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.

— 30 —

Shooting at Humber College

It's official:
We're participating in the Haliburton Home & Cottage show, May 31-June 2! I'll be exhibiting, selling art prints and booking students into photography courses! Linda Cresswell will be there with me, selling her fine art images as well.

I just ordered 1000 of these cards for distribution at the show:

I have a source at a ridiculously low price for full colour printing. This card, printed on both sides in full colour, with an aqueous coating, is costing me under $50. Interested in getting something printed? Business cards in colour for about $20? Or attending a workshop? Send me an email.   

A little more flood stuff
I added a handful of pictures to the web gallery I had put up on the Minden Floods. Here's the link: if you've been there before, be sure to check out page 2. Sorry if the pictures got mixed up a little, I didn't save the gallery template and had to redo it.

Downtown Minden is a ghost town. They're worried about a dam giving way which would inundate the town without warning, so they've closed the main street to traffic.  This is a single frame toned image from my point-and-shoot, by the way.

The Box House
I took this a couple of weeks ago. My neighbour has a very attractive house. His last name is Box, so it's the "Box House". The story is that it burned down some years ago and was rebuilt, with this beautiful stone and glass façade.

This time of year, it's hard to make beautiful landscape shots because everything is brown, grey, muddy and wet. But I thought I'd give it a try.

I went a little overboard on this one. It's an HDR, then I toned it even further with Topaz Adjust, but I went nuts with the detail slider. Then I masked back the house and its reflection in the puddle to bring back the colour and detail. 

I tried another version of it using a line-art layer instead of the toning, but didn't like it as much.

Last weekend at Humber
I dropped in to the Humber College campus last weekend for a couple of reasons: to meet with someone from out that way, to say hello to my old motorcycle instructor colleagues, and to see what was interesting to shoot at the Humber Arboretum.

I miss teaching there. I don't miss the aches and pains, and with my voice issues, it was a challenge to make myself heard over the wind and the bikes. It was time to retire.

But after I left, they had to find a way to make the motorcycle course attractive again, so they went out and bought a whole fleet of pretty bikes:

Honda CBR 125 Repsol's. They bought some black ones too, but these are far prettier! 

There are a bunch of cool images to see: rather than clutter up the blog, I posted them on a separate gallery,
and here's the link. Drop in for a look!

Humber Arboretum
Although it was a bit early in the season, the only flowers that are up are crocuses (croci?) and daffodils, the Humber Arboretum is a great place for a visit. As far as I know, it's freely available to the casual photographer or visitor, but I know they require a permit for any commercial shooting. Check it out at their website here.

The recent firmware update for the D600 said they were addressing an autofocus issue. I haven't seen any problems, in fact it is unbelievably quick in AF-C mode. This is a composite of two successive frames in a high speed burst, F=400mm, ISO 250, 1/2000 sec at f/8. I will admit the bird was flying into a strong wind and wasn't moving very fast, but still... You can click to blow it up (like all the other pictures in the blog).

Is this a crocus? Or a lily? Not sure. Paintograph... 

Don't ask me what kind of tree this was on, although if I were guessing, I would say "cherry".  I have to come back when it's open. 

I ran into another photographer by the name of John, who was a bird and wildlife shooter. Despite the fact that he was using Canon equipment (I'm not going to stop making Canon jokes. Or Harley jokes. Live with it!), he had some outstanding images in the folder he carried in his car. He was actually shooting with a Sigma 150(?)-500 lens. He had some excellent wildlife shots, from deer to birds and foxes if I rccall. Anyway, we wandered around together and he pointed out things I didn't notice, oh, like a flock of about 25 cedar waxwings! They eat berries (ready for this? from CEDAR trees! Who would have thunk it!) and I got a few shots with berries in their mouths, but none perfectly timed.

Notwithstanding my previous comment about autofocus, the camera was fooled by all the branches and twigs, so I had to manually focus to get this shot.  

I think this is my favourite image.  

Although I kind of like this paintograph as well! 

OK, one more picture then we'll call it a day. I shot this one at the top of the hill in the arboretum.

I wonder how it will print on watercolour paper... 

— 30 —

If you want to make God laugh...

... tell him your plans.

I was shooting the Vaughn Hospital Charity Motorcycle Ride on Sunday morning when my cellphone rang. Without adding too much detail, it was the doctor telling me that there was a family medical emergency and my shooting day ended there.

It also put the Kaibosh on my planned two days shooting moose in Algonquin Park this week. I was lucky enough to find someone to take my place and I heard from the others that were there that it was a fantastic time: I heard there was a small bull, a cow and two calves and assorted other wildlife shot. I hope to get another chance to go at another time.

As I write this, I'm sitting in Toronto, not sure when I'll be able to get home. I'll keep you up to date as time goes on.

That doesn't mean I don't have stuff for you to read and look at. Onwards and upwards...

My Workshops are up and running!
I've announced two dates for DSLR courses up in the Highlands: June 24 and July 7 weekends. Those will be group courses, I can do individual or semi-private courses at the students' convenience, you tell me.

