The theme for the trip here on the island so far. We are here a week earlier than we've ever been, arriving the week before the 4th versus the week of the 4th. With the economy bad off and a month straight of rain, this campground (and all the others that we've seen so far) is very vacant. There are normally 5 campers blocking the view of these picnic tables in the field, there are none to be found today. In fact, the entire field has something like 45 or 50 sites, there are 3 campers in it, one is empty (possibly seasonal on a water/electric site). I snapped this right before we jumped on our bikes and took a short ride. We are trying to make the best of the situation this week.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Jun 28 - Jacob's 'New' Bike
More of an 'artsy' view of Jacob walking his bike up the hill. With our Tahoe out of commission, we were unsure of whether we'd be able to get our son his 'new' bike today. His old bike was too small for him and he did not want to ride on the Tag-A-Long for our annual bike trips on the Carriage Paths. We were going to surprise him and tell him that we forgot to pack his bike and the Tag-A-Long so we'd have to buy a bike. He and his sister figured it out before we left though. This bike and this trips marks a passage of a very long chapter in our family's life. When we hit the trails this week (provided the weather cooperates) it will be the first time as a family that I (or my wife) have had to either carry or tow a child. Basically it has been 14 years since we've hit the trails on our bikes without a child in tow.
Jun 27 - Jumping Wizard
We made it to the campground. What should have been an uneventful four hour ride, turned into a desperate hope to arrive event. Just outside of Bangor (land of Stephen Kind) we picked up a high pitched whine in the front end of our Tahoe. After about 10 miles of it not getting better, I used our OnStar (The service we pay $20 a month for an *almost* never use). They ran a complete vehicle diagnostic (while we were driving) and pulled up nothing. They patched us through to another person who thought it might be a belt. While that kind of set us at ease, I began to realize it wasn't a belt. With about twenty miles to go, the whine lowered in tone and picked up a bad rattle on deceleration (we were towing our camper too). We somehow made it to the campground and left the vehicle parked in front of our site today. Luckily the island has a very nice network of buses to get us just about everywhere we want go. In the theme of nothing working right, I tried to set up my off camera flash and the freakin cheap eBay trigger wouldn't work. This was after trying to get the umbrella mounted to a camp chair. I finally gave up and put the 580EX2 on the camera as the available sunlight (well, cloudy overcast) was fading fast. In the spirit of "June is for Jumping" my son is levitating with his funky Wizard hat that he got earlier in the day before we left at the local Strawberry Festival. We really are roughing it. While the campground has WIFI, we have to hoof it to the main office for the only access point. There is no place to set the laptop and it is raining out. Not sure when this will get posted.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Jun 26 - Not a Turkey
This is not what I intended to post. For the past three or four days, I have noticed this wild turkey in almost the same spot by the road each day on my ride home from work. This evening I pulled around and decided to capture it. The sun was in the wrong spot, I was sweating in my motorcycle gear, and I almost stepped on her babies (they kept running through the tall grass, I couldn't see them but could see the grass moving). Before I left, I snapped a few shots of these daisies "Just in case". It was a good thing, all the shots of the wild turkey basically sucked. I might have to try an early morning expedition when it is cooler. I'd like to get a shot of her and her babies, if possible. Hopefully they will still be around in another week. We go on vacation tomorrow up to "God's Country", our annual trek to Mt Desert Isle, Maine. Let the photo's roll!
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Jun 25 - Deep
On the way home this evening, I pulled into a construction company site to try to capture these curbs. I was on my bike, in full gear in the humidity and even walked up an overgrown hill to get a better shot. I think it might have been worth it. It was so bright out and I actually still had my helmet on, I didn't realize there was as much detail inside the the pile until just now while post-processing. I have to go mow the lawn, it's rained so much lately that we have had very few "lawn mowing days", its supposed to rain again tomorrow too.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Jun 24 - Header
After waiting 3 years to move our rear garage door, I finally got in gear and have someone doing it for me. He got the header in today. The old door sits level with the garage floor which is nice, but it also sits level with the backyard. In rainy weather (like we have witnessed for the past three weeks), water tends to flow quite freely into the garage. In a short period of time this will no longer be a problem.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Jun 23 - No Birds Today
Shot off the same deck from yesterday, different subject. I could probably find a week's worth of PaD images from my deck alone. I'd rather have decent weather though. I didn't notice the spider webs until I was in Lightroom, we've not had bird seed in this feeder for some time, apparently the spiders aren't finding much use for this either. I did dial in a little negative Clarity on top of a stock Lightroom "Selenium" preset.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Jun 22 - Tritone Leaf
Raining again. There was a bit of a lull this evening when I got home. I noticed our bush in the back (right off our deck) looked interesting so I grabbed the gear and took a few shots. This is actually rim lit with my 580EX-2 off camera. I am shooting into my home-made diffuser, giving me some relatively soft light. I had the camera on the monopod and I was holding the flash in my left hand. This is an act of balance and a little luck. I was ready to go with the color version, but I liked the contrasty patterns when I went with a Black & White version. I added some green highlights in Lightroom as well.4
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Jun 21 - Feats of strength
Here I am lifting my wife for my evening exercise! We had a whole bunch of these jumping shots. Lots with the both of us synchronized, but this idea came to me towards the end and here we are. We went upstairs to the bedroom for this and actually locked the door. We showed the kids this shot afterward. This little session has a few benefits because the kids will now think that we are "jumping around" upstairs when the door is closed ;-)
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Jun 20 - Go ahead, Make my Day!
