Baby, You’re Not Quite a Star

Posted by dkrashb on July 1, 2013

Me making my way carefully through the crowd with Buddy and Jerry

Today’s photos are by my husband, Patrick Murray, shooting with the Canon Rebel T4i.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been in training on Saturday mornings. I am learning how to be the assistant in the Rock City Raptor’s program so I can cover for a vacation.

The problem, of course, is that I cannot both perform in the program and take photos. I was quite happy that my husband made some time to come up and watch a program and take some pictures.

John with Gilbert, the American Kestrel

It’s amazing how quickly things get confusing back stage–a DVD player failed a couple weeks ago and was replaced by a smaller one. There are 2 DVD players and the one that failed was on the bottom. The new, smaller one is now on top. All of my notes refer to top and bottom. This means having to do a mental flip-flop when I try to remember which machine I need to do something with. It’s irritating how this small change can put my brain into what computer geeks call “thrashing.”

But, after many Saturdays, some things are starting to come together. I am now, for example, able to walk around with both Buddy and Jerry on my glove and get through the Screech Owl script without forgetting much of it. I’ve now managed to walk through the audience, stepping over people sitting on the steps, and stepping up on what can be slippery rocks without hurting myself.

John with Artie, the Barred Owl

Although, I did fall before the show because I was carrying Cody (the red-tailed hawk) next to a wall and was following instructions to keep my body between Cody and any objects that he might hit should he decide to bait (fly up from the glove), which he does frequently. In my determination to protect Cody, I forgot that I was about to go up stairs and fell up the stairs. Cody, ironically, stayed calmly on my glove through the whole thing.

I have a few days worth of Pat’s photos (I did quite a bit of post-processing), so here are just a few from the first few birds in the program. The last image is a post-show image. At the end of the program, I take Buddy (one of the screech owls) out and let people touch him.

This is probably my favorite part. Since I don’t have to walk through the crowd, make sure the microphone is picking up my voice, or worry about saying the right things at the right time (so I cue someone else to do their part), I can really enjoy the looks on people’s faces when they touch an owl for the first time.

I also get to hear their stories and answer their questions in a more one-on-one kind of basis. What’s really cool is hearing people comment about how much they enjoyed the program and, especially, the new things they learned.

Buddy wowing the crowd one last time

Super Moonrise – At Last

Posted by dkrashb on June 30, 2013

At long last, the super moon rose last Sunday evening. I suppose it wasn’t really the super moon–after all, the moon was officially full nearly 12 hours earlier. But whether you count it as the full, super moon rise or something less than that, it was dramatic.

At first, I was afraid the moon would not be visible at all that night. The low-lying clouds around the horizon threatened to ruin the view altogether. We watched and watched and suddenly a reddish glow started to show through the clouds. The glow turned from a faint hint of red to a full moon with a silhouette cloud in the foreground in a matter of moments. I barely had time to breathe before the scene before me was changing.

The moon disappeared behind a strip of clouds

After a quick exposure adjustment, I managed to capture the red-glowing moon.

A second moon rise in the same night

It rose a second time–or at least it looked that way. It passed through a stretch of clouds, appearing to rise all over again, when it crossed over the top of the cloud bank.

As it rose above the last trace of clouds, I switched lenses. I’m not that excited by close-ups of the full moon and I was shooting with a 100-400mm plus a 1.4x extender. There’s not much you can do wide with that combination. I switched to the 24-70mm lens instead. It was a good decision. The extra bright moon over the Market Street Bridge was far more interesting than a close up of the rock. Plus I got some serious topics to study up on as a result.

A helicopter forms a bright streak in the foreground

Switching to wide angle brings the Market St Bride into view

Sun Before the Moon

Posted by dkrashb on June 29, 2013

A rising cumulous cloud forms a silhouette in front of the setting sun

After shooting the moon from the Market Street Bridge the evening before the full moon, I got to share the view from the common room in our building with a group of photographers from the local photographic society chapter. A neighbor of mine and I organized a bit of a field trip. Since the common room has a wonderful view of the river and of the anticipated location of the moonrise, it seemed like the perfect choice of destinations for photographers interested in capturing the full super moon rising over the Tennessee River.

The setting sun highlights the low-lying clouds at the horizon–they don’t bode well for the moonrise

The thing about the moon is that it’s not particularly cooperative. It really can’t help it. It just has a lot of dependencies. It’s light is determined by the sun. It’s visibility determined by the clouds. It’s appearance above the horizon dependent on the objects between the moon and the viewer. When you consider that there are nearly 239,000 miles between the earth and the moon, I suppose it’s a wonder that we are able to see it at all.

