Here’s a nearly day by day, blow by blow account of my vacation, it started Friday, January 11th.
I went shopping Friday on Schenker Logistics. I had $275 worth of prefect attendence bonus gift certificates to spend. I came home with a movies, music, and an electric razor. I nearly bought a plasma lamp, at Spencer’s, some more crap to sit on my computer desk at back in “civilization”. I went shopping with Dave and Dora and bought them lunch at Bennigan’s. I carefully spent my gift certificates in such a way as they are all gone, but I’ve got a pocket full of folding money change.
Dave had been getting after me for the last week or so to stop thinking about things to buy, we were going to shop spontaneously. I don’t do spontaneous very well. I like to have a plan. I don’t know if that’s a guy thing, or something I learned along the way. Seeing as how we were going to shop spontaneously, I told them that I expected to wander the aisles of every store in the mall. Starting with the first store that we saw. As it turned out that was a jewelry store, so much for my plan, we avoided it.
I had told Dave and Dora, I might just get my ear pierced with a stud of my birth stone, which is an emerald. Dave told me that I should get a hoop. Like a pirate, mateys! Somehow I don’t think a hoop would be my style. I have no new holes in my body. Perhaps someday I will get an ear pierced, but it’s going to have to wait until after I’m retired. Piercings on men are not looked at as being professional. I can see myself with a pierced ear, I am an artist after all, or at least a wannabe artist.
Next door to the jewelry store was one that sells music and movies, FYE. I dropped a load of gift certificates there. As far as the movies go, I bought the balance of the Star Wars movies on DVD that I didn’t already have, in this case episodes, I, II, and III. As well as a boxed set of the Indiana Jones movies. Rats, I just checked and Star Wars - episode II - Attack of the Clones, is not in wide screen, it’s pan and scan. I’ll have to take that one back. Fortunately there is a store in that chain in the “civilization” area.
That electric razor is pretty cool. It’s a Braun 4775. It will operate cord or cordless, a great feature. It can also be cleaned by running under tap water. It’s got a nice travel case too. Of course I had to try it out. It seems to give me a nice shave. At least there’s a lot less messing around with shaving cream and razors, like I’ve been doing for the last year or so.
My back has been bothering me for the last few days. Each day seems to be a little better than the day before. I don’t know if it was something I did to myself at work, or just slept in an odd position that is the cause of my trouble. But that Friday, after spending about 20 hours on my feet, it was really bothering me. I got to the point of being just miserable out shopping. Even after the half hour or so I spent sitting in the car on the way “home”, my back started feeling better. I got back there around 4 pm.
When I laid down Friday evening, I rolled over on my left side, the side I normally sleep on, and I could feel tension in a muscle right at the base of my spine along the left side. I figured that sleeping on that side would pull my back the other way, since the spot that was bothering me is located near the middle of my back on the right side of my spine. Right now I feel pretty good, in fact normal.
Oh yeah, the music CDs that I got. Michael Bolton - Bolton Swings Sinatra, Trisha Yearwood - Greatest Hits, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer - Welcome Back My Friends to the Show that Never Ends.
The Michael Bolton I have sampled online. I knew that was a good one.
I don’t normally listen to country, but I’ve got a thing for Trisha Yearwood. Not only is she a great singer, I think I have an attraction to her, you know, a big blonde. It might be because she reminds me of the way I choose to remember how “M” - the one that got away - looks.
Finally, Emerson, Lake and Palmer - Welcome Back My Friends to the Show that Never Ends. This I have on vinyl, but I don’t have a turntable anymore that will hold an even speed, I haven’t been able to listen to this recording for years. I have fixed that now. Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s music style is a combination of classical, jazz, and rock. This particular recording is live. Normally I don’t enjoy the live versions of artist’s music as much as the studio version, but this one was done very well. Emerson’s piano stuff is just incredible.
When I get back to “civilization” I’ll rip these three new CDs to MP3s with some special software on the new desktop, and copy those files over the network onto this laptop. That way I’ll be able to enjoy that music here in WB, without the bulk of the CDs to transport back and forth.
Saturday, January 12th, I made it back to “civilization” finally.
Monday, January 14th.
My new desktop had a major hardware failure. I’ll be sending a couple of hard drives back to Western Digital today. I lost them both. I’m not sure what happened, they are showing different errors. I spent most the night running diagnostics on them, while I was napping.
I had them setup in a redundant array of independent disks (RAID). One backs up the other automatically. If one goes down, I’ve still got my data. Or at least that was the plan. I hadn’t expected both drives to fail. Something weird is going on.
While all of that messing around was going on, I found $175 worth of gift certificates from Dell in my mail. Woo-hoo! I sent the laptop’s touchpad shopping and it bought; headphones, a wireless mouse, travel sleeve, and a protective film for the cover of the laptop. That protective film has flames on it. I thought that was pretty cool. I could have used one of my own images too. But I’ll bet that custom images cost more, I didn’t check. Besides, I would then have to go through all my images on this machine and try to decide which one to use. That would have been worse that picking one out from the hundreds that were already available.
Okay, so you’d think I’d be all upset about the desktop being down. Well, I’m not real happy about it, but there really wasn’t too much on there anyway. Just a few emails. All the photos that were on there I have on other computers. So no real serious loss. I had only used that desktop for a couple of days over the last month since I had completed it’s construction. The only thing that I’ve lost is time spent with that machine. Not that I’m likely to have that much time with it anyway, other than this week. I’ve still got this laptop to play with. I’m not completely dead in the water.
I was sitting here blasting away at the keyboard, writing a long email to Dave, when Windows gave a warning about the hard drives failing. I had the sound up kind of loud too, I had been listening to music earlier. Between the volume and the unexpected warning message I about came out of my skin.
There’s going to be a trip to the UPS store. That’s not too far, it’s in the strip mall with Hy-Vee. I’m going to have to pay for the return shipping, but that can’t be helped. It’s cheaper than buying two new drives.
They knew more about the RMA process at the UPS store than I did, that wasn’t too hard. Return packing and shipping set me back $17.31. I had thrown out all of the original shipping containers. I’m estimating that it will be three weeks until I see the new drives. I sure hope we’re still on a six day schedule then.
Mom, Dad and I had lunch at Hy-Vee. I had Chinese. Mom and Dad split a Ruben sandwich. That didn’t look to me to be enough to keep a bird alive. It certainly wouldn’t have been enough for the case picker at the table.
Tuesday, January 13th.
Let’s see, what’s been going on around here in the last twenty four hours. Nothing really comes to mind at the moment, other than “The Girl from Ipanema”.
There’s a song by that title on the newest Michael Bolton CD in my collection, the one that I picked up while shopping with Dave and Dora. That song was sort of a surprise to me. I had heard it before, but not for many years. It’s got a nice soft Latin beat, beautiful melody, and melancholy lyric. I’ve played it over and over and over again. “The Girl from Ipanema” was written by Antonio Carlos Jobim, the song hit number 5 back in ‘64.
Ipanema is a upper middle class suburb of Rio de Janeiro and adjacent to Copacabana Beach. From what I’ve read about Ipanema makes it sounds like a really nice, but expensive, place to live. I could go on and on, but if you are really interested you can do your own Google search. If you do that, you’ll find photos of lots of pretty Latin gals in thongs on the beach.
