All work and no play...

Yeah, I know you can finish that. Quite a week.

Since the show, I feel like I haven't stopped. Then I look around and it seems like I haven't accomplished anything, My house is still a mess, I have papers and pictures everywhere, I was trying to work on something and couldn't find an uncluttered horizontal surface to put things on... everywhere I look there's something else I need to do.

The house smells funny: like old cigarette smoke. So I thought it would be a good idea to go clean the creosote out of the fireplace chimney. When I ran the brush down the chimney, there's this odd 6-foot gap between the bottom of the steel pipe and the fireplace insert. I have a call in to a chimney repair guy. Stay tuned... it's a good time of year for that to happen, though. Think what it would have been like mid-winter!

Update: he was just here. There's nothing wrong other than my brush being worn to the point that it's looser than the chimney liner in spots. He figured that it was a combination of things, including the gasket which is worn down a little, and told me how to fix it. That's a relief! I can't fix stuff generally, because all I do is break things!

I broke my Wacom stylus. I went shopping for a new one: even on eBay they're $70 or more. I got lucky, though (and so did one of you!). I found an almost new Intuos4 Small for almost the same price, complete with stylus, mouse and all the goodies! Bought it, got it, I'm a happy camper. I also found a used stylus on Kijiji, bought it too.

FREE Wacom Tablet

So why is one of you going to benefit? I've been using a tablet and stylus since I took the Pixel Painting course several years ago. Once you use one, you'll never go back to a mouse! OK, that's not fair, the mouse is good for certain stuff, like writing and file management and web surfing... but for any kind of photo editing or management, the stylus is like heaven. Imagine trying to write with a brick instead of a pen: that's what the mouse is like in drawing tasks. And don't get me started on trackpads.

 I now have two Intuos4 tablets, one small and one medium. The tablet I bought originally was a Wacom Bamboo Fun, size small. It is great for getting your feet wet. And I'm going to give it to someone. Free. It's used but it works perfectly on PC or Mac, driver is readily available at Wacom. You only need to do three things.

1. Subscribe to my newsletter. Upper right on the blog or click the QR code graphic, or go to www.photography.to/subscribe.html.
2. Send me an email telling me you want the tablet. Put "bamboo" in the subject line. If you're already on the newsletter list, you'll get an error when you try to subscribe, but send me the email and I'll put you in the draw.
3. Promise that you won't sell it, that when you're done with it you'll give it to someone else.

As soon as I get 50 new names, I'll pick someone at random.

Magic Mushrooms

A couple of years ago I posted a picture of a huge pile of carrots and wondered what caused it. The most popular conclusion was that aliens shaped like bunny rabbits had invaded the Earth unknown to mankind and had planted cachés of food while on their mission to enslave mankind and take over the planet. Search for "carrots" if you dare.

The plot thickens. Today I was out talking with the chimney repair guy and I turned around and saw this:

Yes, some mushrooms growing in my water-soaked grass (or what passes for grass here. Mostly dandelions, but that's another story, kids). 

But then I looked a bit more closely, and was compelled to take a little video with my P&S to try to communicate what was going on (if you're not on high speed you may want to skip clicking on it):

The mushrooms are growing in a perfect circle, approximately 4 meters in diameter. There are no other mushrooms around. It's hard to capture unless you get up on a ladder with a wide angle lens (and I don't do ladders), so I opened a ground level shot in Photoshop and circled the mushrooms in the picture:

It's not my septic bed, I'm standing on that to shoot this picture. It's a perfect circle of mushrooms. 

Now I think the alien bunny rabbits landed their spacecraft right here and left behind spores from their extraterrestrial home. There's no other logical explanation.

Disposing of an old computer

I had a Sony Vaio laptop years ago. It got really slow in it's old age (I can relate!), it's probably 120 years old in computer years and I replaced it with a Lenovo. The screen died on that one too, about a year ago and I replaced it with the HP Pavilion that I'm typing this on right now. But it was time for the Vaio to go to the great computer home in the sky. Or in the landfill...

