Category Archives: photo

Construction Helicopters at the Mart

Previously I posted about the work with Midwest Helicopters at the Merchandise Mart. This post included the stills of the job while this one had some video. That job was all about erecting the steel to support the new chiller units. Construction Helicopters had the job to lift the chillers themselves since they were considerably heavier than the S-58T can lift.

This time I ended up shooting the lift from along the river. While I had originally planned to be back on the roof, the plan changed but it ended up being a better solution. I wish I had planned it to be so but I will take being lucky any day. The view from the ground was one I had intended for the first lift if it had gone to the second day so this time i was able to get shots of the building with the helicopter operating in front of and above it.

This was the first time I had seen the Super Puma that Construction Helicopters have acquired. I have had a soft spot for the Puma family for many years dating back to a model of an RAF Puma I made as a kid. It is a great looking helicopter and certainly a powerful performer.

The weather was excellent and the lift went very smoothly. The chillers were picked from a barge on the river in front of the Mart and lifted to the roof. I certainly wasn’t alone in watching the work as quite a crowd gathered along the river to watch. Great job to everyone involved.

FedEx shots

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A recent trip to Seattle gave me some time at the very beginning and end of the day to pay a visit to SeaTac. Plenty of interesting things are to be seen there. One specific area of interest for me was the amount of traffic for FedEx. They had a lot of movements with a variety of types. (A contractor operates Cessna Caravans for them which I saw but did not get any shots of sadly.) With FedEx just having announced a reduction in types in their fleet plan, this was a more interesting opportunity than it might otherwise have been.

Two McDonnell Douglas types came through while I was there. The MD-11s are busy as usual but I also got MD-10s. Meanwhile, the Airbus A300s were also in use. I don’t get to see them often and, since they are going to be retired in large numbers soon, I might not get many more chances. With movements at the beginning and end of the day, I was able to catch them several times. They were busy. I am assuming the middle of the day is quieter for them so I didn’t miss much while at work.

The only unfortunate side of shooting the FedEx jets was their departure profiles. When on the departure end of things, I was generally in a good location to catch the jets as they came by. FedEx was the exception. I don’t know whether they practice rapid climb outs due to flying into some dangerous places or just for noise abatement (they do have some aging aircraft) but the result is that they climb fast and are much higher than average by the time they reach you. Nothing much I can do about that of course but it was a bit of a shame. Approach shots were not an issue of course. The three degree glideslope is the same for everyone! Time to enjoy some of these jets before they go for good.

Photoshop CC Shake Reduction

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While a lot of people have been quite vexed by the introduction of a subscription based approach to the Adobe software suite including Photoshop, I decided to get over it and upgrade to Photoshop CC. One of the features introduced in CC is Shake Reduction. This is an effort at dealing with motion blur in images. It isn’t going to rescue a crappy shot but it is potentially able to to take an almost good shot and rescue it. I decided to experiment with it on an image I recently took.

The image above is a combination of the original image without sharpening and the filtered version. (It is recommended that you turn off sharpening before running the filter or it will make things break up more.) The effect actually seems to be quite useful. I should note that I tried it on several shots and they didn’t all respond as well to the filter. However, it did make quite a good upgrade to this image. I shall potentially use this again if there is an image I really like that is not quite as sharp as I would like. Another tool to potentially use but not one I think I can rely on.

Clow Cavalcade

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Air shows are not planned to be a big part of my year this year. However, I did take the time to go a short distance out of the city recently to a small event that I like. Clow is an airport down in Bolingbrook, southwest of downtown Chicago. The airport holds an event every year for the local community to show what goes on at the airport and to try and generate interest in the aviation industry. It is not an airshow. There is not a flying display. However, a number of aircraft do visit and make some passes to show the crowd some interesting aircraft.

A number of aircraft are on display. Some warbirds show up and the EAA owned Ford Trimotor was providing rides throughout the event. Usually they have some parachutists displaying throughout the event (and I have previously shot them at work) but, unfortunately, the weather did not prove to be cooperative this year and the cloud base was too low to allow them to jump.

