Archive for the 'Photography' Category

Another summer ends, apparently. The leaves are changing colors (yes, we really do have a fall in California). We have had our first rain. The nights and mornings are cool and moist, wet even.

And the last sunflower has bloomed and faded.

This sunflower was still in all of its glory just a week ago (this picture is from a few days before that).

Now? Petals nearly all gone and the head is losing the pollen bearing fuzz to reveal the seeds underneath.

This particular sunflower is growing in a sunny patch at the front of our house right by the curb. The original seed was planted about 3 years ago by our neighbor’s five year old son, now Roger’s best friend, Paul.

The seeds didn’t sprout until late july and the plant didn’t bloom until September. And just about the same time the flower faded, fall started.

When the seeds matured, Paul and Roger spread seeds in the same little flower bed and — sure enough — a half dozen sunflower plants popped up the following summer.

And again this year.

And hopefully next.

Because this grand plant, so far, has been a better predictor of exactly when the weather is going to change than any weather forecast or almanac.

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Gruber pointed out this absolutely gorgeous set of photos of the recent Singapore Grand Prix Formula One race.

As it was the first F-1 race held at night, the lighting was both intense and unique. Combined with the gorgeous skyline of Singapore, the event made for some spectacular photo opportunities.

Of all the photos, the two that caught my eye were the ones taken with Tilt-Shift lenses.

In this photo, the focal cut is fairly straight across the image However, this photo has the “focal cut” off center and running slightly diagonal from top to bottom, for a rather amazing overall image.

Roger was in the front yard with some friends and he yelled “Hey, Dad! A hawk just landed on the tree right over my head!”

Sure enough. A hawk was hanging out on the branch over his head. It stuck around long enough for me to grab my camera and [borrowed] Canon 28-300mm lens.

This is a young Cooper’s Hawk. Thanks to ChuqUI for the identification. Chuq, an avid bird watcher and talented photographer, has a much better picture of a Cooper’s Hawk in his collection.

Cooper’s Hawks are one of more common predatory birds in the United States, distributed across the whole country and quite common in many areas.

The hawks primarily prey upon various smaller birds and rodents. Oddly, a Cooper’s Hawk is just as inclined to chase down its prey through brush on foot as it is to attack from the air.

Though, that is primarily in the wild. With the proliferation of backyard bird feeders, these hawks will often sit in trees overlooking backyard feeders and will swoop in for a tasty meal when the opportunity presents.

In the first house bay area house we lived in, we were enjoying a meal in our backyard while a couple of mourning doves overlooked from the power lines behind the backyard. Suddenly, something swooped up and behind the doves and one dove exploded in a shower of feathers, then was gone.

Most likely, a Cooper’s Hawk grabbed it off the line.

Meet Cody.

The second Cody dog that my parents have had.

Cody is a yellow lab mix of something. She is also completely strange.

Of course, most of my family’s dogs are totally strange. We are such dog people, though, and we encourage our dogs to explore their dogginess, within appropriate boundaries, and this leads to dogs with uniquely strong personalities.

Cody, though, is one of the most interesting dog souls I have had the pleasure of spending time with.

My Mom picked her up at the humane society a few weeks ago. Our family always goes for strays or rescue dogs. Not only are these dogs in need of homes, but even the most basic of high school biology teaches you that what the AKC calls “pure bred” is a dog much more likely to have health problems than a mix-breed.

And, of course, a bit of genetic dice roll yields some interesting traits.

Cody loves fruits and vegetables. In this picture, Cody is nosing her way through the blackberry patch.

She sniffs out only the ripest of blackberries and gently picks and eats them with a certain bit of calm air that is rare to find in a 2.5 year old dog.

Cody has her side of the row of blackberry bushes and my mom picks from the other.

It is amusing to watch as my mom and Cody head down the blackberry row, one on each side, picking berries.

Cody also enjoys peaches, blueberries, and other fruits and vegetables.

As calm as Cody appears in these two pictures, she is also quite the action packed dog…

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Roger recently turned 8 years old and, of course, I pulled out the camera to document the event and share it with the family.

This is a shot of Roger getting ready to blow out the candles on the awesome Super Mario birthday cake that his mom made.

But note the weird candle-ghosts hovering just in front of Roger’s face. This was one of about 8 shots in the sequence, and the only one where the candle-ghosts weren’t overwhelming.

It is almost a neat effect here, but not at all desirable.

The shot was taken with the 50mm f/1.4 lens, at f/1.8. This is a completely fantastic lens that I have raved about before.

I was chatting with Duncan– who has about umpteen bazillion times more photo skilz & knowledge than me– and showed him the picture.

His conclusion: classic flare. Bad flare. He shoulda seen the others!

In chatting some more, Duncan dropped a link to this Canon tech note on me.

As it turns out, digital camera sensors are more reflective than film.

Thus, it is quite possible that the relatively intense candle light was reflecting off the sensor, then bouncing about the lens and back to the sensor, thus generating ghosts.

Likely enough that Canon has specifically optimized lens design around minimizing the impact of such internal reflections unique to digital sensors.

Amongst other digital specific optimizations, Canon has been reshaping some of the elements to reduce internal reflections off of the sensor. The technote goes there in more detail.

Now, that might not actually be what is going on here. But it warrants further investigation and comparison. Instead of candles, some high intensity LEDs should do the trick.

