Daily Image - Apr 2013 Archive

01 Apr 13. As I write this Easter Sunday I'm hoping that you all had a wonderful Easter. The image for today is more of an Easter theme than that of an April's fool theme. I thought the yellow to be along the lines of the Son arising as opposed to anything having to do with egg hunts or April pranks. The original was just a bunch of daffodils resting in a vase which I shot close up, but not close enough to be a true macro shot. I then did a couple of manipulations which I blended together and adjusted the opacity to get the effect you are seeing. Pretty simple stuff, but just complicated enough to require a little thought before hand else you wind up doing far too much work. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/4 sec @ f /9 on a tripod with filtered sunlight slipping in through the skylights in my "study."

02 Apr 13 Just down the road a bit, quite literally, resides a beautiful nursery resplendent with a myriad of plants you likely won't find elsewhere, a very friendly group of 6 dogs, and a most interesting owner whom I hope will be assisting us in our long range plans for completing the exterior grounds over the next few years. The nursery is called Dragonfly Farms, and should you be in the area anytime between now and October on any Thursday through Sunday I would encourage you to drop in, that is, if you have a couple of hours to just wander around and lose yourself in some delightful scenery. I made a couple of trips there this past weekend, the first because we missed the date of a major plant sale at another location by exactly one week and wanted to look at plants anyway, and the second because I wanted to re-shoot some of the material I tried to capture on the first trip. Today's submission has had very little done to it to create the B&W as presented. The original color was perfectly exposed so all I did was crop for the composition I wanted, remove a couple of distracting elements, and convert. D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/100 sec @ f / 5.6.

03 Apr 13. Returning from our Vegas trip to pay a second visit to the Craters of the Moon National Monument we were met with snowfall that had preceded us by one day. The mountains in the area were all displaying a fresh coat of white, and as we got closer and closer the amount was increasing and the surrounding countryside ever more beautiful. We paralled, I believe, the Pioneer Mountains as we approached the park and every mile promised what we hoped would be a most spectacular park environment. By the time we reached the outskirts where we stayed, we found just two rooms available in the entire town. One was totally unacceptable and the other just barely but it was across the street from a nice cafe so it worked out O.K. Listening to our waitress you would have thought the 10 - 12 inches of snowfall the previous day to have been the Blizzard of '09 so we had a good laugh at her expense. The next morning we left early to get a good run on the park but found our access severely limited due to the inability of one park ranger to drive in the snow. I did get to do a nice walk in one small area, took a lot of images from the same spots I had 9 days earlier to illustrate the change in just that short of time, and spent a hour plus in the visitors center which was very worthwhile. The shot I'm sharing was taken on the prior day's approach and I think is of the Pioneers. D300; 18 - 200; Aperture priority; ISO 400; 1/500 sec @ f / 8.

04 Apr 13. This is another of the previously submitted images from '09 that I've reworked with the current softwares that allow for greater extraction of the underlying image. Although not a winner, this one, in the original form, was a finalist in a major national competition. Had the current technologies been available then, it might have fared better. The shot is a 5 image HDR composite to which I've applied a little micro contrast enhancement. This is pretty much what the eye was seeing but which the camera couldn't record with a single exposure. The first time around looked much like this time except that the clouds were not as dramatic nor the god rays as clearly delineated. Small and subtle changes, but changes that have rendered the image very differently from the earlier attempt. D300; 18 - 200; Aperture priority;ISO 200; 1/125 (middle of 5) @ f /16.

05 Apr 13. Alright, back to reality after yesterday's drama. In the news this week was a court decree that a local "timberland baron", Pope Resources, originally Pope & Talbot, the company from whom my Grandfather purchased the land on which we just built, would have to begin cleanup of one of the locations of a prior sawmill operation. This has been an ongoing legal contest for several years that was "apparently" resolved with an agreement that the state, who had given permission for the original operation, was equally responsible for the cleanup since it authorized things in the first place. If you visit the area, which is located directly adjacent to the tiny community of Port Gamble, the location for the Civil War enactment photos I shared two years ago, you can easily view what remains of the original mill. The area of the mill offers some interesting possibilities for photography, but it's state of decay suggests that most of what you capture would be best represented by HDR exposures. So, instead of something from that specific location, I've substituted something from another small community, Port Townsend, albeit orders of magnitude larger than Port Gamble. Sitting right along the water front about 50 yards out is this reasonably sized floating (it is sitting on a barge) crane which, with the proper skyline, makes for an interesting subject. I've added some structure to the water and the clouds to make it a bit more dramatic than it was to the naked eye but not enough to put it in yesterday's class. D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f /14.

