Lessons Learned in Timelapse Photography (February 11, 2011)

An unfortunately less-than-dramatic timelapse of sunset over Salt Lake City.

I was enamored with the nearly 360-degree view we had of the mountains at our place in Utah, and since the weather was so nice during our stay I thought capturing the sunset behind the range would be a sure win.  Unfortunately, the evening skies never quite cooperated, and the sunsets were sort of lackluster – the sun just disappeared slowly, and eventually the opposite corner of the sky would show the merest traces of pink.

On our third night there, I ventured out to the equestrian park just below our house to take a timelapse – I figured that if the colors weren’t vibrant enough to make an interesting still shot, making it dynamic would allow me to capture more of the beauty.  In my previous timelapse attempts, I’d learned 2 very basic things:

1. The slightest variations in position between shots cause severe “camera shake” in the video (can be post-processed out, but it’s painful)
2. As the lighting conditions change (as they tend to do in a sunset), it becomes harder to focus each subsequent shot in the same place

Using a remote timer easily fixes #1, but it was incredibly cold outside and I couldn’t manipulate the controls on the timer to set the interval with my frozen fingers.  I established a very careful pattern – remove hand from glove, place on shutter button, gather camera strap with left hand to prevent wind shake, push shutter button, hold still for a slow count to 3, hand back in glove, stare at watch for next 15 seconds.  Incredibly the camera shake actually isn’t that bad – I didn’t correct it at all.  That wasn’t the worst of it, though.

For some reason (laziness or cold fingers – I can’t remember which), I left the exposure settings on auto.  Huge mistake.  The camera quite dutifully adjusted the exposure length and the aperture as the light changed, meaning that in every few shots the overall brightness of the sequence was essentially reset.  I realized this about halfway through the shoot, but thought that changing it halfway through would make things even worse.  At least I’d get the movement of the sun and clouds, even though I couldn’t show the darkening skies.

After about 20 minutes, during which I took an exposure every 20 seconds, the sun was behind the mountains and the only changes from shot to shot were in the lingering glow – which of course was masked by the auto exposure.  My fingers were numb and I figured any gain I got out of the next few minutes would be pretty small, so I packed away my gear and called it an evening.  Sadly it was the last evening I’d have to attempt sunset shots, though the following evening didn’t look any better.

When I got back and pulled the photos off the camera, I was about as disappointed as I expected to be, and I planned to just delete the entire sequence without ever putting it together into a video.  But it was a learning experience and I certainly don’t want to repeat that mistake.  So here I am, 2 weeks later, putting the video together after all and recording my lesson so I remember it:

3.  Never leave the camera in auto-anything.  All settings must be identical for the entire sequence.

Yeah, that was probably self-evident… but apparently not when I’m cold.

Explorations into LDS Territory (February 12, 2011)

[This was day 3 of a 4-day trip to the Salt Lake City area.  I’m posting a bit out of order as I’m waiting for photos from others from days 1-2.]

When I was about 10 years old my parents took us to see the Biltmore Estate.  Determined to make it an “educational experience”, they not only ensured that we learned the relevant history ahead of time, but they also repeatedly reminded us throughout the tour of how ridiculously rich the family was (as if the physical evidence wasn’t right in front of us).  The phrase “you’ll never see money like this again” is a family joke to this day as they repeated it so often in the short span of the tour.  (Of course, we were really there for my parents to enjoy the wine cellar, but I didn’t realize that then.)

At the time, I was in awe.  A man rich enough to own his own indoor swimming pool!  (Never mind that, emptied and abandoned, it looked like a cellar from a haunted house.)  The extravagance seemed more absurd to me than the riches of kings and queens.  I was convinced my parents were right – I’d obviously seen the most extravagant private home ever to be built in this country.  But while it’s scale is certainly unrivaled, some of the many novelties that made the Biltmore house so impressive in the late 19th century are now common fixtures in homes.  Things like central heating and fire alarms are standard features, and centrally controlled clocks are not so very different from today’s integrated media systems.  Since I’ve never been to the Gates residence or any of the pretentious celebrity houses, I’d never seen the modern version of a wealthy private home – until now.

The house our party of 10 stayed in for our ski vacation was actually less than half a house – we had only the bottom floor, with 4 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms, of a house with a total of 15 bedrooms and who knows how many bathrooms.  Yes, FIFTEEN bedrooms.  There were THREE 2-car garages and an additional single-car garage, not one of which was reserved for our use – we were relegated to parking in the spacious secondary driveway.  Our quaint little basement home-away-from-home also included a full gym with cardio equipment and racks of free weights as well as a home theater with stadium seating, both of which we were advised were open to use by the residents upstairs.  Naturally, since having a home theater is not convenient for simply watching TV, the home also had a wall-sized flat panel TV in the living area and a separate full-size flat panel TV in the gym.  Externally mounted speakers carried our music selection through the house and out to the patio, where an in-ground hot tub was available for use by anyone in the house.  From there, a path led out to an in-ground trampoline (and yes, it was completely frozen and snow-covered) in the midst of a landscaping showcase of waterfalls, benches, and bridges that apparently cost $150,000 to install.  I never saw the 11 bedrooms upstairs as the family was living there, but as the lower level was only converted to a rental as an afterthought, I can only imagine what the main floor contained.

The theater:

 

The gym with its view:

 

The rear of the house + trampoline after we tried to use it:

 

Lots of electronics (photo cred DByther):

   

On its own, I guess this wouldn’t have been too surprising.  I have friends who own vacation homes; I could imagine someone with a lot of startup funds buying a basement condo and then making it competitive by adding amenities to attract wealthy vacationers or celebrities.  Except this wasn’t the case here – these people *lived* in this house.  The amenities they had were amenities they either expected or wanted in their daily lives.  They hadn’t built the place to attract celebrities; this was just how they lived.  AND THEY WERE NOT ALONE.  This was just one house in one subdivision.  Each house was equally as large, and each subdivision equally pretentious.  These people weren’t Biltmores by any stretch, but they did all apparently have $800,000 (we looked at the price on a property for sale) to invest in homes, pools, hot tubs, and home theaters – all in addition to the 10% they must tithe to their neighborhood LDS church, which is conveniently located just around the bend in each and every subdivision (Visitors Welcome).

