Lots keeping me busy these days — most of which is either not-very-interesting visually, or I’m not able to share until publication. Busy, nonetheless. And occasionally distracted enough by the “song” of these little buggers that only come by once every 17 years to get out and try and make a picture of one.
A fun distraction last night — we attended the Mowbashers Mower Derby at the Douglas County Fair. Nothing like a little noise, smoke and chaos to distract one from the heat of summer. The exhaust fumes probably didn’t hurt, either.
Here are the contenders, lining up to start while the field is wetted down:
Drivers of all ages, getting into start position:
And, they’re off!:
Gear is a funny thing. You can become obsessed with it — always wanting the newest, the fastest, the most megapixels — but it’s a trap. At least I feel that it can be a distraction from paying attention to the things that really matter: composition, mood, light, message.
I don’t buy new gear all that often and I try and really think through and make purchases that will last. I’ve had a solid stable of bodies and lenses for a while now and have the whole range of focal lengths covered from 17mm to over 400mm (if you consider the 1.5x of my crop-sensor D7000).
So what more could I want or need?
I’ve thought about this a lot lately and have decided that what I’m looking for now are not necessarily the tools that test out as having the “best quality,” but rather tools that have a “unique quality.” It’s a fine distinction, but what I’m looking for are a few lenses, in particular, that have a uniqueness about them. They deliver something special. They may not be the most expensive, rugged or sharpest, but they will bring a capability to my kit that I didn’t have before.
My most recent addition arrived on Saturday: a Rokinon 85mm f/1.4. I took it out for a quick walk around the KU campus yesterday to see what it could do. I was drawn to this lens for the shallow depth of field and creamy bokeh (out of focus areas). It’s manual focus as well, which slows me down and makes me more thoughtful. So far, I’m not disappointed. See what you think of these initial test shots:
The Jayhawk shot above is actually stitched from 18 images in a pano-grid method I’ve written about before. It lends the shallow depth of field to a wider angle of view.
These last two shots are of mounts on display in the Natural History Museum — they’re not wildlife shots. I was just looking for some tighter settings to try the close focus and shallow depth of field:
So far, I’m impressed and happy with my purchase — and anxious to get this lens out in the field for some real travel work.
Silly me. I thought that Lawrence’s low temperatures might reduce the turnout for the Color Run yesterday. According to this morning’s paper, 7,000 had turned out by 3:00. I wouldn’t be surprised if the total number wasn’t closer to 10,000 or even more. Here’s a link to more info on the run. And here are more pics:
Made a quick stop at Tee Pee Junction on my way back from a shoot in Tonganoxie last night. It’s odd that I don’t shoot this place more often as it’s just on the outskirts of town. It’s now on my to-do list to make an early morning visit soon.
One advantage of being home this Spring is getting to see everything in bloom for once. Due to the early warm weather, the daffodils and tulips are long gone, but there is still plenty going on around the yard. Extra credit to anyone that can identify all the species…
After a tough few weeks, I’m returning to a somewhat normal schedule. Some would argue whether I ever operate on a “normal” schedule, but at least things are becoming more normal by my own warped standards. One part of what I like to think of passing as a routine is my morning walk. They’ve been few and far between lately, but the weather — and life — has been cooperating recently and I’m trying to reawaken the habit.
I sometimes build additional purpose into these walks by taking a camera along to experiment with a new lens or technique. On this particular recent walk, I limited myself to my Lensbaby Composer and my D700. The shot at the top of this post was created by swinging the camera downward during a .6 second exposure. I wanted to abstract the scene of grass and tree trunks to its essence and I’m pretty happy with the result. It took more than one try, but this is actually pretty close to what I was looking for.
The shot of the tree was pretty straightforward until I applied some textures in post using Photoshop CS5. And here’s one more Lensbaby shot that sums up the serenity of a pre-dawn stroll:
After a weekend of temps in the 60s and 70s, yesterday morning brought a wet 4-inch snow — one of the prettiest I’ve seen in years. The winds were calm enough that the snow could cling to the tiniest branches and grasses creating a wonderland of white. My first thought was to try and get to the KU campus to shoot but the streets looked bad (we have to go up steep hills either way we leave our house) and the temperatures were rising so fast I knew the snow wouldn’t last long. In the end, I opted for my favorite morning walk spot just across the road. You may recognize the trees in the first photo. I’ve blogged them before here.
By the end of the day, only a few patches of snow remained in areas of deep shade and this morning they are predicting temperatures rising back into the 70s again by mid-week.
I returned to the Eldridge Hotel for another twilight shoot last night. You may remember a recent post where I shot it from a rooftop across this street. This time I went street-level and parked myself under a tree along the sidewalk catty-corner from the hotel. I was again going for a long exposure with some traffic streaking and a combination of the dying light in the sky and the warm street lights.
I’m discovering that this particular building is not lit very well, nor do there seem to be many lights on in the windows in the early evening. My solution has been to merge several shots together. The image above was a quick attempt this morning to see how it might look, but I’ll need to do a more involved layering later. While I was locked down on a tripod, I was also changing apertures. The differing depth of field between shots means that I need to mask out some areas to preserve the focus where I want it. Otherwise I end up with ghostly halos around the foreground elements.
The advantage I gain by using multiple shots is that I can use one as the base image — here I’ve chosen a later shot with a good sky — and then “paint in” elements from other shots. One example is using a shot taken earlier in the evening where the building itself had more light on it. While it’s nearly silhouetted in the base image, I put the earlier exposure on a layer above, added a black layer mask to hide it entirely, and painted the building back in using white as my foreground color. I could reduce the opacity of the upper layer to better blend it and achieve the level of light that I wanted on the building.
Another advantage was that I could get more traffic streaks than what actually appeared in any one photo. I picked dark shots from my bracketing that had good headlight and taillight streaks, stacked them on layers above the base image and set those layers to “lighten” in the layer mode menu. That made only the areas that were lighter than the base image visible — in this case, the light streaks.
Headlights from the street to my left would also occasionally throw some light into the leaves of the tree above me. I was also able to paint in some detail there using the same technique as I used on the light streaks.
The downside of this kind of shoot is that I’m tied to one position for about an hour. I usually move around and find different angles, trying to make the most of the light as it changes and fades. Here, I need to dedicate myself to one angle and stick with it in order to have all the layers I need for the final product. Last night the sky was surprisingly dramatic for a short period in the middle of this sequence an I regretted positioning that tree where it hid the sky but I was committed to stay put in order to keep all of the images registered. Since this is a local shot for me, it’s not such a bad thing. I’ll just keep going back and trying different things.
It’s ridiculously hot out there — heat indexes well over 100 for days now — but the purple coneflowers in the front yard don’t seem to mind. I’m hoping it eases up a little tomorrow evening so that I can make another attempt at a twilight shot of the Eldridge Hotel. Finger’s crossed…