Month: April 2012

The call came at 10:08 AM. The guy at Action Camera sounded as excited as I was. My Nikon D800 full frame DSLR camera finally arrived after two months of waiting and almost daily calls to the camera store. A prior commitment kept me from running over immediately to pick it up. But, by 3PM I had it home. The battery took 2 hours and 35 minutes to charge. Actually, I think it was partially charged but I needed almost the entire two and a half hours to attach the camera strap and familiarize myself with the settings enough to be able to take a photo.

I am in love. I thought the sound of the shutter release of the D90 was orgasmic enough, but the D800 makes an incredibly wonderful ka-chung that is very authoritative and almost made me swoon. First, let me introduce the D800.

It was so late when I finally got my act together to actually start taking photos that I chose who else but Bobo to make my comparative shots. I used comparable lenses for these shots (D90: 18-200mm zoom; D800: 28-300mm zoom), sat at the same place, used the same settings (manual mode, maximum extension of zoom, ISO 400, f/5.6, 1/30 shutter speed). The D90 can hold its own, but the D800, oh my. Click on the photo, then click on it again to enlarge it. You can see the difference, especially in the feather detail. These photos are not excellent. The shutter speed was too slow to hand hold but I did. Just wait for wonderful shots to come!!

D90:

D800:

The anticipated ukulele/piano jam session of yesterday evening never happened. Copious amounts of beer and wine were consumed which we thought might trigger it but instead, our indelicate consumption of alcohol caused us all to retire early. This morning, however, caffein was all we needed to get going again. Mady got things off to a good start by actually retrieving the newspaper and posing for a shot; not the pose I had hoped for but at least she was still. Arthur tuned his ukulele and started to strum the chords to “Hukilau” (“oh, we’re going to a hukilau”) which is a song I learned words and hula moves to on a long ago trip to Hawaii. My spontaneous hula caused Sue to grab my camera and take some shots but because she didn’t understand my back button focus settings, the shot is thankfully out of focus. I took a shot of Arthur strumming and one last shot of Mady, anxious about the long car ride home. As I look at these parting shots, none is in crisp focus. I used Aperture Priority for all and completely forgot about exposure compensation adjustments. The first several shots are all SOOC; I cropped the last one of Mady slightly. They are all candids so I won’t obsess about my lack of technique. Tomorrow, it’s back to serious photography again. In the meantime, I’m going to miss Mady.

My brother and sister-in-law have returned from their Hawaiian cruise and arrived this afternoon to retrieve Mady. Arthur eagerly shared his newly acquired musical skill: playing the ukulele. The new uke was out of tune so we used the age old ukulele tuning method of singing “my dog has fleas” which failed to result in an accurately tuned uke so we played D-C-E-A on my out-of-tune piano which resulted in a better sound, but, was not satisfactory enough for my brother so we ended up driving to The Guitar Center to get a real tuner. As luck would have it, The Guitar Center is next door to Total Wine so we stocked up on some beer: Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye, and DeChutes Obsidian and I found a red blend that I couldn’t resist: “Sexy Wine Bomb ‘Blends Have More Fun.'” By the time we consume the beer and the wine, we won’t care whether or not the uke or the piano are tuned and I anticipate our jam session later this evening will sound pretty good to us…maybe not the neighbors, though.

Here’s Arthur as he tuned the guitar out on the patio. I’m reflected in one of the tuning heads.

Focal Length 50mm
ISO 200
Aperture Priority
f/1.4
1/1250
SOOC

Mady and I walked along Miner’s Ravine Trail again today. It’s Mady’s last day with me. Arthur and Sue are returning tomorrow to take her home. This time we turned left toward town and walked about mile and a half before turning around. I don’t know how close we got to Royer Park which was my original destination. The GPS on my iPhone was having trouble pinpointing my exact location on the map for some reason but I had my Run Keeper App on and it recorded a distance of 1.43 miles when we decided to turn around.

