Month: July 2011

I was in Auburn today and returned to a small park I discovered a few days ago, tucked away between Auburn Ravine Road and I-80, to see if I could get some photos of the fish in the small pond there, using my polarizing filter to reduce the glare on the surface of the water. The pond is surrounded by grass, reeds and cattails. There are a few ducks, lots of dragonflies, and a single picnic table next to the pond under a large tree surrounded by a large grassy field. It is a very quiet and serene park; it seems to have a calming effect on one. I was sort of vegging out as I strolled around the perimeter of the pond. I realized I fit right in with the two groups of developmentally disabled adults having lunch in picnic areas some distance away from the pond. One of the people, a middle aged woman, came over to me as I photographed the ducks and extended her hand and told me something about what was in store for her that evening. She ignored the calls from the caregiver after I replied with the word “fabulous” to describe her impending activity. As the woman was led away by her caregiver, she looked over her shoulder, laughed, and repeated the word “fabulous” over and over at the top of her lungs. Like I said, I fit right in!

Whether it was the mesmerizing effect of the park or just my usual inability to remember to reset the White Balance, once again I screwed up the settings. It was only after I got in my car to drive home that I realized the White Balance was set to “white florescent” and has been since Friday when I took photos of the blood drive in the gym. I had been wondering about the color on my photos the past couple of days. Now I know why. I did manage to use the polarizing filter with good effect and was able to tweak the white balance with software after I downloaded the photos to my computer. I cropped this photo and applied Auto Curves. The dried grass on the upper left side of the photo is on the surface of the water and the white spots are surface reflections. Everything else is under water.

Focal Length 200
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/100

This dragonfly alit on a Fortnight Lily at the gym this morning. It looks rather curmudgeonly and even a bit sad to me. Who knew a dragonfly could show personality?

I tweaked the photo a little, cropping to a vertical format and applying Curves to make up for the slight overexposure. I wish I’d had my beanbag with me to steady the camera a little better. The focus went a little fuzzy when I cropped it.

Focal Length 200mm
ISO 200
f/5.6
1/200

I spent 3 hours steam cleaning Bobo’s cage today; it shouldn’t take that long but it had been quite a while since I’d done a thorough cleaning and I discovered that when Bobo wipes banana off her beak onto the cage bars after eating, that banana turns to concrete if I don’t clean it off immediately. Banana that has turned to concrete is almost impossible to get off, even using a steamer. After completing that chore, I didn’t feel like making much of an effort to take pictures, so I relied on my stand-by subject, Bobo. Since I’m still catching up on my photography class lessons, I looked to see what I had left to do. My Lesson 6 assignment was to use a macro lens but I don’t have a macro lens so an alternate assignment was to work on getting as close as possible to something with sharp focus. A twist on the assignment was to use a bean bag instead of a tripod. The goal was to produce an image with a life-size subject in a 4 by 6 inch format.

I had a bag of beans (a combination of small white navy beans and Great Northerns if you have to know) in a ziplock bag and I sat down in a chair in front of Bobo’s cage, set the camera on the bean bag in my lap, aimed the lens in her general direction and let auto focus find her. I was so lazy in fact that I didn’t even look through the view finder. I just looked at the LCD screen after I took the photo and moved my knees or adjusted the focal length accordingly. Bobo sat quite still, wondering WTF? while I slumped in the chair facing her and snapped her picture. I was able to get nice clear focus on most of the shots because she sat still and I didn’t have to hand hold the camera because I had the bean bag. I decided to go for bigger than life size and cropped the photo (also allowed by the assignment) to an interesting composition. I love the reflection of the bay window in her eye.

Focal Length 80mm
ISO 400
f/5
1/8
Cropped

. . . I gave blood today. This is my friend Bob’s arm as he was waiting to start donating blood. I had just finished. One of Channel 10/The Blood Source’s Blood Drives was held at my gym today so we decided to donate this morning. I was almost rejected because a drop of my blood in solution didn’t sink in time, indicating I had low iron. Not to worry, they said, we’ll centrifuge it. I passed the second test. Of course I had my camera and tried some one-handed shots of blood (mine, Bob’s, and another guy who gave me permission) dripping into the bag but after reviewing them I decided they were not very appealing, or interesting for that matter. Bob’s arm with the sticker gets the point across.

