Month: March 2013

Spring is in the Air

I still need to process the pictures for the next round of blog posts so figured I’d take the easy path to the quota this month.  Been pretty exhausted from work lately and it’s going to get EXTREMELY busy in about a week so this extended weekend is all about getting some things out of the way and hopefully some sleep.  Thanks to a mouse this week my slumber was cut short .. but more on that in a future post.  Today is all about celebrating the arrival of Spring.  What’s the best way to do that?  How about some of these:

How’s that for getting rid of the Winter blahs?  These flowers all came from the Indianapolis Zoo/Botanical Gardens trip we took back in 2011.  While processing the statues for the previous two posts I found these sprinkled in.  Linda is usually the flower girl but since she keeps trampling into my bird shoots figured it was fair play.  I’m not sure I mentioned it or not, but my digital darkroom received an upgrade over the holidays.  Although I was becoming quite efficient at Lightroom 3, we decided to go ahead and upgrade to version 4.  It seems those people over at Adobe decided to make some changes that impacted my standard workflow.  Since these shots had a nice range of color and contrast, figured they’d be a good place to start re-learning.

To Adobe’s credit, they did carry over the old interface elements for those items imported into a Lightroom 3 created albums.  Not a big fan of paying for things I don’t use so immediately chose to convert those images to the new format and the experimenting began.  One thing that is immediately apparent is the improved ability to pull detail out of the shadows and recover it from the highlights.

There definitely needs to be soak time with the new controls.  Kelby has been educating me nightly on how to get the most out of Lightroom 4 (the book of the month.. okay maybe more like two or three).  Nothing too earth shattering, but did explain the white balance eye dropper which has been baffling me ever since I started with version 3.  His chapter on how to add meta tags on load was also a big help.

Hit the jump to continue ushering in Spring

Continue reading Spring is in the Air

Composition Gutter

We have one day of dog shows in the books.  The good news is both dogs ended up taking a first place in one of their runs with Rizzi even earning another title.  The bad news is they had more than one run a piece – translated, another 6 failures to round out the day.  Speaking of failures, I’m actually sitting here in the midst of a rain of confetti thanks to a Butler choke and apparently OVER-RATED Zags – those two games drove me to tear up my NCAA bracket into tiny pieces and toss them in the air.  Oh well, I can always Cub it and declare “Just wait until NEXT season”.    Meanwhile I’ll work the sorrow off by cranking out another post.

Consider this part two of the Indy Botanical Gardens Statues post (link here).  I was not kidding when mentioning there are a lot of interesting status there.  Take for instance the Zombie Turtle

This little guy (or maybe gal) gave me an opportunity to assess the impact of composition on the overall impression of the shot.  The shot above doesn’t look that bad.  You can see the detail in the turtle’s underbelly and the outline is dark enough to pull it out of the background.  The water didn’t come out as smooth as the shots in yesterday’s post – there wasn’t any fish in the ponds so guessing it was the wind effect again.  Also note from the shadow you can tell the sun was high and in front – not my preferred shooting conditions (Linda also reminded me it was over 100 that day!).

Changing up the angle a bit gave me a better shot of the shadow, but at the cost of the main subject getting a little lost in the background.

The bizarre posture and the water ripple ended up mushing up (highly technical photograpy term) the reflection anyway.  The turtle now looks less like a brains craver and more like an Olympic diver building up momentum to pop off the diving board before executing a Triple Lutz with an Inward Pike Somersault ending in a Fakey.  If that makes sense to you then I’m not the only one who doesn’t know a damn thing about diving.  The turtle sculptor must have been busy, because there were other poses sprinkled around the gardens.  In another attempt to find a background that would complement the shot, I went with the water vegetation.  If you recall, I tried a similar thing with the frog in the previous post.  The results seem a tad distracting.  My eye keeps getting drawn to the background.  I call this the Kite Flying Russian Dancing Turtle.

And then there’s Michelangelo running through his forms.

A mere 20 degrees probably prevented that shot from being one of my favorites.  Obviously not taking into consideration the full composition, I ended up cutting the angle short and instead of filling the background with uniform vegetation it looks like I got some concrete structure.  Also makes it hard to shop in a picture of Shredder (hehehe).  Lesson slowly getting hammered in – give the background more attention – 6 more times and it just might stick.

Hit the jump to read more about the Indy statues – but be warned, it does eventually descend into the gutter.

Continue reading Composition Gutter

An Eye for the Odd

It’s dog show weekend which means I’m sitting in a hotel in some far off distant land trying to entertain myself. This is Linda and the boys thing so I’m generally around to Sherpa the 25 suitcases each of the dogs has to travel with. The good thing is I can be pacified with a computer and access to the Internet.   So, when not watching YouTube videos of cats displaying their DNA entwined stupidity I can pop out a few blog posts. Correction, I also have to spend the total of 8 minutes watching the dogs run (4 runs for each dog averaging 60 seconds a piece). For the curious, that means I will have spent 60 times that amount in travel this weekend just getting to and from the event location.

