dedication and the willing ness tobe alone and lonely, cold and hot, restless and energetic. Just do it!

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Let me claify my statemnt "Photoshop doesn't do anything with NEF files or RAW files. Of course, you can edit them in many fantastic ways. Photoshop saves the files in its own or a selected format and does NOT save over the original file. It leaves the RAW file "as is" and therefore the photographer always has an "original."

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The history of photography began with the notion of an aid for artists. It was originally designed to help artists draw accurate and to help those who were challenged in drawing. Only after the early explorers of photography learned to project images on a surface did it occur to them that the image could be captured.

I am currently reading "Yhe History of Photography" by Beaumont Newhall. The first few pages explore the bginnings of what has turned in to an art form. It began as an aid to creating reality. For the photo-artist, it has turned in to a way of expressing our illusions.

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Photoshop doesn't do anything with the NEF files or any other RAW files - it can't save them - ACDC will save as NEF but not Photoshop - you bring the NEF in with the raw filter and do as many adjustments as you can in that - using jpegs complete eliminates any use raw would have - anyway, when you are finished in Photoshop - save it as a PSD file or a tiff with layers. And BTW - layers, layers, layers - if you do all your adjustments in layers and flatten as the final step - you have the PSD file with all your work in layers and then the tiff as a flattening file ready for printing - except for the final sharpening.

With PS, I save in 16bit with all layers which can make for a very large file but it's worth it.

Here's another little trick - you can duplicate a layer - use emboss on the top layer and then select overlay - depending on heavily embossed the 2nd layer is, the image will come out sharpened - without the unsharp mask as a permanent change on the base file - plus you can erase any edges on the 2nd layer if they see too sharp.

The reason you use layers for curves, levels and all the rest is so that the base image is disturbed as little as possible. An image is just made of pixels and if you affect one, you affect those around it so by doing all your adjustments in layers, and then flattening, you have a record of what you have done and a file that has as much clarity as when you started.

It is beyond me why anyone questions the use of PS - it is a darkroom in a pen or mouse - it will teach you so much about the next time you shoot and it will end up making you better images and learning more about what you want to do the next time.

For instance, while I like the grad filter effect, I'd rather use a grad filter to begin with - start with the best and improve on it - with JPEG, you've lost a lot of the bits you started with and an image that is compressed.

Now, if you're a wedding photographer, that's a whole different ball game - who would have time to edit 300 shots - but for a flower or a sunset - raw gives me so much to work with and in 16 bit which makes any changes that much less noticeable.

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Some tricks and tips for Photoshop:

I read an article a little while ago about the difference between shooting jpegs and raw and I think it has some bearing on the use of Photoshop.

That is - what goes in has more to do with what comes out than anything. Photoshop can do a lot and make some lousy shots pretty good, but I think the better you understand light and exposure, the better images will turn out.

There are literally thousands of things Photoshop will do. It's ability to selectively lighten dark areas while leaving light areas as is, is just amazing. However, if there is no detail in the shadow, all you end up with is sometimes and spots of shadow.

There used to be a wonderful show on PBS. Three people would play with PS and teach different techniques. Today, I read PCPhoto magazine. The magazines have some wonderful tips and tricks that I've learned.

For instance, did you know if you have an underexposed shot that putting a 2nd layer on it and selecting screen will change the exposure by 2 f-stops. You can then adjust the opacity of the layer so the right amount of lighting is achieved.

Conversely, if you have an over exposed image, that putting another layer on top and selecting multiply for the layer will darken the image by 2 f-stops. You can try this with part of an image. If you cut and paste a sky, for instance right back on top and select multiply, it will give you rich detail that might never be noticed.

If you chose only part of the image, such as the sky, it is like using a graduated filter - just make sure you feather the selection before you paste it back so the effect is gradual.

Most importantly, you have to use the program as much as possible so you begin to learn where all the tools do and what they do.

For all I have learned, I feel I can barely scratch the surface.tips.

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This is just a late evening ramble - took me many words to get where I wanted - so it just might be a waste of time reading them.