We finished the baseball season today. I am actually in the process of ripping photo CD's for the team. Since I was the coach, I couldn't wield any of my cameras (which kills me each season) so I asked for a "Team Photographer" volunteer. While I burn a CD, my son & I would play with these Nerf Longshots that we got replaced the week after Christmas. They have been in the box ever since. This one was opened up today, there is one more still boxed. We took a bunch of photos indoors and then I moved us outside because of the distracting backgrounds inside. I was using my homemade diffuser for a little fill and it worked well here. It sits so high above the flash that it almost acts as a hair light. The flash is on the camera for this shot, with the diffuser, the light source is actually about 18 - 20" above the lens. I did BW (OK, quad tone) processing first, after I saw this I gave color a try, but with color, the barrel is orange and there is blue and yellow that seriously detract from the "Bad Ass" look that he is sportin!
Friday, June 19, 2009
Jun 19 - OOOOOOOOHHH
My 3GS arrived at work today. The FedEx guy was about a 1/2 hour late, I image a few other people were added to his stop today. I am/was an iPhone Virgin, today this is no longer true. I went with the 32GB model, my reasoning was that the extra 16GB is needed to replace my 60GB iPod. I am in the process of syncing 24 GB of music right now. I have a gunmetal incase plus an anti-glare sheet protecting the face. Without the anti-glare sheet, you'd be able to see the awesome "Sync in Progress" message along with the Battery charging indicator. This was my "Birthday/Father's Day present" from the wife (of course I did the ordering ;-) While the new 3MP camera with the "Point to Focus" interface is pretty cool, shooting with a Canon 40D equipped with an excellent set of glass is still no competition. I'm not sure that the iPhone would even edge out my Panasonic LX3 "Motorcycle cam" either.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Jun 18 - Rolleiflex (f/2.8)
This doesn't do the Rollei any justice, but I was able to capture the name and the big honkin lens (albeit the viewing lens).
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Jun 17 - Me
I started out with returning to the "Through the Looking Glass" concept, I'd even pulled over my previous shots from pBase last night. These take a little while to get right. I'm not sure if this is just right, but it fits the concept. I did a few shots off the tripod downstairs, checked them on the computer, then went upstairs to the bedroom to check on the light. My wife popped in and distracted me so I never returned to this concept . This concept is pretty simple, hold a drinking glass out in front of the lens with the top up so that you pick up the distorted imagery around the subject. I need to head back outside in the sunlight to get some more of these going.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Jun 16 - Light
So I jumped on the bike at lunch and took a little ride in search of something to shoot for today. I went back to my old haunt (NH Tree Park?) from last spring and summer, hoping to find a bird's nest. I found what was left of the Blue Jay's nest from last year, but nothing new. There is an old private cemetery on the property and one of the markers is this very large granite tower. I leaned over a wrought iron metal fence and held out the camera to see what kind of shot I could get. The first shot was interesting, so I continued, trying to get the angle just right. I believe I had 34 shots of this single marker before I'd finished. This is the next to the last shot I took.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Jun 15 - One Small Step
I will call this my "Surprise Entry". I am finally living up to my screen name on a bunch of motorcycle forums "PhotoBiker". I got a set of saddlebags for my birthday that allowed me to put my day to day stuff into, freeing up my "big honking top case" to hold my camera gear. So I was at the boat launch in Eliot (Maine) walking around in my motorcycle gear when I noticed my boot tracks in the soft sand. I was actually heading back to the bike when I decided to try an up close shot of one of them (there is another leading up to the water middle left). In all my gear, it was impossible for me to focus, I did the "point and pray" technique (lots of shots). I'm glad I gave this a try.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Jun 13 - Fox
My dog Fox Mulder. He's made it into a few PaD photos over the years. Today is/was my Birthday, I spent a lot of time riding the motorcycle, coaching, and going out with the family to celebrate my day. We wound up at the Texas Roadhouse where my children decided that payback is a bitch. They made sure the waitress knew it was my birthday and what my age is now. I got to ride the saddle. It wasn't nearly as embarrassing for me as my kids had hoped ;-) So I found myself towards the end of the evening without an acceptable PaD. While my wife & kids were getting the presents ready, they kicked me out & I hung out with the dog. I couldn't believe that I had to bump up the ISO all the way to even capture this.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Jun 12 - Evening reflection
We had some odd weather today, last night it rained out well into the morning. It was a a cold wet ride into work (I didn't ride straight into work, I took a bit of a detour). Just after noon, around 1ish, the skies parted, the sun came out, and it warmed up. We finished off the day with some very beautiful skies. Our practice ran late and I took a different route home to try to make use of the clouds and colors. On my way to some fields, I came across this pond with a reflection of the farm house. I wanted to get the sky above and its reflection in the lake, but the highlights were too blown out. Just way too much dynamic range and I'm not going to tackle an HDR tonight. I salvaged what I could, giving priority to the beautiful sunset tones and trying to recover as much as the farmhouse as possible. The result is a rather noisy farm scene.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Jun 11 - Need replacing