I'd been using it to drive my scanner/fax/printer that's also toast, so it was plugged into the network and I also occasionally would back up files on it, like financial records, email addresses, etc. So it wouldn't be a good idea to just throw it, with the hard drive intact, into the garbage. I'm here to tell you it takes only one shot with an axe to eliminate that problem.

...and there's a certain satisfaction to be gained. By the way, little tiny shards of platter poured out the middle. Wish I had taken the time to photograph it, bet it would have been cool. 

Anyway I wrote this to remind you not to throw out old computer stuff until you make sure your data is really and truly gone. Even CSI, the CIA, CSIS and other "C" groups wouldn't be able to put Humpty together again!

Time for some pictures

I know, you've been waiting and waiting, reading through my rambling drivel, waiting for some pictures. OK, here you are.

On Saturday, I unlimbered the ATV (must give her a name. "Polly", maybe, she's a Polaris... definitely female because you sit... let 's not go there). Anyway, I took Polly out for a ride not only down the trail but also along Horseshoe Lake Road to the White Water Preserve. It was a nice day and I figured I'd see some kayakers there. I've shot thousands of kayak pictures but it's somehow compelling.

I did, but I don't have anything special to show you. However I did take a few other shots in other locations.

In the forest, partway down the trail. I promised you I would keep you apprised of the changes in the scenery. The sun on the forest in the background caught my eye. Great colour! 

Looks like I'm in the African Veldt. Deep in the elephant grass. OK, maybe not, the dandelions give it away. It's 15 feet behind my garage... Go ahead and criticize my over-processed HDR, but I like it! 

How about this one. Remember when you were a kid and set up one friend holding his hand up and another friend in the distance looking like she was standing on his palm? My old satellite dish looking like a communications link while riding through the elephant grass in a third world African country.

One more shot at looking like I was trekking on safari in a remote place. 

I told you I went to the fast water. I had a picture in mind, and here it is:

I spend some time on this. The image is a 3-shot HDR merge, all shot with the 10x ND filter on the camera. The dark rocks and bright white water told me I had to merge more than one shot to capture all the detail; the fast flowing water needed slowing down, hence the ND filter.

I got some other pictures there but I'll save them for next time. I was following my own advice to "work the scene" and look around for other things to shoot. You'll have to come back to see them next week!

— 30 —

First Impressions

I've got my new Nikon D600 and I'll share some first impressions here. But first...

Announcing Photo Mini-Tours
On the weekends of October 7 and 14, I'll be running some what I call "mini-tours". The intention is to take some people out to shoot photos of the fall colours up here in the Highlands, at venues I've scouted and perhaps give them some tips on how to take better shots. These are not full teaching workshops, just a 3-hour session that should give them some great ideas and if the weather cooperates, probably some "keeper" images. There will be 3 sessions each Sunday, depending on demand: loosely termed "morning", "noon" and "night".

If you're interested in attending or if you know someone who might be, visit http://www.photography.to for more information, but don't delay! The colours are coming, the colours are coming!

As I mentioned earlier, I've written a guide to taking better fall pictures. It's included in the registration for the mini-tours, but it's also available for separate download here.

They're Baaack...
Yes they are. The alien bunny-rabbit like creatures from a planet far, far away, have come back under cover of darkness and placed another caché of carrots for their forthcoming invasion of the Earth. I have proof, captured on digital film:

Some of the alien bunnies must be colour blind because they threw in a few parsnips this year. Also some onions and turnips...
perhaps we're destined for a stew in a giant crock-pot! 

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

iPhone Picture
I have to admit, it isn't bad!

I built this little fence to block the elements so barbequeing  will be easier in the winter. I do that year-round.

OK, OK. You're waiting for the D600 impressions. Here we are.

Nikon D600 first impressions
Some good, some not-so-good, but I'm glad I bought it. I wrote most of this up on the TIF forum last night as well, so if you're on there, this might be a repeat. Here's what I wrote:

I have an overall positive feeling about the camera but there is a learning curve and a few glitches that take the shine off it a little for me. Some of it is just me but I thought I'd share anyway. 

