251 - Looking Up - April 1-7, 2018
Byron-
I was thinking of situations where a camera would look up. I thought it would be interesting to show a point of view that very few humans have seen. That point of view is from the bottom of a drinking glass as water is being poured in. I used a GoPro camera, in a waterproof case, placed at the bottom of a large glass. It is looking up. I put in in still photo, burst mode and turned on the wireless connectivity. I could then control it from my phone. As Erl started pouring I pushed the shutter release and the camera took 10 photos in 1 second. This is the one I selected.
ISO 100, 3mm, f2.8, 1/728th sec.
I was thinking of situations where a camera would look up. I thought it would be interesting to show a point of view that very few humans have seen. That point of view is from the bottom of a drinking glass as water is being poured in. I used a GoPro camera, in a waterproof case, placed at the bottom of a large glass. It is looking up. I put in in still photo, burst mode and turned on the wireless connectivity. I could then control it from my phone. As Erl started pouring I pushed the shutter release and the camera took 10 photos in 1 second. This is the one I selected.
ISO 100, 3mm, f2.8, 1/728th sec.
Darin-
A bug's eye view.
This was as simple as setting the camera on my phone on a 10 second timer and dropping it in the weeds. I wish a 747 would have been flying over at this exact moment, but that was just too much to ask.
A bug's eye view.
This was as simple as setting the camera on my phone on a 10 second timer and dropping it in the weeds. I wish a 747 would have been flying over at this exact moment, but that was just too much to ask.
Kevin-
When Byron announce the Looking Up theme I figured that he is becoming so enchanted with astrophotography that he was aiming to drive to Western, Minnesota where the skies are darker and perhaps photograph the Milky Way. Unfortunately right after the theme was announced mother nature dumped about a foot of snow on Minnesota, and I understand cold, clouds and more snow have continued. So he may have never had the chance. But honestly, if the skies cleared up, I could see him slip-sliding his way to the Barnesville area, tripod, telescope and adapters in hand.
Actually when I teased Byron about the astrophotography thing I was actually thinking along the same lines, but with a focus on the Milky Way galaxy. And unfortunately also dealing with a weather forecast that wasn’t ideal. But suddenly on Wednesday night, after a dinner out, I looked at the weather map again to find that Joshua Tree National Park was supposed to have mostly clear skies overnight. Knowing I needed to take the photo before the moon rose at 11:30 PM I threw everything in the car and scurried up there.
Barely having time to determine the location of things, except for reading that the Milky Way would primarily be in the southern sky, and relatively low on the horizon, I simply took a chance.
What I failed to realize of course is that from the park, the southern sky, low on the horizon, would be dominated by the glow from the communities of the Coachella Valley, (like Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, etc.) So, no, the Milky Way was most decidedly not visible.
Now understand, there were many, many stars in the sky. And all of them, like our own sun, are a part of the Milky Way. But that is different than seeing the relatively edge-on Milky Way disc. Still, it was enough to create a nice photo.
Did you every try to manage camera settings, proper cropping, focus, etc. in a totally black sky? Things in the attached image may look reasonably bright, but that is due to a long exposure, a higher ISO, and a pop from a flash unit. The reality is it was a very black night where I didn’t know if my next step would knock over the tripod, or place my foot onto something like a Cholla. And in my rush I forgot to bring my LED headlamp with me.
The final image was captured with my Nikon D850, mounted to a Manfrotto 440 Carbon One tripod with an Acratech ballhead, 14-24mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens set to 15mm, manual focused via Live View, one Nikon SB-5000 flash unit on a tall light stand to illuminated the nearest Joshua Trees, ISO 800, f/2.8 at 25 seconds.
For my own portfolio I want to return in 10 days and capture this shot again. But I want to arrive there before sunset so there is still enough light in the sky to properly compose the scene, I want to bring three flash units and three light stands so I can illuminate each nearby Joshua Tree separately, I want to up the ISO to 3200 which will allow me to make the trees 100% sharp and then wait until a couple of hours after sunset to press the shutter again.
When Byron announce the Looking Up theme I figured that he is becoming so enchanted with astrophotography that he was aiming to drive to Western, Minnesota where the skies are darker and perhaps photograph the Milky Way. Unfortunately right after the theme was announced mother nature dumped about a foot of snow on Minnesota, and I understand cold, clouds and more snow have continued. So he may have never had the chance. But honestly, if the skies cleared up, I could see him slip-sliding his way to the Barnesville area, tripod, telescope and adapters in hand.
Actually when I teased Byron about the astrophotography thing I was actually thinking along the same lines, but with a focus on the Milky Way galaxy. And unfortunately also dealing with a weather forecast that wasn’t ideal. But suddenly on Wednesday night, after a dinner out, I looked at the weather map again to find that Joshua Tree National Park was supposed to have mostly clear skies overnight. Knowing I needed to take the photo before the moon rose at 11:30 PM I threw everything in the car and scurried up there.
Barely having time to determine the location of things, except for reading that the Milky Way would primarily be in the southern sky, and relatively low on the horizon, I simply took a chance.
What I failed to realize of course is that from the park, the southern sky, low on the horizon, would be dominated by the glow from the communities of the Coachella Valley, (like Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, etc.) So, no, the Milky Way was most decidedly not visible.
Now understand, there were many, many stars in the sky. And all of them, like our own sun, are a part of the Milky Way. But that is different than seeing the relatively edge-on Milky Way disc. Still, it was enough to create a nice photo.