I found a couple more Emerson, Lake and Palmer CDs that I hadn’t ripped to MP3s yet. Actually those disks have been missing for some time. They are part of a boxed set that I got of their music. I discovered that Windows Media Player will rip CDs to an MP3 format, but you’ve got to change a few settings to do that. By default it rips them to a Windows Media Audio file. Which is fine as long as I’m using a Windows based computer to listen to those songs, but the MP3 file format is a little more universal. The only thing that I’ve got around here that will play an MP3 other than my computers is the DVD player in the other room. It will even play them off of a DVD-RW. A DVD-RW should hold around 1200 MP3s, that’s about 80 hours of music, according to my calculations. That doesn’t seem possible.
According to Windows, I have over 1500 files in my music folder. That doesn’t seem possible either. There must be at least a few other files in that folder other than music. There have been plenty of times when I want to listen to some music and I can’t find anything that I want to listen too. Or only listen to the same tunes, over and over and over again. I get into a rut.
I knew I had a Simon and Garfunkel CD here too of their greatest hits, that I had never ripped to MP3s either, because I didn’t think that I had a way of doing that. I’ve been listening to them off the CD. With this new discovery that I made this evening I ripped that one too.
Since I was in that kind of mood this evening, I also ripped a three disk collection of the hits of the 60s. The computer put those in a folder labeled “Various Artists”. I didn’t even know I had a folder on this computer labeled that. I found 14 untitled tracks of classical piano music in there. I’ve got them running at the moment, I have no idea what they are. Or where I got them from.
It’s amazing what you find when you really start digging around. I’ve got a stack of at least a dozen music CDs that have never made it onto any of my computers. As well as the long ago lost photo editing software that I had only on the old desktop. Well, that’s getting on the laptop sometime tonight.
I got a box today from Dell. I only put the order in Monday as I recall. That was quick. That box contained the, travel sleeve and Bluetooth mouse. I have tried out the mouse, it works. But I don’t see the point in running down the batteries in it when I have a perfectly good wired USB mouse right here. I’m still finding myself using the touch pad more than the mouse. I haven’t tried out the travel sleeve yet. That can wait until Sunday, when I pack up to head back to WB. I’m hoping the headphones get here before the weekend. It could be a while until I see them otherwise.
Wednesday, January 16th.
Mom, Dad, and I had lunch at Mojo’s today, I bought. That’s a cafe inside the River Music Experience. According to their website, there was supposed to have been a banjo player there. The guy that was entertaining us during lunch actually played an electric guitar while blowing a harmonica. He was okay, but I don’t think I would have paid to listen to him. My turkey club sandwich was pretty good, although it could have stood some mayonnaise and mustard. I should have hung around while they made it, instead I found a place to sit. I’m sure that I’ll go back to Mojo’s in the future, the Figge Art Museum is just a half block down the street.
Next we went to the Putnam Museum. That’s our local nature and history museum. They had working displays of Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions. A hands on kind of display. I turned every wheel and crank in the place. A lot of his inventions he never built, he couldn’t find backing for some of his ideas, many of them were centuries ahead of their time. Like the tank, a ship with a rotating cannon firing turret, lawn mower, automobile, bicycle, etc, etc, etc… The most elegant of his designs were man powered flight, they wouldn’t have worked, not enough wing area for lift and the human body wouldn’t have been strong enough to flap those wings. Still his flight models were beautiful to look at. Leonardo was most certainly a genius.
After our stop at the Putnam, we took a drive along South Concord Street for a little eagle watching. I had the camera along. I shot 37 images from the back seat of the car, hand holding the camera. Effectively 900 mm worth of lens on the front of the camera. ISO800, f4, 1/500. You’ll find the best image over on the photo pages, in the wildlife section. There was a just a brief fleeting moment when the light got just right. That’s when Dad started moving the car. Mom made him stop the car again. By the time that I got reset, that light had gone away. The images that I got were still pretty good.
Like a real nature photographer, I shot and shot and shot. All the images that I got were of that same bird. It would turn it’s head and I’d grab a shot. Turn it’s head another way, and I’d grab another shot. On and on I went like that, firing as fast as the camera would save those images to memory. I figured that if I shot enough images, one of them had to be good, just by shear dumb luck. Those 37 images I made in three minutes.
I prefer Lock and Dam #14 near LeClaire for my eagle viewing and photography, but I wasn’t driving. They are on the wing there and I can get action shots. Which to me, are a lot better than a static sitting in a tree images. I haven’t been there in years. I could spend hours and hours there watching and photographing. One of these days…
After that, it was off to South Park to exchange the full screen version of Star Wars - episode II - Attack of the Clones, that I mistakenly bought while shopping with Dave and Dora last week, for the wide screen version. While I was at the mall I bought a replacement for the battery in my cordless phone. I had taken the old one out of the phone and stuck in my coat pocket. But it was so warm here Wednesday that I wore a lighter coat than I have been lately, and forgot that the battery for the phone was in my other coat. So working from my sometimes faulty memory, I wandered into Radio Shack to get a new battery. Sure enough, I bought exactly the right battery. That should keep that phone working for the next five years or so. We also had a little Whitey’s ice cream treat while in the mall.
My Dell headphones arrived while we were out Wednesday. I’ve got them on my head at the moment. They’ve got a better bass response than I recall ever having in any set of headphones I’ve had over the years. The treble’s not bad either. Usually, I feel like I should have my external speakers running with a pair of headphones on, for that missing bass response. I haven’t felt that way with these.
I’ve been working on my music on the laptop. Trying to get it all organized. That’s been a huge project. I’ve got things now that when I do a search inside of Windows Media Player, say for jazz, it finds all of it. Over twelve hours of jazz. I’ve got over eight hours of swing on here too. I found some more duplicated files, and wiped them out. I’m down to just under 1500 music files now. That’s still a bunch. I should buy more. I’ve done enough shopping to last me for a little while. At least this week anyway.
One of my biggest surprises has been a Herbie Hancock CD of Gershwin tunes. Oh my God! First of all I didn’t even know I had this CD, or just how great it was. It makes me wonder just how long it’s been hiding around here. And what I was thinking when I got it. I should think like that more often.
Thursday, January 17th.
The keyboard on the laptop has a definite clickity click sound to it. It sometimes makes me think that my finger nails have gotten too long again. I just checked they are nice and short.
It occurred to me earlier that when I get around to spending some time alone some winter shooting eagles on the wing, I should put the camera in a burst mode. I don’t know what Pentax calls that mode officially. I have seen it in the utilities in the camera’s on board menu. I don’t know where it is in there at the moment, I would have to do some poking around. You know, trial and mostly error. Hit the shutter release button and have the camera blast away automatically 3, or, 4, or 6 exposures. I’ll have to get a bigger and lots faster memory card than what’s in there now if I’m going to do that. With the camera ripping away shooting that many frames at once, it will likely give me the feel of being a real nature photographer. I’ll get that feel again when I get home to the computer and move several hundred images off the camera onto one of these machines. Then there’s the hardest part of the whole project, being my own editor, and picking out the best images.
I’m going to have to wait until there’s been a really good (or bad) cold spell. What we’ve had so far hasn’t been enough, the river is still open water. I need it to freeze over. Then the only places of open water are going to be just down stream from the roller dams. I like Lock and Dam #14, the background is more natural looking, and there’s a boat ramp with a parking lot right at the river’s edge. I can sit there in the car with the motor and heater running and stay warm. The car also has the added bonus of acting as a blind. I don’t know what it is, but most critter’s aren’t put off by cars. With limited open water the eagles will get concentrated. That will make photography easier.
Of course a long lens is going to be necessary. I could use what I’ve got, its a little slow, but get’s the job done. I did some checking today, Pentax no longer makes long telephotos. Must not be enough call for them. My favorite third party lens manufacturer Sigma does though. I was looking at a 300 mm f2.8 prime today, $2600. I don’t recall ever seeing one of those on the used market.
