Show Notes for the Billy Newman Photo Podcast

Billy shares reflections on creative workflows in photography, discusses Comet NEOWISE and stargazing in rural Oregon, recounts recent outdoor camping and photo expeditions, and dives into technical thoughts on camera equipment and the creative process. He also touches on issues like light pollution, the evolving nature of digital cameras, and the unique challenges of capturing stunning night sky photography.

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Explore outdoor photography, technical media projects, stories from backcountry expeditions, and insights from the creative process with Billy Newman—photographer, author, and podcast producer. Connect, learn, and follow along.

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Podcast Forward:The Billy Newman Photo Podcast blends real-world outdoor adventure, technical insight, and practical photography tips.

[MUSIC] Hello and thank you very much for listening to this episode of the Billy Newman photo podcast. I hear different industries kind of talk about what a good day of work is or how that is to kind of get out and get what you need done. And just as like a creative system, it's sort of tough in photography. There's a lot of the entrepreneurial and sort of business related stuff of how do you get paid and how do you operate in a business, how do you function as a photographer sort of a thing. But still outside of that you need to do something nourishing in the system of creativity where you're kind of gaining new ideas and putting new materials together and sort of figuring out a way to make a union of something new with media and with something visual, especially as fast as technology is moving forward. It's definitely an interesting vector kind of using the progression of technology and artistic creativity to try and make new pieces of media to put out. And that's what I really like about new media as it goes. So it's kind of interesting. I'm kind of thinking about the way of making pieces of media and new media elements and working with photographs and stuff. But it's something that I've been really interested for a long time. [MUSIC] You can see more of my work at BillyNewmanPhoto.com. You can check out some of my photo books on Amazon. I think you can look up Billy Newman under the authors section there and see some of the photo books on film, on the desert, on surrealism, on camping. Some cool stuff over there. And I wanted to jump into a couple of the things I've been doing through the month of July and some of the outdoor camping and travel stuff I've been up to. I was going to run down some of that in this podcast today. I wanted to talk about a trip I did out toward Eastern Oregon, I think like last, or what was a week before last is when I was out in this area. And I was trying to get some good observations in for Comet NeoWise. I'm not sure if any of you guys got to check that out while it was in its prime viewing section there. I think that was why we had the new moon before it switched over to being a gibbous moon or a nearly full moon like it's been the last week or so. But I think, what was it, around the 15th through the 25th or so of July, there were some pretty good observations to be made of Comet NeoWise. I guess after reading about it a little bit, it's not considered a great comet, like HaleBopp was, or I think it was Hayataki in 1996. We haven't had a great comet in a long time. I've ever seen those when I was a kid though, and that was pretty cool. Watching HaleBopp come through for, it seemed like three months or something. You were just looking at that in the low corners of the Northwestern and Western skies. It was cruising across the skyline there. I remember that still from third, fourth grade when it was coming through. And I also remember the year before that, when straight up in the sky at night, for it was only a week or so. I was a kid, but I remember for that week, you could see a real bright two-tailed comet that was going through. I think, I can't remember how to pronounce it, I think it's Hayataki or, I think it's some Japanese name, I'm pretty sure. But that was a really cool one. That one I still remember really clearly. I was only like, I don't know, seven or something when that, when that comet came through, but I really appreciate getting to make some observations. So that one, when I was a kid, I missed Haley's comet though, back in what, '87, I think was the last one it came through. And I probably will be the few years or that, that decade or two of age range that doesn't get to see Haley's comet in their lifetime. So I think I was born in '88, of course. So if I make it past a hundred, maybe I'll see it. What is it? Maybe like 80 something years. So it's probably not going to come back around until, I think it's like the 2070s or 2080s that I'd have to make it to, for to see Haley's comet again. It'd be fun, but I don't know, maybe we'll see how future, how the, you know, the future is at that time. But it was really cool to get to see comet Neowise. It was just a little below what would be the legs and feet of Ursa Major, the Big Dipper or like the Big Bear as it would kind of be observed. But if you kind of look at the Dipper part that we're all mostly familiar with, if you kind of consider Ursa Major, the larger bear constellation that it's structured on, if you kind of look down below the Dipper is where I was able to make my observations, the comet Neowise. And over here in the elevation area that I'm at in Western Oregon, it's about 200 