Back on the other side, the cloud stretches tall in front of the sun

But the first problem is figuring out when to expect it. There are tons of places to find out the time of the moonrise, but none of them are ever right for exactly the place where you might be standing at that given time. Not unless you happen to be in the same spot the time of moonrise was calculated from.

The second problem is figuring out when the sun will set. The opportunity to capture the moon in full glory while the surroundings are still visible becomes increasingly difficult as the moonrise falls later and later relative to sunset.

Wispy pink clouds decorate the Northern sky

On this particular night, the moon would not rise until a good half hour after sunset. We, of course, scheduled our field trip to begin much earlier. We probably should have taken the group on a tour of the riverfront while we waited for moonrise to approach. However, we got to talking and snacking and decided to find a spot to shoot the sunset instead. Finding a perch on an outdoor staircase with a view of the setting sun afforded some nice views of the clouds forming in front of the sun.

As the sun fades, the pink haze turns darker

The sunset is no more reliable than the moonrise from a photographic perspective. The clouds were interesting, but didn’t quite result in the super-dramatic sunset one might hope for as a prelude to a rising super moon. After shooting the sunset long enough to end up with many wasted images, we returned to the opposing view to watch for the moon. The setting sun cast a warm glow across the Market Street Bridge and set some of the clouds aglow as well.

While it may not have been the most dramatic of sunsets, it still seemed photo-worthy.

A saucer-like cloud captured my attention

Super Moon

Posted by dkrashb on June 28, 2013

Moon faintly glowing through Walnut St Bridge

I made it back from Monaco and Nice just in time for the super moon. The super moon refers to when the moon is closer to the earth than usual, resulting in an extra large moon. The point when the moon is full is the point when it appears the largest. I’m not sure if this is because the moon is actually the closest to the earth at that point or just the effect of it being a full moon. In any case, I have now chalked up a couple of years of experience shooting full moons. I remember the words of advice I got from a fellow photographer when I first started shooting full moons. They were, “Don’t.” He went on to explain that the full moon is too bright to make an interesting image. It simply looks like a flat, smooth circle with some gray areas in it compared to the much more pock-marked, three-dimensional moon one can get when shooting a crescent moon.

Moon over the heads of unsuspecting lovers

I experimented with this advice. I found that he was absolutely right that if you just shoot the moon, once it’s much more than half full, it becomes a very flat, uninteresting rock. However, I also found that if you shoot the moon rising at the the horizon or going through architectural features or clouds as it rises, it’s much more interesting. Since this discovery, I have attempted to pay attention to when the moon is full (or close enough to full) and where and when it will rise in the hope of getting interesting moonrise images. I’ve gotten a few I like, although there’s always room for improvement. The hardest part about shooting moonrise is how fast it goes. While the moon is usually quite late appearing in the sky compared to when the official moonrise is supposed to start, once it appears, the period of time when it’s most interesting to shoot lasts only a few minutes. The moon moves so quickly that you have to watch your shutter speeds–too slow and you start to get motion blur from the movement of the moon.

Moon over the bridge

On this night, it was a pre-cursor to the actual full moon. While the moon was fullest the next morning, it was still close enough to full to get a full moon effect both the night before and the night after the moment of total fullness. I decided to walk out to Market St Bridge in the hope of catching people walking in front of the moon on Walnut St bridge. Unfortunately, low-lying clouds along the horizon prevented the moon from being visible until it was too high for people to be in front of it. When it finally appeared, it was barely a glow through the haze with the sun still relatively high in the sky (although it was headed towards sunset). It was still beautiful, though.

Wide view of moon, bridge, water, and boats

Plane Food

Posted by dkrashb on June 22, 2013

I suspect I am drunk. I am on a plane. I arrived late for my connection, meaning I didn’t have time to eat. I had skipped breakfast. So, at 30,000 feet or so, I had a glass of wine on a stomach with nothing but a tiny, quarter handful of peanuts in it. Between the altitude and the empty stomach, it’s possible my judgement is impaired.

Evidence in favor is that I discovered my salad had a clear plastic lid over it when I dispensed salad dressing on top of said lid.

Further evidence includes that I ate every morsel of my plane food thinking it was one of the finer meals I’ve had. I chowed down on the plastic-wrapped roll (I did remove the plastic wrap first, thank-you-very-much) with what butter I could scrape out of the plastics container thinking it tasted fantastic. I even ate the iceberg lettuce salad without feeling like someone should take some nutrition classes.

What’s most alarming is that when they came back around with the drink cart, I asked for a second glass of wine!