I had to head home to catch a paving expert to give us a quote on replacing our driveway today. Since I had pavement on the mind, I grabbed the camera and set it on the driveway and tried to line it up on a crack. There's no shortage of cracks in our driveway.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Jun 10 - Reo's Barber Shop
Another last minute PaD entry, I've driven by this shop numerous times, I've never actually stopped in (though there was this one time when I tried to stop in but they/he was closed). I shot this with my Tokina UWA so I had to get pretty close.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Jun 09 - Shoe
A last minute PaD entry. I'd wanted to go with a bit of a desaturated color version, but this quad-tone works very well. No real story here.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Jun 07 - (16/52) Finding the time
My wife had guard duty this weekend, the last one of the summer (they have July off because they double up in March). I caught her coming out of the shower, door locked, no chance of her escaping. I did wait for the clothing to go on ;-) I came up with this idea while waiting for her to finish, I was lying on the bed watching something on NatGeo or Discovery and realized our bedspread made a great background.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Jun 06 - Nature Boy
My son started shouting while I was working on my bike. When I checked on him, he was pointing to this dragonfly that landed on the driveway while he was on his scooter. I told him to hold on while I ran inside and grabbed my camera. We were able to get the dragonfly to climb up on his finger and pose, however, it happened pretty fast, this was the best of only two shots I was able to take. Right after I took this shot, the dragonfly took flight and my son tried to track him down with no luck. We really like dragonflies, they are like natural bugspray, their larvae feed on mosquito larvae & the adults eat mosquitoes. Not to mention, they look cool too!
Friday, June 5, 2009
Jun 05 - Following instructions
Sometimes the pictures take themselves. I was heading home from our practice this evening trying to figure out what to shoot for today's PaD. I was a bit rushed as I just found out I had a scheduling error for tomorrow's game, it is supposed to be at 9am not the 1pm that all the parents thought it was. Here I was contemplating missing a day, when literally right in front of me at a stop sign, in a church's parking lot this scene literally jumps out at me. I pulled over and grabbed the gear (my son was in the Tahoe and knows the drill). I had the tripod out on the sidewalk and had quite a few spectators. One person was asking me if it was a "Model A". I told him I had no idea, it was the scene I was after. Parents have been notified and I have a photo I really like. Nice day!
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Jun 04 In the mirror
I am actually shooting my wife's reflection in our bathroom mirror. I can't believe I got her to actually pose a little. We tried a few glam type shots with her bath towel, but the lighting was off. We were pressed for time as the kids share our shower for some odd reason, even though there are two other showers in the house.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Jun 03 - Looking up
I didn't feel all that photographical this evening, while pacing around looking for a shot, I spied our geranium bush (I call it a giant weed) off our deck and grabbed the gear. At one point a huge bee came by and upset my photo shoot as the shutter speed was pretty slow & he was bouncing this flower around. I prefer this angle over all the other shots I took of it.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Jun 02 - Where have I been
I saw this tractor on Sunday I believe when I was out and about riding. This was the shot I wanted to go for last evening. It worked out OK this evening, sun is setting much later, turns out I probably could have caught this yesterday, but you never know. I wanted a wider shot, but the tree line in the background is pretty ugly and sloped, making the photo look crooked. It was a lot hazier out than I'd expected, humidity is pretty high.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Jun 01 - Life in the fast lane
Life is a blur, I rush home from work to rush to a baseball game. Our game ended early and one of the children was waiting for his family to pick him up. My son wanted to play in the playground so we waited and they played. I was a little peeved as I had a chance to rush off to capture a scene I saw this morning in the evening light complete with clouds, but would miss it. I could have made it if we left right after the game too. Anyway, after I came to grips with the fact that I wouldn't be capturing that shot, I pulled out the camera gear and found something to shoot. I tried to talk the boys into staying on the merry go round while I took their [blurred] photo, but they zipped off to something else. This is one of 29 photos and about 50 revolutions on this thing. I still feel sick from this damn contraption. I think I could have used the Tokina UWA for this shot. Of course, the Tokina doesn't have IS (though I think I confused the Canon IS on this shot).
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