An ad is running in the Haliburton Highlander as we speak, and the link to full details on the workshops is here: http://www.photography.to
Here's what the courses are about:

Shoot Better Pictures

This course is aimed at people who are relatively new to Digital SLR photography. Beginners, more or less. It is a general course, so that you can use more of the features of your camera but mostly to get you to understand that the camera doesn’t shoot the picture, you do.

Now I know that most of my readers are well beyond beginners, so this workshop is not for you. But if you know someone with a new DSLR and they want to get off Program mode, have them contact me. I'll do sessions in Toronto or elsewhere as well, but we'll have to work out a schedule.

If you want to TEACH a course like this, let me know. I have the curriculum almost finished and the "Train the Trainer" manual almost done. The intent is that I'll share the course curriculum with you for free and I hope you'll use the student workbook I'm writing, at really nominal cost for each student (I'm thinking $2.99!).

That's another hour out of my life I won't get back...
Warning to PC users (if you have a MAC, you can probably skip this section).
I was bitten by some Malware this morning. I'm not sure where I got it because I don't surf "those" sites. The only thing I can think of is that I went to tinyurl.com to get a short name for a long URL and I remember something popping up which I ignored.

I've seen this one, or ones like it before, so I didn't bite this time. But they're insidious and creative, so I thought a word of warning is appropriate. About 10 minutes later I was writing an email and a big huge warning box popped up onscreen that said my computer was infected, click here to get rid of it. It's easy to think that's your virus protection software kicking in BUT IT'S NOT. It's a trojan (virus). In my case, I had to Ctrl-Alt-Del to get rid of it.

I finished the email, then shut everything down and ran Malwarebytes. Sure enough, it found two infected files.

So two messages here: (1) don't click on these infection warnings and (2) install and run Malwarebytes anti-malware software (there's a free version here). It catches stuff your regular virus software doesn't. Run it whenever you have an incident, or if your computer is misbehaving, or from time to time just for the Hell of it. You'll be surprised what it finds.

For what it's worth, I use Microsoft Security Essentials as my main virus protection. It's also free, doesn't clutter up the computer with extra stuff like other programs (I don't want to mention Norton or AVG, so I won't) and it comes from folks who have a vested interest in protecting Windows products. I've linked to it above.

Photos from the Charity Ride
As I said, I was interrupted while shooting the Charity Motorcycle Ride. I did get a few pictures, though.

My favourite lens is the 70-200. You can't take a bad picture, especially at f/2.8

The Honourable Julian Fantino, MP for Vaughn. Chief Fantino, as many people still call him, was the head of the OPP before running for Parliament. He made a presentation to StylesQ, the organizer of the ride.

...and here's StylesQ on his iron steed, just getting ready to depart on the ride. Although he was leading the ride, and he designed it, he got lost. I know Styles doesn't mind me saying that. He once got lost trying to find his own house. He has said to me, "what is this thing 'North' that you keep mentioning?".

I've put a few of my ride pictures up on my Smugmug site here, and Kathy Constantinou who was also there, and did manage to shoot the whole ride, put her ouststanding images up here. If anyone wants prints or screensaver/wallpaper images they can contact me or Kathy by email.

Canola field in the sun
I drove home on Wednesday to pick up some clothes (and my laptop!), then came right back to Toronto the next morning.

As you drive along at this time of year, you might spot a canola field. The bright yellow caught my eye and I had to stop to photograph it. I'm probably going to brighten this image up a bit in a few days but I'm not at the desktop computer right now (on the laptop) so I can't. What caught my eye when I stopped here was the incredibly bright yellow and it needs to be brighter than what I see onscreen right now.

What did I tell you about the 70-200 lens, especially at f/2.8? Right. This field was just west of Argyle, Ontario. There will be some more shots of it on my Smugmug gallery in a little while (when I get back to the computer!).

Poetry in motion
As I was driving to Toronto on Saturday (out of chronological order but so what?), I saw a bicycle race in the Mount Albert area. I drove ahead of the pack, then pulled over to park (actually they fooled me and turned onto a different road. I had to backtrack and do it again! They drove past the Nudist colony but I didn't stop in for pictures!). Anyway, I took a few shots:

This one was done at a deliberately slow shutter speed, panning with the bike. I can't get at the EXIF information right now, but I think it was 1/30 sec or slower).

Black Background Flowers (again)
Again, going backwards in time, here are a couple of pictures I did on black backgrounds up North. Two different varieties of Irises. Suitable for large format reproduction, if anyone is interested... email me.

Two guesses which lens I used to capture these images! These were actually shot inside my light tent, using the great big light in the sky as illumination. Actually, I may have used a bit of flash fill on the second shot, also bouncing it off the light tent.

Anyway, more to come. I hope to get back on track in a few days. TTFN.

— 30 —

Yippee, no HDR's!

For once, I didn't shoot any HDR's this weekend. I love the technique, and it's hard not to like the dramatic colours and precise lines, but there's a lot of it out there. Whenever I browse the NAPP site, it looks like every second picture is an HDR. Overdone. But fun.

