Category: Outdoor

Outdoor photography

Lonely Playground

A long way down
I went into the little town of Penngrove for lunch yesterday and stopped by the park to take pictures. The park is one of the few with old, metal playground equipment, the kind all parks had when I was a kid. We’ve taken the kids there a few times, and they always have fun.

It’s not a fancy, shinny new park, but it has a lot of heart and character. You can easily imagine generations of kids playing there. I can easily picture kids from any time in the last 60 years swinging and sliding and laughing here. While the new playground equipment offers twisty slides, climbing walls, and rubber coated steps, they just lack character.

Shot Details

Shooting Date: 9/25/2007 12:48:40
Shutter Speed: 1/125Sec.
Aperture Value: F3.5
ISO Speed:200
Lens: EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
Focal Length: 18.0 mm

I took several other shots that I posted on Zooomr, here are a few:
IMG_1335
IMG_1332
IMG_1344

She steals the sun

She steals the sun

The weekend was full of work around the house and not enough photography. I tried to get a sunset shot yesterday, but it just wasn’t that great. At least I was out for a bit. I grabbed a couple of quick shots tonight while walking to and from my car while downtown for an appointment this evening.

This bench, and many others like it, were made by the shop class at Petaluma High. They’ve been making benches and bike racks for the downtown for a couple of years now and it’s great. The students get to do real projects and the town benefits. Kudos to the students for great work. Your town appreciates it.

Shot Details

Shooting Date: 9/24/2007 18:16:36
Shutter Speed: 1/125Sec.
Aperture Value: F5.0
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
Focal Length: 38.0 mm

Here’s another shot I took tonight:
9-24-2007_3

It’s kinda creepy

It's kinda creepy
Just a quick post. I shot this at my youngest daughter’s soccer game two days ago. Not much to say about it, just look interesting at the time. I knew I wanted it to be a high-contrast black and white image when I shot it. It pretty much came out how I planned. Cool. As for the title, that’s what my oldest daughter said when she saw the shot.

Also, I wanted to point people to publicengery’s recent blog post. His stuff is awesome, and he rides. I’m jealous, biking is something I want to do much more of. Keep riding Dave.

Shot Details:

Shooting Date: 9/10/2007 17:55:05
Shutter Speed: 1/400Sec.
Aperture Value: F5.6
ISO Speed: 400
Lens: EF70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM
Focal Length: 300.0 mm

Western Pacific

Western Pacific

Many years ago I took a basic black and white photography class in college. Recently, I rummaged through the attic and found my old camera and a bunch of contact sheets, negatives, and prints from the class. It was a nice stroll down memory lane, and there were a couple of decent shots. Digital photography hadn’t started when I took this photo and the web didn’t really exist like it does today, so no sites like Zooomr were around to share photos. I figured I should share them now. I don’t remember the story behind this shot, and don’t have any details, I just like the high contrast and subject.

As I get images scanned, I’ll post them here when I don’t get out and shot new photos.

The Sky of My Dreams

The Sky of My Dreams

Another quick shot. After missing a few good photo opportunities last week because I had left my camera at home, I started taking it with me everyday again. The clouds going to work last Friday were awesome, so I drove to the top of the nearest parking garage and took a few photos of the sky and clouds. The structures in the foreground were intentional. I wanted the pieces of our modern world to show up in the shot to give a feeling of loneliness. The clouds were actually moving through pretty quickly, so the sun didn’t stay hidden behind clouds for long. I got the effect I was looking for, but a few moments later, it was gone.

I did a lot of curves adjusting to bring out the blue and increase the contrast. There is another shot from that day that I might use to experiment with HDR, but I haven’t decided if I want to or not. This shot worked fine without HDR, and I am inclined to be lazy and not do HDR. Besides, I don’t have Photoshop.

You can view this image on Zooomr with a geotag. I’ve taken other shots from this location before.

Shot Details

Shooting Date: 8/31/2007 08:21:06 GMT-8
Shutter Speed: 1/800Sec.
Aperture Value: F5.6
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
Focal Length: 18.0 mm

Harm

Bunker 3

Here’s the first photo from my Point Bonita shoot last weekend. With the eclipse, kids going back to school, and work it’s been hard to find time to go through the images and pick some to post.

To be honest, I wasn’t happy with my shooting that day. It was a fogging day, so everything looked really flat. Point Bonita has incredible views of the Golden Gate and the western part of San Francisco, but the fog made it difficult for me to shoot any nice landscapes. I ended up taking a lot of pictures of the old military bunkers. For some reason, they are good subjects for me.

