Tag Archives: Photography

Missing the Moon

Posted by dkrashb on

I am out walking late again.  It’s 11PM and the moon is full.  As I cross the street with Tisen, I realize I forgot to check the lunar calendar.  I’d been experimenting with shooting the full moon on the horizon.  It’s a more interesting subject that way.

Last August, I discovered the moon was rising behind the Walnut St bridge and attempted to capture people walking in front of it on the bridge.  This was a great concept, but the lack of a tripod led to poor execution.  Since then, I’ve only managed to catch the full moon in November.

Tonight, I look up and see thin, high clouds blowing across the sky, making me feel like I’m watching time lapse photography of a moon rise.  As the clouds pass over the moon, the moon forms a brilliant ring.  As the clouds and light continue to shift, the ring turns a glowing red.  Inspired by a much better photographer, I pull out my iPhone and attempt to capture a shot.  The first picture in the gallery is the best I could do.

A couple of lessons learned on iPhone photography:  1)  even the iPhone 4S with it’s new improved camera doesn’t handle night landscape photography well, and 2) if you’re going to try to get a decent shot of the moon with an iPhone, it’s best not to be holding the leach of a feisty dog while you’re shooting.  No matter how adorable Tisen is, he only assists my photography when he is the model.

About the time I realize I cannot possibly get a decent shot, the ring around the moon shifts from a glowing red to a circular rainbow.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  Unfortunately, the colors do not show up in the iPhone shot and the clouds move on, the rainbow disappearing as quickly as it appeared.

As much as I want to return home to get out my DSLR and tripod, I know Tisen needs more time.  We complete our lap of the park until Tisen is satisfied.  Then, I rush us home as quickly as possible.  There is a huge bank of clouds blowing in and I’m sure I can get set up while it’s still passing over the moon.

I rush to grab my tripod bag.  I knock over a glass, drop the bag, and fall across the couch, waking my dozing husband.  After assuring him all is well, I get out my camera bag, pull out the camera, find the CF card and stick it back in the camera, attach the 1.4x extender and the 100-400mm lens, slide on the wireless remote, locate the remote, and snap the whole thing into the tripod.  I carry it all outside, locate the moon, position the tripod, and finally find the moon through my viewfinder just as the last wisp of cloud blows away.

All that’s left is the naked moon, overly bright and relatively uninteresting.  I’m fairly certain I can see the man in the moon laughing at me.

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Wishing for Winter

Posted by dkrashb on

This evening, I take Tisen out for his evening stroll.  We head across the street, dodging cars that refuse to yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk with a green walk light.  This is a curious thing about Chattanooga.  No matter how much infrastructure they build to support pedestrians, the drivers still try to run them over.  I frequently end up stopped half way in the crosswalk waiting for the cars who are turning to realize they need to stop.

I usually give up and try to dive in front of a car where there is enough room for them to stop and the driver appears to be at least paying attention to what’s directly in front of them.  It’s a little dangerous, but after several weeks of this, I’ve found a few more drivers are watching for pedestrians and yielding.  Sometimes it just takes an accidental death to get traffic problems resolved.  🙂

Having made it safely across the street, we make our way down the sidewalk.  Tisen spots a strange mix-breed dog coming towards us, about 50 yards away.  Tisen crouches lower, juts his head out level with his shoulders, and his muzzle appears to have shape-shifted into the shape of a wolf’s.  If I didn’t know any better, I would think I was walking a border collie.  When the bizarre mix (he looks like a golden retriever with a pug’s head) gets closer, Tisen lunges with growly barks.  This is a first!  I think perhaps it is due to the strangeness of the dog.  But then we pass a chocolate lab puppy who is being a typical silly, playful pup and Tisen does a complete repeat performance.

I don’t know what changed between yesterday and today to make him behave so differently.  I keep thinking the longer it’s been since he was neutered, the less aggressive he’ll be, but I’m guessing whatever hormonal effect there will be has already happened.  I consider the possibility that it’s seasonal.  After all, we’ve had ridiculously warm weather for at least a week straight now.  Maybe his body thinks it’s spring.

While I am usually longing for spring this time of year, I find myself longing for winter instead.  Not out of hope it might settle Tisen down, but, in part, because it’s harder to appreciate the spring fully when you haven’t gone through a long, cold winter.  And, to be honest, I’m already tired of swatting mosquitos.  I do not want to think about what the insect population is going to be like if we don’t have any more cold weather this year.  I can only hope the bird, bat, and dragonfly populations keep pace.

