Things with 3 Legs

Yeah. They're called "Tripods". I just bought a new one for 3 reasons.

• The Gitzo I have is really big and hard to carry around on my bike
• It's heavy. I think the legs themselves (not counting the ball head) weigh 5 or 6 lbs.
• I saw this one and really thought it was innovative.

So I wanted a tripod that was really light. This one weighs about 2 lbs without the head. It's made of carbon fiber which is very rigid and strong. The head is innovative too, and it weighs less than 2 lbs and can support almost 20 lbs. It needs to be small so I can pack it easily. This one folds down in a really innovative (using that word a lot!) way -- the legs fold up over the head so the overall length is only about 17".

It also needs to be tall enough so I don't have to bend my aching back over to look through the viewfinder. Do you think this one is tall enough?

As I mentioned a couple of blog posts ago, this tripod is made in England by a company called, "3 Legged Thing". And the name of this tripod is "Brian". Cute, eh? Here's a link to the manufacturer's site and here's where you can buy it (at B&H). They say the one with the blue ball head is backordered but the black one is in stock.

I'm really happy with it, although I've had it less than a week. The only issue I'm having is that I tend to grab the friction locks (there are so many of them!) and loosen them inadvertently, so I need to tighten them more. I like the ball head, it's smooth and easy to use. On a scale of 1-10, it's a 9. So far.

When it gets dark...

Don't put away your camera. Instead, take out your tripod and get creative. I like star shots, so here are a few:

I used a little flashlight to paint the tree with light. This is a 30 second exposure at f/4, ISO 800 and 15mm in case you were interested. To keep the stars crisp at that long an exposure you need to use a wide angle.

The moon is really bright. In this picture I tried not to let it affect my exposure so I stuck with the same settings as the last image. I was struck by the pattern of the clouds and never noticed the meteor trail at around 10 o'clock (I suppose it could be an airplane but meteor sounds better!).

Almost the same exposure: a little darker originally because it was 15 seconds at f/4, ISO 400. But I did some processing to bring out the Inn and the sky at the same time.

A couple more hummingbirds. This little fellow is in flight — actually hover mode at my feeder.

Male Ruby-throated hummingbird in flight



Male ruby-throated hummingbird at rest. This looks similar to a shot I did a week or so ago, but I like the sharpness and the composition better. Remember this guy is only about 2" (5cm) long.

And finally,

Attack Squirrel! This guy looks like he's coming after me. Quite the opposite, he's frightened. He should be: this is just after he emptied my squirrel-proof bird feeder.

More to come!

— 30 —

Fly me to the moon...

Just a quick blog post today, with two subjects: business cards and the moon!

Business Cards
As I mentioned last time, I have a dealer account that allows me to access wholesale pricing for business cards. They are rather excellent, and very cheap! So I thought I'd help out by offering my blog readers a deal on full-colour cards.

This is my new card, front and back.

Believe it or not, you can get 1000 cards printed in full colour on both sides of heavy glossy stock, for about $20. How incredible is that? Here's what you have to do:

• You can provide complete artwork in a variety of formats,
• You can supply a couple of pictures and tell me what the type should say and look like, or
• You can use my images as the background for your cards.

If you supply everything, all ready for the press, it's $20. Plus taxes and shipping if applicable, of course. If you want me to do the layout and tweak things to look good, we can talk about how much my time on the computer is worth. If you want to use my images, that would also be included in the hourly fee.

I did this card for John. This is a great picture he took in Yellowstone and no, 555-1212 is NOT his phone number! That is his photo gallery, though: go have a look and enjoy! Took me less than an hour to set this up, including the back of the card (which I didn't show here).

This is next-to-nothing, folks. You could have cards showing that you're a camera club member, or a motorcycle group denizen, or for your work or just to tell people how to find you online... possibilities are endless at this price.

If  you're interested, I'll supply more information. I don't want to go on too long here, and bore half my readers to death! Email me.

The moon
There was an awful lot of hype about the "Super Moon" this Saturday. The full moon coincided with it being at perihelion — it's closest distance from the Earth, so it was bigger and brighter than normal. Big deal. I have lots of pictures of the moon and I'll bet you do to.