While I didn’t grow up in a poor family or a rough neighborhood, I can’t imagine growing up here.  The things you’d take for granted around you, the spending patterns you’d expect… I’d think the rest of the world would lack a certain luster.  But perhaps they never intend to leave or see the rest of the world aside from their mission work.

Of all the extravagant neighborhoods, though, none was as noticeable as the adjacent subdivision, proud home of the Draper Temple.  Perched on a hillside, the temple was a shining landmark visible at night from miles away as I drove back from my evening swims at the community pool.  Depending on how you looked at it, it was either a symbol of pride or a gaudy distraction.  Either way, I was interested in trying to capture a shot of it all lit up amongst the houses.

(This is the view of the temple from in front of our house during the day – unfortunately the only shot I have is from a video taken with a point and shoot from the car, so this still frame is not great quality.)

I wanted to photograph the temple from a distance to show it outshining everything in its vicinity.  There was an equestrian park below our house that I thought would make a good starting spot, though I’d be shooting almost directly uphill.  Unfortunately, T didn’t agree with me – he wanted a close-up shot of just the temple itself.  In my opinion, LDS temple architecture is not really that interesting – they’re square with pillars at predictable intervals.  Everything is straight lines and rectangles.  I couldn’t envision a compelling composition for a close shot, particularly as the bright lights would likely burn the image too easily, but I was interested to see what T had in mind.  Since we only had 1 car, we agreed to head up onto the neighborhood hilltop for T’s shot first, and then back down to the park for mine.  We had it on good authority from a local that the temples stay lit all night so I didn’t mind waiting to get my shot.

As we drove up the hill, winding through the endless corridors of private mansions even bigger than ours and feeling a bit like trespassers, it was obvious that the close shot from the temple parking lot was way too close, and there was no good way to get any distance on it since there were houses on all sides.  T decided he wanted to try a top-down shot, so I continued up the hill to try to get above the houses.  When we reached the end of the road, though, we still didn’t have a clear view.  But we *had* found a hidden treasure – an unfinished culdesac with the greatest mansion of them all still under construction.

The house was huge – it wrapped around the entire culdesac, and the construction project required its own industrial sized waste bin.  The owner apparently wanted to live in a castle and had chosen a design with multiple towers, gables, spiral windows, and arched doorways.  The opening into what would probably eventually be the garage yawned black in the night, shaped like a large drawbridge gate, opening onto nothing.  The wind was howling that night on the unprotected hillside as a warm front was being shoved in, and it whistled through the black unfilled orifices of the house.  A perfectly clear half moon illuminated the drawbridge side of the house, while a single streetlight inconveniently placed just to the right of the house made the right and bottom half of it glow.  A single light was on in an upstairs window behind the tower, but clearly no one was home.  The entire structure looked inhospitable, and in the darkness with the wind blocking out all other sound, it seemed less like a warm friendly residential suburb and more the perfect setting for the next sequel to a bad horror movie series.  I half expected to hear creaking shutters or doors slamming unexpectedly or lights flickering in other windows.  Or bats flying out of the empty “drawbridge”.

T wandered over by the house to get his temple picture, as the temple was visible from the backyard, but he came back quickly without a shot.  He claimed that the angle wasn’t good, but I suspect he was spooked by his proximity to the scary house – he locked himself in the car and didn’t come out for the rest of the shoot.  There was a couple making out by their car across from the house when we first drove up, but they quickly left when they realized we weren’t just turning around and leaving them to their privacy.  I immediately took their spot and set up my tripod.  If I could figure out how to get the lighting right to really convey the mood, this house would be better than the temple.

I framed the shot as closely as I could to ensure that the port-a-potty was out of frame to the left and the streetlight was out of frame to the right, as the former sort of ruined the mood and the bulb on the latter would be a bright distracting spot in the photo.  Still, though, the glow from the streetlight illuminated the house a bit too much.  At a longer exposure the lower half of the house was far too bright and detracted from the shadowy peaks and gables.  At a shorter exposure the sky and roof were too dark and blended into blackness indistinguishable from each other.  The wind was so strong that it was blowing my tripod around, and I was having trouble keeping the house in focus for the duration of the shot.  I suppose I could have tried exposure bracketing to bring the sky more into balance with the house, but either I didn’t think of it at the time or I was deterred by the wind vibrations.

Here’s the original, and beside it is what I’ve done so far to try to bring out the mood (just simple color/exposure changes in Windows Live).  In some ways I actually like the original better, so I don’t think I’m on the right track.  I’m wondering what I could do to make it look more like the “scary” place I had in mind.

As I packed my gear into the car, the glow from downhill suddenly lessened.  Our local source had apparently been wrong, as I’d suspected – the temple showcase lights had been turned off quite promptly at 11 PM.  I’d no longer be able to see the temple on the hill from the distance, so I resigned myself to the close shot.  Maddeningly, though, they’d left the bright white lights on around the lower third of the building, presenting me with the same problem I’d had with the house.  I took a couple shots anyway because I was determined not to come back to our friends (who were mocking us for venturing out on a night photo walk) empty-handed.  For some reason, T didn’t bother to take a shot at all even though it was the one he originally wanted. 

I came away with this disappointing frame:

Still frustrated by the bad timing, I stopped at another construction site on the way home, this one just below the temple, with a clear view of the entire Salt Lake valley.  Construction hadn’t even begun on this home yet, so I had an unobstructed view of the miles and miles of city lights.  Salt Lake City does not really have a distinguishable skyline like other cities, though, thanks to the ordinance that prevents them from building taller than the Salt Lake Temple.  So while I’ve been excited about my skyline shots recently, this one had no chance of measuring up.  What I do like about the shot, though, is that the temple is clearly visible even from my vantage point about 20 miles away.  (Note that the Salt Lake Temple does apparently stay fully lit past 11 PM.)

