Stars on Bikes and Stars in the Sky!

I had the privilege of being invited to attend a training/competition session of the Toronto Police Services Motor Squad last week. My friend Sean is a motor officer and he obtained clearance for me to be there. It was a two-day event but unfortunately I could only get away for one day. The first day was devoted to team exercises and the second to individuals.

Those who know me know that I’m not much of a “people-person” – I shoot rocks and trees – although if I make the effort… but I’m out of my comfort zone shooting people. These guys made me feel comfortable being there. I chatted with a number of them (and if you’re reading this, guys and gals, I have a real problem remembering names, so forgive me if I meet you somewhere else – not professionally, hopefully – and can’t remember, don’t hold it against me!). They were really nice people, from the Inspectors on down. I’ve been around athletes before, who need to focus, and I did my best not to interrupt anyone’s train of thought.

Physically, they were all different shapes and sizes. TPS Traffic Services comprises some 40 motor officers, a few women, men ranging from fit gung-ho 20-something-year-olds, to wiry grey-haired guys (one fellow told me he’s been “blue-carded” on bikes for 32 years), to, well, a couple of gentlemen who made me feel slim! But they all shared three things in common: (1) they are all police officers, (2) they all REALLY know how to ride motorcycles and (3) they all love what they do for a living.

Pan shot. Slow shutter speed, long lens. When they work... 

I think the team events were more important than the individual skills ones, and here’s why: first of all, they all have the riding skills. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be there. Sure, some are better than others, but if you spent 12 years like I did teaching basic and intermediate motorcycle skills to civilians, you’d know it in an instant. But here’s the thing: these people are out there every day doing arguably the most dangerous duty a police officer can: individual car stops without a partner (I’m told that “domestics” are up there too). So although they’re out there ostensibly alone, deep down they know that their colleagues always have their backs. They trust each other implicitly. And when they do ride together, they know they can count on each other.

I’m reminded of the Snowbirds demo team where flying in close formation means focusing on your flight leader to the exclusion of everything else (and hoping he doesn’t fly into a mountain!). On bikes it’s the same thing except you also have to be aware of and react instantly to your surroundings. That’s why I called these guys (and gals) athletes.

There’s a sense of camaraderie in the motor squad, familiar to anyone who has ever served in a military unit. And respect and trust for the higher ranks. At this competition, almost all of them were wearing matching athletic shirts that said graphically on the back, “HEAD… and… EYES”. All motorcyclists know what that means. If you don’t, ask one! And they all had a nickname screened on their sleeve! You don’t pick your own nickname, the group chooses it for you! Sean is “RADAR”, for Radar O’Reilly of M*A*S*H fame who somehow could find anything. I met “Keener” and “Turtle” and “Rowdy” and “Scooter” and “Bam-Bam” (don’t want to know where that came from!) and others which of course I forgot.

Serious skills. This is Sean, looking where he wants to go! 

By the way, it was 35°C in the parking lot, and not a cloud in the sky. I was in an athletic shirt (with my old nickname on it: “Gunslinger” — thanks, Radar or “Sheriff” as he used to be known!), a photo vest and cargo shorts: except for the fact these folks were in tee shirts, not dress shirts and body armour, they were all in blue fatigue pants, boots and of course their fully loaded equipment belts. At the end of the day, they had to don their full kits for the ride back to the station: I didn’t envy them. It goes without saying that helmets were mandatory.

I think I understand now why police departments favour the Harley-Davidson over higher performance bikes. The Europeans favour the BMW’s and the Honda ST-1300 and other exotic rides. My old Honda ST-1100 was capable of almost double the top speed of the Harley, it was more manoeuvrable and much less expensive. But if you dropped an ST or a Beemer, into the shop it went for delicate repairs. The Harleys soldiered on. Most of the time you couldn’t even tell if one had fallen over, it landed on the crash guards and even if you did bend some chrome or dent a fender, so what? It’s low and stable and in the hands of a good rider, capable of manoeuvering in tight spaces. That said, the technology is over 100 years old!

