Daily Image - Feb 2014 Archive

03 Feb 14. BOOM! With all the events of yesterday as well as me not feeling all that well, the image for today is a bit late, but here none-the-less. My plans to share with you a shot of an iguana taken at the Bremerton Bug Museum, a nice place to visit for anyone in the greater Puget Sound Area albeit a very small operation, fell through when I didn't have time to work it up. So, I'm substituting an image of a chameleon that I worked up in various color combinations - well, it is a chameleon so no cheating here - as well as a couple of creative versions. I've chosen a creative one to depict the excitement, perhaps misplaced, of the greater community over the recent sporting event. The choice of subject is one that any reasonably creative writer could use as a metaphor for yesterday's big game. I'm not going to write about that, but I couldn't help making the comparison in selecting the subject for today's selection. The BOOM theme is of course a big thing out here being a reference to the defensive unit of the local football team, but for me it more accurately applies to what must be experienced by the prey of many of the reptiles in our amazing world when struck by say the tongue of a lizard or the strike of a constrictor! BOOM is purely apt. This critter was s l o w l y crawling / walking down a branch in its cage and obligingly keep an eye out for me. As you see it on your screen it is likely about 8X life size. The shot I took filled the frame and incorporated just this 1/3 of its body so it was shot at 3X. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/5 sec hand held @ f/ 8.

04 Feb 14. For those of you, very few I would imagine, who may be following me book-wise, I'm going to suggest for you another text that is a classic and quite expensive. While I found one under $40, most of the copies I came across were well over $100. So should you be interested do some serious searching on the web in any of the many used book locations. The text is titled photographic lighting, learn to see. The author is Ralph Hattersley and the 1979 ISBN is:0-13-665323-5. IF you grabbed a copy of, or even looked at the book Seeing in Black & White I mentioned several months ago, you will want to add this one to your library. The two complement each other nicely. Today's entry started out being envisioned as a B&W shot before I ever pressed the shutter. We were headed over to Pt Townsend and encountered fog along the way which made Jan suggest we head on over to Nordland to shoot the harbor in fog but got waylaid as we crossed the Hood Canal Bridge which was partially enshrouded by heavy fog. By mid point on the bridge the fog was gone, so we pulled over to the side of the road on the west end of the bridge to shoot the fog. I failed to recognize that I had some wrong settings on the camera so those shots were a total loss, but we next drove to a close by location under the bridge and shot from there. This time I had setting correct and got some nice shots of the east end of the bridge simply disappearing into the fog, which reminded me of some recent govt projects of building bridges literally to nowhere. This one does connect on both ends to land but in this shot you might think otherwise. If you zoom to 100% or greater the dark specks in the fog at the left hand side of the image will be apparent. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/160 sec @ f / 25.

05 Feb 14. In all the many trips we have made to Fir Island to shoot the snow geese, it has never been my luck to get any good photos of the other large migratory bird that winters over, the Trumpeter Swan. Usually I don't really even see that many of them, let alone positioned such that I could get a nice shot. So I have generally just considered them another critter that it would be nice to photograph but one that wasn't going to get checked off on my capture list. On our first trip up a couple weeks back I was quite surprised to see a large flock of them numbering in the several hundred in a field that was not accessible for photos but one which I could at least appreciate. On the next trip up two days later I commented on how I've never been able to get near enough any of them in a nice location to get a shot. A few minutes after having said that we crossed the river to Fir Island, made a quick left turn and stopped. There in the field right next to the road was a nice but small flock so close one could almost spit on them. While I was working the flock to try for something acceptable I got the idea of moving away from the group of photographers/bird watchers gathered at one location and move further away from the birds but in a spot that offered a different perspective. Shortly after positioning myself there I noticed a flight of three birds that were approaching as if to land. I put the camera on the birds and followed them while they made a full 360 above the landing site and then executed a smart 180 and approached to land. I began shooting the approach as they made the turn to the spot where all the rest of the birds were congregated. As they made their final approach and descent to the land, I kept firing at 5 frames a second to see what I could get. This shot was just before they came to a full stop as their feet were plowing up the muddy wet pasture where they would join their fellows for breakfast. The bird on the left was squawking all the way down but I never did decipher his call. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/320 sec @ f /8.0.