My vantage point:                                Salt Lake City + Temple:

 

At this point, I was very cold and tired of worrying about my tripod blowing over in the wind (I was getting blown around myself; I have no idea how the tripod remained upright).  I was also tired of looking like a prowler, cruising the neighborhood streets and parking outside people’s houses, peering through their yards to see if there was a good view.  There were some other perspectives I wanted to try, but the conditions just didn’t seem right.  Maybe I’ll be back to the area for another ski trip sometime, or maybe I won’t, but in any event it was a fun use of time while the rest of the group was back home drinking.  And certainly eye-opening to see this community’s standard of living.

Birthday (Eve) Pizza – February 4, 2011

[It’s been over a week since I posted, and I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t let that happen.  So earthshattering or not, I had to put up *something* tonight.]

“If you want something done right, do it yourself.” 

I subscribe pretty resolutely to this motto.  Some might add “Or hire a professional” to account for those times when you don’t actually know how to do something right… but that involves both spending money AND delegation, two things I’d prefer to avoid.  So when my plans for a nice dinner out tonight in Vancouver followed by drinks in Whistler Village somehow turned into “hey, sorry babe, I have to work – why don’t you make us some pizza for dinner tonight instead”, I was definitely disappointed, but also oddly relieved.  I could just take matters into my own hands.

 

I used to make pizza pretty frequently using a dough recipe my mom had developed over the years.  I was pretty happy with it and saw no reason to change it, especially since I’d had a lot of practice in working with it.  But recently I was coerced into taking a pizza-making class with T (who was disappointed that I don’t use my pizza stone very often)… and in brutal honesty, it was a really horrible experience.  The dough we were given to work with for our class samples was either poorly mixed or just wrong – it came out of the oven spongy and tough, and it was so salty I could feel my insides shriveling up like a dead slug as I gagged down just enough to be polite.  (I should note that this was probably a combination of several random instances of bad luck with the chef and his help and not a reflection on the company that offers the classes.)  We each left class with quite literally an armload of the stuff to either make into our own pizzas at home or freeze for later.  Mine went straight into the trash, but T, ever the optimist, put his in the freezer and insisted I use it tonight, because, you never know, it could be better than the other batch.  Ok… fine.  Let’s see what miracles I can work.

After 3 hours of sitting on the breadboard, T’s freezer dough of unknown quality was still a spongy ice-filled brick (unfortunately, I didn’t think to take a picture of the disgusting small-dog-sized flesh-colored amoeba), and I abandoned the idea of pizza for dinner.  I cooked up most of the pizza toppings, heated some sauce, and, with the help of some fresh basil, recreated an orzo dish that I’d tried last week.  We both wolfed it down and I felt pleased with myself for rescuing dinner so creatively.  But somehow, by the time all that was done less than an hour later, the dough was thawed enough to work with.  Typical.

At this point, since I’d already made my birthday dinner, T volunteered to step in and try his hand at the pizza.  It probably would have been a good learning experience for him to try it in a real kitchen setting rather than just playing in a classroom, but I just didn’t have the patience to work with him or the inclination to watch his failed attempts.  I wanted something tonight to turn out right, dammit.  So… I stuck by my motto and ushered him out of the kitchen. 

I cut the dough into 3rds because there was so much of it.  I’ve never worked with homemade frozen dough before, and it was definitely harder than using it fresh.  It was so inelastic that it would resume its thick balled shape within seconds of being rolled out.  I was really concerned that it would be too thick and would come out chewy and spongy as in class.  As predicted, it puffed up quite a bit in the oven, but I have to grudgingly admit that it was actually pretty good.  I prefer thick bready crust to thin crispy crust, so in some ways it was more to my liking than my mom’s recipe.  The flavor was a bit bland to me, but at least it wasn’t disgustingly salty!  That in and of itself made me feel a bit like a miracle-worker.

This isn’t a cooking blog, so I’m not going to waste space on here with either crust recipe.  The only reason I’m making this entry at all is because I had to find some way to entertain myself while doing this (I can tolerate making one dinner a night, but two!?).  Since I have absolutely zero experience taking pictures of food, I thought I’d challenge myself to take a picture of my own creation that actually made it look appetizing.  Something I could put on the website of my hypothetical future pizzeria.

In my opinion, food is tough to photograph “candidly” – it looks more appealing in dim light that hides the blackened spots or the leaking sauce or the fat globules in meat or the edges of the greens that have wilted.  But it’s hard to get a sharp picture with lots of appetizing color in dim light.  And using on-camera flash (which is all I have) is problematic in that it tends to reflect off all the wet or greasy facets of the subject and/or dish.  (Case in point – see right, taken with reduced flash.)  Using just ambient light, it’s difficult to keep the photo from being too yellow.

I knew that the “scene” was going to be everything, but given that I don’t actually have a wood-fired brick oven to give a fiery/homey backdrop, the “handmade” look had to come from somewhere else.  I opted to go with the floured breadboard as its natural habitat, though now that I look at it I think putting some of the fresh partially-cut ingredients around it would have made it better (if a bit cliché).  I took everything with the 100mm macro lens just because I like the shallow focus I can get with that lens.  Nothing I took would make me want to buy my pizza, but hey, it was a fun challenge anyway.  (And no, the pizza did not have cheese on it!)

 

Moral of the story: If I want a good pizza, I should make it myself.  If I want good photos, I should ask someone with more experience… but then I’d never learn… so in keeping with my motto… just keep trying! 

Seattle Evening Skyline from Beacon Hill (January 22, 2011)

In keeping with the skyline theme from earlier in the week, I’d been looking at various city photos on Flickr and was struck by several HDR shots taken from Dr Jose Rizal Park on Beacon Hill.  In particular, there was one shot (with the obvious fake HDR look) that really captured my attention with beautiful (exaggerated) bands of sunset color behind the buildings, with the traffic streaks from I-5 highlighted in the foreground.

