I had an excuse to get out to Rockport yesterday I had a wedding consult request for Vistaphotography for a June wedding on the headlands of the Rockport harbor and I decided to get up there

Vistaphotography at Rockport

veeery early and try to shoot the sunrise.  I got to bed at midnight and somehow got myself back up at 4:30ish to arrive at Rockport just after sunrise and as you can see here the sun had already cleared the horizon.  I was lucky because I was in a hurry so I didn’t put the filter adapter on the camera and I didn’t run with the ND grad filters to lesson the impact of shooting into the sun.

Even if I had the grad filters on the camera lens, they work best if the horizon is straight which is not the case with Motif #1 in the view. What saved me this morning was that there were just enough clouds to diffuse the rising sun which also led to the intense cloud colors.  You don’t have long to catch scenes like this and I was lucky this day. Normally you have to be in place and waiting for it with a plan of how you’re going to shoot it.

I knew from previous trips that I wanted to be somewhere at the end of the harbor but I had to make a decision and just go with it. I don’t think I made too bad of a choice but I bet I could do better.

Vistaphotography

This weekend has for almost 60 years been the home coming event for Rockport and in recent years they have tried to grow it into something very special. So the weekend prior to Memorial day weekend they have this two day party in the streets and they do the town up right.

I walked up Bear Skin Neck rd as the only traveler and I was suddenly pulled to the right by an heavenly smell of fresh brewed coffee and some sort of pastry. In front of me was Helmut’s Strudel and I was unhappy as it was not quite 6AM so I walked past to the neck and I set up for some shots of the harbor from the point.  If I had more room I would post the sun dog that appeared in the clouds but here is a link to my gallery. Later this morning while I walked around the town I   listened to some of the great musicians that had taken up positions in front of several stores in iconic Rockport’s art district.

This is a short clip of the live jazz band on the street they are called “Jazz in the Air” and they were very good.   Bob Sabourin of Jazz in the Air can be found at Jazz in the air.com or email him at jazzintheair@hotmail.com.

I also found a Irish singer with Celtic band back in front of Helmut’s Strudel They were as good as anything I’d ever heard on TV or in my travels overseas. If you would like to contact the Celtic singer his name is Michael O’Leary and can be reached at celtsinger@gmail.com.

This is it for now I hope you enjoy this quick trip around Rockport Ma during their Motif #1 days.
See more of my Art work at Vistaphotography Art work
And for Wedding or Event work visit me at Vistaphotography.com

Jeff Folger
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Epson scanner

Well I just did my first day with the V600 scanner from Epson and I was worried a little bit in the beginning…

The last time I bought a scanner and tried to scan a picture it was horrible.

Click the picture to see the full review

Jeff

I first purchased a HP flatbed scanner in “02″ and although it was supposed to do negatives I was very disappointed and gave up bringing my film negatives into the digital light.

I continued to use this scanner until last week when I realized that I needed the performance that my 8yr old scanner couldn’t provide any more. (The manual talks about installing under Windows “ME”!!! If that gives you an idea of how old it was…

Anyway I read reviews and purchased the Epson Perfection V600 at B&H imaging. Since I like my toys… I mean tools to multi-task it had to do negatives as well as normal flat bed scanning.

I found that the document scanning is plenty fast enough and I had a preview in 5+ second and it scanned the B&H receipt and spit out a PDF to me in less than 8 seconds.

Color negatives are not nearly as fast but I don’t have a library of thousands either so I’m not too worried.  I set it to film and hit preview and I was overjoyed by the preview thumbnails (remembering what I had seven years ago) and now I had in @12 seconds 8 thumbnails that I could  get a pretty good idea if I wanted to even scan that negative or just skip it.

I had 8 images  in two strips and it took 25 seconds to preview them and I then scanned them at 24bit and 1200DPI which produces a 1659x 1051 jpg image and weighs in a 1MB each (or a little under). The whole scan process took 16 minutes and I find I can work on other computer items (like this article or get a cup of coffee) and the overhead wasn’t even noticeable as to computer responsiveness.

I examined the resulting files and rescanned one picture at 48 bit color depth and 32DPI and the single file took @4 minutes to scan and resulted in a 4382x2794px file and 6.16MB in weight (how much space it takes up).  It will depend on the image how good your results are.. I found even with grain reduction on and Digital Ice and color restoration the image wasn’t any good to me except as a memory of 30 yrs ago… (Oh yes, I’ve become a much better New England photographer in the last 30+ yrs…)

Well at $227.00, I judge this scanner to be well worth your looking over.  Whether you are a pro or a home hobbyist, I think it will satisfy all but the most demanding Pro’s out there.  Here is a shot from 1977…  (Hey I was 17…)

Jeff Folger
Vistaphotography
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I started shooting  Bar Mitzvahs (Google it if you aren’t up on them) a few years back and they were an unknown quantity for me.  Why? because I’m not Jewish so I set about to learn from a fellow photographer and friend, Herb Goldberg in Marblehead who does dozens of them a year.

Herb taught me the basics so I wouldn’t make mistakes (at least too many).  This brings me up to current day where I photographed Jessica I had photographed her brother a couple of years before so the family was happy with my work.

To me a Mitzvah isn’t too much different in structure to a wedding and in some ways it’s easier. You shoot the family members all coming together on a joyous occasion (not hard) and then you photograph the boy or girl on the Bima and these shots are almost always the same. I’ve fond a few angles that I don’t usually see and Herb even gave me a compliment by saying I came up with a shot that he had never thought of so he now shoots that one also.

Here are some of the days shots…

Well that’s enough for now please feel free to check out my online gallery of work.

Jeff Folger
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