Back from Washington State

I just returned a few days ago from a 10 day trip to Washington State. I have family in the Seattle area, so I went to visit them, but I used the nearby scenery as an excuse to get out and take a few pictures....1201 pictures, to be precise.

The weather the first few days was kind of crummy...either lots of rain and sunshine, back and forth, or just cloudy most of the day. However, after those first few days, the weather turned very nice, and I had some nice photo trips. I managed to photograph a lot of subjects while there:
Space Needle
Seattle Aquarium
8 lighthouses up close or at a reasonable distance
3 lighthouses from far or very far away
1 lightship from a medium distance
Snoqualmie Falls
Mt Saint Helen's
Mount Rainier
North Cascades
Hurricane Ridge
Hoh Rain Forest
Daytime and Sunset on the Pacific Ocean
Tidal Pools on the Straights of Juan de Fuca
Cape Flattery

After several hours of looking over the course of 2 days, I've completed my first pass at the pictures and weeded them down to about 150. Now I need to make another pass to narrow them down more, then look through all the pics again to make sure I didn't leave anything out. Then starts the time consuming work of processing all of the images.

Hopefully by weeks end, I'll have my pictures ready, printed, and uploaded to the web site.
...click here to read more!

The Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens is repaired

A few weeks ago I finally got around to sending in my Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens for repair. The FedEx guy showed up on Monday with my repaired lens. The upside: Canon replaced the front element and reassembled it good as new...focus appears to be fine. The downside: Canon insists that the lens sustained an impact (not sure how that happens to a lens that has never been dropped and is stored in a well padded area of the camera bag). As a result, they wouldn't fix it under warranty, so they charged me $40 for the repair and $5 for return shipping. Including my original shipping, I got the lens repaired for $50 with a total turnaround time of 3 weeks (the lens was in my hands exactly 2 weeks from the day I faxed in the repair authorization).

I guess it's not a bad deal. It saved me about $25 compared to what I would have paid to buy a new one. It's about the same price I would have paid to buy one used off of ebay. I still would like to upgrade to the f/1.4 lens, but this saves me from having to dish out that money right now (difficult to afford with some summer trips coming up). And if I later do decide to upgrade, I can probably sell this on ebay and get the entire $50 back.

I'm also happy that I finally got this thing fixed. I'll be able to use it on my upcoming trips to Seattle and Copper Harbor. That makes me quite happy simply because this lens takes such wonderfully sharp pictures.
...click here to read more!

Tulip Time - Holland, Michigan Tulip Festival

This weekend we took a trip to Holland, Michigan for the tulip festival. It was our first time visiting for the festival, and it sure was a treat. Tulips everywhere in town.

Our first stop was at Windmill Island. Here there were plenty of tulips, to be sure. But more importantly, true to it's name, there is a giant windmill named "De Zwaan" (The Swan), which is an authentic windmill from the Netherlands, build in the 1700 and shipped to Holland, MI in 1964. We actually got to go up into the windmill, see how it was used to mill grain, and walk around the deck.



Unfortunately, there was a huge crowd touring the windmill, and with so many people in a confined space, I wasn't able to get many shots of the inside.

Out next stop was to the Veldheer Tulip Farm. This is where you can find pretty much any variety of tulip you never even knew existed. They have 30 acres of tulips for you to wander in, and each section of tulips is numbered so you can look it up in the catalog and order bulbs to grow your own.





The rest of the tulip photos can be found here:

http://www.pbase.com/ldkronos/tulipfestival


The weather wasn't all that bad. I was hoping for blue sky with some spotty clouds, but the sky just didn't cooperate There was some blue sky with a few thin wispy clouds to the northeast, but the sun was to the south/southeast and it was pretty well overcast anywhere to the west.

However, at least we were able to get enough sunlight earlier in the day to help bring out the colors of the tulips. Later in the day, as the sun moved west, the clouds moved east, and around 1:30 or 2:00 the sun pretty much disappeared for the day. By then, we were off to get a few shots of some nearby lighthouse.

First we hit the Holland Lighthouse (AKA Big Red) then we traveled south to hit a few other before heading home. Here's a shot of Big Red.



