Filter fun

I've been a Canon camera user since I got my first SLR camera as a teenager. Rebellious tennis star Andre Agassi was promoting the new Canon Rebel and that was good enough for me. I progressed thru several Canons, first film then digital, and grew a decent sized lens collection. Since I was a big sports shooter I had my eyes set on the big telephoto lenses and was always glad that Canon produced some of the sharpest telephotos available. But in the past few years, as I've started doing more landscapes, I found Canon's wide angle lenses did not perform as well. Many other Canon shooters had the same feelings and some found a way to mount Nikon's very sharp ultra wide angle lenses on their Canons. Some Canon clan would shun such treachery and liken this to putting a Chevy 350 in a Ford Mustang. But the days of Andre Agassi were long gone and I had no such loyalty to a company that wasn't producing the results I wanted.

So a few years ago when a cheap Nikon lens popped up on Craigslist courtesy of a bad divorce I jumped on the bandwagon. After waiting almost 6 months for the special adapter to be made in England I was off shooting landscapes as sharp as my sports shots. The pictures were awesome. Razor sharp and clean across the whole image. The only drawback to the lens was that it's front element was so big you couldn't mount filters on it. So in tricky light situations like bright skies and dark foregrounds at sunset I had to revert back to my old cruddy Canon lenses. Of course many other photogs complained about this, too, and eventually several filter makers came to the rescue with special holders that mount to the body of the lens. It looked good until I saw the price. All were $300 and up. The holder was almost 3x the cost of the filters.

Being the cheap engineering bastard that I am I looked for a way around this. The holder didn't need to be anything fancy. Just something that could mount around the body of the lens with grooves for sliding in the filters and have a way of keeping out stray light around the edges. Building my own holder would be a good way to satisfy my thriftiness and have fun with the power tools. I sketched up a design and started cutting. I took some old 1/2" plywood that was used for the drawer sides on Abby's dresser and cut a 4" hole in the center, about 1/4" larger than the diameter of the lens.

I cleaned up the board then cut some scrap 3/4" pieces of poplar hardwood, also left over from Abby's furniture, about 1" wide by 6" long. The filter I wanted to mount was a little under 1/8" thick, about the same thickness as the cut of the saw blade. One quick pass on each piece about a 1/4" deep gave a groove for the filter to sit in.

I used a little foam cushioning around the hole to give a snug and soft fit around the lens and help block stray light from reflecting between the filter and lens. I nailed the sides on and a test fit looked good.

I painted the interior flat black

and then cut some old black fabric and stapled it around the top and bottom to block the rest of the stray light.

Of course I would decide to finish something like this just when all the cloudy skies that needed filters would be going away for the season. Luckily there were a few clouds out a couple days ago for Abby and I to go check out the horse ranch near our house at sunset.

It's not the greatest example of what this lens and a 3-stop graduated neutral density filter can do but at least I know it works.

Another popular trend with filters now is the use of extreme neutral density filters to produce long exposure (one minute or longer) images in daylight. I'd always enjoyed doing something similar by moonlight. But being able to take those pictures in the daytime would be beneficial. I already had an old Kodak gel filter that could add 13 stops to my exposure, basically changing my shutter speed from 1/30 of a second to 120 seconds. The filter was too small to fit on the holder I just built but would cover my old Canon lens. Since a filter like this is used too create a motion blurred scene the poor sharpness of the lens would probably add to the effect I wanted. But like my filters for the Nikon lens, I had no way of mounting it to a camera.

Since I had the tools out it was time to make a holder for this filter, too. This filter had to be completely light tight. There were some old used holders on EBay for around $20. But like I said, I'm cheap and like to build things. The basic idea for gel holders is a clamshell design with a circular opening on each half and padding inside to hold the gel softly in place. I took a piece of 1/8 mdf leftover from the drawer bottoms of Abby's armoire and cut an opening about 82mm in diameter. The front filter thread on my Canon lens was 77mm and I had a 77-82mm adapter ring that I didn't need anymore. Fitting this ring to the holder would allow me to screw the holder right onto the lens. With a little sanding I fit this ring snuggly into the opening. On the inside of each board I glued a piece of black fabric and cut a circle to match the opening. When closed the fabric would help hold the gel in place and squeeze together to give a flat enclosure and prevent light leaks.

