Daily Image - Mar 2012 Archive

01 Mar 12. Our second tour in the Navy found us living in Grand Terrace, CA, a small community located between Riverside and San Bernardino, CA. I was stationed at El Toro, CA, a 52 mile drive one way from where we lived. Having just come from our tour in Warminister, PA where my commute was 6 blocks, I thought that 52 miles was an outrageous distance to travel and that the hour minimum was a ridiculous amount of time to be on the road. My neighbors couldn't understand my position as they generally traveled much greater distances than that daily and thought nothing of it. We picked the location we did because of housing costs, and that 52 mile commute got us a house for only about 50% more than we could afford. So I wound up staying at the base all week in the barracks, which the base let me do for free, communicating back and forth only on the weekends to save the commute costs. That helped some, but the loss of our paying renters, whom we carried for two years without a rental payment, made a difficult time even more so. But I did get some helpful opportunities by doing what I did and among them was the befriending of my boss and his family who basically adopted me and shared their home with me on many an occasion. One evening the boss's wife decided to hold a Tupperware party in the house and told hubby to take the kids out for the entire evening which was to include dinner. Now being a west coast Marine, and spending a goodly part of his career across the pond, he figured he would take the 4 kids out to dinner at a sushi restaurant whereby he would get off cheap since they wouldn't like it. Unfortunately, much to his chagrin, they all loved it, and the evening cost him almost $100. He wasn't very happy about the outcome but his wife thought it was hilarious as you might appreciate from a woman who had a poster over her kitchen table that read "When you have them by the balls, their heart's and minds will follow." She was the daughter of a Marine Colonel and a former Pan Am stewardess and one of the funniest and nicest individuals I have ever met. I haven't come across them since leaving El Toro in '85, but I will always remember them and the sushi dinner episode. ISO 250; 1/320 sec @ f /13.

02 Feb 12. Traveling across the pond this a.m. to work on the house, I left in rain, drove through a rather nice snow fall, and then arrived at the ferry terminal to be greeted by a most spectacular storm crossing in front of the Olympic mountains. As I watched it break apart it partially obstructed the mountains providing for a very dramatic view. I figured since the rock theme was going well I'd just continue it but with some local rock this time. From the perspective of rock, many folks out our way consider the two mountain ranges, the Olympics on the west and the Cascades on the east to be the real rock stars of the Pacific Northwest. I played with this in color as shot be decided that it lent itself well to a B&W image, reminiscent of one of the greatest Seattle photographers of all time, Joesph Scaylea, so I changed it to that format. I removed what was likely a Bald Eagle from the clouds in the upper mid right because it was more a blur than a silhouette but left in the Seagull in the lower left corner. Other than a small bit of noise abatement, the image is right out of the camera, minus the color of course. ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 9.

05 Mar 12. Always looking for suitable background material for swapping out our local ugly skies, cloudy skies are among my favorite choices. Coming across Puget Sound Saturday late afternoon we were treated to a most unusual display of clouds and I took the opportunity to record it. As I was looking through the assignment lists today for the several camera clubs in which I enjoy participating I noticed that the subject for March for one of them was clouds. So I thought I'd get a jump on the assignment and play with a shot or two from Saturday's passage. I liked this one a lot in its basic form, but decided that if I enhanced it a little that the characteristics of the clouds would be more readily apparent. So what you have is the basic shot with a bit of noise abatement, a curves adjustment for contrast, and a small bit of creative filtering courtesy of another plug-in. All of which manipulation was employed to provide what I "saw" and the camera, smart as it is, did not. ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f /10.

06 Mar 12. For those of you familiar with the area the image for today will be readily recognized as the Seattle waterfront; for those of you not familiar with the area it is a photo of the Seattle waterfront. Now, familiar or not, what is likely for the majority is an unfamiliarity with the history of said waterfront as well as the city itself. There are at least three, if not more, versions of its history depending upon who and what you read or have watched on the tube. Probably the most familiar story that many my age grew up with was called "Here Come the Brides" and the most likely stories about the city either come from a book called "Sons of the Profits" or several of many heavily biased history books on WA State. Of all these Bill Spiedel's book is probably without a doubt the best read as he combines a great deal of humor in his relating the story of the city. But it is in the reading of the book that brings to mind the generally less then desirable politics of the city that is now bringing us an underground thruway (tunnel to be more exact) in an area that is, at best, tideland fill, and not so stable at that. We have however come about our political conditions based on years of practice as is well documented in the best selling book. Today's depiction of the future thoroughfare was captured from the deck of another WA icon, a WA State ferry, this one transiting Puget Sound from the waterfront and sailing to Bainbridge Island, about 30 minutes west. The photo is a panorama consisting of 15 shots; the stitching of the individual frames left the corners a bit warped and straightened what is not a parallel shoreline providing for a bit of a false perspective. In attempting to completely straighten the edges I messed up the Smith tower a wee bit; it isn't tipping over. The original image is approximately 72 inches in width. ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f /10.

