Monthly Archives: March 2012

Tidying Up a Computer

This one is for those of you that update your computers to add new capabilities and one day find you have created a monster.  I bought my computer with two hard drives installed.  I added other drives and ended up with seven of them in there.  It occurred to me that I probably wasn’t making the best use of the storage I had and I decided to make two changes.  The first was to replace the drive the OS was installed on and the second was to rationalize the drives for storage.

The original OS drive had been an SSD which was barely able to hold the OS and some of the user data.  however, at some point, something became corrupted and a new install was required.  Unfortunately, the install process which is supposed to allow a reformat of the drive as you go, somehow wouldn’t do it.  Since I needed it for work, I swapped it out with a spare normal drive I had.  This worked but took some speed out of the system.  Fixing this was the first goal.

SSD drive prices have fallen a lot so I actually bought a new SSD drive which allowed me to keep more on it without worrying about space.  This was the first part of the upgrade.  A couple of minor problems troubleshot and I was up and running.  The second thing I had to do was something I had prepared for ahead of time.  Reallocating all of my storage requirements.

Originally, I had a bunch of drives that had become part of the system over the years.  Some were in their third machine!  They were not the biggest drives around so I had a lot of space taken up with relatively limited storage capacity.  I worked out the requirements for all of my different data types – photos, documents, videos, Lightroom catalogs etc.  I then decided how I wanted them split up, what growth I needed and what drive sizes would suffice.  I was actually able to make use of drives that I already had – there were a bunch of reasonably large spares that came from updating my NAS a while back.  That also meant I had some large drives to act as intermediaries while I moved everything around.

I will have to update one of the drives in due course but it will suffice for a while.  My culling of old images will also buy me some time there!  Ultimately I got everything migrated across to its new home, the Lightroom catalogs updated to find everything again and I now have two less drives in the box and still plenty of capacity.  A bit of a pain to do but worth it I think.  Let’s hope everything behaves for a while and no further rebuilds are required!

Snocross in Short Sleeves

March in Wisconsin seems like a pretty good time to schedule a snowmobile race.  Unfortunately, that would mean that you didn’t know this year was going to be particularly mild all winter and especially so in March.  So it was that the final round of the AMSOil ISOC Snocross race was scheduled for the Grand Geneva Resort in Lake Geneva WI in mid-March.

Just because it was warm, didn’t mean there wouldn’t be racing though.  Congratulations to the organizers who made good use of their snow cannons to put a base of snow down on a basic course.  Apparently, it was a bit truncated compared to previous years but there was a course.  Moreover, the course managed to hold together as the air temperature made its way up to the high 70s (if not creeping into the 80s!).  I wondered whether this great job of combating the conditions extended to the clothing the racers wore.  I doubt too much snowmobile racing clothing is designed for the high 70s.  I suspect it is more about staying warm.  They were probably pretty toasty!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hadn’t applied for media credentials for this event so was only shooting from the public areas.  With the course laid out the way it was, this really didn’t prove to be too limiting.  There were a few shots I would like to have got but it really didn’t make too much of a difference.  The action is close to the people most of the time and they come by pretty frequently so there is usually plenty to see.

I was pretty happy with the outcome to be honest.  It was a fun day out and I spent it with a good bunch of guys as well.  We would split up at times but end up back at similar locations before too long so it worked well.  One of those disappointing things about shooting an action sport like this is that you find yourself focusing on a particular rider and hear a groan from the crowd.  This is a sign that someone has wiped out quite dramatically but all you see is them getting up and retrieving their machine unless you get lucky – certainly luckier than the racer!

Now I just have to work out what the real name is for the machine.  I always thought they were snowmobiles but then I watched some stuff from Alaska that said the people in the know call them snowmachines.  The announcers at this event didn’t seem to be aware of that so I am just as in the dark as I was beforehand.  Anyone know the right term?

Final Overnight Time Lapse

I mentioned before that I had tried to do an overnight time lapse video.  In that post I detailed all of the ways I had screwed up the process.  Rather than sulk, I did take all of those lessons to heart and went back for a second attempt.  This time, I was a lot more successful.  I hadn’t got around to figuring out how to make the tethering work properly but the alternative was acceptable and I had learned the rest of my lessons.

One minor hurdle still existed.  Our windows are not at their cleanest at this time of year and shooting through the glass is the only option.  We are due to have the cleaners take care of them shortly (although that will probably only guarantee some rain immediately afterwards).  In low light and with a wide enough aperture, the dirt smudges are not too much of a problem.  I have to make sure the shoot doesn’t include any time with direct light on the window which would make the muck flare up in the shots.