I put the filter in place and added a little electrical tape to hold everything in place.

Like the filter holder for the Nikon this one really benefits from clouds in the sky. The Saturday after finishing this there were a few midday clouds hanging around while shooting the UCD baseball game for work. I brought the tripod and set up the camera to see what I could get.

Again, not a spectacular shot but the motion in the clouds got me excited about what could be if I find a good location for shooting. Even though I haven't had the chance to put these filters to their full effect I'm still happy that my designs worked and didn't cost anything but time.

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The few minutes photo adventure

"I'll be back in a few minutes."
That's what I told Miranda as I was watching the storm clouds move overhead near sunset. I was in the garage just about to get greasy trying to build up an old bike from left over spare parts. I popped out to peak at the clouds and then thought "You know what, the bike can wait."

The wheat fields right across the street from the Nugget Market were a wonderful shade of green right now, I stopped by and got this shot two days ago on my way between assignments,

so I figured it'd be a quick trip there and back for a similar type shot.

As I pulled into the shopping center parking lot a faint rainbow started to appear in the southeast, almost the exact opposite direction I was going to be shooting. If I wanted to catch it I was going to have to find someplace else, quick. I pulled right back out of the parking spot and sped my way up to Poleline Road. Before I made it to the stoplight the rainbow was gone. Crap. But there were more clouds moving thru and if another rainbow appeared I needed to be in a good spot.

Up Poleline I went to another wheat field we pass on the way to Costco. The plow lines in it were quite exaggerated and made for a good vanishing point photo.


I was about 6 miles from home and started to debate wether to head back or try going up to the area with oak trees past Woodland. A nice big cloud was heading towards Davis that could make for a good shot. But it had been a while since I'd been to the fields up the road and wanted to see what might be growing there. I tried a few quick spots before getting to the oak I wanted in sunflowers last summer. A thin line of color from what was probably a gorgeous sunset over the Sonoma or Bodega Bay area popped right behind the tree to give some brightness to an otherwise dark image.


I started the drive back, on the scenic route of course, and noticed a big puddle on the side of the road next to two trees. I don't know why I decided to stop here but I'm glad I did. With the tripod center post reversed to get the camera as close to the water as possible, the reflection turned out pretty nice. Because of how the tripod was set up this image is upside down.


Back to Poleline, a.k.a County Road 102 in these parts, I went, happy with a decent outing. The northern edge of Woodland is the industrial area. The lights at dusk there can be quite pretty. And with the rains filling up a few drainage ponds I found another good reflection spot. I'm not sure what they're processing at this plant but the steam clouds flowing out into the cold air of this storm helped accent the lights of the factory and sunset.


With a few minutes turning into 180 minutes it was time to head home where Miranda made sure to remind me of my earlier comment. But she knows that my time moves at a different pace when I'm on a photo adventure.

I've complained a lot on this blog about being stuck at work when the skies were shaping up for good sunsets. Thursday Jan. 5 looked like one of those days. But the work schedule can be pretty light in winter and my only assignment that night was a 7 p.m. basketball game. With the winter sunset at around 5 I figured I had just enough time to make it to the open space in Vacaville and be back before the game. After checking in at the office I made the 20-25 minute drive and arrived with about half an hour of sun left. I reshot one of my favorite photos, the oak and rectangular boulder to see if the clouds would give me something better.

I processed this one differently, extracting the red and green channels, combining them into a grayscale, then toning it to look sepia like. Sometimes when I do black and whites with cloudy skies I pull only the red channel into the grayscale to give the most contrast to the sky. But I've noticed before that the details between channels sometimes shift slightly (insert complex explanation about the nature of optics, diffraction, visible spectrum, etc) It's hard to see in a small web picture but I really like the effect this and the use of a large aperture has on the details in the grass and boulder.

The actual item on my list was the old dead oak tree I'd shot before but at sunset. I tried adding the clouds and moon to make a nice color photo but still like the black and white from last time.