or 300 feet above sea level. And there's kind of a constant problem with haze and with light pollution in this area. And I think it has to do something with, well, like, I mean, of course, you know, the amount of population that's around, but also there's something about the air quality or about how the air kind of flows out around here that just doesn't ever seem to be as crisp or as dark as you can get up in the mountains. And really, it's just like a stunning difference when you're able to get out further and make some some more clear observations. You know, the level of magnitude of stars that you're able to reveal just in a dark night is so much more crisp and clear. It's just like a it's a total difference. So it was cool to I think I first was able to spot just a little fuzzy bit of a second magnitude version of comet Neowise while I was here in town. But I tried to make a special trip out toward eastern Oregon out into the desert just to do some camping stuff. But what I wanted to do at the same time was make some good observations and also try and get some good photographs of common Neowise as it was coming through during its period where you could you could make some some good sightings. But it was cool. So going out to eastern Oregon, as it got dark a little past 1030 or so, as you look to the northwest, you could really see the comet and its tail spread for a couple inches in the sky. And I was really surprised to notice how little of it you could really make out or see when you're in an area of almost any light pollution once you're back in town or once you're in a lower elevation area with some light pollution and haze around. It was really difficult to make out in the same way that I could out in the desert or out in the mountains. And so I thought that was pretty cool to get to get to see and get to check out over there. But yeah, it was a blast getting to do some stuff out in eastern Oregon. I went over to the John Day River area and I was checking out that area. There's a lot of public land out in that area, but there's also some a lot of private land, too. It's just kind of an interesting area, how it's sort of broken up. And it was cool to get to go out, go out to the I headed out to Madras and then I took off and headed over east of there until I ran into the John Day River. And then I was able to use this map that I have to go through and find some of the open off or just the open roads that are, you know, the smaller gravel roads that are set up to kind of traverse the backcountry out there. So I was able to find a few of those that were open and travel around on those for a while. Now, that was pretty cool. I was able to find some dispersed campsites and set up right along the John Day River, which is really cool. It's a beautiful area out there. It's kind of interesting. The John Day River flows through this sort of, I guess it would be, I don't know, it's kind of like Canyonland and it's also sort of these rolling grass hills that sort of make up the landscape of Northern and Northeastern Oregon. And I think, yeah, as soon as you kind of get a little bit for like a little bit north of Bend is when you get out of the Great Basin area and you start to get into another kind of landscape that seems to stretch up north of the Columbia River up into Washington. I figured that some of it's from like really old deposits from the river systems and the waterways that were up there and how there's old deposits and then an erosion that's happened from those rivers running through the area for such a long time. But really cool to see kind of the rolling hills and then some of the carved out canyons that go through the John Day River area up there. When I found the campsite I was at, I was pretty far away from everybody and I was really far away from any substantial town. I think I was near, I don't know, I don't even know what it is. There wasn't anything there when I drove through it. There was a bridge and a couple little ranch houses, you know, real ranches, right? Like just a little house, like a little two bedroom house and then 100 acres of cattle to deal with. So it seems like another life out there. I wonder how they're dealing with, you know, kind of the way of the world as things are this summer. But it was cool, yeah, getting out there. Went to, oh yeah, I kind of set up my campsite and stuff, had my truck going, and that was all pretty easy going. But then I waited till dark after 1030. Yeah, Comet NeoWiser is really visible up below the Big Dipper. That was pretty cool to get to see out there in eastern Oregon. Really bright, really clear. You could almost make out the second tail. I have my binoculars with me. I think there's some 10 by 42s and those worked really well to view it, to view the comet. Looked really crisp through the binoculars and it got really easy to spot most of the night. Even just to the naked eye, it was really easy to spot it. Just like, oh yeah, it's right there. There's a comet. It's just a big wisp in the sky. So it was really cool to get to view it. What I did is I set up my tripod and I have my camera with me. And so I set it up with a really wide angle and then I was trying to get some photographs of it as the comet was coming down to set on the landscape of the hillside as the hours went on into the night. So I think I stayed out until maybe one or two in the morning when the Big Dipper was sort of scooping down a little low onto the horizon. And then at that point, the place where the comet was dipped below the horizon and then was out of view for