AUGUST 2012RUSSELLGRAVES.COM

N E W S L E T T E R

The Comeback

No News is Good News

It’s been a while since I released a newsletter. No reason in particular other than I have been busy. Busy with photography and writing projects but mainly busy with kid stuff. Since late January, we’ve been involved in Little Dribblers basketball, Little League sof tba l l and baseba l l , swimming, golf, and a ton of other stuff. It is a busy time but it is fun and rewarding.

So far, this spring and summer has been busy with many cool projects including some photo shoots and video productions. The shoots have involved everyone from regular folks to famous people and have taken me to locations both beautiful and remote. I’ve also been growing the column. Over the past few months, paper after paper have picked up the column and now it’s viewed by over 100,000 people each week. If you have a dialogue with your local paper, suggest it to the editor as I am looking to grow it even more.

With that said, there are some big things on the horizon: a couple of new ebooks made especially for the IPad are in the works, I’m taking the initial steps to launch a new internet forum, and am looking into all kinds of new multimedia offerings. So stay tuned to

some really cool stuff coming down the pike.

Speaking of new stuff, I just finished a new short film on a river that is an u n l i k e l y p l a c e f o r fl y fi s h i n g enthusiasts. It’s a cool piece so I hope you’ll take a look.

Finally, the hot temperatures seem to be moderating a bit and it’s about time. I’ve been staying inside way too much lately as the Texas heat is often barely tolerable. It’s time to get outside once again.

Sincerely,

russell@russellgraves.com

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PHOTO TIP

Traditional photography instruction tells you to keep the sun at your

back. Backlighting, however, is a cool way to add drama to your

images. I even like to add a little lens flare in the pic.

Canon 5D Mark II camera, Canon 16-35mm lens, 1/1250 sec. @

f5.6, ISO 1600 F B ICON

Featured Column Louie Mueller’s Second Street in Taylor, Texas cuts its way across the town’s heart in a straight-line fashion that you are accustomed to seeing in most Texas towns. Despite the street undergoing major renovations, it’s still easy to get around the old buildings of varying age and architectural styles.

Although the street is torn up in front of the place, I spot the old barbecue joint and pull into their spacious parking. Most of my adult life, I’ve heard of Louie Mueller’s BBQ in Taylor and my stomach tells me I am ready to dig in. I am not much of a food writer and never have been. Those who

deal in culinary

prose are much more adept at it than I will ever be and are probably more well traveled than I. However, I will give it a shot because Louie Mueller’s deserves mentioning.

Walking into the front screen door, it’s like I’ve stepped back in time to a restaurant that is what eating joints used to be like: short on expensive architectural and interior decoration details and really, not all that fancy. Instead, Mueller’s is all about the food.

The main room is cavernous with high ceilings and another room, nearly identical in size flanks it to the west. The main room is a bit dark because of scant ceiling lighting. Instead, natural light floods from the adjoining room because of the large screen panels that separate the second room from the outdoors and makes it feel like a patio. Wood smoke makes the space a bit hazy

and the walls are a rich brown - the

patinaed result of years of smoke permeating the walls.

It feels like a smoke house in here. With no air conditioning, its a bit warm inside but the big fans peppered throughout the building makes it comfortable.

After looking around I saunter to the back counter to order. Behind the counter, a slab of peppered brisket lies on a well worn wooden chopping block. While I stare at the hand written menu that’s hanging on the wall and scribed on meat wrapping paper, one of the employees slices a small medallion of beef and lays it on some butcher paper in front of me and motions with his knife for me to try it.

The brisket is warm and perfectly seasoned and his subtle sales technique works deftly and I order four slices (that he cuts fresh in front of me) along with a link of beef sausage. Before I am at the end of

the counter, I add a large iced tea and a small bowl of a vinegar-based cole slaw. When I check out, the meat is weighed to establish a price and by the time my wife and two kids come through the line, we’ve only spent $32.

Sitting down to eat, I am still enamored with the look of the place. It is nothing fancy but completely captivating. After my first bite of brisket, however, my focus quickly changed. This place is all about the food.

From the syndicated newspaper column, “Russell Graves Outdoors”

Family Traditions

Like clockwork, the Graves family

always makes opening day.

September 1st is a special day. In Texas, it’s the opening of a new hunting season. Just as sure as there is a September 1st, the Graves family is afield. My brother, my dad, my wife, and our kids make sure we keep this family tradition relevant whether there are many birds or not.

In the end, harvest numbers do not matter. What we care about is the experience and the family bonding. Those memories are priceless.

THE SKINNY:

VARIOUS CANON

CAMERAS AND LENSES

Throw lighting a change up

Sunny days aren’t always the best days to photograph If I could pick one perfect day for shooting outdoors it would be to have a couple of hours of sun during the morning and a couple of hours of sun in the evening. In between, cloud cover all day long.

PHOTO

INSTRUCTION

I can remember as a young photographer I would curse days without sun. I thought (unintelligently) that I just couldn’t make good pictures without full sunlight. I couldn’t be more wrong.

Shooting pictures under cloud cover is a great technique for bringing super saturated and deep colors to your photographs. Using a studio lighting term, the overcast sky works like a giant “soft box” to modify the harsh, overhead sunlight. When sunlight is filtered through a layer of clouds, the light becomes soft and “wraps” around your subject. The soft, shadowless light really makes colors

vibrant and makes your images pop.

Shooting under overcast skies, however, you do have some limitations.

The first, of course, is that the light is typically dimmer. Therefore, to keep your images from blurring moving animals, you can always bump your ISO to a higher level. Most of the time, I’ll shoot at a low ISO - say around 100. I don’t mind shooting up around ISO 640 or 800 as the files on my Canon camera hold up remarkably well and are noise free at these higher ISO’s.

Increasingly, however, as the camera sensors improve, you can get great files from higher and higher ISO’s.

The second, and probably the biggest problem is the sky. Cloud cover in an images literally sucks the color out of an image. If you let the camera decide the exposure, the camera seems to gravitate towards exposing for the sky. If there is any difference in the tonality range between the subject and the sky, the sky will often be properly exposed thus making the subject go dark.

Conversely, if you expose for the subject, then the sky gets

“HOWEVER, AS PHOTOGRAPHIC TECHNOLOGY IMPROVES, MEGAPIXELS DON’T MATTER SO MUCH ANYMORE...”

so blown out it looses all of its detail. Sometimes, that is not necessarily a bad thing as the high key look is kind of cool on occasion. But unless you are after that one particular look, it’s best to take one simple precaution when shooting outdoors under overcast skies: leave the sky out of the picture.

When shooting pictures of wildlife, you may have to plan

your set-up to shoot at angles where you can eliminate the sky. Pick spots where the wildlife may be in a low area with a hill rising up behind it or maybe it is an area where there is a stand of trees and vegetation well in the background.

Either way, get creative and think about ways to sky out of the picture. Just this one simple technique will increase

the quality of your outdoor, cloud laden images dramatically.technique (which we’ll discuss in later topics) and shoot often for practice. Modern cameras are technological wonders. However, they are only as good as the person holding it.

NEW VIDEOS AT RUSSELLGRAVES.COM

THE PEASE RIVER FLY FISHING CLUB

THE LUTHIER

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