Dailey Family Christmas Card
Posted in Christmas, Family Fun, Photography on December 24th, 2009 by Don
Time for the annual family Christmas portrait. Merry Christmas to you and yourn.
Strobist info: Last year I used a single reflective umbrella and another flash for a hair light and I had weird shadow issues. This year I used the reflective umbrella on camera right with an SB-600 at 1/4 power and my ghetto foam-core softbox on camera left with an SB-26 also at 1/4. I wanted to keep the light ratio very close. Even though both flashes were on 1/4 power, the different modifiers put out different light levels. The softbox was a little brighter than the umbrella.
High On A Mountaintop
Posted in Arkansas, Ouachita Mountains, Photography on December 18th, 2009 by Don
Abby’s been gone all week and school’s over until next semester, which has been nice because I got a bunch of stuff done. But by Thursday I’d done everything that needed doing and I found myself at loose ends. I headed west into the Ouachita National Forest to see what I could see. After wandering around on the back roads for a couple of hours I found myself about halfway up Grindstone Mountain in extreme northwest Saline County. I decided to get out of the truck and walk the rest of the way up the mountain. I thought maybe a nice sunset would be in offing, but the overcast sky just took on a kind of pale yellowish glow while the evening haze clinging to the ridges took on a blue-grayish hue. The landscape kinda looked like what you always see in movies featuring dinosaurs. I guess we tend to think the sky and air looked weird a few million years ago. I shot the photo on cloudy white balance to pump up the yellow in the sky.
That big rock sticking up in the middle of the top photo is Forked Mountain.
While I was up there one of those big C-130s from Little Rock Air Force Base flew by, circled Forked Mountain and headed back to the east. Those things always fly very low. This one was at about the same altitude I was.
Land Of Ahs
Posted in Kansas, Photography, star trails on November 25th, 2009 by Don
The state of Kansas once called itself “The Land of Ahs” in its promotional materials. Get it, Land of Ahs=Land of Oz. Yeah, I know. This church sits near my parents’ little farm near Parsons, Kansas. We visited last weekend to enjoy an early Thanksgiving feast. (Cheese grits live on!) The farm is out in the sticks, closest town is six miles away, so it’s a great place to see the stars. For this shot I stacked 97 photos, each of which had a 30 second exposure. The advantage is that when the photos are combined, you don’t get the sensor noise that shows up on a single long exposure. It was the first time I’ve tried this particular star trails technique and it didn’t turn out as I expected. To do this right, you need an intervalometer to automatically make the exposures. Higher-end cameras have the intervalometer built in and you can buy inexpensive small intervalometers that plug into the camera. I had to use some computer software that has intervalometer capabilities and shoot the frames with the camera tethered to my laptop.
It’s a cumbersome arrangement and it didn’t work quite right. I let the camera sit clicking on the tripod while I went back to the house for an hour. When I came back, the software informed me it had attempted 160 shots or so but could only process 97 of them. No idea why that happened. Then I loaded all the photos into Photoshop and ran an action I found on the Internets that combines all those exposures into one shot. Some of the star trails are kinda jaggedy and I don’t know what caused that exactly. Was it the software? Was it camera movement from the slight breeze blowing that night? Who knows. Also the trails near the North Star are really faint. I suspect that was because I had the aperture stopped down to f/8. I needed to have it a little wider for such short exposures. The stacking did work well to get the exposure on the front of the church. Several cars passed by and swept their lights across the church when they turned the corner. I’m going to get a real intervalometer and try this shot again.
Here we have a more traditional star trails shot I made later that night. I just put the camera on bulb and opened the shutter and let it sit for about 50 minutes. I had some technical difficulties on this one, too. When I came back, the camera had shut itself off. I thought maybe the batteries had run out, but there was plenty of battery left. Maybe it got too hot and tripped some kind of breaker. The metadata on the frame said the exposure was 30 minutes exactly. Maybe the shutter will only stay open for 30 minutes, but I know I’ve taken longer exposures than that a couple of times.
The thing sticking up in the middle is an old grain silo on the farm. It’s green from a big yard light shining on it about 200 yards away.
Abby and Gramps got in a little fishing. They couldn’t find any worms, so they used dog food. They didn’t catch anything.
Another Map
Posted in Maps, Photography on November 10th, 2009 by DonI got so excited about MapFlickr that I made another map. This one shows all the photos in my Flickr account tagged with “Arkansas” and geocoded. If you click the little flags, you can see the picture taken there.
Click to see the map.
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The Cartographer
Posted in Flickr, Maps, Photography on November 9th, 2009 by DonI found this site called MapFlickr that will make a map from your geotagged Flickr photos. I found it to be quite cool, so I made a map of all the waterfall photos I’ve uploaded to Flickr. Some of the pins aren’t exactly accurate. I’ve zoomed in on some of them and noticed some are a few hundred yards to a half-mile off. But that could’ve been my fault when I placed them on the map in Flickr.
Click to see the map.
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Dawn Patrol
Posted in Arkansas, Photography, Waterfall, exploring, fall foliage on November 5th, 2009 by Don
My Dad and I made our second-annual day-before-the-end-of-daylight-savings-time-sunrise pilgrimage on Saturday. The first annual DBTEODSTP was so successful, we decided to do it again. This year we went to Petit Jean State Park and caught the sunrise from Stout’s Point near the gravesite of Petit Jean herself. Several photographers had already assembled by the time we got there. The sunrise wasn’t all that great photographically, but it was pretty neat to hang out up there with my Dad.
Face-To-Fish
Posted in Abby, Family Fun, Photography, The Stay-At-Home-Dad Experiment on October 20th, 2009 by Don
I didn’t have classes on Thursday, so Abby stayed home from school, too. We went out exploring just like in the old days when I was a full-on stay-at-home dad or STAHD. We headed down to the river market to see how the fish were getting along at the Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center.
Cedar Falls At Dawn
Posted in Arkansas, Photography, Waterfall, exploring on October 11th, 2009 by Don
If I never accomplish anything else in life I can always say that I was the first person at Cedar Falls in Petit Jean State Park on October 10, 2009. It rained heavily across the Ozarks and Central Arkansas on Thursday night and Friday, so I knew the waterfalls would be running for a few days. The trouble was that Saturday was supposed to dawn with clear skies, and bright sun is no good for waterfall pictures. You need the muted light of cloudy skies to get good photos. I figured if I got out there before the sun got very high, I could do some shooting before things got too bright. Problem number two was that I’d have to go somewhere close by if I was going to be there at sunrise. The only real waterfall close enough for me to get to that early is Cedar Falls. I got up at 5:30 a.m. and got to the trail head a little after 7. And as luck would have it, it stayed cloudy, dark and gloomy all day. The top photo is a panorama made from six blended and merged photos.