I’m still using Aperture Priority settings on my camera. I had auto ISO on for a while but changed it to ISO 100 because the sky was so bright. I’m still so used to fiddling with the dials to make adjustments in manual mode that I failed to notice that I’d moved the shutter dial which doesn’t do anything in Aperture Priority unless you have Easy Exposure Compensation enabled which I just did yesterday as an adjunct to Aperture Priority. So, when I got home, I noticed that I’d adjusted all photos I took today by -0.33 ev. Dang! Once again I’m foisted by my petard. I think that adjustment darkened the exposure by 1/3 of a stop, but it didn’t seem to do too much damage to the shots I took.

My favorite shot from today’s walk is a closeup of a thistle. We had to walk off the road into the weeds about 30 feet but I pretended that no rattlers were in the vicinity. We made it out unscathed so I guess I was right. I like the colors, the depth of field, the lighting, and yes, even the composition. It isn’t in the middle of the shot, although a few I took were before I caught myself.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
Shooting Mode: Aperture Priority
Exposure Bias: -0.33 (by mistake)
f/8
1/125
SOOC

I’m up early today; plenty of time to check out the “Our Daily Challenge” theme: Three Colors. That’s easy. The beautiful and tasty strawberries I just bought at the nearby Granny May’s strawberry farm seemed perfect for the challenge: red berries, green calyx, red and white background. The “easy” shot turned into an hour of fiddling and retaking and exchanging backgrounds. When I downloaded the first batch of photos I realized the red and white checked Paris-Bistro apron I used as a background was a more intense color of red than the strawberries and was distracting so I found a white dish towel to use instead. Then, the placement of the berries became an issue and I fiddled some more. I started out using Aperture Priority and thought the results were too bright. I realized I needed to change my white balance to tungsten and that helped. I finally changed back to manual mode and was able to change the exposure settings to my satisfaction. When I returned the settings to Aperture Priority just to see what the difference was, the settings the camera chose were suddenly the same as my manual settings. Woot!

After all of this, on closer inspection, the third color actually is the yellowish color of the tiny strawberry seeds. And, since white is really the presence of all color, I should have used a black background which is the absence of all color if I really wanted to be a purist about the whole thing. But I’ve fiddled long enough and I don’t think a black background with strawberries would look very good. Unless they’re on a black reflective surface…uh oh. No, I don’t have anymore time for this shot or I’ll miss my Pilates class.

Focal Length 50mm
Shooting Mode: Aperture Priority
f/1.4
1/20
WB Tungsten
SOOC

Asparagus, my favorite vegetable, is to me, the epitome of spring. I am lucky to live near the premier growing region of asparagus in the world—the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta. I bought some asparagus this morning to make a new soup recipe that was featured in this morning’s newspaper. Today’s challenge theme is “expression” and since asparagus is the quintessential expression of the season I took some photos of the spears before I chopped them up for soup.

Focal Length 50mm
Shooting Mode: Aperture Priority
ISO 100
f/1.4
1/20
SOOC

I don’t have a Mady blog, and since Bobo isn’t featured in any shots today I don’t want to use Bobo’s Blog to post Mady shots. So, I have no where else to post these shots except to my blog so today’s blog gets a part 2. My Photography Workshop assignment for week 2 was freezing and implying motion AND a creative shutter speed shot. We had to use the shutter priority shooting mode. These are my two favorite shots that I took of Mady today and we haven’t gone on our walk yet. Could there be a Part 3 to today’s blog?

Focal Length 50mm
ISO 200
f/2.8
1/1600
SOOC

Focal Length 50mm
ISO 100
f/16
1/30
SOOC

The weather is changing yet again. And, yet again, a song has entered my head and I can’t get it out. So, with the melody from “There’ll Be Some Changes Made” rattling around in my brain, the stormy looking clouds seemed to be the perfect illustration of my current tune torture. And as luck would have it, “change” is today’s daily challenge theme.