Negatives

• Without Lightroom/ACR support, it's a bitch to post-process images. The only software I have that will handle the NEF files is NikonView NX2. Remember when LR4 was creepy-crawly slow? NX2 is worse. Adjust the white balance and wait 20 seconds before the screen refreshes. Exporting one file to TIFF is a 60-90 second process. The controls in NX2 suck compared with LR (or maybe it's just me). I initially set it up to output RAW+JPG(fine) and chose "vivid" toning. That looked horrible so I switched to "Neutral". That's also awful, I'll try a different setting tomorrow. Images are really flat. When you overexpose (eg. bird in flight) there's nothing you can do to recover.

• You can only do 3 shot bracketing. 1 stop increments are too small, 2 stop are too big. Or maybe it's because I'm stuck with JPEGS for now... 

• I used to walk around all day with my D300/70-200 in my right hand. The middle finger on the right hand sat comfortably under the little ledge on the front of the camera. With the D600, they reshaped the ledge and my finger hurts. I suppose I'll get used to it.

• None of my old accessories fit. Batteries, CF cards (the D600 uses 2 x SD cards), the cable release, even the AC power supply.

Positives

• The autofocus is super fast and tack sharp. I wasn't sure because it was hard to tell on the LCD but I went out yesterday and practiced on birds in flight and 80% of my shots were bang on. Learning curve, though: I have to figure out which settings work best. There's "AF-A" mode that takes some getting used to, but I can see using it as a default when 'walking about'.

• High ISO performance is OUTSTANDING. I did a forest scene at 1/200 sec, f/4, ISO 6400 and after a little noise reduction in LR (on a JPEG!) it looked like an ISO 800 shot from the D300.

• You can blow up/crop images to 200% and they look like 100% crops on the D300. Tons of detail on that 24Mp sensor!

I picked up the camera on Friday, and shot this test image that afternoon:

This is cropped from a larger image. The significant fact is, I shot it at ISO 25,600. Yes, I said 25,600.  I did apply a little noise reduction in Lightroom, but this blows my mind. ISO 25,600.

On the way home to Minden, Rosa and I stopped at a cool pine forest and I took these shots:

Rosa's taking an iPhone picture up in the trees.
We're probably going back to this spot on one of the mini-tours, by the way. 

On Sunday, I stopped at the landfill (OK, the "garbage dump"!) with the intention of testing the autofocus as I said above.

On the way home, I came across this wild turkey (the one above is a "turkey vulture". Different beast).

This was shot with the 400mm, quite far away so I had to crop. I used shutter speed priority, 1/640 at f/5.6, ISO 800. 

Heartwarming little dog picture
My neighbours, the Sweets, have a couple of little dogs. Marty walked by while I was shooting some fall colours and the dog stopped yapping long enough for me to get a photo:

I used the oil paint filter on the fur, and painted some catchlights in the eyes. It's cropped quite tightly.

That's it for now. More to come soon!

— 30 —

A New Look!

I've had the same header picture up on my blog for a few years now, and I decided it was time for a change. The original "Canoe in the Mist" image was shot in the fall of 2007. The new picture draws from a consistent palette of colours that I really like. The original shot was of a milkweed pod in a meadow near my house, but I replaced the plant with me (narcissistic, aren't I?)! I hope you like it.

So: on to some "stuff".

NAPP is giving some good deals. But they all happen on Monday, November 28th which is supposedly Cyber-Monday (what do we know in Canada? That's like our "Boxing Day", I hear!). They have 30% off stuff, but for me, the biggie is the extra 6 months membership with a renewal or a new membership. And I was about to expire! If you go to the NAPP site, please use the link at the right so I get my 'brownie points'.

If you don't know NAPP (The National Association of Photoshop Professionals), they're a huge resource for those of us who spend time at our computers making our images look pretty. And they're our advocates against the seemingly unfair policies of Big Business — take the latest one from Adobe where many of us won't be able to get upgrade pricing when CS6 comes out... details on these and other stories after these words about your dirty clothes!