Since Saturday evening was relatively clear, T and I grabbed our gear and headed over to the park around 4:15 PM.  As we drove up to the park entrance, we passed over a bridge that shared a name and nearly the same view as the park.  It looked to me like the clearest view would actually be from that bridge, but since the high point was actually in the park, we opted to stay there for this first outing.  I think next time I’ll try the bridge.

It wasn’t difficult to determine that the best spot for a clear view with the fewest tree branches encroaching on the shot was just on the other side of the fence near the pavilion.  There were two homeless men under the pavilion conversing in false bravado/self-importance about political matters that made no sense, a pathetic scene oddly juxtaposed with the trendy Chinese man taking pictures of the sound with his toddler son on the bench with him. 

After I’d been there awhile, the homeless men lapsed into silence, and one of them eventually wandered over to urinate near the corner of the fence.  While neither of them seemed to be overtly eyeing me or my camera gear, I was definitely keeping an eye on them as the neighborhood seemed a bit rough.  Note to self: always bring a buddy to Jose Rizal Park.

Aside from the unsavory denizens of Beacon Hill, two things were immediately obvious to us upon arriving.

1. We were way too early for sunset.  Though sunset was advertised at 4:45, and we were there at 4:30, the long exposures we’d need were really best after the sun was down but before it had gotten completely dark.
2. The sun was *not* setting behind the city to the northwest.  It was setting to the southwest, far out of any reasonable frame that contained the skyline.  This made sense to me once I thought about how the earth is oriented in winter… but what doesn’t make sense is that the photo I’d been excited about on Flickr was taken in January with the sunset colors in the northwest.  Fake, or just extremely lucky with cloud refraction?  Either way, we weren’t going to get those colors.

I figured that despite those 2 minor issues, this would still be a good learning experience.  Perhaps I can go back in the summer when the days are more predictably clear and the sun sets in a better spot.  My purpose this time was to do a little reconnaissance on the location, get the remote timer configured and working for long-exposure bracketed shots, and understand the daylight/nightlight conditions necessary for the photo I wanted.  While I didn’t get a “wow” photo for Flickr, I exactly accomplished those goals.

The first photo below is an HDR composite of 5 frames at –2, –1, 0, 1, 2 (done in PS CS4 as usual).  I deliberately overcompensated on the colors to negate the “graying” effect I’ve observed, and to bring out the light streaks on the highway a bit more.  Obviously, as the 5 original frames show, this is not exactly as my eye saw it… but this is close to what I’d envisioned before leaving the house.

              

The second sample I made a bit more realistic.  Same thing, 5 exposures, HDR, obviously different composition (more I5, less city).  I think I like the less realistic one better.

               

While we were standing there waiting for true dusk, taking a few shots at semi-regular intervals to see how the lighting conditions manifested themselves through the camera, another photographer joined us.  He’d obviously been here before, as he’d brought a buddy with him.  The buddy played the role of sherpa/moral supporter/dog walker while the first guy set up 2 tripods right next to us, having ascertained that we were in the best open spot.  On one tripod he put a Nikon DSLR (I’m not familiar with the Nikon line, so I didn’t ask what it was), and on the other he set up a video camera, which he aimed first at the wide shot of the city similar to my first shot above, and then zoomed in on I-5, filming the moving traffic.

He wore shorts, which seemed a rather strange clothing choice given the cold weather, but he was very friendly and seemed quite at home in the park.  He asked when we’d gotten there, and when we said too early, he asked if we were taking a timelapse.  Ugh!!  Of course!!  Why didn’t I think of that??  I even had the timer!  I could have just set it up to take regular photos while waiting for darkness and sat in the warmth instead of standing with my feet in the freezing wet grass taking every shot at different settings.

For some reason T told the guy that we were taking a timelapse.  I think he must have momentarily forgotten what timelapse meant, since that was obviously false.    Nonetheless, after taking a few seconds to mentally thrash myself for not taking advantage of the opportunity, I set about rectifying the situation by taking regular shots at the same exposure settings and composition.  Except I didn’t want to ruin my HDR plan by changing the game halfway through, so I was actually taking 3 or 6 exposures for every “shot”.  This made for a horrendous post-processing experience, as might be expected.  Additionally, since the 50D only gives me 3 bracketed frames at a time, I was physically pushing buttons on the camera in between intervals, which meant that I was slightly changing the position of the camera each time without knowing it.

Since I’m a beginner and cheap when it comes to tools, I’m not really afraid to share my timelapse workflow on here (such as it is) knowing that most people who are interested in this already have a much better one with more sophisticated tools (if anyone will actually end up reading this anyway).

1. Go through all the images and pick the frame from each interval with matching settings and reasonably close composition with the others.  In this case, I was just eyeballing the skyline position and looking at exposure length and bias.  I ended up taking all the –1 bias shots as the ones with the best color.
2. Throw all the photos into Windows Live Movie Maker just to preview the result.  This tool is not really essential in the workflow, but I find it much simpler to use than anything else, and it’s integrated into the library I have.
3. Discard any frames that look really out of place – for instance if I misjudged the position.  In this case, I started out with 19 frames and ended up discarding the first 8 as they were in a radically different position than the last 11 (which were taken after the guy’s comment).
4. Import the selected frames into Corel Video Studio.  I use this tool because it can output AVI, which I need in step 7.
5. Reduce the time on each frame to somewhere between 0.1-0.2 sec, depending on the subject.  The result will look a bit stuttered due to the frame displacement, but everything else (lighting, etc) should be corrected here.
6. Export to the highest quality AVI possible.
7. Import the AVI to VirtualDub (a free video-editing tool).  I don’t do steps 4-6 here because it’s not quite as easy to combine video frame by frame.  At some point I’ll figure out a better way so I don’t have to export and re-import.  It’s important to import an AVI even though VirtualDub reads other file types because it will only export as an AVI – if it’s not AVI to begin with, the conversion will result in grainy/blurry video.
8. Run 2 passes of the Deshaker plugin (also free, but obtainable separately from VirtualDub).  Adjust settings between passes as necessary – so far for me this has just involved turning the matching settings up to the most accurate.
9. Export as AVI.  The Deshaker plugin should have matched each frame with the frames around it and moved them accordingly, adding black space on the top/bottom/left/right as necessary, so that the result is a smooth version of the original video.