Fortunately, I already had some images processed in the digital darkroom before I came so I do not have to deal with that portion of the post while on the road. This is a good thing in this case since these shots needed a lot of work having spent a better part of this shoot in harsh light. If that made you think of the Indy Zoo shoot you are tracking well – this batch also came from that same outing, but taken at the Botanical Gardens right next door to the Zoo. I am not a huge flower guy, but in all honesty I had a great time there. Not so much due to the flowers, but thanks to an awesome collection of these:

I have always had an affinity for odd statues and other creative art.  This is definitely why I’m a huge fan of Allerton Park (link here).  After this trip you can add the Indy Botanical Gardens to my fan list.  This place was loaded with these small odd statues in very creative settings.  The shot above (and below) was taken at a small pool of water.  Of all the shots, these two are the ones that pleased me the most.  The fact they came out as well as they did was due to some hard work in the field.

I distinctly remember spending a looooong time at this tiny pool trying to figure out the most pleasing composition.  The harsh light was causing some nasty bounce off the water and washing out the features in the statue.  Eventually I found a good angle (by lowering the position of the shot) which allowed me to get the detail in the statue itself as well as the reflection – the reflection was the primary target.  This angle also allowed for the water to turn to glass – if you are curious, those were handheld without any filters.

Hit the jump to see even more shots of the statues at the gardens!

Continue reading An Eye for the Odd

Operation: Those F’n Shoe Racks and Operation: Greenie

And now for the third installment in Project March – and it’s a two-for!  There are a couple of difference with this one than the last two.  First of all, it didn’t require any 2×4’s – my project medium of choice.  Secondly, it required me to spend far less time on the design than on the implementation phase.  The reason for the latter difference is we actually bought this project to REPLACE an earlier project that I did design (and labored with blood sweat and tears to get through).  When we built out house about 7 years ago, we decided to go with a wire rack organizer for the master closets.  There was just too much going on then to spend a lot of time dealing with anything too fancy – beside the great room bookcases still needed to be built.  Instead, I quickly planned out a useful design that addressed the storage needs of Linda’s huge collection and my paltry set of clothes.  Apparently I failed to properly address the thousands of pairs of shoes Linda had, because soon after laboring for days with her walk in closet I had to add in more racks.  That lasted a couple of years until she bought another thousand pairs of shoes that easily overran the augmented design.  Unfortunately for me, Linda knows exactly how to motivate me to tackle a “Honey Do” list item.  What is that trick?  Continually bring it up until I relent and agree.  So, for the last couple of years, every time there was a gift giving event she responded to me request for ideas with “build me shoe racks”.  Christmas.. shoe racks, Valentine’s Day .. shoe racks, Wedding Anniversary … shoe racks, Dating Anniversary .. shoe racks, Birthday .. shoe racks.   This might have ended sooner, but every time she responded I looked up at the fireplace and reminded myself the bookshelves were STILL NOT DONE.  Somewhere she got the idea to look into options on the Internet.  A few days later she had found a company called Easy Closets that allowed you to design a system through an online application that was tailored to your closet dimensions.  Normally I would be offended by purchasing a system that I could likely tackle myself, but there were other projects in flight and another year of hearing about it from Linda would make my hair turn grey.   Instead, I was all for the idea and even helped her with the online design – caution is in the air when Linda has her purple tape measure out – she tends to follow the “close enough” rule of design and it looked like this was going to be configured to perfectly match whatever dimensions we gave it.   We did take them up on their free service to validate the design – they added a small connecting piece at the corners of the top shelves to make it one continuous shelf, but other than that, the design was fine.  Words of caution though… if you have ideas of doing this be prepared for the sticker shock ..eesh!

About three days later our UPS man was put to the test delivering something like 14 boxes:

Linda wasn’t about to let these sit around, so as soon as I got home Project Those F’n Shoe Racks was on.  For the record, she came up with the project title based on my standard response to her gift request.  I was going to go with Project Going INTO the Closet but her’s seemed more fitting in the end.. I crack myself up.

