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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Show you Care

Why don't we honour our cops?

Ready to put up with my ramblings? This has been on my mind and I want to express it.

Last week’s terror attack in Ottawa triggered this post. While any terror attack, whether carried out by a group or a single extremist, whether it results in the loss of thousands of lives or just one, is to be deplored, that’s not my message. Only one person who mattered died (the gunman died too, but his death was unimportant) but the bad news is this is not going to be the last such attack. This was inevitable: Canada’s support of the world’s fight against extremism and terror has not gone unnoticed. I certainly don’t think we should cower in fear or back down, I think this event should add to our resolve to wipe out terror organizations that threaten the globe. The message should be, “you don’t poke a sleeping lion”.

I watched the public reaction to the death of Nathan Cirillo. There was news coverage around the world. The Queen expressed her condolences. Parliament gave a 5 minute standing ovation to the Sergeant-at-arms who stopped the bad guy. Thousands of people stopped what they were doing, stood on overpasses and at the side of the 401 to pay their respects as the hearse travelled from Ottawa to Hamilton, that road has been designated as the “Highway of Heroes” and a laudable tradition has developed to honour the sacrifices of our armed forces members in defence of our country and our way of life. I fully support that expression of solidarity. But in my mind, it raises another issue. Two, actually.

Why does the public not express the same outrage when a police officer is killed in the line of duty? Yes, the law enforcement community acknowledges and honours the sacrifice of a fellow officer, but why doesn't the public? Just like the armed forces – more, perhaps – these people stand between us and the bad guys who would do us harm. Is there a line drawn somewhere, defending our country is more important than defending individuals? Dead is dead, doesn't matter whether it was directly at the hands of a terrorist or a criminal or in an accident while trying to defend us, dead is dead.

We need to recognize and pay homage to the sacrifices of our police officers, our firefighters, any other emergency service personnel, as much as we do to a soldier who was struck down in the performance of his or her dangerous duty.

I know a lot of police officers. And a few firefighters. And some selfless EMTs. They all deserve to be recognized for what they do and especially know that we are proud of them. Go shake a cop’s hand. I dare you.

My second message is this: drive through any small town in the US and you will see homes bedecked with flags, streets lined with symbols of American patriotism. Drive through an equivalent Canadian neighbourhood and, oh, look, there’s a flag! One. There are lots of reasons I prefer being a Canadian to an American, but this isn't one of them. Why are we not committed to our country as they are to theirs? Are we not proud to be Canadian? Why don’t we say it more? Yes, we can add “please” and “thank you” but we have to stop being apologetic about being citizens of such a great country.

To start with, fly a flag. I do. I dare you.

Still a cool pillow...

Remember the pillow I had printed with my granddaughter's picture on it? I just uploaded a bunch of new images to RedBubble, and some of them would make dandy pillows!

Pretty cool, huh? Picture this in an appropriately colour-coordinated room. In fact, it'll look great on my green leather couch and I'm going to order one!  

Check out my RedBubble portfolio here. They make all sorts of fine art products, from framed prints to canvas prints, even posters, greeting cards and Tote Bags

Shooting Stars (again!)

Linda called me last Thursday and said she had heard about a huge solar flare, which of course should result in dramatic Aurora Borealis. It happened to be a clear night, so I "girded my loins" and went out at around 1:00 am. I tried a couple of spots and ended up on the public beach across from the old 12-Mile Lake Historic Church (kicking myself right now. Why didn't I think to see what I could shoot with the church in the foreground? Damn. OK, on my list...)

Anyway, no Aurora. At least, not visible. So I shot a few milky way setup shots, then settled in for a 90-minute, 180 image sequence for Star Stacking. PS: didn't get to bed until 5 am... had to upload the pictures to see how they came out!

Here's a Milky Way image. The red lights are on a radio tower probably 5 or 10 km away. When you enhance the image in Lightroom (or ACR), the green glow of the Aurora appears but as I said, it wasn't visible to the naked eye.