It occurred to me that I have some images I made sitting in that very spot with the old point and shoot digital. I’ll bet those images are still on the old desktop. I don’t think that I’ll bother firing it up to look at them. I recall even then thinking those images were lacking. Not enough lens. I don’t know if a 300 mm prime with a 2x teleconverter would be enough. Because my camera has an APS-C sensor in it, it increases the focal length of all my lenses by 1.5 times. A 300 mm lens with a teleconverter, would be effectively 900 mm. I’ll bet I’ll wish I had a longer lens than that. Now we’re talking big bucks! Yeah, like $2600 wasn’t scary enough.
There’s no point in thinking about that too much, I’ve got a lot of other hoops to jump through first, some of them flaming, before I get to that point.
Friday, January 18th.
I can’t say as I’ve done anything today. I pretty much sat right in this chair and did nothing of any importance.
Have I mentioned that Windows Vista has a good chess game built into it? The computer opponent is pretty good too. I’ve played two games against it so far and it’s beaten me twice. And that was on the easiest setting. This last game I was cleaning it’s clock, until I made a bone head move and got checkmated. Oops. I thought for sure I was going to have my first victory against it. Over confidence. I’ll bet I learn that lesson again a few more times.
There was a time, many years ago, when I played chess in the Chicago Industrial Chess League. I even had a US Chess Federation rating. It wasn’t very high, compared to some of the other folks in that league, in fact I think you’d call my rating low. I wasn’t very good. I remember plenty of times playing against guys there were nearly grand master rated and having my head handed to me. Even in a losing situation I would play the game out to the end. The other guys on my team called me tenacious. I never gave up, I kept fighting to the end. I don’t have any where near the skills at that game now that I once had. I used to read chess books regularly and played a game against a chess computer that I had then everyday. After I moved back to Iowa, I quit playing. I’ve been telling myself for years that I should take the game back up again.
I have had a computer chess game that I’ve had on other computers of mine, I rarely played it. I could never find a level that was easy enough that I had a chance to win, and yet have it difficult enough that I got any kind of a challenge out of it. I just this week pulled that program’s installation CD out of my WB kit. If I’ve got a chess game already on the computer, what do I need another for? Perhaps after I start beating the one on here repeatedly at it’s highest level I’ll install that other game on here. Playing two games of chess in two days is hardly taking the game back up again.
My camera calls it’s burst mode, “continuous shooting”. I did some tests last night, photographing the florescent light over my head. It seemed as long as I held the shutter down in that mode it kept firing, until the memory buffer got filled up. In my tests, that was five images. The amount of images that it will take in that mode will probably depend on amount of detail in the image. There wasn’t much detail in those images of the florescent light. Out in the real world shooting in continuous mode, if I get three successive shots, I’ll call that good.
My plans are probably too ambitious for the day. A hair cut is high up on the priority list. I might swing into Goodwill and see if I can find any flannel shirts. I’ve got a coupon for a buy one get one free deal at a local submarine sandwich chain, they’ve got a store that is right next door to CVS. I got that coupon on the back of my ticket to the Putnam museum Wednesday. That about wraps up my plans for the day, other than doing laundry and napping.
I should really spin things up around here so that I can get back to WB tomorrow, in case the weather turns bad on Sunday. Right now I’d say the forecast is not too good. 40% chance of snow.
About noon yesterday I shoveled the inch of white crap that got deposited off the driveway and sidewalk. I even cleared a path to the compost bin out the back door of the garage. There was only a couple of times when the wind came up, surprisingly, and took my breath away.
Saturday, January 19th.
I got everything done yesterday that I set out to do. I’m even starting to get back to a third shift schedule. Although, as usual, I’m up in the middle of the afternoon. I may use this time for a little self-portraiture.
Dave recommended that I do a self-portrait in my balaclava or stocking mask. It’s just cold enough out there today to be dressed like that too. I think I’ll wait until sometime after 3 this afternoon for the light to get a little better. Although I suspect that I’ll be using fill flash, I don’t know if that’s going to be provided by the camera’s on board flash or by the external flash unit. I may even break out the reflector for a little larger sparkle in my eyes. The only part of that’s going to show of me in that photograph is my eyes. Everything else is going to be covered up. I don’t know how well this self-portrait is going to turn out, but it’s worth a try. Maybe.
I should really be making the final push to get things packed up around here for the return to WB. The weather tomorrow is questionable. Going back today probably makes more sense. But I am now in my comfort zone.
Part of what I wanted to do this week was to clean up this mess I’ve got in this room. All I think I’ve done is make it worse. That is not the kind of progress that I was looking for. I should have known that I wasn’t going to be able to do anything to this disaster area. At least not too constructive.
While I was out and about yesterday I picked up three new to me flannel shirts at Goodwill, and a sweater too. I won’t wear the sweater to work. That’s for around the town here. Yeah, like I get out much.
I napped from about nine last evening until 1:30 or so this morning. It wasn’t long after I got up that the internet went down. I checked all my settings and equipment here, it wasn’t me. So I watched a movie. There were probably more productive things I could have done with my time. Clean this room comes to mind.
The movie that I watched was, “Sunday in the Park with George”. It’s one of Mom’s movies. It’s a musical, starring Bernadette Peters. She’s hot, at least in my opinion. She’s 60 too. I must be getting old. The movie was filmed in 1986, so she was quite a bit younger then. The movie is about the life of George Seurat, who painted with dots. His most famous work is, “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte”. I think of a several reasons why Mom might have wanted me to watch that movie. It’s a musical. It’s about an artist. It’s about an artist who lost the great love of his life. Mom might think that I have some artistic talent. You know how I feel about my skills. Anyway, that movie brought up some issues within me, as you might imagine.
Later I told Mom that I had watched that movie. She said it was, “cute”. Okay, so no deeper stuff going on there. Just a cute musical for me to watch.
The first act was pretty entertaining, even though without much in the way of historical accuracy. The second act really got into a fictional portrayal of his life. His great love left him, Dot, she moved from Paris to America, and his great grand son became an artist. The great grand son got to know his great grand mother, Dot, through her writings while he was visiting Paris.
I did a Google search on Seurat after I got up this afternoon, and the internet was working again. Besides doing a little historical reading on his life, I was looking for a few of his works; “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte”, “Young Woman Powdering Herself”, and his final unfinished work, “The Circus”. According to the movie the model for “Young Woman Powdering Herself” was Dot. Today I’ve read that her name was actually Madeleine. I don’t know too many Madeleine’s that go by Dot. That model might well have been Madeleine, she gave birth to his child the following year. “Young Woman Powdering Herself” is the biggest reason I did a Google search on Seurat, I wanted to see what she really looked like. Well, Seurat was a neo-impressionist, so it’s hard to tell. At least I can see the way he saw her.
I can hardly believe that I’m writing about an artist. A photographer, I could see that, but a painter?
The last of my packages came today. It was the protective film for the cover of the laptop. Or at least I thought is was a protective film for the cover of the laptop. It doesn’t quite cover the entire cover. Not even half. I guess I thought that most of it was clear or something. When this one wears out, and I decide to get another, I’ll know to get something that will cover the entire cover. I’ll probably do something, like, one of my own images, with my web address on it. Like this laptop is going to get used out in public that much. You never know, I might be sitting in some Wi-Fi airport terminal someday, messing around on the internet. That protective film will be my website’s billboard. Right now, the laptop has got flames on it’s back. This machine is not that hot, but it is a lot faster than my old laptop.