I think I was busy saving kids from burning houses or building homes for the less fortunate at the time, but the impatient one took it upon herself to move all her clothes out of the closet and completely dismantle the wire rack organizer.  Something tells me she enjoyed that a little too much.  Now there were no more excuses but to get started on the replacement organizer.  I have to give Easy Closets major kudos for their directions.  They were awesome!  Not only did they have a pretty clear process outlined for installing them, they even had them customized for our specific dimension making it very easy to see which pieces went where.  Par for course, there was a small glitch.  With the wire rack out of the way, we were reminded that we had outlets put in our master closets.  No, I can’t remember why anymore but I am sure it was for a damn good reason (can you tell, I designed all the electrical in our house).  The problem this posed is the outlet was going to be in the way of the drawer section.  The resolution was to push the top of the organizer up a few inches – not a big issue, we just needed to make sure we carried that across all the relevant parts of the installation.  With all the issues addressed, we could start hanging the core supports.  These were solid pieces of steel with the top half bent out at 45 degrees.  All we had to do was draw a level line a set number of inches from the top (plus the outlet modification) on both sides and back wall.  They provided three steel pieces that needed to be cut to fit the wall dimensions – being careful to end on studs.

Tool Count:

  • Utility knife – to attack the 14 boxes
  • Pencil
  • Long level
  • Stud finder
  • Cordless drill 1 for pilot holes
  • Cordless drill 2 for screws

With the steel bars in place, we could hang the end supports which had a matching 45 degree notch in them. Here is the left side.

here is the left side of the back wall

and the right side.

Hit the jump to see how this organizer project worked out

Continue reading Operation: Those F’n Shoe Racks and Operation: Greenie

Operation: Undertaker

Were back, and as stated in the previous post, it’s Project March.  Similar to Project Gypsy Hauler, this post focuses on a physics problem.  Actually, I shorted that word a tad – make that a physic-al problem.  Do you recall a rant a few posts back regarding some issues trying to acquire a file cabinet (link here).  At that end of that (maybe in the comments) it was revealed that the problem had been solved thanks to a Mega store.  That was really a premature closure of the ordeal.  Sure, the new file cabinet had been ordered, but it had not arrived yet.  I was really in a holding pattern waiting for it to be shipped.  Normally this wait would be one filled with eager anticipation – truth is it was 6 weeks of concern, fretting, worry, hair pulling, aspirin popping and pencil sharpening.  This was all due to roughly 200 yards.  This represents the distance from the curb to my walk in basement (yes, that includes the same stretch the drywall had to travel in the hauler).  Why is this an issue you ask .. you did ask that right — sure you did.  What a great question!  With the new source of the file cabinet, came a new shipping policy.  They only provided curb service – no option to pay an extra $100 and at least get it to the driveway like that other customer hating company had.  Now, I don’t consider myself a slouch under the weight bar, but even before I shed a lot of muscle when retooling my body for the distance running circuit, ~450lbs was a tad out of reach.  Every scenario that was played out ended with spending the Spring mowing around a  450 pound crate sitting by the curb.

By the time the shipping notice hit my inbox the pencil was a tiny nub.  It was past due to make this happen and paper wasn’t going to solve this problem.  Build phase was at hand and that means a trip to the basement… but first a quick trip to Menards.  The final plan called for utilizing my truck to cover the distance from the curb to the basement along with a huge assumption the shipping truck driver would be willing to help me out with the transfer phase of the plan.  I figured the day it arrived it was going to be me, one (or maybe two) shippers and the crate.   It was also likely going to be me who has to get the crate out of the truck but would seek help getting it wrestled into the basement.  With those parameters in place it was pretty easy to see the heart of the issue was figuring out how to easily get the cabinet into the truck and out of the truck – simple eh?  you just build one of these:

If you haven’t figured it out yet, there are a lot of 2×4’s laying around my basement at the moment because of another project that is underway.  That other project requires a lot of table saw work ripping these boards by myself – just me and my trusty roller stands (cue light bulb).  Surely there was some way to incorporate that capability into the design.  All that is needed is a bunch of cased bearings which was the reason for the Menard’s run… and a wasted Home Depot stop.  Finally losing an internal argument whether to ask for help or not, I located an employee who translated my obscure explanation of what I needed and took me directly to the end of the table saw aisle.  He quickly pointed to a tiny bin containing the exact items I wanted.  Every one of them hit the cart but had a feeling there wasn’t enough to do the job.  To resolve this another stop was made at Home Depot.  Yes, the internal battle won again, but this time I was met with – uh, what is that?  No blaming me this time, the request came with a visual having brought one of them in with me.  Denied!  The Menard’s purchase would have to work.

Hit the jump to see how this all comes together and whether it was worth all the trouble!

Continue reading Operation: Undertaker

Operation: Gypsy Hauler

Welcome to Project Week – crowd, standing in unbridled anxiety cheer with joy in their hearts… oh wait, they were apparently gathered to celebrate the selection of the new Pope.  Well, if they were here for my post they would be cheering just as much (or perhaps not).  It doesn’t really matter you are stuck listening to my ramblings on the latest episodes of  Brian the Handyman.  This also buys me some time while I get to work on another batch of real pictures and reset the bar on the reader expectations.  Apparently a few of the previous posts were considered pretty good and I just can’t have that pressure on me.

