Author: tophermueller

This author has written 6 articles
Announcements

Why I don’t offer Paypal for checkout.

My site uses a rather unusual process for receiving and sending orders. You like a print, you choose a size and format of the print (framed, canvas, paper), and go through a payment gateway. In this case it's Stripe, which was easy to set up and test. I've ordered several copies of prints just to be sure the process works. (Yeah, the first one was shoved into my mailbox despite the "do not bend" message printed on the face. Shrug. The print still looked great.) You're not on my journal…

Comments Off on Why I don’t offer Paypal for checkout.
August 23, 2021
About my Photography Equipment
Behind the Shots / Equipment & Review / Tips, Tools, & Strategies

About my Photography Equipment

You've seen my byline for my photography, a quotation from local Californian author John Steinbeck: It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again. As you can see in my galleries - I work from the range of about 3-5 millimeters (such as the smallest nudibranchs) to hundreds or thousands of light years away (such as my images of galaxies and star clusters), and everywhere in between. It takes a lot of practice and refining technique for each of those…

Comments Off on About my Photography Equipment
August 23, 2021
Dockfouling at Breakwater, Monterey
Outings & Practice Galleries

Dockfouling at Breakwater, Monterey

August 8th, 2021 - Water was pretty foul: not very good seeing. So, so many nudibranchs today! I've started to more or less ignore the opalescent nudis, unless they're acting photogenic for me. Lots of eggs too, so I suspect Breakwater will see a boom in population in the coming weeks. Today was a reminder to scan slowly. I didn't bother working the berths and stuck to the loading docks near Pigwizard. Not familiar with dockfouling? Watch for a future post on how I got into it. Thanks for looking!

Comments Off on Dockfouling at Breakwater, Monterey
August 8, 2021
Nudi-What? The Joy of Hunting Nudibranchs
Behind the Shots

Nudi-What? The Joy of Hunting Nudibranchs

In my Intertidal & Underwater gallery you'll notice several frilly or alien-looking creatures caught on all sorts of surfaces. These nudibranchs (pronounced new-dih-braynks) are especially fascinating to both marine biologists and underwater photographers. My images only give a small taste of how oddly beautiful and colorful these creatures can be. It's a deep rabbit hole to start researching the wide array of species around the world. There's a lot to learn, and a plethora of resources online. More fun, you'll find that nubibranchs have their own cult followings all over…

Comments Off on Nudi-What? The Joy of Hunting Nudibranchs
August 5, 2021
Purchasing Prints – How it Works
Announcements

Purchasing Prints – How it Works

The goal of this site was to start sharing my work outside of social media. Secondary to that, I wanted to give the chance for friends and family to 'help themselves' to buying prints to mount and enjoy. I've got little interest in managing orders; I'd rather be out taking the pictures! So I'd decided to purchase a plan with a company called Imagely - and use their process for image ordering and fulfillment. When you visit a gallery, you can scroll through the images on the bottom filmstrip. There…

Comments Off on Purchasing Prints – How it Works
August 4, 2021
Welcome.
Announcements

Welcome.

Welcome to my website. There's more to the story when I get around to creating a legitimate About page - but for now I'll sum it all up: It was in my teens that I really started appreciating what photography could  mean to me. It took a long, long time for the passion to evolve. This slow, natural progression of discovering light and strategies in shooting and storytelling by myself led to the images you see here. Thirty years later, but who's counting. Gladwell writes that it takes 10,000 hours of…

Comments Off on Welcome.
August 1, 2021