Category Archives: Photography

An exercise in shutter speed

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I’ve said it repeatedly on this blog: I’m a novice when it comes to photography. I’m trying to learn, however, and that’s half the fun. There are a few things I’ve learned since the day I marched into Bob’s Photo and threw down for my trusty Canon digital camera:

1- Photography is all about the moment. Capturing a photo of something boring with technical perfection and artistic genius produces a perfectly boring photo.

2- As soon as you have more than one lens in your arsenal, you almost always have the wrong one on the camera at any given moment!

3- The only way to get a nice portfolio of decent pictures is to sink a pantload of time into chasing them.

There are others, but those simple truths should be sufficient for now. But let’s talk about another lesson: shutter speed. I decided to try for some different effects on this windmill, located in a field east of Bismarck:

It’s a nice windmill, sure; most of the time the wind has it pointed so there’s nothing but an ugly industrial park in the background. A few days ago I was lucky. I spotted it turned the right way, there was a blue sky, and the blades were moving too! That is when I decided to play with shutter speed.

By slowing things down a little bit, I’m able to start getting some blur in the blades. This conveys motion to the viewer. But by doing so I make my camera more sensitive to light, and have to crank the aperture (f-stop) down a little. This is at 1/160th of a second, aperture at f/5.6.

For a little more blur, I slowed things down to 1/30th of a second. The effect is great, and I had to adjust my aperture to f/11 in order to get that bright blue sky under control.

Here’s where things get interesting. I slowed way down to 1/8th of a second and got some really cool blur. Obviously I’m using a tripod, since it’s hard to keep steady for 1/8th of a second…even with an image stabilized lens. By now I’m cranking the aperture down to f/22.

By watching the meter in my viewfinder and adjusting accordingly, I was able to keep these photos consistent for exposure and color, only affecting the way the motion of the blades was captured.

One pitfall of a narrow aperture (high f-stop number) with a digital SLR camera is that it begins to reveal the inevitable dust on the camera’s sensor. I had to do a fair bit of spot removal to the last two photos as a result. Dust casts shadows on the sensor, but when the aperture is open wider, light gets around the dust. When the aperture starts to limit the light, the shadows get bigger and are seen by the sensor. That’s where Photoshop and a cleaning kit come in handy!

I hope you enjoyed this exercise. If you have any sort of camera that allows you manual control, and have a decent tripod, I encourage you to play around with this sort of thing. Learning photography is fun, and Bismarck-Mandan is full of interesting subject matter with which to expand your skills!

Apparently orange is the new black

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It’s not a conscious effort to keep posting photos of orange skies, really. It’s become a theme lately, simply because that’s what our skies have been doing. While folks in Dickinson, Williston, or Cavalier would probably argue that the two colors are inseparable, I jokingly describe orange as “the new black.” I don’t know if you have to be an artist to get that…maybe just watching Zoolander will get you there.

Mandan Art Show concludes. Thanks for the ribbons

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Today marked the close of the 49th Annual Mandan Art Show, and it was a pretty big success from what I could tell. For instance, there were a ton of participants and student participants. One of the students (I’m so sorry I’ve forgotten her name) had several pieces scattered about that were simply awesome. There are a lot of talented young people in our community!

I saw some work that looked familiar from the ACC art show a short while ago, and lots of other work that I’d never seen before. I am new to photography, and even newer to the whole “art” thing. Being so technically minded and creatively inhibited, I never really considered myself an artist except for the black marks I leave in 150mph corners. With that in mind, this new experience of matting, framing, and entering my photography in art shows is pretty keen. I’m learning a lot!

While I had hoped to sell a piece or two to help offset the enormous costs of a photography hobby (or buy diapers…depends on who you ask), I didn’t sell any at this show. I’ve only been in three shows so far, starting with the BAGA show last December, and was fortunate enough to have sold a major piece at two of the three. But I did have plenty of consolation, even if I have to take diaper money out of the motorcycle fund.