The quote from the last post comes from an ancient George Carlin routine, mid 1960's. The character was "Al Sleet, the hippy-dippy weather man". He said, "...Russia and the United States are at war, missiles have been fired by both sides. Details on these and other stories after this word about your dirty clothes." He was a funny guy.

If you're not a member, click this link to find out more about NAPP. If you are a member, click it to renew, but wait 'till Monday to save some big bux! Go to this page to see the codes you need to use to get your discounts.

What else? Oh yeah,

The Alien Carrot Mystery

I got a lot of feedback from the last post. Some people suggested that someone was baiting deer. Another person thought it was an attempt to outfox the "carrot marketing board". Someone else thinks Santa has lost his reindeer and is trying to get them back. Or that my neighbours have a secret bunny farm in their basement and got a year's supply of food... but I got a bit more insight yesterday when I visited the Carrot Pile again. Here's what the pile looks like, in context:

See? In a meadow, in the middle of nowhere.

And here was my clue: a new addition to the site:

A "Carrot-Cam". I think this camera is fired by a motion sensor, which probably means I'm on Candid Carrot! But why? I stand by my original premise: they're trying to capture photos of the aliens!

Topaz Adjust 5

I've been using Topaz Adjust 4 for some time. Version 5 just came out and for registered users, it's a FREE upgrade and it's a real step forward! For new users, there's a discounted price of $35 until end of November (Code: "ADJUSTME") and then $50 after that. Topaz makes some phenomenal products and if you use Photoshop or Lightroom you really want to have their plug-ins. It's cheap, and upgrades are FREE! Click here to go to the Topaz site to see what they've got.

Here's a picture I worked on yesterday. It uses some of the new features in Topaz Adjust 5, but I also used Nik HDR Efex to produce the original HDR image, and Nik Color Efex for the vignette.

This was also taken yesterday, up in the carrot field

I'll be doing some analysis and some how-to's about Adjust 5 in my Tech blog, but not today! Give me a few days and come back. There are some things I haven't figured out yet. But go get your copy before the special offer expires!

One last picture for today

The Gull River at Norland. This is NOT an HDR. It is exactly as it looked when I shot it. It's a 2-shot pano with the wide angle and covers close to 180°. It's a huge wide image and I could probably print it 3 meters wide.

For the record, I did try an HDR but I didn't like the artifacts I got. Merged automatically in Photoshop CS5. I did tweak this with Topaz Adjust 5 and I removed some dust spots, but that's all.

Oh yeah, dust spots!

I almost forgot. I had some very persistent dust spots despite my best efforts to remove them. Mark (from RHCC) told me about a great place in Toronto to get my sensor cleaned, so I went there on Friday. Great experience!

For the record, Nikon wants $80 to clean the sensor, but more importantly, they want to keep your camera for up to 2 weeks! Not me. These people apparently do the service work for a large retailer who shall remain un-named, but their name starts with "H"... they're an authorized Canon service shop but they do all brands. They're located at Steeles/Keele. I brought in the camera around 11:30 and picked it up 2 hours later. $60. If you're in Toronto, give them a try: Sun Camera Service, 2150 Steeles W, 905 669 6355, info@suncameraservice.ca. www.suncameraservice.ca, Nick. Tell him I sent you.

Apparently my mirror bay was full of dust as well, every shutter actuation released a cloud. I really should be more careful.

Next time!

— 30 —

Aliens have landed. It's the only explanation.

We'll get to the aliens in a minute. "But first, these words about your dirty clothes." Anyone know where that line from a comedy routine comes from? Comment below or email me!

Glenn's Cheap Tricks
Larry Becker from NAPP has his "Cheap Shots" blog where he tells you about inexpensive stuff he's come across, or DIY things you can do on the cheap. I sent him this one, but he didn't publish it, so it's my turn! By the way if you come up with similar things, drop me a note and maybe I'll publish it and give you credit! Or my undying respect. Or whatever.

