Going digital, the death of creativity.

There is something about the analog process of shooting on film and making your own prints that made those photographers a lot more creative. I think it was the smaller margin of error that working with film afforded that made these photographers more creative. Limitations inspire creativity. When there’s room to make mistakes, people will make mistakes, but sometimes those mistakes turn out to be wonderful surprises. Did you forget to process your film correctly? Maybe you pushed it one stop, but forgot to process it that way. Maybe you left the photo paper in the chemicals for too long. More often than not, these mistakes led to disasters, but occasionally they might produce something extraordinary that might lead you to try new styles and techniques. It inspired experimentation and creativity.

The lack of instant feedback also inspired creativity. You never knew if you got the shot or not, so you’d take the same picture over and over again with different exposures, different lighting, and different film; hoping that one of the shots would turn out. If you were lucky, you’d have many versions to choose from afterwards.

Unfortunately, I’m finding a lot of that type of creativity has gone missing in today’s digital world. You would think that the instant feedback, lower processing cost, and unlimited post processing possibilities would lead to unheard amounts of creativity. Instead digital seems to have narrowed the vision of many of today’s photographers. The lack of limitations creates paralysis. Everything from EXIF data to Photoshop settings are studied and duplicated from one person to the next. It has become a game of precision, rather than creativity.

Before, photographers would talk about their stories of how a particular picture was taken. How one waited for the right moment, said something silly to get the right expression, or how the light reacted in an unforeseen way. Those stories are far fewer these days. Instead it’s all about the lens, camera body, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, exact time of day, or light placement. The subject becomes secondary to the technicality of taking the picture. Everyone wants a formula that says if you do x, then you will always get y. Photography doesn’t always work that way.

I suppose this type of formulaic precision was bound to make its way into photography, once digital became popular. Over 15 years of working with computers has taught me that. Working for corporations that wanted their business plans to be as simple as a formula that could be predicted by a computer. Our strategy is x and the computer predicts that the result will be y. To assume that the computer must always be right has been the downfall of many business strategists. It isn’t. For one thing the computer can only make the calculation based on what it knows, and it cannot know everything. It lacks information relating to experience, trends, and most of all it lacks imagination.

So the next time you pick up your camera, think a little differently. Try not to worry so much about what your settings are. Experiment, play, and be creative.



Photographing the Total Lunar Eclipse on February 20th was challenging. After reading several tutorials on the web about how to do it, rapidly changing conditions due to cloud cover and winds made any planning I had done go straight out of the window. So I winged it.

This image is available for download as a desktop wallpaper in several resolutions:

Widescreen 960 x 600 Full Screen 1024 x 768
Widescreen 1280 x 800 Full Screen 1280 x 1024
Widescreen 1440 x 900 Full Screen 1600 x 1200
Widescreen 1680 x 1050 Widescreen 1920 x 1200

Limpkin Park

There’s a whole new rock band over at Green Cay. Four Limpkin chicks (Aramus guarauna) have been keeping visitors and photographers busy with their antics. I was told that five chicks originally hatched about a week ago, but now there are only four. Unfortunately that’s how nature works by weeding out the weaker ones, so the stronger ones survive to perpetuate the species. I was surprised at how aggressive the little chicks are toward each other. Although they huddle close for comfort and protection, when the parents are around the little ones really push, peck, and tug at each other.



The Limpkin is usually placed in its own family group, and although it looks somewhat like an Ibis it is much more closely related to rails and cranes. Easily recognized by its loud echoing call; Limpkins in Florida were almost hunted to extinction for food. Like the Snail Kite, Limpkins feed primarily on the Apple Snail (Pomacea spp.) and has benefitted from the introduction of South American Apple Snails into the South Florida ecosystem from the aquarium trade. In fact almost all the Apple Snails in Green Cay are of the nonnative South American variety.

Speaking of which, one of the earliest birds to return from South America, is North America’s largest Swallow, the Purple Martin. The nest boxes at Green Cay are starting to fill up with Purple Martins which usually arrive in late January and early February. At the moment these birds are battling the European Starlings which compete with the Martins for their nest boxes. Here is a species that has come to rely on man for its survival. The colonies found in Eastern North America now rely almost exclusively on birdhouses built for them to nest. Unlike their Western counterparts, the Eastern Purple Martin population could be seriously threatened if their nest boxes were removed.

