Daily Image - Jul 2011 Archive

01 Jul 11. With the year now almost half over, the 4th being the start of the second half, I'm beginning to wonder if we will ever see the sun again. The rain over night on Wednesday thoroughly flattened most of the crops down to the point that outside looked as if a huge herd of large mammals had elected to bed down over night, not only in my yard, but throughout the entire community. Not exactly the kind of weather that those growing feed crops need to see at harvest time. Being across the Sound from Seattle, I'm wondering if the spillway at the Chittenden Locks is still flowing at the rate it was when I last visited and shared the HDR images of the spillway. I'll have to take a look over the weekend to see if there might be something there of further interest. All this water needs to be put to some good use, and I'm hoping that it will be available in a form usable by the salmon as they return from their salt water adventures having fully matured and ready to travel back up the rivers of their hatching to begin another generation. If that works as it is supposed too, then the fish ladders at the locks will be teeming with life and all of us in the local vicinity will have the opportunity to once again photograph that portion of the life cycle while those whose life long investments reside in Salmon Bay for the better part of the year will be preparing to return home for another season of maintenance and rest. This image is a B & W rendition of a full color HDR original. I'm finding the by creating a HDR image first, then converting it to B&W, that the range of tone is improved. I've left in the noise to give the vessels some character. ISO 200; 2 sec (middle exposure of 5) on a tripod @ f / 9.

04 Jul 11. A bit late for this 4th of July release, but I figured most all would not be at their computers anyway. And as I have nothing 4th of July special, I had to give the image selection some thought. Sunday afternoon we took a walk down to the local Ballard Farmers Market and for a lark, took both dogs, Maggie & Mini with us. Generally it takes us about 45 minutes to walk both ways and make our minimal purchases. Not so yesterday, about 50 folks stopped us to ask about Mini, wanting to pet her, take her photo, including one couple in a restaurant through the glass window, and generally inquire as to what she was and the like. Our normal quite round trip took almost 90minutes. Mini had a wonderful time sucking up all the attention she could muster, while Maggie felt a bit left out in the cold. Both dogs however apparently had a good time and were ready for a rest upon returning home. My prior image of Mini was one of the creative types, so here is one of her taken during a brief period of warm light taken a couple of weeks ago. I believe you will see why folks stop me and ask about her. The coloration of her coat is pretty accurate, even with the warm lighting, and it will have to suffice for my lack of anything fireworks-like. ISO 500; 1/125 sec @ f / 6.3

05 Jul 11. As I write this the fireworks shows are just beginning, and I have a couple of dogs with me who wish it were otherwise, one more so than the other, but both preferring that they not happen. But it is the 4th and were circumstances just a bit different, I would be photographing the displays of fireworks, something I haven't attempted since the early 90s. Next year my goal is to be moved in across the Sound and watching/shooting several simultaneous displays. Of course THIS year we had a beautiful sunny day, my first ever such 4th while living in Seattle, and likely next year won't be such a marvelous day, but one can hope. Lacking anything like a fireworks shot, as I mentioned earlier today, I'm going with something not as spectacular, but equally beautiful in my eye. Lupine is a very common flower in the alpine regions of our PNW, but as those places are still covered in several feet of snow - folks were snow skiing today in our mountains - shooting Lupine in the mountains is about a month or more away. So, as the saying, "If Mohamed can't go to the mountain, the mountain should go to Mohamed" goes, I'll go with second best and shoot the Lupine in my next door neighbor's yard. This is from a tight grouping of plants, and since I could only get one stalk sharp at a time, I've cropped it to a single stalk. The color you see is due to the time of day it was shot, and, if you were to see if later in the day, it would be slightly more intense. And it is pointing up towards the heavens as would be a shot of fireworks. ISO 200; 1/200 sec @ f / 8.

06 Jul 11. I believe I promised to share a couple more of the moon rise shots, so here is one of them from the first night's shoot. This shot was taken almost 8 minutes after the previous shot I shared a few days ago. In that length of time, the exposure had changed from 1/10th sec @ f /8 for both the city lights and the moon (i.e. a single exposure) to 1.3 sec @ f / 11 for the city lights and 1/30 sec @ f /11 for the moon, a difference between the two of more than 5 stops and obviously two different exposures. As the moon continued to climb higher in the sky the difference increased significantly to 9 stops by the time I quit shooting. The exposure range can be quite different from year to year with the greatest difference I've ever recorded being almost 11 stops! So while the image you are viewing is what we were seeing, the camera couldn't capture it all in a single shot, and I've taken the moon, cut out from the shot exposed just for it, and pasted it over the blown out spot in the city lights exposure. Until the new digital bodies capable of capturing 15 - 18 stops of light, currently going for roughly $50K, a bit more pocket change than I have available at the moment, drop in price some, I will have to resort to this effective double exposure method to capture such lovely events. ISO 200; 1.3 sec & 1/30 sec @ f /11.

