A Momentary Light

First time for photographing fireworks. With all of the film/digital cameras I have, I used a Canon A630 point and shoot on a tiny tripod, same rig used in my series in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The camera was placed on the hood of the car - I liked the reflection from the windshield and left it in most of the photographs. I like the sparser images the best, less smoke in the air.

Here is the gallery, warning - the EXIF data for the 35mm focal length equivalents to the Canon A630 focal lengths are wildly off. 7.3mm on the Canon is equivalent to a 35mm focal length for a 35mm film camera.:

While I'm gathering some photographs of the bands and the bystanders at the recent Highland Games in Fair Hill, Maryland, let me pause to document an attempted break out by three sheep. Evidently, they escaped from the sheep dog demonstration area. To our delight, they rounded a couple of pipe bands that were assembling for the Massed Bands and raced down the racetrack hell-bent for leather in the general direction of Newark, Delaware. At the rate they were going, I figured we would see them on Main Street when we got back, maybe sipping lattes at Brew-Ha Ha or having a late (vegetarian) lunch in front of the Iron Hill Brewery. To our surprise, they suddenly veered to the right and assembled in front of a bemused photographer. Are you our mommy? It was funny. Then a border collie appeared, streaking down the track, and effortlessly herded the sheep back from whence they came. The speed at which that dog gathered those sheep together and got them moving was impressive. Now there is a technology that just plain works. Here are the photographs:

I'm Scotch-Irish on my father's side of the family. That would be Orange-Irish then. I'm a little bit conflicted that my ancestors were removed from Scotland and used by the British Crown to try to pacify the unruly Irish but my buddy Steve (Green Irish through and through) doesn't seem to hold that against me. Anyways, my wife and I have always enjoyed the Highland Games wherever we have lived and we have a good version of the Games close by in Fair Hill, Maryland. I like it all, the food, the pipe bands and the athletic competition. Where else are you going to see a guy, with great seriousness and concentration, toss a burlap bag of hay over a bar with a pitchfork or flip a telephone pole end-for-end?

For the past two years, I have impersonated a more serious photographer at the Games by virtue of wearing a backpack full of camera gear. Here are some of the photographs, first up are the athletes:

I wanted to try out Blogger and have been fooling around with old film cameras in recent months so I started a new blog more related to the hardware side of my photographic journey. My shove down this slippery slope was a Pentax ME Super (with new lightseals) I got off of Ebay for not much money. First hit is free and then you pay...

I found some color print film at a local Rite-Aid and carried the camera along with the dSLR to the Highland Games in Fair Hill, MD and then with Molly to Blacksmith Days at the Carroll County Farm Museum near Baltimore. Wow, the experience of pulling the roll of film out of the canister and winding the leader on the take-up spool took me back 30 years in an instant. Some of the shots I took turned out well, I'm chuffed. Now I'm in the process of resurrecting my old Spotmatic F, scoring some cheap film off of Ebay and getting some film bodies for backup. Backup is important. Here are a couple of shots from the Games and the Blacksmith Days. More to come.

Color Guard waiting to march:



Farrier in a horseshoe making competition:

How the time flies...the summer went by in a blur, then the election, the collapse of the stock market... Winter came and I was captured by my competing interests, woodworking and pen making. In times like these, it's good to have immersive hobbies. As Jefferson said, "It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give happiness." The K200D hibernated in the backpack, only emerging to get a picture of a cardinal divebombing the bird feeder and some shots of new pens. But with the onset of Spring, I find myself looking at sunsets as I drive home and restless to get out with the camera. Easter Sunday I managed to get out to a walking trail to get photographs. The sound of moving water, birdsong, warm mellow sunlight...it was good.

Cardinal at the feeder:



New apricot pen:



Gallery from my Easter walk in the woods:

We just got back from a week at Cape Hatteras, this was a poignant year, we cast Jennie's ashes in the surf, same place we did Hubie's four years ago. Molly, Katie and Vini couldn't make it this year but we had a full house anyway. Although I hate going in the water to the point of immersion, I did spend some time on the beach with the K200D and my 'beach' lens, a Kiron 'Zoom-lock' 70-210mm F4. This was a $35 Fleabay special so I wasn't worried about toasting an expensive lens with salt spray. The camera is supposed to be splash-proof so I wasn't so concerned about it, just wiped it off with a damp cloth after I got back to the beach house.