The rest of the lighthouse shots are here:

http://www.pbase.com/ldkronos/lighthouses&page=7
...click here to read more!

Prints, Papers, Matting, and Framing

Over the last few weeks I've been working more on getting some images ready for sale. I took 4 of the collages and prints that I've done previously, and re processed them to make them look a bit better quality than the quick prints I made for myself. Making prints to sell is a bit more difficult. Whereas normally I look at my photos and decide I like it or don't like it, now I find myself critically evaluating every little detail...noticing everything I don't like. I eventually convince myself that the photo looks like crap, only to look at it again later and realize it actually looks nice, and I'm just nitpicking.

I've also been cutting up my matboard into sizable pieces. I now have a stack of 8x10 and 11x14 pieces in about a dozen different colors. I also took 2 pieces of each color and of each size and bevel cut out the center in 2 different width so that they can form a top layer and a bottom layer. Now as I work on new photos, I can start mixing and matching colors for mats to determine which color combinations work best for that photo.

Last night I took a swing by the art/crafts store and picked up a few more frames. I'm planning on selling mostly matted, unframed photos, but I do plan on having a few pieces onhand that are framed...both to show of my work and get peoples attention, as well as to provide for those people who don't want to frame it themself or can't quite imagine what the print will look like in a frame.

Finally, I started looking into different paper types. I've been using the Canon Photo Paper Pro for almost 2 years now and have been very happy with it. The color is great, and it seems very resistant to fading (no problems yet, except that the white yellows slighly in exposure to sunlight). However, I decided it would be interesting to at least begin exploring other paper types. I picked up a pack of Ilford Gallerie Smooth Pearl last week. I was at the store looking through samples and just loved the texture of that paper.

I did a few test prints and it seemed to work quite well. It looks very nice. The only downside so far is that it's not 100% water resistant. After letting it dry for several hours, I ran the corner under some tap water. I could instantly see a change in color, and even after letting it dry out I could still see the change. I let the print dry a few more days and tried again and it was much better this time...it was barely noticable after the water dried off, but still a slight difference. Of course, this was in the sky, where it was easy to see the difference in a solid blue area. When I tried wetting down the trees, I couldn't really tell the difference after letting the print dry out again.

So I definitely think (based on a quick evaluation) that the Ilford Gallerie Smooth Pearl could be a wonderful addition to my printing repertoire. I'll have to do some more longer term tests to ensure I'm still satisfied with the paper before I consider selliing photos printed on it.

Anyway, as I said, I've got 4 more prints all ready to go. I post some matted mockups of those this week.
...click here to read more!

First photo ready for sale

I've been working off and on for several weeks, picking out some of my favorite photos...the ones that I think are the best and have the most potential to sell. While I've certainly got some nice photos all finished up and hanging on my walls, I haven't gone back to re-finish those photos (double check the quality, set them up for easy automatic printing, etc). I guess I figured they were mostly done, so I'd rather spend my time looking for more photos and just come back to finish up those later.

In my searches, a few weeks ago I found a group of photos that I really like. They show various views of/from the Au Sable Point Lighthouse. I really like the photos together as a group. Maybe it's just nostalgia for the fact that my wife and I had to walk over a mile each way down a closed off service road just to get to the lighthouse...the extra effort required to get those shot gives them a special place in my heart. Or maybe its the fact that, after all that walking, when we got back to the car, the battery was dead and we had to flag someone down to give us a jump start in the middle of nowhere. Whatever it is, I felt there was something about these photos that, together, really told the story of this lighthouse.

So, at the time I loaded the files up really quick in MS Publisher and proofed the layout and configuration of the photos. When that worked well, I mocked up a double layered mat in Publisher and fooled around with color options.

Once I was convinced I had something worthwhile here, I immediately got to work fixing up those photos. The first step was to work on each of the individual photos, converting from CRW (canon raw) to TIFF format and post processing. The next step was to get the photos working together in a single TIFF file. This required cropping the images down to the required proportions (including some bleed around the edges), then resampling all images to a common DPI, sharpening each individually, and then copying them to the final image and positioning them relative to each other. The final step here was to work on the text...picking out the right fonts and sizes, choosing the wording, and creating the text layout.