With their fairly predictable flight pattern and their close proximity to the Green Cay and Wakodahatchee boardwalks, the Martins make great subject to practice advanced flight shot photography. You have a relatively small and fast bird, so you’ll have to lead your target well. Because of how dark the Martins are you’ll have to dial in a +1 to +1.5 stop exposure compensation for their color to come out, especially against a clear blue sky. However, when these birds fly low enough to allow for a green background, then your shutter speed is going to plummet if you are in aperture priority (Av) mode, so it’s better to use Manual exposure (M).

Canon Digital Rebel XSi (450D)

At the PMA (Photo Marketing Association Annual Show), going on now at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Canon recently announced the new Digital Rebel XSi. You can get the full specifications and press release over at dpreview.com.

I know that there are many of you that have purchased previous versions of the Canon Digital Rebel series, and continue to purchase updated models in the Rebel series as features are added. The Rebel series has some excellent cameras in the lineup, often coming very close in feature sets found in Canon’s prosumer line of cameras, the xxD series (i.e. 20D, 30D, 40D).

So if you’ve been sticking to Canon’s Digital Rebel line of digital cameras, upgrading year after year, Canon has a message for you in the new XSi. Stop, and upgrade to the xxD series. Two feature changes in the XSi signal this message to me. The first is that Canon has once again, changed the battery type; and second they have changed the media type from compact flash (CF) to secure digital (SD). This will be a frustrating upgrade for current Digital Rebel users, since it would involve buying new spare batteries, a new battery grip, and new memory cards. All of that adds up quickly. Compare this to the more stable xxD line where the battery grip has changed little through three models (20D, 30D, and 40D) and the batteries and compact flash cards have remained the same since at least the 10D. So current Digital Rebel users this is probably not the camera upgrade for you.

Many people have always thought of the Digital Rebel line as the lite version of the xxD line. But the XSi’s new features put it more along the lines of a step up for those who have point and shoot digital cameras that want to upgrade to a digital SLR. Now the XSi will accept the same memory cards that your point and shoot digital camera uses. This was a smart move that will probably continue to drive more point and shoot users over to a digital SLR.

The disappointment regarding the XSi was that current Digital Rebel owners really wanted a lower priced 40D in the form of the XSi. The XSi did inherit some features from the 40D, but none that would really threaten 40D sales. Instead, it’s clear that Canon has targeted the Digital Rebel series as a step up from a digital point and shoot.

Here are my thoughts on some of the XSi’s features:

12.2 Megapixel CMOS sensor - Canon is playing the megapixel catch-up race here. They have not increased the sensor size, just added more pixels. The result is going to be more noise in the image.

3.5 frames per second - Good enough if you’re upgrading form a point and shoot, but misses the mark if you’ve been using a digital SLR for a while now. Canon has all of that 20D and 30D technology sitting around that they should be able to recycle at a lower cost. This camera should have had at least 4.5 to 5 frames per second.

9-point wide-area AF system with f/2.8 cross-type centre point - This is the AF system that was on the 20D, 5D, and 30D, It is not the one from the 40D.

DIGIC III image processor - The DIGIC III, has been found in nearly every camera model Canon has made over the past year, including point-and-shoots. The Digital Rebel seems to be the last model to get this feature. The Xti should have had it years ago. You do get 14-bit which is good for recovering shadows and HDR. The other stuff like highlight-tone-priority are really JPEG only features that can be replicated with any good RAW processing software.

Fully compatible with all Canon EF and EF-S lenses and EX-series Speedlites - Oddly, Nikon can't claim the same thing about their system. The low end D40 isn't compatible with all Nikon lenses.

There are two features that Canon should have added to the Rebel that would have made it a real competitor to the other entry level DSLRs. The first should have been a high resolution LCD. The larger LCDs that Canon uses have the same pixel counts as the old smaller LCDs. The larger LCDs only make the images look fuzzier and doesn't help you see if you've taken a blurred shot or not. The second should have been an HDMI port so that you can view your images on a High-Definition TV.

Where to purchase:

Canon Rebel XSi 12MP Digital SLR Camera
Canon EOS 40D 10.1MP Digital SLR Camera