Here's a stacking sequence. 170 frames, actually: I miscounted. But as usual, there were too many stars, so I had to go back to rework it, then I applied some Topaz magic. I may be way out of line here, but to me, the tonality of this image, including the pastel transitions in colour particularly in the water reflection reminds me of Lawren Harris (Group of Seven). Maybe that's why I liked it. Click to blow it up. Comments would be welcome.  

Here's another image that I took the same day. I was driving back from Toronto and had a bit of extra time, so I revisited the spot where I shot the massive oak tree a month ago. I took a few interesting shots there, but one jumped out at me.

What I saw was the back lighting on the grassy stuff in the foreground and the composition of the way trees take the eye into the middle where the sun is. It's a 5-shot HDR. It was a nice enough image but I decided I wanted some texture, so I opened it in Topaz Impression and after experimenting, used the "Caveman" preset. By the way, I stopped down to an aperture of f/11 to get the sun's rays (which I then proceeded to soften with the brush strokes! Oh well!). 

I was just South of Kirkfield, still had some time, so I said "let's go see what's doing on Carden Plain". Not much. I drove up a different road and came across this old farm building, that screamed, "Take an HDR, take an HDR", so I did.

While I was shooting that picture, along came a tractor and since I didn't know how the driver would react about having his picture taken (and since I had my long lens on), I shot one from far away.

Don't critique the picture! Just setting the scene, OK? 

Turns out that Leo (that's his name) and I had a great conversation! See what I mean about not being afraid to approach people and talk to them? Here's the gist of it:

This is Leo. He's 71 years old and for 45 years, while he was farming his 1300 acres on the Carden Plain, he also drove a transport truck at the same time. He's thinking of selling, Real Estate people are after the property. He can be a very wealthy man. He wanted to set up three solar farms a few years ago but was stopped when it turned out that his property was home to an endangered species [the loggerhead shrike].

We talked about how his kids aren't interested in farming, how Ontario has designated parts of the Carden Plain as a Provincial Park, how the nights are quiet and really dark there, about the 12 feet of snow at the top of the hill behind him last winter, how his neighbour, who has 200 acres offered him $130K for a 100 acre parcel adjacent to her land, he laughed and said he would give her double that (per acre) for hers but she turned him down, and more that I can't remember.

As we went our separate ways, I asked if I could take his picture. He said, "sure, as long as you think you won't break your camera!".

I used Topaz Impression to add texture to this bright sunlit portrait. I started with the "Cave Dweller 3" preset. I stepped back a bit but I had my 70-200 on board, with the 1.7x converter, so this was about as wide as I could get (OK, cropped a little). Does he look 71 to you?

Revisiting an image

Last June, I shot a picture of this person after a conversation with him, including discussions of his prison tattoos including the teardrop one on his cheek. Today I read a thread on FaceBook about someone who shot (pictures of) homeless people and he posted an example which was outstanding. To make a long story short, I revisited this image and re-edited it to put it on a black background and make it much contrastier and darker.

It reminds me of Yousuf Karsh's photo of Ernest Hemingway. You need to look at this one full-sized. Click the picture to blow it up. 

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"License and Registration..."

Great Lakes Police Motorcycle Training Seminar

If you see one of these guys in your rear view mirror, remember they can ride better than you can drive! Motor cops from all over were there to hone their riding skills and on the final day, to share their skills in the spirit of competition.

I used to know a lot of these motor cops, but there are a lot of new guys – and gals – in the cadre. Still some familiar faces: some retired, some not. Luc, for instance, from the RCMP in Ottawa (forgive me for not posting his last name here) is the Staff Sergeant in charge of training for his crew. I made a mistake, joking with him "if you drop your bike, give me a heads-up so I can get a picture!" Don't be mad, Luc, I didn't mean to jinx you! But I won't publish the picture. That is, if you put a package of small unmarked bills... kidding, kidding!

This is one of Luc's group, in perfect control of that big 'ole Harley. A fun edit with heavy-duty tone mapping and some added warmth. 