Is anyone listening and if not, why am I talking. Writing is talking with no sound. I'm sit across from you and talk and I have the floor without pause to go and and say what i feel. Let's say I want tot talk about the last photos I've taken and tell you they are all excuses for why i am not doing any real photography.

The rose is most certainly deserves the attention and yet, I'd rather be out to see the sunset over water, over mountains, over trees and feel the cool wind on my face or would I?

I think you know what you want to do by looking at what you're doing and I am not doing that. There was a time - a few months ago when I could walk out to the car, look up and know exactly where to go or to just turn around and go back inside as if the only reason to be outside was to find a wonderful photograph.

But life's more than that. When i look back at the many treks i took through Sawhill and along the foothills or up Mount Sanitas as the moon set, I forget about the days i didn't go. I forget about the colds and flu and the headaches and the tiredness that pushed me around or the computer that wouldn't work and I was too possessed with the possibility of it not working to even consider leaving it as if it were a child suffering from some unknown disease. I wouldn't leave it as if it were the most valuable thing on Earth because it held all my photographs from yesterday and the day before. Those became more valuable than the one I was about to take and I lost them anyway and I lost the moment.

And why I am writing about this today is that all those heavy little pieces fell on me today, a cold and sore throat and tiredness and then a computer that won't do what i want and I have no choice but to replace it.

A computer is not a piece of paper or a storage bin and there are no photographs in it. What there are is 1s and 0s and those 1s and 0s combine to make designs and colors I call photographs and they can all become 1s and 0s and that's it in the blink of an eye. It's like a storm or the fire that rages through California. One moment, all you know is there and the next it isn't.

So, I had this day and as I watched the news tonight, I saw what life is about for those who were in the fire and I feel very small and very silly that i take my life so seriously.

One of my disks went down - went off and won't come on and there is so much on it and I can't remember if anything unique is on it and my life hasn't changed because everything is on two disks - well, almost everything and yet, my house stands, the water runs and the bed is comfortable. The sky is not filled with fire and smoke and a night of quiet sleep in a familiar place awaits me.

So, I watch a woman in mask sift through what was once very dear to her and I see her holding back her tears. I am still only half thankful for what i have.

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Before you start reading this rambling - just remember when I say you, I am really saying I - as in do I ever but I started writing this in you so it is going to stay that way. I came back to say this so you'd know this is a rant to me. I forget almost everything I am about to say from time to time.

I'd like to tell you I know secrets but I don't. They are hidden away and out in the open for everyone to see. So - first - how many of you always (not sometimes) use a lens hood. If you don't, you could be losing 25% of the clarity of your image. How many of you use a tripod when ever possible or is it just too much trouble. How many of you use a cable release and how many of you keep going to the same places a hundred times or maybe a thousand until you know where every tree is an every angle the sun comes up and use every lens you have until you can imagine without looking through it what you will see.

Photography is not so much what you know, it's how you use it and if you use it. It's a lot of hard work and getting up and going out when everyone else is asleep. The light changes an hour after it's up. It changes before it's up and in 5 minutes and fifteen minutes and are you there.

For 6 or 7 years I got every morning before the sun came up and went out. I'd get in my car with growing bag of equipment and look at the sky and decide right then and there where I'd go. Boulder Colorado makes that hard because it offers so much and indecision is a killer because if I don't my butt going, I won't end up anywhere.

I wasn't right all the time either. But as i went, i began to learn where I wanted to be when the moon set was at sunrise and almost full. I remembered when the leaves changed and when the air was still the reflections I'd get and i shot so damned much I just had to learn how to use the camera.

So, about the equipment and the hood and all that - it is vitally important to the shot and so is the camera and all its settings but like a piano player we have to know it so well, what we do becomes instinct (I finally changed from you to we). So, when I began to shoot seriously, I bought a Nikon F100 and set it manual except when I was trying get Canada Geese taking off and learned to see light as the camera did. I didn't always like what the camera saw, but what could I do because the camera certainly wasn't going to make any changes in for me and the film was going to limited in it's capacity unlike the human eye, so in spite of all my moaning and groaning, I had to learn.