07 Mar 12. Returning from our "cruise" on the Yellow Submarine that took us around and under the harbor at Cabo San Lucas, we were enjoying a close up look at how the other "half" of the folks lived, i.e., ogling the luxurious yachts and sailboats, when we noticed a fishing boat returning to harbor with a most interesting passenger. At first we couldn't believe our eyes, but after a few moments in disbelief, we had a good laugh, and I took a couple of images. While this isn't something that I would readily recommend doing, and for certain it isn't something that I'd even consider, such behavior is apparently common in Cabo. One can only wonder if it is a reflection on society as a whole. ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f /13.

08 Mar 12. One of the most recognizable icons in CA is located along 17 mile drive about which I wrote earlier in the year. Known as the Lone Cyprus, it is a single tree that juts out over looking the Pacific Ocean. While stationed in Monterey attending Safety Officer School in the very early 80s I made my first of several trips out to see and photograph it. It was always accessible and there were never fewer that a dozen or so photographers there looking to capture their version of the old tree. I was no different. At that time there were no printed brochures provided for the entry fee discussing the tree and a couple dozen other sights, and access to the tree was very easy. Not so any more. Now, not only do you get the printed brochure with numbered pictures and short discussions about each stop along the drive, but you are now treated to a sign as you approach the tree informing you that the tree is now copyrighted and that should you dare to take a photo of it for anything other than your personal use that you will be sued! Here is my response to that!!!At the time of our visit the lighting was worse than terrible, so I elected to make that awful condition work for me and shot the tree as a silhouette as I really didn't have any other viable option. I've lightened the black just enough to let you see - barely - that it is now surrounded by a stone enclosure but removed the guy wires that are now securely? holding it upright, I guess. If you get to Monterey it is one of the sights you would likely enjoy seeing, and the 17 miles of ocean side and mansions are kinda fun to see, so do go visit while there. Just be careful what you shoot. ISO 200; 1/800 sec @ f /14.

09 Mar 12. While stationed at the Naval Air Development Center in Warminster, PA during our first tour of duty in the military, we attended many social events sponsored initially by the Wives Club and then later on by both the Wives Club and the Officer's Association, an entity that was formed for the first time, at that base, during that tour. There were many memorable events, some far more so than others, some of which I won't write about, and some that were very entertaining centering around artistic endeavors. Of these the most memorable were the annual art auctions, and a time in our lives during which we acquired a number of very nice pieces of art, mostly oil paintings, but some water color, and one acrylic. The acrylic was perhaps the most interesting of all the pieces we acquired, and was of a scene in Old Williamsburg depicting a rural street with several period homes, an area we have visited many times! Now what made the acrylic so interesting was the application of color and how it displayed on that particular medium. It so significantly differed from any other combination of pigment and substrate that I have often found myself looking at it and wondering how I might employ something equally unique in my photography, but not in a form that would be considered emulation. The result of such contemplation has been the employment of a technique that some might term solarization, although it is not of that style, even though the means of achieving the result are similar. In the process of playing around with the application of various contrast levels, I decide to try working in the extreme and concluded that by totally inverting the curve that one is presented with initially when working with a curves layer, that I could achieve a look very close to that of using acrylic as the base for the application of pigment, but a look that is, at the same time, very different. This is how the end result looks. ISO 320; 1/80 sec @ f / 9.