the rest of the evening. And I think even into the morning, I think by that time when I was photographing it, it wasn't visible any longer up in the morning sky. I think they said at first in early July, you could kind of view it around Capella if you were able to get out early enough, say three or four in the morning. But as the direction, as it was moving, it was kind of creeping up pretty quickly, day over day over day. It would kind of move a good chunk through the sky. And the direction that it was moving, it was moving to be more visible at the nighttime, which really offered more hours of good observation time. Which I thought was pretty cool to wait until it was really dark enough in the northwest view of the sky, probably about 1030 onward is when you were finally able to make out those kind of finer points of light in the sky in that region. So it was really cool to set up the tripod, set up the camera, set up some manual focus to get it kind of set sharp. You can't use autofocus when you're trying to make photographs of the night sky and the stars because it just kind of seeks back and forth. You have to set it to manual focus and then ring out your focus ring to infinity and then just back a little bit. You'll notice this every time if you do it. It's really frustrating, the dark, because you can't really always make it out in an easy way and edit your mistake quickly. But if you go all the way to infinity and then take pictures there of the night sky, you're going to notice that those points of light that are the stars sort of end up a little fuzzy. And it's because all the way to infinity for whatever reason just isn't quite in focus at infinity. So you have to go all the way out to infinity and then back it off just a little bit. And that'll nearly ensure that most of that part of the image is in focus the whole way. And it's difficult even if you do have an f-stop that's a little bit more tightened out, say like an f4 or f6 or something, you're still going to get a lot of that out of focus softness. If the focus ring isn't really dialed into the right spot. So I try to work on that a little bit. And yeah, dialed in my focus was able to set it up with a reasonable ISO to get some images of the night sky and pick up some of those finer points of light. And then I was able to take a series of photographs in a few different locations out there in the John Day River Valley, which I thought was really cool. It was pretty to be out there and it was a nice night, really warm in the river canyon. And really remote too, like I was mentioning, I think I was the only person out there for a few miles. I saw another group coming in on a, they had like a little mid-size SUV and they were going fishing out at a bend in the river a couple miles up from where I was. And so I took my truck down a little further and camped out just on the side of the river. It was cool, nice green river up to the kind of high desert tan rim rock that runs the area around there. So it was a cool evening, cool campsite area. It was a cool spot to check out Comet NeoWise too. So I tried to check it out up until, I don't know what, you know, 1.30 in the morning when I couldn't see it anymore. And then spent the night out there out in the John Day River area. And then the next morning got up and tried to check out some of the different roads and stuff that went around. You can check out more information at billynumanphoto.com. You can go to billynumanphoto.com/support if you want to help me out and participate in the value for value model that we're running this podcast with. If you receive some value out of some of the stuff that I was talking about, you're welcome to help me out and send some value my way through the portal at billynumanphoto.com/support. You can also find more information there about Patreon and the way that I use it. If you're interested or feel more comfortable using Patreon, that's patreon.com/billynumanphoto. I've got the Sony a7R going through its paces. It's been really cool using it for the last couple weeks. I've been trying to figure out its idiosyncrasies and there are a lot of them. There's a lot of them with these newer cameras and I can see definitely where from the a7R or from the first series of the a7s to the a7II and so on and so forth with the better and different accentuated camera models, they get better. They really do get better. There are some things with the first renditions of the electronic viewfinder and the system of how that takes photos, how it kind of interrupts when you're taking photos that don't quite seem to the level of professionalism that I'm really trying to hit for. I know that there's a lot of custom settings that I have to go into and sort of tweak how that a7R is going to be grabbing at photos and then how it's chimping. You guys heard of that before? Chimping. I don't know what it really has to do with but it's referring to when you take a photograph or you take a couple of photographs and then you look down at that screen on the bottom of your digital camera, the back plate of your digital camera. You look down and you see the photo and then you come up, you recompose and you shoot again and then come down and look at it. It's, I guess, I don't understand it completely. It just seems sort of like a modern approach to something that the technology allows you to do. I think it's totally acceptable but for whatever reason, it is sort of an interference in the creative or in the photography process sometimes. I know that there are many pros, all of those pros coming from