Repairing a side stand interlock spring on the fly. You won't see a BMW rider doing that! (Then again, it wouldn't fail on a BMW... LOL )

So back to my point of trusting your teammates. There were complex exercises designed to test your ability to do just that — and yet think for yourself. One of them, called the “Dumb Ride” had three bikes in the circuit at a time, inches apart and they changed leaders three times!

I made this out of the shot below, doing a lot of work on the background in Photoshop and using Topaz Glow (see note below this article on the current upgrade available!).  

My only regret is that I didn’t expend more effort to document the team and perhaps get a group picture. It was really, really hot! Sorry. I thoroughly enjoy shooting motorcycles and admiring the skills of these motor cops. Their training is intense and effective, and they’re all really dedicated personable people who do a dangerous job really well. Kudo’s, motor squad.

Here's Sean, doing what he loves! 

---

New/Updated Topaz Glow

The fine folks at Topaz have just issued an update to their fantastic "GLOW" plugin program, which they have creatively called "GLOW2"! It's on sale from now until September 2nd at 30% off. Here are their words describing the update:

Topaz Glow introduces a new kind of tool into your workflow designed to electrify your imagination by illuminating the contours of your images to reveal the hidden life in each moment you capture. Glow 2 gives you the power to create stunning neon effects, or subtle ethereal glow. No matter the look you love, amplify your images faster than ever with Glow 2.

New features in Glow 2 Include: 

• Over 30 New Presets - That brings the total to over 100 included effects to amplify your images or give you a boost creating a personal look you love.
• New Masking Module -You no longer need a host editor like Photoshop to create masks on your images! Now, you can open Glow 2 and mask areas of your image directly from the application using luminosity, color selection, a spot mask, or a traditional brush mask, and yes it’s color aware :) 
• Unlimited Undo/Redo - That's right! As long as you don’t close the program you can now undo or redo to your hearts content (as far as your system memory will allow.)
• Topaz Community Integration - Topaz Glow 2 is the 3rd of our products to include the Topaz Community, an easy way for users to search save and share custom made presets with other Glow 2 users around the world. Surf an ocean of hand crafted presets, then download and apply with a click. Or share your custom presets for other users to try.
• Automatic Preset Backup - as long as you’re signed into your account when you save a preset, that preset will be privately uploaded to the community then synced on any other machine you sign into. 

There's one caveat: this program uses intense GPU processing, so like Impression 2, your computer must have Windows 7+, Mac OSX 10.9+, and a GPU with OpenGL 3.3 or higher. (this replaces the older requirement for OpenGL 2.1). It won't install if it doesn't detect that. If you already own GLOW, it's a free update. Just download it and install it, it should pick up your existing license key.

If you're a new customer, use the link below and enter the coupon code, "GLOW2" at checkout for the discount. You can also try before buying to make sure it works on your system. Here's the link: http://goo.gl/9dFLLz

---

The Perseids Meteor Shower

Mother Nature is really cruel. It's been sunny and beautiful here for weeks on end. The peak nights for the Perseids meteor showers were Thursday and Friday. Guess what? Cloudy. I went out on Wednesday night but it was still worth the effort.

No meteors in this shot of the Milky Way. A flashlight, a little light painting...  

Instead of the advertised 150-200 meteors per hour, I saw about 30 or so over two and a half hours. Of course a lot were where the camera wasn't pointing! Still, I managed this composite of about 10 events:

Looking Northeast, I took about 250 frames over about 75 minutes. Each exposure was 15 seconds, with the wide angle lens set at 17mm (full frame), aperture at f/2.8, ISO at 3200. I drove the camera via TriggerTrap, using my iPhone.

People asked me how I created this composite: I isolated the 10 frames with incidents (I ignored airplanes. How come there are so many planes at 1:00 am in Northern Ontario?). I loaded them as layers in Photoshop and I masked everything except the meteor trail on each layer. 

The resulting negative mask looked like this. 

