Hey Everyone! Hope you're having a great week. As Photographers either Amateur or Professional we are overwhelmed with ads and videos from camera companies telling us what we should have in our camera kit. I can't blame them because I have given in to those adds and spent lots of money. But did it improve my photography? Not really. All of the fancy gizmos and gadgets haven't really improved my photography at all. They tell you that you need full frame this, and megapixels that, and that you're not a photographer unless you can shoot at 30 frames per second. Now if you're a professional sports photographer or portrait or wildlife photographer that are selling your photographs you might. But the mass majority of us are taking travel or street or just taking photo's of the kids at a soccer match don't need a lot of the camera that the companies are trying to sell you. If you are just posting to facebook or instagram or occasionally printing something for your house you really don't need the fanciest of cameras. Let's go over the specs of what I think 90% of people need in a camera. 

Sensor size- I have had full frame and crop sensor camera's for years. Most of the time I shot with Crop Sensor cameras. Most of the photo's on this website were shot on crop sensor camera's. It is true that the dynamic range of a photo is better with a larger sensor but to the necked eye you can't tell unless you magnify 100% or more and people just don't look at photo's that way. Crop sensor camera's have many advantages first of all they give a field of view that is deeper than full frame. What that means is more of your photo is in focus which most of us want for landscapes or ordinary shots. They are smaller which means that the lenses are smaller and cheaper making them more portable. Great for street or travel. Most people don't need Full Frame Sensor only about 10% of photographers. Full frame is better in low light so if you're a astro photographer a full frame would be better but lots of great photo's have been taken with APSC crop sensor cameras. Crop sensor camera's are cheaper than full frame camera's so they are great on the wallet.

Megapixels. Now you can get camera's up to 100 megapixels. Does the ordinary photographer need this? No. Megapixels give you what is called resolution. Everyone knows that 4K is great for viewing on video or on a screen. Well 4k comes out to 8 megapixels on a camera. So anything bigger than 8 will give you a 4k photo or better. I think the magic sweet spot is between 20-40 megapixels anything smaller you have trouble cropping any and anything larger just takes up a lot of space on your hard drive. Most of my camera's have been in the 20-24 megapixel range and my full frame camera that I use now is only 24. The larger megapixels cameras are good for cropping like you would do in wildlife photography. If you're not printing bill board size and mainly posting to facebook or instagram you don't need the extra megapixels .

Frames Per Second. This is short and simple . Unless you're a sports photographer or a wildlife photographer Frames per second really doesn't matter. Most camera's will shoot 8 to 10 frames per second and that is fine for 90% of photographers.

Lenses. There are so many lenses to choose from when buying and you don't need the most expensive or the most popular. Most people can get by with a kit lens that came with your camera. The kit lens is the lens that comes with the camera when you buy it. It came with the kit. The kit lenses that come with camera's now are really good lenses and can be all you need for most of your needs.

Camera. Now let's talk about cameras. Camera's come in different levels . You have the entry level which is the cheapest , intermediate and the professional. Most folks don't need the professional. Only if you are a professional. The entry level or intermediate level is where most people need to buy. My camera's fall in this category and don't think I ever had a professional camera if I did it was many years old that I bought used. Which I think is a good way to go if you're serious about photography. All the manufacturers have these types of camera's and you must research which one fits your needs. A professional camera can cost up to 6000 dollars for body only. You can get an entry level or intermediate for 2000 or less and that includes the lens. Although both may seem expensive if you are serious about photography 2000 isn't expensive when you get a lens also. These are new prices you can get even less if you buy used. So I think that 90% of folks need an entry or intermediate camera and lens combo. It will take very good photo's especially if you are only posting to facebook or instagram. So until next week "Get out and Shoot!"

