Left Brain Challenge

The Right Brain is considered the creative, artistic side.

The Left Brain is the calculating, scientific half.

Those who know me know that it's only in this part of my life — say for the last 15 or 20 years — that I've indulged my creative spirit and done my best to discard and ignore the old technical part. Without success, I might add. I moved over to Mac from PC, for example which is a source of never-ending frustration because I can't dive into the code like I used to. Not that I really want to, I just want to be a "user" and let others solve the technical issues. Which doesn't always work, but that's another story.

I 'play' guitar and keyboard (in quotes because I'm really a hacker) but I can't remember how to read music much, despite years of training in my youth. I 'paint' and 'sketch', also in quotes because I suck. I write: no quotes there, I do that, but the only way I'll finish my novel is if I have another 20 or 30 years ahead of me! And of course I photograph and digitally manipulate images.

I used to shoot guns and ride motorcycles but always with the left brain engaged, respect for the mechanics. No, I've really had enough of the cogitative life.

So WHY IN HEAVEN did I decide to get a star tracker? It's one of the most complicated contraptions I've tried since Rube Goldberg was a kitten.

Here's my camera mounted on an iOptron Skytracker Pro. The thing on top is my iPhone which runs TriggerTrap software to operate the camera shutter. I could use a remote, but hey, this is more complicated!

What does it do? Inside the red thing is a motor that turns the camera mount at the same speed as the earth rotates, ideally in the exact opposite direction, so the stars stay put in the frame. Note: if you're a "flat-earther" you can skip to the next article because this won't make sense to you. The camera is mounted on a ball head so you can point it where you want, and that's sitting on a counterweighted arm — which technically isn't needed with a wide angle lens, but I was trying to learn how to set it up.

Since everything rotates around the North Pole, you have to align the thing with the Pole which is close to (but not exactly on) the star Polaris.The thing on the right with the rubber band on it is a Polar Scope (the rubber band is to keep the lens caps from falling off), a little telescope you use to align the thing. Without boring you to death with detail, that's the hardest part: you roughly point it North, tilt it to the correct angle for your latitude (there's an app for that), look through the scope by bending over at an impossible angle and you should see Polaris. I saw A STAR, I think it might have been Polaris... then you use some clumsy controls to put it in the right place in the scope. Sure. When it's -2°C, windy, and the stupid ball head control gets in the way. Oh yeah, and you have to make sure the tripod is perfectly level (with a bubble level). Once it's aligned take care not to move anything or you have to start all over again. That's harder than you think.

OK, why? Well if you shoot the milky way, for instance, a typical exposure would be say 15 seconds at f/2.8, ISO 3200. If you know anything about digital photography, the high ISO generates lots of 'noise' which interferes with a sharp, clean image. Any longer, and the moving stars will leave tracks instead of being round dots (if you're in focus. Another issue...). So to get the ISO down, you need to keep the shutter open longer, hence the tracker to keep everything still in the picture. My go-to exposure would be 4 minutes at f/4, ISO 400, not too far off, I think.

With all of that said, I went out on Wednesday night to give it a try. The moon was too bright, there were clouds coming in, but I got a couple of shots.

This is a 4 minute shot with the tracker on. As I said, it wasn't perfect, but not a bad first attempt. You can see that the foreground is fuzzy because the camera was moving the whole time, but the stars were (reasonably) sharp. 

This is a shot with the tracker turned off.  You can see how much the stars moved during the exposure but the earth stood still. I turned on the inside light in the car for a bit at the beginning of the shot.

So what you do is blend those pictures together in Photoshop, then fiddle with it for an hour and this is what you get. Pretty cool, eh? 

Here's another one, facing ENE but I forgot to shoot a foreground shot so it's fuzzy. 

I'm looking forward to getting out on another clear (but WARMER!) night to try again, maybe with the Milky Way this time! Exercising those computational muscles on the left side of my brain!

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Newfoundland

Planning is well underway. I only have a few days left to book, I'd really like to find something around Greenspond for the end of July, but may have to settle for the Bay Roberts area (not that there's anything wrong with that, but I'd love the chance to roam around Greenspond for a few days). No available accommodations there that I've been able to find.

I booked the ferries: July 4th outbound, August 18th inbound. That gives me a couple of days on the Western shore on either end of the trip. I'm still open for people (photography or artist types) to share part of the time with me. 