12 Mar 12. There is a 1963 movie titled "A Gathering of Eagles." A cold war story about a group of Air Force Colonels I've never seen because I always think of Eagles as being senior Naval Officers, and thus the movie must have been mis-titled and therefore suspect. Or perhaps it is because I don't go to the movies. Regardless, the real eagles are something I never tire of seeing, especially in the wild. During our trip to the Boundary Bay region of British Columbia, Canada on the 3rd of February, to shoot Snowy Owls, we sighted no less than 50 of them and that was without any effort. They are becoming as abundant as crows and just about as much of a nuisance. The Snowy Owls were very present along a dike that faces the bay, but for the most part they were not in a good shooting position - light wise - from where we were supposed to remain to keep the tree huggers from going into a panic and having a heart attack. I almost gave one just that when I suggested that they were sufficiently large and aggressive enough to take care of themselves and that getting within a hundred feet of them wasn't going to give them nightmares! It was most entertaining! She threatened to call the authorities and I suggested she do just that, the Ugly American that I am. So my success rate with the owls, other than actually getting to watch them for several hours just sitting on logs, rotating their heads 300 degrees, was not very good, but the Bald Eagle opportunities certainly were. This roadside gathering of eagles was quite animated, as was perhaps the movie, with the adult at 6 o'clock having just landed while the juvenile at 12 o'clock was seriously considering another location. ISO 500; 1/640 sec @ f /13.

13 Mar 12. During the one year stay that the family had with me in China Lake on my third tour of duty, we lived in a housing area that bordered on 160,000,000 fenced A of desert. There were animals of all kinds to enjoy, including many kinds of reptiles and birds, one of which was a local Roadrunner that would run along the top of our fence. One morning Jan noticed a small baby bird in our yard that she assumed had fallen out of the nest do to pruning work being done on the neighborhood trees. She watched it all day waiting for mom to come and fetch it but mom never arrived. As one of our local wildlife visitors was a coyote, she decided to bring it in and see if we could raise it to a point where we could let it go. About the time that the bird, a Mourning Dove as it turned out, was ready to fledged from us, the neighbor's dog got a hold of him and broke his left leg. Jan took it to the local vet who spliced the leg with a Popsicle stick and some tape and told us to keep him calm for three days and return to see if it had healed. It had, albeit a bit crooked, but more importantly, he had by that time patterned on me and we could not let him go even though it was, and stupidly is, illegal to keep indigenous birds. We named him Tony, and he lived with us for the next 17 years even though the in-wild life expectancy of a Mourning Dove is 3 years! He finally passed on one day while we were both at work, although his passing was not unexpected as he had been failing very rapidly that week. Since we were not there for the last goodbyes, I've always thought of him just flying off to the beyond to begin a new life. While attempting to take some images of flying doves while up at Boundary Bay, I got a few that I really liked, and this one in particular reminded me of how we felt about his passing. ISO 160; 1/6 sec @ f / 32 on a tripos using the 80 - 400 lens set to a 340 mm focal length.

14 Mar 12. Our last tour in the Navy was spent in MD and we lived in a community known as Montgomery Village, about which I could write much. For today I will discuss a bit of the wildlife that was there on a daily basis, year round. We basically lived across the street from a lovely little lake (Whetstone) that the County was trying to usurp as a catch basin for multiple family developments upstream of us. That is a story all unto itself, but in spite of the County, the lake was home to many animals including a huge number of carp, lots of turtles including two gigantic Snapping Turtles, LOTS of miscellaneous birds, aquatic and song, about 400 Canada Geese and a heronery that was home to roughly 20 nesting pairs each Spring/Summer and about 3 pair that remained all year. Most everything about the lake based wildlife was enjoyable, save for some aspects of the flock of Canada Geese. We lived directly under the final leg of the flight path to the lake, and every night we would have them flying directly over our house and low enough that you could hit them with a rock should you so desire. The also liked to inhabit a small green space between us and the lake, often times forgetting that there was a difference between the grass covering the green space and that comprising our front lawn. If you've never experienced a thorough fertilizing of your lawn, that is, what's left of it, by a group of adult Canada Geese, you are in for a "memorable" experience, and that memory being one you won't forget no matter how hard you try. Running them off can be a bit of a crap shoot as generally they grudgingly move on, except for those times when they decide to stay put and defend "their" territory. They are bigger than you think, and they are much stronger than you might imagine a bird would be. While working on edging the side of the yard one afternoon I actually had one misjudge the required space for a successful launch and it flew into me knocking me over with it flapping wing! I have a lot of respect for the power of these animals. But not much, if any, respect for how they "co-existed" with us and our property. We had to deal with perhaps 10 birds max at a time; imagine how the folks up in Fir Island, where I get all the geese images, must feel about having a flock of Snow Geese approaching 10,000 in number hang out in their "front" yards. ISO 400; 1/1000 sec @ f / 8.