Thanks to everyone who voted, because a big version of the sunset bridge that graces the top of this blog won overall for photography entries as judged by the art show patrons. I was hoping for good results, but this was overwhelming! In addition, one of my Northern Lights photos won a merit ribbon and I received an individual award for my Thresher’s Row photo. It felt pretty sweet to have someone indicate that they like something I created, because I still see myself as a total n00b when it comes to this photography thing. Maybe I’m getting the hang of it finally, after over 20,000 photographs in two years. Then again, most of the photos I had entered were among the first I ever took. Uh oh…

I look forward to the 50th Annual Mandan Art Association show next year. A friend of mine, also a recent enthusiast in the field of digital photography, has started scoping out other art shows across North Dakota. This is going to be a lot of fun…with even more potential for diaper money.

Spooky Saturday

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I don’t think this one’s as nice as my Spooky Sunday photo, but it was neat to be able to try again. This effect was actually pretty easy, taken on a nice sunny afternoon walk with my wife and son.

To get this kind of effect, simply crank down the aperture on your lens (I used F/18 here) and then adjust your shutter speed to get it suitably dark (I used 1/1000th sec). It’s that easy!

Both of my Spooky photos were taken on very pleasant days, yet they have a dark, forboding look to them. Learning to do things like this by using my camera’s controls is really fun! Give it a try.

A wide perspective

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I haven’t had much opportunity to go out chasin’ pictures lately. A lot of work and side projects have limited that, along with doing things like taking baby PJ for walks around the mall in the stroller and introducing him to motorcycle racing on TV (he loves it). But I did finally get to take out my new super wide angle lens the other day and capture this sunset. This lens is going to be amazing for landscapes, skyscapes, and astrophotography. Now let’s get some Northern Lights going!

A friend of mine is shooting with this very same lens in Utah right now as he mountain bikes various parks and stuff on his way to Death Valley, California, and said that it’s amazing to be able to take such wide angles of striking scenery. Well, North Dakota has striking scenery of its own, which I plan to post here as soon as things green up.

For a sense of perspective of exactly how wide this lens is, that little protuberance on the horizon is the capitol. Given a high enough vantage point, I can get the majority of Bismarck in the frame. Obviously this is going to be exciting once I get out into some wide open territory. Stay tuned!

Something old with something new

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I found these rusty relics resting beneath a tree west of Mandan this weekend. As are many of the subjects of my photos, it was mere happenstance that I saw them out of the corner of my eye, as they’re quite a long ways from the road. Thankfully I just got added a couple of toys to the kit:

First off is a replacement for my previous telephoto lens, a new version with a lot more clarity, faster autofocus, and improved image stabilization. When I first tried this version out at Bob’s Photo, I could shoot the back wall from the pickup counter (handheld, no tripod) at 1/15th of a second and read the tags on the backpacks in the far corner. I’m pumped!

The shorter one is a perfect fit for much of my “work.” It’s a 10-22mm super wide angle lens, which will be great for landscapes, panoramas, and skyscapes. I really look forward to sunsrises, sunsets, and most of all… Northern Lights photography with this lens!

I had a little bit of money saved for a lens last year and decided to invest it in the bankrupt Delta Airlines. Playing around with stock in bankrupt companies is risky, but I managed to play my money up quite a bit as rumors of Delta’s merging with USAir circulated. I managed to sell right before the stock took a nosedive (no pun intended) and turned my money into two really fantastic lenses!

I’ve been really busy being a husband, dad, homeowner, landlord, and video monkey lately, but hopefully soon I will be able to find more killer sights around Bismarck and Mandan to share with y’all.

Right down the line

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I don’t think Gerry Rafferty had power lines in mind, but he’s the victim of another music reference on this blog. One of the most frustrating things about taking pictures of North Dakota landscapes is all the darn power lines! It seems that no matter where I go, they’re always present. We have a lot of power plants in this state, presumably because of the supply of coal, so the ubiquitous power transmission lines are part of the package. Tonight on my way home from work I decided to turn a nuisance into an asset.