Fortunately for me, I am sitting next to a sweet, older lady who doesn’t seem to suspect a thing. Although, I think I caught her casting a glance when half of my cracker fell into my lap due to a mis-timed bite.

Speaking of cracker, I was eating the aforementioned cracker with cheese. Not fancy, aged, unpasteurized cheese from France (as one might reasonably expect on a flight to Paris) but rather smooth, slightly plasticine Tilamook cheese from good old Oregon, USA.

I enjoy Tillamook Cheese–I’ve even been there in person and done the factory tour–but let’s face it. Americans really have little patience when it comes to producing things that require time to ripen and age. We don’t even let our fruits and vegetables ripen before we load them on the truck and ship them off to market.

But what’s remarkable about this is that I really enjoyed the Tillamook cheese. Maybe not so remarkable–I’m an American; I can even enjoy eating Kraft American Cheese. But it’s the degree to which I’m enjoying it that’s so surprising. It tastes like something rare and remarkable.

Oh dear, I’ve forgotten all about my fireworks theme! Perhaps I’ll have some of that second glass of wine . . .

Human Fireworks

Posted by dkrashb on June 21, 2013

The theme of fireworks made me think of the chemical fireworks that sometimes ignite between two people. This thought reminded me of a story from my teenage years. It was about someone I didn’t know well, I just knew of her. She was a mother and wife and she went to her high school reunion, reunited with a high school sweetheart and KABOOM! Fireworks.

Fireworks so powerful that she left her husband of over 20 years to marry this man from her past. It was an incident that shocked and dismayed many of the woman’s friends. I believe it was the notion that someone could be so overpowered by a chemical response that they could lose all sense of direction and suddenly wind up on a new course that they found terrifying.

In contrast to this story, my own father was reunited with a woman he went to school with about a year after my mother died. They never dated in school, although she and her husband and my father and mother double-dated in college. The four of them maintained a long distance relationship over the years, exchanging hand-me-downs for each others’ children (I got the daughter’s clothes; her brother got my brother’s clothes), and even visiting a few times when we were children in spite of living many hundreds of miles apart.

When both her husband and my mother died within 6 months of each other, my father and his friend found support in exchanging emails about the experience, which eventually led to a first date. I never asked if there were fireworks, but I tend to think there were. After all, they saw each other in person for the first time in 20(?) years at the end of May that year, then she came out to visit Dad for their 2nd in-person date in early July. Her second day in town, they showed up on my porch excited to announce their engagement

While I was not prepared at the time to accept that while I was still struggling emotionally with my mother’s death my father was ready to move on, I have come to really love this story. I find it incredibly romantic that two kids who grew up together in the country came together and fell in love 40 years later. I’m happy to report that my father and his wife seem to still have the fireworks going strong 13 years later.

Balcony Lessons

Posted by dkrashb on June 20, 2013

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During the Riverbend Fireworks, I had the interesting experience of meeting a young woman who was using her new Canon Rebel (not sure which one) for what was nearly the first time. She had apparently bought it from eBay, played with it briefly, and then set it aside until the night of the Riverbend Fireworks.

She asked me a few questions about what settings to use and I’m afraid I might have overwhelmed her with information. I was reminded of the conversations I had about 9 years ago when my own adventure with photography started with a good friend a colleague who was usually patient and willing to share information.

But I had the realization as to how quickly it becomes difficult to answer a simple question when the person asking it has no knowledge of the basics of photography. I also had the realization of how much I’ve learned.

I did my best to explain to her how she might select an appropriate aperture and what an ISO setting is and why a slower shutter speed might be beneficial. I also explained why turning off her flash might be a good way to prevent wasting her battery since it wasn’t going to help. I’m not sure I did a food job of containing myself or the information. After all, I think she was looking for a more definitive answer like, “when you’re shooting fireworks, use f/11.” I haven’t found the equivalent to the bright sun rule of “Sunny 16” for fireworks, but then, given the number of times the Sunny 16 rule hasn’t worked for me, I’m not sure it’s realistic to call it a rule.

In any case, I realized that I really need to find a venue to teach photography. I enjoyed that little 10 minutes of playing teacher more than I expected.
I am a big fan of learning by teaching–there is nothing that pushes me more to really work at something than when I know I’m going to have to teach it. I love the feeling of having something to pass on to someone else. Whether it’s work related, tricks on photographing fireworks, bird facts, or even something completely outside my normal areas of interest, nothing make me feel more alive than the feeling that I have something to share.