Did you every try to manage camera settings, proper cropping, focus, etc. in a totally black sky? Things in the attached image may look reasonably bright, but that is due to a long exposure, a higher ISO, and a pop from a flash unit. The reality is it was a very black night where I didn’t know if my next step would knock over the tripod, or place my foot onto something like a Cholla. And in my rush I forgot to bring my LED headlamp with me.
The final image was captured with my Nikon D850, mounted to a Manfrotto 440 Carbon One tripod with an Acratech ballhead, 14-24mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens set to 15mm, manual focused via Live View, one Nikon SB-5000 flash unit on a tall light stand to illuminated the nearest Joshua Trees, ISO 800, f/2.8 at 25 seconds.
For my own portfolio I want to return in 10 days and capture this shot again. But I want to arrive there before sunset so there is still enough light in the sky to properly compose the scene, I want to bring three flash units and three light stands so I can illuminate each nearby Joshua Tree separately, I want to up the ISO to 3200 which will allow me to make the trees 100% sharp and then wait until a couple of hours after sunset to press the shutter again.
Paul-
I hadn’t intended to use my cell phone or myself as the subject this week. I had some vague architectural shot in mind. But one night this week, as I was heading for bed and turning lights off in the house (with cell phone in hand), I had…well, not so much an “aha” moment as a “what the hell moment” and positioned the phone around waist level and shot up at my face. I went with the last table lamp lit in the house as my source of illumination.
I expected something grainy, not too sharp, and with not much range of tonality to write home about. I wasn’t disappointed. Still I really liked one of the images because the angle of my gaze matched that of a line where a wall and ceiling met.
There were two or three other shots that might have work, but they had me looking menacing and pensive…“mensive”—by that I mean a combination of menacing and pensive (and not the name of an organization that has supposedly highly intelligent people as members).
Going vertical: Motorola Moto X (Android 1.5); camera set for “widescreen” (10MP); no on-board flash used. I exported the photo I wanted to my computer and imported it into Lightroom where a little cropping, tweaked the exposure and rendering it in B&W. I saved the image as a JPEG and then open it with NIK Silver Efex Pro 2, where I used a preset I like called High Dynamic. I also used Efex Pro to do some tweaking of the “Structure” options which lets one work with Highlights, Midtones, Shadow, and Fine Structure. (I probably could have used Lightroom’s Histogram to get fairly close to the same result, but didn’t feel like jumping out of the program I was in to do so. (Which I did anyway to add the watermark, but who’s gonna know?)
I hadn’t intended to use my cell phone or myself as the subject this week. I had some vague architectural shot in mind. But one night this week, as I was heading for bed and turning lights off in the house (with cell phone in hand), I had…well, not so much an “aha” moment as a “what the hell moment” and positioned the phone around waist level and shot up at my face. I went with the last table lamp lit in the house as my source of illumination.
I expected something grainy, not too sharp, and with not much range of tonality to write home about. I wasn’t disappointed. Still I really liked one of the images because the angle of my gaze matched that of a line where a wall and ceiling met.
There were two or three other shots that might have work, but they had me looking menacing and pensive…“mensive”—by that I mean a combination of menacing and pensive (and not the name of an organization that has supposedly highly intelligent people as members).
Going vertical: Motorola Moto X (Android 1.5); camera set for “widescreen” (10MP); no on-board flash used. I exported the photo I wanted to my computer and imported it into Lightroom where a little cropping, tweaked the exposure and rendering it in B&W. I saved the image as a JPEG and then open it with NIK Silver Efex Pro 2, where I used a preset I like called High Dynamic. I also used Efex Pro to do some tweaking of the “Structure” options which lets one work with Highlights, Midtones, Shadow, and Fine Structure. (I probably could have used Lightroom’s Histogram to get fairly close to the same result, but didn’t feel like jumping out of the program I was in to do so. (Which I did anyway to add the watermark, but who’s gonna know?)
Jerry-
My plan was to hold the camera in my lap, pointing upward in a general fashion and try to capture a seagull flying overhead. I didn't use the viewfinder and was just hoping for an interesting shot. All but one photo missed the gulls completely. My photo kind of merged last weeks bird with this weeks looking up.
My plan was to hold the camera in my lap, pointing upward in a general fashion and try to capture a seagull flying overhead. I didn't use the viewfinder and was just hoping for an interesting shot. All but one photo missed the gulls completely. My photo kind of merged last weeks bird with this weeks looking up.
Don-
This was a fun subject. I was trapped at home this week as we were having
some remodeling done. Lots of stuff when looking up.
I live close to the Farmington airport giving me opportunities to photograph
airplanes. This guy became my favorite and therefore my submission.
Exposure f3.5; 1/2500 seconds shutter; ISO 100.
Focal was a 24 to 70mm set at 70 mm
This was a fun subject. I was trapped at home this week as we were having
some remodeling done. Lots of stuff when looking up.
I live close to the Farmington airport giving me opportunities to photograph
airplanes. This guy became my favorite and therefore my submission.
Exposure f3.5; 1/2500 seconds shutter; ISO 100.
Focal was a 24 to 70mm set at 70 mm
Elroy-
I took this with a Canon Rebel T3i Iso 200 f5.6 1/1000 I used a 55-250mm lens. The colors and the tree branches looked good. This is the Cross at Holy Spirit Church in Tempe.
I took this with a Canon Rebel T3i Iso 200 f5.6 1/1000 I used a 55-250mm lens. The colors and the tree branches looked good. This is the Cross at Holy Spirit Church in Tempe.