Bad Habits

Posted by dkrashb on July 14, 2013

I don’t know why, but big puffy clouds make me happy

I expect to collapse into a deep sleep from which I cannot be awakened at any moment. Between long days for my day job and several personal projects, sleep seems to be the thing that’s not fitting into my schedule. Oh, and healthy meals. Oh, yeah, and working out. How long can a human survive on limited sleep, limited nutrition, and way too much time sitting?

More importantly, how do bad health habits affect photographic skills?

This is my list of what I have observed in how my photography habits have changed:

I have less time to shoot. Therefore, I shoot what presents itself. Sometimes what presents itself isn’t all that interesting. I shoot it anyway because I don’t have time to go find something more interesting.
I have less imagination. There have been many times I have had a lot of fun shooting uninteresting subjects and made them more interesting by choosing to treat them differently. With a muddled mind full of unfinished to-do’s, I seem to be stuck in landscape mode. I guess when we are stressed, we tend to fall back to where we are most comfortable.
The same clouds as above as they begin to break up
I take fewer images. Instead of shooting every possible angle with different exposures and trying different focal lengths, etc, I take a couple of angels less than a half dozen times and call it done. This would be a good thing if it were because I was taking my time and carefully deciding what I wanted. But it’s more like I am not seeing all the possibilities and don’t have the energy to create a bunch of shots I have to go through later.
I minimize the time I spend on post-processing. If I have 3 similar images, I spend less than 2 minutes adjusting the first and then I stamp the same settings on the rest. Unless there is something really amiss, I call it done.
I don’t plan my shoots or my shots. When I am experiencing less stress, I think about images I’d like to get. I think about where I can go to get them. I think of techniques I’d like to improve and give myself assignments to work on them. Now, I am grabbing what I can get.
I don’t work on new skills. Normally, I find at least a couple of hours a week to read about something related to improving my photos or go to a workshop or watch one online. Those hours have been consumed. Perhaps this is why I am having a shortage of ideas?

Now that I have enumerated the ways in which I am neglecting my development (that would be funnier if I were a film photographer), the only question is whether it’s better to keep shooting or whether I’m just picking up bad photography habits in addition to bad life habits.

I cannot recall having ever seen a cloud quite like this one

High Water

Posted by dkrashb on July 13, 2013

It’s hard to tell if there is any separation between the wetland and the river

The other day, the water levels reached a new high. I decided to go grab a few shots from the common room balcony where I had shot the landscape in times of normal water levels for comparison.

Taken last June before the drought dropped the water levels–previously the highest I’d seen it

Two things distracted me. First, I started experimenting with the in-camera HDR feature since there was a lot of contrast between the wetland (in the shadows) and the sky. Second, the clouds were interesting. They never got really colorful–I watched until the sun was well below the horizon–but they were making some pretty interesting shapes.

All of these images are the HDR version of the image created in the camera.

My favorite cloud

On the one hand, I get better dynamic range using Photomatix. On the other hand, I didn’t have to do any special post-processing to get these and given that I didn’t start processing photos until after midnight, I appreciate that.

I will try processing the 3 exposures using Photomatix and doing a comparison when I have some more time (like that will ever happen), but for now, I feel like the feature did improve the dynamic range of the image some and I didn’t have to do as much work.

I should also note that the clouds were moving, yet the in-camera feature managed to match them up across 3 images and then crop the image to the size that worked with the data it had. While I wasn’t crazy about the cropping, I thought the matching worked very well.

Bed is calling . . .

Getting Rosy as the sun goes down

Fast Camera

Posted by dkrashb on July 12, 2013

I am experimenting with a new iPhone photography app called Fast Camera. It’s fun little app that starts firing away in rapid-fire mode the moment you launch the app. You can change the settings so you have to push the button manually, but what fun is that?

I love the idea of being able to capture rapidly moving objects (such as Tisen) before they stop doing the thing that I wanted to take a picture of in the first place.

This is a constant struggle with smart camera apps. By the time I get the app started, get the thing focused and click the button, whatever I was hoping to capture has often already gone on it’s merry way or turned its back to me.

However, I find I am struggling with this app a bit. The first problem is it starts taking photos as I am raising it into position, so I end up with 24 shots that look like this:

I am not fond of my feet. Certainly not fond enough of them to want two dozen pictures of my toes. And I’d much rather have Tisen’s entire face in the frame than just his nose. (I really didn’t mean for that to rhyme.) That said, it is easy to delete all the extraneous misfires, so that’s not a huge problem.