If you want to see my Newfoundland pictures from 2017 and 2018, go to my Portfolio page, here:

https://glennspringer.myportfolio.com/newfoundland

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House Sale

I had an offer a couple of days ago, but it didn't work out. Still available, great location and house and price, perfect for someone from Toronto looking to move out of town or even to use as a cottage as a stepping stone to moving up here. 

Here's the listing site from my agent:

http://www.trilliumteam.ca/viewlisting.php?id=1344553

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Algonquin Park visit(s)

I was up in the park twice. Last week, Amin and I went for a drive up — we had a great day but didn't see much, other than the Pine Martens. We did run into a few friends, the "Susans" and we met Dave Nicholson who had never seen a Marten, so we sent him to "the spot" where he saw one for the first time.  


I grabbed this Canada Jay picture there, and turned it into a sketch:

Then Ron called and said, "let's go to Algonquin Park". "Sure, what time?" and I met them up there Saturday morning. He brought Rob Klein and Lil Schneidman with him, Lil is the outgoing president of the Richmond Hill Camera Club. We'd met before but with my memory for faces and names... sorry Lil!

That didn't go exactly as planned. As I was driving east on Highway 60 out of Dwight, a deer decided to remodel the front of my car. The insurance is covering everything but the deductible and I'm off in search of a body shop tomorrow.

Here's the deer. Not going far with a broken back half. I shot the picture while waiting for the police. The nice officer dispatched it with his Glock: I volunteered to do it but for some reason he wouldn't lend me the gun... We left it for the wolves and other critters in the bush. 

This is one of the shots I did for the insurance company. A lot of plastic to be replaced, a little sheet metal, and maybe a little internal damage to the A/C Condenser. We'll see. The plastic did its job, no damage to the frame or anything, I think. Subarus are tough! 

When I finally got to the Park, I met up with them and shot some pictures. Almost all were with the 200-400mm 'bazooka'. It's soooo sharp but it's soooo heavy... except as noted below. Enjoy.

The obligatory Pine Marten shots. See what I mean about sharp? This one is cropped quite tightly, too. 

I hate Grackles. They empty my feeders in half a day, chase all the other birds away and their call is annoying and noisy. But they do have pretty iridescent  feathers!

A common Redpoll 

A digital sketch of Turtle Rock up on Opeongo Road. More complicated than it looks because it was a composite of 12 separate images shot with the 70-200mm f/2.8 lens and edited in Topaz Studio. 

 Here's Lil, using a similar technique.

We stopped at the ice cave on Hwy 60 on the way back. Careful footing to get up to it, here's Lil trying not to fall.

And this is a merged-HDR pano shot from the entrance to the cave. With a little help from Topaz! 9 shots HDR merged in Lightroom, done with the 24-120 lens.

'til next time!

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Signs of Spring

Workflow tips

From the "for what it's worth" department (FWIW): I thought I'd share a couple of workflow tips for my photographer friends. But then I decided it would be better to put it in my tech blog so most of my readers' eyes don't glaze over and it makes them not want to come back to visit every week! If you are a photographer and  use Photoshop or Lightroom or Elements in your post-processing, feel free to hop over to www.faczentech.blogspot.com.

TOPAZ CLEAN on sale

The good folks at Topaz Labs have done it again. This month they have put Topaz Clean on sale at half price for the month of May.

That's one of those products that's a little hard to understand until you use it (you can try it for free before you buy it for 30 days). Here's what they say about it:

If you've ever post-processed a portrait for flawless skin texture, or made a car look clean and polished, or created the perfect sky... you know how difficult it can be. There's a fine line between "too much" and "not enough" post-processing - and you have to get it.

Topaz Clean makes it easy and fast to create perfect image texture. Instead of creating 5 different layers in Photoshop, just drag a few sliders in Clean and you'll get a great result in seconds.

Topaz Clean lets you smooth edges and surfaces in your photos. It's great for subjects like cars and portraits, and you can also use it to create some interesting effects as well. Clean has three main controls:
 * Smoothness: smoothes the surfaces of your photo. Useful for removing blemishes from skin, removing dust + noise, creating a "flatter" texture, and more.
* Edges: smoothly enhances edges with a unique process that looks "vectorized". This creates smooth and well-defined lines in your photo that work great on image features like hair and eyelashes.
* Texture: recovers and refines original detail in your image to keep it looking natural. For example, re-introduce original skin texture in your portraits to prevent your post-processing from looking too overdone or "plastic". 