Once the image was all set to go, it was time to print the image. Just one slight problem...the image I created was 11"x14". I do have some 13"x19" paper that I can just cut a slice off of (I've done it before) but the widest my Canon i950 can print is 8.5". Luckily, my image had a 1.5 inch border, leaving 8 inches of actual content. Add 1/4" for bleed to each side and you've got exactly 8.5". However, the next problem is that, in order to print the full 8.5" width you need to put the printer driver in borderless mode, and unfortunately (for who knows what stupid reason) borderless mode is only available for a few fixed paper sizes...not for custom sizes. Luckily (once more) my image had a bar of whitespace that spanned the entire width of the image about 2/3 down the page. This allowed me to break the image into a two 8.5"x11" halves. I just print the top half, turn the paper around 180 degrees, and then print the bottom half upside down.

The next step was to make a custom collage mat. My first try was a disaster...crooked lines, wrong measurements, and on top of that, I actually cut the mat backwards (mirror image). I didn't feel like taking another shot at it right away, so I went back to other things for over a week. Today, I decided to take one more stab at making the mat. This time it came out great, and I managed to get 2 double layer sets cut.

So here it is...a publisher/photoshop mock up of my first complete image ready for sale.

Au Sable Point Lighthouse
Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
Au Sable Point, Michigan

...click here to read more!

It's starting to feel a lot like....

No, not Christmas! It's starting to feel a lot like spring time. I'm getting a bit excited. I like to do a lot of outdoor and landscape photography, but I think last summer just sucked. It was nice that there weren't a lot of hot days, but there were just way too many rainy and overcast days. I had some decent weather on a few of my smaller trip here and there, but there were even more bad days. My August trip around Michigan got half rained out. Half of my lighthouse trips ended up being overcast skies. Not to mention (unrelated to photography) I hardly got to do any swimming all year. While not a horrible summer, I was more than a bit disappointed.

In fact, thinking back about it now, I was starting to wonder if maybe I was having clouded memory about just how bad the weather was last year. So I decided to go back and review the summer/fall months from last year to see if it was as bad as I remember. A quick look at the historical data over at Weather Underground (a wonderful site to get your weather from) shows that, nope...it's not just my memory. June was really the first month after getting my camera in which I was able to start doing some decent shooting, so I started there. So how bad was the weather? For the summer months (June/July/August) here is what I came up with:
19 sunny days
28 partly cloudy days
2 completely overcast days
43 rainy days

Wow...that's one heck of a crappy summer. September offered a bit of relief, with 18 sunny day(thats one day less than all 3 summer months combined), 8 partly cloudy, 1 overcast, and 3 rainy. However, October went back to the bad weather: 5 sunny, 4 partly cloudy, 8 overcast, and 14 rainy.

This year, Mother Nature is starting to get my hopes up for some good shooting weather. There have been a tremendous number of clear days so far. Lots of beautiful sunrises and even some nice sunsets. One day had one of the coolest sunsets I've ever seen. The clouds had rolled in as a solid layer, but there was a break at the horizon for the sun to do some dramatic side lighting on the wavy underside of the cloud layer. I was completely unprepared for what was about to happen, and I didn't have my camera on me at the time, but my brother-in-law was able to snap a nice shot on his Canon S-70 from his front porch.



Last week, the first flowers started popping up. First it was some daffodils at work. I could not resist snapping a few shots of those, including the following.




Then at home, our tulips just started to open, along with some other purple flowers which I planted a few years ago, but can't remember the name of. There were also some yellow blossoms opening up on one of the neighbors bushes.







So anyway, I'm just hoping that this is really a sign of a nice summer to come, and not just Mother Nature's way of torturing me with a sick sense of humor. I'm looking forward to getting some better photo opportunities this year. I've got a few trips planned already.

In May, I'll be heading to Seattle for a week. I hope to hit a number of sites there. I'd like to spend a whole 2 days on the Olympic peninsula: in the mountains, the rain forest, and stopping off at the ocean beach. I'm also planning a day for Mt. St. Helen's (volcanic activity permitting...you never know what it's going to do lately), and another day for Mt. Rainier. That leaves 4 days to see other things. Of course, I'll hit the usual spots downtown (waterfront, pikes place, space needle). I also hope to get to Snoqualmie Falls. Other than that, we'll see what happens.