A number of aircraft manufacturers have their aircraft on display with Cessna, Piper, Cirrus and Diamond all having aircraft available to view by potential (and wishful thinking) buyers. Eclipse also brought one of their Total Eclipse 500 aircraft.

I was most interested in getting some shots of the aircraft either flying or on display but an event like this is also about seeing how the crowds interact with the aircraft and their owners. It is a very open event with people having the chance to get close to the aircraft and the operations. Since the conditions weren’t great, I often put down the camera and just watched everyone having fun. (Obviously no pictures of that!)

A Night with Chaka Khan

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During my teenage years, I was introduced to an artist who I had not heard of before. Chaka Khan brought something I had never heard before. I can credit a friend of the family for first playing me some of her music. Along with many others, I became a fan. Not a devoted fan but someone who really enjoyed her music. However, I never saw her perform. That changed this week.

Forty years in show business were celebrated for Chaka this year and, as a Chicago native, the city had a free concert for her in Millennium Park at the Pritzker Pavilion. We headed along and we weren’t alone. A very diverse group of people came to see the free concert. It was a great evening out. Things took a long time to actually start but when they did, she certainly still had it. An outdoor location is a great place to sit and listen to someone belting out the hits. The years have not diminished her vocal power. Great stuff.

How Many Megapixels?

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How many is too many? I really don’t know. I refer to the number of pixels that can be squeezed onto the sensor for a digital camera and what is desirable or not. Over the years the camera manufacturers have steadily increased the number of pixels on their sensors and come up with ever greater resolutions as a result. This has been both beneficial and problematic. What I am not sure about is whether I am missing the point with all of this.

My first DSLR was a Canon EOS 10D. It was a 6.3Mp camera – something that would now be considered unacceptable on a cell phone. It was a great camera, even if it did have a number of limitations that would be considered unheard of today. However, for its day it was very good. I had full page images printed in magazines from it with absolutely no problem.

As the megapixel wars got going, I was adopting larger and larger file sizes by default. I would tell anyone who asked that megapixels were not the most important thing when buying a camera and there were plenty of other issues to consider. I certainly don’t mind having a more dense file when I need to crop in to a shot but the impact on memory cards, the need for ever larger hard drives and the upgrades to computers to process the larger files were downsides that I didn’t appreciate.

For a while it seemed like the pixel count had leveled off a bit and the focus was on gaining better noise performance at high ISO settings. This seemed like a very worthwhile approach for me. However, big sensors are now back in play with the Nikon D800 leading the way and Canon talking about some large sensor cameras to come. (I think it is worth noting that, since the pixel count is a function of the square of the linear resolution, these larger counts do not translate in to a huge improvement in linear resolution. Yes, you do get more detail but it isn’t quite as mind-blowing as some will suggest.)

Am I a dope for not welcoming this? Am I taking a Luddite approach in sounding happy with what I had and not appreciating the advances? Do I just accept that all of my gear has to be upgraded periodically to stay in line with the latest thing whether it is camera file sizes, the processing requirements of new generation software or the interface needs of the latest devices. I’m sure there are some benefits to having such dense files but I am not sure that they matter for what I do.

As for the uses for large file sizes, there is always much discussion about printing big or using for billboards. Only a photo nerd looks at a picture from six inches and billboard resolutions are actually quite poor. I wonder what a good resolution level really is. Anyone care to suggest the perfect compromise?

This is Disgusting – You Have Been Warned!!!

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While in downtown Seattle, I was introduced to something that I had never heard about. It is the gum wall. Not having heard about this before, I was curious. It is a wall where people have taken to sticking their used gum creating a wall of gum. We actually went in the wrong direction initially so didn’t find it. A reversal of course took us back to Pike Place Market and a word with a guy who worked there provided us with directions. It was very close.

His parting words were to try not to lose our lunch. I thought he was joking but he was spot on. When I first saw the wall, I did experience a pretty nauseous feeling. It is quite disgusting. After a while, you get used to it a bit more but it doesn’t stop being quite unpleasant. I only had my phone with my and it was rather dingy down there – even without the gum. However, I had to try and record what I saw. Not the nicest of tourist attractions but one that has a sort of morbid curiosity about it!