Speaking of doing things with my own images. I’ve been doing some thinking about my next generation of “business” cards. Cards I hand out with my website’s address on them. My current ones have a sunset. It’s nice, but not the kind of photography I’m doing much of in the warmer months. I should probably use an image off the prairie. Someday I would like to have a close up of a gorilla’s face on the card. We’ll have to see about that.
Didn’t I write something yesterday about having some flaming hoops to jump through first before any of that can happen? There’s that, and I’ve still got quite a stack of cards with the sunset on them. I should hand them out more. I should get out more. I should get out with the camera more. But I seem to prefer my comfort zone.
I think it’s just about time to end this and gear up for a little sub zero self-portraiture in the backyard. I am the only model I’ve got after all.
I have used several different filters when out shooting landscapes. After much trial and lot’s of error, I now only use a graduated neutral density filter.
The Cokin graduated neutral density filter that I use fits in a holder that screws into the front of the lens. That filter slides up and down in the holder. The upper portion of the filter is translucent gray, the bottom is clear. In the center there is a transition where the gray portion fades into the clear. The idea of that filter is to cut down the sky’s brightness in an image. While the human eye has the range to see the difference in brightness of that kind of scene, the camera does not. Exposing for the ground in a landscape image will wash out the sky. Doing the opposite, exposing for the sky, will render the ground under exposed. I’m sure there are ways in post processing to correct for that, but why not try to get it right in the camera, instead of having to mess around so much after getting that image on the computer? The idea of the graduated neutral density filter is to place the transitional area on the horizon, where ever that might be in the image. The gray portion of the filter reduces the amount of light getting in the camera in that part of the scene by three f-stops. I did the tests last summer to prove that. Three f-stops, that’s 1/8 the light, that would have gotten into the camera without the filter.
In the past, I have used a polarizer on some of my landscape shots, to cut the haze and render a bluer sky. But a polarizer is tricky to use. They only work when the camera is pointed exactly 90 degrees from the direction of the source of the light. Even then, a polarizer produces an unnatural blue hue to the sky.
A graduated neutral density filter doesn’t care where the source of the light is. It produces the same result regardless, and a more natural looking sky.
This insight has sure cut down on the gear that I drag around with me when I’m out on a landscape shoot. Although I’ve still got to have a tripod.
When shooting landscapes I want to use the smallest aperture that I can get away with. Tripod mounted, I go right to f32. That’s the smallest aperture my favorite landscape lens, the Sigma 24-135 mm zoom, has. F32 will produce an image where everything from 10 inches in front of the lens to infinity is in sharp focus. The problem is that is usually requires a long exposure, a quarter of a second is not unusual. I can’t keep the camera still enough for that long of an exposure when I’m hand holding it, which is why I use the tripod. Since the shutter speed is so slow, I use the camera’s mirror lock up feature to remove that as a source of camera shake as well.
So you say, “I don’t have an SLR like you do, Scot.” Cokin makes adapters for several popular models of digital cameras without interchangeable lenses. Check into it. Those filters and adapters aren’t all that expensive, and they will improve your landscape photography.
In this month’s Iowa Outdoors, the magazine put out by the DNR, is an article titled, “A Razzle Dazzle Night… in an Iowa Woods.” Its a nicely written article about the night time sights and sounds in the woods. The author, Sandy Flahive, starts her piece by saying that most people don’t think that Iowa landscapes are very interesting. That is certainly true of most Iowans that I know, even I have thought that. I have learned though to see the rolling farm land now in a different light. It has a beauty all it’s own.
The principle crops in Iowa are corn and soy beans. I am sure there are other crops grown in the state, but being as I’m a city boy, I wouldn’t know about them, or be able to identify them. The varying crops add to the textural changes in the landscape.
I was watching Iowa Journal on Iowa Public Television this week. There was a segment on that show about the art galleries of the state, some of the best are found in Des Moines. A proprietor of one of those galleries was interviewed for the show, she said, “I’d have to say that we have more clients interested in landscapes than probably any other type of artwork.” She went on to say that, there are more artists than there is a market for them.
When I discussed this with Mom earlier in the day she gave me a list of places here in “civilization” that I should try to get my work displayed. “Wouldn’t that be something,” I commented, “if I had my photography in an art show. I’m not sure how I would react.” Not that I think my images are good enough for that, there might be two or three that are. I’m pretty hard on myself when it comes to my own work. Always striving for perfection.
What little feed back that I do get, and I do mean little, other than friends and relatives, is pretty positive. I can probably count on one hand the number of comments that I’ve had that fall into that category. I don’t do enough marketing of my website.
There are some things that I look for when I’m out shooting landscapes. The first is an interesting sky. Clear blue is just as boring as overcast. Partly to mostly cloudy is best. If the clouds are a little dramatic, all that better. Part of the problem is that fair weather clouds only develop during the heat of the day, when the light is at it’s worst - harsh. I prefer shooting early or late. Those few fleeting moments after dawn is the best light of the day. Those pretty fair weather clouds haven’t developed yet. I am more likely to get them later in the day. As afternoon wears into evening, those clouds begin to fade away though with the cooling of the atmosphere.
The source of the light, the position of the sun relative to the camera, is best when it’s at a ninety degree angle to the direction that the camera is facing, this creates long shadows when out early and late in the day. Shooting into the light can have a dramatic backlighting effect. Shooting with the source of the light behind you produces a flat boring image, and probably gets your shadow in the image too.
Good landscape photography also has near and far. Finding an strong interesting foreground object can be a challenge. Grass, I have learned after hundreds of images, doesn’t cut it. When I have used flowers as a foreground object I’ve found those images lacking. I never seem to be able to get the blossom large enough in the image that it becomes strong enough focal point. Gates seem to work well. As do stones and cactus, but there’s not much cactus in Iowa. A bush or a tree will work, but we are talking farmland here, so there’s not many isolated trees and bushes around.
The next thing I look for is leading lines. Something that will lead the viewers eye through the image. It could be a road, a path, a drainage ditch, or the lines created by rows of crops. Lines that run horizontally or vertically through an image are bad. It doesn’t take too much movement by the photographer to move those lines to a more artistic position. Leading lines are best if they start at one corner of the image and lead to an upper opposite third.
Which leads me to the rule of thirds. Photographs where the subject is centered are boring. The subject should be placed one third of the way into the image from the right or the left. I seem to prefer the right, I don’t know why. In landscape photography the foreground object should be placed one third from the right or the left and one third the way up from the bottom of the image. Horizons should also be placed one third of the way from the bottom or top of the image. A centered horizon? More bad photography, you don’t have to go any farther than my Gettysburg pages to see a large number of landscape photos with a centered horizon.
What’s the point of all of this? Am I trying to make you a better landscape photographer? If that’s what happens so much the better. Mostly I’m trying to make me a better landscape photographer. It might be helpful to me, at some point in future, if I put all my thoughts on landscape photography down in one place. Something for me to go and back read later. I wonder how much of this I will agree with in; five, ten, or fifteen years?
I also spent some time today searching out Grant Wood landscapes online. The results of that search, as I have often written here, is another post.
Dad and I looked at Comet Holmes Saturday evening. It’s very bright. It’s probably a naked eye object under darker skies. Here in “civilization” it’s a binocular object. The Moon was just rising as we were out, it’s brightening of the sky was visible along the eastern horizon. The comet is so bright that the Moon didn’t spoil the view. I used the binoculars on the camera’s tripod.
