On The Road Again

One of the ideas suggested by Mollie Isaacs of Awake The Light at the Grandfather Mountain Nature Photography weekend was a technique for producing motion blurred images. She suggested that you have your partner drive down the road slowly while you hand-hold your camera and shoot through the windshield using a slow shutter speed.

Mary Lindhjem suggested a speed of no more than 5 mph.

Pentax K-20D, Tokina ATX-Pro 80-200 zoom @ 80mm, ISO 100, f/11 @ 1/2 second

I wanted to give it a try, but not having a partner to drive for me, I had to improvise.

I started by securely strapping my tripod in the passenger seat and mounting the camera to it. I connected my remote shutter release to the camera.

The camera was set to aperture priority auto-exposure with +1/3 stop exposure compensation at f/11; manual focus, focused as close to the Hyperfocal Distance as I could manage. For this particular lens at f/11, that gives a D.O.F. stretching from about 10 feet to infinity.

I left the in camera shake reduction turned on.

The road I chose is the main road in William B. Umstead State Park in Raleigh, NC. This is the eastern section off of Glenwood Ave (US Hwy 70). This road already has a low speed limit at 25mph, so there was less risk for me driving it at 5 mph.

Grandfather Mountain Nature Photography Weekend

The 2011 Grandfather Mountain Nature Photography Weekend is history.

My first love is nature and wildlife photography. That's where the two lanes lead me to. I didn't think I'd get the chance to attend this year's program, but the opportunity came up at the last minute, so I grabbed it.

The Nature Photography Weekend is an annual photography event at Grandfather Mountain. Along with the chance to meet and compare notes with others who share an interest in nature photography the weekend includes evening presentations from some top nature photographers. This year's speakers included:

Tony Sweet
http://www.tonysweet.com/

Tony spent 20 years as a professional jazz musician before switching to photography. Tony's images show the influence of his jazz career. He's the master of photoshop improvisation.

Take a Tony Sweet workshop and you'll be talking about it years later.

Bill Fortney
http://www.billfortney.net/Welcome.html

Bill a Nikon Professional Services tech rep for the southern US, and amateur pilot. Bill is the author of America From 500 Feet, a runaway best seller of aerial nature photography.

Bill Lea
http://www.billlea.com/

Bill Lea is a perfectionist at finding "just the right light." He's the go to guy for photography in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park.

Vinnie Coluci
http://www.nspwphoto.com/

Vinnie, along with his partner Melissa Southern hosts Next Step Photography Workshops. This year at Grandfather mountain his presentation was on how to get zoo photos that appear to have been taken in the wild.


Mollie Isaacs & Mary Lindhjem
http://www.awakethelight.com/

The final presentation was "Work It, Baby" by Mollie Isaacs & Mary Lindhjem of Awake The Light. Find the scene, find the scene within the scene and WORK IT!

And then there's the contest, with the Mark and Doug show. The contest offers the chance for attendees at the to photograph on the mountain and show their skills.

All I can say about the contest is to repeat THE PLEDGE: "I will not take the contest too seriously."

Memorial Day

I'm a little late with this, but I wanted remember my friend Nathan.

I think I was in my first year of high school when Nathan's parents moved into the house behind ours. Nathan was their second child. He was a bit wild and frequently in trouble at school. Not a bad person, he just didn't like school and he wasn't shy about saying so; more of a cut up than a real trouble maker.

He was four years younger than me, and always hanging around. Kind of like having a second little brother to bug you. He and my brother became best friends.


I moved away to go to college while they were in junior high school, and only saw him a few times after that. But I heard about him from time to time from my brother .

He dropped out of school at 17 when his mama signed the papers for him to join the Marines. He grew up there. He was proud of his service and proud of his uniform. I don't know why he chose to end his own life.

I go see him a couple times a year. We all miss him.

Where you been so long?

I been a-havin'some hard travelin',
I thought you knowed.
I been a-havin'some hard travelin',
Way down the road.
            Woody Guthrie.

I started this blog as an assignment for a class I was taking for my course in Photo Studio Management at Randolph Community College. That class is over but the blog remains. In the meantime I've had some bumps along the way.

