Blast from the Past

Fifty Two for Fifty Two

I did it! A year ago, I promised myself I'd post weekly and I did. This is the fifty-second post in 2012. One per week. I've made 220 posts since starting this blog. Yahoo!

It's all my fault

Toronto got 6" of snow. Niagara got 9". Peterborough got 6". Barrie got 6". Montreal got 18" of snow in the biggest one day snow fall in years. Ottawa is still getting snow. The snow was knee high in Bancroft. I got an ATV with a snow plow. We only got 2". I plowed both of them.

Rosa at her brother's place north of Bancroft on Saturday afternoon BEFORE it snowed! They got another 6" or more overnight on Saturday.
Photo by her friend Galya.

Another shot by Galya. Again Saturday before the big snowfall. Damned powerlines...

On Red Umbrella Road Christmas night.
No snow pictures to show you, so here's an out-of-focus Christmas tree...

A blast from the past

So because there didn't seem to be anything interesting out there to shoot, I decided to finally set up my slide scanner and digitize some old slides. You listening, Bob? I did it at last! I promised Bob the slide scanner when I was done with it! What held me up was people telling me that it wouldn't work with Windows 7. Google is your friend... I found a workaround and even installed the new version of the Nikon Scan software.

So I thought I'd share some pictures from a "few" years ago. All of these pictures were on Kodachrome 25, 35mm. Depending when, I either shot them with a Nikkormat FTn, a Canon AE-1 or a pocket Olympus camera I carried in my ski pack!

They did have snow in December on top of Mt. Whiteface in New York. Oh by the way, this was in 1976! 

I took this in Arizona in August 1972. Yes, 40 years ago! 

A macro shot from 1971. I believe I used extension tubes and an 85mm lens for this one.

This is the glacier from near the top of Mont Blanc on the French/Swiss/Italian border. I shot it in August 1971. It was hot and sunny at the base of the mountain and bloody cold, I remember, after taking the cable car to the top! BTW this one has no border because I cropped off a fence railing at the bottom. All the other ones are full frame.

Somewhere in Colorado in 1972.  

One more picture from the past to share with you:

Another shot from the Painted Desert in Arizona in 1972. This is actually better than the original because I was able to open up the shadows in the foreground in Lightroom, something you couldn't do back then. You got what you got, shooting Kodachrome and mailing the film in to Kodak for processing! I'm guessing this was shot with my Nikkormat and a 50mm lens, maybe with a polarizing filter on it.

Happy 2013 to everyone!

My wish for everyone for next year is that it exceed your expectations. I wish you all health and happiness in the new year.

Glenn

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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!

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Challenges

Not for you, for me.

Oh, OK. I have a challenge for you. But first let's talk about me.

Due to some family matters, I literally haven't picked up my camera in over a week. Which implies that the photos in this blog are older than that! So that's been keeping me busy for a while. Then I got home and turned on my laptop and, "boing". That's the only word I could think of that wouldn't end up with this blog getting x-rated.

Without dwelling on the details, it's dead. I was lucky enough to be able to recover my data. I had done a backup to an external drive about a week before, and if you're not using Dropbox, you'd better start now. Click the link. Saved my bacon — I had gotten into the habit of copying my critical files, especially my Quickbooks accounting file to Dropbox and there it was when I needed to recover.

So I went computer shopping. I really wanted to get a Mac, but in the end, the price of changing over was too high for me. Not only the hardware, which is close to double what you pay on the PC side, but also all the little bits and pieces of software that I would need. I stayed on the Dark Side.

This is not an endorsement for either the manufacturer or the store, but I bought an HP laptop at Costco. When I transport stuff, it's in the back of my Subaru Forester SUV so size doesn't matter (in computers as well as other things...) but I have to admit that the 17" I bought is HUGE. In fact, when I got home I discovered that the big leather computer bag I've been using for years is too small, it won't fit in! I had to buy a computer backpack (at Costco again... OK, I do endorse them!). Anyway, a quad-core i7 processor, 8Gb of RAM expandable to 16Gb, 1.5 Tb of hard drive storage in the form of two discrete 750Gb drives, and a 2Gb NVIDIA video card. All of which I'm sure will be obsolete in 6 months!