I also like that the app does not automatically save all the images to my camera roll–that would fill up my photostream with a bunch of crap I would rather never see again.

However, the down side of it not saving images to my camera roll is that I end up with a collection of photos inside the app that I forget all about and then discover again weeks later when I next use it. For example, I had 62 images that looked pretty much identical to this:

I cannot come up with where this image was taken or whose foot that could possibly be. Perhaps I should have a “who can identify this photo” contest? I can only imagine that I accidentally launched the app and didn’t even realize it was shooting away.

Yesterday, I chose this app over the more familiar apps I use to catch Tisen trotting down the hall in his happy mode. This means he was picking his feet up, wagging his tail, and holding Lamb Chop (the newest addition to his family) high.

In spite of the speed of the app, Tisen stopped his happy mode trot as soon as I stepped out in front of him and held up my phone. The other problem was that all 45 images were just as out of focus as the 2 I’m posting. When I just now opened the app to check the settings, I ended up with 12 images of my computer before I could hit the “stop” button. But, I did switch it to autofocus mode so next time I launch it, the focus will hopefully be improved.

Perhaps the only problem is that the app is faster than I am?

It’s Raining

Posted by dkrashb on July 11, 2013

It has been raining. Perhaps I mentioned that before? If I am repeating myself, forgive me, but the weather has been repeating itself as well. We had a break in the rain, which is a darn good thing or we would have been trying to buy a kayak to get to the grocery store. But it’s started again and the forecast is not looking like we’re going to dry out soon.

A few days ago, they closed off a portion of the park we walk in because a good bit of it was under water. Tisen and I walked down to the riverfront where it was open and I snapped a couple quick iPhone images of the water level.

While I was standing there, I ended up in conversations with 3 separate neighbors who have lived here many years. They were all amazed by the water level–none of them remembered seeing it that high before.

I took some time going through old photos to find some comparison shots. So, here is my photographic evidence that the river is really high:

Shot taken 2 days ago under the Market St Bridge–note the water is up to the grass in the image:
Shot taken in the spring showing the launch ramp that’s supposed to be in the same spot under the Market St Bridge, but it’s completely under water in the above photo.
Shot from 2 days ago looking downstream–the top of a Mimosa tree is visible (although dark). It looks like a tiny peninsula in the upper right quadrant of the image.
Shot from last year of the same bank showing the same Mimosa tree as it normally appears–not submerged.

Nickajack Lake

Posted by dkrashb on July 10, 2013

Roadside view of Lake Nickajack–I needed a hedge trimmer

On Sunday, our journey through the Tennessee River Gorge ended when we got to the portion of the river where it becomes Bennett Lake. This corner of what is nearly a 180 degree bend in the river marks the first time a major road intersects Mullins Cover Rd, the road we were on, after a lot of slow miles.

We opted to stick to major roads at this point. In part because we’d had enough sitting in the car and in part because we were starting to get low on gas and we hadn’t seen a gas station for many miles. We worked our way back to I-24 and headed back towards Chattanooga. We were surprised to discover we were in the Central time zone and on the Nashville side of Nickajack Lake.

I decided we should stop and get some shots of Nickajack lake since we hadn’t managed to get any really great shots from down in the gorge. Unfortunately, I didn’t decide this until after we had passed the best exit for views of the lake. We went down several dead ends trying to find a road to the lake.

Another roadside view

We ended up driving up the ridge around the lake a ways when just by chance I saw a break in the trees. We parked down the road and I walked back to the spot. It wasn’t much of a break in the trees, but it at least provided a view of the lake.

Driving through (the highway literally goes right over the middle of the lake) Nickajack lake is one of my favorite parts of the drive to Nashville (or the West end of Cumberland State park), although almost all of the drive is full of great views.

When we got back on the freeway to make our way rapidly towards food, we soon found ourselves in a traffic jam. I started taking pictures from the car. It’s always a bad sign when I start shooting through the windshield, but it gives you an idea of the kind of scenery that unfolds as you drive through this part of Tennessee . . . uh . . . Georgia? No, this was Tennessee. Barely. We crossed the Georgia state line about a mile after this image was taken.

Scene from the actual road–a “through the windshield” image

That’s another interesting thing about driving from Chattanooga to Nashville–you have to go through Georgia to get there–at least if you take I-24. I-24 dips across the state line for about 3-4 miles as it winds it way through the mountains.

