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! 

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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

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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.

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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!

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