Focal Length 200mm
ISO 800
f/5.6
1/80
SOOC

The Farmers’ Market at Mahany Park by my gym is always a tempting destination after Thursday’s Pilates class and I went there this morning intending to replenish my depleted supply of The Crazy Gringo Taco Wagon Salsa that I first tasted when the market opened there in early June. The Crazy Gringo is the third stall but on my way past the first stall, Snow’s Citrus Court from Newcastle, my eye caught sight of a stack of jars filled with mandarin orange dark chocolate sauce. I stopped, oohed, drooled, tasted, and, as Renée told Tom in “Jerry Maguire,” it “had me at hello.” Wow! They told me it keeps 18 months in the refrigerator. I’m wondering if it will last through the day! I did manage to get my salsa (regular plus tomatillo and habanero) and some nectarines, but clearly the highlight of my visit was the mandarin chocolate sauce.

Focal Length 62mm
ISO 200
f/7.1
1/60
Cropped

I had another hawk rescue call today. Someone reported an injured hawk on the side of Highway 65 near Twelve Bridges. I drove over but I saw no movement or anything that looked like a hawk on the side of the road or in the median except a few shards of tire rubber. I went around a couple of times and finally pulled over at Twelve Bridges. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack and I was unsuccessful in finding the injured hawk. Acres of dry grass and weeds and who knows what else lurking there stretched in front of me. Since I couldn’t find the hawk, I took a few shots trying to remember the hyperfocal distance lesson from class. This scene isn’t much to look at but it is what that entire area looks like, and I seem to have managed to get everything in focus without using a tripod.

Focal Length 18
ISO 100
f/16
1/100
SOOC

. . .but when it’s over 100 degrees outside, who cares? To be fair, the stick-on label did warn me that there might be a few seeds in this “seedless” watermelon. I took the last hunk of watermelon out of the fridge intending to devour its sweet, crunchy, and cool refreshing flesh. I ate one sliver and found some seeds and spit them onto the plate. That’s when I remembered I hadn’t yet taken any photos today.

Upstairs I went with my plate of watermelon to my “studio,” where I used a white paper background and closed the shutters in the room so I could see how much light I could capture using long shutter speeds. I set the camera on the tripod and set the shutter speed to the “bulb” setting and used ISO 100, the lowest on my camera. I also used a small aperture because I wanted the entire plate to be in focus. I held the shutter open as I counted, then used a stop watch to time myself at various settings from 3 seconds up to 9 seconds. The best results were just over 5 seconds. I was interested to see that leaving the lens open just a few seconds produced a well-lighted photo even with such a small aperture and low ISO.

Focal Length 56mm
ISO 100
f/14
5.2 seconds
SOOC

I was just trying to get an unfurled flag on Vernon Street in Roseville this afternoon. It wasn’t until I downloaded the shots to my computer that I found a bit of irony in the juxtaposition of Old Glory, that venerable symbol of freedom, and the restricting signs next to it.

Focal Length 95mm
ISO 200
f/11
1/30
SOOC

I’m not Dorothy but today I saw lions and tigers and bears at the Folsom Zoo and Sanctuary. I’d not been there before and it was a delightful place. I’m trying to catch up on my photography class assignments and a recent assignment was to go someplace where animals are in cages and photograph them so that the cage bars don’t show. We were asked to use a tripod, a large aperture, and manual focus, and to take our time and fiddle with settings.

I was at the zoo for more than an hour and a half about midday as the temperatures rose and the sweat dripped down my back. At least there is lots of shade at the zoo and I was glad my water bottle hooked onto my jeans. I met a docent who was excited to tell me that the young mountain lion, Cedar, would be let out into the main enclosure with one of the other mountain lions for the first time. This docent was to sit and observe the interaction for a couple of hours. I set up my camera and tripod and waited with her as one lion paced anxiously and occasionally disappeared into the indoor enclosure. I was unable to get any decent photos of that lion because it kept pacing and using manual focus proved difficult for me with a moving target. When a zoo staff person advised the docent that the anticipated connection would not happen, she left. The zoo staffer then told me that there was one lion in a cave around the corner.

