I was wrangling a hose in the front yard around 4p and noticed a substantial cohort of bees buzzing around some flowers. I ran inside and grabbed my XT-30 and my XC50-230mm zoom lens to see how much detail I could capture. I’m pretty impressed with the result! Heck of a $200 lens!
It’s gettin’ hot! Luckily the water is pretty cold :-) The clouds and sky are nearly surreal. Such fun color! I’ll miss it when winter comes.
We took a drive down to the Frosty Drew observatory to catch a glimpse of the comet and do some stargazing. Couldn’t get a pic of the comet, but ended up with some keepers anyhow. These were shot with my Canon SL3 which I brought along since I’ve got a better suited lens for that camera. However, the high-ISO noise still drives me a bit batty on that body. Though, truth be told, I do like the ergonomics of the Canon much more than the Fuji (flippy screen, touch screen, menus, etc.)
Unable to sleep, I headed into work just after 4a to grab a few things that I’d need for the day. On my way home, I saw a picturesque sunrise on the water. Got home, grabbed my camera and rode my bike back to the river to snap a few pics.
This was my favorite combination of colors, composition, and reflections.
And here are the runner ups. I wish I had noticed the bird flying towards the boat and switched to a higher shutterspeed, I only captured it by dumb luck. Ah well, better to have gotten it blurry than not gotten it.
At night, Emily and I drove over to a large field to stargaze a bit. With Saturn and Jupiter so close to each other, it made for some nifty shots. If you zoom in on the close-up of Jupiter (it’s the largest dot in the sky) you can make out 3 of its moons! (and a picture of Scorpio for good measure)
Continuing our RI intrastate adventures, we took a short walk around Simmons Mill Pond. The terrain wasn’t as varied and interesting as Blackstone Gorge, but the combination of ponds and clouds were lovely.
The weather is great for some Springtime hikes. Even after 20 years living in Rhode Island, we’ve embarrassingly not really explored much of our own state. With interstate travel limited, intrastate excursions seem like a great idea! On Sunday evening we drove up Route 146 for a short hike along the Blackstone river.
Got to try out some high-speed bursts with 1/1000s shutter to catch Violet leaping off a rock. Truth be told, it took a few takes for me to nail the settings as well as I could. But she was game for multiple leaps :-)
After our hike, we headed back to the house for a backyard fire and marshmallow roast. Violet’s friends tumbled into the yard to join the fun. I took a couple of long-exposure shots which I have named (in my head) Ghost Stories. I dig the blurry, ethereal images of the children in motion around the fire with the crystal clear, static image of the inanimate yard. The fleeting time of youth is quite a blur.
On Sunday before Memorial Day, Emily and Violet and I tromped around the trails near our home. Izzy had left hours before to do more adventurous hiking in CT, but we opted for a 10-minute-drive sort of hike. On the trail, we spied an Osprey, a Heron, a Japanese shore crab, and a curious Robin. Not bad for a Sunday morning!
p.s. I had unwittingly left both of my new fancy camera bodies at the workshop, so I grabbed my Canon T3 & the long zoom for this walk. Other than the vignetting on the zoom, it’s still a pretty fantastic combo.
Here in the Northeast, the COVID-19 lockdown is slowly loosening. Things are far from normal with many restrictions still in-place, but with the weather warming we’re spending more time out in the yard and less time in the house. A welcome change.
We enjoyed our first evening fire of the season:
Emily and I drug Violet along to the workshop one evening to take some product photos of the masks we’re making. Understandably bored, I helped her rig up a chair to a hoist so she could fly up and down for amusement.
Flowers!
On Saturday, day 31 of social-distancing, I challenged Violet to an indoor timed photo exercise. We made a list of 10 ideas to photograph, set Alexa for a 20-minute timer, and headed off to search the house for snaps. Our only rules were:
Stop taking photos in 20 minutes
Stay in the house
iPhone-only (no fancy cameras)
Here’s what we came up with. Violet’s photos are first in each instance:
Funnily, we both did the same thing on different floors of the house! Stand a chair, point down.
Violet eyed the seashell Xmas lights we keep in the kitchen, while I tried to induce some reverse vertigo looking up the stairs.
I love Violet’s take here. Look for the head of a little green pin in the beige carpet. I took a closeup of a pop-up Valentine’s Day card.
In our house, you’re never more than an arm’s reach from a mostly-empty cup or bottle. Violet found twins. I tried shooting through a bottle of olive oil.
Tough to get the iPhone to take a dark shot. Here the phone’s insistence to meter stole Violet’s darkness. It took me a few tries as well to convince my phone that I wanted a poorly lit scene in the basement.
And in reverse, the iPhone toned Violet’s pic of Emily’s sewing lamp way down. I tried to capture some lens flares under Violet’s bunkbed.