Then I took that composite and laid it over one of the 250 frames.

Since I had some 250 frames, I did two other things with them: I made a video timelapse using Microsoft Movie Maker and here's the link! Click to view it full-screen.

And I also created a star trails composite in StarStax. I didn't like the usual "lighten" type version, so I played with an average-with-increasing-exposure version that was much more subtle and brought out the glow of the Northern Lights that were present but not very visible to the naked eye:

I added in the masked composite from the previous example and did some toning work on the foreground.  

I'll close with another shot of the milky way from a few nights earlier.

— 30 —

The Stars they come stealing at the close of the day

Amazing night in Algonquin Park

I had an adventurous visit to Algonquin Park on Saturday. Nothing physical, I can't do the things I used to do in the past, but a trip that more or less worked the way I planned it. I had intended to go up early evening, scout locations for shooting stars later, shoot a sunset somewhere, probably ending up on the beach at Lake of Two Rivers campground where I would sit in the car on the beach, the same spot Mark and Ron and I visited last September.

The problem with shooting pictures of stars is it only works when there are no clouds. If you live in this part of the world, it's really hard to predict when that will be. There are some sites out there, like www.cleardarksky.com but their forecasts only go out two days (Navigate around their site to find a local observatory. They have 1900 of them in North America. Here's one in Algonquin Park).

I had been hoping that clear skies would coincide with the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, but it was cloudy up there Thursday night. I did shoot some in the Minden area, though. Two nights later, the forecast was for clear skies, But one problem I anticipated was the high humidity, which meant that the camera would "dew" up (sure enough, it did).

Anyway, I headed out on Saturday afternoon, planning to sit there all night. I should have stayed a bit longer than I did, but I was happy anyway! I invited a bunch of friends, but nobody came along, so it was just me, myself and I. I brought my D800 and wide angle lens, heavy duty tripod, cable release, extra batteries, and a handwarmer. You'll see why in a minute. I packed a cooler bag with a couple of sandwiches and some pop, plus a thermos full of hot coffee. I threw a bathing suit and towel in the car, a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.

In preparation, I had phoned Algonquin Park Information, because I was concerned about the number of visitors to the Park (summer weekend) and wondered if that would interfere with my plans. "Not a problem", I was told, "just be sure to get a day pass". Debbie knows what she's talking about but some of the more junior staff are not on the same page. I also picked her brain, to ask if she knew any spots to suggest. I told her I was looking for a North view, far enough off Highway 60 to avoid light pollution from passing cars.  She suggested a few spots.

The first challenge came when I entered the park and stopped to buy a permit. No such luck. Permits expire at 10pm, and, according to the young lad at the counter, you can't buy a permit for the next day. He's wrong. He said the only overnight permit is for camping which is (1) expensive, (2) I didn't want to camp and (3) all the campgrounds were full so they wouldn't sell me one anyway.

After a fruitless attempt to contact a supervisor, I asked about the fine for not having a permit: $65, the guy told me (wrong. It's actually $155!). But I said, "you have to catch me first"!

UPDATE: I've rewritten the following after another phone conversation with Debbie at Algonquin Park information. 

So here's the deal. They know that some people come in to the Park for stargazing. What you need to do is to buy a two day pass (or two passes) that doesn't expire until the following night at 10. If you get an argument, tell them to look in their computer, it's available. This information is from a park supervisor via Debbie on the info line. With that pass or passes displayed on your dashboard, you should be good.

The rules say you can't be in the Park after 10pm unless you're a registered camper or "other legitimate occupant", and stargazing (or photography) qualifies. If it were me, I would make sure you make them aware of you and what you're planning to do when you buy your permit, or I'd call in advance to go on record. Phone them at 1 705 633 5572 during business hours. Or email debbie.dunn@ontario.ca. 

