Some Random Stats from my new Book

The new edition of Under the Endless Sky will be out soon. Aside from being a nature photographer, I also like to play with numbers on occasion. So I put together some stats on the images included in my new book.

When were they taken?

Sadly, based on the images I selected for the book, I did my best photography in 2002-2004, since 43% of the photos in the book were taken in that three year period. 2006-2009 was apparently a major dry spell in my landscape work.

2002-2005 also corresponds with the time period when I was shooting with my Mamiya 645 Pro using Velvia 50 film (see below). There was nothing like that camera and nothing like Velvia for color. I do miss it.

By month, things are a bit different. Though you might think that the majority of the images might be taken in the spring and summer, nearly two-thirds of the images were taken between December and March. This makes some sense given that wildlife are most abundant in the winter (December-January) and the orchards bloom in February and early March.

Where were the images taken?

You can see the distribution of images on the map in the book, but breaking the images down by county, it becomes clear that Butte County is a favored location, partly because it's close, but also because it has a mix of farms, orchards, foothills and mountains that is quite photogenic. Table Mountain was the single most popular location for images in the book.

What about all that camera stuff?

As noted above, I took more photos in this book with my Mamiya 645 than with any other camera, even though I only used it for a little over 2 years.

Here are a few more esoteric graphs, breaking down images by shutter speed, aperture and ISO. Not much terribly revealing here, other than the fact I don't seem to like shutter speeds between a 1/30th and 1/60th of a second, and that I took a lot of photos using Velvia 50 film (that accounts for all of the images at ISO 50).

Only a true camera nerd could be interested in these graphs.