Spo-rad-ic, Yeah... That works

I went for so long keeping up a daily blog that now that I have been posting a little more sporadic, I find that I am more emotionally connected to the post rather than a task. Maybe it's just my ADD kicking in after the two and a half years of daily posting. (Ziser, I don't know how you do it be please keep on doing.)

Anyhow, the other morning I had to take my son to the airport to catch a flight. We had to leave the house at 5:45 so yes it was still dark. I opened the front door to see the following glowing in the sky.

Well it was close to that. I went down to the studio to bring up the camera and fortunately it was still on the tripod but had the EF 24-105 f/4L IS USM mounted. Ok so it was not the best choice for low light or solar photography but it was there and it was now.

So outside I go and turn the camera on only to be displayed with NO CF CARD. Ugh! I tromp downstairs and gram a card. So in the few minutes it took me to do all that, the moon was not the same but it is what is in the image above.

Dialing the ISO up to 1600 and racking the lens out to the full 105 mm I knew it was not going to be a great zoom as I was shooting on the 5D Mk II which is full frame so no factoring. Two good things though were with the Mk II 1600 was not going to be an issue and with the size of the image I could crop the daylights (maybe moonlights would be more appropriate here) out of the thing and still have a usable image. Actually the image above is cropped down to just under 10% of the original size.

Sliding the noise reduction slider in Lightroom just slightly eliminated the small amount of digital noise in the image. But that just made a nice looking spooky moon. I could do more.

I had not used the grain slider much in Lightroom because I generally am looking for a tack sharp image that is as clean as a whistle. Besides adding grain after you have reduced noise just seams counterintuitive to me. That is until you want to emulate some real filme grain and not digital noise. The moonlit night gets a little spookier. But I could do more.

Using the Hue/Saturation/Luminance sliders were not going to work her to make a global change to the images overall colorcast as it was mostly black and white naturally. So the next option was to add a color via the localized adjustment brush.

You can see the little tick mark where the color picker is set. That is all it took to give this already eery moonlit sky a sense of mystery and age.


Hope you enjoy the new sporadic me. Cya... Doug

Spectacular Fall

Last week my son Tom had gone for a run down the Kent Trails. I say "the" when really there are many trails in the Kent Trails system. Many years ago the trains pretty much stopped running in Michigan at there was no real place to go. The could not cross the straights up north and the only real access to Canada is over in the Detroit and Port Huron areas of the state. So that left a large number of abandoned rails in the state. Many of these have been relegated to walking, running, bicycling and in some part snowmobiling. In the fall they are just spectacular to take in. This year was a very good year as there have not been heavy rains and strong winds which have left the leaves on the trees for most of the fall season.
Anyhow, Tom came back from his run and proclaimed that I must get down and take some pictures of the colors on the trails. By the time I got around that day the sky had clouded over and I thought I had lost to opportunity. The next day I found it had rained overnight but it was a light shower. I packed my ThinkTANK Shapeshifer bag with my 40D, the EF 24-105 f/4 IS and EF 16-35 f/2.8 lenses and my Induro Carbon tripod with the Really Right Stuff BH-40 ball head.
As I entered the trails I knew it was going to be a good day, the colors were absolutely stellar.I came across this cart bridge for a golf course about a mile from our house and the sunlights was filtering through the trees providing such beautiful shadows and colors. The image above is actually an HDR of three images at Ev-1, Ev 0, and Ev +1. The image below is a screen capture of the original images in Lightroom.

Tom has been in Chattanooga TN attending college for the past four years and said they just don't get to see colors like this. I gotta tell you, Michigan might have its problems but God has blessed it with a natural beauty that can't be beat.
That's going to wrap it up for this week so have a great weekend and go out and enjoy the beuty of creation.


Cya... Doug

Two Blog Week

I think this is my worst unannounced week of blogging since I started. Got won in MOnday, Tuesday and Wednesday went down the chute, today I am wedging it into the day and tomorrow it just isn't going to happen. I will be running around for a wedding we are a part of on Saturday. So here goes...

Last Saturday I got up early to shoot a golf outing the College/Career group from our church was having. Early yes, it was still dark when I arrived at the course. Basically it was going to be an ugly day, no sun, drizzle if not showers. Yuck! It would give me an opportunity to try out my new bag, a Tenba Messenger bag I picked up at one of the seminars last week.