Once in the Park, I headed for the suggested spots to scout them out. One didn't pan out, it involved parking in a spot right by the highway and hiking in... (my car would have been ticketed for sure, and anyway, I didn't want to hike in and sit in the bush all night), and one did. I'm going to keep it to myself for now... but it was far enough off the road to make it unlikely I'd be seen, and there was zero light pollution! That's the good news.

Here's the bad news (depending how you look at it): I found out that a large bull moose and a big sow black bear had been seen in that area. Right there.

It was hot and muggy. So I stopped at the Lake of Two Rivers beach for a swim. There was a telephone booth there: I REALLY wanted to change into my bathing suit in a phone booth like Superman, but discretion proved the better part of valour – there were too many people around! Had a great swim – the lake must be spring-fed as its name implies: the water when you get more than a few feet down was c-c-c-cold!

On Highway 60 there was a "Bear Jam". One car spots something and pulls over, five minutes later there's a crowd scene!

One little bear cub, barely visible in the brush, and a riot ensues. I wondered where mama bear was... 

I checked out the campground beach and filed it in the back of my mind as an alternative location to shoot. I'd have to avoid the park rangers, though. While I was there, I took a gratuitous shot of a girl in a bikini...

... and went back along the highway to look for a spot where I could get a sunset picture. I didn't find one, really, but I took this shot:

HDR merge in Lightroom. I liked the warm sunlight on the rocks. 

Off I went to my secret spot where I parked the car out of sight and set up the camera. The built-in compass in the iPhone is really neat, but it was set for "Magnetic North", not "True North". I discovered that just in time when I looked up and saw the big dipper where the camera was pointing instead of Polaris. I moved the car in front of the camera to get a few shots with foreground interest before it got really dark, tried a little light painting but that didn't really work out. The mosquitoes made me retreat back into the car where I sat, waiting for dark.

So here I am, all alone, in the dark, going out to set and reset the camera. In big bull moose and bear territory. "They're more afraid of me than I am of them", I've heard...if you make noise to let them know you are there! Fortunately there was nobody around to offend with my loud singing and harmonica playing.

Looking North, I was disappointed that the skies didn't really look dark. I decided to start capturing a sequence at 10:30. As I said, dew buildup was a concern and about 10 photos in, this is what I got:

pretty useless, right? 

That's what the handwarmer was for. I had read that if you strap it to your lens, it heats it up to prevent the condensation from forming. It didn't seem to actually get warm to the touch – they're designed to work in a confined area – note to self, get some new ones and bring some plastic wrap to enclose it next time. But it did the job or the weather conditions changed enough: no more condensation.

When I looked at the back of the camera, what was all that colour about? I couldn't see it with the naked eye: OH MY! Aurora Borealis. I scrolled back and looked at one of the first images before the lens fogged up:

No words, right? 

So I shot a sequence of a little over 100 exposures over the next hour, which I planned to merge into a star trails image using StarStaX (I came up with another solution too: look below, or click here!). Then I decided to move the camera to face South, so I could capture the Galactic core of the Milky Way.

I did this shot by turning the camera to face South so I could get the car (inside lights on, obviously) and the Milky Way . 30 seconds at f/2.8, ISO 800, 17mm lens. Among other things, the new dehazing filter in Lightroom worked wonders. 

In hindsight, I should have tried some different exposures. Higher ISO made it easier for some photographers I've been following to get more detail out of the Milky Way, with less effort in post-processing. The mosquitos were annoying so I just decided to go with what I had.

This is about the best I've been able to do. I'm not satisfied yet...the Milky Way doesn't stand out enough from the other stars. Just means I have to go back! 

I turned the camera North again but the Aurora had faded. I decided to pack up and go home at around 12:30. By 2 am I was home and uploading images!

I tried to find a couple of ways to show you what it was like there. The first way was with a little 30 second time-lapse video which I posted on my photography.to site. Here's the link. Click it. You'll like it!

Watch the 30 second video clip. If you watch carefully, you'll see seven meteorite events, remnants from the Perseid Meteor Showers. On Thursday night there were over 100/hour, seems to be down to just a few on Saturday.