08 Apr 13. We headed out to Lake Crescent last week to take in what many folks consider the gem of WA State. Struck me as otherwise, and to be honest, I've not been as disappointed in anything in a long time. We'll give it one more chance, likely in the fall, but it was a major disappointment! That said, we did stumble onto a delightful trail in the park grounds called the Moments in Time Trail. It was absolutely mesmerizing and, in my desire to get that had to have photo, which of course never really is, I managed to stumble and really mess up my shoulder, sadly reminding me that maybe, not quite yet ready to admit it, I can't do all the things I used to do. The trail is a mere 0.5 mile level stroll, but it takes you through some stunning rain forest with many trail markers to tell you a bit about what it is you are viewing. This is a definite got to do it again walk, and I'm thinking we'll take the cherubs next week during their spring break with us. It will be a magnificent experience for them and fun for us. I saw this tree near the end of the trail and its branches, spiraling as they did, reminded me of a roller coaster and Jan of dancers. D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority;ISO 800; 1/80 sec @ f / 6.3 (Gives you an idea as to how dark it is in the rain forests.)

09 Apr 13. Planning on beating the crowds at a local nursery rare plants sale, we went to the members only session that was to begin at 1600 on Friday afternoon instead of fighting with the crowds over the weekend. We arrived at 1605 to find the parking lot jammed leaving us wondering exactly how the "show" was being managed. We went promising ourselves that it was to look and photograph only but as usual we succumbed and brought home a few alpine flowers, a few of which you will be seeing shortly. The weather had been nice all day until about an hour before we left and we found ourselves looking at plants in less than ideal conditions, so there wasn't much photography occurring save for a couple of grounds shots. This is my favorite of the day, and I approached the conversion to B&W in a different fashion from anything I've tried prior, this time simply de-saturating it and then applying a detailed curves adjustment layer that was blended using the soft light blend mode. This resulted in the treatment of the willow almost as if it were an infrared image while still holding detail in the deep shadows. Overall I think I like this approach although I don't think it's applicable for every image. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 500; 1/80 sec @ f /6.3.

10 Apr 13 About. 12 minutes outside Port Angeles there is a rather nice waterfall called Madison Creek Falls. It is about a one block walk from the parking lot and handicapped accessible, so you have an idea as to the difficulty in reaching it. We've visited it twice, and may do so again next week with the cherubs. The two visits have provided very different experiences with respect to the amount of water falling and the ability to climb the slope in front of the falls. Last week the amount of water pouring over was rather spectacular for such a small fall, and it was truly beautiful to see. The light available that afternoon was minimal, so the only way to get a truly encompassing shot was to go via the HDR approach. However, trying to get the result I wanted using the normal methods didn't give me the results I desired, so I thought I'd try something different this time and go with a single image and tone map it. What resulted was an image that looks a lot like an old painting on heavy canvas. It is substantially different from anything I've done before, and from my perspective the jury is still out on it. But I thought share and let you come to your own opinion. The bright areas of the final image are almost identical to what was captured in the original, but the bottom portions, which were in various degrees of shade, some parts very dark, are all lightened sufficiently to give balance to the entire frame. D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/30 sec @ f / 25 (to smooth the water) on a tripod.