The result is below.  Obviously imperfect for all the reasons I described above… but next time I’ll make it better.

The lights come on in Seattle as evening falls

While I planned to return the next evening and correct all my mistakes, the weather didn’t cooperate – the sky was overcast all day and it was actually raining by evening.  I’ll just have to wait for another chance.

Bellevue Lights (January 19, 2011)

After the debacle at Snoqualmie Falls in the morning, I was still determined to go home with a post-worthy photo for the day.  I headed over to Bellevue for yoga but had gotten the class time wrong, so I had a bit of free time before I had to pick up T from work – clearly the perfect time to make up for the morning since I still had all my gear with me.  Since it was already dark out (about 7:30 PM), I didn’t really have the option of scouting out a vantage point, so I decided to head up to the top of City Center where I’ve been known to admire the sunset over a picnic dinner on occasion.

From the balcony at the top of City Center one can see most of the Bellevue skyline (it’s not a geographically large city), but since you’re essentially inside the skyline, you’d need a pretty wide-angle lens or a stitch of several photos to actually capture the entire thing.  I actually wasn’t interested in the skyline that night, though – I wanted to get the traffic lines on I-405 with the hills and lake in the background.  When I got to the top of the building, however, I realized that the perspective wasn’t quite what I had in my head – the highway was east of me, with the moving traffic in the southeast, and the city and lake are farther to the west than I expected.  The moon (which was full) was directly east, so I couldn’t really get the full moon and the traffic, which moves north-south.  Plus, at close to 8 PM, there just isn’t much traffic in either direction, so I’d have to use a pretty long exposure to get the light lines.

The other complicating aspect of shooting from the City Center balcony is that there’s a high safety wall all around the balcony with what amounts to a high curb all around its base, which makes setting up a tripod… tricky.  There are some old mounts that were probably once intended for tourist viewfinders, and I found that by perching the tripod in a corner with one leg on each side of the curb and the other leg on one of the mounts, I could get a reasonably level shot that didn’t include the safety wall.

I was trying to use T’s remote/timer, but it’s a knock-off and the contacts in the cord on the timer weren’t making contact with the outlet in my camera, rendering it essentially useless.  I gave up on that pretty quickly and just hoped that the camera shake wouldn’t be too bad.  Conclusion: I-405 is no good for the shot I had in mind.  There are low parking lots and buildings with bright white lights that abut the highway, and those lights are glaring and distracting in a longer exposure.  Plus, the highway itself has lots of lights on it, which distract from the lines from the cars’ head/taillights.  The Bellevue city lights are maddeningly just far enough from the road that there’s a dark patch between the city and the highway.  In short, not at all what I wanted.

At 1.6 sec exposure, this is what I ended up with.  I could see that it wasn’t going to turn into what I wanted, so this is as far as I went with it.

I fiddled around with the composition for awhile trying to get the full moon in the shot, which is just out of the frame to the left, but the results were too horrendous to even keep on the memory card, so they never made it here.  It’s better that way. 

With my last few minutes, I spun around 180 degrees and started shooting the skyline that I hadn’t intended to shoot at all that night.  There are 2 buildings right next to City Center that have exteriors almost entirely made of one-way glass.  While they’re better with the colors of a brilliant sunrise or sunset, they’re also fascinating to stare at at night as they create a kaleidoscope effect of the city streets around them.  I got a shot of one of them that I was fairly happy with – that one went on Flickr so I could feel accomplished about my day, though when I looked at it later it looked darker than I’d intended.

I also had 2 shots that I realized would stitch together quite nicely to show the 2 buildings next to each other (with the unfortunately distracting mall parking lot between them… if only I could just get the mall to turn off their lights at night).  Since I hadn’t planned for these to be a stitch when I took them, the alignment was way off, and there’s a glimpse of the safety wall in the lower corner.  Cropping the stitch would sort of ruin it, so I just left it as-is (complete with the airplanes flying in the background because I don’t have photoshop on this computer).  If only I’d lined it up better on site, this might have been my shot for the day.  Oh well.

Snoqualmie Falls in Flood (January 19, 2011)

We’ve had relatively heavy rain for nearly a week now.  In this area, constant rain at a flow rate any higher than a drizzle means there’s guaranteed to be flooding somewhere in the state.  True to form, the weather app on my phone had a whole list of queued flood alerts waiting for me on Tuesday morning (Jan 18th).  As I went through the list, I noticed that one of the alerts was measuring flow rate rather than water level – the order of magnitude difference in the numbers made me look again.

Snoqualmie River, above flood level, cresting soon.  Just before the falls.  And skies were clearing on Wednesday.

If those facts alone didn’t add up to enough impetus to get out there, a couple hours later I happened across a photo from the previous evening taken by someone on the email list at work.  Turns out that the hydroelectric plant near the falls is currently under construction, so the entire flood volume was going over the falls.  The photo I saw was taken at dusk and looked very compelling, but in my mind’s eye I had an even more impressive shot.  I thought I could do better on a clear day at the golden hour.

I should pause briefly here to point out that Snoqualmie Falls is a very popular tourist spot for both locals and visitors and is probably one of the most photographed landmarks in the state.  There are countless “wow” photos of these falls on Flickr – by day, by night, from the bottom, from the top, in flood, in freeze – and I didn’t expect to outdo the majority of them on my first real attempt.  Nonetheless, I thought I had a shot at something really good given that I’ve been to the falls several times before and knew exactly where to get the best view – from the bottom, outside the “legal” viewing area.

Unfortunately, I was wrong.  I had a PT appointment at 8 AM that morning, so I’d be missing golden hour by a bit.  The sky was clear and the air was crisp as I headed to my appointment, so at that point I was very much undeterred.  I cut my appointment short by about 20 minutes and headed out on the road.  The sun was warm and golden all the way east, and I was starting to worry that I was too late and would be blinded by shooting into the direct sun over the falls.