Focal Length 28mm
Shooting Mode: Aperture Priority
ISO: 200
f/7.1
1/4000
SOOC

When I was six or seven, I joined the Blue Birds. My mother was the Blue Bird leader. I have only vague recollections of what Blue Birds was all about except that once Blue Birds turned ten, we “flew up” to become Campfire Girls. Sadly, a quick Google search about the purpose of Blue Birds (to provide creative experiences or something for little girls) was renamed in 1989 and so Blue Birds I knew no longer exists. The good news is that today, I saw my first non human blue bird and had my camera with me to document the event.

Mady and I were walking in Mahaney Park about 6PM this afternoon and I noticed what was obviously a blue bird sitting on a marker sign in the park. I very slowly inched closer as I photographed and tried to keep Mady under control. The female flew in as I started to shoot. Luckily, I’m trying to become comfortable using the Shutter Priority setting on my camera so it did capture the female in flight but I was having trouble with pinpointing my autofocus so it’s not in perfect focus. The still photos of the male blue bird didn’t need the shutter priority mode but that’s how the camera was set and I did manage to get the focus under control with the still shots. I cropped the first shot because I was pretty far away but the other two are SOOC. The female didn’t stay too long.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 320
f/11
1/320
Cropped

Focal Length 300mm
ISO320
f/10
1/320
SOOC

Focal Length 300mm
ISO320
f/11
1/320
SOOC

Mady and I walked in Antelope Community Park this morning. It’s the first time since they built the high school that I have visited the redesigned playground area by the fire station. The new (to me) playground is colorful and interesting and there wasn’t a child in evidence. Of course it was just a few minutes after 8AM when we were there; I’m sure it will be filled with excited giggles and squeals later today.

My favorite photo from this morning is a view of a walkway railing in the playground. And, as luck would have it, today’s daily challenge theme is “ten or more.” I’m still trying to use shutter priority as much as possible this week, although a static railing is not exactly when one needs to use Shutter Priority settings. And, once again, I failed to recheck my settings and my ISO was set to 640 after some twilight photos of Mady in the yard last evening. Sigh. One of these days, I hope some of the photography information I’ve tried to pack my feeble brain cells with will actually emerge on a conscious level.

Focal Length 300mm
Shooting Mode: Shutter Prioity
ISO 640
f/32
1/80
SOOC

I was about to make breakfast, scrambled eggs with fresh thyme, when I decided to check today’s challenge theme. “Recipe!” I have no real recipe for scrambled eggs with thyme. I just like to add fresh herbs to things and since I always have fresh thyme, I usually add some thyme leaves to my eggs.

Focal Length 50mm
Mode: Manual
ISO 200
f/1.4
1/60
SOOC

Mady and I walked along Miner’s Ravine Trail in Roseville again late this afternoon. I decided to try to capture the frustratingly elusive pipevine swallowtail butterflies using Shutter Priority (we’re studying it this week) and I thought a fast shutter speed coupled with my 28-300mmm lens would do the trick. It’s only been a couple of days since the meadows were covered with these black beauties but today there were probably a quarter of the number that were out a few days ago. Perhaps it was the time of day (a little later than the other times we’ve visited) or the temperature (somewhere between the high 80’s to low 90’s) but I didn’t get a single shot of a butterfly.

Despite the searing heat today, the rains from a few days ago provided enough wetness that an interesting giant mushroom emerged in the shadow of an oak along the trail. It looks like a wild portobello. I kneeled down to take a few shots. Today’s challenge topic is “growing wild” and this wild mushroom certainly fills the bill. On the way back to the car, I let Mady walk along side the asphalt trail on the grass so it wouldn’t be so hot on her feet. A guy on a bicycle warned us that he’d just shooed a rattlesnake off the trail about a hundred feet up the trail minutes before; he thought they’d emerged onto the trail for the heat. Mady and I stayed in the middle of the asphalt after that and no more wading into the grasses to find the butterflies or the perfect poppy photo. Yikes.

Focal Length 300mm
Mode: Shutter Priority
ISO 200
f/6.3
1/160
SOOC

Today’s theme is “on the street where you live” so I’ve been singing that song ever since I read the topic. Don’t get me wrong. I love the music from “My Fair Lady” but now everywhere I’ve gone today I’m singing, “I have often walked down this street before. . . ” including on the treadmill, up and down my stairs, and yes, outside my front door to my very own street to take this photo. Enough already!