Photographing the lion deep inside the cave proved almost impossible. I could barely see him. Focusing was next to impossible into the darkness. I was so intent on the manual focus that I forgot to open the aperture wider and so my photos of him were not very good. I bumped up the ISO but didn’t open the lens. He did not take his eyes off me while I tried to take his photo. Another docent approached and told me that the tiger was lolling about on his back in his cage and she took me to see him. By the time we got there, the tiger had moved to the back of the enclosure and was barely visible. I did manage to get a few decent exposures but still forgot to open up the lens. Besides, it wasn’t too exciting to watch the back of a tiger’s head as he slept.

I made my way to the bears and found a delightful and engaging black bear, I think it was Tahoe, perched in a hammock made by weaving old fire hoses together. Tahoe was enjoying destroying cardboard boxes and just doing what bears do in captivity. Besides the loudly calling peacocks roaming the grounds, Tahoe was the only active creature that I saw in the zoo today. I set up near her and by this time, I realized I needed to open the lens and finally managed to get the cage bars to almost disappear. I spent 30 minutes watching and fiddling with settings. When I was done, I returned to both the mountain lion and tiger exhibits but they had all disappeared to the coolness of their indoor sanctuaries. I’ll go back to the zoo when the weather’s cooler and when the animals are awake and are more inclined to roam about.

Mountain Lion: in a dark recess and aperture not large enough for the bars to disappear:

Focal Length 300mm
ISo 640
f/9
1/50
Increased exposure with Curves

Tiger; increased ISO but still too small an aperture:

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 1000
f/9
1/50
SOOC

Bear: largest aperture at that focal length and the bars are almost gone. I was able to return the ISO to 100 because there was more light in this area of the sanctuary and I could use manual focus more easily than with the moving lions because this bear was content to stay in the hammock.

Focal Length 270mm
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/30
SOOC

This morning I washed my car inside and out and this afternoon I went to Costco at 5 o’clock for gas. Surprisingly, there were no lines to wait in and gas was $3.55 a gallon. I never thought I’d get excited about gas prices in excess of $3.50 per gallon. Boy, do we get indoctrinated fast.

While the gas was pumping I thought I’d take a photo; the attendant came over and offered to take a photo of me pumping gas. I declined and explained about my blog. He waxed ecstatic over my camera and I told him I got it at Costco, where else! While I put my camera back in the car, he removed the pump and closed the gas cap. What a nice guy and what great service! He’s reflected in the clean car’s flank just above the nozzle.

Focal Length 32mm
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/125
SOOC

I love gardenias and their heady, sweet fragrance…so long as they are outside. To many people, their smell is too reminiscent of a funeral parlor and I tend to agree but, in the right place, they are not only fragrant, they are lovely to look at. Today I visited my friends Henry and Sharon to thank them for watching my house (and, as it turns out, saving my fountain which had a slight mishap while I was gone) and to deliver my thank you gifts. When I left, Henry cut me a bouquet of gardenias from their entry. Their fragrance was almost overpowering in the 95° heat but it was a sweet gesture and I figured I could tolerate them if I set them in the living room. As I started to arrange the bouquet, it struck me that I hadn’t yet taken any photos today. They were lovely with water droplets on the petals. Since my “studio” still had remnants from yesterday’s shoot, I took a bloom upstairs to photograph. I set the camera on the tripod determined to use my 35mm prime lens with a low ISO, a slow shutter speed, and a small aperture to see what the results would be. I used my OTT lights as the lighting and set the flower on a black background.

I tried focusing on different points on the flower and leaves to see if the hyperfocal distance theory would work on a closeup. I think it does. When I focused on the flower center, the most prominent part closest to the camera, the entire flower seems to be in focus and when I focused on the drops on the back leaves or lower leaves, different parts of the flower are out of focus. I like the result with the focus on the center of the flower.

Focal Length 35mm
ISO 100
f/13
1/4
Cropped