06-06-06: A couple of photos

[Mike Jackson]

Today is one of those oddball dates on the calendar where all the numbers are the same. Interesting!

It has been quiet here so I thought I'd take the liberty to post a couple of recent photos. Spring has finally come to the mountains and the Aspen leaves are showing their summer colors.



I was able to get up close and personal with this wild Bald Eagle on the South Fork of the Snake River last Sunday.



Sorry if the photos are off topic, but hopefully someone will enjoy them.

Mike Jackson

[Doug Bernhardt]

Beautiful stuff....as usual, but ya gotta tell me, what on earth lens did you use to get that eagle shot!?!!

[Catharine C. Kennedy]

Just gorgious, Mike! I always enjoy seeing your work, signs, photos, how-tos, whatever!
:lol:

[Raymond Chapman]

Great shots Mike. Don't apologize - what you do with a camera is creative art, and almost all of us are interested in that.

[Mike Jackson]

Hi Doug and Raymond,
The leaf was shot using a tripod and a 200-400 VR lense, plus a 1.4 teleconverter. The lense is new and should allow me to get some great new shots.

The eagle was taken last week using a 80-400 VR (vibration reduction) lense. I've had that one for about 8 months. I took it with me the other day because of its relative small size, at least compared to the total zoom factor. The bird was up on a bank when we floated near it. Instead of flying off, it dropped down and walked away. I followed it on foot and got quite a few nice shots. As it turned out, the eagle had an injured wing and couldn't fly. That photo is a cropped in section of a hand held shot I took of basically only the head and beak. All that detail is lost when I made a jpg of the full head, so I wanted to show it zoomed in.



I managed to capture the bald eagle on that island, then we called 911. They patched us through to the Idaho Fish and Game and a ranger met us at the take out to move him to a bird recovery center nearby. I don't think he will ever fly again, but he will be safe and well fed. The ranger said they had been looking for him for a few days.

People say you can get similar shots in Homer, AK at certain times of the year, but I don't know when I would ever get up there. Around here, they usually fly as soon as you turn off the truck or about the time you get the tripod set up.

Mike Jackson

[Catharine C. Kennedy]

Talk about magnetic personalities...!
Congrats. on the rescue, as well!

[Raymond Chapman]

Wow...what a great shot. A once in a lifetime experience.

Nice hat, too, Mike.

[Mike Jackson]

Thanks Raymond,
That hat would look even better with a bald eagle feather in it.

Mike

[Raymond Chapman]

So, what's the problem? You had a whole bunch of feathers right there under your nose.

[Doug Bernhardt]

Glad to hear the little feller will make it and explains the close up.....without the story I had imagined a nice 4000mm lens...and Ray has it right....you're beginning to look like Indiana Jones....just shorter.

[Mike Jackson]

We had a storm brewing most of the afternoon. I headed out with the camera and lenses in hopes of catching some dramatic cloud formations. I saw lightning striking in one area of the valley so I headed somewhere to get some sort of subject matter in the shot. I captured two with the bolts, but this one is the most dramatic.

Mike Jackson

[Raymond Chapman]

It's da-ja-vu all over again. I'm beginning to see the same passion for photography in you that I saw 25 years ago for signs. And that's a good thing. Keep pulling the trigger. And now it's cheaper than fifty cents.

Doug, as soon as I saw that hat I thought of Indiana Jones.

[Doug Bernhardt]

Mike sent me a photos a week or so back and I'll say the same thing in public...some of them are as good as anything by some of the top notch pros especially in wildlife and nature. Get him to show you the trout and Osprey shot!

[Catharine C. Kennedy]

Okay- May we please see the trout & osprey photos? :lol:

[Raymond Chapman]

OK Mike, Doug let the cat out of the bag...so, show us the pictures already!

[Ron Berlier]

Hi Mike, as usual your photos are just fabulous and I agree with Doug and Ray! You really seem to have a photographer’s eye.

Please do show us some more of your work .... I see a second career in your future.

[Mike Jackson]

Hi Ron and Doug,
I have quite a few of the osprey with trout, but I think this is one of the photos Doug was talking about.

I just checked the EXIF data on the last shot I took and it reads over 23,000. I am sure it is more than that, but at this point I will call it good. That's 23,000 photo on my D200 since the middle of February this year. Back in the film days, I used to kid Raymond that each shot was 50¢, 50¢,50¢..... With the digital camera, shooting in the RAW format, each shot is 15 megs, so it can really fill up a 300 gig hard drive fast. It might still be 50¢, 50¢,50¢, 50¢, 50¢, 50¢.

For anyone interested, I am in the process of signing on with a stock photo agency. I am new to that part of the world, but should learn what they need and want soon. This particular agency is looking for "lifestyles and liesure" shots, vs wildlife, birds and scenery, but it will still allow me to photograph the kids while skateboarding, skiing, snow boarding, and some random fishing photos. So, I guess the new venture has begun and I can illustrate to the IRS that I am actually trying to return some money using the new equipment.

I took thousands of winter photos and have moved into spring and early summer photos now. It is interesting and exciting! The large mammals are having babies now, along with some of the migrating birds and other wildlife. I am waiting for a few osprey nests of eggs to start hatching and get to watch them grow and fledge.



Mike Jackson

[Mike Jackson]

Here's one from about a month ago. For much of the winter, it would have been impossible to get down to the little spring because of the deep snow.

Mike

[Doug Fielder]

Great pics Mike!!! You will never go hungry with talents you possess!

[Catharine C. Kennedy]

Are you set up to sell prints of your work?