Since I cannot take any photos of snow and ice, I decide to pull out some old ones.  Here are some shots from the Canadian Rockies in Jasper National Park, Alberta.  The high temperature our first day there on that trip was -15 Fahrenheit.  Now that is winter.

Finding Joy

Posted by dkrashb on

Shifting gears from focusing on the things I want to do to the things I must do on a Monday causes me to think about joy.  Joy is one of those feelings that took me a long time to distinguish.  I finally decided the main symptom of joy versus run-of-the-mill happiness, amusement, infatuation, or any other emotion that might camouflage itself as joy is that my eyes well up just a little.

My chest also feels like it’s filling with something.  My throat constricts slightly.  The physical symptoms are the same as if I’m about to have a good cry.  But I don’t feel like crying–I’m too busy grinning.

The thing about joy is that it always surprises me.  It’s always the tiny things I so often overlook that suddenly create this overwhelming sense of, well, joy.  There really isn’t a synonym.

When I take Tisen out, his tail wags in time with his foot steps as he prances along like a tiny horse.  The joy of this wag overwhelms me.

When Tisen wiggles his way closer to me just before falling asleep, I smile until I ache.  When Tisen eats his food like he really enjoys it, I nearly do cry.

But it’s not all about Tisen.  The other day, I was walking in the park and saw a small bird perched on top of a light post.  It was back-lit and I couldn’t make it out until I got to the other side of the pole with the sun behind me.  It suddenly burst into the full color of an Eastern Bluebird.  I felt like I’d been let in on a joyful secret.

Sometimes, all it takes is noticing the arrangement of stray branches casting a shadow over a pool of water.  Or a puff of clouds forming a smiley face.  Or a stranger walking by and saying hello with a twinkle in their eyes.

Joy seems to create its own momentum.  After I notice one joyful thing, I suddenly start noticing more.  It’s like getting a glimpse causes me to look for more.  I am reminded of the filter that decides what information to process versus what to ignore.  If you’ve ever bought a new car and suddenly noticed every one on the road, joy is like that.

At the top of the big hang gliding hill yesterday, I stood for just a moment and looked all around.  The grass, the trees, the sky, the mountains.  All there just for the price of noticing.  This is what people mean when they talk about smelling the roses.

Ironically, when I need joy in my life the most, it’s the hardest to find.  I get wrapped up in suffering and suddenly the sunrise isn’t worth noticing, the trees are just trees, and a wagging tail is just a wagging tail.  I wonder what it would be like to be able to see the things that make me smile when I feel the least like smiling?

High Flying

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For today’s triple play, let’s start with hang gliding. On the big training hill, there are 7 tests to “clear,” which means you get your Novice license and you can fly off the mountain launch.  But, if you don’t fly off the mountain for 4 days straight, you have to “re-clear.”

Today, Pat will re-clear and I will continue my endless quest of clearing for the first time.  Yesterday, I learned they mis-counted my total training hill flights:  they missed a page.  At the rate I’m going, I will have about 160 flights by the time I clear for the first time!  They don’t give you a trophy for that; they just charge extra.

After successfully completing one more test today, I’m pretty much spent.  Pat re-cleared and left for the mountain early on, but the wind prevents him from flying.  He picks me up and then we head over to the landing zone where we each get a tandem flight.

For the second time, I hook in with an instructor and we are towed above 2000 feet, literally into the clouds.  But this time, I’m not as mentally paralyzed.  The instructor gives me control and I fly us all the way to the landing (except for those moments when it appears I’m going to kill us both).

Flying a tandem glider with an extra person in it is completely different from flying solo.  It’s good to experience the altitude though–and to have 12 minutes instead of 12 seconds to practice.

Next, let’s talk about Tisen.

Two new things happen at the training hill today.  First, while Tisen has stopped chasing wheels, when I carry my glider he dives at my legs, grabbing at my pants and pinching my skin.  When I set the glider down, he stops.  When I pick it up, he starts again.  He doesn’t seem to be able to associate my legs with my body when I have the glider on my shoulders.

Second, when Pat leaves, he calls Tisen down from the big hill by squeaking his favorite ball.  He was at least 100 yards away and he ran down the hill to get that ball.  The power of a squeaky toy!

In the car later, Tisen starts carrying his squeaky toys up onto the seat in the min-van.  I cannot help but snap a shot with my iPhone.

This leads us to our final subject, Photography.

