Daily Image - Sep 2016 Archive

01 Sep 16. Just north of the town of Big Sky, MT, on highway 191, you start to encounter Big Horn Sheep. There are a couple of flashing lights alerting you of the sheep being present, but as we have yet to see the lights NOT blinking, regardless of the presence of any animals, I don't think them to be of much use. I guess if nothing else, they do tell you there MIGHT be animals around. On this particular evening we were returning from a trip to Bozeman when I noticed a small group of young rams standing on the hillside close to the road so we drove to the closest pullout and I parked and walked back to shoot them. Unfortunately there wasn't anywhere to stand save for the bitter edge of the highway and with 18 wheelers using the road it was a bit of a challenge to not get blown over the edge into the adjacent river which at the moment was a raging torrent of water. Working between the passing big guys I was able to get a few decent shots with snow falling around us. I tried to give this a bit of the local Indian art look through the use of a creative effect constrained with a mask. These two guys were talking to a larger number of their group directly on the right but out of the frame. I cropped the base image a small amount, applied a special effect using Topaz Impression 2, and placed a mask over that to keep the rams crisp. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 500; 1/100 sec @ f / 6.3.

02 Sep 16. Since my very first mailing of the Daily Image I have created the final image by starting with a RAW file. No exceptions. Today's submission is the first time I have ever deviated from that approach, and I did it intentionally to see what I could accomplish starting out with a jpeg file. Much to my surprise, the resulting image is for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from those which began as RAW captures. A few days ago at one of the local nurseries the flowers were abuzz with bees, so I grabbed a lot of shots of the critters on the flowers. I then took those images and using a free and simple graphics editor, FastStone, which I've recommended many times, I took each image, cropped out just the portion of the shot with the bee, and put the resultant crops in a folder. This week, just for fun, I started to play with them to see what I might be able to create. So far I've messed around with just two of them, and today's submission is, no surprise, one of them. This is a bumblebee crawling over the top of a cone flower. I recorded it for about a minute hoping that at some point it would turn around and directly face me, but instead of so doing it simply flew off to another flower. A bit of a shift for close-up/macro Friday in that it is not a straight shot. This crop is about 1/4 of the original capture. I've given it a little bit of micro contrast enhancement, then used Topaz's plug-in Glow 2 to create the final effect. Nikon D300s; 105mm macro; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/400 sec @ f / 5.6.

Labor Day. Roughly 5 miles into Yellowstone along the West Entrance Road you come to the first pullout where you also have a parking lot. Just beyond that point there are another series of pullouts sans parking lots where you can get a nice view of the Madison River with the Gallatin Range in the background. We've never seen these mountains without a lot of snow on them but as we've never visited in the summer I can't say if they are that way year round or not. Considering their height, I'm thinking they are. This shot is looking north and it's along the north shore of the river that the bison round up took place in '15 when we visited. Both the river and the road bend at this point with the road paralleling the river on it's left for about another 5 miles when the river makes a distinct dog leg to the right and the road crosses over. Often, in the early morning or late evening, you can find "stray" bison or elk at this location but we have yet to see more than three at a time, and generally, none. The image is a 6 shot pano so you are viewing a considerable portion of the river in this view. This is a very late morning shot and the weather that day was threatening to turn nasty but it never did save for a bit of wind. A short distance further into the park you can turn off the main road and take a side road that takes you to the rivers edge where you can drive right alongside the river. Occasionally when you do you enter a traffic jam courtesy of one or more large four legged creatures. When that occurs the best outcome occurs when you use it to get some really nice photographs paying ABSOLUTELY no attention to that thing on your wrist. Taking all 6 images, I stitched them together and then trimmed the resultant for the best composition for my base image.The lighting that morning was quite flat, so I first gave the image some overall contrast enhancement, then used Topaz Glow 2 to get an overall look which was modified by the Darken blend mode and that constrained with a mask. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/640 sec @ f /9 for all 6 images.

