Category Archives: About the Photos

Information about the photos that appear in the header.

Shooting the Moon

Posted on by
3

I finally figure out how to do it right.

I’ve been taking photos of the moon for years — since I first developed an interest in photography.

I remember one of my first experiments. I was in my late teens, away at college. My dorm room was on the top (14th) floor of one of the university’s six dorm towers. My room faced east. At moonrise one night, I set up my camera and tripod and took several long exposures of the rising disc. I developed the film — remember that stuff? — and was very disappointed with the results. The moon wasn’t round. It was oval. And there were no features. Why? Because my long exposure was too long and the moon moved during the shot.

Time passed. I stopped dating a photographer, graduated from college, and got on with my life. Photography wasn’t very important to me. Photographing the moon was, in my mind, something I simply couldn’t do.

More time passed. Enter digital cameras. They’ve done more for photo experimentation than any other development (pun intended). I could try all kinds of things and see results immediately (on a tiny screen) or almost immediately (on a 24-in high resolution computer monitor. How does a change in shutter speed, aperture, focal length, or lens filter affect my image? Try it and see! (The trick, of course, is to pay attention and remember what it is you’re trying. Remembering is not one of my strengths.)

So I tried shooting the moon again. I shot some photos of a lunar eclipse this past February. They weren’t bad. In fact, some of the folks who saw them liked them a lot. But I wasn’t satisfied. Not enough detail. Not clear enough.

Quincy Golf Moon Moon with Car LightsLast month I tried again. It was my first full moon in Quincy. I was camped out at the Quincy Golf Course, which has an “RV park” connected to it. (The quotes are because there are only 5 full hookup sites, a bunch of partial hookup sites, and no other RV parklike facilities.) I brought my tripod out to take some photos of various things in night lighting. I got a bunch of good photos — check my Photo Gallery to see a few of them — but my shots of the moon were not among them. I liked these two the best. In the first, I lined up the moon with the Quincy Golf sign. The moon looks like a big golf ball. In the second, I shot the moon when it was still quite low. My camera angle included the road (State Route 281), which is heavily trafficked. The lines are the lights of cars and trucks whizzing by during the relatively long exposure.

The other day, I tried again just after moonrise. I used my 70-300mm lens, dialed in to 300mm with image stabilization on. I put it on a tripod. And then a shot a bunch of photos, examining each one after I shot it. I realized that the moon was too bright. And then my brain kicked in. What makes a photo too bright? Too much light; overexposure. What do you do if a photo is overexposed? Reduce the amount of light coming in. How do you reduce the light coming in? Two ways: close down the lens or increase the shutter speed.

Or, on my camera, just set exposure compensation to underexpose the photo.

So I set the exposure compensation to the minus side of the meter. At first, I set it 1/3 stop. I took a shot. No appreciable difference. A full stop. Better. Two stops. Much better; I could now see some detail on the moon’s face. Three stops, now beyond what the meter can show. Great. With each change, the camera increased the shutter speed. So I was actually killing two birds with one stone: I was decreasing the amount of light that came into the camera to avoid washout of the moon’s surface and increasing the shutter speed to shorten up my exposure, thus preventing blur from the moon’s movement.

Want to see the differences over time? Here are six shots. The first was taken without exposure compensation at 9:03 PM. The others were taken with various amounts of exposure compensation from 9:10 PM through 9:11 PM, about 12 seconds apart.

MoonAperture: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/40 second
Exposure Bias: 0

MoonAperture: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/60 second
Exposure Bias: -1

MoonAperture: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/80 second
Exposure Bias: -1

MoonAperture: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/120 second
Exposure Bias: -2

MoonAperture: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200 second
Exposure Bias: -2.67

MoonAperture: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/250 second
Exposure Bias: -2.67

None of these images have been retouched. All I did was bring them into Photoshop, crop them to a 600 pixel square, and then reduce the resolution to 72 dpi.

But with a tiny bit of sharpening in Photoshop, at a higher resolution, the final photo doesn’t look bad at all:

Full Moon

What do you think? Have you used any special techniques to shoot the moon or other objects at night? Use the Comments link or form at the bottom of this post to share your secrets.

Lake Pateros Fun

Posted on by
Comment

Action photos at the lake.

Jetski at Lake PaterosI spent the July 4 holiday weekend at Lake Pateros in Washington State. Most of the time I wasn’t flying — I spent 3.1 hours on Friday drying cherries — I was holed up at the extremely pleasant (and helicopter-friendly) Lake Pateros Motor Inn. Mike and I lounged a bit on the upper deck patio walkway right outside our room. The lake was wild with boaters and jet skiers and wake boarders. On a whim, I took out my Nikon D80 camera and its 70-300 mm lens. I set the camera to continuous shooting, zoomed all the way, and started snapping photos.

To my surprise, a few of them came out pretty darn good.