I was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer just about the time I started this blog back in August 2010. I've been undergoing treatment - radical surgery & radiation treatments - while trying to keep up with my school work, including an internship during spring semester. I'm back in school now for my final semester.

But there have been some good things too.

Tian Tan Buddha, Po Lin Monastery, Hong Kong, China

At the end fall semester, between cancer treatments, I had a once in a lifetime opportunity to make a trip to China.

I was pretty sick at the time, but I couldn't let the opportunity get past me, so I just sucked it up and went. I'm not real impressed with my photography from that trip. I really wasn't at the top of my game. But ... vini, vidi, vinci!

White Christmas

I've been out of town for a while. That will be the subject of future posts.

But I arrived back here in Asheboro for what was for me personally a significant event.

I'm 61 years old and I've never seen a white Christmas. Until this year.

We don't get a lot of snow here in central North Carolina. Half an inch is enough to panic the area into total gridlock and shut it down for over 12 hours (January 19, 2005).

Pentax *istD, Tokina  ATX-Pro 28-70f/2.8, ISO Aperture & Shutter Speed not recorded.

 


Bad weather makes good photography. This old farmstead is up the road from my Mother's home. I took it in 2005, the day after the storm paralyzed Raleigh with a half inch of snow.

This year we got two inches starting at about 6:30 pm Christmas Day. I saw it when I went out for my annual "Christmas Day Chinese Restaurant" dinner. The news says the last time the area had snow at Christmas was 1947, two years before I was born.

Pentax K20D, Tokina ATX-Pro 28-70f/2.8, ISO 400 1/250sec @ f/8.0

I took this one out the sliding door at my apartment here in Asheboro, NC the next morning, on Boxing Day. It's not much to look at really, just a back yard with a little bit of snow and the church next door, but for me it's a small Christmas miracle.

My Kitchen Timer

One of the problems with being a bachelor is having to eat your own cooking. You can live strictly on soup out of cans, microwave meals and fast food take-out but it gets really old. Especially if you're doing it for years and years. Sooner or later you're going to go in the kitchen and actually cook something.

And eating pre-prepared food is expensive. The economy being what it is and my budget being what it is, I can't afford to dine out every meal. Good home cooking costs less and it's better for you. 

Eventually, you're going to get to a place where you need to cook something for a certain length of time, like boiling pasta for exactly 7:00 minutes to get it perfectly Al Dente. Which is where the kitchen timer comes in. Set it and you don't have to watch the clock like a hawk to ensure you get the right time. You can let your attention wander to other things, like getting the sauce to the right temperature and toasting the bread. A good timer is an essential tool for kitchen multi-tasking.

I'm living in an apartment down here at school. I've brought about half my kitchen utensils, pots & pans and dishes down here. The rest of my stuff is still at home. But I've only got one kitchen timer ... or so I thought.

Pentax K-20D, SMC PENTAX-DA 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 AL II, ISO400, f/5.6 @ 1/8 sec

I don't do much "darkroom" processing right now, just the occasional roll of B&W film. I use a hybrid system where I scan the negatives and make digital prints.

I can load B&W film onto the reels and place the reels inside the processing tank using a dark bag. Once the top is closed, I can perform the rest of the process right there at the kitchen sink.

So the timer serves dual duty.

The pasta was delicious BTW.

Something to be Thankful for

I'm only about a week late. I had a little bit of a rough patch in my life recently.

But I'm getting through it with a little help from my friends. And I want to say thanks to all of you.

I'm also thankful for these folks:

Pentax K-20D, SMC-DA 18-55f/1:3.5-5.6 ISO 100 1/100@f/8

This is the VA Medical Center in Durham, NC. It's just a snapshot really, no great work of art. I've no pretention that it's an image of any significance in the greater scheme of things. But this is a photography blog, and that's a photograph.

The picture is not important, but the VA Medical Center means a lot to those it serves. I'm lucky enough to be among them. I recently spent almost a week there and they are some of the kindest, most caring people you will ever meet. They take their mission to serve the Veteran most seriously.

Because of their care, I got to have a quiet Thanksgiving at home.

It looks like I may get to stick around for a few more Thanksgivings to come ... and Christmas, family birthdays, anniversaries, school holidays ... all the reasons for family to get together.

And that is something to be thankful for.