Fraser Speirs — another photographer with a much bigger photog-clue-stick than me — suggested that it might be the filter. And, in fact, I do have a relatively cheap, totally flat, filter on the lens. I’ll definitely add ‘filter vs. no-filter’ to the testing criteria.

For lenses, I’ll probably just order another plastic fantastic (cheap, kick ass lens — it turns a rebel into a [large] pocket point and shoot) and I may have access to the 50mm f/1.2 lens.

This is Roger’s geode collection that he has amassed over the last couple of visits to Missouri.

Well, three geodes and one bit of pasta for scale.

Geodes are an interesting bit of geological product in that they are effectively little pockets — bubbles really — of gas and minerals that form

The geode fragment in the back was likely a part of a much much larger geode. Size of a basketball kind of large. It has an interesting crystalline structure not apparent in the photo.

The softball thing at the left is the most perfectly round geode I have ever seen. It has fossil inclusions in the surface, but is otherwise just perfectly round. Might be interesting to slice it open, but it is just so… perfectly round and magnificent as is.

The last geode is kinda small. Really really small. I had no idea geodes could be that small.

But, as Roger often teaches me, discovering small is often just a matter of paying attention.

It is actually quite a spectacular little bit of crystalline geological product.

The image at the right is a close-up of that really tiny geode.

Quite the surprisingly complex bit of crystalline structure in a very, very small package!

Not surprisingly, this image was shot with the Canon 65mm 1-5x macro lens.

To take this kind of picture with this lens requires a tripod, a stand for the subject and a really good light source.

All of which I happened to have, though some of which was a bit hacked. Click through for details.

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Since the iPhone’s release, there has been much criticism of the built in 2.1MP camera. Certainly, there is room for improvement.

Personally, I don’t really understand most of the criticism. Cell phone cameras suck. If you want a real camera, get a real camera. Even a $150 pocket point and shoot will outperform any cell phone camera by a long shot.

So what happens when a professional artist with an unparalleled intimate knowledge of light gets a hold of an iPhone and decides to take some pictures?

What you see at the left is what happens.

The renowned watercolor artist Paul Jackson has an iPhone and he noticed some interesting characteristics of the iPhone’s camera’s implementation. Namely, it scans when it takes the photo and, thus, you can achieve interesting effects if you move the camera just right. Combined with his mastery of all that is light, he set out to see what he could do with the camera.

Some very cool images resulted. Paul says “I just love the shots I’ve been getting from my iphone camera. You can bet it will affect how I paint things!”

Paul’s paintings are simply stunning. It is hard to believe that an image like this is a watercolor. And Perfect Curves is a great example of Paul’s mastery of painting light.

Truly a great artist!

Paul was recently invited, as one of only three american artists, to exhibit at the First Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary International Watermedia Masters in China during the Olympics.

He is spending some time traveling through China and is documenting his experience on his weblog. It is a fun read and full of interesting observations & insights.

I look forward to seeing how Paul’s future work is influenced by the strong imagery of China!

Meet the juvenile black swallowtail larva (I’m pretty darned sure). This little guy looks like a piece of bird pooh for a reason.

Specifically, it is employing feces camouflage. By resembling a bit of bird poop, the caterpillar makes itself look singularly unappetizing during the vulnerable first part of its life.

And by “little guy”, I do mean little. This worm was exactly 3/16ths of an inch long — just about 5mm long.

No, really, about the size of a grain of rice.

That leaf? It is the end of a parsley leaf.

I was wrong. This is not a swallowtail larva. It is most likely of the Brush-footed butterfly family (Nymphalidae). Swallowtail caterpillars of this size look very similar — similarly bird poop like — but do not have spines.

It is amazing how quickly they grow. Within only a few days, that little pooh-pillar turns into a rather stunning green worm that will grow to up to 2″ in length.

Not so coincidentally, the caterpillar features a new defense mechanism. When harassed, it sticks two bright orange antenna out of its head that stink horribly.

Even without the antenna, the caterpillar’s head is really quite striking.

I tried to get a shot with the antenna sticking up, but discovered that the caterpillar seems to fairly rapidly learn that any particular stimulus is not threatening and will stop wasting energy defending against harmless “attacks”.

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Anyone who has had a poke at my photography knows that I totally dig macro photography. I love taking photos of flowers and critters where the extremely small fills the frame.

The second lens I added to my tiny photo tool chest was the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens. I can’t say enough good things about this lens. Actually, I really need to write up a review of the lens because it is just a stunning piece of glass and is worthy well beyond just being a Macro lens.

However, there is a much more extreme, single purpose, Canon macro lens and I was just lent a copy today (by David Hill — of Medialets, of interest to iPhone app develoeprs — one incredibly generous soul!).

The Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5X Macro Lens. It is, flat out, ridiculous. Just very very different from normal lenses. The wikipedia article contains a decent explanation.

The picture at left is taken at a minimum magnification of 1x. It is of the power button on my MacBook Pro.

Since the lens is fixed focus, that is the maximum sized bit of reality that can be captured with the lens (the image is cropped just slightly — about 90% of the original size).

So what does 5x look like? Click through to find out….

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I have been very very busy working on lots of things that I can’t talk about.

Roger is but days away from his 8th birthday. In this photo, he is illuminated by the same LEDs I used to illuminate my self-portrait with a bit of emphasis on the less extreme range of lighting.

I like the result. Captured Roger nicely in one of his rare quiet moments.

I also grabbed an extreme close-up of the LEDs reflected in his eye. You can see the shape of the source of illumination.