The other minor issue is a function of the double glazing.  More intense light can show up the effect of the light bouncing between the glass panes.  At night this isn’t a hassle except with the moon which is so bright.  For some reason I should be able to figure out but can’t, the center of the window almost totally removes this effect and it gets worse towards the edges.  However, the moon is so bright in the scenes it blows out and, since the whole thing animates to a video, the loss of shape in the shots becomes less apparent as the moon zips across the sky.

With all of that said, here is the video itself.  It seems to have worked out well.  Sadly, the messed up effort seemed to have got some more interesting light sequences from the windows of the building but you can’t have it all.  Enjoy!

Remember Northwest?

I have been going back through a lot of the archive recently with the goal of culling a lot of the crap images that have no hope of ever seeing the light of day again and are, therefore, just filling up drive space.  As I do this, it reminds me of a few things I haven’t seen for a while and some I won’t see again.  Northwest Airlines is one of these!

From time to time I have done a lot of shooting of airliners.  I won’t profess to them being my favorite thing to shoot – fast jets and helicopters are probably my favorites – but when it comes down to it, I love all things that fly and airliners do just that.  Besides, they are sometimes easier to come by!  One of the features of shooting airliners is that most of what you see does not cause you any surprise.  There may be something that is rare or unusual wherever you are and that can be quite exciting but usually what you see is pretty much what you would expect to see.

It is only at a later stage, when whatever you saw is no longer around, that you can get interested in something that was previously pretty unexpected.  Such is the case with Northwest.  Before the merger with Delta, Northwest had a large fleet that covered the country.  I didn’t fly with them much but I would frequently see their aircraft.  I would take pictures of them but probably not get too excited.  I even spent one day at Detroit where they were most of what I saw.

Now, Northwest is no more and its fleet has been repainted in Delta’s colors.  To find a picture of a Northwest jet as I go through the archives suddenly takes on a level of interest that it hadn’t at the the time it was taken.  Maybe it will have the same effect for you so here are a few samples of something no longer to be seen.

What a Balls Ups

I have previously played around with time lapse videos made with an SLR, a timer release and some software linked to Lightroom to create the finished video.  I decided to go a little longer with one and make a video throughout the night, starting before sunset and finishing off once the sun had come back up again.  This did not prove to be as simple as I had hoped!

It should be pointed out that most of these problems are entirely of my doing.  First of all, I did a calculation of how many shots I thought would be necessary to complete the clip.  This was more than would fit on one of my compact flash cards.  No problem, the camera has a second slot.  It turns out that, unlike the MkIV which will switch to the second card when the first is full if you so desire, the MkIIN won’t do that.  Okay, not problem.  I shall tether it to Lightroom and download direct to the laptop.

This didn’t work.  I believe this was also my fault as the MkIIN has a firewire connection as well as the USB and the USB tethering showed up on the computer but didn’t actually do anything.  Okay, I can fix this.  I shall let it run for a long time and change the card shortly before going to bed and the new card should work through the rest of the night.  A fully charged battery and off we went to dinner.

Upon my return, I find that the camera is not shooting any more.  Foolishly, while I worked out that a 16Gb card would be fine, I didn’t remove the 8Gb card that was in there so the card was full.  I swapped the card with another one quickly and set it off.  A while later I come back to check on it and nothing is happening.  The new card is full.  I hadn’t formatted it first.  What a fool.  I also have a flat battery.  This is not going to be good.  Fortunately, the MkIIN came with the DC adapter as standard (unlike the MkIV – how tight are you Canon?) so I swapped that in, put in a fresh card and formatted it.  Then I went to bed.

This finally worked.  The remaining shots worked fine.  The result wasn’t too bad but, since it had some obvious jumps in it – the moon was traversing the scene when the gaps occur – it wasn’t usable.  However, it did teach me a bunch of thing that I now need to deal with for the second attempt.  let’s see if I can balls that up as well!

Goodbye Another 747 Fleet

A while back I wrote a post about the retirement by JAL of their Boeing 747 fleet.  At one time they had been the largest operator of the type.  Well, it has happened again.  Another large operator of the 747 is retiring its final passenger example.  Singapore Airlines is saying goodbye to the Queen of the Skies.

Unlike JAL that is in financial difficulties and is rationalizing its fleet, Singapore is doing very well.  It is just moving on.  It has a growing fleet of A380s and a substantial fleet of 777s so the 747 is no longer suitable for its needs.  Sad to say but it is actually just a bit old these days.  The freighter version is going to live on with Singapore so it won’t be impossible to see the type in Singapore colors but it will only be the Mega Ark aircraft from now on.

