Ocean Wildlife

Two days ago I shared a number of cemetery photos. Well, I also had the opportunity to take a number of nature photos the same day. Here are some of them. Tomorrow we'll finish off the Point Arena blog entries with some foggy hike photos I took the day before these.


The night of the 4th my girlfriend saw this heron hanging out by the lighthouse. The morning of the 5th it was still there, so I grabbed my 400mm lens. 


It's a simply stunning bird and, unfortunately, I missed all the shots of it grabbing fish.


There were also harbor seals. And they noticed me and many looked up at me the first time I pointed the camera at them.


I was stunned and thrilled. Seals, in the wild. This was fantastic and amazing and such a rare thing, right?


Nope. Totally the most common seal around. And they hang out on these rocks all the time. People go there to photograph seals.


That afternoon my girlfriend and I hiked down to bowling ball beach. The bowling ball concretions were all underwater, but the tide had delivered a dead seal to the beach. Three turkey vultures feasted on it when I approached, but two had flown off before I was close enough to take good photos. The third hung around and didn't fly off until I was about thirty feet away.


When he did, he flew low and I managed a few shots in flight. I had an old manual focus Vivitar 135mm lens on my K3 so I didn't expect much of my tracking. But the bird flew in a fairly straight and predictable trajectory, so I managed a few good shots.


Having a camera that takes more than eight shots per second helped a lot.


Eventually it landed on a cliff overhead with three other turkey vultures. The seal had no head, which one of the local shop owners told me was very bad news for surfers.

Gravestones

This week I'll wrap up my Point Arena images. The other week I had a sunset time-lapse followed by a cloud trails composite image. Those were, obviously, taken at the same time. The other two photos in the second post were also taken on the same day. Well, all the images from Point Arena that I share this week were also taken that same day. In short, it was a good day for photography.

On a whim, I stopped into a cemetery to take photos. At the exact same moment I stopped in, so did another guy. He had in tow two medium-format digital Hasselblads and lenses. In sum, the gear he had in his car was worth more than my entire camera collection. Stands to reason, he was tooling around in a decked-out Carrera. If I'd known being a professional photographer paid that well, I may have made different choices in college.

Anyway, I started with some establishing-type shots to simply get to know the place and get comfortable.


A number of the graves had stone borders or designs. Many also had raised dirt, fresh or not. I liked that. When I die, I want to be buried with bottled water, a flashlight, and a shotgun with lots of ammo. Why? Because when the dead rise from the grave that's zombies. I want to be well hydrated and capable of defending myself.



Many of the newer graves had concrete borders. I supposed that's for visitors.



This statue was next to a pastor's grave.


The pastor may have been a golfer.


Another statue in the cemetery. There were a number of statues, all about 18 inches tall or so. Many of them from different eras and clearly with different intents. This was my favorite of them.


Many of the graves has silk flowers. But some had come loose in time and littered the cemetery. Also, most of them were severely sun-faded, which actually made me sadder than the graves. It meant that no one had been by in a long time to tend to the graves.


This was a particularly sad grave -- a child who died after 57 days.



At one section, a number of children's graves were grouped together. Many had stuffed animals and toys adorning them. The adornments showed a lot of weathering and fading.



I almost didn't take photos of the children's graves as I was debating if it was disrespectful. In the end, I decided to do it because I wouldn't show any respect for the kids' short lives by simply walking past.

Photo Credits

A couple of weeks ago, unexpectedly, a professor at UIUC e-mailed me asking for rights to use some of my photos in a book he's finishing that studies daylighting use in architecture. The compensation: photo credit. I'm down. No question in my mind is this a yes. Unfortunately, none of my images fit the book perfectly.

Well, I happen to know the building fairly well, having worked at Webcor when they wrapped it and been involved in to the photo process (even though I didn't get to attend the actual shoot.)

Since none of my photos fit the bill, I volunteered to go take some more. I was going to be at Civic Center anyway, I said (that was a fib, though there are some great restaurants down there) and I would just do it while there.

It actually worked out VERY well. After the shoot I walked to my favorite camera store in the city and they had a Pentax 6X7 bellows WITH the double release for $99. My gut reaction was 'how many holes are in the bellows.' But Gassers is known for good stuff, so I looked at it and it's in mint condition, the bellows having been recently replaced. I mean, shoot, for this condition I couldn't buy one on eBay for less than $400, so, yeah, it's mine now and waiting for its firsts tests. One thing I'll be making is a 6X7-to-M42 converter so I can use my M42 lenses as macros for the 6X7. That ought to have some neat effects and produce good results as the M42 lenses are slightly sharper than their 6X7 counterparts (on a lines per millimeter basis.)