Binoculars on a tripod is a pretty nice setup. It keeps the binoculars stabile, and has a wide field of view. I wouldn’t have even thought to do something like that if it hadn’t been for a couple of visits to the Texas hill country and my friend’s there setup.
The comet had a definite nucleus and a slightly dimmer coma. No tail. There is no tail because the Earth is between the Sun and the comet. If there is a tail, and surely there must be, it’s behind the comet. I think that I read that the comet is beyond the orbit of Mars. Comet Holmes is about just as bright as any of the stars in the constellation Perseus, where the comet is currently located.
The comet was pretty easy to find, once I figured out where Perseus was. The star chart that I had pulled up on the laptop was for two hours later in the night than the time that I was out. Since I was out in the driveway, there were plenty of street lights and car head lights going by, to spoil the night’s sky. There were only a couple of the brighter stars of Perseus naked eye visible through all of that.
Comets aren’t something you get to see everyday, so if you get the chance, get out and try.
Replacing a bicycle’s inner tube doesn’t sound like that big of a deal. Right? It wasn’t really. I just tend to make things more complicated than they have to be. You’ll see what I mean as I continue on with this post.
As I posted here two weeks ago my bike had a flat while out on the Hoover Nature Trail. I’m back in “civilization” now for a three day weekend, one of my projects for this weekend has been to fix that flat and replace the broken brake shoe on the front wheel.
I got to the local bike shop and they had the brake shoes, but not an inner tube for that size wheel. Mine are 27 x 1-1/8 inches. I guess they don’t sell many bikes with that size wheel any more. Next stop the local hardware store. They sell bikes and just about everything else. “If they haven’t got it, you don’t need it.” I have often said of that store. Sure enough they had an inner tube in that size.
The front wheel on that bike has a quick release hub. That made the bike easy to haul around while I was living in Chicago and riding the many great bicycle trails there. That hub also makes getting the front wheel off really easy for this kind of repair. Getting the tire off the rim was another story.
I used to have a set of tools specific to the job of getting the tire off a bicycle’s rim. I’ll be darned if I know what’s happened to them. I ended up using three screw drivers to do the job. That’s not the recommended method, but works in a pinch. Getting the bead of the tire initially over the rim was the toughest part of that job. I didn’t want to dig around in there too much, I didn’t want to damage the tire. I would just about get the tire over the rim and it would span back. It took several attempts, but I was finally able to get the tire over the rim. Then I picked up another screw driver and just a few inches over tried to pry the bead of the tire over the rim there. Only to have the first screw driver flip back at me and the tire snap back on the inside of the rim. It took a half dozen tries, but I was finally able to get the tire over the rim in two places. I then took the third screw driver and a few inches over levered the tire over the rim there. I then removed the middle of the three screw drivers and began prying the tire over the rim most of the way around the wheel until I could do that by hand.
Now I had one side of the tire off. From what I had read about doing this job you are then supposed to be able to get the other side of the tire off the wheel with only your fingers. Yeah right. It took two screw drivers to get it off the wheel.
I replaced the inner tube and followed a reverse procedure to get the tire back on the wheel. Screw drivers came in handy again. The new brake shoes went on the front brake caliper, the easiest part of the whole ordeal.
Returning from the gas station up the street where there’s an air compressor, that costs 25 cents to use, I took the bike out for a test spin. It worked great. I then hung the bike up in the garage in it’s storage place, hanging upside down by the wheels from two hooks in the ceiling of the garage.
Later in the evening I wanted to get up to Subway for something for that middle of the night meal that I knew that I would want. As I was pulling the bike down from the hooks, the tires were right at eye level. That’s when I noticed that the front tire was trying to crawl over the edge of the wheel. That’s probably what caused the flat in the first place, the inner tube got pinched between the tire and the rim of the wheel. The tire was shot. Some how it had suffered a structural failure. I needed a new tire. It was too late in the evening for that, all the bike shops in town were closed by then. It would have to wait until the next day.
The next afternoon I headed to yet another bike shop here in town. This is the one that I bought those tires at six years ago. They didn’t have any like the ones there were on the bike, tan side walls. The style now is black sidewalls. I knew that having two unmatched tires would drive me crazy, so I bought two new tires. That meant that I was going to double the fun of replacing only one tire. Fortunately Dad was around to act as the second pair of hands that I could have used the previous day when trying to get the tire off the first time. There was still a battle though, not unlike what I have described above. There was also some time spent trying to locate a 15 mm socket to use with a ratchet wrench to get the rear wheel off the bike.
After getting the rear tire off the bike I discovered that it wasn’t in much better shape than the front tire. Like I have already written here I bought those tires six years ago. The pervious set of tires were the ones that were on the bike when I bought it and they lasted twenty years and a whole lot more miles than I have put on that bike in the last six years. These failed tires must have been crumby tires.
Finally though two new tires on the bike, reusing the old inner tube of the rear wheel. Back from the gas station a second time in the same number of days, a quarter lighter, as I set the bike up on it’s wheels after getting it out of the back of Dad’s pickup, the rear tire was flat. I had just filled it. Somehow I had punctured that inner tube in the struggle to get the tire either off or on the wheel.
Back to the hardware store for another inner tube.
In order to do that job right, you should put a little bit of air in the tube before placing it in the tire. That eliminates kinks. Back to the gas station I went for another 25 cents worth of air. Of course there was yet another struggle to get the tire off and back on the rim.
Finally a third trip to the gas station for air. Only this time there was no traffic to wait on as Dad and I backed out of the driveway. We even hit the only light green on the way. Was this a good omen? I spent yet another quarter.
After getting the bike out of the truck again, I checked the tires. Hard as a brick. Cool. I took the bike for a spin around the block. Perfect.
My total cost of the repairs? $37.41 and I pretty well killed the afternoon too.
Just after I hung the bike up in the garage I remembered that there were logos of the tires manufacturer on one side of the new tires, but not the other. Had I mounted both tires so that logo was on the same side of the bike? It would make me a little crazy if I hadn’t. Sure enough, just by pure chance, I had.
I’ll bet I’ve used that subject line before.
I could work up a really good rant about some things going on at work, but posting those thoughts here is probably a good way to get fired. So I’ll keep those thoughts to myself. At least in this forum.
After nearly a month of sleeping 3-4 hours a day, I’ve been getting 6-8 hours this week. All in one stretch too. That’s nice. I like that. I don’t know what the heck has been going on there. That was one of longest periods of insomnia that I’ve gone through. Getting to sleep is not the issue, I put my head down on my pillow and I am out. It’s staying a sleep that’s been the problem.
My “new” sleep cycle has put a damper on my photography. I haven’t been awake long enough during day light hours to get out with the camera. You may recall that I work third shift, I wouldn’t have it any other way either. That’s why I sleep during the day.
At some point this week I went back through all my images from the Summer of 2006. I found a few images in there that I hadn’t shared with you over on the photo pages. The reason that I didn’t share them at that time is that I wasn’t happy with the lighting. I was planning on shooting those subjects again in better light. Here it is over a year later and I still haven’t done that. I’m going to share what I’ve got. I’ve got them ready to up load with this week’s update, but they are so buried in the website I doubt you’ll be able to find them.
My other project this week was rewriting the “About Me” page in the third person. I’ve renamed that page, “About Scot”. I’m hoping that you will find the humor in there that I had intended. The “About Scot” project has got to be one of the strangest things I have ever done. It’s probably a seven on the weirdness scale. I started writing the text for that page a couple of years ago. It had two sentences for the longest time. I’d open that file up, stare at it for a while, couldn’t think of a thing to write, and close it again. At some point this summer I found my muse and was able to add more to it. If you have been following that project while it’s been going on, then you’ll know that there has been some rewriting going on there these last few months.