All of this makes me feel a bit old.  I was studying aeronautics when the 747-400 was going through its certification program.  My college days are a long time ago so the fact the 747-400 is now considered pretty old is hardly surprising.  That doesn’t make me feel any better about it.  The unique shape of the 747 is very appealing to me even now.  With the never ending stream of 767s, 777s and A330s, a 747 showing up is always a welcome surprise.  I guess it is going to become a rarer one in the coming years!  Enjoy them while you can.  At least the 747-8 will be around for a while but they don’t appear to be selling in quite the same number so we shall have to see how easy they will be to see.

Turn the River a Slightly Different Color

Since the birthday of this blog has just passed, I am now going to spend my time repeating previous blog posts from a year ago.  Seems a lot easier than creating new content.  In fact, for those of you with an inquisitive nature, I will make things easier and you can go to this post to see what I wrote before and decide for yourself whether I am being original or whether I am totally ripping off my own work.  If it is different, has the quality of my posts improved???

This year St Patrick’s Day was a Saturday.  I am not sure whether this really made any difference because the city chooses a Saturday to celebrate everything and that is the party day whatever the date.  The odd thing this year is that it was warm.  Mid 70s is not what you expect for this time in March.  In fact, my first St Patrick’s Day in Chicago, we went to see the parade and gave up half way through because we were thoroughly frozen!

This time being too warm was more of an issue.  I won’t go in to whether the madness that the city falls in to is any way related to St Patrick or even the Irish (and we shall leave the fact that Patrick wasn’t Irish anyway for another day!).  Instead, I am going to focus on the tradition of dying the river green.  I went down to join the crowds and see how things were developing.  It was very busy with the weather really bringing out the crowds.

Dying the river went fine despite the coxed eights that didn’t get out of the way in time.  The Police boats seemed mad but hadn’t made an effort to get rid of them ahead of time so what did they expect.  It was funny to see the speed boats running close by and putting quite a wash over the eight who looked less than happy about how close they were to sinking!

Watching the crowds was also fun.  You do see some sights on a day like today and some of them can be photographed.  However, you also have to be careful since the drinking starts early and can affect the good humor of some people!

Up a Big Pole!

Today we have a bit of a flashback.  Regular readers will know that I shoot a lot of helicopter operations.  Midwest Helicopters is the large local operator so they do most of the work in the city.  However, there other operators that undertake similar work and some of them will work in Chicago at times.  This is often a function of the weight of the loads to be lifted.  Construction Helicopters of Howell MI are one such operator and their S-61N aircraft can lift 10,000lbs – a big increase over the 4,500lbs of the S-58T.  If you need even bigger things lifted, Erickson Aircrane are probably your people!

This piece, though, is not about the helicopter so much as the people it was working with.  A few years ago, the Trump International Hotel and Tower was built here in the city – in fact just across the street from us.  We had the best seats to watch the demolition of the old Sun Times building and the growth from a hole in the ground to 92 floors of building.  It was fun to watch, even if it did take a chunk out of our view!  The building was topped off with a spire.  The parts for the spire were lifted to the roof by the construction cranes before they were assembled but it was going to be significantly higher than the rest of the building so those cranes were not suitable for assembling it.  The pieces would be lifted into place by helicopter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first attempt at this was unsuccessful as the winds were so strong that keeping each piece in place long enough to secure it proved impossible.  There was a long wait before the second attempt but the job finally went ahead.  The heroes of this story are the guys on the tower.  If you think that the tower itself is over a 1,000′ tall and the spire is a significant (and flexible) structure above that, you can see that this is quite an exposed location to be working.  From talking to the team that assembled it, the most senior guys are the ones at the very top – they want to be there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three guys were on the spire at the top.  As each section was brought into place, they grabbed the tag lines and pulled it into position.  When they had located it, they would put in a bolt in each corner.  Then, one would climb up the new piece to release the lifting line.  The other two would follow while a second group came behind them to insert the additional bolts to finally secure the section.  While they were finishing that off, the next piece was coming in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To add to the fun of this, the spire narrows as it gets higher so the working space gets progressively more limited.  All the time you are dealing with whatever wind conditions there are at this height combined with the not inconsiderable down-wash from the helicopter and trying to make sure you maintain your grip and don’t drop anything on the team below you!