06 Sep 16. Sandwiched in between two gloomy Labor Day weekend days was an absolutely beautiful Sunday, so after church we took off to just go for a drive to see what we might. We visited a few places we have been to prior, and made our way to a few new spots, none of which provided for anything really exciting. We finished the day by visiting Scenic Beach, a location from which I've shared a lot of shots a few years ago but a beach that of late has not been very rewarding marine life wise. But it was very scenic yesterday due to some very nice cloud formations, a bright blue sky, and quite flat water although not glass like which it can be on occasion. Being the last weekend of summer it was quite crowded with both people and dogs, so we paid it a very short visit, but long enough for me to take a dozen or so shots. This is a B&W version of what I've described and with the color missing you can just concentrate on the landscape. The water on the incoming tide was warm enough for many children playing in the shallows and lots of folks enjoying the water in boats, tubes, and floating things you stand on and paddle. I took the base image, gave it a small amount of global contrast adjustment, and converted it to B&W. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture priority; ISO 200; 1/2000 sec @ f / 7.1.

07 Sep 16. On a morning outing searching, successfully, for bear, we rounded a bend in the road and only accidentally noticed we were being observed by a herd of cow elk. I stopped the SUV and quietly and slowly got out to take a few shots. These gals never stopped watching me while I was shooting and continued to do so as we drove away only a short distance to shoot bear. We got to observe them for better than a half hour all the while with them intent on watching to see what we were doing. You can see 10 in the capture, but in total the herd was closer to 20 in size. It really was fun watching them watch us and I can honestly say we've never experienced anything quite like this before with a herd of wild elk, although we can observe many more bison with their calves daily around the condo. Considering the size of this herd we were surprised not to see any calves. In fact, we didn't see a single elk calf during the 10 days we were visiting this past spring. I cropped the base image a little to achieve the best composition, added a tiny amount of contrast, and that was it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 250; 1/500 sec @ f / 9.

08 Sep 16. Two weeks from tonight and I'll be back at the condo for some - hopefully - great fall color and autumn animal antics. The bison herd has begun returning to the area and the aspens have already begun to turn yellow. Last year Maggie made a new friend, Phoebe, a Golden-doodle who belongs to a fellow condo owner. They have rapidly become BFF* and love to play as much as we'll allow. Phoebe generally comes over to see Maggie and then it's off to the races, literally, as they love to chase one another all over the property. One chases the other for a distance, then they exchange places and go back from whence they came only to reverse again and continue to so do to exhaustion. It is a real joy to watch the two of them play and I only wish I had 1/10th of their energy! They won't get to do it again until next May as I'm not taking Maggie (or Jan) with me on this trip and I don't expect that Phoebe will be there anyway. This is a shot of them tearing around a curve with Maggie on the inside track gaining ground on Phoebe. Note the dust trail to the left and below Maggie which will give you some idea of their speed as they tear around the grounds. I'm thinking next year we should charge admission to the races and perhaps take bets as is done in handicap racing. I've cropped the base image and added a small amount of contrast. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 8. *BestFriendsForever

09 Sep 16. A couple weeks back while roaming around the Pt Townsend area we visited the Far Reaches Farm, a nursery with a large array of unusual flowers. I wrote about the farm earlier in the mailing of the red hot poker. In one large covered area was a fairly good sized plant whose flowers were trumpet shaped and a few of which were situated such that during a portion of our visit the sun was shining through the trumpet from the back, sort of like one blowing air, but in this case light, from the "mouth" to the bell. I thought it rather interesting and took several shots. They came out nice and really showed off the lighting effect well, but they were all too busy due to the proximity of several competing blossoms. So I took one I thought representative of the group, cropped it tight, then selected just the blossom, inverted that selection and first turned it almost black, then added a water droplet texture to simulate rain fall on a supposed window in the background. (You won't see that in this version as I've darkened it further to emphasize the glowing trumpet.)That wasn't quite realistic as the flower was too sharply defined against the background, so I blurred just the flower and with a mask confined the blur just to the edges of the petals to make it all blend together a bit more realistically. I almost pulled it off, but the manipulations didn't quite work as desired on the two right petals so by going with this darker version I've effectively turned that failed part into what looks like a rim light. The base image was thoroughly manipulated as described above. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/640 sec @ f / 5.6.