Hurricane Gloria was well out to sea but was creating moderate/heavy surf. I have never seen as many surfers out on the Hatteras beaches before. Here are some shots, first four taken with the Kiron, a manual-focus lens that basically operates like a Pentax-M lens on the camera. I really love the Katz-Eye focusing screen. The last two were taken from the upper deck of the beach house with the Sigma 70-300mm:

Last week I was in Philadelphia for a meeting and the last day decided to lug along my camera instead of my laptop. There was so much going on in the seminar that I didn't really have time to check email anyway. After the seminar broke up, I went to Reading Terminal Market (near the Market East train station) and bought some pizelle for my wife. With the camera hanging around my neck and feeling like a bona fide tourist, I headed out to explore. I caught a glimpse of William Penn up on top of City Hall and headed over that way. City Hall has suffered some neglect over the years but it looks like they are fixing it up some. Impressive structure and I found out later that it is still the tallest masonry structure in the world at 548 ft plus the statue (really - who knew?). Ok, it was hot, I was wearing a sport coat and tie and was loaded down with a briefcase, pizelle and camera plus lenses so this was a brief outing. Quick circuit around City Hall, back to Market East Station (saw an interesting sculpture of the world near a hotel) and after photographing some street musicians, got on the train and headed home.

Camera-wise I had the Pentax K200D dSLR and two manual Vivitar lenses, one a 28mm f2.8 prime lens, this one made by Komine, and a 70-150mm zoom, made by Kino Optical (also known as Kiron). Vivitar was a distributor and sourced lenses from several manufacturers. Both of these were 'Fleabay' bargains.


The gallery:

Last Saturday my wife and I went down to Washington DC to see the big veteran/motorcycle rally known as Rolling Thunder. There is quite a subculture that has grown up around Rolling Thunder, now in its 21st year. Do-rags, leather, vests adorned with colorful patches and motorcycles were in abundance. We met a couple from my wife's hometown who ride Harleys. Bill and Sally met us on the Mall near the Smithsonian and we walked down Constitution Avenue to a rally point known as Thunder Alley. We gawked at the spectacle in and around Thunder Alley, ate lunch (excellent barbecue) and walked over to the Vietnam Memorial and the Mall (pictures of the latter in the next installment).

Wow, the bikes were beautiful - gleaming chrome, world-class paint jobs... rolling pieces of sculpture. Here is the gallery:

A couple of weekends ago, I wanted a change of scenery, photographically speaking and decided to make a quick trip into Southeastern Pennsylvania, into Amish territory. I found the experience to be pretty frustrating, almost claustrophobic. Here's the thing - the Old Order Amish don't want you taking pictures of them. They consider photographs to be graven images and therefore against their religion. So there I am just trying to get a few shots of very scenic countryside (and maybe a buggy or two at a discreet distance, without showing the occupants) and sort of feeling like a paparazzi the whole time. Plus, the roads tend to be narrow with not much in the way of shoulders to pull off on. There I was, passing great shots of farm country and nowhere to stop the vehicle except the middle of the road.

At one point. I found a lane to pull off in and turned off the vehicle. It was pleasantly warm, the late afternoon sun was mellow, birds were singing...it was nice. I got a few shots. Later, I happened on a couple of Amish horses at pasture with blinders on. Disconcerting, but I guess they have a good reason for the practice.

After I got home I googled around for Amish photography. I saw a few shots of children on the backs of wagons and barn raisings that were obviously taken at a goodly distance with a telephoto lens. Huh. Well, the Amish are supposed to be pacifists but I guess you wouldn't want to risk sticking a camera in the faces of a bunch of them while they were armed with hammers and sharp chisels, now would you?

Here is the gallery:

It was almost a couple of weeks ago that some sort of front moved through and for a couple of days we had just the clearest skies. Skies so clear you could see the contrails everywhere, a constant feature of the East Coast landscape. I like contrails, I like the way they begin as thin bright spears in the sky and billow out into long trailing clouds. The moon was close to being full and was well up above the horizon in the early evening. I went back up to the Park of Dogs to see if I could get some pictures of mallards or geese on the pond.

A denizen of the Park of Dogs, preparing to fertilize a clump of grass:


The path down from the parking lot led through a meadow of yellow rocket (Barbarea vulgaris). The Man in the Moon was overhead, the leafless trees framed the meadow, and I knelt down and took three auto-bracketed shots for a high-dynamic range (HDR) image. Skirting a grass-sniffing dog, I went down to the pond and quickly realized that the light was too dim for detailed pictures of mallards that were apparently unwilling to hold still for just a few measly seconds. Looking back up the hill I could see some contrails framed by the leafless trees, the trees looked like black lace in the viewfinder. I took a shot with one of the old Vivitar zoom lenses I recently got off of Ebay. The sunset was all deep oranges and reds in that clear air and I took a few shots with the old Vivitar, then moved back to the Pentax 18-55mm AL II lens. The fading sun lit up the contrails and finally flickered out. To the east the moon was bright enough to just cast shadows. I set up the mini tripod on a picnic table and shot the pond in that cold blue moonlight.

So there you have it - the duality of nature, the ying of the ruddy sun to the yang of the cold blue moon. Some people might prefer the moon, I choose the sun. Here is the gallery.