Dogs and Fireworks

Posted by dkrashb on June 19, 2013

Dogs are frequently afraid of fireworks. I would venture to guys that dogs fall into two categories: Those who are completely oblivious and those who think the world is coming to an end. Tisen does not like fireworks. Nor does Twiggy, who is visiting with us again while her mom and dad are on vacation.

Tisen seems somewhat embarrassed about his fear of fireworks. Like he knows he’s supposed to be a big tough boy and not be afraid of loud noises. Instead of whining, howling, or barking, which would only draw attention to his cowardice, he hides. But if you happen to look in on him from time to time, you’ll discover he often has a puzzled look on his face like he can’t understand why his humans are not distraught by all the noise.

I think there is a simple explanation for this disparity in human and dog interpretation of loud noises. I think it’s hearing. While one might speculate that canines have less ability to understand the source of loud noises or to reason as to whether they are in potential danger or not, I really think it comes down to pain. The deep, reverberating booms and high pitched crackles sound so much louder to a dog than to a human, it seems quite possible they are in physical pain.

This being my theory, I was doubly surprised when I spent the entire length of the Riverbend fireworks out on the balcony of the common room (where dogs are not allowed) and Tisen remained parked by the front door waiting for my return instead of hiding under the sofa, desk, or Daddy. Twiggy cuddled with Daddy, leaving Tisen to fend for himself as the stalwart guard patiently awaiting the return of Mommy. I felt pretty guilty when I got home and found him still waiting for me.

I wonder if he is more afraid of losing Mommy than he is of fireworks? This also made me feel more guilty getting on a plane the following morning.

Tisen braving it out at the door

More of the Same

Posted by dkrashb on June 18, 2013

Continuing yesterday’s list of tips on photographing fireworks . . .

Fourth, think carefully about depth of field. If you’re shooting wide and trying to get the landscape into the photo at all, you’ll want to stop down the aperture as much as possible.

Fifth, as a contrary point to the above, be aware that because the fireworks are so bright, you aren’t going to be able to get a single exposure for both the fireworks and the landscape unless the landscape is brightly lit (like the city lights). Some photographers solve this by combining two photos manually later. Be aware the HDR settings will not be very helpful (although may be interesting) because of the motion of the fireworks. To combine the two manual exposures, you would need to be able to layer them together in an application like Photoshop.

Sixth, fireworks move. To get long, bright streaks of light in the sky, you need a fairly long shutter speed. This helps with the fourth tip–you get more depth of field as a bonus. I’m pretty happy with the size, shape, length of the streaks I get at about .4 seconds. However, there are some types of fireworks that look better with longer exposures. The only downside of exposing longer is that you get more smoke showing up in the process.

Seventh, I once missed about ½ of a fireworks show trying this trick, but maybe it will work better for you. Supposedly, you can put your camera on bulb and use a piece of paper or your hand to cover the lens in between the rockets being fired. Then, you can get multiple fireworks into one shot. This might have worked last night when I was in very close proximity to the launch point. However, from a further distance, I just got very dull looking fireworks that were often barely visible.

Shooting Fireworks

Posted by dkrashb on June 17, 2013

Well, there comes a time when we are all caught off guard by ill preparation. I can list a long number of excuses as to how this happened, starting with working way too many hours for my day job, but the truth of the matter is that I didn’t give getting my blog posts ready ahead of time top priority and, therefore, it didn’t happen.

So, I am about 45 minutes away from leaving for the airport. I’m headed overseas on a business trip where my internet access may be limited and my time most certainly will be. And, I have only photos of fireworks ready to post.

So what’s a daily blogger to do?

Well, I’ve decided to do some really short posts on the theme of “fireworks.” We’ll see if I manage to get a post a day up!

For today’s fireworks-themed post, let’s talk about some things I’ve learned about shooting fireworks.

First, if you’re going to be really close to the fireworks (in this case, we were within a .10 of a mile as the crow flies from where they were being fired), put your widest lens on your camera. Since most of us now have cameras with 20+ megapixels, cropping to get tight photos is an option and there is a bigger problem with fitting all the action in the frame.

Second, if you know which way the wind is blowing, find a spot upwind. This will help reduce the amount of smoke in your images. Unfortunately, that was not a possibility for me, so I do have a lot of smoke in my images. I managed to do some adjusting to reduce it’s appearance, but it’s still annoyingly visible.

Third, your cameras metering is useless while you’re shooting. It will jump all over the place as the fireworks create large amounts of light and then fade. By the time you adjust exposure, it will be too late. Remain calm. Check your photos on your LCD early even if it means missing a shot of the next one going off. It’s better to miss one or two getting your exposure set right than to get home and find that every shot you took was completely blown out or too dark.

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