11 Apr 13. 6 miles east of the lodge at Crescent Lake there resides alongside the highway what I'll call a beaver pond for lack of a better description. We saw neither beavers, their lodges, or dams, but plenty of beaver harvested tree stumps and a couple of piles of sticks that may well have been lodges but were so disheveled that I hesitate to call them such. The pond area was very attractive even though there was virtually no vegetation greening at the time. I shot several frames of the entire area, and a couple with a pair of Mallards checking the place out for whatever reason. One of the Mallard shots I turned into B&W and while I liked it a lot on its own, I felt it even stronger with the Mallards being brought back in color. So consider this as a B&W photo that has had a bit of tinting applied to it to color the birds; it is so much easier and neater with errors easily fixed in digital than in analog. Certainly enjoying this digital age of photography. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/250 sec @ f / 8.

12 Apr 13. Paid a visit to the surgeon Thursday who said shoulder A.O.K., making very good progress, and keep charging forward, so I guess I can now get back to shooting as I'd like. The restraints for the past two months have been more than frustrating, but have also helped to push me back to working on some of the stuff I actually enjoy doing inside during periods of inclement weather. One of those things is table top (macro) photography, and I've taken the opportunity to re-construct a very capable stand upon which I can set, hang, or place any number of kinds of support materials, the simplest of which is to just drape the stand with cloths of different textures or colors. For today I've taken an avalanche lily and placed it against a textured gray background. I could have used a solid color but thought it would look to stark so went with what you see. Another option, that is easy to do, is to place the subject in front of a rear projection screen onto which one projects an appropriate background scene. When properly done, the result is a sharply defined subject in the foreground, with a soft background giving the illusion of the shot having been taken in the "wild" and a great way to get around the problems of wind, and rain, and wet ground, etc. This was a nursery plant which we purchased just a few day back. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 500; 1/60 sec @ f /16 with flash.

15 Apr 13 . With some rather dynamic clouds teasing the area on Sunday, much like we were used to enjoying during our P_Cola tour, we launched out to see if I could capture a few of them accenting the local area and at the same time getting the cherubs out for some nice weather activities. Our first stop was in the park by the Kingston ferry and it provided for some nice foreground material to go with the clouds. This shot is from the public access boat ramp, one of the only two accessible areas for the general public at the marina. I did a bit of standard photo manipulation (vignette and graduated neutral density filter) to the shot plus added some small amount of detail enhancement to the water, and the clouds, just enough to emphasize their darker portions. Otherwise, it is a pretty straight shot. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/200 sec @ f /18.

16 Apr 13 . Living as we do at the end of the communications line, we pay for 10 GBit/s and hopefully get 2, except for the times, like yesterday, when we get none. So, now that we once again have a connection, time to send out the photo. After leaving the parking lot adjacent to the ferry, we drove a small distance, effectively traversing a 150 degree arc, to get a different perspective of the same area, this time looking back towards the ferry terminal, the ferry being the white thing directly behind the break water. Now the clouds were really putting on a show which continued for several hours. From this site we went to a local school playground, substantially higher up, and shot the clouds for another two hours as they merged together, spread apart, and reformed again. A most relaxing and enjoyable afternoon. I've added just a bit of detail enhancement to help accentuate their wonderful textures as well as give them some depth, a little 3-D like, if you will. Nikon D30s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f /18.

17 Apr 13 . Following the advice of the PT I'm seeing, we started out late morning and drove to the west side of Port Angeles to visit the Salt Creek Park tide pools, then into Sequim to spend some time at the Olympic Game Farm, then back to Port Angeles to drive to Hurricane Ridge as the road had just opened but still had the remains of a fresh snowfall from a couple days previous, then made a dinner stop before finally returning home around 2230. Included on the itinerary for yesterday was a return to the Moments in Time trail as well as a visit to the Devil's Punchbowl but we just couldn't fit it all in. We'll use one of the photos from our last visit to the Moments in Time trail for today which is a "park" bench located near one end of the trail, which end depending from where you start. It looked pretty good in color, so I thought I'd try a little something different in B&W. I've been studying a couple of books on B&W photography, more about them in the next several weeks, and this is one of the first images I've done trying to apply some of what I'm studying. Give yourself about 3-4 feet viewing distance and judge it from that distance. Look at it up close also but I think you will prefer the greater distance. The original has a limited set of tonal values, being comprised of almost greens, yellows, and browns. I've cropped it a bit, adjusted for lens aberrations, added a tiny amount of structural enhancement, perhaps 3%, and then run a filter on it provided by the author of one of the books. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 500; 1/100 sec @ f /6.3.

