Daily Image - Sep 2012 Archive

All the Daily Image mailings for the Month of September 2012.

03 Sep 12. A happy Labor Day to you all. We elected to spend the first of the three day weekend by taking in the first (annual?) Sequim Balloon Festival. It professed to be a really big show but lived up to none of its hype. We went in the afternoon on Saturday choosing to forgo the early morning launch (0600) of the 10 or so balloons in lieu of the night show called Twilight in the Olympics. According to the promotion there was to be lots of activities and crafts, a food court, non-stop music, and much more. All for the meager price of $19 a day or three days for $29. Non stop music there was, and of good quality and quite varied including one of our favorite artists, Jeffery Castle, but it was far more hype than anything else from my perspective and way over priced! But it was the first time out of the gate for this activity, so I guess we have to give it some time to mature. Of the crafts there were perhaps 20 individuals at most showing their wares, but one of them was, in our opinion, simply outstanding! Martha Collins is a local worker in wood, and her woodwork is best described as exquisite. She laminates hundreds of tiny pieces of different woods into a block and then turns that block on a lathe to create her product. We spent a considerable amount of time talking with her and she was kind enough to let me photograph her work. I thought about sharing with you some of what she has done, but then decided against that as it would not be my work I'm sharing but that of another. So I took an image that I shot of a set of bottle stoppers, and highly manipulated it for today's submission. I would highly encourage you to jump out to her web page, the blue link above, and look at her work. You will be impressed I assure you. Jan purchased a beautiful serving tray from her and a picture of it is on the web page. All of the bottle stoppers that are present in the image you are seeing today are shown individually here. So while we weren't all that impressed with the overall program, we certainly were with the artistry of Martha. Twilight in the Olympics, the finale of the day's program, was to be all the balloons arranged around a reflecting pond lighting off their engines such that they would reflect in the pond and illuminate the balloons in the dark of the night while live music played in the background. Unfortunately, wind came up that was too strong for that to happen and all that was done was for the balloon owners to position the engines around the pond and light them off. Having been invited to view it all from the privacy of one of the lavender farms owner's establishment, we found ourselves to be positioned such that we could not see the reflections at all. So the trip to see the balloon festival concluded with us seeing not a single balloon. As they say in some of the fairy tales, sometime the dragon wins. Nikon D300s; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f /14.
04 Sep 12. Abutting the fairgrounds where we spent Saturday at the Sequim Balloon(less) Festival sits the Purple Haze Lavender Farm, our favorite of all the Lavender farms, although to be fair, there are several we like almost as much. Since we didn't get an opportunity to visit the Lavender Festival this year, we took the opportunity to take in one farm while we were at the Balloon Festival which just happened to conveniently be Purple Haze. It is a beautiful farm with more than lavender to offer, especially poppies during the festival time and Black Eyed Susans and Sunflowers this past weekend. I spent a good 45 minutes working the flowers and especially enjoyed the sunflowers. It was with the Black Eyes Susans however where I spent the most time. As the afternoon breeze was beginning to develop, the one that eventually kept the balloons from the planned evening activity, the flowers were busy swaying back and forth giving the pollinating insects a bit of a ride and they performed their dictated chore. It was also an opportunity to practice working with moving subjects, in this case not only on their own, but in consort with the flowers. It was sorta fun, and I think I got quite a few usable images. Now back in my youth it was a common practice to place cut flowers in food coloring colored water to change the color of the petals. If memory isn't failing me, I do believe our favorite choice of flower was the daffodil. But changing the color of a flower shouldn't have to be something relegated to both food coloring and youth; today we can do it without even cutting the flower. Take for instance something like a Black Eyed Susan; say perhaps you would prefer your "Susans" to be something other than yellow, well, with a bit of trial and error, - practice perhaps - you can elect to have your "Susan" any color you want without the mess or loss of the flower. And the best part is that you are not stuck with just changing it to one color and only once, now you can try something different day after day after day. Any flower, any color, any time. Pretty neat. Nikon D300s; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/800 sec @ f / 6.3.
05 Sep 12. Part of the activities for the balloon fest included a car show, appropriately labelled Hot Gas and Gears, as it focused on a combination of classic and muscle cars. From my perspective that was probably the best of what they offered during the time we spent there. There were a few real vintage cars including one beautifully restored Stutz and I'll share a shot or two of it once I get them ready. There were also a couple of 50s era vehicles that had adornments to remind one of the "good ol days" of drive-in restaurants and all the entertainment that went with them. One truck had a very cute window display that caught my eye, so I elected to render it as an HDR image. For those of you not holding the HDR approach in high esteem, I'm betting that you would not think of this image as being such. It is however, and I put it together as follows: first I created the base HDR from a series of five shots, then did a bit of cleanup on the resultant composite, added a masking layer to do some simple dodging, then another masking layer to allow for some isolated adjustment to the window display, then brought back one of the original shots used to create the HDR image and masked it to allow for specific areas to override the composite HDR. The result is the image for today. If it doesn't remind some of you when you could fill up the tank for $5 or less, I'll be both surprised and disappointed. Nikon D300s; aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/800 sec (middle of 5 exposures) @ f /11.