15 Mar 12. Back in the days of film it was generally concluded that if one got a single good shot out of a roll of film, the exercise had been fruitful. Assuming the statement referred to a 36 exposure roll of film, 1 good shot out of 36 equates to roughly a 3% success rate. I can think of no other endeavor that would equate a score of 3% to success, but yet, it has been so in photography for as long as I can remember. Our trip up north to Boundary Bay , B.C., to shoot owls produced perhaps a dozen useable shots out of the mere 1000 I took, so my success rate for that shoot was even worse, barely over 1%; impressive! In my defense was the weather, time of day, equipment available, and requested observance of some rather ridiculous game encroachment rules. Still, a good photographer should be able to get the material regardless of the conditions. And so I did, but not to the degree I would have liked, and not in the quantity that would have made for better selection. What I did get were a few shots of the birds looking in my direction, and one series with a bird opening its mouth and displaying its pink tongue. Very harsh lighting in the direction of the mouth made even those shots less than desired, but I think you will get a little feel for what it looked like on the shore of Boundary Bay. Had I been willing to spend more than just an afternoon there I could have gotten some really good material, but time constraints prevented that from happening this year. They will return in another 5 - 6 years at which time I plan on spending several days working with them from dawn to dusk. So stay tuned for another half decade at which time we will return to the world of the Snowy Owl. ISO 500; 1/500 sec @ f / 9.

16 Mar 12. It's March, and thusly the annual installment of the Basic Course, an intro to photography, put on by the Mountaineers. In the past several years I have been very active in the program but have elected to sit out this year. It would have been my last year due to the distance involved because of the move across the Sound, but situations dictated my departure. I had however planned on leading one of the workshops, the one to Fisherman's Terminal, but that will be taking place on the first of my two weekends in MD. That is a big disappointment as I've rather enjoyed getting there VERY early (0500ish) to work the subject for my own use as well as help some of the students who desired to do a "bit" more than that provided in the workshop. That tended to ruffle certain feathers, but, too bad! Missing this opportunity of teaching also means that easy opportunities for me will suddenly be all but gone, as we will no longer live walking distance from the site. So I need to get my body down there rather soon to do one last series of shoots before we depart for the new abode. Today's shot was part of the class session from last year and was originally in full color, actually 1 of 5 combined to an HDR format, and then rendered in B&W as I thought it made for a more dramatic image.As I was preparing this to send I noticed a few interesting artifacts that for whatever reason I hadn't observed when I made it. I've removed a couple, and left in the remaining ones. If you view the image at a "normal" size they will not be apparent, but if you enlarge it to 100% you may find them. Might be fun to try; I left them in because I felt they added to the final feeling. ISO 200; 1/4 sec @ f / 9 on a tripod.

19 Mar 12. Having departed the cruise ship and walking around Balboa Park after deciding that $40+ each for a couple hours in the zoo was a bit on the pricey side, we wandered into a building that was having a cactus sale. As I walked from table to table I found several specimens that I thought would make good candidates for the Daily Image. This is one of them. I don't know its real name, nor anything about it, but I thought it to be rather attractive. Perhaps one of you more versed in succulents will recognize it and be able to share some info about it. I do know it was round, a bit like a barrel cactus, and not all that large, say perhaps eight inches in total height and six inches in diameter. The room light was dim so I used fill flash to supplement what was there. The fill helped in showing off the delicate pink blossoms, especially so with the partially open one on the left. Never was able to determine what constituted the white material surrounding the flowers, but it added to the overall beauty of the plant. ISO 320; 1/60 sec @ f /11 hand held with fill flash.

20 Mar 12. Those of you who keep track of this daily gibberish may recall that I sent an image of the Athabaska Glacier back on the 30th of January. Our visit to see it was in 1973, and it was most impressive. Like most of the glaciers in N. America, it is currently in a retreating phase, but as anyone who studies glaciers learns they advance and retreat and some do it with some apparent regularity. The link above has pictures from various times, and I thought the one from 2005 (sign says 1995) an interesting contrast to the image to its right as well as for what I'm sharing today. To say that the glacier we saw was a bit of an overwhelming experience would be a vast understatement, and perhaps I can put some perspective to that statement by explaining that the small dark blobs you see in the diagonal ice roadway in the lower right hand section of the photo are 22 passenger buses! The dark area in the lower left hand side of the image is also part of the glacier, being a portion of the glacier that has pushed rock up on top of itself as it moves forward. If you still have that image from the 30th (there is a copy of it on the blog) compare it with what I have included here. The 30th image is basically a magnified section of this image, encompassing a section from the middle and moving left. They are individual exposures, one taken to show the enormity of the glacier and another to give a more dramatic presentation. If you were to visit it today I'm rather certain that from this vantage point it wouldn't look much different , but if one were to stand at the toe I think it would drastically different. ISO would have been 100 as it was shot if Fujichrome but I have no exposure data available (memory just not all that good).