One day, I sat in my back room and threw away 9,000 slides - and in film terms that's a lot of slides - a lot of really lousy photos that I spent a lot of money on. But when you're in love with what you're doing and you've got the money (or credit card) and think you are after something non one else can have, it's so much easier.

And that's what i was - in love. I bought and read every camera magazine and every last one had something in it that i could use. A little tidbit that made it possible for me to see differently than I had the day before. I read an article about lens hoods and after that I had one on every lens all the time - not just pat of the time - all of the time and I won't buy a camera or a lens that i can't put one on. I bought a tripod because some pro said it was the one thing that would improve my photography the most.

Now, I had this idea of shooting that involved holding a camera to my eye and clicking away like the photographers in movies - click, click, click but once i got a tripod, I slowed down. I had to and then I felt naked and unstable without it. Guess what?! They were right. I think it is is because I slowed down and because i didn't have to hold anything and then there was the cable release so I didn't touch the camera and I began to see tilted horizons because now, I looked through a window.

The Nikon F100 is a wonderful camera and it began to feel like a musical instrument in my hand. Like a musician, i played color instead of notes and I hardly had to look to see where my fingers went to change a setting. That's when I began to notice light. The camera became transparent and all i saw was light and I began to figure out that the light had to be soft and even. I threw away all my flowers that had blown out noon light in them and began to hide the flowers from the sun until the sun was soft and kind to the flowers and the detail in the petals came out.

I began to learn the rhythms of the world around me and I anticipated where the moon would be and when it would be full. I began to remember and one night I had this thought about finding a very beautiful thing each day and bringing it home.

One afternoon, I shot at irises and went through almost 500 exposures. I spilled water on the table and when I was done, I had learned more about irises than I ever expected to know. I had never seen the designs and lines and dimensions of the iris and I fell in love with them just as I had fallen in love with roses and the moon and reflections.

So, if I can say anything, it isn't about the equipment although you know it is. What I can say and recommend is to fall in love everyday. I see most of you do, I see it in your images as if I was looking through your eyes and I see a new vision.

With love, I am persistent and excited and determined. I am willing to get up and put layers and layers on when it is cold enough to make me shiver and I am determined enough to be alone and lonely while I wait for the colors of a sunrise or a warm light on a rose. I am willing to carry my tripod up steep slopes and make sure I don't forget the hoods or filters or cables. Yet, there have been times i was so focused on bring everything, I forgot the one thing that made it all go - film. So, after watching a blue heron stand silently only 20 feet from me with 12 dead batteries and all the film i needed, I determined to go through a check list before I went out.

I think it did me some good to just watch although that would have been one great shot - you'll have to trust me on that.

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I just might be able to write a review of the Canon XTi no one would expect. In part, because I used it for almost 10 months on a daily basis; in part because I watched it topple to a hard cement surface as my tripod collapsed and nothing more than a small scratch happened and in part, because it was stolen about a month and a half ago and I am wondering what to do. Not only did I lose the XTi, but also an XT and three lenses, that same tripod, head, cable release, lens hood and just about everything else I had used in those wonderful moments when I was immersed in seeing.

So, the camera is gone. Oh, I have one in a box I haven't opened but I have a suspicion Canon is about to release a new one - perhaps the 450 or 500 with God knows what improvements.

The XTi is a very fine camera though, like the XT, is just a little too small to feel like a precision tool that the Nikon F100 did. The F100 was like playing a musical instrument and because it was film, I had no way to look at what I had just shot while I missed another cloud or color in the clouds that had just popped up. I got used to ignoring that big, wonderful screen on the back of the camera so I could see with my failing eyesight what I had shot.

At the heart of it all, the camera made great photographs. Oh I know, it's the photographer and you may or may not think I made great photos, but the camera gave me the opportunity to do it.

The images made great prints, a few of which hang in my house, not to honor me but to remind me of those wonderful walks at Sawhill Ponds or the incredible lines of an iris.

