Jer Hetrick Photos And Photography Discussions
The backyard is becoming a very busy place! Hundreds of birds, frogs, snakes, deer, turkey, you name it! It’s a jungle out there! A few photos captured using a modified Canon 6D with Sigma 300mm f2.8 ED APO lens, in some photos lens with Sigma 2x EX teleconverter, which I absolutely love for terrestrial photography!
I recently acquired this phenomenal collection of original 1800’s Mexican photographs from some of the most well known and renowned photographers of the 19th century. The majority of these photos are portraits of poor Mexican children, working men and woman and Mexican families. Though there are also several landscapes and cityscapes in the collection.
From the research that I have done, I have come to the conclusion that this collection was actually produced by the Grafton Tours Company out of Chicago, who Charles Mayo was part owner. The company ran a dedicated train tour into Old Mexico during the early 1890’s. This collection of photos was used as a brochure of sorts.
This collection of very scarce Mexican photographs consists of 37 5″ x 7″ Silver Gelatin Sepia Photographs and 17 Larger Photos Which Are 8″ x 10″ Format Photographs.
UCLA special collections library secured a very similar collection. You can view their collection by clicking here.
My collection of Mexican photos by photographers Abel Briquet, CB Waite, Charles Mayo and others is listed for sale on Ebay. If any Universities, Private collectors or Special interest groups are interested. This could literally be a once in a lifetime chance for a private collector to obtain historic Old Mexico Photos from famed photographers from the 1800’s Abel Briquet, Charles Mayo and CB Waite.
Last month I was at one of my favorite bid board auctions where I found this absolutely amazing photo album dating back to 1923.
After a quick glance through this album I knew it had to have it! I was so impressed by this historical masterpiece of photographic excellence that I was willing to throw down $500 or more If need be. It is hard to really put a value on it, though I think conservatively this album could easily sell for upwards of $2500.
Thankfully though the bidding did not get to out of control and I was able to secure it for much less than $500. Me and one other bidder were the only two people in a full house interested in it. So we went back and forth a little bit up to about $25, finally he broke loose and started jumping the bid in higher increments, up to about $50. At that point I threw down a bid of $75 jumping the bid by $25 and hoping to show this guy I was serious about winning. Surprisingly that’s all it took!
You just don’t come across antique photo albums like this. It has everything! It’s themed, the photographs inside are slip fit, not glued, the entire album is put together perfectly like a picture book and then finally this it is laid out in chronological order. So the experience of paging through it is more like reading a story than shuffling through a bunch of pictures.
So this Photographic Trip starts with a photo from the Hong Kong Hotel over looking Repulse Bay and then leads into several other Hong Kong And China Views. Including a variety of landscape and portrait photos. From there you are taken on what seems like an endless journey through Asia and into Northern Africa And then Egypt where the photographer has perfectly framed views of the great pyramids and the Sphinx.
If the photographs stopped in Egypt this photographic work of excellence would be near perfection. It continues onto Switzerland and Italy and then into Europe where this fantastic trip comes to an end.
As much as I would like to hold onto to this amazing photo album, I can not. So this historic masterpiece is listed for sale in one of my Ebay stores, It can be found HERE..
There’s a reason Super Takumar Lenses are as popular today as they were 60 years ago! Can anyone say optical excellence?
These lenses, specifically the the 50mm f1.4 though f2 and the 55mm f2 are nearly perfect. Not that I am in anyway negating any of the other super takumar lenses, because they are all superb, even by today’s standards. In fact most lenses manufactured today don’t even compare. These lenses are optically superior, super precise and built extremely tough!
The following photographs were captured using the above Super Takumar 55mm f2 m42 mount lens adapted to a canon 5D MarkII. Optically this lens is awesome. Aside from possessing super sharp, high contrast resolution. The 55mm f2, as well the entire line of Super Takumar’s and Super Multi-Coat Super Takumars focus like butter, the feeling of manually bringing a subject, or scene into focus is almost orgasmic!
You can buy the same lens I used to capture these photos here, at my Ebay store. If you’d like to purchase a different copy, feel free to search around. They are fairly easy to find.
Until next time, peace out!
So here is another star trail image captured using the Gopro Hero7 Black. This is a really fantastic camera that makes taking high end time lapse video, star trail images and video a breeze. Unfortunately it could be better, much better, though I will get into that in another post!
They were calling for heavy meteor activity on 7-30-2019, so I figured it would be a great opportunity to get out with the GoPro Hero 7 Black under the stars to see what it can do. So to the rooftops I went with Gopro in hand!
My setting is not what most would consider idea being in the heart of red zone. Though atmospheric condition on the 30th were perfect, or supposed to have been perfect.
When working with the go pro in conditions like this you are really limited as to what you can do. It’s not like using a DSLR, or Mirrorless camera that can be tweaked and fine tuned infinitely. Also using light pollution, or notch filters is also out of the question, though I am sure it would be easy enough to rig something up.
Because I started shooting early and allowed the camera to run through the night till early dawn. I allowed the Gopro to automatically adjust it’s shutter speed. Which in retrospect was a mistake. I also set my upper and lower ISO levels to low. To pull as much information out of the sky as possible it is critical that each frame is exposed to the max, in fact as far as the camera can be pushed without completely pushing data to the point of no return.
Despite these oversights I was able to pull enough data out of the stars to put together this nice star trail image.
Months back I lost my entire site, I had planned on re-populating my new website with all of photos and posts which I lost. Unfortunately it turned out to be a much more complicated and impossible task than I originally had though. So long story short, I am going to start republishing those photographs and posts again, one at a time.
So this photo is of the Great Orion Nebula, probably the most brilliant and easy to photograph nebula in the night sky. The data captured for this photo was collected through an 80mm ED APO telescope and a modified Canon 70D DSLR on an AVX computerized equatorial mount.
Zeus our 6 year old Rottweiler has been such an amazing addition to our family. He’s been such an important part of our lives that we have discussed bringing another Rottweiler into our home on many occasions. Though we always came to the same conclusion, one was enough. That was until about a week ago!
Meet Rose our 13 week old female, German Rottweiler!
Spring is finally in full swing here in Pennsylvania! The forest is green and teaming with life again, thousands upon thousands of laurels are popping and the creeks and rivers are running strong. The only element that is missing at this point are the mushrooms, though it wont be long now. Within the next week or two the forest floor will give birth to mushrooms of all colors, sizes and shapes. It will continue to do so straight through the summer and into the fall months of the year. right up until mother nature decides to start throwing frozen winds in our direction.
Anyway here are some of the photographs that I’ve captured so far in these mountains. Hope you enjoy them as much as I’ve enjoyed capturing them!