18 Apr 13. A couple of weeks back when I slipped and jarred my shoulder, this was the picture I was hopeful of getting. The original, of course, was in full color, but after looking at it as it was taken, my opinion was that it wasn't worth the effort. Still, it had a fair amount of character, and after teasing out as much as I could from it, I decided that it was a good candidate for turning into something it wasn't. My approaches were B&W, sepia, simplified, really manipulated, and what I finally liked the best, an aged image, and in this case, one that has really aged. For those of you who remember the old stereoscopic viewers, the ones with the long cards with a photo on each end, this image may bring back some memories. For those of you too young to know what I'm describing, here is a link to view one. I still have one much like what you will see on the link, along with several of the cards. Every now and then it is fun to take it out and look at the old 3-D images. Had I been thinking more clearly, instead of mostly hurting, at the time I took the image, I could have shifted my position a few inches and taken another shot to make a card to use with my viewer. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/320 sec @ f / 7.1.

19 Apr 13. This is another shot from Bald Top Mountain in Craters of the Moon National Monument. Actually, it is six shots from the top pasted together to give you an idea of how the surrounding countryside looks. Due to the diminutive size required of the panorama to render it viewable on the small screen, much of the topographical detail is lost leaving you with a false impression of how the terrain actually presents. So I added some structure to it to bring out the very rough surface of the lands both in and surrounding the park. Folks like me think the area simply beautiful, but some I know rather personally who don't share the feeling. It is one of those places where you really need to see it in person before coming to a conclusion. I was told by several that I would love it and by an equal number that I would hate it. The hate it folks were in error. Other than adding some texture, doing a small amount of cropping, and adjusting for the lighting shifts as I shot the needed frames for the pano, it is pretty much as we saw it. Nikon D300; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f /16.

22 Apr 13. While walking along the trail of a local nature park in Hansville a several weeks back with the cherubs, I came upon a Madonna tree that was missing a branch. It was likely missing more than one, but this one was right at eye level and the resulting scar was quite striking. As I was considering how best to document it, my mind wandered back to a visit we made to Stockholm about 10 years ago where we visited the Swedish warship Vasa. It has a very interesting history about which you can read at the link. The vessel is housed in an large museum, actually built around it, and is accompanied by many dioramas and other displays adding to the experience of learning the ship. On one wall was a drawing of carpenters in the forest cutting down bent trees. Initially I thought it rather crazy to do such a thing until I read in another area that the curved (bent) trees were used for the ribs (curved) of the vessel. That made for material far stronger that having to form a straight piece into a bent one. Thus using what nature had already provided made for a stronger final product. As I looked at that tree in the nature park, rather than seeing a misshapen portion of the tree, I was envisioning it being felled and cut into slices for a table top or similar piece of furniture. Those naturally occurring textures and design being far more lovely than anything we might think of designing. I've enhanced the fine structure a wee bit to help illustrate the beauty I was seeing. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/60 sec with flash @ f / 20.

23 Apr 13. Having been made aware that the cherry trees along Lake Washington were in full display, we decided to combine a trip to the dentist with a visit to the shoreline of Lake Washington where we both grew up and an area where we frequently rode our bikes as young kids. For those of you familiar with the Tidal Basin in D.C, think of an area 50x that large lined with cherry trees, a gift from Japan, which are best seen in and around Seward Park. And in place of a national monument there is a 14,000+ foot mountain guarding the area! It is rather spectacular to see in person, especially in color, but as this is B&W Tuesday, here is what we saw Monday afternoon in monochrome. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f /13.

24 Apr 13. In response to a surprisingly large number of requests, I'm taking the easy way out today and sharing with you the same image I shared yesterday, this time in color. Everything I wrote about it yesterday remains the same, just that the color has been returned to what it was. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f /13.