07 Jul 11. Having lost all communication connection yesterday around 0800, and continuing until after I departed to help with haying which lasted until 2230, nothing was sent or received on Tuesday, hence the delay in getting this out. I'm work this morning with a badly uncalibrated monitor - that gets fixed today - so I've elected to go with a B&W image. Not knocking B&W in any way, just that it removes any color aberration. I departed around 1730 to help with the baling of a small field, one in which we were only able to bring in 280 bales before the sky ran out of light, well almost, the quarter moon was available, but it wasn't providing enough illumination for the job. Plus everyone was sufficiently tired by 2230. My work however wasn't quite finished at that point as Mini, who had decided to give up the city life to become a working farm girl, evidently decided she was going out on a date afterwords as she found a fresh pile of cow droppings and elected to add a bit of "fragrance" for the evening, rolling it nicely around her head and neck. Thus we had a bit of cleanup before departing and by that time I was just too tired to even check to see if communications had been restored. So here we have the field with a bit over 280 bales waiting to be picked up for stacking in the barn. What can be seen on the ground not yet baled will hopefully, weather permitting, get done this evening. ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f /8.

08 Jul 11. Three days of sunshine was just more than we could handle, so the rains returned this morning, lasting all day, to put us in our proper place. More is forecast for the next few days, so a break in the haying for sure. However, all was not lost today for the morning rain, at least, was a bit unusual, and provided for a few nice images. If you can imagine standing in a campground shower with the water at full flow and the shower head set to fine mist, and that the shower was very close to a noisy running river, you will have this morning's setting. Never before have I experienced a rain exactly like this one, so I took several shots in an effort to capture it to share. This shot does a reasonably good job of illustrating what I was watching; enlarge it to 100% and take a gander. Now try to imagine that river running nearby. ISO 200; 1/25 sec (hand held) @ f / 8.

11 Jul 11. About 1.3 miles from where we are building, on the south side of Eglon Road, sits a property that we gave some thought to purchasing before we started building. We never actually walked the property; in retrospect we should have given it a closer look. Its purchase price was less than the cost of our building project, we could have been living there now for almost 4 years, and in the long run we would have been many $$$$ ahead. Hindsight is of course always at least 20/10 or better, and now that I've had an opportunity to meet the current owners and have a thorough tour of the property, hindsight is better than 20/00. One of the best parts of this property is a beautiful fish pond, large enough to hold several hundred fish including trophy Small Mouth Bass, Rainbow and Cutthroat Trout, and a few Crappies. The trout average about 4 pounds, and I have no idea as to the size of the bass. I have been made the offer of stopping by any time to wet a line and have some fun at either catch & release, or catch and eat. The former sounds like more fun, but even more fun is attempting to photograph them eating as they surface to get the food or even jump out of the water while doing the same. I've tried my hand at photographing them once, had some limited luck, and plan on trying again this week, good weather allowing. ISO 200; 1.250 sec @ f / 6.3.

12 Jul 11. Having finished my half day's project on the house, and the sun beaming in the face of the weather guessers, Mini and I hopped into the SUV on Saturday afternoon and set out for a bit of photographic practice. First stop was my cousin's farm for a few attempts at corralling a few HDR sets of images (where we were about 3 hours late to photograph the birth of another calf), then down to Hansville beach. There we were introduced to our cousin's next door neighbors, who, as it turned out, shared some things in common with me. The husband had attended the same H.S. three years ahead of me, we knew many students and teachers in common, and they numbered, among their many friends, the couple that owned the Barber School I attended immediately after H.S. graduation. Even stranger, they live in Seattle during the week about 4 miles from our Ballard house. While we chatted about lots of memories, Mini decided to prove that she really is a water dog and went for 5 Swims in Puget Sound. It was very interesting to see how high she rides in the water. She had a ball, especially when a young Bernese Mountain Dog showed up (with her owner), spending a couple of hours romping on the beach. We then headed off to a local lake and park to do a bit more shooting, before returning home. While we were at the beach I took the opportunity to try my hand at some HDR still life's comprised of the break water between the beach and my cousin's home upon which his wife had placed some of her cobalt blue glass collection. A few pieces of sea grass along with Puget Sound and the Cascade Mountains made for an appropriate backdrop. As the wind was blowing a "bit" the grass was in motion, and I've elected to leave in the ghosting of the grass to suggest there was more grass than there really was, and additionally because I feel it makes for a more interesting image. ISO200; 1/402 sec (middle of 5 exposures) @ f /10.