But even he isn't immune:

When you push the edges of the envelope, sometimes you get a paper cut! 

This was interesting: it's an electric bike. "Zero" was there with a bunch of bikes for the motor cops to try out. Without a clutch, I can only imagine how it is to ride in these tough low-speed exercises. 

I'll leave you with two "people" pictures.

He didn't see the humour when I suggested he shouldn't do that while riding!  

I was there with my friend Lori who actually said she LIKES this picture! I'm flabbergasted. This is the first time she said she liked a picture of herself! 

More Flowers

From there I drove to Humber College where I said hi to my former motorcycle instructor colleagues and took an hour to shoot in the Arboretum behind the campus. It's a good spot to visit if you're a photographer, free access (unless you're shooting a wedding or something in which case you need to arrange with them).

My goal was to shoot some more flower images for my black and white series. I still haven't figured out the optimum subjects for that treatment, but I'm getting there. I'm going to write a tutorial on how to do this, and put it in an eBook format. Watch this space or drop me a note and I'll tell you when it's ready.

I actually shot this one at the Fruit and Vegetable Market in Minden a few days earlier.

This one too... 

This one was shot at the Arboretum. And lots more, no time to edit them!

Shooting Stars

As most of you know, I ran a 2-part workshop last month on shooting the stars. But the weather gods have not cooperated: there hasn't been a single suitable night for shooting stars since the end of June!

PS: at last night's camera club meeting, one of my students said I could count on him NOT to come out to shoot stars in February. LOL. However, I do have an idea that involves making use of an ice fishing hut...

A couple of nights ago, I woke up from a 'nap' in front of the TV at around 12:30, went outside and saw, "STARS"! I loaded up the car and headed out to check out one of the spots I had pre-selected for the field portion of the workshop, when and if the weather cooperates. I got out there, set up and sure enough, clouds started moving in, so I didn't get a suitable sequence long enough for stacking. However, I did get a couple of shots:

This is facing East. That's the moon coming up on the right.  Click the picture to see it better. I was going to brighten it up but it lost the mood when I did.

Zooming the lens while the shutter was open produced this image. And a little help from Topaz Adjust which is on sale for 50% off until the end of August. Click the link at right and use "augadjust" in the code field at checkout.

Boat HDR

Yesterday I took the boat out and shot this 5-shot bracketed group. The Topaz Simplify filter produced this "painterly" effect. 

Free eBook

If you're reading this and you haven't yet downloaded your free eBook on shooting Fall Colours, get to it! There are some early red leaves out there... click the "Newsletter" button at top right. If you're already subscribed, you got an email with a link to the eBook. If you've lost it, send me an email.

I'll be running a photowalk day into Algonquin Park around the peak colour season for the Haliburton Highlands Camera Club. If you've never been up there at that time of year, bring your sunglasses because the colours are so bright you'll burn your eyeballs out. Oh, and DO NOT come up on a weekend. Last year the stop-and-go lineup into the Park was over 20 km long and the outfitting store/restaurant was a mob scene.

This weekend is the PanAm Games test event at the whitewater, with the entire following week taken up by the Minden Invitational National Kayaking Championships. Guess what you can expect in  the next blog post?

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Paranoia runs deep!

But before we talk about that...

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Paranoia
The little green men can still be after you even if you are paranoid, you know.

Two things triggered this thought.

1. The cops are out to get me

Driving home the other day along the Argyle Road, traffic was light. Perhaps 5 vehicles came from the other direction in about 10 km. Just to give you a sense... the road was bare and dry, the weather clear. The speed limit was 80 kph and I'm not afraid to admit that I drive around 100 kph in these conditions. I use the cruise control to keep from overdoing it.

I looked in the mirror and there was a black SUV behind me, with a suspicious looking roof rack/profile. I don't know where he came from, I'm generally pretty good at watching around me. Uh-oh. I know what that is. OPP (Ontario Provincial Police). I eased off the cruise control, just dropping to about 95. He stayed where he was. 90. Still there. Then came a straightaway and he pulled out and passed me. Then he accelerated to about 105 and was slowly gone.