06 Feb 14. After working up 8 images for something creative for today, I settled on a photo of a bald eagle that I shot as the bird flew directly overhead as it was checking us out before making a decision as to whether it was safe to roost in the tree right next to the vehicle. It decided it wasn't the first time around, then changed its mind and elected to return from where it had originally launched out. I took several shots, none of which were quite what I wanted, but standing in the middle of a road has its limitations. I made three versions of this shot, two creative and one not so. One of the creative images looks very much like the non-creative, just somewhat more dramatic. The other creative attempt, the one I'm sharing, was designed to look a bit like what I think a piece of our local Indian art would resemble based on our many visits to the art outlet called Northwest Native Expressions in Blyn, WA. This is a somewhat simple rendition of a eagle but you will no doubt immediately recognize it for what it is. This was primarily a simple one step conversion but I did have to add the eye back in after the manipulation. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 9.

07 Feb 14. I worked up 4 images specifically for Macro Friday and decided to let Jan choose which one I'd shared, and this turns out to be her choice. This one would best be described as a close up as opposed to a true macro of which the other three would qualify. Among Jan's current set of pets are two 3 year old Sulcata Tortoises also known as African Spurred Tortoise. We purchased them a couple of days after hatching when they were about 1" across the back of their shells; now they are about 8 across on their way to approximately 30+" across and weighing in at a couple hundred pounds. They are the second largest of the tortoises and are great pets because you can pass them on down to the grand children whom they might even outlive as they can apparently live to be about 150 years old. We are looking for a home for ours as they will soon be a bit of a handful but I'm thinking we could be looking for a long time. While we were visiting the Bremerton Bug Museum last week we had an opportunity to interact with Cecil, their Sulcata who is now 15 years old, a mere teenager, and I took several shots of him, mostly of him dining. This is one of those shots. I've cropped it to make it a macro shot when displayed on your screen, but the original was roughly 1/4 life size, thus a close up and not a macro. I was trying to get his tongue picking up his food but I couldn't get quite the angle I needed due to the placement of his food dish, so this was as good a shot as I could get. I probably could have asked the staff to reposition him and the food, but didn't want to disturb him if I didn't absolutely have to and so I didn't. I've painted out some very distracting portions of his food dish in the upper right hand corner, and sharpened it a little bit, otherwise straight from the camera. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/60 sec @ f / 8 with full flash.

10 Feb 14. With a camera club council meeting being held Saturday half the distance to Fir Island, we made the decision to make the trek the rest of the way post meeting to go and try our hand at finding the snow geese for a third time. We weren't to be disappointed with our search, but I could have done with a slightly warmer day. Never thought I'd find myself saying something like that, but even with the help of a couple of chemical pack hand warmers, I could only tolerate standing out in the open with the wind shooting the geese for an hour. At that point my fingers were so numb I couldn't feel them so I completed my shooting and retreated into the vehicle. Having waited for that hour for the one particular shot I wanted, and having not been given the opportunity to get it - no eagles cooperating with us and providing the necessary fly over - I figured it wasn't going to present itself on this visit. Of course, 5 minutes later, what I had been waiting for all day occurred, but I wasn't in a position to capture it. Still, it was a very productive day and I'll share 5 or 6 images of what we shot. Some of you who have been with me from the beginning will recall that when we lived back in Montgomery Village, MD that we were next to a small lake, Lake Whetstone, a lake that was home to lot of waterfowl of which about 400 Canada Geese were year round residents. As much as we enjoyed seeing and hearing them, to say nothing about the pleasures of watching them raise their families each year, we most certainly didn't appreciate the mess they made in our yard and the damage to the lawn. I have to chuckle a bit when I think about our complaints concerning 400 critters, when the residents of Fir Island get to play host to a flock of roughly 12,000 Snow Geese. Since we can't trespass onto the farmers land where the geese hang out, I can only imagine what their properties must look like. I guess it is good that the majority of the land where the geese graze is farmland. Now, for those of us who either are, or were, fans of Hitchcock, I'm thinking that today's offering just might be something with which he could orchestrate a motion picture thriller. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/1000 sec @ f / 5.6.