[Raymond Chapman]

Just a note here to voice my opinion of Mike and his work (but I'm not saying anything that most of you don't already know):

I've know Mike for over 25 years and I still stand amazed at his talents. He has the unique ability to focus on some subject and learn all that he possibly can...just like a sponge. To say that he is intense would be an understatement. Not only is he very intelligent, he also has that humble attitude that draws people to him. Whatever he chooses to do at the moment will have his full attention and be done expertly and with great enthusiasm.

That same passion is directed towards his family also, as he and Darla raise their boys. It's plainly evident that he loves them and encourages their activities. He gives himself away very freely with both family and those that seek his advice.

It has been an extreme privilege to call him a friend for all these years.

Now, if I were saying this to his face, he would have some joke to tell and make fun of me...but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Several years ago a lot of us stood at the side of a casket and tried to tell someone how much he meant to us. I don't want that to happen again. Those "flowers" should be said to the living, not the dead.

Sorry Mike for the serious post...just something I wanted to say. Now, I've got some MDO to coat out.

[Mike Jackson]

Hi Raymond,
Normally, I would come back with some sort of quip (like...well, you are a Texan and therefore are easily impressed), but I do appreciate your kind words and understand where they are coming from. Like you, I'd have to say that call I got back in early 1986 (edit: really 1982) that invited me to the Boise BarBQue, my first Letterheads meeting, changed (or at least focused) my life. Many of the people I met there have gone on to become long and lasting relationships. This forum is an extension of that experience. In the years following my first meeting, I tried to go to every meeting I knew about and could afford. That's a trait of being obsessive/compulsive, I guess. In the past 12 or so years, my personal interests have had to be split up between the business, family life, and other passions that also needed nurturing. I know much of my experiences have been played out by others. We're all just at different stages at different times.

So, I'd also like to say thanks for a long and fruitful relationship back to Raymond and everyone else that gets a chance to follow this forum. I know some just read and don't post, but we appreciate that, too. I had planned on making it to the Cincinatti meeting this year, but a few things tripped me up towards the last minute. I would have liked to have seen everyone there again. Many people already know it, but Tod Swormstedt has been a quiet backbone of the Letterhead movement since the beginning. He does it without much fanfare and never asks for it. Tod, Signs of the Times Magazine, and the American Sign Museum have helped keep the momentum going strong for roughly 30 years, actually 100 years. And of course, I also have to thank SignCraft for their effort and support, both to the trade and to me personally. They are truly a special group, along with the crew at AMAL (A magazine about Letterheads).

I am happy to share a few photos here. Knowing we set this site up as a place to discuss signs and signmaking, I have refrained from posting them here. Things have been quiet here for the past couple of weeks so I went ahead and did it. Now, I am glad I did. Raymond's heartfelt comments towards me might hopefully cause all of us to take a second and think about telling a few others how much you appreciate them while they are still around to hear it.

Sincerely,
Mike Jackson

[Raymond Chapman]

It was 1982, not 1986, Mike. Old age must be creaping in. Memory is the second thing that goes with old age...I can't remember what's first.

[Mike Jackson]

Catharine,
If you are really interested in a print or two, let me know. I haven't really been trying to push them, but I figured them at $50 for an 8" x 12" glossy print at $50 each. Priority Shipping is $5 on an order and insurance is available.

Last fall, I took a basic web design class at the local education extension offices. That class promted me to spend the time to make this web site:

http://www.goldenstudios.com/colors/

Those all taken last fall and into the first few patches of snow. I have thousands of winter shots and thousands of spring shots that just haven't made their way to a new web site.

Mike

[Doug Bernhardt]

Had to stick my nose in again here, as I appreciate (understand) all the things said and a few acolades are well deserved, and the photos are one thing.... but the photoshop processing here is actually very remarkable.....and I just can't imagine how you manage to get so much done! I do a bit of this, and I gotta add that there is a ton of work, "conceptualizing" and just plain knowledge to produce a picture like the "Rocks and Tetons" photo. At some point I'd love to see the various steps you used to arrive at that shot.. .... a top notch photoshop-ographer to boot. As with the likes of Edward Weston ....the darkroom was the real means of making a great photo into fine art.

[Jim Moser]

AWESOME pictures Mike !

[Mike Jackson]

Hi Doug,
At the expense of sounding like a broken record, you really need to subscribe to http://www.Lynda.com. You mentioned you would like to see me process an image...that's were I learned. There is a section or title called Enhancing Digital Photos with Photoshop CS2 ...and and earlier one when it was CS1. Besides those two, many other titles that deal with the subject on a variety of levels and angles.

I just spent two days in Yellowstone. Everything is lush and green right now. I haven't had time to process any of the photos, but I think I got a dozen or so really nice shots.

Mike

[Doug Bernhardt]

Yes....you do sound like a broken record and yes.... I WILL investigate this. I just bookmarked the page.

[Kelly Thorson]

Okay Doug .......

Do it! They talked me into it and I should have just taken the full year, because I'm going to end up paying for it monthly anyhow.
It is the best money I have spent on learning - Well......other than going to Larry's meet.

I've been really enjoying your photographs Mike. My daughter Jess is just getting into photography and we spent some time on your "Colors" page. Amazing stuff! Keep sharing. And yes, she is doing the Lynda.com Photoshop CS2.

[Mike Jackson]

Here are a few from the weekend in Yellowstone. The two above are actually in Grand Teton National Park on the way to Yellowstone at about 6:30 AM.




Mike