Fiber Fool

The camping trip was mostly a photographic bust for both Amber and I. The sunset wasn’t terribly special and choosing the proper metering for something like that is something I need more practice with! Sunrise was 100% clear so we rolled over and went back to sleep, LOL! But, it was worth the cabin price for the hotdogs and marshmallows (Energy Nuggets of Phat Photographers) roasted over our campfire :-)

I did capture some interesting things with nice warm pre-sunset light…

Including the requisite one of Amber taking a photo of me taking a photo of her, LOL!

Then my favorite of the evening I think, which totally toned my abs in order to be able to capture it!

I do not think I mentioned over here, but I am in Minnesota for a visit at my parents’ farm. It had been over a year since I had last been home. On Memorial Day my sister and I got up and out the door by 4am to go to an area state park and get photos of the sunrise. When we arrived, the park was gated. We decided to make the most of our situation and go get breakfast a great greasy spoon truck stop nearby only to find out they did not open until 6am. So, we turned around and headed back into town to breakfast at Perkins to waste some time before heading out to tour the areas to the northwest of us.

We stopped at Swift Falls County Park, Glacier Lakes State Park, Historic Terrace Mill and ended at Sibley State Park and crashed back at home around 1:30 after stopping at the greasy spoon for lunch and phenomenal pie. The highlights of our photocentric roadtrip are in the mosaic above. You can check them all out, plus a few, on Flickr.

We’re going to camp (and I use that term loosely) at Sibley on Friday night in hopes of catching a colorful sunset and sunrise, so positive vibes of such sent our direction are greatly appreciated :-)

Of course I didn’t take just broad landscape shots when were in Rocky Mountain National Park. That was mostly what I took as I was still trying to get my shutter speed and aperture priority mode legs under me so I didn’t get overly creative. I had set a goal for myself that for the remainder of Amber’s visit after our class I would not use any of the specialty scene modes (macro, portrait, landscape, action etc.) but instead use only shutter or aperture priority and if I was feeling really brave full manual. This was a huge thing for me as I have become the master of scenic mode manipulation. I know which mode to use for certain photographic effects even if the actual shots are not of the “scenes” the modes are made for.

One of the best things to photograph when learning about shutter speed is waterfalls. The photo at the top of the page used a fairly slow shutter speed of 0.1 seconds or 1/10. The photo just above used a very fast shutter speed of 1/1250. Notice how in the top photo the water is blurred? Much more water moves through the framed shot in 1/10 of a second than it does in 1/1250 of a second. In class we learned a handy little guideline — 4 digits will stop most action free of blur, 3 digits may stop some action, 2 digits almost certainly will blur and single digits moving over into actual seconds will. That was a handy “rule” to know when shooting something like waterfalls. It is also a good rule for knowing when to pull out the tripod - especially if you do not have image stabilization in your camera and/or lens.

Above is another pair of shots. The first had a slower shutter speed of 1/10 and the second of 1/500. Notice how the “stopped” image of this pair is not as stopped as the larger one shared before. Well, this one was 3-digit so it was likely some blur would occur and indeed it did. In general, when it comes to water I think I much prefer either well-blurred or well-froze. The in between does not appeal to me as much.

While the broad landscape shots of yesterday’s post and the zoo shots in Monday’s post made me wish for a circular polarizer, taking these waterfall shots at nearly high noon made me wish for a neutral density filter. I couldn’t get any really drastic shots of the water blurred because I couldn’t stop down my aperture enough to get proper exposure and my desired shutter speed. But neutral density filters can stop down the light getting through to your sensor by 2-3 stops and it does not change your white balance or color. The shot above was the longest shutter speed I was able to actually capture in that bright, high altitude light and it was only 1/8. That’s not to say I didn’t try :-) I have several all white frames to prove I didn’t listen to what the numbers in my viewfinder were telling me, LOL!

One of the natural photography destinations while Amber was here was of course RMNP. This was her 5th visit to Colorado and I had never taken her up there and now we were armed with some new photographic knowledge thanks to the class we had taken. Much of the class was review, but for me it was the first time I was “presented” info on ISO, shutter speed and aperture rather than just reading about it in a book. I have to say things finally sunk in much more.

One of the best things of the class was learning about Nikon’s photo editor - Capture NX2. I’ve been an Adobe Lightroom user since before the official release of 1.0. I haven’t yet upgraded to version 2 though. I had been of the impression that Lightroom, Capture and Aperture all did the same things, but I was quite wrong! Capture is not an organization tool, but a photo editing tool for photographers. Lightroom is also a great quick edit for photographs where most of the editing tools are named for traditional dark room techniques. Where Capture far exceeds Lightroom is in its ability to apply edits to specific areas of an image rather than to the image as a whole. An example of this is the ability to warm skin tones on portraits without giving the background too much warmth. It is a powerful set of tools that allows for very streamlined yet refined edits. I’m in love.

There is a plug-in by the same company that makes Capture, Nik Software, that will give both Photoshop and Lightroom these same tools, however, Viveza retails for $250 (I’ve seen as low as $210) and requires Lightroom 2, upping the bill for me to nearly $350. But, for ~ $130 I can get Nikon Capture NX 2 Full Version. It doesn’t integrate nicely with Lightroom, but there are some other advantages of using Capture in addition to Lightroom if you are a Nikon shooter, such as better noise handling for long exposures. Thankfully, part of the class included a 60-day free trial of Capture so have a bit of time to decide how high up my photography wishlist Capture sits :-)

A note to Amber, most of the above photos have been tweaked in Capture since you last saw them. You were correct - Capture RAWKS!

Forget Hungry Hippos, these were sleepy!

The first photographic expedition of my sister’s week in Colorado was to the Denver Zoo. It was after March 1 so admission was full price, yet we found a good share of the exhibits to be closed or uninhabited. That was sort of disappointing. Also trying to get tight shots that did not give away the fact that we were at a zoo was not easy with our lenses. We developed intense telephoto lens envy. I was also envious of Amber’s polarizer which I expected to allow better photos through the glass.

Despite our limitations in camera equipment and willing photographic subjects both of us managed some nice shots that day that made the aching feet and legs at the end of the day worth it.