I also spent a bit more time processing the images. Normally I do a little brightness and contrast adjustment, maybe some cropping, but not much else. For these shots because the lighting was so flat, I played with curves more to bring out the colors and add depth. For this shot I applied a colored filter to bring out certain tones and did some pretty drastic curves adjustments. I’m starting to experiment more with post-processing on some shots, but I’m not sure how I like it. I tend to be more of a “get right in the camera” photographer, but sometimes some shots just need more help. When I took this shot I planned on a lot of processing and intended it to be black and white. I guess the more abstract the shot, the more processing I’m willing to do. When shooting I usually do think about what level of processing I’ll do on the computer when I get home. I knew this image would have a lot or processing.

One thing I’ve learned while working with RAW images is that I need a faster computer with more RAM. My 1.5 GHz with 512 MB of RAM is just too slow. Maybe I’ll get a new motherboard and processor instead of buying some of the photo gear I’ve been planning on.

There are more Point Bonita shots on Zooomr; I’ll probably blog a couple of them this week. You can view this one on Zooomr with a GeoTag. Since Zooomr isn’t showing EXIF info, I’m including it on the blog posts. I’ll update this post later with that info.

Lunar Eclipse

Lunar Eclipse

Yesterday I ran around and got a tripod and remote trigger so I could take pictures of the lunar eclipse early this morning. For my first real attempt at astrophotography, I’m pretty pleased. It was a challenge getting out of bed and setting up in the dark, but it was worth it. The eclipse was incredible. Even if I hadn’t taken pictures, it was worth it.

To be perfectly honest, I’m too tired to write much. I still have some shots of Point Bonita and GGNRA to post, but they’ll have to wait. The one thing I do want to mention is the remote trigger I got. I bought a third-party wireless remote trigger instead of the Canon remote. It worked beautifully. It’s a SecuLine Twin1 Wire & Wireless remote shutter controller. I got it at my local camera shop because they have a 15 day return policy, but I’ll be keeping it. The manual is in English, but clearly was translated by someone who is not a native speaker. Nevertheless, I was able to understand most of it and after some trial and error, got it working. It also comes with a handy mini-tool with Phillips and flat-head screw drivers; really small ones. I’m now itching to go out a night and shoot. The remote and tripod have opened a new world for me.

Shot Details:

Moon in almost total eclipse August 28, 2007 3:02am GMT-8
f/5.6
Exposure time: 4 seconds
Focal Length: 300mm

If you want to see other amazing shots of the eclipse, go to Zooomr and search for “lunar eclipse”. Here’s links to two of my favorites:
http://www.zooomr.com/photos/randyman/3063706/
http://www.zooomr.com/photos/34541@Z01/3068760/

The
folks over at the Shutters Inc. podcast also have great some eclipse photos.

Poor Man’s Macro, Take 2

Immobile

After my first attempts at the Poor Man’s Macro, I decided to give it another try with my new camera. At some point in the past couple of weeks it dawned on me that I had an old Canon T70 with a 50mm lens on it that I could use for macro shots. The only problem was finding the camera. It turned out to be stashed in the attic with my wife’s old Pentax. Both were great cameras that we used until they stopped working.

I pulled the lens off my camera, but couldn’t figure out how to open the aperture all the way. When the lens is off the camera, the aperture closes down, which makes the lens useless for the Poor Man’s Macro. Luckily my wife’s old Pentax also had a 50mm lens that didn’t close down when off the camera. So, now I have a second lens I can reverse without taking the 18-55mm lens off my camera.

To take this shot I simply held the 50mm lens in front of my regular lens, but reversed. I’m still unsure of whether to use a large or small aperture on the normal lens. The depth of field is already compressed, and the slightest movement forward or backward changes the focus. I think the compressed depth of field comes from the reverse lens since the aperture is wide open. I don’t think the aperture on the normal lens matters. I’m also unsure of where to focus, and if changing the focus on the reverse lens matters. I need to experiment more with the focus ring of both lenses to see how they impact the images. Right now I just move closer or farther from the subject to change the focal point.

It is somewhat difficult to hold the reverse lens in the right place. An adapter of some kind would help, but since the lenses are different sizes I doubt I can find a reversing ring that would work. I may have to build my own. Having the reverse lens actually mounted on the normal lens would allow me to experiment with changing both focus rings. I’ll keep playing with this technique to see what works best for me.

I took a lot of pictures, but this is the only one that worked out. I converted it to monochrome in Digital Photo Professional and did some contrast adjustment.

Shot Details:

Taken August 23, 2007.
Normal lens: 55mm
Reversed lens: 50mm
1/50 shutter speed, f5.6, ISO 800