Here's the link to the Topaz Clean product page. To take advantage of the half-price offer (valid until the end of May), enter the code "mayclean" at checkout when you order it.

Do you live in the past?

I do, and I admit it. My sister shared a site with me and I thought I'd pass it on. This website is called "45rpm DB" and it contains the full recordings of 77,000 45rpm singles dating from 1950 onwards! You can search for anything, but look at the "archives" tab: it shows the top 10 charts for each month and year. It's amazing how you can remember every single song from that many years ago.

As I type this, I'm listening to Michael Jackson's "BAD" from 1987. Before that it was Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" from 1973. How about "Surfer Girl" by the Beach Boys from 1963? Love this site!

Give yourself an Assignment

Again, this is for my photog readers. But it leads to some pictures for the rest of you too see, too. Bear with me.

I'm a really strong advocate for the "Competition" process in camera clubs. Not only does it get you to think about doing your best work, but it also gets the creative juices flowing. For me, it helps to have a theme or a reason to go shoot pictures. I like the time limited ones that force you to focus on a topic. I'm not that good with long projects, although I'm trying.

So last week, I noticed that the river was up again in Minden. We're all hopeful that it doesn't result in another flood situation like last year. I took a few photos and sent them to the local paper and not only did they want some, they also asked me for pictures to illustrate an article on "Signs of Spring".

This fixed dock on the Gull River in Minden is underwater again.

So are parts of the RiverWalk pathway and this bench illustrates how much the river is up 

Signs of Spring. Well, it's late this year. So if you go out in the woods today, you're in for a big surprise. Nothing to see! The trilliums (and trout lillies) are about the first wildflowers up) weren't there yet.

Early shot of an infant trillium not open yet. Just about the only one I could find. 

What to do, what to do. I did find some pictures from previous years in the archives, but I wanted to do some new ones. So I gave myself an assignment. What else would be harbingers of spring?

Iconic symbols like songbirds back at the feeder.

I hate grackles. OK, "hate" is a bit strong, but they show up in herds (I think a flock of grackles should be called a "Feh" or a "Yucky"). They drive off all the other birds, they squawk, they empty the feeders in a matter of minutes. This one was fluffing out his feathers, probably a display thing in mating season. Too bad there was an out-of-focus twig  blocking part of the tail...

I did manage to get this shot of a female rose-breasted grosbeak.
The male eluded me – every time I got close enough for a shot, he disappeared. 

Anyway, back to the 'assignment' thing. What else says 'it's spring'? "Well", I thought, "what about people out doing outdoor chores"? So with that in mind, I went out and found these:

Jack was out raking leaves on a property in Minden 

Keith was transplanting some trees at his place in Hunter Creek. Interesting guy: He and his wife (Carol?) retired here a year or so ago: they're not comfortable with country living yet, his wife says she never knows where she is, the roads aren't laid out in a grid like they were in the city! Keith and I talked about the flooding, he says anyone who builds or buys a home on a flood plain sort of deserves what they get! 

I stopped at the Minden Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Mart. Sue only opens for the season in April, so there's a sign of spring! It's pretty cool in her place with all the doors and windows open, she has to dress to keep warm. 

Spring flowers for sale, like these miniature daffodils and bluebells say "spring"! 

Tulips. This is going to be the cover shot for an insert section in the Minden Times next week! 

I think this is a killer art shot. Out behind the Fruit Mart was a stack of flower pots waiting for plants. A little Photoshop (Topaz) and voilà! Going in my fine art portfolio. Contact me to buy a print!

By giving myself an assignment (or being lucky enough to be given one!) I was able to find some interesting images.

I mentioned larger projects: I've got two in mind. I'll share those soon. Watch for it!

Image of the Week

For 7 years I've been shooting this tree at the Minden Wildwater Preserve. I finally got it. This is a 5-shot HDR, using Nik HDR Efex Pro 2. I set "de-ghosting" on so I could isolate the moving water on just one frame. I'm definitely making a large scale art print of this one. Haven't decided what medium yet, probably Epson Cold Press Natural, and I'll probably ask Jim to mount it for me using his patented process. You need one for your wall. You know what to do! 

OK, enough typing. Time to go out and see how the Trilliums are doing. Oh, and I think I got a shot of that male grosbeak. Next time!

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