Every time we drive down I-24, I am amazed that such spectacular scenery surrounds the freeway. Having grown up in flat Columbus, Ohio where you could drive for 2 hours in either direction and barely see a bump in the landscape, the ancient mountains of the Southeast make my mouth drop open. I used to always think I preferred the Rockies. I do love the Rockies, but the gentler slopes of the Appalachians have equal, if different, charm.

The moment Georgia entered my mind

Tennessee River Gorge

Posted by dkrashb on July 9, 2013

The height of the river testifies to the amount of rain we’ve had

When you see stock images from the 4th of July other than fireworks, they all have one thing in common: sunshine. It’s so engrained in my memory that the 4th of July is always bright and sunny that I am unable to conjure any memories of a rainy 4th, even though I’m sure there were some.

This year, in spite of the great fortune of having 4 days mostly off work, the weather refused to cooperate. We had nothing but rain. Instead of spending 4 days hiking as we’d planned, I ended up working part of the first two days, rearranging the office in the afternoon of the 5th, and then spending the better part of that Saturday hanging shelves in the newly arranged office.

We watched several large logs racing down the rapidly moving water

Granted, it needed to be done. I’m very happy that we managed to get the office into some sort of order–I was tired of hunting through baskets on the floor when I needed something. But, to be honest, it’s not quite what I had in mind when I thought about how I wanted to spend my 4-day weekend. But, the deep gray skies that continually spouted rain day after day did make it easier to get motivated to work on the office.

On Sunday, the rain gradually eased up to a gentle mist and then evaporated. The sun popped through the first gap in the clouds we’d seen for days sometime around noon. When I took Tisen outside, I had no sunglasses or sunscreen on because I’d pretty given up on ever seeing the sun again. When the sun suddenly appeared, I had to hold my hand over my eyes and squint, worried I’d perhaps turned into a vampire and I would soon turn to dust.

I was worried about Tisen falling into the river while I was shooting

We made a quick decision to take a drive through the Tennessee River Gorge to a place called, “The Pot House.” I kid you not. In fairness, it’s officially called Pot Point House or Pot Point Cabin, but everyone calls it “the pot house” for short–even the parks and recreation department refers to it in the vernacular in some of their web pages.

Even the storm sewer looked navigable via kayak

I have yet to find an explanation as to why the point is called “Pot Point.” Perhaps the cabin was once the location of a clay pot maker?

Whatever the case may be, the views of the river gorge from Pot House were not quite what I was hoping for. After snagging a few shots, the sun decided we’d had enough and was quickly replaced with yet another torrential downpour.

One of the 2 turtles we stopped to help cross the road

While it didn’t turn out to be quite the photographic opportunity I’d been hoping for, we did get some lovely views of the river gorge (unfortunately mainly at places where it was impossible to pull off the road). We also assisted two turtles on their journey across the road, stopping to pick them up and put them where we hope they were headed. They didn’t seem grateful, but it made us feel better.

A stream running down the hillside had turned into a waterfall

Events and Portraits

Posted by dkrashb on July 8, 2013

Elle finds a rock–or maybe it was a feather?

I am not excited by event photography. Every time I review my photos from an event, I realize that this is apparent in the images. I have not found the energy to learn anything about event photography other than individual portraits, which I interest me after landscape, wildlife, nature, architectural, macro, and sports photography.

In spite of this, I regularly shoot events for the Chattanooga Audubon Society and I feel bad that I can’t deliver better results than people who know nothing about photography, like this one:

The kind of event photo that makes me cringe with embarrassment

I have dozens and dozens of images that look like that–random groups of people poorly arranged not paying attention to the camera and often caught with strange expressions on their faces. I am very good at capturing the moments no one wants captured during an event.

My latest endeavor was at the 69th birthday party for the Chattanooga Audubon Society. People were sitting in chairs or standing in lines around the walls of a large room. They were eating cake and ice cream and talking. When I would attempt to shoot small groups of people, they often either hid their faces or moved out of the frame.

Elle showing me a leaf

This led to stealth shooting of the whole room. Which, in turn, resulted in images like the one above. I was quite relieved when one of the young guests needed someone to take her for a walk–she was a much easier subject.