There is absolutely nothing interesting or unusual about my street this morning. I took a photo of the lone blooming rose with a couple of parked cars in the distance but wasn’t thrilled with the photo. As I walked down the street I noticed the storm drains are marked with a colorful warning and decided that was the most interesting thing on the street today. Plus, Earth Day is coming up so it is sort of timely. Our storm drain runoff empties into Dry Creek, a local salmon habitat.

Focal Length 50mm
ISO 100
f/6.3
1/200
SOOC

Last night I went to the monthly meeting of The Placer Camera Club, which meets in Auburn. I submitted my first photo for evaluation by a guest judge who is a professional photographer, which photo was first published in this blog on January 23, 2011 (Brown Pelican Makes A Splash ). I cropped it and made a levels adjustment that I didn’t make when it was first published. The judge gave me an 11 out of 12, which I was thrilled about, then he said that I should crop out the splash at the back, crop out the feet and focus on the wings and the head. I should note that he gave no ratings under 9 but at least I was in the top 75th percentile. One of the funniest comments made during the evaluation of more than 100 photographs last night was “this is Ed Sullivan if he were a bird.” That remark brought down the house. It was made by the photographer who took the photograph of a Snowy Egret hunched over in the typical Ed Sullivan hunched pose. By the way, the egret photo was rated a 9 because it wasn’t doing anything. A static pose was considered uninteresting except for something like Peterson’s Guide to Birds.

Late this afternoon, I finally got around to taking Mady for a walk at Mahaney Park near my gym As we walked through this wetland preserve in between a high school and some residences, I watched a snowy egret fly in and land in a nearby dead tree. I had my 28-300mm lens attached so I was prepared for birds. I stopped and took quite a few photos. One was sort of like the Ed Sullivan bird from last night and I decided I had to use it. Then, I discovered one view that looked like Beaker, one of the Muppets, and another where the egret looks like Albert Einstein. It goes to show you just never know what you’ll find when you’re out and about with a camera.

N.B. Sky photos always seem to show the “spot” that must be on my sensor. I guess I need to take it back to Action Camera for cleaning. I cannot imagine what that is. And the fact that it only shows in blue sky is weird. I could edit it out but now I’m trying to post SOOC photos again.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
f/10
1/250
SOOC

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
f/10
1/250
SOOC

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
f/14
1/160
SOOC

Today, Mady and I walked for an hour and a half along part of the Miner’s Ravine Trail in Roseville. It is beautiful there now because it is all green and the oaks are leafing out and the creek is running high and the wildflowers are abundant. With 80+ degrees forecast by this weekend, it won’t be long before the wildflowers are gone and the grass has dried to a golden hue. I’m glad I discovered this lovely area. It offers lots of photo ops.

I made myself leave my zoom/telephoto lenses at home so I can learn to use my new Nikkor 50mm 1.4 lens. It is incredibly fast and when I manage it, the focus is crisp. The depth of field is so shallow at the widest aperture, 1.4, that very little of the scene is in focus, especially at close range. The bokeh this lens produces at even much smaller apertures is beautiful. Today, except for a couple of shots, I kept the lens wide open and at that aperture, the depth of field is so shallow that I managed to miss my focus on most things. Mostly I tried to capture wildflowers. I saw lupines and California poppies and vetch and a yellow daisy-like flower called tidy tips. But the wildflower I was most intrigued with, was a purple flower on a single stem that protruded from the grasses. When I got home I discovered that it goes by the unfortunate common name of Blue Dick.

Here are eight of the shots I took on our walk today. With one exception, all are closeups with shallow depth of field, and, I cropped two shots slightly, but exposure of all of the shots is SOOC. I tried to keep in mind the rules of composition that I’m suddenly finding so difficult to follow of late. I ended up cropping the two shots of the pipevine swallowtail butterfly slightly because once again, the subject, the butterfly, was smack dab in the center of the shot. I plan to return to Miner’s Ravine with my long lens and try for better shots of the pipevine swallowtails. I think a long lens will let me get up close to them without scaring them away.