The pictures from the tandem flight were taken by a small Olympus point and shoot positioned on a mount on the wing.  The camera was set to take a shot every 10 seconds.  This was not my camera, but an add-on service the flight school offers.  Frankly, I can’t tell much from the photos and they all start to look the same after a while, but it is kind of cool.  I am definitely going to wear sunglasses so I don’t have to wear the school’s protective eyewear next time, though!

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Double Play

Posted by dkrashb on

I have come to realize I am down to three obsessions to write about:  Tisen, Photography, and Hang Gliding.  I was hoping to combine all three into a single post today, but hang gliding didn’t happen today due to weather.  Maybe tomorrow–my own little triple play (sorry, it’s a telecom joke from back when I worked in the telecom industry).

After driving to the training hills, getting about 10% into assembling a glider, and then having to put it away and drive home, I consider taking a nap.  However, I have volunteered to help organize a St. Patrick’s Day fund raiser for S.O.A.R., so I decide to do some work on that instead.  I have a photo that I want to use of Cody, a Red-Tail Hawk, but it had a noisy background.  It was also taken with my iPhone–what I can do with it is somewhat limited.  Nonetheless, I end up spending an hour figuring out how to cut the hawk out of the photo and put it in front of a different background.  No wonder I hate editing photos!

Before:

Cody Flaring for Landing - iPhone photo slightly retouched

After:

Cody with New Background

I end up putting a different busy background behind Cody because there are so many places where I either erased something I didn’t mean to or didn’t erase something I should have.  I need the background to distract from my mistakes.  Regardless, I think it will work for a brochure and it turned out better than I thought it would.

After creating a draft poster and brochure, I take Tisen for a long walk.  There are tourists on the Walnut St Bridge taking pictures.  I have to smile to myself–I can’t count the number of times I’ve been up on that bridge shooting.  But, today is not a good day for shooting at all.  It’s gray and misting and I feel lucky I can pick the days I haul my equipment up to Walnut St Bridge.

I realize today that I’ve decided without actually deciding to include photos with each post, even if means grabbing a few shots with the iPhone.  After finishing the walk, I decide to get out my real-deal camera with the 100mm macro lens and start playing.

After seeing some shots on a real photographer’s blog that make me think maybe dog photos can be artistic, I decide to stick with Tisen as my model, but to try to use the macro lens to get something a little different.  Unfortunately, until I am going through the photos later, I don’t realize how much having a logo showing detracts from a picture.  It looks like I was hired to do a shoot for Kong dog toys.  That would have been nice!  While I’m doing an unpaid ad, Tisen does prefer Kong’s tennis balls–they squeak.

If I weren’t tired of photo editing, I would edit out the logos.  But now, I have the great joy of watching Tisen’s tail wag as we head out the door.

If Daedalus Were a Photographer

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We get to sleep in today–we don’t have to be at the mountain launch until 8:30AM.  At 3:17AM, I am awakened by a dog looking intently at me, wagging his tail and a cloud of stench that makes me think he’s had an accident.  I illuminate my iPhone and find he has not had an accident, yet.  I pull on footwear, grab a jacket, and race outside with him.  We make it outside with time to spare, but I’m about to have an accident by the time Tisen’s needs are met.

I spend the next 3 hours nodding off and waking up every 15 minutes.  Tisen snores loudly at my feet.  I finally fall back into a deep sleep about 10 minutes before the alarm goes off.  I lay in bed willing myself to wake up my husband and get out of bed.  Today is a big day–Pat’s first mountain launch.

We make it to the top of the mountain and find a couple of guys from Minnesota have already launched for the first time.  They and the instructor, JC, return about the time we’re done assembling Pat’s glider.  JC goes through the flight plan with Pat again, making sure he knows exactly what he’s supposed to do.

While she launches our Minnesota classmates again, I busy myself getting my equipment ready.  There’s the GoPro helmet cam, my iPhone video camera, and, of course, my DSLR.  I’ve found a spot below the launch ramp to shoot from.  Unfortunately, I’m too close to the ramp with the 100-400mm lens to get the field of view I want.

Since I am also manning the iPhone video camera, I’ve mounted it into a TomTom iPhone mount to make it easier to hold on top of my lens.  Whatever I’m pointing at will also be the subject for the video.  Pat, aka MacGyver, came up with this idea.

I learned several things trying to shoot this launch.  First, don’t be both the still photographer and the videographer at the same time.  I couldn’t pan well while holding the iPhone mount and missed the most interesting parts of the launch with my camera.  Second, the iPhone is a fine way to make a video if your subject is no more than, say, 50 feet away.  After that, Pat was a white dot floating over the trees.  Third, keeping yourself busy with equipment really distracts you from the overwhelming anxiety created by watching your life partner of over 16 years run off the edge of a mountain.  Unfortunately, it also distracts you from fully experiencing the moment.  I felt like I hadn’t seen the launch at all.  The moment my husband stood on top of a mountain with a kite on his back and ran off that mountain like he’d been doing it all his life, in that moment, I was distracted.  I wanted to be inside his head at that moment, but, instead, I was outside, looking through a viewfinder.