Then there’s been all those self portraits I’ve shot. God. If you could see the folder on this computer they are in you’d think I was obsessed with myself. Striving for perfection is what I was after. I had a patient model, one that was around all the time. Me. Bored and to much time on my hands too. It’s not like I haven’t got a hobby.
While the “About Scot” project has been going on I was told by one of my regular correspondents that these pages are all about me already. I didn’t need a separate page. It was a little disturbing to receive that in put. When I started thinking about it, I do use the words, me, my, and I quite a bit. But to be honest, there’s no one else around in my physical world other than, me, myself, and I. Who else in my world do I have to write about? Nobody. I don’t see that changing anytime soon either.
Sometimes I wonder why I even bother. Bother with any of this. Sharing my photos, my blog. These have got to be some of the least visited pages on the Internet. My number one, most viewed photo, has been looked at 78 times in the last year. I get a weekly report on the website’s traffic. Fortunately I don’t get a report of how much traffic my blog gets. If I found out how little this page gets viewed, I’m sure that I wouldn’t bother. I’ll bet it’s two page views a week, and one of them is a search engine.
That reminds me of a totally unrelated story.
My oldest brother and I were fishing somewhere. I don’t recall exactly where now, but do recall it was on the shore of the Mississippi River. We were kids. We weren’t catching anything either. Which is why they call it fishing and not catching. Anyway, at one point he says, “Pollution killed all the fish but one, and it’s already been caught.” I remember his saying that like it was yesterday, only it was over 40 years ago now. That’s always one of the dangers of being around me, I’ll quote you back, word for word, at some future date.
I wonder how many relationships that skill has cost me? Where the gal briefly in my life accuses me of not listening or starts retelling a story I have already heard, then word for word repeat back what she had said to me. Women say they want a guy in their life that listens to them, but not like I do, or can. I’m currently of the opinion that you are better off not listening to them. Then again, you hadn’t better take my sage advice. I am a life long bachelor after all. Also I’m sort of in an, “I hate women” mode at the moment. Some days are better than others, or worse, depending on your point of view. It’s not as bad as it has been, this crap has only been going on for the last ten years. I don’t see that changing anytime soon either.
There’s the start of another rant that I hadn’t better post here. Yikes! I’ve got to be careful, I could really be spitting venom here pretty quickly.
While I was making dinner here a couple of nights ago. I noticed what smelled like burning up electronics in my room. I sniffed around, starting with this laptop computer, my most critical piece of electronics, but couldn’t locate the source of the smell. Turning my attention back to the microwave oven where I had my dinner warming up, I noticed that the paper plate that was in there was on fire. I’ll bet I used a blue word or two when I made that discovery! I opened the door and retrieved the plate. The fire went immediately out. I had the plate sitting on a wicker paper plate holder. “They” claim that wicker paper plate holders are not microwave safe, but I have never had a problem before with them. The wicked plate holder was still glowing red where it had been on fire. I rested it on the only things I have around here that are fire proof, a few empty Coke cans. Then transferred my dinner to a new paper plate and stuck it back in the microwave. After it had quit smoldering I examined the wicker paper plate holder and found a wire twisty from a loaf of bread had become lodged in it. Metal in a microwave oven means sparks. Sparks in a combustible material like wicker equals fire. I got lucky that it wasn’t any worse than it was.
That was my excitement for the week.
I got out on Wednesday this past week to try for some more spider photos. I was operating under the wrong impression that there are black and yellow garden spiders in the area. The reason that I though that is because the bottom side of the banded garden spiders that are around are black and yellow. I have uploaded an image onto the website that proves that.
While I was out and scouting around I came across some milkweeds expelling their seeds. I made some images. I was really working that subject. I even came up with an image that I really like. It may be the best image that I’ve made in quite awhile. We’ll have to see how I feel about it after I’ve lived with it for a while.
Before I set out on Wednesday’s photography run I mounted the macro lens on the digital SLR. Then I got out with the gray card to see what exposure that combination recommended. At ISO200 and f11 it was 1/180 of a second. The images that I made of the spiders at those settings were kind of dark. A black spider against a black background. While I was out I switched the camera out of manual mode into aperture priority and let the camera decide what exposure length to use. At f11 the shutter speed the camera chose was so slow that all I got was blurry images. I eventually opened the aperture up to f4 and that was enough to crank the shutter speed up enough to eliminate my camera shake. I was surprised when I finally got around to looking at the images that I made that day Saturday evening. I would have thought that the depth of field at f4 would have been too shallow to keep all of the spider in focus, but those images look pretty good.
When I got to where the milkweeds are Wednesday I went back to manual mode and the settings that I got when I was testing earlier with the gray card; f11 and 1/180 of a second. I know from my experience of shooting snow filled scenes that the light sensor in the camera gets fooled when it gets something as white as milkweed seeds in front of it. It doesn’t believe anything is that white and turns them gray. Sure the background of that image is black, but the seeds are nice and white. At least they look that way on this laptop’s LCD screen. It will be interesting to see what they look like when I get the chance to get back to “civilization”, my desktop computer, and it’s light temperature balanced CRT monitor.
Friday I started spinning things up for a serious outing with the camera. I wanted to get out on the Hoover Nature Trail Saturday evening. I hadn’t been out that way in three years. That first fall I was in WB. There’s lots of reasons for that, which are beyond the scope of this post. Anyway, I loaded the little camera backpack with a selection of filters; polarizer, neutral density, and graduated neutral density. Also I included a; lens cloth, gray card, note pad, and pencil. Before placing the camera into that padded bag I replaced the batteries in it with a freshly charged set.
In the last minutes before I headed out the door late Saturday afternoon, I Velcro strapped the tripod onto the bike’s bag rack. My first stop was across the street from my room here in WB to top off the air in the bike’s tires. The last time I had it out they seemed a little soft to me. I was going to buy a bottle of water while I was across the street, but some how forgot to do that. Too excited about all the great images that I hoped I would get perhaps.
When I pulled out of the parking lot and turned north, I had tail wind. By the time that I hit the bottom of the hill on my way through town I was really flying. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that, gravity assisted, I was breaking the 25 mph speed limit. It felt like I was doing about a hundred. The wind was roaring in my ears. The vibration from wheels rolling over the road was blurring my vision. As neared the bottom of the hill I had that stay thought that it would be really bad if I lost control of the bike at that speed. I’d be one skinned up mess.
Eventually my speed bled off, as wind drag slowed me back down to a velocity I’m more comfortable with. I cruised through town at a nice comfortable pace on my way to the Hoover Nature Trail. I turned off the hard surface on to the pee sized gravel of the trail and continued northwest out of town. My plan was to get to the end of the trail, surveying for things to photograph on my return trip.
Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans…
I had gone about a mile, or maybe a little more, when there was a loud pop. The reflector on the front wheel of the bike came flying off. I slammed on the brakes, came to a stop, and got off the bike to retrieve the reflector. I couldn’t understand why all of a sudden it had come off. It’s two mounting points were broken. While I was standing there trying to figure out what had happened, I noticed that one of the front wheel’s brake shoes was missing. I found it too laying on the ground not too far away. Okay, no big deal. It was all up hill from there to my room in WB, it wasn’t like I was going to be flying along at the edge of control again that day. I could get by with just the rear brake.