But as someone else wrote in his blog or on Google+ today (might have been NAPP's RC Concepcion), the moon is a magnet for photographers. Everyone likes taking pictures of it and if it's up there, we do our damnest to include it in our shots.

But hey, I'm a photographer, and the moon was full and the sky was clear (at least for a while) and... I was out for dinner and missed moonrise and it was cloudy at 5am (I think. I rolled over and went back to sleep!) so I didn'tget those shots. I did get a few, though. But I tried to be different.

All of the illumination in this image was from the moon. Well except for a bit of that light green at lower right which was from a light in the parking lot next door.

Again, all the light was from the moon. I thought the cloud formations were more interesting than the usual man-in-the-moon type photo. OK, OK, I cheated and comp'd in the turkey vulture which I had shot earlier in the day. I did do a comp of the full moon, properly exposed, with the bird flying across it; just like a million other moon shots I've seen.

Here's one that's just a little bit different:

Photomicrograph of the ebola virus. OK, This is actually the moon. One of those regular telephoto shots. Then I started playing in Photoshop and used the 3D Repoussé function and then made a layer on which I used the liquify filter, and the smudge tool and... just for fun! Originally I started making it out of green cheese, but I liked the orange so I left it that way.

I should be shooting some different stuff for me this weekend, but I'll leave you hanging!

— 30 —

Busy, busy!

I've been busy. I know, I just said that! "Busy doing what", you ask? Well, my First Aid business needed my attention, Revenue Canada is being a pain in the neck (I'm being generous. Lower down.). Motorcycle training season is starting. Back and forth to Toronto for business and family stuff. Planning workshops, and writing the manual for training courses.

I'm an American Idol fan. Joshua, Jessica and Philip. You read it here first. I'm also a Big Bang Theory fanatic, and Stephen Hawking is guest starring tonight! It's such a great show, and not just because I grew up with a "Sheldon Cooper".  So I've been watching that in the evenings.

Accolades and Neat Stuff
I've been asked to do a couple of seminars and workshops next season and accepted readily. I know precisely what I want to do, but I have to work on the material. I'm waiting on my first Freelance assignment for the Highlander Newspaper. I'm planning my first photo workshop up here in a month or so. My Michipicoten Light image has been put up on several websites (and Naturally Superior Adventures is using my video on their site with permission). I'm now about halfway through "Behind the Camera and in front of the Computer™" which is a manual directed at people teaching and taking basic photography courses.

See? I'm busy!

But I'm not as busy as Dr. Ron who takes over as President of the American Cosmetic Dentists Association this week. "It's a whole other full-time job," he told me. I wished him luck and asked if I need to find accommodations for the Secret Service when he comes up to visit next month! He still has time to print pictures and submit them to the Richmond Hill Camera Club competitions, where he took two First Place and one Second Place ribbons in 'Yoda' class this month. He's so talented! If you click the link above, you come to the RHCC home page where there's a display of winning images from the latest competition. Look for the cape buffalo shots and the wolf. By the way, his "Oxpecker on Cape Buffalo" image scored a perfect "30" in the competition, first I've seen.

There are some really outstanding images by RHCC members this month. I'm humbled.

Landscape pictures
A couple of weeks ago, I posted some pictures of an old truck that sits outside the Argyle Blacksmith Shop and antique store. I commented that there was a huge spiderweb in the window. I was back a few days ago and guess what? Another missed opportunity! It was gone.  But I did get this picture nearby.

Disused. There are lots of these run down farm buildings in rural Ontario, elsewhere too I'm sure. This one caught my eye because it was just at sunset and the light was a golden glow. Not in the sky, though: that was pure, bluebell, boring blue. So I merged two different HDR pictures (the ground done in Nik HDR Efex and the sky in Photomatix pro). I kept the warm colour temperature and painted in the setting sun using Viveza. The picture lacked that balancing structure, so I painted the two birds from scratch. This image needed a lot of post-processing but it will make a fine, large art print.

Speaking of missed opportunities: I came back from a walk yesterday and saw what I think was a Golden Eagle hunting in the sky over my property behind my house. I ran inside, grabbed the long lens... but alas he was gone. I did see this, though:

Moonclouds. No, this isn't a composite image. The rising, waxing gibbous almost full moon was playing peekaboo in the clouds. All I did was to add some contrast,  adjust the exposure and crop the image slightly in Lightroom 4.1. It might be out there again tonight: we'll see!