21 Mar 12. Having weighed anchor in the Cabo San Lucas harbor, we departed for our return to the home port of San Diego. Dinner that Thursday evening was notably lacking in the dessert department, and it wasn't until later that evening that we remembered that Thursday night was the routine of Dessert Extravaganza. And what an extravaganza it was. Starting at 2100, it went to roughly 2400 with dessert distributed around the central area of Deck 3. Below on Deck 2 was a string quartet playing classical music, three stations of flowing chocolate for dipping fresh fruit, and several short speeches from the crew. You name an extremely high calorie dessert and it was present. Mostly in some form of chocolate, sugar and sugar free, but eclairs, cheesecake, pastries, tarts, you name it. All you could eat and much more. Of course, to set all this off, there were specialty alcoholic drinks of special designs and colors, enough to make any party spectacular. And you needn't move more than a couple of feet before being asked by one of the crew member if they could get you anything. Decadence refined to perfection. Anyone who didn't go to bed that night with some form of a sugar high, solid or liquid, clearly didn't understand the protocol! Surrounding all the sugary products were to be found floral displays made from fruits and vegetables, each individual flower having been carved from a single item. Most spectacular of all were roses with multiple layers of petals all carved from a single water melon with the petals still attached to the center of the melon, i.e., not individually carved from another and put in place. And on one table was an assortment for those who might consider themselves to be sugar conscious. ISO 200; 1/60 sec @ f /11 with fill flash.

22 Mar 12. On the last trip two of us took up to Fir Island this year we had nothing but great luck and the Snow Geese really put on a show! The image for today is from that trip and shows the birds making a 180 degree reversal of their flight direction which they did several times before returning to graze. I took my first videos of them so doing on that trip and I will be posting one of them on the blog as it is too large to show via this mailing. It is something you really have to see in person to truly appreciate, but the video, poor as it is, will at least give you a better idea than this still image could ever hope to do. Nevertheless, the still will give you a bit of an idea as to how it looks as they reverse direction and the resulting flashing of black and white like two transparent checker boards being waved across each other. The resultant flashing of light would be enough to confuse most anything trying to single out an individual bird. On this particular flight the birds formed up much like a swarm of bees with the flight having a very pointy front and broad back with the front, as it reversed direction, threading its way through the vast assembly of following birds, with none of them apparently hitting one another, something that simply amazes me each and every time I observe it! A great show just as long as you are not directly beneath it. When that's the case, hope for an umbrella or something similar, to shield you from the droppings. We were close enough to the flock of approximately 10,000 birds on one occasion, about 3 feet away actually, when the incessant loud squawking suddenly stopped. ALL the birds at once, in less than a half second, went totally silent, remained that way for perhaps 2 seconds, then they all launched as a group. The noise of the launch was almost deafening and one of the most spectacular things I've ever been privileged to experience. ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 9.

23 Mar 12 . Returning home from working on the house a couple weeks ago I noticed a couple with their dog standing as close to the stern as allowed looking back at the Olympic Mountains and in the general direction of the Kitsap Peninsula as if trying to hold on to a particular experience or memory. That offered an opportunity for several different approaches in creating the image, and I elected to go with an almost total silhouette, but not totally black. IF you concentrate hard enough you can see the faces of all three, but I had to manipulate the original RAW image somewhat to make that happen. At first glance you won't see their faces, which is exactly what I wanted, but they are there. In retrospect I probably should have gotten a model release, but at the time of the shoot I didn't realize I had as much detail available as I did. That said, I find it highly unlikely that anyone of this mailing list would recognize the couple and/or their dog. Even exposing the couple to the degree that they went almost solid black, I still had too much light falling on the water which had to be handled carefully as a layer in Photoshop and selectively darkened. As the area was quite blown out in the original, getting the water to blend in took a bit of effort, but eventually I got it sufficiently under control that I think it looks O.K. for sharing.with you. ISO 200; 1/2000 sec @ f /10.