Sadly, I didn’t need to be worried about the sun.  When I got to the falls, I couldn’t see them.  I couldn’t even catch a glimpse of the top of the falls from the lodge.  Not only that, but the only way I knew down to the base was closed until 2013 thanks to the construction.  I wandered down the path to the tourist viewing platform, where I was practically being pelted with mist and spray (pelting with mist?  a new experience to be sure).  I’d been warned about getting wet, but I wasn’t expecting zero visibility.  In my disappointment I just stood there staring out into the gray blindness for awhile, shivering in my very inadequate jacket.

There were two other photographers there – one was tromping around looking as dissatisfied as me, and the other was amusing himself by taking pictures of the haloed sun whenever it could be glimpsed through the fog.  Or perhaps of the saturated tree branches around us.  I couldn’t quite tell.  Either way, it wasn’t worth exposing the lens to the spray.  His tripod leaned dripping and forgotten against the railing some 50 feet from where he stood as if he couldn’t even be bothered to retrieve it.  The whole scene was depressing, and I couldn’t believe that this was how my day was going – that I’d really driven all the way out there to come back empty-handed.

After talking to abandoned-tripod dude, I determined that I’d missed the sun by only 5 minutes.  Fog (and most weather) changes fast in the mountains, so I figured it was reasonable to assume that my luck would reverse just as quickly if I was only patient enough to wait it out.  So wait I did.  For an hour.  I did everything I could conceive of to pass the time.  Explored the construction site to see if there was an alternate way to the bottom.  Talked to some tourists who’d come from Oklahoma City.  Talked to some construction workers.  Wandered up and down the path.  Watched the traffic.  Stared impatiently in the direction of the sun.

The spray wasn’t so bad at the top of the path near the lodge, so after awhile I decided to take the camera out and get a few handheld shots of the covered bridge over the highway.  I feel like I just didn’t get the right angle or composition of the bridge, but that there’s potential in that shot.  I just can’t quite imagine what it’s supposed to be… I guess I’ll know it when I see it.  I particularly don’t like the cars visible from most angles, the glaring light at the end of the bridge, and the tourist posters on the walls inside.  But I love all the angles (it was hard to find the right “straight” perspective) and the eerie industrial feel cast by the ceiling lights.

       

When I finished messing around on the bridge, the sun had burned through some of the fog around the lodge.  I knew that if I got a break it would come quickly so I better be ready for it.  I got out the tripod and set everything up, then took it down to the viewing area at the midpoint.  There was no point in going all the way down to the main viewing area – even though it provides a more complete view of the falls, the fog was trapped there and would take hours to waft out.  I aimed the camera somewhat blindly with frozen hands, and then removed just enough of the lens cap within the protection of the hood to get the focus right.  I figured if it did clear, I’d have a clean lens to get 1 or 2 good shots.

Sadly, the clearing I was hoping for never really reached the viewing area.  Around 9:50 AM (I’d arrived at 9 AM), I got a few brief glimpses of the plunging water from where I was standing and started pushing the shutter whenever I could see *anything*.  It was definitely impressive, but the camera didn’t quite convey it.  I was too disappointed to play with these photos and just left all the water spots in.  May as well give a realistic impression of the experience.

After a few minutes at the midpoint I was soaked and frozen so I moved back up to the top where the air was more clear and I could see a bit better.  I figured I’d just try capturing the tumultuousness of the top of the falls where the water fights its way over large boulders on its way to the precipice.  Of course, such shots lack context (not that there was any to be had in that weather) and depth, so they were bound to be limited anyway.

At 10 AM I threw in the towel (which, unfortunately for my bedraggled head, was an imaginary towel) and headed for work.  The photos I have posted here are the best I got that morning.  As I drove away the roads were bathed in a golden sunny glow, but I’ll never know if I would have seen the falls in that light had I waited another hour.

To emphasize just how useless this cold, wet hour of my life was, and how dramatic the flood flow is compared to normal, here’s a shot of the falls from the main visitor viewpoint (the one at the end of the path from which I couldn’t see anything this time) that I took with my Powershot 950 in June 2009.

Space Needle Fireworks (New Year’s Eve 2010/2011)

After my fantastic day in eastern Washington, I wanted to keep the photography momentum going (and, let’s face it, exercise my new gear a bit more – I had a brand new tripod that I was excited about playing with).  Conveniently, it was New Year’s Eve – the perfect night to set up camp at some sweeping overlook and capture the Space Needle fireworks in all their glory against the backdrop of the city skyline.

I thought of a couple places I could go (more on these spots in a later post):

• Gasworks Park – can see the Space Needle and most of the city from a distance
• Kerry Park – a fairly close view of the Space Needle from an elevated perspective
• The I-5 Overlook from Capitol Hill – nearly eye-level with the Space Needle about a mile in the distance
• Alki waterfront – a loooong way from the Space Needle, but views of the entire city

As with all fireworks shows, people gather early and densely at all the best viewing spots – several years ago I was invited to a party in an apartment above the overlook in the 3rd bullet point, and the entire railing was lined with people over an hour before midnight when the show started.  On top of that, the top 3 of those places are in dense urban neighborhoods – on a party night, it’s virtually impossible to find parking, let alone close parking.  And to top it all off, I had to pick T up at the airport at 11:30 PM, so there was no chance of getting anywhere early to stake out a spot with an uninhibited view.  That left Alki as the best option for being both the closest to the airport and the spot with the most space for people to spread out, thereby giving me a chance of getting an open view at the last minute.

11:33 PM.  Fortunately, T’s flight was on time.  I ushered him quickly through the icy blast of the sub-freezing Seattle air to the car and sped down the freeway to the West Seattle Bridge.  He was coming from 10 days in Mexico, so the weather was a bit of a shock to his system.  I’d thought ahead and brought extra clothes for him to wear so that the cold weather wouldn’t talk him out of this idea.