11 Feb 14. Departing the ferry and starting the drive to Everett last Saturday I couldn't help but notice that the light that morning was about as beautiful as any I could remember. I was truly regretting that the next 3 hours would not be available to me for photography. So, as soon as the meeting ended, we high tailed it to the Fir Island area to shoot. Along the way I felt required to call Jan and a tell her about how beautiful the mountains were bathed in that light. We began our shoot looking for swans and while we did find several groups of them, none were positioned such that they were truly photogenic. But we did get to see several small flights of them moving from place to place, and I took advantage of those small excursions to try and get some good in flight images. I wasn't very successful, but I did get one image that I liked although the birds were not quite where I wanted to have them placed. I played with it for a couple of hours yesterday and never really got anything I felt worth sharing. Today, after spending the entire day working on Council issues, I returned to it as I needed to do something relaxing, and thought it might work out acceptably well as a B&W image. In my mind it did, and so it is the B&W submission for this week. Now, the main subject initially, meaning when I pressed the shutter, was the flight of four swans, but they unfortunately failed to become what I desired in any approach, so I just let them fade into the background as supporting actors to the now main characters of mountain and church, both being white, against the remaining shades of black everything else. The original scene was simply beautiful, but what my eye/brain combo provided me the camera simply failed to comprehend. So, starting with the original capture, I did the following to get to what you are seeing. First I duped the background, changed the blending mode to multiply and masked it to get just the amount of enhancement I desired. Then I duped that resultant layer and cropped the image to get the compositional balance I liked best.Then I added an adjustment layer to enhance the snow on the mountain, then another layer to get rid of a whole lot of man made distractions, then a curves layer to lighten the foreground, a levels adjustment to lighten just the mid tones, and finally converted all that to B&W. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/1250 sec @ f / 8.

12 Feb 14. Our visit to LaPush provided us with many different looks at the Pacific Ocean, and one certainly came away with the thought that ol' Magellan either saw a very different ocean or was used to something much more awesome than anything I've ever experienced. This shot inside the seawall of course does not give a very good idea of just what was occurring on the other side of those rocks, but the small white band in front of the smallest rock might give you a subtle hint. As I was playing with the light, fog, sun, and surf, I was intrigued by this sole fisherman tending his nets. At one point he motioned to me for the time as I'm guessing he wasn't wearing a time piece. I told him, he thanked me, and cruised away. I saw him often during our visit and he was always doing something with his nets, but I never saw him bring in any kind of catch, but I'm assuming he was fishing for salmon. In between this shot and the shots we got of sunset we took a break to purchase some smoked salmon from one of the local residents. It was so fresh that it was still warm out of the smoke house. That was to be our first taste of seafood that day, but not our last. Located in Port Angeles, which is on the way to/from LaPush is a small restaurant called "Colonel Hudson's Famous Kitchen." It is our favorite place to eat in Port Angeles, the other place we had seafood that day, and features some of the finest seafood we've ever enjoyed, and a staff to match the food. It is not a fancy restaurant, but rather a place to visit to have some fun and most definitely a come as you are place. Great for when you are cold and tired after a day in the "wild." If you ever pass through Port Angeles and are looking for something to eat I can HIGHLY recommend it to you; you won't be disappointed. The cherubs give it two thumbs up! Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/800 sec @ f / 8.