Anyway, I'm sure you don't want to read about the endless trials and tribulations of getting software installed and configured, it's a daunting exercise. But it can be a Sisyphusian task (look it up!) if you don't do it right from the beginning, which is why I brought the computer up to Jim's place before even taking it out of the box! Jim is a workflow guru and I think we got things set up in the best possible way. Thanks, Jim!

Photography Courses in the Highlands

They are up and running. I have at least two sessions booked in the next two weeks. All as a result of this ad placed in the Haliburton Highlander:

For those of you interested in taking such a course, I'll be running these here in the Highlands or in the Toronto area for now. Please use this link to contact me. Or you could, of course, pop over to the photography.to website. Or even phone me!

If you're interested in TEACHING such a course, my Train-the-Trainer manual is coming along nicely and if all goes well, it will be ready in a month or so. Please contact me via this link to get on the list of those who will receive a FREE copy of the manual when it's ready.

Rosa is a smart lady

So she deserves a subheading of her own in this blog! Kathy and others will remember the difficulty I had trying to collapse my light tent so that it would fit into its original dinner-plate-sized bag. Kathy did it last summer in about 3 seconds but try as I might, I just haven't been able to do it.

Rosa said, "Look on YouTube. I'm sure you'll find how to do it there". I was skeptical. She is a smart lady! There are a number of tutorials on there that show exactly how and I DID IT! Her insights into a thousand different things amaze me. For a right-brained artist, she sure knows a lot of stuff. She's even challenging me on Quantum mechanics and string theory. She doesn't "get" the Big Bang Theory, my favourite TV show, though! LOL

Business Cards

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I have a source for full-coloured, double sided, high quality business cards at ridiculously low prices (like $20 for 1000 cards!). Since then, we've ordered a number of them for people and they've all come out exceptionally well. If you're a photoshop type, you can do the whole thing from start to finish yourself, if not, I can help you with it. Go back and check out the previous article or contact me if you need some.

A really Excellent presentation.

I watched a presentation by Scott Kelby a couple of weeks ago and it caused me to recompose some of my teaching points in my course, but more importantly, to rethink some of my practices when shooting pictures. It was called "Crush the Composition" and it was recorded on YouTube. It's an hour long, and worth watching -- make the time. Here's the link.

One of the things Scott touched on in his talk was "Working the Scene" and it's a fabulous concept. In three words or less, if you've stopped to take some pictures of a scene, don't just take one or two snaps, work it. Your original picture may not work out, but there are bound to be others that will, if you take the time and make the effort to try different perspectives or views of the same scene. He documented a great example, when he visited the Taj Mahal... but I'll let you hear it directly from him instead of trying to paraphrase it.

A few days later, I stopped at a canola field that caught my eye. I already showed you one image a couple of weeks ago, but here's the one I had in mind when I originally stopped there:

In the spirit of "working the scene", I mounted my 400mm lens and took this shot:

and this one:

And this one, which I did some additional work on:

I used some of the new tools in Photoshop CS5 to move the plants around to form a better arrangement,
then the oil paint filter to add some texture.

Back to my 70-200mm lens, I created this layered looking panorama

and now a deliberately slow shutter speed and panning action on that smooth gimbal mount produced this:

I call this one, "Yellow". I wonder why? I'm contemplating making a very large print of this for mounting and display. The one before as well.

Are you bored yet? I'm not. Half-a-dozen totally different images, all from the same stop at a yellow field of canola plants (actually I stopped twice, about a week apart).

My challenge to you

Next time something catches your eye and you stop to take a picture, pause and look around and see what other images you can create from the same spot. Post your pictures somewhere and send me a link to where they are, I'd love to see you stretching yourself like I think I did!

I had originally intended to come up with a theme for you, but I don't want to impose any limitations except that you should try to capture some totally different images, all from the same location.

I'll try to find some time this week to shoot some pictures. I'm working on the course, and I have to prepare for my CRA audit (shudder) next week, but I'll be baaack!

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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.

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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.

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