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link

Hey Everyone! Hope you're having a great week. Well another week has passed and I just got back from another trip. Boy it really feels good to say that. It feels like I haven't been anywhere until a few weeks ago and now I've been on another trip. In a couple of weeks I'll have another trip to tell you about. So the year is starting to turn out better now that spring has arrived. This week's blog is about a trip that Robert (my photography wingman) and I took to do some fly fishing for trout and some photography and videography.  We planned this trip a month or so ago and went ahead and made our lodging accommodations. Once that is out of the way we could plan our days. The plan was to be on the water very early in the morning ( O' Dark Thirty) and fish to about noon or so get lunch and then photography and videography. Robert was the videographer and he even added a drone to the mix this trip so we spent a lot of time taking video footage and I wandered around taking photo's. Of course there was rain in the forecast . It seems like there always is when we take a road trip. I remember one time took a trip to Indiana for a bike ride and Hurricane Helene followed us all the way there and it rained the whole time we were on the trip until we were about a half hour from the house. Here is the link to a blog I wrote about it. Indiana Road Trip Hurricane Helene. It was 5 days and 7 states of rain. LOL  Anyway back to this trip. 

Our Trip. We had planned to stay in Damascus Va. Commonly called "Trail Town USA" the AT (Appellation Trail) goes right through the main street of town. The week before we arrived they had "Trail Days" which is a week long festival and the towns population goes from less than a thousand to 25000 in a week. By the time we got there the masses had left. This is a quaint little town geared toward tourism as the main income. It has all sorts of cute Air B&B places to stay and little diners, coffee shops. The area is big on
hiking, bike riding and of course fly fishing. The Virginia Creeper trail goes right by the town. This is one of Americas favorite Rails to Trails this is a trail that had been converted from a train track to a foot and bike path. Now during our bike trip that I talked about earlier Hurricane Helene Devastated this area . It flooded the town eroded roads away and washed away bridges. Over 40 bridges (that used to be train trestles) on the Virginia Creeper Trail. I thought that they would never fix the
trail but I was wrong. After they had fixed the roads they started on the trail and bridges there is a lot of construction and are planning on having the trail open by October. So hopefully I have painted a picture of this town. We had reservations for Thursday through Sunday. Robert wanted to get there the night before so he got reservations at a small hotel in Sparta and we were to leave Wednesday afternoon then the next morning drive 45 min and could
be fishing Thursday morning instead of driving. So that's what we did. We left Wednesday after lunch and drove the 4 hours to Sparta where we had a room booked.  Had a great meal at a Super Mexican
Restaurant. The next morning we headed out and arrived in Damascus and headed to our first fishing spot. We got our gear together and headed to the water. We fished it until about noon and we both caught fish. Robert had the first and the largest fish of the day. We went to a burger joint in Damascus for lunch. We then went to a grocery store and got snacks, fruits and stuff for the Air B&B. We got in touch with the owner of the Air B&B and he let us check in early. After we got settled into our place we went and did a photo walk
around Demascus. I took photo's and Robert took video and flew the Drone. We ate at the apartment and the next morning we were up early before the sun came up and headed out to fish. Let me tell you the photography went much better than the fishing did. We fished all morning. Now when you're fly fishing standing in a stream where trout are it's usually a very rocky bottom with baseball sized or larger rocks covering the whole stream bottom. This means you're slip sliding around the whole time trying to keep your balance trying to keep from falling in. You use a lot of muscles that you haven't used before so you get very sore quickly. We tried a couple of locations and by noon I was very sore from slipping and sliding and casting. So I headed to the car while walking down the road I looked at my wader boots and the sole on both of them were coming unglued falling apart. A little later
Robert had showed up and I told him about my shoes and he said that was nothing because the backside of his waders had blown out with a huge hole.

We had a good laugh. We went back to the apartment got cleaned up and went off to Bristol Tennessee to check out downtown.  We went there had some BBQ at a Delta Blues BBQ joint. We then walked the downtown area. It was pretty worn down but that made for some interesting photos. The next day it was photography and Video only no fishing. We started at the Archway into Damascus on the AT and then started doing some country exploring and found some good shots. It was suppose to rain in the afternoon so we tried to shoot in the morning and do editing in the afternoon.  We got some really cool shots of the landscapes old barns and churches. That pretty much rounded off that day doing editing and getting ready for departure in the morning. The next morning we headed out and went to Boone NC for breakfast and then headed home. 