13 Feb 14. Of almost a dozen creative images available for today, Jan chose this one. Our strolls down to the beach usually include one dog, and on rare occasions, two. It's easier with just one who tends to not stray too far out into the water than it is with two, of which one was born to be in the water and is more than large and powerful enough to haul me right in with her should I attempt to decide otherwise. The swimmer just likes to cruise around in the "surf" such as it is out here, but the non-swimmer prefers to chase anything she sees on the beach or the adjacent shoreline. That tendency is a mixed blessing in that I like to shoot shore birds in flight, but I also like to be able to have more than just a fleeting moment to work with them. As long as they are "beached" I get to try out different things, but once in flight my options and opportunities are somewhat limited. Of course living as close as we do to the beach the opportunity isn't really all that limited, it is just limited on any one excursion there. While we were spending some time one morning a few weeks back with just the three of us (only one dog), I was playing with a small group of seagulls who were spending some quiet time on a strip of sand with the in-coming tide rapidly encroaching on their spot when Miss Maggie decided that they were fair game for a good chase. They of course were going to have none of it and launched, albeit not all of them at once. This is a shot of that flight with all but 6 of the birds in flight. I've cropped significantly from the original, shifted the colors somewhat, and obviously applied a painting filter to it. But I also painted some "light" onto the dorsal surfaces of a couple of birds to replace some very subtle but significant lighting that got lost in the manipulation. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 8.

14 Feb 14. I suppose the image for today should be red or pink, but it isn't; it's yellow. Among Jan's favorite spring flowers is one that isn't, the pussy willow. They grow in abundance near us and each year she finds opportunity to snip a few branches to brighten the home. When she does, I usually find them irresistible photographically, and see them as a wonderful macro subject. This image was roughly full frame in real life and I filled the frame with it, so a true macro shot. When you look at these lovely buds up close they take on a very different look than they do when just observing them on the tree. What I find really interesting about them is that the pollen is located in multiple little clumps apparently arranged in some specific pattern but not one I've been able to discern. It may be that the pattern is more easily deciphered when the bud is just opening as opposed to looking at it near its end. I took her group of clipping and photographed them against a black velvet-like cloth in the "studio." Using full flash power allowed for a very small aperture for the necessary sharpness across the entire bud. All the clippings have since dropped off all the fuzzes, have fully leafed out, and are growing a healthy set of roots. Last year we tried unsuccessfully to get the clippings to grow; this year we'll try again and hope for greater success. Nikon D300s; 105 macro; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/60 sec @ F /22 with full flash.

17 Feb 14. Before I ever purchased my first serious camera, I had heard the story about the press photographer assigned in Viet Nam during the early days of our involvement in that war. He had sent back a roll of film that had a spot on it in a frame that the front office wanted to print. They blew up the frame only to discover that the spot was a clear outline of a helicopter. That solicited an immediate inquiry as to what camera he had used to shoot the photo. Nikon F was the answer and that was the start of Nikon's almost universal use by all foreign correspondents in the field. It was also what made me interested in that line of cameras and I've never questioned the decision to shoot them. The image you are viewing today is a top down view of the Olympic Game Farm about which I've written several times and obviously taken with one of the Nikons. Now, IF I had to be an animal in a zoo type setting, this would have to be one of the settings on my preferred list. Of course it isn't always as beautiful as it was on the day I snapped this image hand held from inside the car with the engine running, but there are lots of them in this particular part of the PNW. By now you are likely wondering how the intro fits in with this image. The simply answer is this: there are four things to find in it, two are Musk Ox which should be readily obvious, one is a bird, and the fourth a helicopter. Find the helicopter. Remember, the shot is hand held from within a vehicle with the engine running. This is almost a straight from the camera shot, having only a small amount of detail enhancement applied to the sky on a separate layer and some cropping of the original frame. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500sec @ f /10.