Anyway, I went to the Haliburton Sportsman's Show for two reasons: OK, three. One, it was something to do, a good destination for a ride on a beautiful weekend (the WeatherNetwork was wrong: no rain at all until the middle of the night last night!).

Non-Photographic tip

There's a site called intellicast.com that has interactive weather maps online! You can see precipitation, cloud cover, all kinds of stuff and you can see it tracking across a map, or satellite picture. It's really cool. Check out the link, click the purple "full screen" box upper right, then click "play" to watch the weather move across the screen. It's almost realtime: the weather pattern is only 5 minutes old! As you can see, the rain has already passed here. Very cool site.

Two, my old hunting buddy Pete was delivering a lecture on how to keep whitetail deer on your property (Pete is the author/owner of Ripple Outdoors. He's a noted writer and photographer, specializing in fishing and hunting). I had a coffee and a catch-up with him.

And three, I read that Yamaha was going to be there with demo rides (my friend André from Humber who manages the motorcycle program for Yamaha was there) and with the Yamaha Rider Academy which gets 6- to 10 year old kids scooting around on motorcycles. Clinton, the owner of Canadian Motorcycle Training Services wasn't there, but Bob Island was, an interesting guy who is also a photographer and is the editor of Snowmobile Magazine. I figured, a good photo-op and I wasn't disappointed.

Reincarnation of Ricky Carmichael? Actually there was another kid there who also buzzed around fearlessly but was older. This little guy looks like about 6 years old! I might take some time to clean out the background on this shot.

Then there were these 3 little girls — sisters, I'm pretty sure — who lined up for a picture from their dad. I thought the 3 colourful helmets made an interesting shot: I called it "R-G-B" (if you're not into digital, you may not know the significance of that. Google it). I cheated, though. It was "R-Y-B" when I shot it. A quick fix in Photoshop and voîlà!

This Yamaha WaveRunner was scooting around on the lake. I knew the 400mm lens was good for something! I was going to crop it tight but thought the image might be more interesting composed like this.

There are more pictures from this weekend on my Smugmug site.

Photo Tip

My friend Pete writes and photographs for Ontario Out of Doors and other magazines. In the course of the conversation, he told me he could sell lots more pictures to them if he had taken the trouble to get MODEL RELEASES signed by recognizeable people in the pictures. He's right. And I've been lazy and don't have releases with me. You should always carry some in your camera bag. You never know when that super shot is going to come along!

I have one somewhere on the computer. I'll go find it, print up a handful of copies and stick them in my bag. If you want a copy, let me know (I think I said this before and never followed through: if I can't find the one I made a while ago, I'll make a new one. We need them)!

OK, I found it. If you want a copy of the modelrelease.docx file that I created and use, send me an email and I'll shoot it to you... Glenn

.

All Right! Tons of visitors

I'm honoured (Canadian/British spelling!). 80 distinct visitors so far, and from all over the place. The Philippines, New Zealand, Belgium and of course all over the US and Canada. I attached a neat hit counter that lets me see all that stuff.

Remember, you can see most, if not all of my images by going to my photo gallery. Click here, or at right.

I know where a lot of you are from -- VROC. For those not in the know, that's the "Vulcan Riders and Owners Club", a group I've been a member of for several years and although we're all joined by the common link to the venerable Kawasaki Vulcan motorcycle, we're an eclectic group including some members with discriminating taste (demonstrated by the fact that they're reading this!).

So since there are motorcyclists here, it behooves me to give them something to look at. Here you go:



Now Luc is an RCMP Sergeant (maybe Staff... I'm not sure). I met him at the Police motorcycle competition mid-August at Humber College. He's a friend of a friend of mine, Lori (Twuble) who rides a little Ninja 500. I'll have to find a picture of Lori to post later. Anyway, the layout that Luc was riding -- successfully I might add -- was really really tight. I tried it later on a little Virago 250 and was generally able to do it, but not a chance on my ST-1100. Here's me on the ST-1100:



I'm not as skilled. I'm trying, but I can't do what these folks can do. Of course they can't take pictures... this photo was taken by "Killboy" at Deal's Gap in North Carolina. Quite the place: 318 turns in 11 miles. (I just read that the record amateur time on the Dragon was 11 minutes. I did it in 14. Not as bad as I thought!) here's a couple of links: a video of still images from Killboy and a link to the "Tail of the Dragon" website.

Here's me on a dirt bike last June:


A little Orton effect for you photographers. I didn't take the photo (obviously) but I did do the PhotoShopping! I have to tell you, I was SORE after that day. I used muscles I didn't even know I had! But was it ever fun. Oh, and I did end up planting my face in that puddle!

And here's another friend, Shawna Aron, a couple of years ago on her R6. I took this at Shannonville racetrack right after I got my 70-200 lens. Shawna was the Canadian Women's Superbike Champion that year.



OK, so I promised you waterfalls. Be patient, they're coming! First I wanted to show motorcycles to my loyal followers!