It was quite windy yesterday and the sky was populated by puffy clouds as you see. I've shot this stuff before, and shots in the middle of the day, or even late day, are boring in flat, bright sunlight. So I was looking for a way to change things up, and I happened to think about my 10-stop Neutral Density filter. I took it, with the wide-angle lens out for a walk. With tripod and cable release, of course!

The filter adds a dreamy look to water, even when there's nothing really going on.

The Red Umbrella Inn, shot from near my dock. This was a 15-second exposure and although there was nothing really happening, the water has a milky smooth texture and even the inn has a soft creaminess to it. Not what you would expect to see on a sunny afternoon.

Remember the picture of the boat upside down on the dock, that I mentioned is about to be published in PhotoED magazine?

Here's another shot of it yesterday. It didn't fare too well over the winter!

Still Waiting and More Weathered. What makes this shot for me is the light. Also the texture of the water, compared to the boat and the wood. As I said, the ND filter and long time exposure (15 seconds) adds a creamy smoothness and texture. All I did to this picture was to clean up a few spots (I need to clean my sensor again) and touch up some texture issues. I burned in the board at right, it was too bright and distracting.

Now this shot, and the next one, were taken blind. With the filter mounted on the lens, you can't see through the camera. I could have unscrewed the filter and recomposed and refocused, then put the filter back, but I'm essentially a lazy guy... so I left it in place, kept the camera focused almost to infinity, and pointed it where my instincts told me it should look.

Reach for the Sky. The clouds moved, of course, during the 15 second exposure. So did the evergreen trees but the bare tree did not. A surreal look at an otherwise ordinary day.

Perhaps I'll wander over to my favourite whitewater spot and see what's doing there! Catch you later!

— 30 —

Magic Time is not just at dawn

When we were in Niagara-on-the-Lake last week, I bought some new wind chimes. And on Monday it was really windy. Not only do they sound great, but they gave me the idea of shooting a long shutter speed flash-enhanced image. The flash stops the motion of the chimes but everything else has a motion blur:

It's a 1/4 second exposure at f/22, ISO 100. You have to stop it down big time to get the long exposure. For a change, I DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to this shot: it's exactly as it came out of the camera. It's not even cropped!

The next night, I went out for a walk. It was cold and crisp, there were stars out although it wasn't perfectly clear, and the moon was waxing gibbous (that means it was around half full, heading towards full. It would have been "waning gibbous" if it was on its way to being a new moon. And you thought you knew everything!). I saw the texture in the fresh snow on the parked car and decided to go back in for my camera. And the tripod, after all it was dark.

Time exposures are very cool and they bring out great and unusual lighting.

There's a car buried under this snowbank! It was really difficult to focus in the dark. I had to wing it. I knew ahead of time that there was going to be some colour in the sky because I've shot there before. It comes from the lights of Minden about 10km away. You can't really tell that this is low light: the exposure was 15 seconds at f/4, ISO 1600. There is a single halogen street light about 50m off to the right. I had to reduce the green colour of the light.

After taking a few shots here, I walked down towards the dock, not ready to go in yet... and I glanced up in the sky. Oh, my Gawd! — I did a double take! Here's what I saw:

I had to look this up. Google is your friend. It seems that ice crystals in the air diffract the light from the moon. The crystals bend the light by 22°, red less than violet so you get a rainbow circle effect that's 44° in diameter.Look it up. Wikipedia says this is not uncommon, but I have to tell you I've never noticed it before. Amazing. This is the same exposure as the previous shot — I tried about 20 or 30 different shots but it turned out that this was the best of the bunch.

The message is, it's not just at dawn and dusk that the light can be magic!

— 30 —

A Magical Drive

This evening's experience was magical. I hope I can share it through this narrative because I wasn't able to capture an image of what I saw other than in my mind and memory.

I chose to drive home from Toronto after dark this evening. For those who don't know, I live about 2 hours Northeast in the Township of Minden Hills, part of the Haliburton Highlands, or as some call it, "God's Country". To get here, you go North on Highway 48, which curls East through Bolsover and Kirkfield, then ends at Highway 35 in Coboconk. I'm 46 klicks North of that, on 35. Driving South this morning, we had some relief from the rain of the past few days, with broken clouds, the sun peeking through here and there, which gradually turned grey as the day progressed but cleared up later on. It was blustery and windy all day but relatively clear when I left Toronto around 8pm.