In July, I've got a trip planned for 4 days in Copper Harbor, Michigan. There are a few lighthouses in the area I'd like to see, some wonderful shorelines, some old growth forests, lots of small towns, and a few decent (though not huge) waterfalls. Unlike my usual trips of packing a lot of things into a few short days, I'm intentionally under scheduling this trip. My hope is to just be able to spend a lot of time in one area, and really focus on shooting more of the smaller details This is in contrast to my usual strategy of getting the grand overview of a place with some basic but lovely shots, and then moving on. With the extra time, hopefully I'll be able to get some better shots, and be able to capture more of the heart and soul of the area.
...click here to read more!

Can YOU see creatively?

I finished reading "Learning to See Creatively" by Bryan Peterson a few weeks ago. This was quite an incredible book. In terms of the absolute content covered, I would put this book just a hair behind "Understanding Exposure". However, taking into account that I already knew a lot of the ideas covered in that one, I would say that this book was probably a little more helpful to me. So what did it cover?

Bryan starts out with a discussion of the broad categories of lenses (standard, macro, wide, zoom). Not a lot of new material for the intermediate or advanced photographer. However, more so than reading what he says about each category, it's really worth looking at his photos of how he used each one in creative ways. My favorite example from this section was a shot of a mountain where, rather than focusing on the mountain as most people would do, he picks his primary subject to be some wildflowers in the field in front of the mountain, and then leaves the mountain itself to be an out of focus (but still very recognizable) background. His macro shots in this section are also wonderful.

Next, Bryan goes onto covering the 6 elements of creative design: Line, Shape, Form, Texture, Pattern, and Color. Although this only comprises a little more than 1/4 of the book, I really felt that the ideas in this part were the real meat of the material. Very interesting reading his thoughts on how to use each element alone, as well as with each other. He talks about the different types of moods evoked by different lines (curve vs diagonal vs zig zig), and how you can often improve the composition by simply rotating the camera to change the angle of the lines. He discusses how the different elements are affected by different angles of lighting. How to use contrasting object to interrupt a repeating pattern. How to use opposing colors together. Tons of other stuff here too. This section was just too valuable to pass up.

In the next section, Bryan continues on with an amazing discussion of different techniques of composition. He reiterates the often heard mantra of getting in closer (no...CLOSER!!), as well as the popular Rule of Thirds. Another interesting idea here was his mention of the "Right Third", and how often a picture can look even better when flipped so the subject is in the right third of the picture rather than the left. He discusses taking landscape shots without including the horizon. Frame within a frame (his idea is that every picture has yet another interesting picture hidden within it). Bryan also covers the highly controversial topic of "Working your Subject". In Bryan's opinion, repositioning and trading out items in a scene is definitely acceptable if it gives you a better composition. Despite some people opinion that you don't get the true picture, Bryan suggests "the real truth of a photograph is in its ability to evoke emotion". Finally, after establishing all of these compositional "rules", he finishes out the section with a discussion of how to break all of the rules when necessary.

Next up is a quick discussion of using light, although this section is really just an abbreviated form of his discussion of light in Understanding Exposure. After that is a brief discussion of digital photography, and how Bryan uses tools like photoshop to achieve creative results. Bryan finishes out the book with a couple of pages on choosing your career path in photography.

As with Understanding Exposure, this book is definitely filled with wonderful idea...however, they all pale in comparison to the wonderful photographs that Bryan has chosen to demonstrate each idea. With careful observation, you can learn a ton from this book without reading a single word of the text simply by looking at the pictures.

In summary. I definitely recommend that everyone pick up a copy of this book. This book is every bit as good as Understanding Exposure. In fact, the only way you can go wrong in picking one of these books over the other is by not picking up a copy of each.
...click here to read more!

