Due to some technical camera issues, my photos of the various family Christmas events didn’t turn out very well. (I think my all-around lens has some focus issues.) However, when we went to my parents’ place in Kansas, I was able to get out on Christmas Night and shoot this star trails photo. The elder Daileys live out in the country well away from any serious city lights so the nights are quite dark. This barn sits less than a half-mile from my parents’ house. I tried this shot unsuccessfully once before. This time the idea was to take about 20 consecutive exposures of 4 minutes and combine them all in Photoshop. During the first exposure I used my little SB600 flash to pop some light on the barn. I set the pop at half-power, which turned out to be way too weak. I should’ve popped at full power two times, at least. And I should’ve popped on the little shed and tree directly in front of the camera. I had to bring the exposure on the barn way up in Photoshop to get it to show at all. I guess I’ll be going back to this spot with a more elaborate plan.

Abby and I went up to Kansas to my parents’ place over the weekend for my Grandma’s 95th birthday party. I wanted to take advantage of the clear skies away from the big-city lights to try some astrophotography. I needed to find something interesting for the foreground of a star trails photo and the gas well on their back 40 seemed as good as anything. I’d already done a few similar shots in the past using hay bales, a nearby church and an old grain silo. I made this photo by combining 19 photos each with a four-minute exposure using a cheap intervalometer I got off eBay. I lit the pump with a blast from an external flash during one of the exposures.

I messed up, though, by starting the sequence too early, before it got slap dark. I further messed up by using the flash during the first exposure. I tossed out the first four exposures because the sky was still pretty light. The problem was that the pump was a silhouette in those later exposures. So I spent a couple hours in Photoshop cutting out the flash-exposed pump from that first exposure with the too-light sky. Then I layered that cut-out over the combined shots with the good star trails. Don’t look too close or you’ll see my ham-handed Photoshop skills on display.

When Photoshop stopped grinding away and displayed the combined photos, I was flummoxed because some of the trails passed in front of the pump. However, the trails behind the trees and other stationary objects stayed in the background, as you would expect. I’m not too smart, so it took me awhile to figure out that the pump must have moved. Now, according to my Dad, that well had been idle for some time. I walked down to it the day before and it was in the position you see in the photo. It was absolutely not moving. When I returned to take the picture, I spent about 45 minutes jacking with my camera waiting for dark to fall and the thing didn’t move an inch. But I went back through every exposure blown up big on my computer screen. The pump area was so dark in each one that I could barely make out that the pump had indeed moved up and down at least once and returned exactly to its original position. So some of the trails in the final product have a big gap.

The sky was as clear as I think I’ve ever seen. I wanted to take a straight shot of a star field to see if I could get the Milky Way to show up in a photo. This is the front of the house. The trees are lit by a florescent street light in the back yard.

A bunch of family came in for the party. We had to go for the big number candles for obvious reasons.

Not exactly what I had imagined when I went out to shoot the moon over downtown Little Rock, but this what I got. Because the moon is so bright, I couldn’t get the capitol and the moon at the right exposure with just one frame. If the moon is exposed correctly, the capitol is completely in the dark. If the capitol is exposed correctly, then the moon is just a white hole in the sky. So I combined three different exposures to get detail in both the building and the moon.

We wrapped our adventures in Natchez by dining at the Castle restaurant on the grounds of Dunleith. For some reason we were expecting an exceptional dining experience, but all we got was average for a nice restaurant. We got off to a bad start when the waitress informed us the kitchen was out of filet mignon, which is both Gina’s and my go-to dish when we want to put on the fancy.

I was able to recover by ordering the ribeye with port wine demi glace and the requisite fancy mashed potatoes and shitake risotto. I got a glass of pinot noir that was decent. Demoralized by the lack of a filet, Gina lost control and got a crabcake appetizer and a salad main course. She ordered a glass of Ravenswood zinfandel and it was better than my pinot. My steak was excellent and the creme brulee desert was even better.

The restaurant itself is very cool. It’s in the plantation’s old stable building, which was built in the 1790s. It survived a fire that burned the main house in the 1850s. The owners rebuilt the main house in 1859.

As for the accommodations, I couldn’t have asked for more. Apparently, recessions are a good time to travel. This place was throwing rooms at people. We stayed two nights at a rate less than half the normal rate. The room was huge and appropriately furnished with a canopy bed and other antique furniture. Aside from a loud music incident last night, we enjoyed every minute. I probably should have taken some photos of our room.

This is another angle on the unknown Confederate soldier memorial at the Natchez City Cemetery. I aimed Photoshop at it and pulled the trigger.

The road to Natchez goes through Transylvania, La. Transylvania is tiny. All that’s there is a garage/filling station with a “for sale” sign hanging in the window. We’ve gone through there a few times in the past on our way to Vicksburg and the Redneck Riviera, and I always say we ought to stop and take a picture of the water tower. Well, this time I finally got around to it. Do you think the thing is full of blood?

A couple months ago when I went to check out Eagles Nest Falls in the Madison County Wildlife Management Area I found this magnificent view of the Kings River valley. I made a mental note to try to get back there to see the fall foliage at sunrise. I figured this Saturday would be perfect because the switch back to standard time on Sunday would make sunrise come earlier and make it less likely I would be able to get there early enough. (I realize that sunrise happens when it happens and we humans are the ones who put a time to it. But these are mental gymnastics I used to convince myself that rising at 5 a.m. was a good idea.) My dad was in town and he’s always up way too early and he enjoys a good hike, so he was game to go along with my idea.

We got there about 30 minutes before the sun popped over the horizon, but fog covered the valley and hid most of the color in the trees below. That was kind of a bummer, but the scene was still beautiful.

I’ve been meaning to try the Strobist portrait technique of shooting with the sunset as a backdrop and using a flash on the subject. This sunrise presented the opportunity but I didn’t bring any of my flash gear with me so I had to use the pop-up flash on the camera. I got the ambient exposure and then I walked up the flash manually until I got the right exposure on dear old dad. I think the flash was on 1/2 power. I was surprised the pop-up worked so well.

I made this pano shot using the photomerge feature in Photoshop. I don’t have one of those fancy pano tripods so the resulting picture was kinda hinky on the left side and I cropped off about a quarter of the shot. You need to click this one to see it bigger and get the full effect, such as it is.

Click for larger size.

Just messing around with some Photoshop actions downloaded from the Internets. I think it would look better if the blog had a white background.