I did manage to sneak up on the cake. The cake is rather funny. I ordered a cake with an outdoors theme and asked for trees and birds. I’d never ordered a cake from the place I got it, but since the place I planned to get it from stopped making sheet cakes and I was ordering 1 ½ days ahead, I didn’t have a lot of choices. I crossed my fingers and hoped they would come up with something good.

Elle pausing to pose for me while looking for the next interesting find

They did a lovely job creating a lake–they said they “didn’t have any birds.” I’m not sure why it’s so difficult for people to create a bird outline in icing, but I didn’t ask. The funny thing is that while the Audubon has 3 properties–an island in the Tennessee River, a property with a mixture of a stream, woods, and open meadows, and a wooded mountain property–none of them have a lake.

The cake–that’s about all that can be said about this photo

I’m sure there is a more artistic way to capture a cake, but I feel like the straight-on, from-the-top framing that one might expect from the average soccer mom at a kid’s party is completely appropriate for this cake. Perhaps with a spot light and some fog it would be possible to shoot this cake artistically, but there wasn’t a fog machine handy.

Oh well. I would start reading up on event shooting, but I think I’m going to leave it on the bottom of my “to-do” list until it’s time to prepare for the next event.

One last image of the endlessly curious Elle

Dog Dependence Day

Posted by dkrashb on July 7, 2013

This is how I found Tisen, Twiggy and Pat once firecrackers started going off

For about a week before the 4th of July this year, I saw admonishments to keep dogs indoors during fireworks from at least a half-dozen places. The pet supply store where we buy Tisen’s food had signs up and posted regularly on Facebook. McKamey Animal Shelter, the place from whence Tisen came also posted regularly on Facebook. And beyond that, at least 3 or 4 friends were posting articles about the importance of keeping dogs inside and the increase of dogs who run away on the 4th because the fireworks are so terrifying to dogs.

I can only imagine what fireworks must be like for a dog. Some estimate a dog’s hearing to be 4x that of a human’s plus dogs hear a much broader range of sound than human’s can. According to one website, the reason dogs bark at vacuum cleaners is because of the very annoying high-pitched noises they make that humans cannot hear.

Tisen was pretty calm on the bottom of the puppy pile

One of the many dogs we took in over the years came to us following the 4th of July fireworks. We actually found her about a week after the fireworks were over. She was wandering alone in the wooded ravine we lived in, an adorable Boxer lost and extremely happy to meet new friends. Especially new friends with food.

She came home with us with an exuberance few breeds can duplicate–boxers have endless enthusiasm. She had a tag that indicated she was microchipped, but when we called the number, they were closed for the weekend. When my husband was able to reach them on Monday, they could only provide the name and number for the vet where the tag was issued. It was a vet in Pennsylvania. When my husband reached the vet’s office, it turned out it was one of the vet’s dogs who was living in Columbus with his son who was attending the Ohio State University.

We were able to reunite the energetic boxer (who we had taken to calling Roxy, although that didn’t turn out to be her name) with her family about a week and a half after she had escaped from a fenced yard during the fireworks. Her owners were so happy they brought us a plate of cookies.

I’m pretty sure that kid never left a dog outside alone during fireworks again.

First attempt to capture fog rising from Lookout Mountain with iPhone

Since Twiggy’s parents were attending a BBQ early in the evening on the 4th and we were going to a party later that evening, we did a dog sitting trade. Twiggy hung out with us for a couple of hours while her mom and dad were socializing and Tisen hung out with Twiggy’s family for quite a few more hours while we did the same. The dogs piled on Pat when the first firecrackers went off.

As a general rule, I don’t share photos from private parties, but I did attempt to capture the fog rolling off Lookout Mountain in the background. Unfortunately, it was a bit too dark for the iPhone.

Second attempt–the ridge in front of the fog kept getting clipped

Keep your fur-friends safe this Fourth of July (journalstar.com)

Sunset and the iPhone

Posted by dkrashb on July 6, 2013

The strong blue streak going skyward on the left side is what initially caught my eye

I have been shooting with my iPhone much more often since being asked for tips on how to take better photos with the iPhone. One of the areas that I have not been particularly satisfied is low-light images. They get extremely grainy and the dynamic range is quite limited.

However, when I happened to see the sky do something cool the other day, I had a choice. I could run inside, grab my DSLR and tripod, run back out and hope I hadn’t missed it. Or, I could pull my iPhone out of my pocket and do the best I could. Call me lazy, but I went for the second option.