By the way, the music in the video clip is played by Bob Culbertson on a unique instrument called the "Chapman Stick". It defies description: you should check out this YouTube video. 

Here's the second way: a StarStaX composite of about 110 images (I deleted the initial 15 fogged up ones)

When you run StarStaX, you can watch the image building. It lays the next image on top of the stack in "lighten" mode which works great for the stars but not so well for the Aurora, because they get muddier and less distinct as each image is added. So when it was all done, I opened the resulting image and stacked in another copy of one of the earlier images, this time in "saturation" mode. Effective, but not as smooth and subtle as a single image like the one further up this blog post.

I think the video is the best way of communicating what it was actually like. Had I stayed longer, I might have been able to do a longer clip that would have done justice to the whole experience. As I said, an excuse to go back again!

— 30 —

Can you fit creativity in a formula?

twisted and convoluted musings... if you have no idea what I'm trying to say here, well me too! If you do, please share it with me!

I'm trying to come up with an explanation why I've fallen behind on my blog posts. I know that thousands of people wake up every morning and are disappointed that there's no new article posted here. I can't tell you how many people have written to wonder what's going on! Well I could tell you, but then I'd have to...

Some of you haven't gotten around to clicking that "Newsletter"button at upper right. Please do so I can give you a heads up when a new article is about to appear. Once a week or so. You can unsubscribe with just one click, so don't be scared!

It also helps me get the word out about deals available: for instance the 33% discount on Topaz DeNoise going on until the end of June. Click this link and use the coupon code, "JUNEDENOISE". 

I've developed a theory so here it is in all its glory. Please try to follow my convoluted thinking!  It's about a function called "Ж", pronounced "Zheh".

---

Someone said, "The Sum of a Man's Sins is a Constant". Unbelievably, Google doesn't know who said it! If I were guessing, I'd say Robert A. Heinlein, who also said one should grok life in fullness.

The implication is that if you decrease one indulgence, the others increase to compensate for it. Smoke less, you drink more. If you don't drink, you enjoy carnal pleasures. Or any of the other sins. You grok?

I eat.

I think it's not really a constant, it bears a topological relationship with age and life experience and one needs to do a differential analysis to define the function.
Let's call the function "Springer's Sigma". "ς"

I think creativity works the same way. The Sum of one's Creative Expressions is a Constant. If you get interested in one creative outlet, the others will decline. Make sense?

For example, a while ago I decided I really want to try putting a paintbrush on canvas. A real paintbrush, not a digital one. The creative spirit that was directed towards creating photographs has been partly redirected. So has my writing drive. Similarly, listening to Tommy Emmanuel's virtuoso guitar has really revived my interest in expressing myself musically. I bought a decent guitar and play it every day. But I haven't turned on my piano keyboard in months, that creative drive has also been redirected.

I'm slowly getting better at both of those things (guitar and painting). Although I've hit a plateau in both, which is really frustrating. And at the same time I'm shooting pictures, and I'm still writing but each day I have to decide on which endeavour I should concentrate that day.

I'm calling that function,  "Glenn's Zheh" or "Ж". 

ς is obvious.  It's the lower case Greek letter Sigma (when it's used to end a word). Sigma is usually used to express "sum" and the word Sin begins with 'S'. 

Ж is a Cyrillic letter. It's a voiced palato-alveolar sibilant that has no equivalent in Western alphabets but it has "alvar" in it and I've been shooting bird pictures in the Carden Alvar, so there you go.

The total amount of energy one has to devote to creative pursuits is mitigated by one's perceived age and general state of health and can be expressed as:

Ж = ∫f(λ)/π²•η

where lambda represents laziness, pi is perceived age and eta is health.

So I have a decreasing Zheh which has been spread over several disciplines so that's why I haven't written my blog in a couple of weeks. Make sense?

---

PanAm Games

And I'm gearing up for the PanAm Games. I did get my press credentials, it's really exciting!