12 Sep 16. Driving around our local area and noticing the fall colors beginning to appear, I thought we'd take a trip tomorrow to shoot color on the other side. So after returning from church I gave the Leavenworth Ranger Station a ring to see how the color was progressing only to be informed that they now only man the office on weekdays and if it was an emergency to call 911. I didn't think the 911 folks would have the needed info, so I elected to review my photo collection to see when I got the color shots the last 6 years only to realize that it was all acquired in early to mid October, so needless to say we won't be making that tip tomorrow. But looking at all those shots gave me the urge to share one so that's what I'm doing for the next two days, this first one in color and the second one, tomorrow, a very similar shot from the same general location, in B&W. These two shots were taken at the end of the prime color period meaning that much had already peaked and this was the end of the peak for the "late bloomers." You get these colors for maybe a week to ten days max, and they vary in color intensity based on the lighting. There is only a small area just east of the Steven's Pass summit where you can find these large beautiful mountain side displays; if you reside anywhere near this part of the PNW it is worth the effort to try and time a visit to capture it. The local park rangers can be quite helpful in timing your visit, that is, IF you call during the week. The original capture wasn't this bright as we were experiencing a very bad lighting condition when we were there. To get this, I first set the correct white and black points, then took the greens to the color they were in a shot I took later that day when the sun had made its appearance and let everything else adjust with the greens. Finally I made a small contrast adjustment. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 500; 1/80 sec @ f / 8 on a tripod. The shot should have been taken at something faster than a 500th of a second to get around the air movement that tends to render these types of shots less than perfectly sharp.(Sometimes I forget my own advice.)

13 Sep 16. Something different for B&W Tuesday in that I'm sharing the original color version and then 4 B&W varieties of that color shot. All of the info for Monday's submission applies to this shot, as they were shot at the same time in the same location, obviously. There are many ways to create a B&W from a color shot, and while I could go into detail on all of them, I won't. Instead, I'll briefly discuss just for approaches, all of which I employ at one time or another. Taking the color image into a graphics editor, I first make a gradient map and modify that with a levels adjustment as necessary to get my best starting color shot. That also provides me with the first B&W version. In the B&W image with the 4 identical photos it is the one in the ULH corner. I seldom ever share this version. After making all the color version of each image, I make a final version that is always B&W. Ninety five per cent of the time I use Topaz's BW Effects 2, with the remaining 5% shared by either nik's Silver Efex or a Digital Zone System program written by Blake Rudis, a colleague. I have placed the four B&W versions side by side for your comparison. No two programs handle the info identically, so I have endeavored to get all four shots as close to one another as possible. That said, they all work differently so you get different results. You can of course use the three italicized programs to create a huge variety of B&W "looks." When I asked Jan to look at the set of four and rank them as to her favorite to least favorite, she amazingly ranked them in the same order as did I. You can look them over and see which result you prefer. The color shot will give you an idea as to how each program handled the color. If any of these programs are of interest, you can find them on the web. The ability to create a gradient map lies with your graphics editor and thus is at no extra cost; nik's suite of programs used to run roughly $400 but are now free to download but I don't know for how much longer. Topaz sell BW Effects 2 for $60 but you can get a 30 free trial and f /64 sells Black, White, & Beyond, the most powerful of all these programs, for $97. While there are many other B&W programs, these are the one's with which I'm familiar. The base image was given a bit of contrast adjustment, and then used as the base image to create the 4 B&W images. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 640; 1/125 @ f / 8.

14 Sep 16. Something real simple for today. All over MT, at least in the places we've visited, one finds these orange colored rocks. The orange life form is something simple, perhaps some form of lichen or other non-chlorophyll organism, but whatever it is it is truly beautiful. I've found it on dry hills, alongside stream beds, and just next to the roads. This rock was lying up near the geysers at Mammoth and was about two feet in size. There were several of them but this was the nicest of the group. On all the covered rocks I've seen to date, the growth pattern is similar in that the rocks are never fully covered and exhibit the speckled pattern as seen on this rock. Next time you are walking about in the Rockies, take a close look to see if you can locate some of these rocks. This is basically a straight shot from the camera save for a wee bit of contrast enhancement on the orange life-form. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/160 sec @ f /10.