13 Jul 11. Our final stop on last Saturday's shoot was at Buck Lake, a small lake and community resource located in Hansville, WA. At the entrance to the parking area there is a landscaped section with the name of the park that is nicely done, especially in that there is a very concentrated cluster of French Lavender which just happened to be hosting a number of very busy bees. One individual bee was totally intent in the circumnavigation of one particular blossom, and provided me with an opportunity to get up close and almost directly head on. The head on aspect is not one which I have been privileged to shoot before, so with the cooperation of this individual, I got a goodly number of images of her just going around and around and around. The result was that I was able to capture a different look from anything I've done preciously. I seriously cropped the original, added a bit of color to a few of the blossoms that were blown out from the bright back lighting, and removed some noise from the background to increase the contrast between it and the subject. With luck, there should be additional opportunity for some more of this kind of photography on Thursday when we attend the annual Sequim Lavender Festival, albeit a day before it officially starts, to avoid both the crowds and expense (no vendors to temp us). ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f / 6.3.

14 Jul 11. With the forecast slated for showers, we elected to go parts shopping rather than work on the house. By the time we finished shopping the weather had morphed from blue skies and white puffy clouds to ugly gray and rain showers. Then back to encouraging skies about an hour later; so we returned to working on the house. Mid way through our planned work for the afternoon the weather morphed once again to very ugly and for about two hours straight we experienced gully washer rains, at times with the sun shining brightly through the falling water. Kinda weird and very beautiful, if a bit tiring. As the storm finally passed on to other pastures, the sunlight was in full glory illuminating a lot of the local flora. Rather than rush out and capture something post storm, I elected to go with an image taken earlier in similar light. The actual flower is Morning Glory but I have severely clipped off the outer edges of the blossom in order to emphasize the base portion where the light is having the greatest effect. ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 13; 105mm macro.

15 Jul 11. Today's image is the third moon rise in as many weeks, and the last for this year. Next version will be in January from West Seattle. This shot was taken on the second of the two nights I was leading a Mountaineers group, and overall, provided for a very different experience from the previous night. The sky was much darker, the horizon far cloudier, the moon not nearly as orange, and the photographer presence almost double the previous evening. Plus it was warmer, later occurring in the evening, and not as vibrant. Nonetheless, it was, as is every full moon shoot, a fun experience trying to capture, on some form of recordable media, what the eye was seeing and the brain presenting. No two evenings of shooting the full moon have ever been even slightly similar, and I thoroughly enjoy them all, though to be honest, some have been better, far better, than others. Two shots comprise this image, both shot at the same aperture but 5 1/2 stops apart. As such, the separation of the two shots was close enough together that I could have forced it into a single image, but it would have resulted in the city portion being very dark and that wasn't what I desired. So the sensible approach was 2 shots, each maximally exposed for the desired look of each subject, city and moon. Had the separation been 7 or more stops apart I would have had no choice but to go with two. The "properly" exposed moon was cut out from its shot and pasted into the "properly" exposed cityscape with the final result being what you see, and what we saw in person back in June. ISO 200; 4 sec (cityscape) & 1/6 sec (moon) @ f / 9.

18 Jul 11. With my bride helping out for the past week, combined with a couple of trips to help my sister with assisting an elderly aunt (93 in Sept), I've fallen a bit behind with image work, but Sunday afforded some time to do a bit of catch up. Last Saturday I made a short visit to my cousin's farm to shoot a series of shots destined to be HDR images, and that was what I worked up Sunday. This will be the first from that series, and will be supplemented with several others. Some, like this one, will be very "HDR-like," while others will not be so recognizable. This image is of an old feed wagon, which is nothing more than a wagon sitting atop of an auto chassis. Such a device allowed for easy delivery of large amounts of food to a mobile herd. Long past its useful life, it now sits as a reminder of earlier, and busier, times. ISO 200; 1/250 sec (middle of 5) @ f 10.