18 Feb 14. About a 25 minute drive from the West Yellowstone entrance you encounter the Firehole River, a tributary to the Madison River. If you take the Firehole Canyon Drive loop off of the main road on the way to see Old Faithful, you are treated to several absolutely lovely scenic areas including the Firehole Falls which is a short distance below the right hand side of this image. Just above the falls you come to a pool that is about as beautiful as any could possibly be with the river suddenly filling a relatively deep hole when compared to the rest of the river bed with the water entering between steep canyon walls, then forming the pool, and then exiting via a group of wide very shallow falls. You are looking at the pool and it's exit. To the best of my knowledge, this is the only swimming site in this part of the park and I believe the only so marked swimming site in all the rivers on the park. It was a bit cool for swimming the day we visited but that only meant I could photograph the location without a lot of people disturbing the water. This is a basic straight from the camera shot except for a slight lightening of the trees and enhancing the detail of the rocks a tiny bit. I probably should have substituted a pretty sky for the overcast one we were experiencing, but I refrained from so doing. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/200 sec @ f / 7.1

19 Feb 14. Continue downstream about 200 yards from the edge of yesterday's photo and this is what you will see. This is the initial drop of Firehole Falls, and while it isn't all the large, maybe a III river at best on the rafters scale, you will notice that a fair amount of water is suddenly compressed into a very narrow section of the river. The falls continue on to a larger drop about 50 - 60 feet further down stream which I'll share in another image. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority;ISO 125; 1/13 sec @ f / 32 on a tripod.

20 Feb 14. While I love capturing all the wildlife in Yellowstone, my favorite would be moose, followed by bear, and then the elk. There are two places which are almost guaranteed to provide opportunities for elk, those being along the Madison River and at Mammoth Hot Springs. My guess is that there are two distinct groups of animals and that the two don't mix. I've never inquired as to that idea but I think I may come our next visit. But as I've never seen any elk in-between the two locations I'm reasonably certain such is the case. This shot was taken around 0730 along the Madison river our second day there and these two animals were part of a small group comprised of this one bull and about a half dozen cows. They were among perhaps 50 we saw along the river, including a few cows walking along side the road and occasionally in it. With the bull bugling I was hoping to get a few shots of steam leaving his mouth but it apparently just wasn't sufficiently cold for that to happen. Based on the activities of the animals, we were likely a couple days early for the active part of the rut but we did get to see the bulls gathering their harems together. I watched and shot this group for perhaps 20 minutes, but no matter how hard he tried, this guy never garnered any significant interest in his efforts from the cows, as you may observe in this image. Other then strong cropping to isolate just the two animals, and turning it into a water color, this is straight from the camera. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/125 sec @ f / 7.1.

21 Feb 14. If you are among those who read the narrative before looking at the image, make an exception for today and go look at the image before reading further, then come back. It being macro Friday, I took the opportunity of killing some time between errands yesterday to visit one of our local nurseries to collect some material. The selection of plants was somewhat limited, but I did enjoy working with a group of hellebores and some jonquils. I worked up a couple of the hellebores but decided I wanted something more macro like and less close up like to share for today. So I selected this leaf macro instead. Now as it turns out this isn't just your ordinary leaf, but in fact a very special kind of leaf. I found it in the close out section of the nursery, and it was on sale for 60% off so it was a rather good deal although I elected to just photograph it and not make the purchase. I shot it at roughly a 50% magnification ratio, which would barely qualify it as a macro shot, but the enlargement on your screen should display it at likely a 3x magnification which more than qualifies it as a macro. The presentation appears as though the leaf was back-lit, but in fact it was not. What I did was shoot it under relatively overcast lighting which has provided for the saturated colors. And in addition to that, I set the white balance to cloudy which further enhanced the color. Plus the leaf itself helped a bit in that it is a painted piece of cement. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/50 sec @ f / 9 hand held.