Clouds and Dogs

Posted by dkrashb on

I roll out of bed an hour and a half later than usual this morning.  I am not a morning person.  In fact, I am so not a morning person that even as an infant I was cranky in the morning.  But, I’ve learned that if I give myself a lot of time in the morning, I am able to function without snapping at too many people.  Losing an hour and a half of “me time” makes this difficult.

Fortunately for me, my hubby gets up and takes the dog out.  This is due to a secret I will share with just you, my faithful readers.  We are thinking about keeping the dog.  However, because fostering was my thing, I was doing most of the care taking.  And, since I work from home and I’m hanging out with the dog all day, Tisen has particularly attached himself to me.  My husband decided he needed to take on extra dog duty to decide if keeping him is feasible.  I am relieved to have the additional help with walking, even if we end up not keeping him.  We are weighing the joy of fostering against the joy of being dog parents.

This morning, because my husband is now fully participating, I gain back a half an hour of the time I lost by over sleeping.

Once the coffee is made, I look out the window and decide to shoot some of the clouds hovering over the aquarium.  I’ve been having fun using my 100mm lens for everything these days, so keeping with that trend, I try shooting the landscape with it as well.  Although I miss the range of a zoom lens, it’s nice that the 100mm gets me over the nasty parking lot in the foreground.

After shooting for a few minutes, I decide I’d better pack it in so I have time to refill my coffee before my first meeting.  But as I turn, I see beams of light streaming through the clouds behind me.  Why is it that the light so often does the most interesting things when you have your back turned?

I fire off a series of shots at various exposures.  I know if I stand there for 15 minutes the light will change and the beams will become more distinct, making a more intense image.  But, alas, the clock ticks and I don’t get paid to shoot sun rays.

At the end of the day, the clouds have cleared and I turn to Tisen as my model.  He loves to lay on the couch.  He looks at me without moving except his tail.  I do my best with a long exposure to get his wagging tail in motion.  I can think of nothing in life that so consistently makes me smile–I never tire of a wagging tail.  Then, Pat comes home and Tisen demonstrates how much he’s come to appreciate Pat by curling up on his lap.  Who can resist taking a picture of that?

Rain Day

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The rain is back.  I have nothing against rain. I would just like to be able to schedule it.  For example, the summer afternoon thunderstorms in the Rockies are nice.  They roll in, drop their goods, and roll out like paratroopers on a daily exercise.  Having done their duty, there’s no need to linger and keep the sky gray for days on end.

While Chattanooga seems far sunnier than Columbus, the winter has brought a lot of rain.

Living on the top floor in a faux-loft apartment changes our relationship with rain.  I don’t have to look out the windows to tell if it’s raining–the sound of it hitting the roof gets so loud in a downpour that I frantically hit the mute button during conference calls.  In heavy rains, mysterious leaks start to appear that seem to be related to the angle and speed of the rainfall and can’t be pinpointed or recreated for maintenance men.

After a few hours, the rain drumming in my ears starts to fade into the background so that when it finally stops, it’s a similar experience to being in an office building when there is a power outage–the sudden absence of the white noise leaves the building in an eerie state of silence, often causing its inhabitants to start whispering.

While there is never silence here–there is always something making noise whether it’s a  delivery truck rumbling down the street, a car stopped at the intersection with its stereo blaring, people shouting and laughing over the sounds of traffic–there are moments of less noise.  When the droning of the rain suddenly stops, these other noises pop to the forefront and I find myself missing the buffer of the rain.  So, I have come to appreciate a slow, gentle rain that is just enough to wash away not only the debris in the streets, but also the noise pollution.

I have visions of shooting rain drops sharply in focus in the foreground with the blurred but recognizable backdrop of the aquarium across the river.  But first, our foster dog must go out.  After taking him out in the rain, drying him off, and setting up my tripod, it, of course, stops raining.  I shoot the aquarium in the mist.  Then, I aim for the clouds over the mountains in the distance.  Finally, I discover water drops forming on the balcony overhang and decide to try to get the effect I was looking for by shooting them falling.