19 Jul 11. Much as I did at my cousin's farm, I shot a lot of HDR sequences during our visit to the Lavender Festival in Sequim, WA on Friday. Our original plans to go on Thursday were altered due to both the weather and contractor availability, so we went Friday vice Thursday in hopes of avoiding the rain. All day long we worked under threatening skies but managed to avoid the water until we had finished our visit and were heading to our favorite local restaurant when the skies began to empty. One local commented that it rains just two days a year in Sequim and it was looking like they were going to get it all that evening! The image for today was taken at the Cedarbrook Lavender Farm which is up for sale should any of you be feeling like you'd like to get into the business. This is the first of two images I'll share back-to-back, both HDR, but the two quite different. This image is designed to look like a "normal" photograph, albeit with both full shadow and highlight detail, which a "normal" photograph can't do, at least not at the moment. Tomorrow I'll provide the identical image but processed differently, both with the same software. Keep today's to compare with tomorrow's, side by side, then decide which you prefer. Of course there is no limit to how 'HDR-like' I make them, but yesterday's hay wagon, and tomorrow's shed, are examples of about how far I will generally stray from the realistic, with an occasional exception. ISO 200; 1/321 sec (middle of 5) @ f / 9.

26 Jul 11. I started dating Jan in her 9th grade year, so we have been together for 48 years, celebrating our 44th anniversary this year. I met all her family obviously at that same time, 48 years ago. Jan is the oldest of 5, and her immediate junior by one year was Linda, who passed away last Tuesday after a valiant multi-year fight with cancer. All the family was able to be by her side at her passing, so everyone was able to say their goodbyes in their own way. It was a very difficult day, and as you can all appreciate there will be many more to come, but each day sees the healing process proceed. Linda was a very talented individual, who, in addition to be a loving and loved wife and mother, progressed in her professional life from dental hygienist, to registered nurse, to nurse practitioner. She excelled in each of these occupations, but her greatest talent was that of an artist. Her art was eclectic, and if you were to visit in her home it might strike you more as an art gallery than a family residence, although there would be no doubt as to the latter. Jan and I always greatly admired her artistic voice, and I would be less than honest if I didn't admit that I was frequently more than just a bit jealous of her talent. Her art has graced many places here on Earth and I can only imagine how it will now grace the heavens now that her walk here has completed and she walks with the Father. Located atop the fish ladder at the Hiram Chittenden Locks in Ballard is a sculpture of waves, placed as if to be sending a continuous rolling message to all who will listen, not unlike the constant undulation of the sea. That sculpture is the base for this image. Although nothing I can do will ever compare to her work, I would be remiss if I didn't try. This one is for you, Linda. ISO 200; 1/1250 sec @ f /5.

27 Jul 11. Picking up where we left off last Monday, here is the second of the two HDR images. Recall that you were to save that earlier image to compare with this one. This time I have intentionally manipulated the image to create the characteristic HDR look, but not the grunge HDR look that folks seem to either hate or love. This use of the same image for purposes of comparison may prove informational for those of you for whom the jury is still out. These last two make 27 such images shared so far this year, all of which have been differing applications of the technique, but this is the first time I've provided different approaches to the same base image. To make for a level playing field, the image was manipulated both times with the same piece of HDR software, no other enhancements were applied, and it was converted to an sRGB format for viewing on your screen. So go ahead, give'm a head to head comparison and see what you think about this new HDR process. ISO 200; 1/321 sec @ f / 9.

28 Jul 11. Those of you familiar with country music will no doubt recognize the name of Alan Jackson, a big name when I was younger and still a major player, but not to the extent he once was. Those of you not familiar with country music might just like his material and I can readily recommend much of his work to you. Perhaps my all time favorite piece of his music is a song called "Remember When." It has 6 very poignant verses, the 3rd of which begins as follows: Remember when, old ones died and new were born, life was changed, disassembled, rearranged; .....". Last week an "old" one died, this week a "new" one was born, and the words of the song couldn't be more meaningful. Please join with Jan and me in welcoming our newest Granddaughter, Svea Wren, who made her appearance Wednesday the 27th at 1254 weighing in at 5 pounds 8 ounces and 18.75 inches. Scott, Anne, and Svea doing fine. No image data available as it obviously isn't my photo.

29 Jul 11. My plan to send out Friday's image by Saturday night failed due to our taking Saturday to do a couple of art shows, the Kingston Art Show and Whaling Days in Silverdale. Both a waste of time which we won't do again, and which cut my weekend home time in half. So here is Friday's Image really late. Son Scott came home 2 weeks ago to be with family for a few days and the evening before we left, we did a bit of sight seeing culminating in a trip to Kerry Park for a view of the city as the evening was drawing to a close. As we arrived at the location Jan made a comment about the clouds that resulted in us staying a bit longer than originally planned and my playing with the birds, oops, clouds. Mt Rainier was making a grand appearance as were several of the newly designated Washington State birds (cranes) so overall we were being presented with a very nice display of the city and its surrounds. ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 11.