11:48 PM.  We joined a long line of slow-moving traffic as I pulled off the bridge onto Harbor Dr, and I knew we weren’t going to make it as far as the tip of the peninsula where the best viewing is.  I’ve done a lot of running and biking in West Seattle, however, so I knew of a dark, winding, little-known street that cuts up from the main road.  There’s no official parking along it, but since it’s just woods on either side of the road, no one was going to stop us on a night when every inch of pavement was at a premium.  Clearly not too many others knew this secret, and I found a parking spot just a few feet up the hill.

11:55 PM.  I grabbed the gear out of the car hastily, knocking a lens into the road right into the path of an oncoming car.  I realized immediately that the lens and pavement were both black, and it was too small of an object for the driver to see over the hood, so I jumped into the road and dived for the lens.  It wasn’t until I was on the ground with my head only a foot from the guy’s front bumper that I realized that maybe the lens wasn’t really worth it.  Fortunately the driver did recognize that there was a human about to go under his wheels and screeched to a halt.

Phew, crisis avoided.

11:57 PM.  I dashed down to the grassy area and started furiously unlatching the legs of my tripod with frozen fingers.  The show started just as I’d gotten the camera mounted, but I had no time for any practice shots to get the settings right with the lighting.

12:01 AM 2011. I quickly figured out that conditions were less than ideal.  The Space Needle and its fireworks looked incredibly diminutive against the scale of the entire Seattle waterfront.  Zooming in made the subject bigger, certainly, but then it was difficult to focus and meter.  The more I made the fireworks obvious in the shot, the more the lingering smoke also became obvious.  Trying a long exposure to make the fireworks bigger/longer also made them overexposed, and even though the camera was on a tripod, there was a lot of shake evident in the lights of the buildings.  In fact, nearly all my photos were more blurry than T’s photos, and he hadn’t bothered to bring his tripod because he didn’t want to set it up in the cold.  So my supposedly sturdily mounted camera was more unsteady than his handheld?  I really can’t explain that one.

While I was expecting to have some trial and error, I was hoping to come back with at least one good one – the one where I’d tweaked all the variables and finally gotten it just right.  I think I would have needed the show to last a good 10 minutes longer though.  The New Year’s show is relatively short, and I felt a bit cheated in rushing all the way over there for approximately 10 minutes of blurry or dark photos.  But I can still say that I learned a lot, even though I never quite figured out the magic combination.

The other benefit to my secret parking spot was that the road I was on leads up and over the Admiral hill and then back down to the bridge via back roads, so I was able to completely avoid the traffic on the way out.  It wasn’t until I was most of the way home that I realized that in all the haste and frantic set-up, I’d entirely missed the cheesy count-down to midnight and the realization that it was now 2011.  I’m generally of the opinion that New Year’s Eve is the worst holiday of the year, second to none – but for once it didn’t bother me.  I think I might have even found the secret to enjoying it.   

So belatedly – Happy New Year!

(I’m actually kind of embarassed to post these even here… but this is for learning and tracking progress, so I have to start somewhere.)

 

Streams of Blewitt Pass (December 31, 2010)

This was the first day trip I’ve ever taken that was completely dedicated to photography.  Usually if my trip doesn’t involve a swim, bike, run, ski, or climb, it’s not a trip worth planning – but I was just getting over pneumonia and hadn’t been in training mode, so I was looking for other ways to take advantage of the unlikely spell of clear weather we were having.  And clear weather it certainly was – for about 5 days straight we had blue skies and bright sunshine that made it feel like life was worth living again (sometimes in Seattle it’s kind of easy to forget that important fact). 

I confess that I didn’t come up with this location idea all on my own, but when it was suggested to me it seemed an obvious choice.  I love waterfalls and winter scenes, but many are difficult to get to in the winter.  Plus, since as I said I’d never done a day trip just for photography, I wanted something “sure” so that I’d come back with something to show for my first day out.  This spot was good because:

• Relatively short drive compared to many striking scenic locations in the area
• Just off the side of the road – no permits or extensive map-reading or avalanche danger required
• Easy directions – just cross Blewitt Pass and start looking around
• Close to several other “backup” options if this one proved disappointing

With the clear days came very cold temperatures, and as the temperature steadily dropped on the drive over the pass I kept feeling half relieved that I wouldn’t have to be out braving the cold on my feet all day.  On the other hand, I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t going to have to HTFU and try the cold challenge.  The thermometer read –7*F near the photo spots, which I’m fairly certain is the coldest I’ve ever experienced.  (My previous personal low was –3*F during an avalanche training fieldtrip – that time I actually was out in it all day.)

It took a bit of driving back and forth to settle on the right spot to set up.  The first stop was a spot along the river that allowed the viewer to see a long ways down… but that angle required downstream shots and I couldn’t seem to get anything striking.  Facing upstream I thought was better, as it had some interesting water/rock elements, but that had more direct sunlight and without a filter of any kind, I was having trouble with over-exposure on the longer shots.

(Before I go further I guess I should mention that T was on vacation in Mexico with both wide/versatile lenses, and I was left with the 100mm macro and the 70-300mm telephoto lens – on a 50D, this meant I was limited to relatively narrow, close shots no matter which lens I chose for shots in confined spaces.)

The second stop was more in shadow and I was able to lengthen the exposure a bit more without completely burning the subject, but I was having better luck with the close shots than the wider scenes.  I really liked the little “ice floes” here.

By the time I had convinced myself I wasn’t going to get anything spectacular here, the sun was fully up and shining on the snow banks at the side of the road.  Since the snow had been around awhile, the surface had crystallized into a sea of sparkles, and the snow coating the surrounding bare branches had melted and re-frozen into fascinating patterns.  Every tree looked essentially like this:

Since I was feeling a little discouraged with my landscape attempts, I decided to break out the macro lens and try to capture the geometric ice.  Here’s what I got – I like the shapes in the second photo a bit better, but the light isn’t quite right to be able to discern the subject from the background snow. 

        

At this point, my toes were completely frozen from tromping around in the snow on the riverbanks and at times post-holing up to my hip.  I was really regretting not bringing gaiters and not upgrading my worn-out boots.  So much for HTFU… (I have since located my gaiters and purchased new hiking boots with which I’m pretty much enamored).

