US 4 Arch Bridge

June 18, 2009

Another problem with the way I abandoned this blog to my writer's block and general malaise this past summer was overlooking some of the really neat pictures that I did manage to capture.

This is the arch bridge that carries US Route 4 over the Quechee Gorge, about 150 leafy green feet above the Ottaquechee River. I took this picture from the same spot as the VanGoghlaroid version from three years ago. It's actually the only spot along the trail where you can get a clear view through the trees. The way the girders of the bridge stand out amid the foliage in this infrared image really make the picture for me.

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Summerfall 2009

With today officially being the last day of summer, I'll offer a few recent shots from Coney Island. Friday was a bright, clear day in New York, with a slight haze off to the horizon. The sun was noticeably into the low angle of winter, giving lots of glare off the water and long, stark shadows even at one o'clock in the afternoon.

Steeplechase Pier

There was a stiff and steady wind off the ocean, strong enough for a burly kite-flier on the pier to tell me he didn't want to let out too much line for fear he wouldn't be able to reel it back in. "Sounds like you're fishing in reverse," I told him.

The Cyclone

I need to come back a bit later in the afternoon so I can make a better pano than this in color. Even though I had the 5D with me, I'd still be dealing with the lens flare on the right because of the position of the sun. Like all of these current InfraRebel pictures, this ten-image montage was shot with the 17-40mm.

The Wonder Wheel

There's an eerie drone in the neighborhood, a low, rumbling hum that I first noticed getting out of the car, and I had parked near 20th Street, across from the ballpark. As I walked east on the boardwalk it seemed to deepen, and I finally realized what it was: the wind blowing through the Wonder Wheel was turning it into a giant, circular tuning fork, radiating a vibrato of despair throughout the deserted remains of the surrounding amusement park.

September 18, 2009

Notice the compositional theme of these four pictures? All of them were shot directly into the sun, with the last three exhibiting typical lens flare across the groupings of the lens elements.

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Moonlight in Vermont

September 5, 2009

Well what else am I going to call this entry? On my second attempt of the summer, I was able to get a good base exposure for a clear night one day past the full moon.

This image was made with the Canon 5D, ISO 100, standard picture style, cloudy white balance, on a tripod, of course. I used the wide end of my 24-105 at f8, and had a wired remote (cable release) locked for an exposure time of 390 seconds. The in-camera noise reduction software uses an equal amount of time to process, so the pictures I made that night took a total of thirteen minutes each.

So even after an hour I had very little to show for my efforts, but I like this image. I wasn't expecting star trails in a six and a half minute exposure, so they were a pleasant surprise. Next time I'll lower the ISO to 50 and stop down the lens some more and try for a longer exposure, and longer trails.

Mountain Panoramas

July 8, 2009

Early in July I headed for the mountains, hoping for a clear night during the full moon. Ha ha. We all know how well that worked out, not only for me but for most of the eastern seaboard. I'd been wanting to try some extended time exposures using the ambient moonlight, and there were a couple of places I had in mind. The cloud cover proved to be too much, and neither of my set-ups were worthwhile, however.

But while the clouds (and subsequent rain) pretty much killed that trip I did get the shots of the abandoned car in the previous post, and put together the above pano in the upper parking lot at Snowshed. This was put together from twelve vertical exposures. Take a look at the cloud on the far right and tell me it doesn't look like a human profile. Sort of.

July 25, 2009

This next one was a few weeks later, during a much more cooperative weekend on the weather front. We took our bikes into Woodstock, about 35 miles round trip, then later in the afternoon took the K1 gondola up Killington Peak. Getting off the gondola at the top I noticed something a little odd. There was a small whiteboard near the operator's station, and someone had written on it:

'Welcome to Mt. Killington. Elev. 4235 feet'

Okay, you're wondering, what's so unusual? Well, it was the elevation. Of a mountain. Written in erasable marker on a whiteboard. Like they might have to change it regularly.

This panorama was also made from twelve vertical shots. Both sets of images were shot handheld using the wide end of a 17-40mm lens. Like all the pictures on this website, you can click on the picture to view a larger version.

VT 103

I've driven along Vermont Route 103 probably a hundred times now in the last four years, yet somehow managed to never see this abandoned car just outside of Chester.


It is sort of hidden when you come upon it from the south/east. There's a dense line of trees along the road just before the open space where this Dodge sits, just a few yards from the thicket. So it's possible to miss it, but this time something brought my eye to it at just the right moment. That moment, however, didn't include any kind of decent light, so these pictures were made the next morning.

July 8, 2009

As best as I can tell, this is a 1953 Dodge Coronet with a GyroMatic transmission. Unfortunately it's lost its hood ornament.

Quechee, Quechee, Queue...

Another thing we did this summer was to visit the nearby Quechee (pronounced 'kwee-chee') Hot Air Balloon festival. Every year this has been going on, a mere twenty miles from where we are in Killington, but this was the first we were able to stop by.