Violet found a bunch of angles in Emily’s sewing machine. I dug into Emily’s sewing project storage to find a jumble of curtain rods.
Star charts provided Violet a curvy view. I opted for the curves of a clock face (from Gwen).
I love all the reflections Big V found in her tinsel. I spied a shiny bracket on a ceiling fan.
My Van’s provided some good black/whit contrast for V. I switched to B&W mode on the phone and stole a shot of Emily’s thread spools.
For the first time in many years, we spent Easter with just the four of us (though Izzy spent most of the day in her bedroom really isolating). Rather than our usual celebration with my sister Gwen and her family, we hung out and chatted with folks on the phone, or Skyped with family. Emily picked up a few bits of Easter flair at one of her recent, carefully executed, trips to the grocery store. She found some hollowed eggs filled with confetti. At the end of the night, we went out on the back deck and tried out different ways of cracking them open. Here are our results.
(I shoulda set my shutter speed faster. Fearing I’d miss the shots, I just cranked the camera to aperture priority and left shutter & ISO on AUTO. You get the effect, but the it’d be better with a faster shutter traded for some more grain at higher ISO)
Like most other humans these days, we’re spending our time mostly indoors at home, or out walking with a 6-foot buffer between us and others. Friday was the last day of work in the plant before shuttering the business for a two-week furlough. Thankfully, all my family and all my employees remain healthy. So for us, at this point, it’s mostly an exercise in avoiding cabin fever and figuring out how to handle the financial crunch in the business.
Before Rhode Island started official social-distancing directives (and before the panic managing the business as sales stopped) I snapped more photos with the Fuji XT-30.
Izzy is home from school after the University closed campus. As a family, we’ve always enjoyed board games, and Carcassonne is a fun one. Having both girls at home, they have played a duet once or twice which is a treat!
The light in the early evening is pretty. Here’s some shots from around Providence and the East Bay.
Violet’s birthday plans had to change because of the virus concerns. Rather than crowding her friends into a Lush party at the mall, we spruced up our deck with some hastily hung lights, and invited a few neighborhood friends over to enjoy the backyard with cupcakes and smores. Looking at these photos just a couple weeks later, those kids were too close together…
We’re back to a bit of cold weather, but undeterred I spent some time in Providence this weekend in the brisk nights snapping pics. Lots of photos, very few made it through review (trash, trash, trash, oh that’s ok, trash, trash, trash). The views of the pedestrian bridge are my fav, though the neon sign is fun too.
On Sunday, after a blessedly short run and subsequent shower, I grabbed my Fuji X-T30 and drove to India Point Park around 3p. The light was just starting to get golden when I started walking and snapping pics. I shot >200 images, and held onto 15. Certainly didn’t nail it, but I like all the curved archways under the 195 bridge – makes for some cool patterns and interesting frames. I’ll have to head back to take another swing after I critique these a bit more to figure out what didn’t work.
I almost titled this just Los Angeles, but I think I have a bunch of trips on the calendar to L.A. this year, and hopefully this isn’t the last time I take pictures in sunny California. Last Thursday morning, I woke up early and tried to make it out onto the street before sunrise to catch the light. That didn’t happen, but I still made it outside early in the sunrise for some fun lighting.
As I walked down the street, I saw a fountain in the entry to an outdoor mall. I started taking a few pictures. After a dozen shots, screwing around with the exposure, a security guard approached and tiredly said, “Sir, no professional photography on the property.” “Oh, so sorry. Thanks,” I replied. As I walked away, all I could think was “He thought I was a pro!”. Hahaha. On the sidewalk, a young man approached, “Hey, do you have a business card? I could really use a photographer for my Instagram presence.” Oh, LA, don’t ever change.
“Wait, what? I thought you just got a new camera? You got another new camera?!?”
Yeah. I did. And I’m not ashamed (much). I’ll fill in the details shortly, but suffice to say that the Fuji X-T30 was the camera I really wanted back in January but didn’t feel comfortable with the expense. However, in the past couple months I’ve satisfied my guilt by continuing to explore this new-found hobby and produce a pretty sweet video for work using the gear. So I gave into the urge and bought the X-T30, and so far it’s glorious. Don’t get me wrong, my photos are still rubbish, but I enjoy the camera even more :-)
So here are the first few pics snapped around town. These are all JPEG straight out of camera. I did shoot RAW pairs as well, but didn’t see any need to edit them in Lightroom. The color and detail are just great. Not to spoil the blog post brewing, but having the EVF (electronic viewfinder) and being able to see the exposure before the shot is transformative. Or at least it feels transformative. Still doesn’t improve my composition skill. I wonder what button I push for that…
Oooh, and I love the easy controls for long-exposure shooting on the X-T30. I have a childlike fascination with long-exposure at night. Like it’s magic that the camera can see more than I can when it doesn’t blink for a loooong time. I do love it though…
On Valentine’s Day, Emily and I took a stroll down to the “beach” (waterline by the house) and took some pics. The wind was pretty fierce and the temperature below freezing, so we didn’t hang around too long, but managed to grab a couple of good shots with my Canon SL3.
