Threezing Thriday Threesome and the Thog

Twas the week before Christmas and all on my shift
were barely any assignments for my shutter to click.

To say last week's work schedule was light would be an understatement. Two assignments the whole week. Even my Saturday shift that usually runs til 11pm was done by 11am. Combine that with Miranda being able to stay home with Abby while on winter break and I was finally able to take my time with some photo exploring again.

Really it was the weather to start the week that got my photo juices flowing. Monday and Tuesday mornings had some of the thickest fog I'd ever seen. That was perfect for two reasons. First the fog makes for cool photos. And second it provided me some cover to do a little exploring at places I wasn't sure I'd be allowed at.

I headed towards the yolo bypass wildlife area thinking I could get some of the reed ponds with reflections and horizons that would vanish into white. Along the way I stopped at an old graffiti covered shack that sat alongside I-80. It was another one of those places I'd seen for years but hadn't had the initiative to stop and look. With the fog giving me cover I pulled down the dirt road up to the edge of the freeway. The designs on it now weren't the best I'd seen but now that I know how easy it was to get to I might try going back and working the freeway lights at night into a good photo.



I started down into the wildlife area but barely made it past the main gate. I'd taken quick shots of the pillars under the causeway before but never took the time to set up for a good shot. So this was the perfect time to change that. I set up the tripod over what I'm pretty sure were fresh cougar tracks and lined the camera up for the perfect, symmetrical shot. It took a few minutes of leveling and adjusting everything with the grid on the viewfinder before I finally looked up at the pillars and realized they weren't symmetrical at all. A few of them weren't even straight.



Whoever designed the underside of this bridge clearly wasn't thinking about its photographic qualities. However I'm pretty sure the person who put that old shopping cart there had to have done it for a picture.



I started to drive out into the wetlands to see what else I could get when a big flock of blackbirds sprung up from a field. Fred had taken a photo like this last year in the fog that I thought was one of the coolest photos I'd ever seen. The fog made the more distant birds a lighter shade of grey. His photo is still more awesome than mine but they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so here you go Fred



Monday's fog was just a primer for Tuesday morning. I couldn't even see the house across the street when I pulled the car out of the garage. I set course for Woodland this time to see a drainage pond near Costco I'd shot in the fog the past two years. But the air was so thick the two islands at the pond 50 feet from shore were just shadows in a sea of white. I was going to have to wait for a little visibility. Not wanting to waste the time, and needing to keep moving to stay warm I did a little exploring. Between the pond and a junkyard were some abandoned and overgrown animal pens. For years I'd thought one shed in back of all the others would make for a good photo but the area had always been fenced off. Now I've been known to wander (some might call it trespassing) into open farm fields or the old cannery site when they used to leave the gates unlocked. But if someone closes off their property I try to respect it. I'd never gone out to this shed because of that. About two months ago the winds brought down a large tree on the edge of the property and that tree took a good twenty feet of barbed wire with it. Surely this was a sign from the photo gods that a picture needed to be taken here. Again under the cover of the fog I worked my way thru the weeds to the shack.



I didn't explore too closely but I think it was actually an old wagon and not a shack. The fog started to loosen and I moved back to the pond. When I shot here last year there were some canada geese living on the islands that made nice little additions to the scene. This year the water was low and the geese were gone. The photos were okay but missing something. Even after getting back home and processing some of them they were still lacking any punch. Then, on a whim I flipped one upside down.



The reflection of a foggy sun in the water became a single point of light in a moody black sky. It figures that my favorite photo from the fog would be the most artificial one. But getting to explore some normally in plain sight subjects under the cover of the fog made it all worth it.

Friday I went in to work at my normal time and there was only one person left in the office. With clear skies, no wind, a new moon, and nothing to do at work it was the perfect time to go back to my newfound subjects for some nightscapes. Back to Woodland I went with an extra work camera, to go along with my two personal cameras, so I could try three different shots at once. I was hoping to shoot due east across the pond for diagonal star trails but the observation deck looking that way was closed. Instead I went to near where I took the previous shot, focused on only one of the islands and composed with a tumbleweed in the water for foreground detail. But looking at the star trails in the finished product I wish I would've shot due south to get them curving over the island instead.



I left that camera to shoot on its own, retrieved the other two cameras, and took them over to the old wagon. Originally the two cameras were going to be looking in different directions. But many times when I compose photos in the dark I get back and find I wish I would've moved the camera just slightly. So I set the cameras up a few feet apart, one with an ultra wide angle



and the other with a moderate wide.



I'm most proud of the second photo not because of how it looks but because I had three cameras and three tripods but only two cable releases to run the cameras. Anticipating this I picked up a small stone in the parking lot the same size as the shutter button on the camera and used electrical tape to keep it pressed down and continuously shooting. Even though it was a pretty cheap way of doing things I was excited it worked. I was also really happy I anticipated the cold (the outside temp gauge on the car read 29º when I was finished) and brought gloves. There's nothing like carrying a freezing cold tripod with bare hands.

The only thing I didn't anticipate was being so close to the airport. Since all three cameras were facing east or southeast, pretty much directly at Sac Intl, about half my editing time was spent removing trails from airplane lights on all the photos. I'm going to have to foggy exploring looking west next time.