15 Sep 16. Back in the days of my youth all pictures started out in my father's darkroom as you see with today's submission. B&W print film produced a "negative" of the image and the print made the positive of the image, which is to say that the dark and lights of the negative became the whites and blacks of the print. It was great fun and something that we don't get to do very often these days. So for this "episode" of Theatrical Thursday I thought it would be fun to create an old fashioned negative. It wasn't as easy as I thought it initially would be, but with a little bit of thinking about it, I came up with one way, probably not the easiest way but it works, and made this version of an eagle that I originally shared two years back. I mentioned a few weeks ago that we had one fly literally right over our heads while we were out walking on the road in front of the property. I didn't have the camera with me that morning, but on this morning in 2014 I did and this is what a Bald Eagle looks like when it flies directly over you, and in this particular capture, banks to the left to avoid colliding with you. The bird was so low and close that I've removed some small branches that were between us and cropped off a lot of blank space on either side. The conversion was made via two B&W layers made using Topaz BW Effects 2 and the exclusion blend mode on the second layer and then a levels adjustment. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 9.

16 Sep 16. During the summer months the local Kingston community in association with the Port of Kingston hosts a 2 hour concert featuring local bands and representing all kinds of music. A member of our church is a drummer and a member of one of those bands. Earlier in his life he was the drummer for Johnny Paycheck so you have some idea of his ability. We attended just two performances this year but will likely attend more next year. During one of them I was wandering around taking flower shots and today's submission is the result of that wandering. This picture started out as a capture of a full blossom but ended up as you see it. The sunlight was striking just the tips of the anthers and creating a rather compelling image, so my intent in taking the original shot was to capture just that aspect. Of course you can't easily get just that part when the plant is part of a community landscape, so I had to take the entire flower and some more to boot. But with a "little" cropping I reduced it to just the part I wanted. This is another image that I had first converted to a jpg before working on it and it would seem like there isn't any problem doing such as long as I'm limiting myself to sharing this way. Since I don't print them I don't know if the same would hold true for a large print, but I'm thinking not based on file size. This is basically straight from the camera save for the cropping. Nikon D300s; 105 mm macro; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/3205 sec (gotta love digital capability) @ f / 3.2.

19 Sep 16. A reminder that I leave very early Tuesday morning to take a few days sabbatical in Yellowstone, so this mailing is either the last or next to last you'll receive until I get back at the end of the month. This time Jan and Maggie are remaining behind but I'll be enjoying the company of a long time friend of just a few months under 40 years with whom I had the privilege of not only working with for several years but who was also a member of both my Master's and Doctoral committees. Not many can claim such a fortunate friendship. He is a member of this mailing list as is another friend who I've known equally long both of which I met on our first tour in the Navy; one my superior militarily and the other civilian. Many stories could be told about both, but I shan't! The image I'm sharing today is on the side of the road leading just about anywhere north of Madison Junction, and is one that is easily missed. You get a quick glimpse of it as you pass by but if you are not scanning the hillsides it is likely that you'll never notice it. I like it a lot and frequently park close by and walk to a spot where you can trip, stumble and fall (apologies to the Mamas &Papas) all the way from the highway to the water. Once there, a distance of perhaps 30 feet, you can walk the river bank as far as you'd like to get closer to the thermal area, although I wouldn't recommend so doing as from what I can see from year to year it isn't all that stable and I've never seen an animal attempt it. The Gibbon River however does take a dog leg at what is the left hand edge of the shot so you can do it if you want but I won't accompany you. Also at the left edge of the shot and somewhat further back is a beautiful mossy area which again you can't see from the road but is alone worth the walk down just to see it. So, if you are driving northerly on the road to Norris Junction, as soon as you pass the parking lot for Gibbon Falls slow down even slower than the marked 25mph speed and start looking to your right. It is less than a mile so if you've made it to Beryl Springs and haven't seen it, park there, cross the road and walk south. And to quote the much overused phrase, "you can't miss it." Aside from a mild straightening of the image, this is what the camera recorded. Nikon D300s; 18-200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 8.