Apparently with this I can go get my actual press pass and the vest they're issuing to photographers and journalists, without which you don't get in to any venues. The bad news is that I have to trek down to the CNE to pick it up next week.

The more I learn about the Whitewater venue, the less happy I am! They've sold 500 spectator tickets (yeah, where are they going to stand?) and they've closed the east side of the river to everyone because it's too dangerous. Press positions will be limited too, and spaces are first-come-first-served but I'll bet CTV and CBC and SportsNET will be hogging all the good spots! I guarantee it's going to be a challenge!

I might also try to go to the Shooting venue in Innisfil one day (I think it's the old "Toronto International Trap and Skeet" club). I just read that Susan Nattrass is leading the Canadian team: she shot in the 1976 Olympics! I worked with her brother Brett at one point. Also Don Kwasnycia is coaching. I knew him back then too.

Speaking of the Carden Alvar...

I don't want to bore you to death with endless pictures of exotic flora and fauna. If you're interested, I put images up on a SmugMug page here: http://faczen.smugmug.com/Carden-Plain/. If you click any image and hover your mouse over the lower left corner, you can see a description.

Here's one of my latest shots, it's a barn swallow shot at the blind on Wylie Road. Click here to see more images.

---

I thought I'd try a couple of the new features in Photoshop CC 2015. All this has is multiple strokes on the text but I thought it would make a good header picture. There's one really hot new feature – dehaze – but I'll show you that next week

I attended the Mud Bog last weekend. Last year I got my camera all muddy and it took me hours with Q-tips and other cleaning tools to get it clean. This year I was more careful!

If you don't know what a "Mud Bog" is, check out this video. Shot with the N70-200/2.8 on my D800.
This guy makes it look easy! It isn't.

A couple of my favourite shots from the event. 

They also had a "show and shine" and I should have stayed around but instead, I went to another event, the Food Fair at Wintergreen's.

Our host, Tom, was smoking a couple of turkeys. If this doesn't get your salivary glands working, you must be a vegetarian or something! 

Here are a few flower pictures for your enjoyment!

I'm waiting for the mailman to deliver the set of extension tubes I ordered. In the meantime, these were shot with my N70-200 f/2.8 and cropped a little bit.

This is a poppy-to-be, at my next-door neighbour's. 

An Iris, same place 

At my house, I have more plants than flowers. This is a Hosta (I think!) 

On the side of Highway 35 there's a Lupin patch. Some Topaz Impression gave it that painterly look.

One for the Road

We did a mini-food photography workshop at the camera club. This was a setup I styled, and I shot it using some continuous lights and a light tent, plus an off-camera strobe to soften the shadows. Again, Topaz Impression for finishing, using one of the Georgia O'Keeffe presets. 

— 30 —

Trying a couple of new things

Last week I posted that it had been raining pretty steadily and it was tough to get out and shoot pictures. This week too: although there was at least one nice day, Life got in the way and I didn't shoot much. I did go out... but didn't bring much back.

I'm loving the D600

It's taking some getting used to. The quality is so good that you think you can get away with snapshooting, but the laws of physics still apply and so do the rules of photography. Handheld 1/20 second exposures don't work, even with this marvellous beast.

What I like about the camera is exemplified by these two less-than-wonderful shots. Let me show them to you, then explain.

This is about a 200% crop from the snapshot above. I did not do ANYTHING to it except crop it.

This is almost a full width shot, obviously cropped vertically. 

So what do I love? Look at the sharpness, the detail of these images. It takes me back to the days of shooting Hasselblads in the film days. I took the car shot because it's the first day of frost, the promise of winter to come. Boring snapshot. But when I blew it up and saw the incredible detail...

The ducks? I I startled them while walking along near my dock. Shouldn't have: I was wearing camouflage colours and walking quietly, but the ducks know it's hunting season. They were, I'd estimate, 200 m away and when they flushed, I brought up the camera and snapped a couple of frames, never expecting to see anything. Not even the 400mm lens, just the 200mm and on the full frame D600, that doesn't reach out and touch anywhere near as far as it did on the crop sensor in the D300. And yet look how crisp: you can even see individual feathers and water drops from their takeoff runs. Here:

The wing blur is because the shutter speed was 1/320 sec.  

