Rick Schwartz, Author at Just Enough Focus

May 18, 2018

Round of Applause

I cannot help that I love to take pictures at the beach. Living where I do it’s unavoidable. As problems go, it’s not a bad one to have. In this image, I’ve lingered after the sunset when the clouds were just right. This specific time is my favorite because the light is somewhat rare. The color creates a glow that beckons to something beyond.

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On this evening, after the sun had set, a group of a dozen people sitting together gave a round of applause. That’s not as uncommon as you may think. It seems odd, but after you’ve seen it enough times, it’s not.

other beach images from the gallery

People begin walking home, and I like to capture them walking along the shoreline. While the colors and scenery are beautiful, I believe that adding people helps us project ourselves into the scene. I can easily imagine walking along the shore at dusk or just sitting there looking out to sea. And if you see me clapping, maybe you’ll understand why.

May 17, 2018

West Vancouver View

The walkway is in a familiar spot of downtown Vancouver that looks across the bay to West Vancouver. If you look closely, you can barely make out the snowcapped peaks rising above the city. I’ve wandered here many times for the view but this was my is my first attempt at capturing it.

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West Vancouver View — The view of West Vancouver from atop the Cactus Club Cafe

It’s part of a structure that houses the Cactus Club Café but also has a walkway on the roof made of grass. It’s next to the conversion center which also has a grass roof.

Other People’s Ideas

Monday night after the rain stopped, I drove over to a little park that I recently heard about through a hot tip. It’s one of those parks that are known only to the residents. We seem to have a lot of those hidden gems in the area. Nevertheless, it quite often affords the kind of view ordinarily reserved for waterfront properties.

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Other People's Ideas — From Rose Park in Bradenton Florida

Here I’m posing with the help of a ten-second timer, which was barely enough time to get into position. My first attempt caught me in mid-stride. I thought that adding a human element to the drama of the scene worked well. I got the inspiration from New Zealand photographer Mike Langford whom I met on a trip there a few years back. Here is a link to his photo on Pinterest and here is his website.

my portfolio

To tell you the truth, I get inspiration from a lot of different photographers, too numerous to mention. I spend a lot of time looking at their work and then when the situation arises; I’ll incorporate an idea into my photo. Sometimes, I even come up with ideas of my own. And then, ten years from now someone will say the same about me. It’s all just good energy going around.

May 15, 2018

Cimitero di San Michele

The view of a little cemetery island in the city of Venice. I haven’t yet explored it, but probably will the next time. My first impression was of a military fort, and I suppose with San Michele in the name that’s not too far off. Nevertheless, it looks to me like an entirely different space away from the crowds.

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Cimitero di San Michele as seen from the northern side of Venice

My intention for this image is minimalism. It could easily have ended up as a tourist photo but, I saw this idea in my head when taking it. When I’m walking around a crowded area, I have to think hard about how I might like an image to look, especially if I want to go minimal. Coming up with ideas is the first part of the creative process.

more minimalism in the gallery

Crowded spaces can also be fun to photograph, especially if there is a story to tell. For instance, a crowd of people on a bridge, or a city scene. But sometimes I find myself moving away from the crowds, if not physically then mentally. By putting my mind in a quiet place, I see things in a slightly different light, or so I like to think.

May 14, 2018

The Takeaway

In the last couple of weeks, we’ve had some fantastic sunsets down here in Florida. I’ve been busy but managed to get to the beach on Saturday for a few shots. Not that that’s the only reason I go to the beach.

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The Takeaway — From the dunes at Manatee Beach

The real reason is for the air, the sound of the waves and sights. They quickly take my head out of whatever state of mind I’m in and clear the cobwebs. Telling myself I’m going for photography gets the wheels moving, being there gives me a whole lot more.

One takeaway here is that this image uses focus stacking. That’s a technique where I take one photo focused on the foreground, and another focused on items further away and then blend them. This way everything appears in focus. The results are pleasing for landscape photography where you want to see as much detail as possible. It’s also great for printing because everything is in focus.

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Anyway, while I’m doing all those fancy techniques, I’m at the beach, walking along the shore and having fun. In retrospect, that’s the real takeaway.

April 27, 2018April 27, 2018

Memories Fade

This photo may be my favorite of the bunch from that day at the beach. And it sums up the chill mood of the people that were present at the time. As for myself, I was pretty happy also.

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Without photos, memories fade. Life goes on and, we do not think about the details of that day. But when we look at pictures, the feelings, sights, and smells come back. That’s the thing about images; they’re drug-free memory boosters.

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Our recollections are a quantum leap beyond what computers do. But that’s changing; AI is closing that gap. But one thing they’ll probably never do is appreciate a sunset. That’s is something only we can do, assuming we don’t forget to go to the beach.

April 26, 2017

Harbour Master Tower

Last week we stopped in the Bahamas on a weekend cruise from Miami. The harbor master tower is the first thing you see at dock. I think it was built before the ships got so big. I took this from a lower deck but you could look down on it from the upper decks and our ship was one of the smaller in port that day.