OK, lemmee see here. Got a new K200D dSLR, got some pretty good zoom lenses to cover the focal length range from 18 to 300mm - got the wide and long covered. What about the short? The macro? Got to have the MACRO. Google is my friend... Lookee here, there's a nice Pentax D FA 100mm f/2.8 Macro Lens available and it's only *cough* $450. Hmmm. Hey, how about close-up/macro filters? Some would consider this solution to be, ah, jejune but not me, I'm a bottom-feeder. The Lensmate people show some pretty good results with Hoya close-up filters for use with their adapter and Canon point 'n shoot cameras. I just happen to have a set for my Powershot P&S cameras and they give some pretty good image quality. What did I do with those things? Got to be around here somewhere... Ha, found 'em. OK, we'll just slap on that #4 filter on the kit lens to my Pentax K200D dSLR and go out, get some shots of some weeds in the front yard, before the neighbors send a delegation to the house and I'm forced to mow them down. Whoa! Not bad! Saves me the trouble of tracking down a pricey macro lens. Check it out:

Yeah, I'm thinking that the cat has one of those creepy alien parasites in him, the ones from Stargate SG1. I mean, c'mon, look at the EYES on this animal. They're GLOWING. Just like the infested humans in the series. Look at his EXPRESSION. Oddly enough, he doesn't seem to display a heightened intelligence but he could be faking it.





On the camera front, besides revealing the cat to be harboring a Goa'uld, the Pentax K200D (normally set at 10 MP) turns out to do a really sharp 6 MP image here with fine detail and good tonal range. This with the 18-55mm AL II kit lens and the camera set in 'Bright' mode. Here's a 100% crop of some detail.


Well, that's all well and good but there is still the problem of the cat. SHE seems to be totally in his power. Fortunately, he hasn't got opposable thumbs so he has trouble turning doorknobs. Yep, I'm sleeping behind a closed door with the lights on.

A week ago we went back to Ohio, to continue the long and difficult process of cleaning out my in-laws house. Both are gone now, they were a wonderful pair and we miss them sorely.

I slipped out late Saturday afternoon with my camera, and in a melancholy mood, drove down to the Hocking Hills. I parked near the Mathias Log Cabin on Clear Creek Road and went into the woods towards the Thompson Cabin. The sky was overcast with a raw, cold breeze blowing. Spring had not arrived quite yet, there were hardly any buds showing on the trees. It was spooky quiet in there, just the wind. The beech trees still had leaves hanging on quivering at the slightest breeze..

I found some odd pock-marked patterns on some of the sandstone boulders, wall-art of the Fae, I'm thinking. Yep, if the Little People are around, this is where they would hang out. There were little burrows, doorways, into a base of the tree and a junction of a tree and rock. "Holy Crap," I thought, "I've fallen into hobbitville here." The moss was an intense, dark green. That old English folk song, "Down By the Greenwood Sidey" was running through my mind (it doesn't end well).

I drove down to Cantwell Cliffs and took the trail and sandstone steps down to the cliff edge. It was close to sundown by then, the sky was still overcast. I walked along the cliff edge up to where a small stream spills on over the sharp edge of the rock. Deja vu, the last time I was in there was 30 some years ago, collecting bryophyte (moss and liverwort) specimens for a botany class at Ohio State. And they were still there, everywhere covering the Black Hand sandstone. I passed a formation like a neolithic dolmen, and walked back up the rock stairway. They had quite a snowstorm a few weeks ago and a good-sized oak was broken off, the raw, orange heartwood vivid against the dark greens and grays. I went back to the house and met the rest of them for dinner.

The next day, I went to church with my wife and was pleased to see one of my nephews acting as an usher and the younger one reading the epistle. So there is a new generation coming along. The processional was the old hymn, "Now the Green Blade Riseth":

Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

Spring is coming.

Here is the gallery:

Back in early March I helped chaperone a church youth group on a trip to participate in the Nightwatch program at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC. St. John the Devine is the largest gothic style cathedral in the world, full of some really beautiful spaces. I thought I'd try out some HDR with the Enfuse software and my Canon A630. I use Bracketeer, a GUI front end to Enfuse on my iMac. At that time, there was not a simple way to align slightly offset images from handheld shots and run Bracketeer so I used a (really dinky) tripod for all of the shots (Bracketeer v3.1 now offers image alignment). Bracketing shots on the A630 was made possible with the CHDK firmware hack and the promise of this was what finally gave me the incentive to install and use the hack. I used the bracketing script, EVbracket which is available on the CHDK wiki site.

With the articulating LCD screen on the small tripod the A630 was a wonderful platform for bracketing shots in the cathedral. It was unobtrusive and very quiet, I had the shutter set to 'silent' mode, something you can't really do with a SLR. At times I had the tripod pressed laterally against a wall or pillar with one hand while adjusting the camera and pressing the shutter with the other. My Op-Tek single-point neckstrap came in very handy here.

Link to the gallery:


Warning - the EXIF data for the 35mm focal length equivalents to the Canon A630 focal lengths are wildly off. 7.3mm on the Canon is equivalent to a 35mm focal length for a 35mm film camera.