The images it produced were striking in detail and clarity and the texture of the photos was almost liquid. What was missing from the camera was made up for by experience and practice. Yes, I'd have loved spot metering and I'd have liked it to be a little larger so it fit in my hand more comfortably and I'd have liked two control wheels, rather than one.

It wasn't an F100, but it was also lighter and easier to carry and with a 2 gigabyte CF card and a fully charged battery, I could shoot for two or three hours without filling the two cards i carried or running out of power. Coupled with the two image stabilized lenses I had, I never enjoyed the collection of cameras and lenses so much.

For those of you who don't think a sensor cleaning system works, I will say, i never once saw any dark blobs (which indicate dust) in even one photograph. While I would tell anyone to turn the camera off and hold it down when changing lenses, i was often too excited to remember that rule. Yet, the sensor was never in need of manual cleaning or even a puff of air.

When I look back 10 years to the Olympus D600L I used for over 15,000 images as i learned light and composition to what has happened now, it seems like a miracle.

I also have a Nikon D40x that I am trying out. One of the Photo magazines rated the XT and 40x buys of the year and I'd have to agree,

But just having a good tool doesn't mean you are going to take a good photo. Like any other form of art, the artist has to have some sort of intention when shooting and the various features of the camera become transparent in actual use. But, this is a time when I have a camera from the two largest sellers of cameras and if only I could have what they both offer in one camera.

The 40x, like many of Nikon's cameras obscures some of the simplest functions in menus - the Rebel XTi has dedicated buttons. With digital, you don't change film, you change settings as the kind of light and the subject change and having those controls a push button away is so much easier than scrolling through different menus.

I recommend the Rebel XTi highly and at the prices the XT is selling for, I don't think anyone could go wrong with either. In fact, the 40x is a great little machine.

My problem is that I have a few Nikon lenses and while not made for digital are wonderful with the 40x. With a tele extender and my 500mm lens with a silent focusing motor, I have a 1000mm lens that is fairly fast and focuses automatically. Not bad and for a little less than $1,000, I get that and two light lenses and a carrying bag. The lenses are small and light so all I need is a 10mm lens to shoot ultra wide angle shots which is one of my favorite things to do.

Look, I know you can read richly documented reviews at dpreview.com and see all the comparisons - and the pros and cons.

We live in an age of electronic miracles and all of these fill the bill.

My purpose in writing this was to sift through my thought and get to a point where I knew what direction to take. I plan to look at the new cameras coming in November - particularly the Nikon D3.

I also plan to look at what Canon has to offer next. I've been disappointed in Nikon for lagging behind, but with the D3 and D300, they caught up. Well, sort of because now Canon is offering a 21mp full frame camera.

That's like having medium format in a 35 mm body but, $8,000 is a lot to spend. Yet, in this world of ever changing and ever improving toys, that 21mp is very inviting.

Yet, with the 10s of thousands of images I've shot, I still find the images I shot with Fuji Provia, the F1000 (and get this) a Tamron 28-200 lens that cost less than $300 ten years ago are still the best I've every taken.

Ansel Adams didn't have all the tools that meant instant results as we have. He could not compare one shot to the next and often he hiked with perhaps three or four glass plates and waited months to see the results.

It used to be, the photographer bought a camera. It was just the box. It was the film and the lenses that made the difference and the lenses still do. But now, the camera is also the film and all of the choices are wonderful. So, go out and buy an XTi - you won't regret it. Get the 17-85 IS lens with it and almost anything you want to shoot will be possible.

Since I can't get the new cameras for a month, I still have weeks of confusion and decision making to go through. I have to worry about spending the money. But, when I think that someone just bought 11 images from me from what they saw on my web site, I know that money isn't the issue. For me, the 400 was a wonderful tool and I wish it hadn't been stolen. But now, the thought of making images that I can fill a wall with - that I can have all the features I want and less money in the short run, I do know what direction I'll go.

I'd love to hear what others have experienced with the D200, and the 16mp Canon - I want to know how large the prints you've made are and what do they look like - are they smooth and real enough to walk in to.

What I thought was a review is more a meander. I remember that what was most wonderful about photography is how I see the world now and what see that I never noticed.

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