A travelers wishes
What a bad blogger and host I have been. How could I not have posted anything during the entire month of October? It’s not like there isn’t anything going on in October what with Halloween, harvest parties, the changing colors of Fall. I gotta do better than this. So for my first post in November I give you “Boots and Reflections”.
It’s been awhile since I lasted posted to this blog. Lots of things going on that have been taking up much of my time. Here are a few things that I have been working on.
I’ve been experimenting with off-camera lighting after purchasing a pair of Cactus V4 wireless flash controllers. This allows me to control both my 580EXII and 430EXII flashes without having to have them on the camera hotshoe. I’ll be writing a review of those shortly.
I’ve also been trying to learn more about Photoshop CS4 and better detailing my workflow and different techniques for really making my photos “pop”! I purchased the book Adobe Photoshop For Photographers by Martin Evening which based on my initial quick review of various sections looks to be the best Photoshop book I have seen so far. I’ll be writing a review of that shortly as well.
Since experimenting with off-camera lighting I realized that I have much to learn about proper exposure and how to best set my camera in different circumstances be it a strong backlight situation or low light. I found a great book called Understanding Exposure (Revised Edition) by Bryan Peterson which I have found to be invaluable in explaining exposure as it relates to aperture, shutterspeed and depth of field. I highly recommend this book to anyone struggling with the relationship between aperature and depth of field and how to shoot in manual mode. I’ll be writing much more on this later.
Finally I attended my sisters wedding in Bend last weekend. The ceremony was held out at Elk Lake in the Oregon Cascades with the backdrop of the evening glow on Elk Lake and Mt. Bachelor in the distance. It was just an incredible time and I have a 2 part post coming up on that.
As time goes on I find myself needing to engage life more and get out there and experience it. It’s a blink of an eye and then we are gone so now is the time to take risks, overcome fear and pursue fully the things we want in life. I’ve got several exciting projects in the works that for the time being will remain under wraps. These are exciting times and I’m looking forward to sharing those with you soon so stay tuned…more to come.
We planted a garden this year. Nothing special, just some tomato plants, cucumbers, eggplants and failed spinach and lettuce. It’s a small garden of 2 raised beds which are partially shaded most of the day (hence the failed lettuce and spinach) but it’s the only space we have to plant. The tomatoes have pretty much taken over the garden at this point and we have a mega load of red and yellow cherry tomatoes. The cucumbers are doing better than last year (we’ve harvested 3 so far with many more developing on the vine) and I can’t see the eggplants right now as the tomatoes have overgrown their baskets and engulfed them. We didn’t plant any sunflowers this year but apparently we didn’t need to as what we planted last year laid seed and we ended up with two sunflowers in the middle of the garden. Here are a few shots I took the other night. More can be seen on my Flickr site.
One of the best things about summer is the wealth of fresh and local fruit and vegetables that are available. Today we took a trip out to the farm and got sweet fresh summer peaches straight from the tree. It’s hard to beat fresh fruit that is grown organically and locally. I’ve always felt it is important to support local farmers. If you can get it fresh and local why would anyone want to buy from a far away source. Find a local farmers market near you at Local Harvest (http://www.localharvest.org/)
Took the camera out to experiment shooting fireworks. I’ve never shot fireworks before so I was curious how it would all turn out. Below are a few of the better shots. I used a 5D Mark II on a tripod with remote cable release. I shot these at ISO 100, bulb mode, manual focus, f/16. When I heard the canon go off I would activate the shutter, wait until I saw a good burst of firework and then close the shutter. It took a bit of practice to get the timing down just right. Leave the shutter open too long and you end up with too much streaking and not enough definition, close the shutter too soon and you don’t get the full explosion. The tripod and cable release are a must for these kinds of shots. If you have any questions I would be happy to answer them. Thanks for looking.
More on Flickr
Went to the Woodburn Tulip festival this weekend. The tulips were in full bloom with lots of reds and yellows and purples mixed together. Just an incredible sight. The festival goes until May 3rd this year: Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm. Here are a few shots taken from my trip there. More photos can be found on my Flickr site.