As I drove North, I could see the occasional flash of lightning on the horizon to the Northeast. It lit up a small segment of sky but I could still see stars above me. I figured I was driving into a storm and hoped it would pass to the East before I got home. I stopped for a coffee at the Tim Horton's in Beaverton, about halfway home, then continued up towards the Bolsover cutoff which, as I said, turned me due East. I made that turn somewhere around 9:15pm. The lightning was continuing off to my left, North of me. As I made the turn, I looked ahead and saw...

The moon. It had just risen above the horizon. It was 'waning gibbous', which means it's a couple of days past full, but it was that dusky orange colour that one relates to the 'harvest moon', its colour reminiscent of the brilliant fall foliage. It was about 3 times the size of the normal moon (it looks so much bigger when it's right on the horizon) and it was directly in line with the road, so it looked like I was driving right to it.

I thought about pulling over and taking a picture. I thought that if I turned my high beams on, I could illuminate the road ahead around the same brightness but there was no way I could do it. I was captivated by the scene evolving in front of me.

I drive a Subaru Forester. It's a stable, safe cocoon in the windiest, snowiest, blusteriest days. I was about the only car on the road and it was like floating in some sort of time and space machine along a thread of road, flying toward the moon. Not just for a moment, either: for a solid 10 minutes or so! And to top it off, every now and then, the world was split by a lightning bolt to my left, although I could still see the moon and stars. After a while, the moon rose a bit higher and wisps of cloud appeared across its face and eventually it was hidden from view. By now, the storm was further East and the moon was replaced by brilliant flashes of lightning that illuminated the whole sky and detailed the clouds above and ahead of me. Not just a little arc of sky, the whole world in front of me!

At Coboconk, when I turned North, the rain started to come down. Soon I had the wipers on high, and my high beams lit the rain which appeared to be coming down in sheets of big fat water globules. If it had been colder, I would have thought I was in a snow shower but no, it was just heavy, huge raindrops. As I turned into my driveway half an hour later, the rain stopped as if someone had flipped a switch and when I looked up, stars!

You had to be there. There aren't words to describe the experience. I wish someone had been with me to share it with. Maybe with this writeup, I managed to convey the magic of the drive. As I said, the only images I have are buried in my mind.

I want to share some new pictures with you.

Last week, my friend Ron called me and asked me to help out with a shoot he was doing, some portraits. I had this picture at the time of my last post, but couldn't share it until I received permission, which I now have. I brought strobes and stands and reflectors and backdrops... Ron brought his D3S! He did the serious shooting, I handheld my D300 to test the lighting setup but captured this image while Ron was doing something else! I asked the young lad to look at his mom and it worked! Here:

By the way, if you want teeth like hers, contact Dr. Ron Goodlin. That's what this shoot was about... Ron's a phenomenal photographer and an even better dentist! Lighting was with 3 studio strobes — two with umbrellas and one (the hairlight) open with barn doors. The large muslin backdrop should have been a bit more out of focus but this is just as it came out of the camera, no Photoshop at all! OK, I'm lying. Well, sort of — I used some negative clarity control in Lightroom, with an adjustment brush limiting its scope to the ladies' faces.

The studio stuff is for sale for a very reasonable price. I just don't use them enough and would rather have a new lens! Contact me.

Last weekend, I did some more fall colours. Here are a few images.

Everyone else does a "red leaf on a wet rock" (I got a laugh watching Judith do it at Buttermilk Falls: exactly like Shannon and Linda did a couple of years ago!). Just to be different, I did a "red and yellow leaf on a log". I didn't put it there, I swear! It was there! It was!

This weekend, I was with Rosa, my artist friend. She hates my HDR's. She says I use my Left Brain and take all the emotion and feeling out of my shots with all that hi-tech post processing pixel manipulation. So here are a couple of non-manipulated images that show what it really looked like out there. It was a dreary damp day and I think these images convey that feeling.

Is she right? I think she might be. I'm working on formulating my goals for the Gales of November shoot on Lake Superior (Wow! Only 2 weeks away!) and this might form part of them. Stay tuned!