Anyway, the trip was hugely productive and here are some of my favorite photos.


This lady stopped me after the shoot and asked me to take her photo. Whenever anyone talks to me, even people I know, my gut reaction is abject terror. So being stopped by a stranger nearly sent me into cardiac shock. She wanted her photo taken and mailed to her (snail mail.) I figured why not. So I hope she liked the shot when it arrived.


Here is the SF Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) building. It's LEED Platinum and all kinds of great. There are some wind turbines behind the sculpture column but they don't actually catch that much wind (that's the building's dirty secret -- don't tell anyone.) That said, this is still one of the most environmentally friendly buildings in San Francisco, if not the most environmentally friendly. SF should be really grateful such a great building is in our city.


I bet those offices get warm in the evening.


I love the sun shades on the building. Here's a high-key version I edited in post that I'm fond of.


Different angle in mid-key.


Yup, that's where you're at.


Thank you for reading!

I'm on a Boat

Originally, I planned to share some photos from a recent softball game. Instead, I elected to share some photos from my company's annual employee appreciation party. On Wednesday, I'll have some more. This year's party was on the California Spirit, a Hornblower ship. My company does a good job with the annual party. This year, I spent most of it working as the company photographer, but still managed time to take a few photos for myself.


Outside Sausalito, about halfway through the night, we passed a number of boats moored in the bay. I mostly used manual focus lenses that night. This was with my Vivitar 135mm 1:2.8. This lens has always performed very well and is one of my favorite short-length telephoto lenses.


More boats.


Before everyone arrived, I took some establishing shots to chronicle some of the night's events. Each year we have gaming tables (though we're not allowed to use actual money and when you run out the dealers just hand out more chips... Yeah, I know...) Of the Blackjack and Roulette table photos, this was the best.


The Bay Bridge West Span.


The Golden Gate Bridge


Another shot of the Golden Gate Bridge.


While shooting the boat photos above, I noticed the XO outside the cabin, getting some fresh air. I managed this shot.

Mount Diablo Macros

Monday I shared a few photos from my April 7th trip up Mount Diablo (yes, I'm about two months behind on posting photos this year.) I also took my K-7 that day. For lenses, I had my 50mm Pentax-A 1:2, 135mm Vivitar, a macro bellows, and my 31mm 1:1.8 FA Limited. I also brought my new Manfrotto Carbon Tripod With 3-Way Head - MK293C4D3Q2 (Google Affiliate Ad) tripod to test it on macro photos. I was pretty pleased with how it performed. At any rate, the trip's purpose was macro stacking. And some of the test shots I took for stacking macro photos worked very well. Since this trip, I got another macro bellows, this one with a built-in slide that will allow better macro stacks.


In real life, that fly was pretty big.


Selective focus macro, made by stacking but only focusing on part of the image.


Made from about 30 razor-thin focal slices.


I would lichen this to moss, and algae. Maybe both.


Stacking macros isn't the only use of a bellows, though. With the 135mm attached, I managed some good very-close shots from a number of feet away. This lizard was skittish, but I was able to get these shots from about three or four feet.


I think this is a fence lizard, but I'm not sure.





Some flowers. I used the flash on this shot. Yeah. I was surprised by how well it turned out, too.








And, when on Mount Diablo, it's good to get some area shots, too. It's a scenic place. This was made by stacking about six shots to get maximum depth of field without stopping down too far. Look closely under the bench and you can see a stitching error.


A multi-shot panorama of the observation building. The individual shots weren't stopped down very far, so each image had a different focal point, similar to the technique I used in the image above.

High ISO Macros

I hadn't used my macro set up on a film camera before last week. MY macros set up is a Pentax Macro Bellows II and m Vivitar 135mm 1:2.5 lens. This yields very nice enlargement with sharp details from a decent distance. So I took out my Pentax K2 (recently back from being repaired... again) and the macro rig. For film I used Ilford P4 pushed to 1000 ISO and Kodak Double-X 5222. I don't recall which of these images are which, but here are the results:


A flower growing by the complex's dumpster


Another dumpster-collocated flower


A mushroom top about the size of a dime


Leaf -- exposed for the leaf


Leaf -- exposed for the background


Macro at f2.5


Macro at f11 or f16


Another flower


A mushroom about the size of a pencil eraser (the kind on the back of the pencil)


Mushroom hiding behind some leaves