The Photography of Dr. Jeffrey P. Harper

We spent the last five day in Bangkok high up in the Grand Centara Hotel . . . thanks Marc for the upgrade!  The view from our 51st floor room was beautiful in the daylight . . .

. . . beautiful in the evening . . .

. . . and beautiful at night.  Good-bye Bangkok, it has been a fantastic 17 years!  I'll be back in Thailand for retirement one day . . . but first . . . a summer vacation in:

The Pacific Northwest, USA

Olympia Washington: My sister-in-law Mary is a great gardener.  She grows everything.  It is always a treat to go from the steaming tropics of Thailand directly to to cool climes of the American Pacific Northwest.

I still had Internet access, so I had fun with my big camera in the Mary's garden.

Very sweet.

We all took several long nature walks along the shores of Puget Sound.  The blackberries were not ripe yet . . .

. . . but the salmon berries looked inviting.

The essence of the Pacific Northwest.

New life everywhere under the forest canopy.

A nice morning to row about on one of the arms of Puget Sound. An old log loading pier still stands.

It Doesn't Get More American Than This: The Monmouth, Oregon 4th of July Parade.The Monmouth, Oregon Parade is open to anybody from the community who wants to 'parade' themselves.

It's a great opportunity to crank up that old tractor you lovingly restored, and drive it down Main Street. I love this little town: I attended two years of univesity here.

An old Mac Truck.  Nice.  Brought back memories of El Paso, Texas at 3:00am in 1958 for me.

As is my personal tradition, I ingest The National Dish on the 4th of July every year.  Yep, it was great.

What would a parade be without a car show?  I met my Hot Rod photo quota for the year.

I LOVE these flames!

I prefer the 4-door fat fender hot rods . . . you can take your friends. 

Silver Creek Falls, Oregon My good friends Jeff & Sharon under Silver Creek Falls.  It was a good day for a trail walk in the foothills of the Oregon Cascades.

Oregon.

Delicate new growth.

More ripe salmon berries.

A beautiful trail through the forest along Silver Creek.

A serene mountain stream.

Upper Silver Creek Falls is somewhat unique because the trail takes you under and behind the falls, making for unusual photo opportunities.

Loud and beautiful.

You can judge the scale in this photo by noticing the size of the hikers on the trail.

A perfect day.

Looking out from behind Upper Silver Creek Falls.

Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaI visited my daughter near Valley Forge.

We all went to the Longwood Botanical Gardens for a morning stroll with my new grandson, Torin.

Scrumptious cacti!

Lovely flowers everywhere.

Touching.

Longwood had formal Italian gardens too.

The tropical greenhouses were interesting.

I remember seeing these same lotus pads in Jogjakarta, Indonesia a few years ago.

I had to laugh when I saw these wax flowers . . . I came half way around the planet to see a flower that was growing in my back yard in Bangkok!

Lovely early summer day in Pennsylvania.

Ocean City, New JerseyA strangly cold summer in Ocean City New Jersey.  We took a walk with our freinds, Bud, Gaile,  in the gathering gloom . . .

Night falling over Ocean City.

Last Light.

New England VillageI won't reveal the exact location of this village in New England, except to say that it was the perfect New England village.  Our good friends from Bangkok, Joe and Nancy, recently retired there.

A dream . . . more like a living calendar!  Just too perfect.

Rural Colonial New England.

Mmmmm.

House Proud New Englanders sure know how to spruce a place up.

Around Nancy's garden.

A friend's home.

More old barns than I had time to photograph . . .

I could have stopped a hundred times . . . but Bud and I had more important things to do . . . .

NASCAR at New Hampshire SpeedwayYep, Bud and I joined 40,000 of our best friend and at the New Hampshire 300.  Bud commented that the people watching here was like looking through a 1920s physiology text book, so varied were the physiognomies of the gathered throng.

We rooted for Juan Pablo Montoya . . . . and I think we were the only ones who were.  We rooted for him when we saw him at the Chinese F1 race in Shanghai years ago too.

It was an unseasonably hot day with the threat of rain that never materialized. It was a good, tight race with surprising results.  Loud and fast . . . just the way I like it.

Loudoun, New Hampshire.  Pre-race ceremonies were colorful, to say the least.

So, I added a couple of extension tubes to my Canon 5D Mark II and put on my favorite macro lens, the Sigma 70mm f2.8 EX DG, and headed to the back yard.

We are just now at the beginning of the "damn hot and damn wet" season, so there were new buds coming out all over.

Depth of field is an issue with macro photography.  I decided not to use a tri-pod, as there seemed to be a lot of light.  Of course, I needed f16 for some of these shots . . . but couldn't because of camera shake.  Still, I used the lack of depth to my advantage . . . I think.

These tiny red blooms coming up out of the green mist is a nice effect.

Some flowers I only see once a year, like these arbor blooms.

These pink wax flowers seem more animal than plant when the come out . . .

. . . they eventually produce these thick, waxy pedals . . .