I got back on the bike turned the wheels over once and saw what appeared to be my front rim way out of straight. I stopped again and took a better look. The rim was fine, it was the tire that had come off the rim. I had had a flat. It had blown the tire completely off the rim. I don’t think that I even cussed. I pushed the tire back onto the rim and tried to decide what to do next. I knew at that point no matter what I did, I was walking. I thought about turning around and heading back here, but I was so close to where I wanted to get the camera and it had been so long since I had been out that way, I continued on pushing the bike.
I only stopped in four places along the trail to take some photos. The results of which you’ll find over on the photo pages. I used a couple of my filters in some of those images and even made notes about which ones I used on which image. I was proud of myself for that. That way I wouldn’t have to rely on my sometimes faulty memory.
Sunset here this evening was at 6:35 pm. I wanted to be back in my room by then. It took an hour and a half to walk the bike back, stopping for a few photos along the way. I made it back with ten minutes to spare.
As I was walking along I was thinking about what might have happened if I had had that blow out at speed on the way through town. That could have been bad, very bad. As it was I got lucky. So now the bike is down, until I can get back to “civilization” again. WB doesn’t have a bike shop and I’ve got no practical way of getting to one in Iowa City. I won’t be ranging very far for a while.
I keep my photographs on this computer organized by season. In the Summer 2007 folder there are 423 images. Sound like a lot? I’ve read that when National Geographic photographers are out on assignment they’ll shoot 300 images a day. A typical assignment lasts three months. That’s something like 27,000 images in the same amount of time it took me to shoot just a little over four hundred. My four hundred isn’t all that impressive. Of course my full time job is not photography either.
A disturbing amount of those images I made this summer are of me. I was working on the “About me” project and I am the only model that I’ve got.
The next biggest category of images that I’ve made are of the Moon. There’s a bunch of them. Mostly the same phase of the Moon, taken over and over and over again, until I got the settings on the camera just right. You would think that once I’d gotten the correct settings from that last time I was photographing the Moon I could use those same settings again. It doesn’t seem to work that way. My last successful image does make for a good starting point for the next image though.
There is also a big series of astrophotographs. A situation not unlike that of shooting the Moon. Lots of messing around with camera settings until I get the desired result.
Of the types of images that I seemed to have shot the least are that of the prairie. I thought that was the intent of this website. How did I put it? “I am trying to capture and share the beauty that I have found on the prairie.” I am no where near exhausting that resource. There are probably images to be had over there yet, until the snow flies. Perhaps even then.
I was out with the digital SLR today. I took the camera on a bike ride south and east of my room here in WB. That’s a direction that I have never gone. I’ve had that old bike since 1981. I bought it while I was living in Chicago and there was a huge bicycle craze going on at the time. I seemed to have fallen victim to that craze myself. My recollection is that I paid $150 for that bike, on sale. I’ll bet you couldn’t touch a bike of that quality now for three times that. I must have made a smart purchase, it’s held up pretty well all of these years. I’ve replaced the tires and the inner tubes, a bike bag too. Still, it serves me well. I’m willing to bet that in another 26 years I’ll still be riding it. I’ll be a retired gray haired little old man by then.
I seem to have gotten off topic…
The first mile of my outing today was paved, after that gravel. The wind was out of the SW with gusts up to 31 mph. I was going along at a pretty good clip, until I hit the gravel. That’s when I slowed w-a-y down. Loose gravel under that road bike is more than a little unnerving. The last thing I wanted to do was to put it down. Just in case though, I loaded the camera into my little camera backpack. With that big Sigma lens on it, it just fits. The backpack is padded, in case I did dumped the bike, I wouldn’t have to be worried about the camera getting gravel ground into it. Since I had a camera bag along I put a polarizing filter in the bag as well. I tried to stay on the compacted gravel or the gravel that was pee sized. Any larger than that and I had a challenge on my hands keeping control of the bike.
I went two miles east then turned south into the wind. My goal was to try to find fields of crops being harvested. I found evidence of harvested fields and those yet to be harvested. But none that were actively getting it done.
I went a mile south and then turned east again. I immediately found a very interesting looking building. It was old, very old. Old enough that I wondered if it hadn’t been around since the area was first settled. Still though, it could have been early 20th century. That building had the look of an old general store. It was a two story brick building. It looked to me like the upper floor was the place that the family that ran the store might have lived. I made an image, which I find now lacking. Part of it is my own fault, it’s leaning to the right. Typical of my architecture photos. There was junk sitting on the front steps of the building and a bunch of junked cars around. All in all it turned out to be rather artistically unappealing image.
When I turned around though I found an interesting (to me anyway) image of an Iowa landscape with my old bike as the foreground object.
The area around WB is the Iowa drift plains region. That means it’s hilly. There hasn’t been a glacier through here in at least a half million years. When you top a hill and look around, all the hills are the same height. The valleys between the hills were caused by erosion. Between the hills, the gravel, and the wind, it was a pretty strenuous ride.
When I topped the next hill I found a field full of bails of corn stalks. For the life of me I don’t know why anyone would bail corn stalks. I can’t image they would make very good live stock feed. There must be another purpose that I am not aware of. I made an image. Actually I took several. This is the spot that I spent the most time at.
From here on out the details of where I made the rest of the days images gets a little foggy. I should take better notes. Better, yeah right. How about any notes at all?
I proceeded to the next intersection and turned north. I had a strong tail wind and the bike wanted to fly! If I had been on pavement I might have turned it loose. But as this road seemed like it had seen the least traffic of any I was on this evening I remained cautious. The gravel was very loose and the bike was kind of wobbly for that mile I was on that road as I began heading back here.
When I turned back to the west again at the next intersection I got passed by a grain semi. It came upon me really fast, out of nowhere. I got a nice dust bath. It occurred to me as I was stopped along the side of the road, eyes closed, choking on the dust, that an image of one of those trucks barreling down the road with a cloud of dust behind might be worth the trouble. But I had no way of knowing when the next truck would be along. It could be minutes, or hours.
After the dust settled I started turning the pedals over again. As I passed a farm house two dogs came out of as much nowhere as had that semi. They were growling, barking, and chasing me. Laughing I continued on at the rate that I had been. There were shouts from the house calling the dogs names. All that yelling seemed to be pretty ineffectual. They only left me alone after I had gotten out of their territory. There was a really nice looking field of soy beans right there. I thought about getting off the bike and trying for a few images, but those dogs weren’t happy with my rolling through their territory. I didn’t want to see what they might do if I stopped and got off the bike. Maybe I should start packing doggy treats.
When I got back to the hard road it left like glass under me. It was wonderful to be off of all that teeth chattering gravel. It took two hours to go nine miles. I hadn’t been exactly leaving a trail of flames behind me. I did spend a lot of time off the bike doing what I had intended to do this past evening, photography. I even got a few keepers for my trouble.
Perhaps testing out my new hiking shoes will get me out on the prairie this coming week. Those shoes don’t feel like they have all that much arch support. I switched the Dr. Scholls insoles out of my other hiking shoes into the new ones. That seems to help a little. I’m gellin’. They still feel a little loose on my heels. I always have that problem with shoes though. My feet are pretty narrow. It’s difficult to find shoes that are narrow enough. I can solve that problem with heel inserts. I don’t know if I will get new insoles just for these new shoes or not. I really don’t need them for the old hiking shoes, they were fine without them. It would be nice to have a little extra comfort in these news shoes after being on my feet all night. The uppers are a suede leather, the soles some kind of plastic rubber material.
There was a show on PBS the other night about the career of Tony Bennett. Bob Hope “discovered” him, and he began recording his music in 1947. Tony said during an interview that he isn’t tired of singing his signature song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”. That song made him famous. It’s given him access to places few others get, castles, palaces, the White House… His fans love that song. I don’t think it’s one of his best, I like it though. Anyway, he sings that song at every concert.