This camera is a winner. Especially with the 70-200 f/2.8 VR lens.

Here's something else the D600 does

I'd have to check the D300 manual, but I don't know if it does Auto ISO. I started playing with that when I mounted the 400mm lens and was contemplating switching to shutter-speed priority because  I've yet to get a good shot with that lens under 1/500 sec. So I thought I'd try it: I set auto ISO with a minimum shutter speed of 1/500. Then I shot a 3-frame burst from my car window (open). Now admittedly, this wasn't at 400mm, but this is a new concept for me: bracketing shots using ISO instead of shutter speed.

Auto-ISO HDR. This seemingly abandoned off-road Jeep is called the "Mud Duck" (as above, you can easily read the name painted on the hood to the right of the duck decal). The lens was at 120mm. The three shots were at 1/500 sec at f/4.5, ISO's 1400, 5600 and 6400. A whole world of high-ISO shooting is opening up with this camera.

Windstorm takes down big tree

On Monday, we had some very unusual weather. Rain and strong winds, but from the South. Usually the winds here are from the West, across the lake, or from the North. The unusual South wind broke a huge pine tree beside my house in half. The tree fell in my neighbour's yard, and luckily it missed his house by inches.

With the help of my neighbour Jim Walker who lives two doors away (and who's going in for surgery tomorrow – today actually since it's after midnight. Kidney cancer. They say they'll be able to get it all. I wish him well), and his chain saw, we cut the tree up into chunks and tossed it back over my fence.

Now my intention was to drag the tree pieces over to the brush pile behind my garage, when I got my ATV back from service. New stator. It came back this morning, so I did my first meaningful job with it.

Using some heavy duty tie-down straps as a tow rope, it took about 5 trips to the back to bring the wood to the brush pile. Actually fun! 

While I was working on it, it occurred to me that I had read that the D600 did automatic in-camera timelapse. What happens is, you set it up and when it's done, it combines the individual shots into a video. I hope this works: I'm uploading the time lapse video here.

Then I thought, as long as I'm doing a video, I might as well do a real one!  So here's another one, not timelapse, shot as a full 1080p video from the D600!

Edit: pretty crummy quality. Here's a direct link to an uploaded version, much higher quality.
http://faczen.com/photos/tif/ATVclip.mp4

The full video was over 600Mb in size! So I imported it to MS Windows MovieMaker, laid a sound track over it and saved it as a smaller file. That gave me a .wmv file which I converted to an .mp4 at reduced quality, so this is only 19Mb in size. Hope it works!


Edit: pretty crummy quality. Here's a direct link to an uploaded version, much higher quality.
http://faczen.com/photos/tif/ATV.mp4


For some reason the videos don't run in Google Chrome, at least not on my computers. They work fine in IE9 and with Safari on the iPad. I'm not sure why, perhaps one of my readers might enlighten me.

By the way, the music track is my own. The first one with a harmonica and a blues backing track, the second one just me on my Yamaha keyboard. I recorded both with my iPhone and uploaded them to the computer.

Lots of fun! Lots of new things to try!

One last image

They replaced an old blocked culvert under Red Umbrella Road. It was a Rainy Day... I was taken with how the fluorescent colours on the workers' coats stood out, so I helped it along using Nik Silver Efex Pro and selective masking. Does that shovel look like it's about to scoop the guys up? 

That's all for now! Catch you next week.

— 30 —

What's goin' on?

Not much, you?

Fall is drawing to a close here, what leaves are still on the trees have faded to dull gold and browns. Although there are still lots of great photos to be had. Here's one I took of my car on a rainy Sunday, driving into Toronto.

I needed a "car" picture taken this week for the monthly Rally on the TIF site. (log in to view. Just keeping the spammers and riff-raff away from our forum). The rain increased the saturation of the colours and gave the car some texture in this HDR shot.

