Kevin's Watch

For Lurch... Danlo's front porch.


By cameramanjenn

Danlo's daughter's bike, this is for aTOMic...


By cameramanjenn


By cameramanjenn


By cameramanjenn


By cameramanjenn

Wow. Drop-dead gorgeous shots of the Moon, CMJ! Such crisp surface detail!

Nice flowers, too. Love flower shots. Even if I'm clueless about flower names.

Coming from someone who posts amazing pics I will take that as one of my highest compliments. Now if I could just afford the photo adapter for my telescope we could see inside the craters...Meade to Canon, anyone got the software and hardware?

Cameraman Jenn wrote:Now if I could just afford the photo adapter for my telescope we could see inside the craters...Meade to Canon, anyone got the software and hardware?

Whew...that's way beyond me. But I'd love to see you give it a try someday.

Astrophotography..Uh oh..theres a path loaded with accessories facilitated with deep pockets. Jenn, go to Meades website and see what is available as far as adaptors from your telescope to your camera. Ask for tech help if you can't find what you think you need. Sometimes it takes a combination of tubes and rings to make the proper connection. If you have a refractor telescope it one thing, and its a whole other ball of wax if you have a reflector telescope. I've seen folks using eye piece projection to get a photo...Yea,, try focusing on what the eye piece projects to your eye with a camera. Now that takes patience and a lot of luck. Tripod is required. There are tons of books and websites on the subject. You mite find articles on just your telescope and camera match up...Good luck and fortune.

btw..what isn't being realized here is that your camera has caught the color of the moon. While some of the color is due to our own atmospheric effects,,the moon does have subtle color when the glaring briteness is brought under control. Be careful with your eyes. I have " hurt" my eyes looking at the moon without a reducing filter on the eyepiece. Remember, the telescope concentrates light...Have fun.

Passions of my Muse or Going Down With The Sunset

Thigh

Wow Lurch, smoke on the water.... fire in the sky..... gorgeous.

Thank you Jenn. Photographing the Monsoon weather around here has gotten very strange this season. I do what I can with it.

A while ago I posted about a volcano up in the Aleute Islands dumping a million tons of ash and aerosols into the atmosphere and thus turning normally " chrome blue" sunsets into violet sunsets,,Here is an example of a dusk shot, after the sun had set,,and the short lived " purple hue" of every thing. I took this shot some 3 weeks ago.

A Taste of Halloween

Sunrise on All Hallows Eve






Happy Halloween !

My camera sucks, but here are some pictures of my adventures.

The Verge of Spring.



Cumberland River



Cumberland Falls



Natural Bridge










That last one is me shouting something. Probably Tank related. Hence the awkward neck muscle tension.

Great Pictures EVERYONE!!! Matrixman, love that last shot of the bee on the yellow flower, that's stunning. Lurch, always good with the skies. Malik, that "verge of spring" shot is achingly lovely.

Malik..Yea! Natural Bridges are so cool. Great!
I feel inspired by Sgt Nulls posting elsewhere of one Roy Buchanan. I must have listened for several hours last nite ,,recalling what I had forgotten,, proof that i was around when Roy was blowin us away. Thanks Sarge, The You Tube links opened up some inspirational stuff, so,
Here's..

Some Fun With This Morning's Sunrise

Thanks Lurch and Jenn!

Lurch, seriously, do you live near an active volcano or something? How do you get to see so many beautiful sunrises/sunsets?

He live out in big sky country... Seriously. He lives in the southwest.

Okay, i live in the southwest, Phoenix, desert vistas and all that, but that isn't the whole of it. I still have to get up on a hill or knoll to get all the wires and street lites out of the pictures,,but many of the last months shots were taken from my back yard.

The color? hhhm..not every sunset or sunrise even has clouds..matter of fact, Phoenix has a little over 280+ days a year with no discernible clouds at all. So where does all the color come from? Again, even when there are clouds ,,is no guarantee of color. Placement of clouds is everything. Perfect conditions would be,,at sunrise or sunset,,clouds cover or blanket most of the sky but not all the way to horizon. There needs to be a clear zone between horizon line and beginning of cloud cover. This allows the setting or rising Lite to get " under" the clouds . Under the clouds means the lowest clouds get lit up with the lite going thru the most atmosphere. The atmosphere filters the blue out and makes the lite red, orange and yellow,,and the higher clouds dark in purples, blues or browns. Okay maybe my physics ain't exactly right but you get the idea.

