Stopping Time

Yesterday I shared a few photos the K-7 took just to show off a bit. Well, here's another.


Thirty Minutes of Sunset. This is the composite image created from the second time-lapse I shared yesterday. Personally, I think this may be the best photo I've ever taken. Sure there's some ghosting in the middle I'd wish could be removed, but that's a characteristic of the lens I used and its alignment to the sun. On the one hand, it's good to see the year start off so well. On the other, it's kind of sad to know that I may spend the rest of 2014 not taking any shots as good as this one.


This is a similar photo to the above only in black and white. The sky is the same but in the first photo I caopied in a different version of the bay to make it perfectly glass-like.


Here's a sepia version of the photo that contributed the bay in the first shot. It's hard to see, but the first shot has a choppier bay.

Yesterday I shared a moonset photo and time lapse. Between that shot and these ones, the K-7 had an all-nighter. Here is a star-trails shot it took as ocean fog rolled in.


My K-7 has decided not to go quietly into retirement, instead perferring to prove that anything the newer K-3 can do, the K-7 can do better.*

*Except video.

K-7 Unretierment

So, yes, my K-7 is officially pseudo-retired. Which explains why it came out of retirement for no reason other than to show up the newer, spiffier K-3.

The first weekend in January, I took my girlfriend to Point Arena to stay at the lighthouse. I brought my K-7, K-3, and 6X7 for film support. The shots will trickle in this month because there were a lot of them -- three cameras and three days. And it was a great weekend for my photography. I got to try a bunch of new tricks and took some shots that I'm very pleased with. Today, I'll focus on two shots.


I haven't really experimented with motion before. So I decided to make some animated gifs. I set the K-7 up to look southwest over the Pacific Ocean. This time-lapse covers 83 photos taken about two minutes apart. There are two little catches where strong winds moved the tripod slightly. Had it not been secured to the fence by its strap and with one tripod leg jammed through the fence rails, the camera may have fallen over. The photo below is a nine-frame composite of the above image meant to capture the whole time lapse in one frame.




I took this time-lapse image on our second night. This was our second sunset and it was stunning. The image that composites all of these frames will be in tomorrow's entry.

Pentax K2 Experiments

For fun one day back in October I got out my K2 and Nikon FM and used the K2 to take a few shots. Here are the results.


Loading the FM with film



I also grabbed an empty milk jug.



Using the FM's mirror box like a periscope



I have no idea what this nor how it happened.

Saturday Special -- Byodo-In Temple, Hawaii

When I wrote this week's preview post, I forgot about yesterday's Found Photos Friday. So my digital shots from Byodo-In Temple near Kaneohe, Hawaii, had to be pushed back 24 hours. In a couple of weeks or less, I'll have the day's film shots. I also brought my K1000 to Byodo-In.


The temple itself.


I thought this was a super-great, original, creative, and unique photo. Then I looked up the temple on Panoramio (I'm quite active on Panoramio with almost 1,000 photos accepted in Google Earth as of this post's writing) and like eight other people had taken basically this same photo. And mine isn't even the best.





Behind the temple is a small bamboo patch. When I was there the wind knocked the bamboo together and it sounded like being inside an out-of-tune marimba. All around the bamboo shoots struck against each other and each time struck two notes. Sometimes they made a chord and other times they made dissonance. Mostly, though, it was a very peaceful setting (except for the mosquitoes.)


A small shrine by a pond


A small out building by a waterfall


Spitting frog statue


Carp and a waterfall and a long exposure. Shots like this made me glad I brought my tripod.


True story-- One of the temple's care takers asked me if I was using my photos for personal use (I have some gear that looks professional-grade.) I replied that I was and had no commercial intentions. Which is true; none of these photos are on my website. She let me be and later was the person who invited me to partake in the tea ceremony.


Lighting incense


Look, the bird and fish feed was a dollar. Of course I'm going to feed the birds and fishes. Their gentleness surprised me a lot. Not a one of them even brushed my fingers with its beak. I had expected to get a few pinches.


Tea ceremony -- washing the cup


Tea ceremony -- washing the brush


Tea Ceremony -- folding the napkin


Tea Ceremony -- the brush


And on a last note, just a reminder that Luch hearts Shelly. I have no idea who these people are.

Do not Adjust your Screens!

During my Hawaii and Japan trip last month, I spent a lot of time tweaking images' colors, saturation, and other settings to try and develop some post-processing chops. Some of those experiments works. Some. I'll share some that didn't work this week, too.


These two images are variations of the same shot. Neither is true-color, though the one below is bit closer. Basically, these illustrate what some layers, blending, and different basic effects can do in Photoshop. This is also why so many people who use Photoshop probably shouldn't.



I took this long-duration shot at sunset with an ND1000 filter on the front. Fortunately, the clouds were moving fast enough to allow for ample blur in 30 seconds. Notice the diagonal band of lighter image and the darker spots on the side? When you go to buy your variable ND (4 to 1000, in my case), don't buy the $16 one.