24 Feb 14. One of the easiest, and sometimes the most frustrating, things to photograph is a sunset. The former occurs when you get the kind of sunset you want, and the latter when you don't. Trying to make something out of nothing isn't easy, and when the sunset simply doesn't materialize as you want it can be more than disappointing, especially if you've traveled a distance to capture it. But it all seems to even out in the end and you get sufficient good opportunities to match those you don't. Of course, having a beautiful sunset, and being able to capture it, doesn't always happen either, but for those times it does it all seems worthwhile. Returning from Pt Townsend about a month ago we had one of those sunsets that you just knew was going to be spectacular, but as it turned out I was not in the position I needed to be to get the really great capture, although I was able to find a location on the road where I could safely get out and shoot. The only problem was that it had been a long day, we were both a bit tired, and there was going to be a bit of a wait to get the grand finale having missed the spectacular start. So I took what was available at the time, and decided that I could apply the same kinds of tricks in the computer that we used to do in camera, namely, under expose the shot by one or two stops. Of course back in slide film days it was a gamble as to what you got; now I can shoot for the very best exposure, see it immediately on the back of the camera, and then make my under exposure compensation in the computer. And that is exactly what I did. This is a 2 stop underexposure compensation of what I captured, but it is also very close too how the sunset completed as we drove home. Being that this was a digital capture, I could have manipulated the file so as to allow for detail to remain on the mountain side, but I preferred this silhouette more. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/640 sec @ f / 5.6.

25 Feb 14. While killing a few minutes before heading out for Valentine's dinner, we visited one of the local nurseries for Jan to pick out some Valentine potted flowers of choice while I shot some of the available botanicals. This is a shot of a Lenten Rose which I converted from an overall mauve color to what you see. Starting with the background layer, I duped it and did some serious cropping. Then I added a detail enhancement layer but limited the effect to just the flower itself. Then I converted it to B&W electing to go with a very high contrast approach, effectively removing everything but the flower and dropping out all the foliage. I then further added a levels correction to punch up the whites, and painted out, with black, anything that remained besides the petals. So we are dealing strictly with luminance in this image. Nikon D300s, 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/200sec @ f / 7.1.

26 Feb 14. Cold winning, so another short narrative. Recall that about a week ago I shared with you a photo of the initial drop of the Firehole River falls. Today I'm sharing the main body of the falls, and while it isn't an extremely long drop, in fact it is relatively short, probably less than 40 feet, it is the placement of the rocks in the path of the water that makes this falls somewhat spectacular. Add to that the sound of the water crashing over the rocks and you have a first rate experience. There is a nearby parking lot but as it holds maybe 10 cars at most, you would want to visit this area before the crowds arrive. Otherwise it is a bit of a walk from the next nearest parking location. Other than a small amount of detail enhancement, this one is pretty much straight from the camera. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/15 sec @ f / 29 on a tripod. Shutter and aperture combination selected to smooth the water.

27 Feb 14. Cold 3 : dave 0 so another short narrative for today. It being theatrical Thursday I bring you a creative image, only today it really isn't creative on my end of the camera. Our largest local nursery sells yard art as well as plants, and this year it appears that they are featuring chickens. This is a shot of the back end of one of the roosters standing out in front of the main building that I thought rather photogenic. I've painted out with black some of the distractions on the right, hopefully without messing things up, and cropped off a small portion on the left. Otherwise, right out of the camera. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 250; 1/400 sec @ f / 9.

28 Feb 14. Cold 4 dave 0 so another short narrative. A close up of a branch of Pussy Willow and on your screen it should be larger than life size so the screen presentation could be considered macro. This perhaps is more like what you would normally encounter. I considered removing the bit of branch above the top bud but once having done so it didn't look "right," so I left it as it was. I increased both the detail and saturation a very small amount on the plant, and more so on the background. Otherwise, this is basically how it looked in the nursery. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/60 sec @ f / 9 with fill flash.