I’m trying to catch on to this photography thing, a hobby to which I’m relatively new. I’m also hoping it’ll help me in other creative work as well, since some days I think I possess the design skills of a carrot. Having a camera on hand at all times helps a person look for relationships, geometry, and perspective. In this case, I was driving along and noticed the line of towers heading southeast from 93rd Street. I figured it was worth a quick exercise in photography, so I positioned the truck just right, stood atop the cab, and this is the result. I like the line formed by the towers as they march off into the horizon. I had snow on my shoes and almost slipped off the truck, but thankfully I made the save. I try to save bouncing my head off the asphalt for racing season, when I wear a helmet!

Power lines like this are pretty wild; when I was part of the electricians’ union I got to see a big chunk of power line. They had it on display in a meeting room, with different layers peeled back. This is pretty heavy duty stuff! These big “wires” are capable of carrying a lot of electricity, and if I had to pull a guess out thin air I’d say these are probably 230kv lines.

Because the electricity generated by power plants has to travel such long distances, they step the voltage up as high as they can to prevent loss. These wires have a certain amount of resistance to them, and they are less efficient with high current than they are at high voltage. If I remember correctly, power loss is proportional to line current, but inversely proportional to the square of the voltage. So the higher the voltage, the less power loss. That means more efficiency, more generating capacity, and more money too. But they can only bump the voltage up so far before it starts to cause loss too; make the voltage too high and it’ll start to arc. It’s kind of a corona effect, and probably pretty dangerous too.

One of my favorite spots to watch Northern Lights is near one of the bigger towers north of town. On a calm night I can hear crackling overhead…talk about spooky! I also heard the same crackling while taking photos for the feds right outside a power plant. That’s not a reassuring sound, believe me. There were no visible signs of arcing in either case, but anytime you can hear electricity it’s best to move down the road a ways.

Well, I’ve satisfied two things here: I’ve geeked out and taken a photo I’m happy with. Time to go play with PJ…he’s babbling now, and he LOVES his daddy! I can get him to smile so wide just by playing with him and talking to him. On the drive home from this power line photo my mind wandered to taking him on daddy-son field trips, showing him how things work, getting him his first library card…I guess he’ll be a geek like his dad. We’ll sure have a good time though!

Comet McNOT

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All the space weather and astronomy websites have been posting remarkable pictures of Comet McNaught, a near-earth object that put on a fabulous display as it passed through our solar system. The sun started to melt the comet more and more as it approached, and it is now even visible in daylight…if you live in the southern hemisphere.

I tried to capture this comet with my camera…repeatedly. People from as far north as Great Falls, and perhaps even further north, were posting their pictures of it…so what was my problem? Clouds.

I would dutifully get up early to go find a nice high point from which to stalk this celestial event, pull out my little locator map that I’d found on the web somewhere, and wait for the comet to come over the eastern horizon. Many mornings I never even got out the door; a look outside would indicate far too many clouds for the trip to be worthwhile. On some particularly frustrating mornings, the sky would be perfectly clear…except for a thick band along the horizon! It seemed I could NOT catch a break. Soon I began to read on the websites that Comet McNaught would no longer be visible from the northern hemisphere. So I guess I missed it…or did I?

This was a sunrise photo I posted on the morning of January 12th. I’d run over to the church to sweep the snow from front steps and had my camera pack with me (of course). The sun was doing some cool things, so I found some high ground on my way home and grabbed some nice wide sunrise shots for later. As it turns out, there might be a comet in there somewhere!

Obviously I didn’t use my telephoto lens or adjust my aperture to try to find the comet, but I think that I did get it. Had I tried to find it and set the camera accordingly, who knows? Maybe I’d have been able to get a shot of the tail. Maybe I would have had to show up a little earlier, before the sun began to blaze in the eastern sky. In any case, that’s apparently as close to Comet McNaught as I’m ever going to be.