So the shoot went really well, I had a cart to run around with which mad a really good support for the mono-pod I had with me. Here are some shots for the day. All the long shots were done with an EF 70-200 f/2.8 L IS with a 1.4 teleconverter. This first shot was from halfway up the fare way shooting towards the tee box.

This next shot is a par 3 and shot from the tee box. The compression is really obvious with the tele glass. It looks like it's a chip shot but is actually 130+ yards.

Here is another shot racked all the way out to get the golfers teeing. Again the compression is quite dramatic.

This next one is with the EF 24-105 f/4 IS L lens. All of the shots were on a Canon 40D as I wanted the crop for the reach. It was nice with the 6 fps burst rate I could get shots like the one below. This was of the Pastor teeing (duh!) off on the 14th hole and I just ordered a print of this to give him for his office.

Ok, Lets all go Aaaaaah! Is't he so cute!

Yes he is just a bit blurred but that just shows movement. Not really thats just a photographic excuse. Fact of the matter, I was driving the cart while holding onto the camera on the right seat and this little guy goes squirting out in front of the cart. I let the cart coast and use both hands to steady the camera as best i could. Now that's what I call an action shot!

Like I said, I will not be around tomorrow so it will be Monday before I am back!

Cya... Doug

Night Tree

Hey all, I made it to Columbus for another fun filled week. Hope everyone had a great fourth of July. We just spent some time in the area attending some fireworks on the 3rd and a parade on the 4th. For the past few years we seem to be attending different fireworks in the area rather than just going downtown Grand Rapids for the "big" show. This year we went down to Green Lake to watch the show over the water. It didn't happen quite the way we thought it was going to as the lake shore is all owned by individuals and public access is for the most part, non-existent. So we ended up in a large field with about 150 other people waiting to see what ever we could. There were two tall trees blocking the view but enough space between them so see the show.

The image above is of one of those trees and was taken just prior to the show starting. I boosted the levels a bit for artistic effect but other than that it was a timed exposure. I would tell you how long but I really don't know. Let's see, hmmmmmmmmm, about that long on bulb!

I should have a fireworks montage a little later this week so stay tuned.

That's it for me today. Cya... Doug 

Juxtaposition - Freak of Nature

This week in west Michigan has been snowy and cold. Last night I threw a glass of water (not the glass itself of course) into the air and it came down as ice pellets. In all the cold winters we have here in Michigan we have in our bathroom somewhat of an enigma. We have this orchid (orchidaceae for you botanical freaks) that continues to grow in an octagonal window our bathroom. It does not bloom very often but when it does it is nothing but amazing.

We have been waiting all week for these buds to pop and they started to the other day. I had a great opportunity this morning to catch a combination of life, light, and juxtaposition. Yes folks those are icicles hanging from our roof with a blooming orchid (no we do not keep our house in the 80's during winter.)

The Shot

With this side of the house facing east and a low sun I did not have all day to get the sunlight hitting the icicles. It was a perfect opportunity for me to try out some new lighting gear as I did not want to generate shadows in such close quarters. The spec on the shot are this; Canon 5D Mk II with an EF 24-105 f/4L IS USM lens. ISO was set to 200, the lens was at 96 mm. With this lens I knew I was not going to get the best depth of field especially at 96 mm so I ran the aperture up to f/22 and settled on 100th of a second for a shutter speed. The Alien Bees ABR800 ring flash was dialed down to 1/16th power because of the closeness of the flower. I tried a grid in the flash unit and that kind of sucked so I just let the little diffuser disk do it's thing.

So now it is back to lighting. The 110 volt kind in the office.

Cya later... Doug

We Got Hosed Tommy

Last Saturday Evelyn and I went out in search of the wonderful colors of West Michigan in the fall. We drove down to Saugatuck MI and found little to be impressed with in the central west Michigan area. The colors were for the most part flat, and unsaturated. We really have no explanation for this as there are plenty of leaves, and we have not had a real hard rain. The winds have not even kicked up as of yet. On thing that has just recently happened was wee had our first frost. That seams a little late in the season and that may well have something to do with it.

After we stopped for lunch on the water front we went down to Oval beach on the lakeshore ands found no additional encouragement in color. Oh well! There was one spot driving into town that I saw and wanted to stop at. A nice place along a creek had some nice reflection and color. I walked a ways to get a different angle when I came upon a park that overlooked the image above. Now there were some colors. Unless the trees are going to bring some surprises in the next couple of days, I am afraid this is about all we are going to get in West MI this year.

Take care... Doug