Modifying the Logan 450 Matcutter

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I picked myself up a Logan 450 mat cutter. While I was very pleased with how well it worked, there were a few shortcomings with it:
1) The squaring bar is very short. Squaring up a 40" mat board against a 3 inch squaring bar is not exactly highly accurate. I found that I could shift the board a few degrees in either direction while still having the board appear to be square against such a short bar. For the best accuracy, the squaring bar needs to be as long as possible.
2) The bar you use to set the border width only goes out to about 4.5 or 5 inches. While this is more than adequate for a majority of mat cutting applications, it is NOT suitable for A) cutting mats with VERY large borders, and B) cutting mats for collages.

The best solution (at least out of the box) for both of these problems is to use a measuring stick to mark out the desired cutting line BEFORE placing the mat on the cutting board, and then just eyeballing the cut to the line. However, for better accuracy, or for easily cutting mats in larger quantities, I needed a better solution. Enter my modified Logan 450.

After running through a great number of ideas in my head about how best to modify the board, I finally came up with a solution that gave me reasonable results with minimum expense and manufacturing difficulty. Also, a key requirement was that the modification not be permanent. I should be able to assemble and disassemble the extension board with a minimum of difficulty and with as much accuracy as possible.

Before I get to describing just how I made these modification, I first want to say that I don't suggest that you make these modifications to your own board. However, if you are handy with tools, and are able to do quality work, then feel free to give it a go at your own risk.

Now, ideally I should have been taking photos of the whole process as I made the modifications. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, so all I have are after the fact photos. I'll post those photos below, and give step by step instructions for how I did what I did. First, I suppose I should start with a photo of the finished product, just so you can see what we are working towards:



Step 1) We need a board we can attach to the side of the Logan 450. For this purpose, a typical laminated shelf of about 12" x 48" x 3/4" works well. 48" is slightly longer than the Logan, so you could cut off the extra 4-5". I wasn't sure what ideas for modification I might come up with in the future, so I decided it didn't hurt to leave the extra couple inches on there just in case.

Step 2) We need to keep the board from shifting along the joint. For this purpose, I used 2 pieces of 3/16" steel rod. Cut off 2 pieces about 1.5" long. Then I took a drill with a 3/16" bit, and drilled 2 holes in the edges of both the Logan 450 and the extension board. The holes need to be about 3/4" deep, need to go into the edge of the board perfectly straight, and the corresponding holes on each of the boards should match up perfectly, and the near edge of the extension board and the Logan 450 should be flush. See the hole marked A in the following photo (ignore hole B for now).



Step 3) Take the 2 pieces of 1.5" long 3/16" steel rod, and insert them into the holes on the edge of the Logan 450, as indicated by label A (again, ignore label B for now).



Step 4) Lay the 2 boards next to each other, as shown in the following picture, and then push them together. If you drilled your holes correctly in step 2, it should go together perfectly, and the near edges should be flush. After the boards are pushed together, there should NOT be a gap between them. If there is, you didn't drill one or both of your holes deep enough (or the steel rod is too long).



Step 5) Now we want to devise a way to keep those 2 boards locked together as tight as possible while still allowing us to easily pull them apart. For this, I took a piece of 1.5" x 36" x 1/8" aluminum stock, and cut off 2 pieces about 3/4" wide (well, to tell the truth, I actually cut them from a smaller, separate piece of stock that I bought earlier, but I later discovered I need the larger piece for something else, and the smaller one was just a waste of money). I then used a metal file to smooth down any sharp edges.

Step 6) Now, using the 3/16" drill bit, drill out 2 holes in the bar. On one of the edges, make sure the hole is as close to the edge as possible (without being so close as to make the edge thin and weak)



Step 7) Now, we need to position these 2 bars at each end of the joint, near each of the Logan 450's hinges. Once they are in place, you want to use the 3/16" drill bit to drill through the holes in the bars and into the 2 boards. See hole B in the photo from step 2.