I came across this product at Walmart (colloquially known as "Wally World"!).

Microfiber (or "microfibre" if you're Canadian or British) is phenomenal stuff. I first started using these to clean the visor of my motorcycle helmet. You know the ones you get from glasses places? They're smooth and after a while all they do is smear stuff around. These are textured like a towel and work better.

They don't scratch. OK, YMMV, but if they're clean and not carrying a bunch of dirt around, they don't scratch. Even lenses. I use these for my glasses (nothing better!), my lenses (well I always have a filter on the front), my computer monitors and keyboard, my TV, the inside of my car windshield... a million uses!

They claim they can be machine washed. I haven't tried that yet because... well I'm cheap but these are under $6 for three big (16" square) cloths and I like a fresh one, especially for the lenses.

I found them in the section with the cleaning supplies, like sponges and mops and stuff. I have to assume that they're available in Wally Worlds everywhere. Oddly, I haven't seen them in the Dollar stores.

---

Still waiting for the aliens? Hang in there...

On our trip up to Lake Superior, I had my point-and-shoot camera with me and took a few odd shots. Here are a couple that I found interesting.

Hmmm. What was Linda doing while driving?? Bob? You let her drive the Sprinter? Hmmm. BTW, you need a graduate degree to program the onboard computer/sound system/GPS/rear camera/... in that vehicle.

Whenever I've been out shooting with Ron, I've noticed a common activity on his part. Somehow, he's always taking a nap... This was at Pancake Bay on the shores of Gitchigumi (you know that's the Native name for Lake Superior, right?)

In fairness, I think he had a second camera and was shooting the rocks while his other one was doing a long time exposure out over the lake. But he could have been taking a nap...

Rosa and I went for a walk the other day, in the fields down the road from my house. I've mentioned her but I don't think I've posted a picture of her yet, so here's one!

OK, now the ALIENS.
Occam's Razor is often summarized as "simpler explanations are, other things being equal, generally better than more complex ones" (Thanks, Wikipedia!). In other words after you consider various possibilities, the simplest, most logical one is usually the right choice. You be the judge. I couldn't come up with another one...

To set the scene, Rosa and I were walking (can't really call it 'hiking') on top of a hill behind a couple of rural houses, but probably 500 meters (sigh. 1/3 mile) away from anything. We were in a meadow that had once, probably 50 years ago, been farmland because there were the remains of an old stone fence and the rusty remains of a 1940's vintage truck overgrown with weeds. The only sign of human activity were some snowmobile or ATV trails and one rutted disused cowpath leading, it seems, back behind the houses. Even my property, supposedly, used to be a horse farm but that goes back half a century. There are no farms in this area. None. We're in a recreational, rural, lakefront area with a mix of cottagers and full-time residents.

As we walked through the forest/meadows, there was something orange in the distance. As we approached it, picking our way through the undergrowth, here's what we found, in the middle of the meadow.

Yes, it was a giant pile of carrots. Again, this was in the middle of a meadow, in the middle of nowhere. No farms around anywhere. Where did they come from? Why were they there?

They weren't decayed, they weren't bad or infested with insects, they were just piled there.

Shot with the point-and-shoot (the other one was with the DSLR and processed as a single image HDR).

Try as I might, the simplest explanation that I could come up with is that an alien spacecraft, populated by bunny-rabbit-like beings from a world that has to be at least 10 light years away, deposited these here as a cache that they intend to retrieve later, which perhaps would serve as a food supply for an invading force of creatures who are intent on wiping out the human population of the Earth or turning us into slaves to fulfill their goal of expanding through the galaxy as they take over world after world and turn them into sources of food for their exponentially expanding population (we know what bunny rabbits do, right?).

There were no more logical explanations I could come up with. How about you? Send me an email with the words, "Alien Bunny Rabbit Plans to Exterminate the Human Race and turn the Earth into a vast food supply World" in the subject line. I'll publish your suggestions, provided the aliens don't get me first.

— 30 —