Jim Larson Photography

Another sunny day of skiing at Bogus Basin brings this “odd” photo. What is there to do while riding alone on a chair lift but to take pictures.

I grabbed onto the back of the chair and leaned out as far as I dared to grab this shot between my ski boots.

Canon PowerShot S-500 (pocket camera), lens 7.4mm @ f7.1, 1/200, ISO 50.

This weekend was a great time to be at the nearby Bogus Basin ski resort. The sky was quite blue, the snow conditions were nice enough that it made everyone look good as they skied down the mountain.

I referred to this images as a sunset. Actually, it was another 3 hours before the sun would be going down, but only a fraction of that time before it set behind the mountain.

I really like back lit ski shots. It makes for a good spray of the snow as this skier carves his turns.  I also like the silhouette it makes of the subject.

The camera was set to an automatic mode and I pointed it in the general direction of what I wanted to shoot. The direct sun created some interesting highlights as it bounced around between the lens elements.

When I later cropped the image I took into account the rule of thirds for composition. The horizon is about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom. The skier is about 1/3 of the way from the right of the image. The sun was opposite from the main subject to balance the composition.

Canon PowerShot S-500 (pocket camera), lens 7.4mm @ f7.1, 1/800, ISO 50.

My wife is a very talented musician, and I also have an interest in musical things. One day we were watching a performance of a group of kids playing their marimbas for a crowd of people. When they were finished with their performance they took their instruments off the stage and set them randomly together in preparation of loading them in their cars.

I took the opportunity of shooting the instruments since, of course, I had my camera with me. Whenever we are at special events or out of the ordinary locations I try to have a camera handy just for cases like this.

There is really nothing spectacular about the shot, but I grabbed the image because it was something that I don’t see very often.

Canon 20D, Canon 24-105 f4 L IS at 102mm, 1/160 at f5.6, ISO 100

A few months ago we were invited out to some very good friends of ours for lunch. They live on a small farm and I found out that they had some fairly young baby goats. Baby animals are always cute, so I loaded up the camera with the 70-200mm zoom so I could get close to them optically.

What I didn’t realize until I started shooting is that baby goats do not stand in one place for very long. By the time I zeroed in on one and was ready to take the shot, it was off bouncing around with one if its siblings.

I did get a few good shots, this one being one of my favorites. It is not your standard face shot, but I liked the angle. I also shot with a fairly large aperture (f4) on the lens, so I was able to keep the background rather fuzzy to keep it from drawing attention away from the subject.

Next time you hear about some baby animals in the neighborhood, grab your camera and see what you can come up with.

Canon 20D, Canon 70-200 f2.8 L IS at 200mm, 1/1600 at f4, ISO 100

During our last sailing adventure in the San Juan Islands we were blessed with some fairly clear skies. This particular evening we were sitting at anchor in Echo Bay on an island named Sucia. As the last rays of sun left the peak of Mt. Baker a large sailing yacht entered the bay to join the rest of the of the boats anchored there.

I used my telephoto lens zoomed at its maximum focal length to frame the image of the mountain and the boat. Several shots were taken, but this one was my favorite of the evening.

Canon 20D, Canon 70-200 f2.8 L IS at 200mm, 1/640 at f4, ISO 100

The image for today was taken on a very calm morning at Stewart Island in the San Juan Islands. Our sailing yacht was resting at anchor and the surface of the water in the harbor was like glass.

I converted this image to black and white and I liked the results.

Canon 20D, Canon 24-70 f2.8 L at 34mm, 1/125 at f5.6, ISO 100

Here is Alle’s January calendar shot. It was taken when she was less than a year old. She had quite a hairdo at this young age.

I used a technique called vignetting to fade out the edges into pure white to add some softness to the picture.  There are many good tutorials on how to do this technique.  Search for “vignetting in photoshop” (or whatever editing tool you use) in Google search and find out how easy it is.

Have you picked a subject to use for your 2009 calendar? If so, start looking for photos that relate to a particular month such as flowers in the Spring, or pumpkins in October.

Alle, our Bichon Maltese dog gets to be the subject of calendar shots.  We’ve been doing this for the past 6 or 7 years and she always comes through with some very cute poses.

This particular image is the cover for the 2008 version.  Every month I will post the shot of the month from her calendar.  Hope you enjoy them.

There are many companies that offer services for uploading photos and printing professional looking calendars.  mpix.com is the one I’ve been using the last 2 years and they do a great job.  Pick a subject and create your own personal calendar.

Canon 20D, Canon 70-200 f2.8 L IS at 105mm, 1/1000 at f4, ISO 100