A few things to be careful of here. First, don't drill the hole too deep into the board...you don't want to go all the way through. About 3/8" to 1/2" should be more than enough. Second, when you drill the hole into the Logan 450, you do not want to mess up and ruin it, so you need to get this right the first time. You don't want the hole to be too close to the edge of the board (you need to keep enough surrounding wood to keep the hole strong). On the other hand, if you get too close to the hinge, what you will find is that the hinge hits the aluminum bar ends up not opening all the way. This is the mistake I made the first time around. Luckily I was able to file away/round off/thin down the corners enough to fix this. So make sure you get it right the first time. Finally, when you drill the second hole of each pair (first hole is in the Logan 450, second hole is in the extension board), you want to make sure the hole is far enough over that you get a very tight fit. You might want to mark the center of the hole with the aluminum bar in place, then remove the aluminum bar and drill the hole just a very slight bit further away from the joint.

Step 8) Cut 4 more pieces of the 3/16" steel rod, each about 1" long. Insert them into the 4 holes, as shown by label B in the photo from step 3.

Step 9) Now, you should be able to slip the aluminum bars snugly onto the steel pegs.




Step 10) Now that we have the 2 boards connecting together solidly, we want to add on the squaring arm. For this I took a piece of 3 foot long aluminum offset angle stock. I drilled 2 small screw holes into the bar so I could mount it to the board. As you can see in the photo above (step 9), I placed the angle bracket to be flush with the Logan 450's own squaring bar. Then, as shown in the photo below (by the blue lines), I used a large carpenters square (the larger the better) to make sure the bar (denoted by label C) was a) flush with the Logan's squaring bar, and b) perpendicular to the Logan's cutting bar/slot. Once everything was lined up, I drilled a few pilot holes in the wood and then (ensuring it was still squared) tightened it down.



Step 11) As shown in the photo above, the squaring bar runs the length of the arrows labeled by C. However for the segment of that bar denoted by the D arrows, there is no lip for the mat board to rest on. So I took the left over 1.5" x 1/8" stock, cut it to the length of section D, placed it half under the squaring bar and flush up against the extension board, clamped it in place, and drilled holes through both pieces, as shown below



Step 12) I used some machine screws/nuts to connect the 2 bars together. For the first 2 holes, you can use 1/4" screws. However, for the last screw, I wanted something to support the weight of that end of the bars (to keep them from bending), so I used a 3/4" long screw. Once it's tightened on, the extra length acts like a stand for that end of the bar.

Step 13) Now that the whole mechanism is entirely in place, we need a measuring tape to run the length of the cutting bar. For this, you need to pick up a right-to-left adhesive backed measuring tape. This was the most difficult item to locate. However, you should be able to track one down at just about any wood working store. I located mine at the local Woodcraft. You can also order it online:
http://www.woodcraft.com/family.aspx?familyid=432

Your goal here will be to cut the tape into 3 pieces. You will need to VERY CAREFULLY measure the lengths of the tape before cutting. If you don't get your measurements accurate here, then you mat cuts will not be precise (especially important for cutting collage mats and other fancy mats). The lengths listed below are only approximate...BE SURE TO MEASURE THE CORRECT LENGTHS YOURSELF.

Piece 1: runs from about 2" to 6+3/8". For this piece, you will want to get it precisely in place against and Logan 450's built on squaring bar, use an exacto knife to carefully cut the vinyl surface around the perimeter of the measuring tape, peel off that rectangle of vinyl, and attach the adhesive backed measuring tape to that cut out area. The purpose of cutting out and removing the vinyl is to recess the measuring tape so it sits flush on the cutting board.

Piece 2: runs from about 6+3/8" to about 18+3/8". Peel off the back, and place this flush up against the squaring bar, and stick it to the board. You may first need once again to cut out a strip of the laminate surface so you can recess the tape flush. I didn't bother with that step. since my shelf was just a hair thinner than the Logan 450's board, it still ended up flush with the Logan (just not flush on the extension board)

Piece 3: runs from about 18+3/8" to about 42+3/8". Just peel off the back and stick this to the aluminum stock.

Step 14)The final piece of the puzzle is to create some type of device that can be clamped onto the squaring bar to act as a production stop. I found a little aluminum U bracket that was used as a security stop for home windows (to keep a burglar from opening an unlocked window far enough to get in). I needed to saw off a piece of this bracket, then replace its clamping mechanism with a thumb screw. Here is the stop device.