I may have written once that I have seen Tony in concert, twice. While I was working at the dinner theater back in “civilization”. That’s how I got hooked on him. Listening to a recording is one thing, but live on stage, in such a small venue as that theater, is something else entirely. I’d love to see him in concert again. I’ve got a new CD of Tony’s on the way, it should arrive next week.
I worked on self portraits one afternoon this past week, when the sun got around to where it wasn’t shining in my window or reflecting off the two cars parked just outside it. Exposure is better that what has been on the website. I like this one a little better. There is a little more light on the dark side. I was squinting a little, it was bright out my window and I was extremely tired. What you can’t tell by this shrunk down version is how bad the focus was. I can’t use this image in any size larger. Now that I’ve been thinking about it for a while I might drop the head shot from the “About Me” page and just leave the image of me working on the prairie up there. That seems to be a better image. Or perhaps I’ll do a product shot of my first camera, the one that I got so many years ago when I was in grade school. I’ve still got it. It’s sitting on a book shelf back in “civilization”.
I found a camera lens on eBay that I would like to have. It’s a Pentax 200 mm f2.8. Unfortunately it’s currently listed at $1400, and the guy selling it is in Poland. There’s two reasons not to buy that lens. I suppose that every photographer would like to have a selection of long fast primes; 200, 300, 400, and 600 mm. Big, big money though. Who knows, maybe someday…
A critical component for my grilling has come up missing. No, not the grill, my chimney charcoal starter. I must have left it outside too long unescorted. Someone must have decided that they needed it worse than I do. It was sitting out there with my grill and tongs. I’m sure that Home Depot will be happy to sell me another. $12 I recall. I might see what other grilling toys they have while I’m there. In the meantime can use charcoal starter fluid that I bought across the street. It was the only can of the stuff they had on the shelf. I’m glad that had that one, I really didn’t feel up to a walk into town that day.
I got out with the camera Thursday evening. Just in the area around the my room here in WB. I don’t think that I got more than 200 feet from the building. I’ve got a close up image of some hay bails that I’m going to use on the website.
Then I worked on a few images of the corn field adjacent to and just south of this building. I think there might be an image in there worth putting up on the website. Then I chased a monarch butterfly around for a while. I got a bunch of images of it, none of then any good. I found a spider in it’s web, no good either. I should get out with the macro lens and try that again.
That night was the first time that I had worn my new hiking shoes while out with the camera. Everything was dry, so I have yet to see how water proof they really are. Even the bottom of the weed and grass filled ditch that’s over there was dry. Usually there’s some water in it.
I had the Sigma 24-135 mm f2.8 zoom lens on the camera. I haven’t used it much since I bought that Pentax 50 mm f2 off of eBay. The Sigma is a nice lens. I like the images it makes. I don’t think it’s quite as sharp as the 50 mm f2, but it’s expectable.
I’m always amazed at the images that I get with the Pentax 50 mm f2. That lens is sharp through all of it’s focal range and apertures. Even wide open the images it produces are tack sharp. Well, they are when I’ve got the focus set right. If an image that lens makes is not sharp, it’s due to an error in focusing on the part of the photographer. I can think of a few examples. That lens turned out to be a pretty good $27 investment.
I got out on the prairie Monday morning with the camera. That was fun. I found and identified two new plants; side-oats grama and tall tickfoil. Unfortunately none of those images are good enough to make the website. I should have used a smaller aperture, or just moved around a little more. Side-oats grama is past it’s prime. I should have started looking for side-oats grama back in mid August, if not sooner. But I didn’t know that I was going to be on a prairie grass identification kick back then. The tickfoil wasn’t looking too hot either, past it’s prime as well.
Now that I’ve got five of the grasses on the restored prairie here identified, that only leaves little bluestem.
I was pretty excited when I saw side-oats grama for the first time. It was on top of the hill, right behind the Hoover grave site. I’ve walked by them I don’t know how many times. My excitement over finding that grass was probably one of the reasons I didn’t get a very good image. The next time I’m out I’ll be over my excitement and can concentrate on my photography. You would have thought that I could have gotten a decent image that morning. The light was prefect and the air was calm. I should have kept working that plant. Much like I did with some spider webs that I found later. But I’ve shot spider webs before. I think I’ll take the 50 mm f2 lens on the next outing. It’s shorter focal length and larger aperture might help.
I even found a spider web that had the spider still in it. Too large of an aperture again. It was so early in the day that the light was not very strong. I was using the 100 mm macro lens. Ideally I would like to have the shutter speed twice that of the focal length, that eliminates camera shake. I have been able to shoot successfully with a shutter speed that’s the same as the focal length, but that requires being pretty stabile. I was in an awkward position trying to get that spider photo.
I was hand holding the camera that morning. If I had known what I was going to find on the prairie when I left my room I would have taken the tripod with me. Usually I do, but I was somewhat lazy that morning, and in my mind anyway, I was on a recon mission, not an actual photo shoot.
I headed out the door here at 6:30 that morning and got back just after 8. There was almost no traffic at that time of day. I kind of expected that, being a holiday and all. Oh yeah, my hiking shoes, socks, and jeans were soaked in dew when I got back to my room in WB.
I made 40 images that morning. That brings my grand total to just under 400 that I’ve made this summer. Sounds like a lot doesn’t it? I’ve read that professional nature photographers will shoot that many images in a day! It took me all season to get that many.
One of the images that I made that morning, that did make the website was of big bluestem in bloom. I didn’t know that grasses had blossoms. I think that’s a nice image. It’s difficult to make a bad photograph in good light. I certainly had good light that morning. It’s unfortunate that the scaled down version for sharing on the internet lost some of the detail that the full sized version has. Still though, it’s get the point across. I don’t recall ever seeing an image of a prairie grass in bloom.
Now that we are past Labor Day, I suppose that the last day of summer, weather wise, is behind us. Astronomically fall doesn’t begin for three more weeks. I did notice that the soybean field west of the prairie was turning yellow. It had started that last week, but is really getting much more yellow now than green. Harvest time is right around the corner here in Iowa. I haven’t paid too much attention to the corn. There’s a field of that just south of and adjacent to the building my room is in. That should be easy to get to for a few photos. I should start working on that corn field for the rural Iowa section of the website. Nothing say’s Iowa more than corn. Other than perhaps the scent of a hog farm in the air. That scent was pretty strong that morning. “Bacon, bacon, bacon! I smell bacon!” Still on the hoof.
The next morning I went out to check on the corn south of this building. As I walked up to the barbed wire fence that’s between the parking lot and the corn field I spooked several grasshoppers. Two of them landed in spider webs and the spiders went right to work on them. I felt kind of bad for a few seconds, that my presence on the scene cut short the life of a couple of critters. I reminded myself that is nature’s way.
It occurred to me that I don’t feel bad for the cow, pig, or chicken that I have for my before and after work meals. I don’t think of them at all, except for how tasty they are. That’s probably because I don’t get to see cows, pigs, and chickens slaughtered. If I ever did see the inside of a slaughter house I’d probably give up eating meat.
Vegetarian; old Indian word for bad hunter.
I ordered some new hiking shoes this week. They are supposed to be waterproof. I’m sure those hiking shoes will likely make my feet sweat. I would be very surprised though to feel like I’m walking around in pools of water after a few hours on a dew covered prairie while wearing them, like I do with my current hiking shoes. I can’t imagine that all that moisture is doing my current hiking shoes any good.