It was a fantastic trip and we had lots of fun. We had some things go wrong My waders leaked and my wading boots were coming apart. Robert had a broken rod tip, scratched a GoPro lens pretty bad, and his waders blew out.  But over all we had fun , we laughed, we fished, took some good photo's and got some good video. Like all of our adventures we enjoyed ourselves . I hope that if you're into photography that you have a chance to get out with your friends and have an adventure. So until next week " Get outside and shoot" and have an adventure. If you would like to  see a video of this trip here is the link Fly Fishing Damascus . 

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link

Hey Everyone! Hope you're having a great week. Me? Not too bad. Thanks for asking. The title of this photo is "Visiting a Historic Photograph." I would love to say that this adventure was my idea but alas it was Robert my photography wingman that came up with this idea. He had done a presentation to our camera club of famous photographers. During his research he came upon the works of Dorothea Lange. She is known for her Great Depression work that she had done for the FSA (Farm Security Administration). This was one of the programs of the New Deal that president Rosevelt had started to bring the country out of the Great Depression. He employed hundreds of thousands of people to build things like the Hover dam the Blue Ridge parkway and many other things for the country. He had commissions that employed artistic folks also. He had painters painting murals in Bus and Train stations and photographers going around the country documenting things like the Dust Bowl migration of farmers to California and rural life all over the country. Famous photographers like Gordon Parks, Ben Shahn and of course the most famous Doretha Lange one of the most famous for her "Migrant Mother" series of photographs. All of the photo's that they took in the decade or so when these programs were in full force can be found in the National Archives website. And let me say they are stunning and amazing photographs that really tell a story. They were in every state of the US documenting what was happening in this terrible time. It is well worth a look. I have spent hours looking at them. The famous photograph that we were going to visit was in North Carolina in July of 1939 by Doretha Lange. She took a series of photos of a Rural Store / Gas Station in Gordonton NC.  The photo shows what life was like at a country store in rural North Carolina which was mainly an agricultural area with cotton and tobacco being king. It shows farm workers enjoying a relaxing moment at the local country store.

Our goal was to go visit the store and take photo's of it . We brought two 8x10 photographs of the famous photo's that I had got printed at my local Walgreens. Robert had all the info of the place where it was at. I hadn't really done much research on it. I was familiar with Dorothea Lange and the photograph but didn't know where it was at or what condition it was in.  I really didn't think that the porch would be there but I was game to go and explore the site.  The ride through the country side was nice after we got off of the interstate and all the large roads. Rolling hills and small farms were on either side of us until suddenly we were there. The porch was still on and even one of the signs that was on the original photo was still in the same place. The modern road that goes right beside it had ditches on both sides that I know weren't there in the original photo. Just a dusty dirt road. Now as I didn't think this trough too much and when it came time to shoot a shot I didn't bring the correct lens. Nothing wide enough. I only brought a 35 and 50mm for some reason. I guess I was thinking that's what she would have used. Well I was wrong and without standing in the road I couldn't get a good shot with the whole store in the frame. Robert had done better with his choice. I ended up using my phone and got some shots. We took some shots with the photographs to show the connection from then to now. Eighty Seven years have passed since Dorothea took the photograph of the guys sitting on the front porch of the store resting out of the hot sun of summer. This was not the only photo that she took that day just one out of a series of photos that she took.

I really didn't know how going to the same place as a famous photographer had been would affect me. But it really was something to experience. I know folks go to famous places all the time like in Yosemite where Ansel Adams took so many landscapes and people try to replicate the shots but I hadn't really done one of a famous person before. I did try to replicate a photo that my Grandfather took in the 40's and that was cool but that was a family photo only known really by me. But these photo's were published in magazines and newspapers all over the world. The building is in bad repair and don't know how many storms it will withstand before falling down. When we left we heard some creaking and squeaking as we walked away. Maybe a cat or squirrel was running around the old store but maybe it was ghost from the past saying thank you for visiting. Maybe Doretha herself was watching us take selfies with the old building. It was kind of eerie . Well that's enough jibber jabber for now until next week " Get out and Shoot" and find some history to shoot.

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link