As I tried a few more angles of old shots I could see the color really starting to pop in the clouds visible over the nearby ridge. I hiked as fast as I could with my gear but couldn't find a good foreground subject before the colors started to fade. My lungs were pretty upset about all the work they just did for no reward. But as I started the hike back down the lights of the city started to shine and the waxing gibbous moon helped light the hills.


Having lived in a town as flat as Davis for so long I really liked having a high vantage point to see a similar sized city at twilight.

A few weeks later, with an itch to do more star trails, I headed back out to the barn I'd shot in the fog a year ago. I thought the old truck would make for a good foreground. After a pain in the butt 15 minute bike ride along the levee road by only starlight with a trailer full of gear I made it to the barn. I brought 4 cameras with me and tried multiple angles

I'm not even a mile out of town and there were almost too many stars visible. While the cameras were running I did a little exploring and decided to try a south facing star trails over the collapsed roof of the barn.

It was pretty dark out there but my eyes had adjusted enough to where I think I got a pretty good foreground. I like how the colorful glow from Dixon and Vacaville gives the horizon a fiery look. Unfortunately the battery only lasted about 20 minutes at this spot so I called it quits after this set. That and, even with gloves, the cold was getting to my fingers and toes.

With star trails still on my mind Mir gave me the go ahead to head down to the Golden Gate the next night. Wanting to get the most out of the almost $20 in gas I was spending I decided to try blue hour at the Palace of Fine Arts first. I've wanted this for a long time and almost had it timed perfect but accidentally took the Hwy 1 exit off the bridge instead of 101. The 10 minutes I wasted working my way back cost me the perfect lighting balance between the sky and lights. I was able to pull out the color and detail in photoshop but the pic is more grainy than I'd hoped.

I'm going to try again with better timing and some waders so I can get out into the water and avoid the tree and outcropping on the left of the photo.
Going back across the Golden Gate I set up three cameras for star trails, one on fishing pier

another at the edge of the pier

and the last as close as security would let anyone go to the bridge. It was the last angle that I like the most

Unfortunately the highlights on the bridge are too blown out. But as usual that gives me a good reason to go back again.

While I was breaking down my three camera set-up I played with a few more angles and found a unique view of the bridge and its northern approach reflecting in the water.
If I go back to re-do the other star trails I think I'll try one with this view, too.

New Year's Resolution: Do Stuff

2011 was a pretty awesome year. Time had seemed to be speeding up, passing by so quickly. But Abby's emergence as a little person helped to slow things down. Sure it seems like just yesterday she was born but New Year's last year feels like a long time ago. That New Year's was one of the few I spent at home doing nothing since I became an adult. It felt like a waste. I didn't want to do the same this year. So I dragged Mir and Abby down to Fort Baker, on the Marin side of the Golden Gate, to watch the fireworks over the SF city skyline. A strong breeze made it impossible to keep the cameras still enough for the super sharp photos I was hoping for. But the real point to going out to take photos was to get out and do things.



And that will be my main New Year's resolution for 2012,

1. Get out and do stuff. I wasted too much of my youth sitting around doing nothing. And not only do I want to get out for my own sanity, I need to set an example for Abby to grow up active and adventurous.

That leads into resolution

2. Spend more time with Abby. Not that I don't share almost all my time outside of work with her, but I want more quality time. Too often I'm doing chores or working on photo orders when I should be guiding her on an amazing start to her journey thru life.

Spending quality time with Abby and getting out to do things can combine into resolution

3. Take a cute photo of Abby everyday. Believe it or not there have been many days when I haven't pointed the camera at my baby. This year that won't happen.

Mir and I were both really tired on the way down to watch the fireworks. We almost didn't go and I was yawning before we got out of town. But we talked a lot on the ride, both there and back, and it made the drive fly by.

4. Strengthen my bond with Miranda. Before she came along I would quit on relationships too easily. She's forced me to make decisions and stick with them more than anyone else ever has. For that I'm very grateful. Even though I'm trying to slow down time I want her and I to make time fly like on new year's more often.