.Infinite vistas make clouds going all the way to horizon line seldom. And even if they do.. the clouds move so fast thru the desert,, there is bound to be a foto op with a little patience...BUT..the color doesn't last very long. You have to be in front of it..as it sweeps across the sky. 15 minutes is the average amount of time for good colorful pictures during set and rise. You have to catch it as it sweeps overhead or in front of you. I mean..i've seen great shots, run into my house, get the camera, run back outside,,and it be just about over. Seems the winter months bring an even shorter " time" to capture the color. It has to do with the sun position on the horizon and even the angle the sun is to earth..Again,, how much atmosphere the lite passes thru has alot to do with color. And now these days,, whats in the atmosphere has alot to do with it.

So,, okay,, i see clouds, i start making plans about where to be at sunset. But, again..some times the pics come to me. Thats the thing about Arizona..its the only state that I know of that put a sunrise( or sunset) in its State Flag. So, vast flat desert vistas, makes for huge sky, add clouds at low level with low or below horizon sun and voila'. ..you have the basic ingredients for capturing the unbelievable.

And yes..I will tweek a shot to gain some contrast or " punch up" the saturation or britenen up the highlites, etc etc,,but i also crop my shots..Point being, if ya want to see the real thing..ya have to be here to see it. IMHO, the Real thing is vastly superior to anything I have been able to capture on camera. What I present here, is the product of camera, computor and my brain..

In case you are still awake, Here is an example of quantity of atmosphere effecting the band of lite getting thru...



And..I owe a huge Thank You to my Muse...more than i can quantify.

Lurch, lots of valuable info, there. I agree with everything you said. I was just in awe of how often a good sunset/sunrise presents itself to you. I've lived in the city too long.

I rarely tweak my pics. If I do it's usually only a slight crop. I thought all your pics were raw like mine, Lurch.

Well Jenn,, the problem for me is this..to present the color as I recall it being in " reality",,may mean nudging the staturation in the mid tones into the positive and the slitest brightning of the hilites in the bright stuff,,but that can create loss of detail in the shadows..No adjustment is without an opposite consequence. So,, take alook at the first Hallow Eves pics above,,then compare to the second set 4th shot of the Fun with Sunrise group. The Hallows Eve shots where hardly adjusted at all,,but the Fun with shot is a lot closer to the way I recall it being as far as the " color" goes.

Then there is this phenomena,,,some " stuff" doesn't come out,,pop into the picture,,until you Do tweek with the contrasts and saturation and brightness levels.,,extra especially with the ethereal vaporous clouds.Some times I don't " see" the picture until I mess around with it in image processing..It can't hurt. If I don't like what I have done to a pic, no big deal.. just don't save it and start all over again. In a short time, you can look at a pic and say,,o kay it needs this and this.. try that and this.. okay went too far with that, back it of.. experiment experiment experiment..Its virtually free..

Some other tips.. To give a picture dimension, depth, so it doesn't appear to be " flat",,brighten the highlites and darken the shadows.. Remove the " muddy" effect of high humidity or thick atmosphere by enhancing the color of the mid tones..Shoot in the earlier morning or later afternoon for more use of shadows to give depth and eye direction to what you are presenting. Plants and flowers should actually be shot on over cast days because brite lite washes out the natural color of the subjects...And always, watch your background. Try to have your background as uncluttered as possible. Unless,,of course,,, well..

With a camera..its not the subject so much as it is the LIGHT within the frame of reference that you are trying to control and capture and manipulate in order to present the Subject as you intend.

Here is a pic I've been holding on to for a while. Due to high contrast of the original,,its about as raw as any I have presented.

We have such different approaches to photography. Mayhap you need to switch to a canon. I find little need to tweak anything with the pics I get with my canon. When we were filming FBH we got a nice broadcast quality canon and some of my best work is in the middle eps before Julie decided to get a "better" camera and got the massive hardcore panasonic. I still love the canon and will buy canon from here on out for the rest of my life. The butterfly shots were taken with my canon rebel xt using the original lens that came with the camera. The bird shots of a few weeks ago, the snowy egrets and blue herons etc, were taken with my telephoto lens. Canon captures the exact color so amazingly. If you want to see the color difference in moving film then watch the action sequence of FBH ep 12 compared to the action of episode 33. I'm sure the panasonic has better capabilities and I was just learning it but still the color reality always looks washed to me unless I film on the Canon.