Night shot. This is actually pretty close to real life. The hotel had a nice view (when photographed correctly), but it was fairly noisy. I had to choose, most nights, between sleeping in a warm room with a very anemic air conditioner or sleeping in a comfortable room with ludicrous street noise.


And here's the shot by day, to give you an idea of what the colors actually looked like. It was, honestly, a nice view.

Driving my Nissan GTR* and Crashing my Ford Mustang*

* -- Radio-controlled


Fun with an ND 1,000 filter
To get this shot, I set the camera's ISO to 100 and set the variable ND 1,000 filter to max. I left the car parked for about 20 seconds and then reversed and advanced it quickly.


More fun with an ND 1,000 filter. For this, I zoomed my Samyang 18-28 from 18 to 28 over the span of the exposure.


This wasn't me driving. I let the girlfriend drive the Ford Mustang, which is a LOT zippier and harder to control than the GTR. And she plowed it into the wood chips. It was fine, though, and in the coming months I'll have some exciting video footage of the RC cars.

A Few Takes on the Golden Gate Bridge

We'll keep this week-closing post simple and stick just to photos. After the winery tour, my girlfriend and I headed to the Golden Gate Bridge for sunset. Here are some of the shots.

The first shot is from my Samsung Galaxy S3. Yes, it's a camera phone shot. The editing is thanks to the Aviary app. No, I'm not an Instagrammer.

Sterling Winery, Pretty Good Photos

About a month ago I visited Sterling Winery in Calistoga Springs, California, for the second time. It's a very well designed winery with great architecture and lighting. Specifically, the way the outside light interacts with the buildings is very appealing. Sometimes a structure feels like it was designed to be photographed. This is one of those structures.

All of these shots were with my Pentax K-7. For lenses, I used my Samyang 18-28, Sigma 35-80, and Quntaray (Tamron) 70-300. Post processing included minor unsharp masking (15% with a 20-pixel radius) and some color or shadow enhancements.


This winery building awaits after a brief tram ride. The tram ride is part of the attraction and great fun. This building, however, is the end of the tour.


Behind that wall the first greeter and taste presetner waits. The tour includes four wines for tasting and a free glass.


After the first wine, here is one of the glasses on a bench.


Here you can see how shadows work with the building structure to create an additional dimension. Without the shadow-wall interplay, the building would be little more than a nice mission-style building with great views.


Additional shadows on an adjoining outside walkway.


This image shows an open area. I'm not sure what it's for as it's been roped off, like a footballer's private club party, both times I've visited the winery.

A hallway and a junction. Up to now, all the images had been taken with wide-angle or standard lenses. This was a telephoto (the Tamron) shot. Telephotos tend to make images look flat due to their increased depth of field and the ratio of magnification versus object distances. Were it not for the tree in the middle of the shot, the building would look flatter than a wall. As for why it's in black and white? I forgot to take my camera off tungsten after we went inside so the original was blue.

More shadows working on the walls.


N.B. the vignetting and chandelier's shadows on the wall. This was the fifth iteration of this image and the intended look I had when I took this shot. To arrive at this image from an original that somewhat washed out the wall and had only faint shadows required multiple layers, blending, mashing, and opacity as well and opacity type changes.

Empire Gold Mine State Park

California is in a budget crisis and many of our state parks are at risk of temporary closure. Empire Gold Mine is not, to my knowledge, one of those parks, but I wanted to use this post to draw attention to this issue.

Closing the state parks would be exceedingly short sited and detrimental. The park system in the United States is our society's great equalizer. In the parks, all people -- regardless of wealth or class -- have equal access to inexpensive or free natural settings. Many of California's state parks charge $35 a night for camping, some being just fractions of a mile from multiple-hundreds-of-dollars-per-night hotels. Granted, for $35 a night you don't get a private shower or a bed which doesn't need inflating, but you do get a place to sleep, another to cook dinner, and 22 hours (check in is 2:00 PM and check out is noon, typically) in nature.

Closed parks also will likely attract more people who want to use the undisturbed spaces for squatting, growing illegal drugs, and supporting other criminal activities. Closed parks could increase the state's risk of catastrophic fire damage. If you'd like more information, or if you'd like to help (I hope you will do both), follow this link:

http://savestateparks.org/

























I thought I might end on a monochrome conversion of the first image. Empire Mine State Park is a place set up for taking great photographs. And that holds true for most if not all of our state parks -- California and elsewhere.

It is not hyperbole to say that our parks are in a crisis and we need to be active in making sure they remain open and public. And, hey, would you like a piece of trivia? If you visited one state park each year, how many years would it take to visit all of California's state parks? In 2012, it would take 279 years.

State parks are a great and communal gift to the American people. We must steward them and ensure our state keeps them public, safe, and open.