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.

a solitary sunset

So remember how I said Wednesday's sunset was epic? Well maybe that was a bit of an overstatement. It was pretty good but nothing like Friday's sunset. Yep, Friday's show was one for the ages. Epic of epic proportions, if that makes sense. Strong central clouds that dominated the sky as they were lit by the finals rays of the sun were supported by plenty of soft accent clouds to fill the remaining sky. I couldn't have scripted it better, except for the fact it all happened over Winters and Lake Berryessa while I was stuck in Davis where 90% of the sky was clear.

Knowing that the show was going to happen in only a small part of the sky I headed south of town where I knew of a few solitary trees far enough off the road to be able to use a longer lens and fill the photo with as much of the sunset as I could capture. My original thought was a valley oak near the south putah levee. But when I arrived a second tree a few hundred yards away caught my eye. I'd always liked the position of the tree, with a vast, uncluttered view behind it, but didn't care for the tree itself when it had its leaves. Now in its winter bones it looked much more photogenic.

The colors in that photo don't do justice to the real thing but my photoshop color manipulation skills aren't the best.

While the long lens helped condense the tree and clouds into a nice little package it didn't really convey my mood about this sunset. The real beauty of it seemed distant, out of reach. So I put a standard 50mm lens on the camera and recomposed.

This photo is more like the feeling this sunset gave me. The tree and I (as the viewer of this image) alone with a thin ribbon of distant color in an otherwise dark and empty sky and landscape. Not that I feel alone in life. With Abby and Miranda I've never felt more loved. Just that this particular sunset was more someone's else's to enjoy and I was only allowed a peek of what could have been had I been standing atop one of the Vaca hills.

Not wanting to end on such a downer I tried a little positive use of negative space. This was the view looking south of the hills where there were no clouds either.

I love it when the lanscape allows to me to take advantage of the color gradation in a post sunset sky.

Twilight, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn

Tonight's sunset was epic. The kind that only happens a few times a year. And as usual I had only a few minutes between assignments at work to find a foreground to do justice to the show in the sky.
While there are many benefits to living in Davis, idyllic landscapes famous landmarks are not on the list. Certain I didn't have enough time to find a good spot in the fields outside of town I headed to the train station. But the southerly position of the December sun didn't line up well with the old SP depot. I decided to let this one pass and headed home to check up on Abby before my next assignment. As I turned on to Eighth St the sky was an amazing pink. I had to find someplace to shoot at and the cemetery was my only option. A year or so ago they had installed a new fountain structure and I thought I could get a decent reflection in the pools. Unfortunately the water had been turned off for the cold weather. It's too bad because the scene balanced pretty well.



I'll keep it in mind next time I'm looking for a nearby landmark.

On Saturday my favorite landmark within a short drive of Davis was in the perfect position for the last lunar eclipse til 2014. I checked the US Navy's moon data site and figured out what time I needed to get up to shoot the alignment of the Sacramento Tower Bridge and the moon. I woke up early, ate breakfast, and headed up to Sac. As drove across the bridge towards The Capitol I realized I'd calculated something wrong. The moon was already dead center on the towers. By the time I parked and ran out to the Capitol Mall with the camera the moon had moved north of the bridge. To add insult to injury I managed to get the three other photographers dedicated enough to get up at 5 am on a winter Saturday who actually got the shot in my shot.

As the moon headed behind the Drexel college building and the sun started to light up the sky I turned around to catch the sunrise over the Capitol building. A light rail train passed by at just the same time.

I packed up the gear and headed back home. As I crossed the bridge the water on the river was so still it was almost a mirror. I pulled off and took a quick walk along the West Sac riverfront. The sky was too bright and plain for a good photo of the bridge. But considering I already had a Breaking Dawn and Eclipse photo I figured I needed a good Twilight photo to go along with them.
The forecast for Tuesday's sunset was clear skies and no wind. So before sunset I drove back across the causeway hoping for smooth water. When I saw the waves rippling across the river I was pretty disappointed. But since I was already there I had to give my shutter finger its dues. I scrambled down to the water's edge and set up the camera. As the sun disappeared so did the waves. When the twilight sky turned that perfect blue I got the shot I was hoping for.

Now that I have three parts of the Twilight saga complete around the bridge in Sac I'm going to need to come back around the New Moon and finish it off.