. . . and look like this when they have been through their cycle.  Always beautiful.

We have orchids all year round.

My super macro study (with the extension tubes) did not really work out all that well.  I will need a completely calm afternoon with lots of bright sunlight and a tripod to do this right.  More to come.

Basil and I have been having that old photographer's conversation: What lens to buy next?

I was feeling like I had the complete set of lenses I needed . . . for the kind of photographs I take and for how I display them . . . until, that is, the new Sigma 35mm f1.4 came out!  I do a lot of night street shooting in Bangkok and around Southeast Asia, and my trusty Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX DG HSM had become my favorite (reviewed elsewhere on this site), but I found that, on a full frame Canon 5D mark II, it was sometimes too narrow in confined alleyways and dark night markets.  So . . . . I traded in my excellent Sigma 50mm f1.4 for the just released Sigma 35mm f1.4 DG HSM lens . . .  and boy, am I happy!  Very nice.

There was nothing wrong with the 50mm Sigma . . . . it almost never left my 5D . . . it is a fantastic lens . . . but I already like the 35mm better for this kind of street shooting.  It's Bangkok, so there is ALWAYS something to shoot, like this egg truck.

Very sharp indeed.  A 35mm is about as wide as you can have on your camera without distortions appearing.

Detail in dark/shaded areas is amazing.

I like walls.  Walls show their histories on their faces.  A 35mm lens in an alley is perfect for capturing this kind of thing without the barrel distortion of something wider.

Wall history.

A Bangkok alley in great detail and clarity.

A Bangkok alley straight from the camera (RAW), converted to a JPEG, reduced in size and posted without any PhotoShop inputs.

The Sigma 35mm f1.4 is not a macro lens, but you can close focus with good results.

Orchids are always candidates for close shooting.

White lobby orchids, Shangri-La Hotel Bangkok.

A wonderful, large, old, carved, lacquered elephant greets you at the Shangri-La Hotel.

The red Shangri-La elephant served as a good object to experiment on for depth of  field studies.

Very nice low light performance.  I couldn't be happier.

This is why you have an f1.4 lens: hand held shooting in a dark parking lot.  The detail in this photo at full resolution is incredible.

Just a few minutes and a good lens is all you need for a good day.

I may go back and shoot this one with a tripod . . . . some additional depth of field could improve the feeling.

So fresh and sweet.

An intriguing tiny world.

I was sitting inside watching golf on the television when it dawned on me, "Why am I sitting inside watching golf on the television?" I have been noticing a wasp's hole near where I park every day and have been saying to myself, "Self, you should mount that excellent Sigma 70mm macro lens on your camera and see if you can't capture that dangerous rascal one of these days."  I have been saying that for weeks . . . so . . . no time like the present.

Taking a photo of wasps is not a very smart thing to do, really.  You are so scared of getting stung that most of your shots are blurred because of the shaking camera.  In addition, wasps are shy creatures:  I waited way too long in scorching heat and melting humidity and all I got was this this little guy peeping out of his wasp hole at me for 15 minutes.  Oh well . . . . there's plenty more in the garden to look at this beautiful morning.

There had been a heavy rain last night (like EVERY night for the past two weeks), and there was still a lot of moisture on everything . . .

It's fun walking around in the garden with a macro lens!  My Sigma DG 70mm f2.8 Macro lens is about as good as it gets for this kind of close-up work.

A very tiny world magnified inside this single drop!

The light was clear and very low . . . and passed through these red fronds.  The dew drops were on the back side of these!  Amazing!

Deep in the undergrowth . . . little gems.

There was so much to see this morning!  I lost my breath when I saw this.

Deep down at the bottom of the garden little magnifying lenses point out additional detail.  Wonderful.

A single dew drop crowns this magnificent red bud-with-a-flowing-bud.

It didn't take long for the sun to dry off the dew from these red flowers.  It was 90+ degrees and humidity 90%+ as well.

The rains blew a lot of leaves off the trees . . . at first I thought it looked messy . . . but then I looked closer!

I love the sparkle of this pink leaf.

A sensuous palm frond, vaguely human.

With all the rain we have been having over the past several months, everything is growing like crazy.

Not only is everything growing like crazy, it is growing everywhere!  The variety of plant life growing on this garden path stone is incredible.

An old dead tree stump had new lichens growing on it.  WOW! What planet did this come from?

Another strange lichen.  I wish I had some extension tubes for my macro set-up . . . guess I'll go to the camera shop this afternoon!

This is about the maximum magnification I can get without an extension tube on my macro lens.  This is at 100%, no crop.

Our star fruit (Carambola) tree is starting to drop fruit.  Pretty tasty, but a strange texture . . . .

Snail Love . . . . mating at the bottom of the garden!

Oh!  So that's where the Chinese stone garden lantern went!

I noticed this flowing  thorn bush before I went into the house . . . and noticed that I hadn't noticed how beautiful the stalks were!