bclee's photostream  

A former resident of Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Illinois, and New Mexico who has spent a considerable fraction of his life in Colorado, I currently reside in California. Which explains why so many of my pictures are from Utah. Or not. Hmmm.

A lot of what I photograph is "rock art" -- Native American pictographs and petroglyphs. I have a special interest in certain archaic styles, especially Barrier Canyon Style. BCS sites are rare, often remote, generally unprotected, and occasionally destroyed by idiots. Developed and well known sites I generally geotag -- look for a map link on the photo page. But given the number of sites that have been destroyed by idiots, people are very protective of the lesser known sites and very cautious about sharing their locations. I may post photos of sites I've only been told about under the condition that I not pass that information along. If you don't know me personally, please don't ask for the locations of these sites, you're asking me to break a promise I made to someone else. I've gotten enough questions recently that I'm starting to think about making these photos private -- I know several other people who take this approach in order to avoid being asked all the time. But I'd rather be able to share the art.

"How did you take those pictures?" you may ask. (You must be bored.) Well, if you were to ask me how many cameras I have, I would have to stop and think a while before I could come up with an answer other than "too many." (The same goes for computers. It has recently occurred to me that this might be a problem. In fact a few weeks back I found two computers in a closet that I didn't even know were there. But that was Amy's fault.)

I currently use mostly a Canon EOS 40D and a Canon EOS Elan 7ne for film, although I have to admit I'm using film less and less (even though I like the end results much more). When I want to travel light I take a Canon G11. Sometimes I even post photos from my iPhone (3GS and 4S). For film, when I can get it I've been using FujiFilm Provia 100 because the resolution is fantastic (when everything goes perfectly I can get nearly 20 megapixels of resolution from it). The color is a bit more muted than Velvia, and for me both come out a bit too blue/cyan/green from my scanner but I have fewer problems along those lines with Provia. I scan my own film with a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000, because how can you resist a product with words like "Super" and "Cool" and an impressively large number all in the name.

Before that I was using a Minolta X-700 manual focus camera, and before that a Minolta XG-M camera that my parents purchased sometime before 1983 and Mom gave to me because she didn't like it nearly as much as the old SRT's. (I have at least two photos posted from one of those SRT's.) In those days I used all kinds of film but later on I tended to prefer Fujifilm Velvia 50 or 100 slide film. I gave up on that because it didn't seem to get along with my Nikon Coolscan IV film scanner, especially if it was underexposed, and at some point before slide scanners I developed the habit of shooting slide film slightly underexposed. So if you run across a picture of mine that looks freakishly cyan or green, chances are good that it's underexposed Velvia.

On the digital side, before the 40D I had more digital point and shoot digital cameras than I can remember (mostly bought used off Craig's List, and mostly Nikon) but never took any of them seriously as cameras until I was given a Kodak P712. That camera has its high and low points but it was the first digital camera I had that made me want more from my SLR, which is quite a feat. I still carry it when I want more zoom than the G11 and less mass than an SLR.

Currently I do most of my post-processing in PhotoShop CS5 (thanks to Amy). I've used
Noiseware and Topaz DeNoise for noise reduction, Noiseware can be carefully tuned but I often get better results from Topaz DeNoise. I've also sometimes use GNU Gimp (especially if I'm traveling). Apple OS X is currently my preferred operating system (how can you argue with a user friendly UNIX) but I have computers in the house running at least 2 different major versions of OS X, Linux, and Windows. And one running a pre-windows Microsoft OS that some claim is the last OS Bill Gates wrote code for. But I only bring out that one to frighten people. Well, I could say the same for the one running Windows ME. (I finally gave that one away.)

Other places you can find me on the web: You can see a few older photos on my Rock Art Photo Collection page originally written in the 90's. (Note that this page is moving from www-personal.umich.edu/~bclee to bclee.net soon, the University of Michigan will be deleting a couple decades worth of web pages in 2012.) Someday I plan to post some of what I have on Flickr back on my rock art page in a more organized form, but Flickr is so much easier. I can also be found on Google+. I may or may not occasionally write on my blog. If you're interested in prints, drop me a line, I've started an account at ImageKind so I can put non-watermarked versions there if you see something you like.

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