Hot air balloons take off best when the surrounding air is cool and still, so early morning and early evening are optimal launch times. We were on hand for an and an early morning and later an evening lift-off. The evening event was a bit murky with clouds, but the morning inflation and rising was as crisp and beautiful as one could hope for.

There were about twenty-four balloons in total, all starting off as flat bits of nylon on the ground...

...and eventually, with copious amounts of both fire and air...

And a bit of leverage...

They all get off the ground and literally head off for parts unknown.

June 20, 2009


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Reflections

Vietnam Veterans Memorial - July 2009

Since I spent the late spring and the entire summer slacking off here at the blog, I figure the best way to redeem myself is to start off with a really strong picture, and certainly the best of the three presented here today.

Washington D. C. in the late summer features an atmosphere eerily reminiscent of the planet Venus, but without all the ammonia. Except in some parts of the Metro. I was prepared for that, and planned an early start the first day after dropping Sherry off. Naturally I hadn't planned on spending the entire morning on the side of I-66 after being the first part of a five-car sandwich. No one was hurt, most of the cars were drivable, including mine, so I wound up getting a late start in the hottest part of the day, while pissed off. Mostly at having to cut short my list: I never got to the Jefferson Memorial, Arlington or the east front of the Capitol.

Ah well. These were a couple of nice shots. Getting the three sets of hands in the first one was pure serendipity; I was concentrating on the girl in pink and the boy in black. The man in white walking in the opposite direction was something I never saw until the last instant. I'll call it the definitive shot of the trip.

This one is pretty nice, too.

And though I didn't get around to the other side, I did manage one shot of the west front of the Capitol, making it almost perfectly symmetrical. It looks so tranquil, doesn't it? You just don't see the two men with automatic weapons on the steps above the curved balcony.

Washington DC - July 2009

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Then and Now

About fifteen years ago my sister gave me a box of photographs and negatives she'd found in the basement of the house we grew up in, and where she and her husband have lived since the mid 1980's. The pictures all seemed to have come from the same camera, or at least a camera that used the then-standard 120 format film. This made a negative that was about two and a quarter by three and a quarter inches. The prints were only a little bigger, since they were contact-printed, rather than enlarged.

This particular one caught my eye.

Sagamore Hill was almost instantly recognizable to me. I've spent many hours wandering the grounds there, and the house itself is quite distinctive. I don't know who took this picture of my dad, or even when, though some quick research reveals that the Sagamore Hill house was first opened to the public in 1953. It's possible my parents came up here one summer day, although this is the only picture they took. Maybe it was the last one on the roll.

I didn't have a problem with running out of film, however. In fact, I brought about half my kit; along with a tripod and flash bracket. The landscape has changed over the last half-century, the tree shading me was most likely a sapling in my father's day, if it was there at all. The tree in front of the house, at the left edge of each picture, is a different one today than in the 50's. In fact, I was talking to the chief of maintenance on my way out, and he told me that that tree is going to be taken down this summer; it's too close to the house.

I may try this one again soon. I was there in the early afternoon, from the looks of the original I need to be there early in the morning, nine or ten o'clock I think. Of course, I'll also need a light gray three-button suit.

Bokeh Betsy

May 2009

I don't know if I've ever mentioned bokeh before. Bokeh is the westernized spelling of the Japanese word boke, meaning fuzzy. It's used to describe the quality of the off-focus background in photographs. When you shoot with a lens wide open, i.e., at its biggest f stop, the depth of field, or the front-to-back range of sharpness, is very short. The out of focus areas are the bokeh. The faster a lens is, the large its maximum f stop, results in a shorter depth of field. High-end lenses like this also have more blades on the iris as well which add to the smoothness of the bokeh.

The picture of Betsy, above, was shot with my 70-200mm f2.8 lens. I was zoomed in at 200, and wide open at f 2.8. Focusing on her right eye, the depth of field is about an inch, from the eye to just short of the end of her nose being sharp focus. Everything else falls off into creamy smoothness.

(When shooting animals or people with a short DOF the best focal point in on the eye closest to the camera. Even if the rest of the picture is out of focus, with the eye sharp it'll look okay.)

Chaising Rebecca

May 10, 2009

This picture is all about unconventional composition, since the sun was too harsh for me to make anything resembling a decent portrait. I had the 17-40mm lens and decided to take advantage of the extra-wide angle by focusing on Rebecca as she lay on the lounge and tried to turn back generations of northern European heritage. I was drawn to the bisecting lines in the concrete, and the way the lines of the lounge work with the near-vertical line on the right to almost meet and form a triangle.

Post-processing included cropping the top quarter of the entire picture, neutralizing the background tones and boosting the saturation a bit. I seem to be emulating the style of a 1960's southern Californian photographer, I just can't remember who.