a past world that's no longer here a film where it wasn't really acceptable to do half shutter press autofocus. You have to do autofocus from the back and then shutter is its own system. With that, there's all these kind of silly rules about how you can use focus, how you can use composition stuff, how you can set up your frame, when you can look at the screen or when you can review the images. I guess these film shooters, they thought it was uncouth to be able to review or see the photograph before the film was developed or before it was later on. Interesting and I see kind of psychologically there's this path that does seem to create better work or more intuitive photographs and those are better. They are more needed and I can see where some of these tricks might get you closer to that but the idea of just looking at the back of the screen that doesn't impede you so much and it doesn't really stop you. If you're a pro and you know what you're doing, you look at the screen, you're looking at the screen because you know why you're looking at the screen. It doesn't really seem to make sense that there's these sort of sideways rules about features you can and can't use that are put into your camera. But to speak about efficiency, the problem that I noticed about the a7R is that it will display the image to you for about a second and a half, two seconds and it will display it on the screen but it'll also display it in the electronic viewfinder for your eye. And you can shut this feature off but there's still a little bit of a hiccup around the time that you hit the shutter button. And the problem with this is if I'm framed up to take a photograph, let's say of a situation I remember back at OSU when I was shooting sports a lot, let's say there's a football game, I'm out in front of the action and I see that the beefs set up a play, they throw a pass, the guy gets it, he's right in the pocket on the third of the frame that I have and I have focus tracking on him. I want to take a series of shots with a high frame rate so I can get that whole run of action as he moves towards me. And so the issue that I'm having is in photography you're trying to select moments that look good. That's kind of the point. Aesthetically you want them to be choices that are appealing and that has to do a lot with gesture, a lot with movement, a lot with kind of positioning and framing and composition and sort of thoughtfully considering what does the person look like? How are all these things in the frame relating to each other and is it going to work when you press the shutter? And the difficulty is with these a7Rs or even with the Sony a6000 when I'm looking at it and I take this series of photographs, I'm almost blind that whole time. Whereas before in the past when I would have been working with an SLR, there's the shutter flap where you see black for just a moment but it comes back and it's optically correct immediately. It's optically correct to what you're going to be shooting but with the EVF there's just enough lag that in high action you seem to kind of miss where the gesture is. If stuff's moving around it seems like you almost have to kind of guess or assume that the next moment's going to happen and then try and take it but you can't see it. It's weird. It's like it shuts off the viewfinder right at the time that you need to be looking through it. And so in some ways like that it's a little bit complicated of am I framed up right? Am I looking at the thing right? When I take the picture it just shows me something else all of a sudden. And I know that they've solved a lot of these problems like if you look up the Sony a9 and some of the features that it has if you bring that into high speed shooting it's got this interesting system where instead of having the electronic viewfinder blink black or cut out completely have the processor move all of its attention to processing that image that it just captured and then bring back the electronic viewfinder momentarily later. What we see in the a9 is a system where there's the bracket. There's like a let's say like a red focus bracket that kind of goes around and you're shooting, you're shooting, you're shooting. But what you're seeing is instead of the electronic viewfinder blinking out black and then showing you a frame or just blinking out black and then coming back on what we see is just that bracket, that red bracket blink yellow or blink from black to yellow or black to red or something like that. And all that's indicating is that it is firing frames, but you're just still seeing it completely normally like you would view any action on a screen. And that's a really interesting process. I think it's like, I don't know, it's like 20 frames a second or something like that. It's almost video at that point when you're shooting raw frames. Are you kidding me? Raw frames on a Sony a9 at God knows what almost 50 megapixels that it's shooting at. And you can do 20 frames a second just looking at the thing and then seeing a little black bar blink yellow and that's signaling that you're capturing all that data. Thanks a lot for checking out this episode of the Billy Newman photo podcast. Hope you guys check out some stuff on Billy Newman photo.com. A few new things up there, some stuff on the home page, some good links to other, other outbound sources, some links to books and links to some podcasts, links to some blog posts. All pretty cool. Yeah. Check it out at Billy Newman, a photo.com. Thanks a lot for listening to this episode of the podcast. Talk to you next time. Bye. [MUSIC]