Exotic Feline Rescue Center

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Nancy came across a place recently called the Exotic Feline Rescue Center. Located near Terre Haute in Indiana, this is a facility that takes care of large cats that have been mistreated or are no longer able to be looked after where they are. They have over 300 large cats, a large proportion of which are tigers but also with many cougars, some lions and a smaller number of a variety of other cat. They do not breed the animals, nor do they trade in them. Instead, they are available to provide a home to cats that need it to allow them to live out their lives in comfort.

We arranged a trip for a few days to include a visit to the Center. They provide tours to visitors. The tour covers one part of the Center and will get you close to approximately 100 of the resident cats. This is not a zoo. The tour is escorted and you are very close to the enclosures. However, if you touch the enclosures, your visit will be over. The cats are the other side of the fencing and any bits of you going through the fence are easily chomped! You get a great close experience but you mustn’t abuse the opportunity.

Being close means the animals really do react to you. The lions will roar if they hear Harleys revving up, keep an eye out if a tiger turns away from you because it is probably about to spray you and, while the fences are there, they can get a little excitable. I was squatting down taking a picture of one of the tigers when it decided to charge towards me and jump up at the fence. It certainly got my attention!

The tour we took was led by the guy who started the whole place. He was very friendly and keen to explain how it worked and how they kept everything running. On our tour were a few people who have been there several times. if we were closer, I would certainly visit frequently. The pace was such that it was easy to take pictures as we went around so these shots will give you a good feel for what we saw there.

The place was great. The work they do is very important and the tales they tell of how some of the animals came to be there are quite appalling. They are always in need of donations so, if you are looking for something to support, you could certainly do worse than these folks. Well done for all they have done and good luck in keeping it all going.

Bridge Lifts and Boat Passage

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The movement of boats to Lake Michigan is a spring event with the bridges along the Chicago River being opened to allow the boats to get by without having to remove their masts. It happens every spring and they all return each fall. After many years in Chicago, you would think I had got bored with this but I still find it a really cool thing to watch. They move on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I often don’t realize it is happening until I look out of the window and see the bridges up. I decided this year I wanted to see a little more of it.

I got out to the river when the boats were at the join between the north and south branches. This section of the river has a bunch of bridges but they seem to have a pattern of opening them in quick succession with multiple bridges open at once. As they get up to Michigan Avenue, they do each bridge one at a time to minimize the traffic disruption since the cars get backed up while the bridges are open. A Saturday often results in a few more boats and this was no exception.

I am actually cheating a bit here since, when I first started putting together this post, I had been out to watch a run of the boats. Before it is finished, though, another week had passed and another run of the boats took place. The weather was also slightly better. I decided to go out with the fish-eye this time to get something a little different to add to the collection so now the shots are a little more diverse and, hopefully, a little more interesting.

Indianapolis Fireworks

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We took a trip to Indiana which was primarily based around the visit to the Exotic Feline Rescue Center as I shall be posting about here at some point. While the center is near Terre Haute, we decided to stay in Indianapolis. We have been to Indy before and had a great time as well as staying at a nice hotel. That trip got a write up here if you are interested. This time it was the 4th of July and the city was due to have a firework display so we thought that might be a good add on to the trip.

Originally, we had looked up the park where we could view the fireworks. There were supposed to be a number of things going on in the park and it was not a long walk from the hotel so we had figured on taking some chairs and heading there. However, the weather forecast was looking a little like a storm might roll in. This made us wonder whether a change in plans might be in order.

Our decision was made easier when we checked in and found we had a 32nd floor room overlooking the downtown. Now we could watch the fireworks from the comfort of our hotel room and, if it rained, we would be fine. As it happened, it didn’t rain. However, our choice proved to have an additional benefit. Not only did we see the main display, there were many displays happening all around the city. From our vantage point, we could see them all. We sat by the window and watched fireworks close by and far off but going off all evening. It was great. I did shoot the fireworks but my approach is always to fire a cable release while just watching the display. Consequently, I primarily get to enjoy the display but also, hopefully, get some shots at the same time.