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This continues on a theme of minimalism. Actually I’ve been on this theme for a while but I don’t always publish the images. I do little studies, with lampposts, trees and buildings, shooting up to simplify the composition. Simplification is the gateway to minimalism; it also accentuates unique qualities of a thing or place.

This image creates an illusion of height, yet the building is no more than a few stories high and there are rooftops just below the frame. But because of how this is composed we imagine it much higher. Minimalism evokes imagination, which in-turn transcends realism.

Since I’m always on the lookout for these I’ll likely put together a book at some point. I get ideas from looking at works of other photographers. One whom I follow on Instagram is Sebastian Weiss. Check him out at the link here https://www.instagram.com/le_blanc/

architecture photography in the gallery

This kind of view is way of looking at the world that is focused on the isolation of something unique. I think we see beauty when we notice uniqueness. It’s all around and all we need to do is narrow our view until we recognize it; at least that my current theory.

April 25, 2017April 25, 2017

Secluded Beach on Longboat Key

This past weekend I took an excursion to a secluded beach on Longboat Key. At least I thought it would be secluded. As it turned out I was only one of about a dozen photographers there. One was doing an engagement shoot, one a maternity shoot, a couple were shooting landscapes and finally a camera club showed up as well. There was a spectacular sunset so I’m pretty sure everyone got good shots and left happy. I know I did.

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This beach is only accessible by boat or hike; it’s not right off the highway like most beaches in this area. At less trafficked shorelines like this you can usually see remnants of past hurricanes. There are spots like this up and down the coast if you know where to look. They are reminders of big events, especially as it pertains to tropical storms altering the landscape of the coast.

This was one of my last shots before hiking back. I got plenty of others but the simplicity of this scene is what I was drawn to. It’s rare that trees or stumps are isolated so I’m always on the lookout for them as photographic subjects. Simplicity resonates in images because it naturally invites interpretation.

minimalism in the gallery

At low tide the beach is exposed where these trees stand, but this was high tide and the beach was completely covered by the sea. However I was standing at a line of mangroves that protect the rest of the island from erosion. If it weren’t for the mangroves there would be nothing left of barrier islands along the coast of Florida.

April 24, 2017

Amsterdam in the Early Morning Hours

Here’s another image I took while walking around central Amsterdam in the early morning hours. I was only here for a week so I made the decision to stay on North American time. That meant I was still wide awake very late which works well for night photography. I could capture the lights reflecting on the still waters of the canals to my heart’s content.

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A couple of times I left my tripod back at the hotel. To get these long exposures without shaking the camera I would make due by balancing it on a bike seat. All of the little bridges have bikes leaning against the railings. All I had to do was pick one with a relatively wide seat and gingerly set the camera down. I used a wireless trigger so that I didn’t need to touch the camera to activate the shutter.

That little system worked quite well and to be honest, it’s a technique I’ve used in many other places as well. I don’t always want to bring a tripod especially when shooting street scenes at night. For that I’m grateful for the high ISO performance of Sony cameras, it allows me to do things that were unheard of just a few years ago. For street photography you want to travel light and be able to react quickly.

Yet when I’m out walking around I’ll invariably see something like this scene and I wish I had a tripod. Then it becomes a little game of figuring out what I can use to stabilize the camera. I use all manner of things like balancing on a fence railing, stabilizing the lens with the camera strap, even placing the camera on the ground and shooting up.

night photography gallery

As a result I’m hard on camera bodies. They get scratched quite a bit. But for me the scratches on my camera body are like notches on a belt. It’s funny but a scratched up camera feels to me like a comfortable set of well worn shows; we’ve seen a lot together.

April 21, 2017April 21, 2017

Super-yachts of the Bahamas

I took this shortly after sunrise as our cruise ship entered port in Nassau. As yachts go this is pretty big, I’m not sure if this is a government craft or just one of the many super-yachts of the Bahamas.

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It got me thinking about why people own these. Personally, I don’t think I would want one. I’ve been on rough seas on a big cruise ship and I certainly would not want to go through that on a small boat. The sea does not care how fancy a yacht is, it will be tossed around like a toy.

I had the same thought when we passed other big yachts near the Atlantis Resort and Casino. Maybe the people that have these only sail in fair weather and remain close to home. That I could understand. They are awesome to look at but I think they are no match for the wrath of the sea.

My hat is off to fishermen who work the seas for their livelihood like the guys on The Deadliest Catch. Watching that freaks me out a little. How they manage through storms is beyond me.

sea images from the gallery

I think this attitude of mine comes from a fear of falling into the ocean and drowning. It might stem from an incident when I was an infant and almost drowned. Although I don’t remember it, I was apparently face down and sinking in a lake.

Anyway, I have nothing against these high-end boats. If I did have one I’d be having fair-weather parties on it all the time. However at the first sign of a storm you’d find me firmly on land. In the meantime I’ll just stick to cruise ships and buy crab legs from a store. I’m not really in the market for one of these anytime soon.