The job ran a little long but they did finish it off and put the final cap in place.  They seemed to do a great job but were so far away from anyone else, I suspect that very few people appreciate exactly what they had done.  It was only recently as I was culling a bunch of old images that I looked again at them as saw exactly what they were doing.  I feel guilty for paying more attention to the helicopter operations when I first shot the job so decided to give them a little publicity now.  Well done everyone.

 

The Blog Has a Birthday

The other day I was thinking about a few things related to this blog when it occurred to me that I must be getting close the the first anniversary of the blog starting.  I had been posting about things that I had done the previous year and hadn’t been blogged about before so knew it was still in the first year but figured it must be getting close.

A quick look back through the complete listing of posts showed me that the first posting went up on March 14th 2011 – a year ago today!  So, happy birthday to the blog.  (Sad to say, I haven’t bought it a present…)

So, what has the first year taught me?  Well, I have been able to consistently put new information up on the blog.  I seriously wondered how well I would do at finding new things all of the time and not having gaping holes in the timeline.   A little figuring out of things in advance along with keeping some of the more complex topics in manageable chunks has certainly helped.  It has been easy enough to drop time sensitive stuff in when necessary but it isn’t a problem to space out postings when required.  Anyone who was there might wonder about the timing but I doubt many other people notice.

It has also helped me to think about the way I write stuff.  The work I have been doing for other outlets always helps but the format of the blog has tempted me to think about other writing outlets.  Nothing to report on that at the moment but, as things develop, you know where the first information will become available!

Thanks for reading.  I know how many people visit the blog and I am glad that it has an interest for some people out there.   It certainly does for me and I am glad that some want to share in that too.  Cheers!

Thornton Quarry Video

The Thornton Quarry lift job with Midwest Helicopters was a full day job so it provided a bunch of opportunity to try different things.  This was true for the stills but it also allowed me to experiment with the video as well.  Since the aircraft was operating all day, I was able to get to multiple locations and see all aspects of the job as they happened.  Normally, this isn’t possible since a lift will only last about 30 minutes.  In that case, you have to pick the location that will get the shots you must have and accept that the alternative shots will not be made.

This time I was able to move around the whole site and capture as much as possible of what was going on.  Some of the clips looked really interesting and the time but they actually proved to be no use.  Some of the boring stuff as it appeared at the time actually ended up being really of use when it came to editing.

At this point, it is important for me to apologize to people like Gerry Holtz.  Gerry is an editor and he does this sort of thing for a living.  Anyone else who knows about editing professionally, you are all due my apologies and my respect.  I am trying a bit with video editing but what I have learned is that it is bloody difficult to do.

On this shoot, most of the video was captured using my SLR.  The rest of it was shot on a GoPro which is such a great little device to get something a little more unusual.  It was handheld (or mounted in the case of the GoPro).  No tripods or dollies and certainly nothing as impressive as a Kessler Crane!

I suspect that to be good at editing it is important to have had some education in the process.  I am doing it the guy way – try something and then try something else and see what happens.  Not even a manual to consult!  Consequently, I make some progress but probably my approach starts from the wrong place.  If I was going to do a lot more of this I would take the training aspect seriously.  However, for the time-being, this is a little side hobby so I will probably stick with what I am doing.

Part of the fun(?) of the edit process is taking all of the disparate elements of the footage and trying to combine them into a coherent timeline.  Part of the engineer in me thinks it should be delivered in the same order it happened.  This is rubbish of course.  The viewer has no concern of course.  As long as the result doesn’t obviously have terrible jumps or continuity issues, no-one is going to be any the wiser.

Also, how much do they need to see.  About eighty lifts were done during the day.  Does the video need to have eighty lifts?  NO!  In the end, I concluded that two lifts were enough to tell the story.  One wasn’t enough but it didn’t need more than two.  I cut the length down as I went but even then it was still quite a long piece.  A pro would probably have it down to a couple of minutes but then, as I mentioned, I am not a video pro.

One lesson I have learned as I have practiced this video stuff is how many of the tools the software has are no use at all.  There are a million transitions between scenes, all of which make it look like you are experimenting with the software but they are a distraction from viewing.  I have learned to use simple transitions that are short so they are not obvious to the viewer.  They just stop the jump being the item the viewer focuses on.

Anyway, the final part of this story is that I was very happy with the result for this video.  Unfortunately, it turns out the company that was doing part of the work is very sensitive about their equipment and doesn’t like the equipment being shown on the video so I have had to remove it from my YouTube channel.  Consequently, I can’t include it in this post.  Oh well…