After a quick bite to eat and some thaw time for my feet, stop #3 was an unexpected find – a part of the river with a “stair-step” effect from a series of rocks and gently sloping terrain.  The rocks had snow piled up on them, making them look like large white cushions dispersed throughout a stream of silk.  If not for the bite in the air, it would have looked quite welcoming.  As it was, though, it looked like the perfect scene.

Again, I struggled with overexposure as the sun was falling directly on the water in places, leaving glare spots in some areas and dark shadows in others.  The water and ice formations looked like something from another world – in some places the water had frozen as it flowed over a stairstep of rocks, leaving ridged ledges of ice that made an interesting out-of-context shot.  I did get a few passable shots of the overall scene, but again I had better luck with the closer framing.

   

As I was folding away the tripod and getting ready to pick my way back through the treacherous ice to shore, a little bird alighted on one of the rocks that was just barely protruding from the surface.  As I watched, he jumped off the rock and into the water for a bath, floated downstream a bit, then hopped out at the next convenient rock.  He sat there for a couple seconds with his spindly little feet in the ice-cold water, then repeated the sequence, seemingly at home with his head submerged in the sub-zero temperatures.  This guy was crazy!

As I finally tore myself away from the scene, I couldn’t resist taking a quick handheld shot of some patterns in a sheet of ice.  I put that one on Flickr, mostly because I was too chicken to put up anything that might actually make sense enough to be criticized.  Somehow I feel safer posting here because this is more of a drafting zone than a finished portfolio.

At this point I’d exhausted the well-lit stream opportunities in the area, so I headed up the road to a spot I’d heard mentioned a few times at work.  Called Swauk Prairie, it supposedly contained a bucolic scene that was unhampered by industrial equipment or power lines or other unsightly farm implements that might otherwise ruin the mood of a photo.  I was not disappointed – the scene was perfect.

I made an HDR composite of the scene, the first I’ve ever taken.  This particular version was done in Photoshop CS4, though I’m told there are much better tools out there for this task.  When I actually get around to investing in one, I’ll likely redo this image just to see the differences.  I’ve made a few other HDR composites since this one, and while I know I still struggle a bit with recognizing a good HDR target on-site, I still get the impression that in general CS4 doesn’t give me a big improvement over my original images.  I must be missing some key piece of crucial knowledge, but it actually seems to tone DOWN the range, making everything just seem… grayer.

I also liked the farm in the composition below, though if I had my way the tree in the foreground wouldn’t be there.  This shot is not HDR – just a single frame.  See what I mean about CS4 making things “grayer”?

On my way out I snapped one last scenic shot of the new wind farms poking up over the hill.  It didn’t come out quite as well as I’d envisioned it because the dark shrubs/trees interrupt the snow too much and detract from the windmills – ideally the windmills would “pop” as they do in real life.  The other obvious flaw is the burn spot in the top of the clouds.  Maybe after a fresh snow on a clear day at sunset this composition would look better.  (As if those conditions will ever all come together on the same day.)

And finally… one final surprise.  Ever since I passed up an opportunity to take a clutch (is that what they’re called?) of quail lined up on fenceposts at sundown in Oregon one summer, I’ve been determined to get a good shot of the little critters with their silly headdresses.  Sadly, I’ve been thwarted every time.  But driving down the road, there they were – about 10 of them scuttling along the middle of the road.  Naturally I stopped and chased them, camera in hand, to the barbed wire fence off the side of the road, which they neatly scurried under and which I was forced to stop behind.  The quail were faster than my aiming and shooting, and I just wasn’t close enough… but I’m one step closer to getting them!

   

In conclusion, and simply put: this was fun.  I came away with a lot of images of subjects I didn’t expect, and though there were about 20 bad images on my camera for every 1 that even made it to this blog, I learned a LOT.  Something new at each location.  I will no longer turn up my nose at the idea of an excursion just for photography (though still, if it involves swimming or biking or running or skiing or climbing so much the better ). 

Oddly enough, I’m happier with my results now, after going through them all in minute detail and sorting out what worked and what didn’t, than I was when I was taking them.  Perhaps it’s because I only have my images to look at and can’t compare them.  Or perhaps it’s because they just look better without all the bad ones around them.  Either way, I’ll definitely have to do something like this again.

Introduction

Obligatory Wordy Introduction

I’ve “maintained” a blog on (my) life, the universe, and everything for a bit over a year now, but quite frankly the task of making it into everything I wanted it to be proved too daunting. Begun as a way to document my victorious adventures, I branched out into everything from my ironman training to dreary journaling to memoir-style creative writing, but most of the trips and adventures I actually wanted to write about never made it past the artfully architected thoughts in my head. Not surprisingly, since I lacked a focus and many of my posts were too intimate to share with the world, I never found nor encouraged a broad readership.

I don’t expect to get much readership here either, but I do have 2 goals for myself:
1. Stick close to the main focus – which is primarily photo-journaling my various adventures and photography trips, with an emphasis on the photography aspect.
2. Don’t worry about making each post artful or precise; just get the words out somehow.

So there you have it – in a nutshell, if all goes well, this will be a semi-regular stream of myopic un-premeditated drivel about this amateur’s foray into photography. Which is of course a very long synonym for “exciting!”. 🙂

Equipment:

• Canon EOS 50D – at the time I’m writing this, my primary camera
• Canon EOS 7D – T’s camera that we occasionally share.  It makes the list because there might be somewhat frequent content on here from that camera.
• Pentax K100D Super – hand-me-down from a friend who was disillusioned with carrying DSLRs.  I rarely pick it up anymore, but I sometimes pack it if I’ll be somewhere without a battery charger since it uses standard AAs.
• On the slopes: Pentax Optio W90 – brand new so the jury’s still out.  Review forthcoming.  Also a proud new owner of a GoPro Hero, so I might play around with video at some point.
• From the hip: Canon PowerShot SD950 – because it’s easy to use, reliable, fits in a bike jersey pocket, and I’m not convinced the Optio will really fit all my P&S needs just yet.