Roanoke River Lighthouse Hey Everyone! Hope your week is going well! This week I want to talk about a photo project I have in mind for 2024. I think that photography projects are great! They tend to fill out the times when we are not traveling taking photos with our families or friends. But what to take photo's of ?  My answer is things that interest you. A few years ago I did a photo project on visiting all of the state parks in North Carolina. I printed a map with all of the parks on them and marked them off as I visited them. It was quite the challenge because it was the year Covid raised its ugly head and things were closed for quite a while but I did get them all in and made a cool book of all the state parks. This year I wanted a project that would take me on day trips that I could grab my wife and dog and take off for a nice trip. Or if my wife was busy I could just take off on a little exploration photography trip. But what to take photo's of? Living in eastern North Carolina I could have chosen a number of things to photograph. Tobacco Barns has always been interesting to me. They are a dying thing as they don't use the old tobacco barns and they are rotting and falling down. Or since I live in the Bible belt maybe Churches of eastern NC. There are some really old and historic ones that would make great photographs. Maybe light houses but there is only 7 here in NC so a yearly project might not be the way to go but a cool project none the less.  So there are many choices to choose from. I'm sure you can think of lots of them yourself. Maybe the fall of the small family farm and the rise of solar panel farms popping up everywhere.  But that would be more of a journalistic Photography and you would really have to be ingrained in the farm community like the son or daughter of a farmer.  I think that a good project is one that you are familiar with. Like the State parks I had visited almost all of them before but not in one year.

I have lived in eastern North Carolina all my life except for my time in the military. I went to high school in a small eastern town and have traveled all over eastern NC.  So my project for 2024 is to visit and photograph the small towns in eastern NC. Now there are lots of towns but I grew up only a block away from the Albemarle sound. So small towns with water connected to them in some sort or way. But I didn't want it to become a beach project full of touristy shots of sandy beaches and piers so ocean beach towns are out. I want small towns that maybe are on a lake or a river or sound that in the early days of the towns existence these waterways was the only mode of transportation or commerce. There are quite a few of these and my family tree ,which winds through the beginning of our country here in eastern NC. So I may explore that more also. My family  came into the states in the late 1600's so right at the beginning of the colonization of the states from England. So I am very interested in the history of these small towns and the region .  When I think of the project I think of the book that I will eventually make.  A two page spread with a town and a small explanation or write up on each town.  I want to tell the story of the town in photo's.  Much like a brochure would if you were promoting the town. I think traveling to all these small towns and spending the day walking the streets and visiting the coffee shops and restaurants and diners of these small towns would be a fantastic way to spend maybe a day a week .  I have a list started with 16 towns on it but I'm sure as I get out and about many more will come .  Do you have any photo projects?  You should. Photo projects are a great Barker House Light House way to expand your photography skills and are just fun to do.  If you don't know what to shoot a photography project will solve that problem. Now that I have announced this project I have to complete it. Thats the hard part but I'm looking forward to exploring small towns near me.  Until next week . Get out and Shoot!

Hey Y'all ! Hope you're having a great week. This week I want to talk about a recent photowalk I did in Washington NC. Not Washington DC. LOL This is a little town population about 10000 and is located in eastern North Carolina in Beaufort County. It is the county seat and is located at the intersection of the Tar River and the Pamlico River and then flows into the Pamlico Sound. It is known to most North Carolinians as "Little Washington" not to get it confused with Washington DC. Little Washington is home to one of the largest historical districts featuring Victorian era homes and ante-bellum homes. Among some of its famous former residents are  journalist Charles Kuralt and film producer Cecil B. DeMille. All of this information I have pulled off of the City of Washington web page. What I can tell you from experience is that being located on the water there are all kind of water activities from fishing, kayaking, sailboarding , and sailing. Also outdoor recreation in hunting. The town has been transformed into a town trying to attract tourist and the downtown is full of shops and restaurants .  Let me tell you about my trip.