And here it is clamped onto the bar to act as a production stop at the 14" mark



Finally, with everything put together at last, here is a photo of the 2 layered collage mat I was able to make.



So there it is... my complete extension board for the Logan 450. Final cost (not counting the extra $3 piece of aluminum stock I unnecessarily bought and wasted):

$ 6.50 : Base board
$ 2.00 : 3/16 steel rod
$ 3.00 : 3 foot aluminum angle offset stock
$ 1.50 : sliding window lock
$ 6.00 : 3 foot 1.5" x 1/8" aluminum stock
$10.00 : adhesive backed right to left measuring tape
$ 2.00 : misc screw/nuts/bolts (if you don't already have them on hand)
------
$31.00 : Total for all materials.
...click here to read more!

Saturday at Sunrise

It's been a while since I just went out shooting pictures of random subjects, so I figured I was long overdue. I thought I'd head out around 11AM or so and search for some shots. However, my wife ended up having to work on Saturday, so it turns out I was up quite early. I peaked out the window about 30 minutes before sunrise and was pleased to see a nice, clear sky just waiting for the sun. I took that as my cue, hurried up and got dressed, swiped my bag, and ran out the door. I headed down to Hines Drive...the local county park which follows the river for about 15-20 miles. I started looking for a place to view sunrise. About a 1/2 mile in, I hit the big sledding hill. Its got a nice view...just about tall enough to see the horizon over the trees. My first instinct was to head up there, but then I thought "no...there's nothing much up there to make for an interesting subject against the sunrise", so I kept driving. Looking at several tempting spots along the way, I eventually hit Newburg Lake about 7 miles from home. It was frozen over, covered with a layer of fog, and had a couple of nice potential viewpoints to shoot from. I figured this was it.

Walking down toward the lake, I caught an interesting angle of a lamppost framing the crescent moon, so I took a shot (or three):



I then headed for one of my favorite little shooting hideouts on this lake...a little cement block thats hidden down a hill through some trees, but lets you get out a couple yards into the lake). On my way there, I threw on my P197 filter and captured the pine tree shot I posted yesterday. I then got to my spot and captured a few shots of the sun just starting to come over the horizon. I looked at one of the nearby trees/bushes and realized it's branches were covered by frost, so I fired off a couple of different shots against the sunrise







Next I went looking for some other subject but ran across another branch that I though looked pretty with the sun back lighting it, giving it that glowing frost look:



Going a bit further, I thought I'd take a few shots looking up the road towards the sun. It ended up being a bit difficult, as I was getting some nasty glare. I couldn't compose the scene exactly how I wanted, but I saw a jogger coming along and captured this one:



Next I jumped back in the car and started heading back towards home, hitting a few of the other locations I had scouted out. I liked the look of this little frozen over drainage ditch as it reflected the sun.



Lastly, I hit the sledding hill that I originally rejected. With the sun now up, but a few clouds rolling in, I looked around and captured this shot looking up the walkway.



At this point, I got a little brave. I had an idea in my mind...a time lapsed exposure sledding down the hill. I knew there was a small risk I could wipe out and cause some serious damage, so I put everything in the car except for my camera with the cheap kit lens and my 3 stop ND filter. I found a half broken sled which some kid had abandoned. I dragged it to the top of the hill. Now, I was planning on going down the gentle side of the hill...the one all of the littlest kids use. I figured I wouldn't quite get going that fast, so I thought an exposure of about 4 seconds should do it. So I set up the proper exposure (and ran a test shot to verify). I then kicked off down the hill. Before I knew it, I was really picking up speed. I fired off 3 shots, but unfortunately I was going so fast and it was getting quite bumpy, and the shots came out as complete blurs. Not the effect I was looking for. I was now picking up even more speed and becoming really worried about rolling the sled and breaking the camera, so I did my best to gently extend my boots and slow the sled just a bit. I made it to the bottom safe and sound, camera fully intact (though covered with a dusting of snow), but the pictures weren't quite what I wanted. However, I wasn't about to press my luck, so I headed home.