Chelan, WA from the AirI continued snapping photos throughout the weekend. On Saturday, Mike and I took a helicopter flight around central Washington and we took turns snapping photos out of the helicopter. (He’s a pilot, too, and we had the dual controls in, so I had a rare opportunity to use both hands and decent equipment for aerial photography with doors off.) Some of those photos were pretty good, too, like Mike’s shot of downtown Chelan.

This all goes back to my theory that if you have decent digital photographic equipment, are in a good place to take photos, have good photographic conditions (i.e., lighting), and enough storage space on your memory card that you don’t have to skimp on the number of photos you take, you have to get some good shots. Mike and I took over 200 shots from the air during a 3-hour flight the other day. I bet we only wind up with about a dozen really good ones.

Anyway, I put the Lake Pateros photos online on a new Web site I’m experimenting with: Flying M Photos. I’m hoping to build up a library of stock and fine art images, as well as event images like this, for sale. With luck, this will fund my photography habit, which is quickly becoming quite expensive.

Were you out on Lake Pateros during the July 4 weekend? Check the site to see if I got an action photo of you! If I did and you want to buy a copy to remember your day at the lake, use the coupon code LAKEP to save 20% on your photo order.

Takin’ Pictures

Posted on by
Comment

I get out and try to photograph the world around me.

I brought my Nikon D80 camera and four of its lenses with me to Washington state. I’ve been out a few times taking photos. I got some nice bird photos on Sunday, but I’ve also taken photos of some less interesting subjects. The other day, on a walk near the golf course late in the day, I got some nice photos of a wheat field and some weeds growing alongside the canal.

I like the wheat field photos. One of the themes I’m always pursuing in my photography is infinity. I like photos of things that seem to go on forever. The fields of wheat, corn, alfalfa, and other crops here are huge and, from the right angles, it’s easy to get a photo of the crop that fills the photo. The photo shown here, shows the deep furrow created by the irrigation circle’s tires as it moves through the field. I have other shots that are just wheat.

Here’s another fill-the-frame image. It’s the bark of a tree alongside the golf course. I love the texture of this. I think it’s a birch tree — most of the bark is white — but the white bark is split, with deep brown-gray cracks. There’s a lot of depth to this. It makes a nice desktop picture. (So does the wheat.)

I took this photo yesterday while on a bike ride. It’s a good example of the kind of farm fields around here. This is an alfalfa field with an irrigation bar on wheels parked on one end. This kind of irritation travels up and down a field — it doesn’t do the circle thing. The alfalfa has been cut and baled. The bales are left out in the field until they can be gathered. While this isn’t an especially good photo, it’s a typical scene in the Quincy area.

Yesterday afternoon, I went back to Quincy Lakes with my camera, 70-300 mm lens, and tripod. Although the lens has image stabilization built in, the tripod really is necessary when you set it to the full 300 mm setting. My goal was to get a photo of a Yellow-headed Blackbird. Not only did I get a photo of the magnificently marked male, but I also got a shot of a female. I got both of these photos from the same place I shot the Redwing Blackbird on Sunday.

I also saw and photographed an American Coot, which is like a duck, and its babies, but none of the shots are good enough to share here. I might go back in a few days and try again. I know where one of the nests are and as the babies begin to mature, I should be able to get better shots of them.

I went out last night to take some photos, too, but I’ll save those for another post.

Flying Things of Quincy Lakes

Posted on by
2

A few photos of the wildlife I spotted during my day trip to Quincy Lakes.

I spent most of Sunday at Quincy Lakes, a weird area of small lakes nestled among the rocks southwest of Quincy. I brought along my camera and my big lenses. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring along my tripod. But I did manage to get three pretty good shots of the critters flying around there.

I’m pretty sure this is a redwing blackbird. I could be wrong. If anyone knows, please share info in the Comments.

I have no clue what this bird is. I don’t have any of my bird books with me and my Internet connection isn’t as reliable as I need it to be to look things up. Know what it is? Use the Comments link or form.

A butterfly.

Saguaro Flowers

Posted on by
Comment

Some more photos from my yard.

Yesterday, one of the buds on the saguaro cactus in my front yard bloomed. Today, there were many more blooms. I took this photo from the covered walkway near my front door using a 200mm lens. The blue color of the sky is not enhanced in Photoshop; it’s a direct result of the polarizing filter on the lens.

 

Saguaro flowers bloom at night and are pollinated by bats. Bees and birds do a bit of pollination during daylight hours. After a day or two in the sun, the flowers wilt. Fruits begin forming shortly thereafter. The fruits are small and hard and, as they ripen, they split open to reveal red pulp. Seeds are tiny — think smaller than poppy seeds on a bagel — and are eaten and passed through by the birds who feast on the fruit.

Keep in mind that this cactus is 15-20 feet tall. The flowers are on top. This is one of the reasons it’s so difficult to get good photos of saguaro flowers — it’s not like you can stand right next to them.

I just ordered a 70-300mm Nikon lens with image stabilization. I think it’ll help me get better shots of things like this. I’m also looking forward to using it on my flight to Washington state this coming weekend.