So along with my Phottix wireless remote (see previous post) I also purchased a Phottix TR-80 remote switch with digital timer. I purchased this with the sole purpose of using it to create time lapse movies from digital still images (see post on Timelapse) using the interval timer and long exposure settings. This remote has a similar function to the Canon TC-80N3 but at a fraction of the price. There are 4 different modes: Self-Timer, Interval Timer, Long Exposure and Exposure Count Setting. With the self-timer you can set the time delay before the picture is taken which works just like the self-timer on your camera. The difference is that you can adjust the time delay to anything between 1 second and 100 hours. With the interval timer you can program the camera to what intervals it will take a photo. So for example if you wanted to take a photo once every 2 minutes you would set the interval timer to 2 minutes using the handy job wheel on the side. With the long exposure mode you can take an exposure up to 100 hours. With the exposure count mode you can select the number of exposures that will be taken up to a total of 99. And the real cool thing is that you can combine different modes. So say for example you wanted to take a 4 second exposure every 14 seconds you would set the long exposure to 4 seconds and the interval timer to 14 seconds. One thing to mention is that there is no power button so the remote is always on. However, the expected life of the battery is 3 years so it probably isn’t an issue. I’m planning my first shoot here in town soon and will post the results and my experience from start to finish here in this blog.
Just got my Phottix wireless camera remote for my Canon 20D today. This is a radio controlled shutter remote with 16 channels, a hot shoe mount and a range of up to 100 meters. I purchased from Hong Kong Supplies on Ebay (see user etefore). I was a little apprehensive about ordering from Hong Kong but this eBay user has a feedback score of 77434 with 99.6% positive feedback. The ordering process was seamless, the communication was prompt and the items arrived in the mail much sooner than I had expected. Personally I can’t say enough good things about their service. Not only that but the model I received is apparently a newer model than what I had seen in the auction. This second generation model has a few more bells and whistles. There are a few different modes: single shooting mode allows you to half-press the shutter button on the transmitter for focusing and a full press takes the photo. There are lights on both the receiver and transmitter to indicate what the status is. So when you half press to focus the lights will turn green and when you take the shot the lights will turn red. There is a 2 second delay switch which works the same as single shooting mode except that there will be a 2 second delay in actually taking the shot. There is a continuous shooting mode as well as a bulb mode (for long exposures) but I have not played around with those yet. Overall I am really impressed with the quality of the product. It even came with the batteries (how often do you find that these days). I bought this to replace the cabled remote switch that I have been using. Now I can take long exposure landscapes without worrying that I will pull the cable or shake the camera at all. I like that the receiver will mount right on the hot shoe. The only bad thing about that is if you want to use the built-in flash you will have to put the receiver elsewhere but I use the flash so infrequently that it is not an issue for me. Also, I should mention that the receiver itself will work as a wired remote as it too has a shutter button on it. It is compatible with the following Canon cameras: Canon EOS 1V/3/1D/1Ds/1DS Mark II/1Ds Mark III/1D Mark II/1Ds Mark III/10D/20D/30D/40D/5D/D30/D50 (there are also models for Nikon). If you are in the market for a wireless remote shutter for your camera I’d be happy to answer any questions regarding my experience.
I shot this sunset at Waldo Lake during a family camping trip. Waldo Lake is a large natural lake, approximately 31 miles east of Oakridge and 70 miles from the Eugene, Springfield area. Waldo is located at an elevation of 5,414 feet in the Oregon Cascades. This was a 30 second exposure shot with a Canon 20D. Later that night there were some big thunderstorms that rolled through the area. We heard what sounded like a freight train off in the distance that seemed to grow closer with each passing minute. The sound turned out to be heavy wind that soon hit the trees surrounding us. We laid in our tents in the dark with the sound of heavy rain, the occasional flash of lightning and the trees swaying back and forth, creaking like an old wood floor. We huddled in our refuge hoping the top of a tree or a large limb wouldn’t break off and crush us in our sleeping bags. Eventually the storm gave way to a gentle rain and the sound of water droplets on the nylon skin of our tent put us to sleep.
Recently I’ve really been missing Bandung. Last time I was there was 2005 so it’s been far too long. I miss the sights, the sounds and the smells. But what I really miss is the food. One of my favorite snacks is martabak, a sweet pancake like food with different toppings. My favorite is the martabak special with keju (cheese), pisang (banana), corn and drizzled with sweet condensed milk. This photo is of the place in Bandung my family and I always went when we got the craving for martabak (which was quite often). I’m not really sure of the location so if you live in Bandung and this place looks familiar drop me a line and let me know where it is so I can add update this post.
**UPDATE** Terima kasih to Eric Setiawan for letting me know that this martabak location is on Jalan Jenderal Sudirman in Pasar Andir area, near Gang Luna.
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