Bluejacket Photo

A photo taken from a point a little south of me that shows the shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble Telescope passing in front of the sun.

STS-125 Atlantis and Hubble Solar Transit

The picture was taken by Thierry Legault.  More of his photos are here.  His work is simply amazing.

The interesting thing to me, though, is that this picture was taken using off the shelf equipment (5 inch refracting telescope and a Canon 5D Mark II digital camera).

Photography has come a long way…

Photographer Scott Bourne, who has an excellent website, also twitters (and twitters useful stuff!), and he recently made this announcement:

Scott Bourne Contest Update

Between now and April 30 I’ll give away:

1) A second generation Firewire Drobo – value $500 (US and Canada only).
2) A ScanCafe.com gift certificate for $500 worth of scanning (US only).
3) $1000 worth of RayFlash ring flash adapters (five valued @ $200 each). (Worldwide)
4) Well who knows? I am a giveaway machine.

I’ll be giving away something roughly every two or three days so stay close. I’ll try to make it fun.

The base rules for my contests are:

a. You must be at least 18 years of age.
b. The contests are void where prohibited by law.
c. All taxes are the responsibility of the winner.

To be eligible to win, do any one or all of the following: (If you do all you increase your chances of winning)

1: Place a link on your website or blog to http://www.photofocus.com.
2: Place a link on your website or blog to http://www.mydl.me.
3. Follow me on Twitter.
4. Follow me at http://www.scottbourne.com.
5. Send this Tweet out ONE TIME if (AND ONLY IF) you think my contests are a good idea…

Follow @scottbourne for a chance to win a Drobo, ScanCafe gift certificate or a RayFlash. Details here: http://bit.ly/17i6R8

If you are already following me and/or have links to my sites, you’re already eligible to win.

The full details are here.

Wow…

Just blown away.

She has always been one of my favorite photographers.  To me, she often seems to catch some sort of hidden persona of her subjects (a viewpoint she disagrees with, it turns out).

If I was to list my favorite 25 photographs, at least 5 of hers would be on that list.  I went in there knowing I was going to enjoy seeing her pictures, but…

It’s one thing to view her pictures on a monitor, or in a book, and another thing to see a whole bunch of them arranged side by side, literally larger than life.

There was a video playing talking about her career and the people she’s interacted with. I liked it enough that I bought it at Amazon…

I also put on my wish list her latest book, “Annie Leibovitz at Work“, in which she takes a hundred of her favorite pictures and describes the background on them, including techniques.

Oh, I also came across her list of 15 favorite photography books…