An interesting thing about photography:  it’s one thing to envision an image and another to capture it.  After 30+ shots, I manage to capture the drops falling, but they disappear into the light gray background of the sky.  I cannot capture anything close to the picture in my head.

When I set my camera aside and buckle down to a hectic day at the office, it starts to pour.  If only I could schedule the rain . . .

Wine Shots

Posted by dkrashb on

I’m ready for the weekend.  But, my husband is working away at his new digs across the street.  I could walk over and check on him, and maybe I will later.  But right now, I take a little time for me.  First a glass of wine.  One small glass left from my birthday bottle of The Prisoner.

Inspired by a Facebook post by a good friend, I play some Etta James–it’s the kind of mood I’m in–and get out my tripod.  My beautiful glass of wine is going to be my first subject this evening.  I set it up on top of my iPad’s green cover.  I move a utility lamp over.  Then, I set up my camera with its 100mm macro lens about an inch from the glass.  I spend about a half an hour finding interesting shapes and bubbles and (ick) floaties in my wine.

Eventually, I get tired of looking at the wine and decide to drink it.  I move on to shooting close ups of an old nail file, a stuffed Brutus Buckeye bean bag (you have to be from Columbus to get that), my ear buds, and then I land on the utility lamp.  I stop myself after the lamp.

As I process photos, I find it hard to choose.  The more pictures I take, the harder it is for me to pick the handful that I like.  They run together in my mind and I cannot remember if the one I am looking at now is better than the one I was looking at 3 seconds ago.

It reminds me of the time I took my senile aunt bra shopping.  For those of you who have never been bra shopping, it’s not a fun activity no matter what you think.  Add to the mix an 85 year old woman who can’t remember your name and it quickly degrades into an exercise of frustration.

I will spare you the details, but when it came time to choose, I would say, “Do you like this one better or the last one better?”  She would look at me blankly and I would hold up the last one and say, “Do you like the one you have on now or this one?”  She would look at the one in my hand and say, “Oh, did I have that one on?”  Needless to say, I gave up and bought her a few comfortable looking sports bras.  She, of course, couldn’t remember they were bras and never wore them.

Since my memory is slightly better than that, I did manage to whittle down my shots to 4.  I particularly like the last one in terms of an interesting experiment.  I shot through the utility lamp with the focus on the mini-blind in the background.  The light created the effect of a moon behind the blind, which surprised me since the lamp was about 6 inches from the lens and the blind was more like 4 feet away.

Catch the Moon

Posted by dkrashb on

I have been using the moon as a model a lot, but I find it is not as cooperative as I expected.  While, like a model, it’s a heavenly body, unlike a model, it presents itself on a predictable schedule.  As such, you would think it would be easy to schedule a shoot.  However, I have learned that a) there is such a thing as cloud cover, b) the moon doesn’t always rise before I go to bed, c) the moon often rises out of sight from where I am looking.

As a result, I have started to worry more about missing the shots of the moon rising behind the Walnut Street bridge in August.  I now wonder if perhaps that was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I missed.

Now that I have a lunar calendar that tells me what time the moon rises, a good tripod, and the ideal composition in mind, I just need the moon to return to it’s former position in the sky.  In doing a little research, I found www.photoephemeris.com for planning outdoor shoots in advance and even tools to figure out where the moon will rise and the path it will travel.  (Maybe we can all be Ansel Adams after all?)

However, this doesn’t answer my question as to how long it will be before the moon rises in the same location.  I am having some troubles finding an answer to this.  I have found articles on the difference in appearance of the moon at apogee vs perigee, the repeating cycle of maxima and minima delineation that takes 18 1/2 years, and calculating the differences in brightness, but I still can’t find how long it takes for the moon to rise in the same location.  I’m guessing that it will repeat within my lifetime, but probably not soon.  In the meantime, I keep watching the moon when it chooses to show itself and looking for opportunities to shoot it rising.

The shot here is a full moon rising through clouds, shot with my iPhone (which was convinced it needed to flash) from a rest area while driving back to Chattanooga from Columbus.  While this looks more like something I might, say, paint during a continuing education class on impressionist painting, I am still impressed by the improvements in the iPhone camera from the 3GS to the 4S–just don’t expect to get good landscape photos at night.

I am particularly impressed with the LCD flash on the iPhone 4S.  I was a little surprised by how brightly it flashed when I took a picture, but when I discovered the flashlight app now has a setting that lets you turn on the LCD light continuously to use it as a flashlight, I was amazed.  I was able to find my workout clothes in the dark this morning and successfully determined the difference between black and dark purple.  If you haven’t upgraded, it’s time.