Speaking of "cars", the parking lot at the Foodmart in Minden looks a little different from its counterpart in urban (or even suburban) Toronto.

Don't see too many of these on the street in the city, do you? I chatted with the owner: he's a Torontonian (well, Richmond Hill-ite) up here moose hunting. Sure makes life a lot easier than we had it back in the 'day', carrying 300 pound moose quarters over our shoulders across a 1 mile portage! Uphill both ways, if I recall. Carlo's also a photographer, with a D90. I gave him a card, hope he gets in touch.  

So that's a Polaris 500 ATV. I think it's reasonably new. I'm still waiting for mine: I exchanged my motorcycle for this guy's bigger, older brother, a Polaris Sportsman 700, vintage 2003, with a snow plow. It's just being mechanically tweaked before we actually exchange the hardware. You can drive these things on all the roads around here except the highway that you see in the picture! He came in the back way, through town. Oh by the way, it's a handheld 3-shot HDR (ya think?) bracket. Selective color with a masked Silver Efex Pro layer. Can't wait to get mine. I bought it just to do HDR pictures of it! OK, and clear the snow, and...

Last weekend, George, a friend of mine from Humber College, visited for the day and we went on a mini-tour. The weather wasn't great, we retreated to here at the computer when the rain started coming down (I didn't mind getting my D600 wet, but George is a wimp about his D800. Just kidding... sort of!). Anyway, I took him to the Minden Wildwater Preserve where we were lucky enough to see a couple of brave fall-weather kayakers practicing their flips and skills in Earl's Hole.

Now if I did this right, here's a video clip I recorded with the D600 the week before, same spot, one of the same paddlers My first or second attempt at shooting video. Looks like something it'll be fun to learn to do. (shooting video, not whitewater kayaking! You think I'm nuts?)




On Saturday, George got a better shot than I did (whine). Here's his picture (with permission)

© George Reichert 2012. Shot with his D800 and 70-200 VR lens 

...and here's my shot

D600, same lens, slightly different POV.  

Shooting at the White Water is fun, I do it a lot. As you may have noticed.

You can't take a bad picture of your kids.

Well yeah, you can but you're more likely to get some good ones. There are a few reasons for that, which I discuss in my basic photography courses:

• You've shot 6000 pictures of your kids and only a few of other peoples' kids
• You have an emotional connection with your subject
• They're no longer intimidated by mom or dad or grandpa with the camera pointed at them and are generally ignoring you
• They're YOUR kids and by definition the most beautiful, smartest, greatest kids in the world.

The lesson is, if you want to take great shots of other peoples' kids, shoot lots, until they ignore you and pretend they're as wonderful as your own kids. If you want to take great shots of other things (like a cow, for instance), you need to get up close and personal and make a sympatico connection with the animal or the rock or tree. Seriously. 

So last week, my son and his family were up from New York, and we all hung out at my daughter's place in Uxbridge. I got a bunch of shots of the kids playing on the trampoline, and if you're willing to wait for those great facial expressions, you'll get great shots too. Of course they won't be as pretty or handsome as mine...

Leah is 3 

Kelly's 9. Hope I'm still around and able to take her high school graduation pictures! 

Ryan just turned 13. He needs a haircut (heard he finally got one this week!). Trampolines are great, this was right up at the peak! 

I'll leave you this week with the texture of the underside of a fall-reddened burning bush leaf at maximum magnification with my bellows.

Nothing done to it. Right out of the camera. Since I don't have Exif data, I'm guessing it was at f/11 or f/16, 1/200 sec at ISO 400, obliquely lit by my flash, off-camera at upper right. 

My D300 and 12-24 wide angle DX lens are still for sale. I'll put them up on eBay next week if there are no takers. It's a great deal...

Update: I just posted this, then went to look at it so I could come back to edit typos, etc and I noticed that someone from Berlin, Germany was already reading this blog post! How cool is that???

— 30 —