The first project topic of the month is for you physics fans out there.. or mechanical engineers or carpenters or for that matter weightlifters.  Let’s start with a problem.  What’s the best way for two individuals to move 50 sheets of 1/2 inch 4×12 plaster base drywall from a garage to the walk in basement across a sloping grass path?  Tick Tock Tick Tock Tick Tock

wait, let’s make this a visual daily double.  Does this shot convey the enormity of the situation?

Maybe some additional context.  A high school kid and I pulled these sheets off of a lift truck and hauled them into the garage – just the two of us – cocky high school kid and slightly fit 45 year old.  This was one of those events that you resign to knowing you will be hurting after it’s done but you have no other choice but to get it over with – kind of like when I had my second degree black belt test and had to do my sparring time with the higher degrees.  The latter left me with a severely damaged shoulder socket that had to be surgically repaired – the drywall unloading just left me with a locked up back.    But I digress from the original question … what’s is your idea for the best approach to get these to the worksite?

Did you say .. “Duh, take some of your 2×4 stash and build yourself a hauler cart”   If so, damn you are good.  If not, then please accept our parting prizes.  Needless to say, I went the Tool Man way and got to work building myself a cart.  One thing that could not be overlooked is just how heavy those drywall sheets are.   They were still tapped in pairs making them a force to be reckoned with.  Yes, I could have separated them, but that would take the fun out of it and doubled the trips – double doo doo.  First thing was to build a strong base.  Taking a page out of the shelves I built for the basement, I went with the stacked 2×4 approach.  I also added the same cross supports which made it a spitting image of one of  the shelf layers.  The intent was to design it to fit through one half of our double doors which was the constraint for how wide the carrier could be.  Knowing that the weight was going to be factor, it was decided that the carrier should be evenly distributed over the base width.  Noodling on it a bit came up with two options.  One approach would be to slant the drywall across the entire width.  Imagine a set of 2×4 straight up on one side and other 2×4’s connecting at the bottom of the base and then attached to the tops of the other 2x4s.  Actually don’t waste your time imagining that because I decided to nix that idea.  Instead I went with a two sided approach requiring an upside down V down the middle of the platform.  Since I made that.. I can actually show you how that looks.

Hit the jump to find out how this all worked out!

Continue reading Operation: Gypsy Hauler

Wildlife Elements

Once again I’ve been hit with the Peoria Plague. I am really getting tired of this, seeing as how it puts all my well laid plans into chaos – especially my running cycles which I cannot afford to be impacted at the moment.  The silver lining is I have to take it a little easier than usual which means … more time for posts!  Warning, this post is under the influence of cold drugs.

Today’s topic is more of a creative adventure than my typical wildlife shots. I’ve been seeing a lot of photographers going down the “Elements” path (add Peter Lik into that category). My take on elements is a breaking down of a shot to the bare essentials. An example may be just a leaf pedal, a single snowflake or some isolated pattern that is representative of the whole. This seems intriguing to me, but I do not shoot leaf pedals, snowflakes and just started exploring patterns – couple weeks back shots some ice plates that did not come out the way I’d envisioned. What I do shoot a lot of is wildlife. Although the overall composition does play into the overall picture, there is one “element” I focus on more than anything else. This would be the one point my focus point is always sitting on.

Yep, the eye.  The shots at the Indianapolis Zoo provided ample opportunity to try out what I refer to as Wildlife Elements.  The goal was to make the eye the focus point of the shot, but show enough overall pattern of the animal that it is instantly recognizable.  Full disclosure, in some cases I did manipulate the eye in the digital darkroom but kept to some basic rules.  I did not change the overall color of the eye staying true to the basic coloring native to the animal.  What I did do was apply some amplification to any color that was already there to.  I still wanted the eye to be focus of the picture and this allowed me to force more attention to it.  The zebra picture below is a good example of it – the sunlight was hitting the animal from the side giving a nice yellow highlight to the black and white striping.

At first I had the white balance adjusted to make the stripes more white than they are, but decided to dial it back to the “as shot” tone so it didn’t overwhelm the eye.  Those first two shots are probably my favorite of the set.  I find it interesting how different the “feel” is between the two elements.  The zebra almost has a calming effect to the point where you almost want to pet it.  Likely due to the non-aggressive nature of the composition – head down, submissive.  This is not the feeling I get from the first photo.  The wide open forward positioned eye immediately signifies predator.  Add to that the tight framing and the urge of flight starts coming to mind.

Hit the jump to view a few more Wildlife Elements!

Continue reading Wildlife Elements