Snuck in an 30-minute photo walk in Bristol this past Sunday around 4:30pm. The day was overcast, but found a couple of nice shots at the water’s edge.
And, a couple shots from an early morning walk a week ago. I didn’t have my Canon SL3 with me, so I snapped these with my iPhone 11 instead. The colors were spectacular.
Avoiding the task of working on the company budget for 2020, last Saturday I walked around the town and captured some images. The day was overcast, and Warren is threadbare, so it all looks a bit sad. There’s a auto shop of sorts next to our workshop that has a Sanford and Sons vibe.
I really like this shot of the lonely mailbox, not exactly sure why.
A rig truck parked by the grave marker lot has loads of texture.
This utilitarian building never had good looks to spare, but time hasn’t improved the aesthetic.
A couple more worn out bits left to decay.
Around 2am, some fog had descended back home. Before falling asleep, I took a long exposure shot out in the road. The result was pretty good.
Tonight was a great night for stargazing without a hint of moon. Around 10pm, I bundled up and trundled down to the river.
Got a couple of nice shots of Orion and The Pleiades.
Orion
Orion and The Pleiades
And, the Big Dipper…
Big Dipper
And a tree in silhouette with stars overhead.
All the above were shot at f2.8 with 8 to 10-sec exposures for minimal trailing, and ISO 800 or 1600 (higher than 1600 just turns into fuzzy noise). To help pop the stars out, I pulled down the dark tones significantly in Lightroom. Without it, there’s just too much city glow in the sky. Still aiming to get out into the country soon.
While I was down at the river, I swung the lens around at the horizon and took some 30-second exposures at ISO 200. Stopping down to limit the light, or open wide for different looks.
We got a dusting of snow in Rhode Island this weekend, so I figured I’d tromp around with my camera and snap some snowy pics. Yesterday after breakfast I strapped on my new camera and went for a long walk. Took 280 pictures, with the majority snapped in a small wooded area nearby. I was having a tough time finding shots. I took a lot but wasn’t feeling very good about them. The compositions lacked depth, the colors were boring, just generally tough. When I imported them into Lightroom later in the day, I was correct – most were garbage. But a few keepers made it through.
I had the most success with reflections in spots of the creek that haven’t frozen over yet. I like the mixture of textures between ice, suspended leaves, and glassy reflections showing both the surrounding trees and skies overhead.
For the return journey, I headed towards the water. It proved more interesting terrain and the water more intriguing than leafless trees. The fluffy clouds in a bright sky helped too.
As I was trodding down the road, a jogger stopped and asked, “Hey, did you see the osprey? That’d be a great shot!”. I thanked him for the tip and went back to find the bird. It was perched high up in the tree. I had stuffed a new-to-me 55-250mm zoom lens in my pocket before leaving the house which was perfect for reaching way up to the top of the tree. Never having used a big zoom, I was quite impressed with the level of detail captured from a distance. Back home, I reviewed the photos and asked Emily for help identifying the bird. Didn’t quite look like an osprey. Turns out it was a red-tailed hawk.
Oh, and I nearly forget that a few nights earlier I took a second swing at night-sky photography. The light pollution near Providence is challenging, but I captured a bunch of stars that were invisible to the naked eye. Hopefully later this month, or next, Emily and I can head down to South County where the skies are darker. She can help navigate the constellations and bring along her telescope for real-time viewing and I can try taking better shots.
I mentioned earlier in passing that I dumped all these shots into Lightroom. That was only after struggling with the shots in Apple Photos first. I really enjoy the simplicity of Photos, both in the editing features and transparent cloud sync. However, when I imported 280 RAW + JPEG images at once, the app started behaving poorly. After initial import, I switched all the paired photos to use RAW as Original so I could edit with more data. That caused all of the thumbnail images to turn black. When double-clicked, the full-size image would render correctly, but as soon as I returned to the library grid all new images were rendered as black squares. Hmph. Then, after a few edits, the app hung for a bit before quitting unexpectedly. I repeated the attempt a few more times before giving up and pulling all the files back out to edit in Lightroom.
I knew of Lightroom, of course, and had been recommended it by a few folks, but previously avoided learning another piece of software for my modest editing needs. However, a few YouTube videos later, I had enough information to get the job done. So, for now, I’m going to try: shooting only in RAW, edit in Lightroom, export JPEG, import JPEG into Photos. This will hopefully keep the editing quick, and still leverage the seamless cloud sync in Photos. I’m undecided about holding onto the RAW files after editing. None of my stuff feels so precious that I need to start managing giant file sets, but we’ll see how it goes.