Separate ways

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Another music reference title for y’all. My wife is originally from Texas, and she’s had an old friend staying with us for the past week…so I find myself saying “y’all” a lot. Anyway, I digress as usual. This is a photo of the wind having two distinctly different effects at the same time. The steam on the left is heading east from the Tesoro refinery, while the steam from the Heskett Station power plant is drifting in the opposite direction.

I did some extensive poking around inside almost every single powerplant in North Dakota during the summer of 2006, including standing atop one of the 23-story boilers at the Coal Creek Station. You could fit the state capitol, the tallest building in North Dakota, inside that boiler. Crazy, huh? One thing I saw that hadn’t occurred to me before was the volume of steam generated by these plants, something that many people assume is smoke. After all, that’s what a power plant does: generate steam. The steam powers the big generators, sure, but everything upstream of the generators exists solely to produce steam.

While I still think that ethanol is a waste and the numbers show it to be a thermodynamic loser, I have to give credit to the guys who came up with the idea of using steam generated by the Coal Creek Station to power an ethanol plant. At least they’re not adding to the amount of energy it takes to produce ethanol, only to get a product with 70-80% of the energy output of an equivalent amount of gasoline. And one thing that nobody’s making a big deal out of is that E85 can actually be sold as E65 in this state without running afoul of state regulations!

None of these thoughts really crossed my mind when I snapped this photo, they just popped into my head as I started typing. After a long day in the garage, I guess it was just time for a big ol’ word dump accompanied by a reasonably neat picture.

Sunrise…on my tummy…

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…makes me happy…oh, sorry. Didn’t mean to kick into John Denver mode there. Yes, it must be a disorder: I was lying in a field at sunrise this morning, listening to my iPod and waiting to see what the sun would do. So much for sleeping in! Before getting down on the ground to get this angle, I was on my feet for a while. So I guess you could say I was outstanding in the field. Okay, I’ll quit the puns. Here’s the pix:

I was hoping that we’d get more of the red/purple thing that the sun has been doing the past few days, but that wasn’t the case. I believe it’s because of the clouds on the far horizon, which don’t give the sun a chance to refract or something to that effect. Not only did that strip the sunrise of its colors, but it also prolonged the time I had to shiver until the sun poked its head above the clouds. The wait was worth it, as I got quite a few neat shots. This is one of them.

There were some ups and downs to this little adventure. It seems that I can’t leave the house without something blogworthy happening, and today was no different. While I got lots of nice sunrise and pre-sunrise pictures, I also had some other trials. First, the cap for the lens I was using fell out of my pocket out in the middle of this field, and I noticed it once I’d hiked back to the truck. Being of the stubborn sort, I hoofed it back out there and actually found it within five minutes! To help, I brought the camera and lined up the picture the same way, then followed my tracks back toward the truck. Whew! Canon charges an arm and a leg for those things. Oh, one more thing:

This is what the last few photos looked like. Yuck. As it turns out, the beautiful little prime lens I was using to shoot this somehow sucked a bunch of dust into itself. I got home, looked at the pictures, and was immediately horrified. Inspection of the lens showed that yes, there was some nasty gunk on the lens…but not on the outside! Somehow it had gotten inside. That’s a mystery to me.

A lot of those other dots are caused by a dirty sensor on the camera. This is a problem unique to digital cameras, since film uses a new surface for each exposure. When you own a digital camera where you change lenses a lot, there comes a time to clean it. Sensors attract dust, and dust shows up when you point the camera at bright stuff with narrow apertures (I think this was f/22). Drat.

I just ordered a couple of different sensor cleaning kits, so it’s time to try them out. It’s never fun to stick foreign objects into a $1500 camera, but I honestly don’t trust anyone else to do it for me. I’ve always been the same way with my motorcycles, mountain bikes, and other stuff. There are too many horror stories flying around out there. So I’ll be sticking a solvent swab into my computer very soon. Hopefully I’ll do it right, or it’ll be hard to come up with more photography for the ol’ Blog!