Focal length 50mm
ISO 200
f/4
1/1250
SOOC

Focal Length 50mm
ISO 100
F/1.6
1/4000
SOOC

Focal Length 50mm
ISO 200
F/7.1
1/200
SOOC

I shot the last five photos at ISO 100, f/1.4, 1/4000; I cropped the two butterfly shots to improve the composition.

Mady will be with me for two more weeks and I suspect that she will be featured in many more of my blog posts while she’s visiting. So, once again, heeeeeeeeere’s Mady! When I got home from the gym, she wanted to go outside and beckoned me to join her. She didn’t have to “go” she just wanted to play. So I grabbed my camera and took a few shots as she lolled in the morning sun, grass between the pads of her feet. Sheer joy.

Focal Length 50mm
Manual mode
ISO 640 (I forgot to reset)
f/16
1/320
SOOC

Then, I realized that I could use her to pose for me for today’s daily challenge, “open shade” which isn’t a topic but a lighting scenario, an odd choice for the group. Fortunately for me, one of the homework assignments I have for the two-part lighting class I’m taking is to take a photograph in open shade, so I can kill two birds with one stone. I realized that the fence was creating an area of open shade so I sat in the sun while Mady posed in the shade of the fence with lots of light coming from above. I set my camera to Aperture Priority and took a few shots. I’m struggling with composition lately. After last week’s lesson on composition in the other class I’m taking, I realized that I tend to position my subject smack dab in the middle of the frame instead of considering the rule of thirds. Since we can’t crop for the class, I’m becoming much more aware of my shortcomings. But, I’m not necessarily improving. The first shot of Mady in the shade fills the frame, which I like, but her eye, the main focus of this shot, is smack dab in the middle again. Since I was using Aperture priority, I didn’t notice that the shutter speed had dropped a bit which I believe is why the first shot is slightly out of focus. I moved slightly for the second shot which is in much better focus (Shutter speed 1/60) and Mady is offset a bit. The background is lousy and I should have used a bigger aperture to blur the background but, I didn’t. I really like the intensity of her gaze in this one, which is probably the one I’ll use for my class homework assignment.

Focal Length 50mm
Aperture Priority
ISO 200
f/6.3
1/40
SOOC

Focal Length 50mm
Aperture Priority
ISO 200
f/6.3
1/60
SOOC

Mady and I visited the dog park this afternoon. I hadn’t planned this destination but rather thought we would explore one of the nature preserve trails near the park. After Mady’s “elimination,” I discovered there are no waste containers anywhere along the trails in the preserve, and when the path beyond the creek was blocked due to flooding from the recent rainstorm, I decided I would prefer to deposit the waste rather than carry it with me for an hour, so we backtracked to the dog park. As we passed the cyclone fencing, several large dogs ran up to greet Mady who seemed genuinely excited to see other dogs so we continued inside. She was almost immediately beset by a pack of three Golden Retrievers and instead of being thrilled to see some of her brethren, she recoiled. Once free of the Goldens, she ran with excitement across the lawn and was again mobbed by other dogs. She then ran back to me and trotted along the trail until we got back to the gate where we entered. There she stood waiting to be released from this “hell on earth” that I was hoping she’d love. Maybe with time, she’ll get used to it but I think Mady does not particularly like other dogs.

One of the assignments from my photography class is to go on an outing and to make observations about the rules of composition without taking photos. Then, after observing, we were assigned to take photos without posing any of the subjects. That’s easy in a dog park. Remembering to observe the rules of composition was not as easy. I’m not so sure I passed this particular assignment but I did get a couple of photos I like.