25 Apr 13. With macro photography allowing me to create my favorite kind of images, I feel compelled to share one every now and then, and so that is what you will be looking at for today. This is a table top production with the subject standing in a vase placed in front of a solid backdrop, although it is highly unlikely that the approach will be obvious from the shot. I used supplementary flash as my main light, as opposed to incorporating it as a fill light, in an effort to produce an image that was fairly flat.Not something one would generally do, but I wanted to severely manipulate it and as such wanted an image that was very evenly lit. You should be able to identify the object, but if not, the answer is in the title. I used several layer styles to achieve the final soft look, and employed a couple different plug-in filters to accomplish it, although it all could be achieved simply using photoshop albeit with significantly greater effort. Nikon D300s; 105 macro; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/60 sec @ f /3.5 with full flash.

26 Apr 13. One more of the cherry blossoms before they paint the ground pink for another year. Now growing up in the SW area of Lake Washington in the 50s and 60s meant that you spent a fair amount of time in either Seward Park or the shoreline nearby. At the time we were in high school there was a loop road around the perimeter of the park that closely followed the shoreline. There were also plenty of intersecting roads that took you through different areas of the park as well as many pullouts. The official speed was 25 MPH, and in fact you could drive that speed, but only on weekdays and bad weather weekends during the school year. The rest of the time it was cruis'n space for every red blooded guy and gal. If you were lucky, you might hit the loop on a summer day when the speed was greater than 3 MPH, but that would have been a rare day. Showing off your wheels and girl was the primo event of every nice day, and it would be hard to say what got top billing, the wheels or the girls in them. A fun time for all, and a great time to grow up. The shoreline would be packed with cars and teenagers in them nightly to watch the "submarine races", and to be sure, more than a few "tricycle motors" got their start from such activity. But it was great fun, and a time when life was far more light hearted. A time of Elvis, the Everely Brothers, and the Beach Boys. And muscle cars!!! Tim Allen kind of power! Now the loop road is gone, and all that remains is one short leg you can traverse in just a few minutes. So to all the great musical biggies, the muscle cars, and the good make out areas, now gated with cyclone fences and physically locked. You can of course still go see the beautiful trees, but the fun stuff is, I'm afraid, gone forever. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; 1/160 sec @ f /13.

29 Apr 13. On the advice of my physical therapist, we visited the Salt Creek tide pools taking with us the cherubs. At first arrival it didn't look very promising viewing the area from the main parking area, but another camper pointed us to a different location where we were able to park right at the cliff edge, take a ladder down almost to the beach, and then travel down a bit more over a steep rocky incline, but very short in length, until reaching the rocky area comprising the tide pools. The last jump down plus a few other short "hops" to avoid water gave my shoulder a little challenge, but Jan and the cherubs had no difficulties. It was worth the visit, and we will most certainly return when we can visit at the time of a lower tide, which will occur early this year, at the end of May rather then at the beginning of June. Considering what we could see with the -0.5 tide when we were there, I'm thinking the -3.0 at the end of May will likely expose a large amount of intertidal zone life. It should be fun. The shot for today was taken at the main parking area and is a composite to provide for a better view of what is there. For those of you familiar with California's Monterey Peninsula, this area looks surprisingly similar. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/ 100 sec @ f /13.

30 Apr 13 . Off momentarily on a business trip to Utah, so likely no more images this week, it all depends on connectivity, but hopefully lots of materials from the Salt Lake City region of Utah. Weather looks to be perfect, and I have two days to play, so hopefully something nice will come out of it. The image for today was taken a couple weeks back when we went to the LaConner area for a camera club meeting/lunch/tulip shoot. It was a very cloudy day, the clouds being one of the best parts and the tulips, what there was of them, were in full display. Mostly reds and shades of red in the fields, but the display gardens had an assortment of everything. More of what was in the gardens to come shortly. In the fields were, in addition to tulips, lots of puddles and children. These two cherubs were having a good time despite mom saying stay out of the puddles. At least that's what I think I heard. Well, you can decide who heard mom and who didn't. I've enhanced the clouds just a wee bit to give you more of the feeling we had when we visited. Otherwise pretty much straight out of the camera. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f /11.