After downloading my shots, a few hours later it was looking really nice again. The clouds were gone, and the sun was shining brightly, so I headed back out again. This time I headed the opposite direction. Found a spot, parked, walked around for about an hour, and captured the following 3 shots in the process:





I then headed home...this time for good. It felt great to just get out there for some pure fun once again.
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Are Colored Filters Necessary with Digital?

I've accomplished a couple of things in the last week. I finished up reading my copy of "Learning to See Creatively" by Bryan Peterson. I'll be posting my thoughts on the book here in a couple of days, but I just wanted to say now that I thought it was an incredible book. I can't decide which one I liked better: this one or "Understanding Exposure".

And speaking of Understanding Exposure, I posted about a month ago that I was really taken with the idea of shooting in manual rather than Av/Tv modes. Well, I had another opportunity to try it out this weekend. The weather was beautiful, and I got in a total of 3-4 hours of shooting on Saturday. I shot just about the entire time in manual mode, and it once again worked very well. In similar situations before while using Av mode, I would alway be fussing continuously with the exposure compensation, taking multiple shots until the exposure was just right. With manual this wasn't the case. Just pick the settings once for the general scene and then shoot away with confidence that the exposure was correct. At this point, I think it's safe to say I'll be shooting mostly in M mode from now on. Without all of the tedious adjustments, it has just made photography all that much more enjoyable.

I also got a few gifts for my 4th anniversary last week. I wanted to start building up my collection of Cokin filters so I put about 6 or 7 on the list. I ended up with a P164 circular polarizer, a P197 Sunset 1 filter, and a P series Adorama brand filter case. The circular polarizer seems to work well. I have a nice Hoya brand circ-pol that I like, but it's a pain to use when the Cokin filter holder is on the lens, so I thought I'd try the one designed to fit in the Cokin holder. In my initial tests, it seems to produce results almost identical to my Hoya. We'll have to see how well it fares in actual use. The filter holder is really nice one. I has velcro straps so it can secure to a belt or belt loop, and it holds 5 Cokin P-series filters.

Finally, that brings me to the P197 Sunset 1 filter, and the topic of this post. With the advent of digital photography and photoshop, it is now possible to do many effects on the computer rather than with lenses. While some people will be quick to say that you no longer need a single filter for you camera, others (more realistic) will say that there are at lease a couple that are still useful. The polarizer (for removing glare/saturating skies) ND (for using long shutter speeds) and grad ND (for shooting bright skies with darker landscapes) are the 3 filters that most people will agree still serve a purpose when shooting digital. However, anything with color can be just as well done with photoshop, so that's what most people now do.

I admit, there is merit to saving your color filter effects for photoshop. First of all, you save money on filters. Second, you have more possibilities and creative control on a computer. Finally, real filters destructively adjust the exposure...if you use a red filter and later decide you want to see the scene in it's natural appearance, too bad.

However, there are also 2 points that give merit to the idea of using real filters. The first is the idea of getting it right in camera. This is an idea which was mentioned a number of times in Bryan Peterson's books. Do the work now so you don't have to do it later. It's hard to argue with that. For me, however, the even bigger advantage to using real (rather than digital) filters is that you can see in real time how things will look. I've always had a difficult time going through my photos on the computer and trying to figure out what would look good with some color added to the sky. Perhaps its because I haven't yet built up my artistic skill in the area of colorizing scenes. I find it difficult to image what a picture might look like if it were color cast with a grad filter in photoshop. Sure I could go ahead and just try it to see if I like it, but repeating that process with a bunch of images is extremely time consuming and tedious. On the other hand, when I tried out my P197 this weekend, I found it much easier to pop in the filter, compose the scene with the color in mind, and take the shot. It just helps me to better visualize the scene. At one point, there were a couple of pine trees that didn't really look interesting when I framed them through the viewfinder. However, when I popped in the sunset filter and tried again, suddenly I could see that it create a mood worth taking a shot of.

I'll post more about my Saturday photo shoot (including pics) tomorrow. But for now, I'll giv you this little shot with the P197 filter to hold you over:



So it would seem I've been in a rebellious mood lately. First I abandoned Tv/Av modes for M mode, and now I'm going back to hardware filters. Well don't worry. I doubt I'll be trading in my DSLR for film or a point-n-shoot anytime soon.
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