I have been cooped up in the house due to weather being cold and also rainy from the holidays last year and I needed to get out. This town is on the list of my photography project "Small towns in Eastern NC" so this was a good preliminary visit. I have been here before but it has been years and I didn't remember much. So me and my wife got in the car and headed about an hour or so north to visit this little town. We parked in the harbor district by the docks and started walking. The streets have been lined with brick but not red brick like you see everywhere these were tan bricks and look very nice. We headed toward main street and noticed that there are crab statues all painted up in various places in town. Kind of a town mascot I guess my county does the same thing with pigs and I have seen it done with bears also in another town Newbern. There is an under ground railroad museum that was closed when we went by but it's housed in a rail car in a pretty yard with a big mural on a wall.  We then started walking through the town at all the quant shops and older buildings. Being in the bible belt there were a few churches but one stood out the Saint Peters Episcopal church established in 1822. Where there was the church and old grave yard with revolutionary era graves there. We had a wonderful time walking the streets and taking photos. There is a North Carolina Estuarium there that is a learning center that we wanted to visit but it was closed also. For lunch we ate hot dogs from Bills Hotdog stand. It one of those local places that have been there since 1928 and is a staple of the community. So we got the specials two  hotdogs all the way chips and drink for 6 dollars and some change. They were pretty good. We jumped in our car and investigated some more stuff before we headed to our next destination which was "Goose Creek State Park" only 20 minutes away. After a short visit there we headed back home. I really enjoyed my trip to Little Washington and can't wait to go back in the spring. 

Until next week get out and explore and shoot!

Hey Everyone! How's your week going? Mine? Fantastic! At the time of writing this blog it is a week before Thanksgiving and I am already in the holiday mood! Too early for my brain but just right for my heart. This week I want to talk about shooting in Super 35mm mode or Crop mode as it may be referred too, I think Nikon calls it DX mode. What is Super 35mm mode? Basically its making your full frame sensor shoot like a crop sensor. Your camera crops the shot only using the middle of the sensor down to the APSC crop sensor size. Now why would you ever want to do this? Well I can think of a couple of reasons why.

If you shoot Sony like I do the crop sensor and the full frame cameras have the same lens mount. Which means you can swap back and forth lenses between each type of camera. Now why would you want to do that? One reason is just for practicality .  Instead of buying two lenses  one for each camera you only buy one that can be used by both. Usually people buy full frame lenses and use on both of their camera body types for the reason that the full frame lens is big enough to cover the crop sensor sensor completely. Full frame lenses are larger and can easily be used on crop sensor camera's but you have to add that 1.5 crop factor. Multiplying by 1.5 will give you the full frame equivalent of the lens on your crop sensor camera. The sensor being smaller its like cropping in on a full frame or zooming in. So a 35mm lens on a crop sensor would be like a 50mm on a full frame.  So now that we have that explanation out of the way back to the why would you need to swap lenses between cameras. I've recently started using a full frame camera again after years of using a crop sensor camera. Now I'm transitioning back over to a full frame camera. I have fantastic lenses for my crop sensor camera especially my long lens. A 70-350mm which is a 105-525mm equivalent lens. Now I don't shoot much past 100mm but if for some reason I need to shoot longer I could use this crop sensor lens on my full frame camera and my camera will know what type of lens is on and automatically switch to Super 35mm or Crop mode giving me that 105-525mm reach. This will save me lots of money on a full frame equivalent to this lens that I won't use too much. So that's a positive of Super 35mm.

Another way to use the Super 35mm or Crop mode is with prime lenses. Let me give you an example. Say I'm out doing street photography and I have a 50mm lens on my full frame camera. I see something a little out of reach that I can't walk to. I can push a button on my camera that I have programed to put my camera in Super 35 mode and it automatically switches into crop mode and my lens is now equivalent to a 75mm without me having to change lenses. When I'm through I can hit the button again and I'm back at 50mm. Very convenient when you're out shooting and not having to change lenses all of the time. Another great advantage of  Super 35mm mode.

So if Super 35mm mode is so great why isn't everyone using it all of the time? Well for one reason most people just don't know about it. Or maybe their camera system doesn't offer it. I'm not sure about other camera systems just Sony but I'm sure they have something similar. The biggest disadvantage to shooting a full frame camera in crop mode or Super 35mm mode is that when you crop into a full frame sensor you lose megapixels. 1.5 times the megapixels to be exact.  That can be a lot. If you have a 24 megapixel camera and you use crop mode its down to 10 megapixel which is small compared to today's standards. But if you have a larger megapixel like say a 60 megapixel camera your still shooting a 37 megapixels. So depending on what kind of camera you have I really don't think that this is such a disadvantage as smaller sensor camera's are.

Knowing what your camera can and can't do can really impact your photography and your wallet .  You may not need to buy that new equipment or gear to do what you need to do or you might just need to read the manual of your camera.  Hopefully I have brought something new into your photography. Until next week get out and shoot!