Mady, checking out the new territory; the flooded creek where we turned back is just beyond the wooden bridge in the distance:

Focal length 50mm
ISO 200
f/9
1/200
SOOC

Mady, fleeing across the lawn from the other dogs besieging her:

Focal Length 50mm
ISO 200
f/16
1/200
Levels; Exposure +1

Mady making it back to the exit, all four paws off the ground:

Focal Length 50mm
ISO 200
f/16
1/200
Levels; Exposure +1

Late this afternoon, I took Mady for a walk at the Stock Ranch Nature Preserve behind Costco. I needed to get gas and pick up coffee and wine, two of the three primary food groups—caffein and fruit—so I thought a trip there would be a fun outing for my Golden Retriever house guest. Mady enjoyed herself and I was thrilled to see a Great White Egret fishing in a pond in the preserve. I was amazed that Mady cooperated by sitting still and not tugging on her leash as I shot, trying to keep in mind the composition lessons from my on-line photography class as well as from the on-site lighting class I took earlier in the day.

I had set my camera with Sunny 16 settings, but because it was late afternoon, the sun was low and I was shooting directly into the sun so the egret was backlit. As usual, I got too excited about what I was photographing to realize that the exposure needed help. But, I thought the glint in the bird’s eye as well as the reflection in the pond, made for a dramatic shot. (N.B. After I posted this photo, I got to looking at it and decided that it was too dark and so I increased the exposure by +1 and made a levels adjustment. I liked the reworked shot much better so I removed the one I originally posted.)

I captured the second shot of the egret landing after flying out of the pond, while I was twiddling the lens so it was only zoomed to 92mm. I had to crop it for better effect.

Focal Length 230mm
ISO 200
f/16
1/200
Exposure +1, Levels

Focal Length 92mm
ISO 200
f/16
1/200
Cropped

I’m still experimenting with my new lens and trying to apply some of the composition rules I’m learning in my class. I didn’t plan to post any of the Bobo pix I took today but when I saw this one, I knew I had to post it. I was crouching/laying on the kitchen floor looking up at Bobo as she wandered the kitchen counter. I had just finished reading the “creative viewpoints” and “portrait” chapters in this week’s lesson. She was curious about me lurking on the floor and had just peered over the edge of the counter.

I think this shot exhibits some of the things I’ve learned this week: 1) Bobo is clearly the subject; 2)it is simple, with no extraneous clutter; 3) it makes use of lines (the countertop) which could also be considered a framing element; 4) it is a sort of candid portrait; 5) it is shot from a creative point of view; 6) to me it tells a story because she is so engaged with the camera; 7) there is empty space. But, it does have a major compositional problem: it does not effectively use the rule of thirds. But, sometimes, we’re told by our instructor, the rules are made to be broken and I love this shot. It’s a little underexposed but I like the brightness on the top of her head.

Focal Length 50mm
ISO 200
f/1.4
1/80
SOOC

It’s raining and I’m behind in my photography class lessons so I plan to spend the day studying and taking photos for my class; I don’t expect any of the class assignment photos to be acceptable for my blog. So, after looking at my dog nose photo from yesterday, and even though I love dog noses, I don’t think it does justice for my house guest, Madyson (Mady for short). So today’s photo is Mady’s entire face. She was resting on her dog bed when I came home from the gym, exhausted, I’m sure, from events of yesterday afternoon, after my brother and sister-in-law left. Although Mady seemed to quickly adjust to staying with me, the severe, late afternoon thunder and hail storm unsettled her a bit and she moved under the kitchen table by Bobo’s cage. I moved to the table as well just to make sure things stayed calm as both Bobo and Mady were jumpy from the thunder. There is a bit of rivalry going on there and they are both competing for my attention. And I was worried at first that Mady might suddenly remember she’s a bird dog and mayhem might ensue. Well, mayhem did ensue briefly but Bobo won and that’s documented on Bobo’s Blog.

For today’s shot, I used my new 50mm 1.4 lens and experimented with various apertures. The lens creates photos with incredibly shallow depth of field, especially at the larger apertures but even at f/8. I wanted to get as close to Mady’s face as I could with her entire face in focus. I was still a bit too close because the focus on her nose is soft. She cooperated by not moving while I set the camera on a pillow at eye level, used my remote shutter release and set a long shutter speed.

Focal Length 50mm
ISO 200
f/8
1.6 Seconds
SOOC