In the few moments between shots, the streak started to spread

I used the Camera! app rather than the default Camera app (the only difference in the name is the “!”, but there are many feature differences). If I would have had a panoramic view from where I was standing, I might have tried the standard Camera app’s panoramic capability, but what was worth shooting fit into the frame, so shooting panoramic seemed unnecessary.

I chose the Camera! app because of its ability to separate the focusing point from the exposure point. You can tap the screen to select where you want to focus and then use a second figure to select a different area that you want to expose for. It’s slightly helpful in scenes like this with strong contrasts. However, slightly is the operative word. Using the dark areas for exposure blows out the sky. Using the sky clips the foreground. By picking something halfway in between, you can sometimes get something better, but in this case, I allowed the darker areas to be underexposed–they weren’t very interesting anyway.

Within 5 minutes, the effect had pretty much disappeared–good thing I didn’t run for my DSLR

The images right out of the camera didn’t have the brilliance of the actual scene. I was able to increase the saturation slightly to get it closer to reality, but the blue of the sky started to move to cyan. One of the challenges with iPhone photography (especially in low light) is that it needs post-processing, but because of the lower resolution, jpeg format, and graininess in low-light situations, adjustments can only be minimal before noise, pixellation, and general ickiness set it. Less is more.

That said, I’m still happy I pulled out my iPhone because the interesting streaks shooting skyward disappeared pretty quickly–I would still have been unzipping my tripod bag had I tried to run for the DSLR.

When I went back in to sit down and blog, I had a little trouble finding a place on the sofa. Tisen was occupying 50% of an 6’ long couch. Pat and I compressed ourselves into the other 3 feet. This isn’t a great shot (another iPhone grab), but you can just see my shoulder next to Pat who is leaning over Tisen in order to create enough room for me to type. We just couldn’t stand to wake Tisen to get him to make room–he was snoring quiet contentedly.

Trying to fit on the sofa to blog without waking Tisen

Bridge and Heron

Posted by dkrashb on July 5, 2013

Not nearly as exciting as when the bridge was fully open

About a week or so ago, I was out walking both Tisen and Twiggy when I missed a once-a-year shot. Walking Tisen and Twiggy together gets a little tricky at times. Twiggy likes to lead. Not just Tisen, but me, too. She likes to decide where we’re going and when we’re going there. When we disagree with where she wants to go, her claws extend much like a cat’s, except that she possesses some superpower that allows her to drive them into concrete. She then leans with her body at what is often a 45 degree angle against her harness and demands that everyone goes the direction she wants to go.

Tisen is somewhat oblivious to her demands. If he catches a scent in the opposite direction, he goes towards it without regard for me, Twiggy, or the fact that he’s got a collar pulling against his neck. I sometimes worry that he would strangle himself before he would realize he was the one causing it.

The gap is no longer even visible

When Twiggy goes one way and Tisen goes another, the human who happens to be in the middle ends up doing what could be called the “Scarecrow,” but with very straight arms. On days when both dogs are particularly adamant about the direction they want to go, it’s more like being on a medieval rack.

I have been working with the dogs to try to prevent this problem. I’ve gotten Tisen to return to me when I make a certain sound and Twiggy to understand that we’re going to turn when I want to turn unless there’s something particularly tempting in the direction she’s determined to go.

But on this particular morning, as we made our way through the park, I suddenly got a view of the Market Street bridge and realized it was fully open. It’s a rare type of draw bridge that’s opened and closed by a counter-weight system. I don’t recall what it’s called, but it’s pretty cool. It’s opened about once a year for inspection, but this was the first time I’d ever seen it fully open.

Shooting with my iPhone doesn’t allow for close-ups, but you can see the Heron just right of 12 o’clock at the top of the tree

Unfortunately, as I wrestled my iPhone out of my pocket and juggled it and two leashes to get my password entered, Twiggy spotted another dog in a different direction. At the same time, Tisen spotted the same dog and decided he wanted to stay bolted to the spot he was currently standing on.

I cajoled and whistled and made my “come to me” noise to no avail. Finally, the other dog moved far enough away that Twiggy and Tisen would listen to me again. I got them down the path to where I could get a decent shot (although not all the way to my destination) just in time to catch the last few feet of the bridge closing.

I was not a happy dog walker. When I turned, a Great Blue Heron was perched at the very top of a nearby tree. I’m certain he was laughing at me.

Look carefully–you can see the heron laughing at me

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nomadicmainstream

Combining living on the road with a mainstream lifestyle

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