Like this one. 

Two days earlier, on Highway 400, limit 100 kph, everyone travels at 120 or so. But then cars are slowing down... another OPP cruiser. He was doing 100 in the right lane, causing a traffic jam because nobody drives at 100... I held 110 or so and tipped my new hat to him as I passed.

But you get that sinking feeling in your gut whenever you see a cop car. Even if you're not doing anything wrong or unreasonable.

2. My power's going to fail!
This came up the other day. I went to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and while I was there, I heard an odd beeping from my computer area. Nothing I recognized... then I heard a similar beeping coming from the back room where the DSL modem is. Putting 2 and 2 together, I said, "AHA! Power failure! Those are the UPS warnings".

I'm guessing it was a low voltage or brownout. I still had lights, etc. It stopped after about 10 minutes. I've not seen that here before, either it's on or it's off. But it made me think about my UPS's and wondering whether all of you are wearing protection.

Just in case "UPS" is not familiar to you (or it makes you think about brown trucks), it stands for "Uninterruptable Power Supply" and it's a battery backup system that provides power when the mains fail or drop below a threshold, and it usually includes pretty heavy duty surge protection as well. I recently replaced the main one that my computers are plugged into, I now have about 20 minutes to save my work and power down smoothly in the event of a power outage. I have a second one that supports only my DSL modem and that gives me about 2 hours of wifi and wireless internet when the power is gone. That's important to me because I'm isolated up here, I'm not in a city and without power, I don't have water pumps, a furnace blower, etc.

  

PS: Think it through when you install one. You need your computer, your monitor, your mouse and keyboard, your wifi or internet modem, and any external hard drives you're using. If you're on a laptop, you're usually covered, but maybe not the external drives or your router...

Pond Hockey pictures
So you expected to see some more pond hockey pictures, huh? You will, but not today. I have something else for you.

Snowmobiling on 12-Mile Lake

First of all, when I typed this heading, Blogger didn't recognize the word 'snowmobiling' and it wanted to replace it with 'monolingualism'. Shades of 'autocorrect' on an iPhone or iPad! Too funny.

It looked as though we were going to get a nice sunset yesterday. So I fired up the bike* and headed out on the lake around 5pm.

* Snowmobilers call their machines, "sleds". ATVers or 4-wheelers call theirs, "bikes". And you thought this blog wasn't educational!

Anyway, there wasn't a colourful one, although the sky was kind of HDR-ready.

Anyway, while I was waiting for the sun to set, I heard the angry hornet-buzz of a bunch of sleds. Usually these guys just go whipping by at 1200 mph but this time they wanted to play on the snowbanks at the side of the ice-road plowed by the Red Umbrella Inn. Looked like a photo-op, so I hopped on the bike (see how the new terminology works? You've learned two new words!) and wandered over. They were cooperative, to a point, so I unlimbered the camera and...

It was starting to get pretty dark, so I had to vary my shooting technique. Initially, I was doing slow shutter speed panning, but it got too tough, so I slowly switched to high-ISO fast shutter.

Small young guy, big sled. He couldn't jump as high simply because he didn't have the weight and strength to lift that big sled. This is 1/250 sec at f/4.5, ISO 2000.

For you techno-weenies, we're at 1/1000 sec, f/4.5, ISO 2000 and even then I was underexposed a stop or two. Getting dark! Shooting RAW gives you a lot of latitude.

In case you're wondering, these are not HDR's. Most of the lighting effects were done in Lightroom with the adjustment brush. I also used Topaz Adjust 5.

I converted the first image to a "Paintograph" (I read that term somewhere. I like it). The oil paint filter in Photoshop CS6 is very cool.

You've gotta admit... OK you don't gotta, but *I* like it!

These sledders have contacted me by email and are hopefully reading this blog. If they are, then I'd love to do some more pictures in better light one of these days. Please get in touch!

More to come next week...

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