Tag Archives: heat

Convection Patterns in Boiling Water

This one is something I kept meaning to do on multiple occasions but never was ready when it occurred to me.  Boiling a pan of water, I am always fixated on the patterns that show up as shadows on the bottom of the pan as the heat affects the water by differing amounts resulting in convection flows across the pan.  This is the sort of thing that only oddballs like me find fascinating.  I finally thought to have the camera close to hand when boiling some water and got some footage of the patterns as they swirled.  I was quite pleasantly surprised that the lens didn’t steam up during this.  No doubt Nancy looked at me with that puzzled expression that has appeared many times after decades of knowing me!

Experimenting With Avoiding Heat Haze

Summer weather means lots of sunny days but also means lots of heat haze.  I was at Boeing Field one sunny afternoon and there were two jets parked across the field that I wanted shots of – one was an Illinois ANG KC-135R and the other was a Falcon 20.  Looking through the viewfinder, both of the were shimmering in the heat haze that a warm and reasonably humid day brings.  This is the downside of summer in the Pacific Northwest.

Not long before I had watched a video on YouTube about photographing Saturn through a telescope.  The image of Saturn was all over the shop but they were using a software technique to take multiple images and build a more stable and sharper final image.  It worked reasonably well and this got me thinking about how to do something similar.  In the past I have used Photoshop to blend together multiple images to remove the moving elements of a shot like people or traffic.  I wrote about it in this post.

I thought I would see if something similar could be done.  I put the frame rate on to high and steadied myself before firing off a few seconds of shots.  I wanted a lot of images to provide the best opportunity for the statistical analysis to find the right solution.  Importing this in to Photoshop as layers and then auto aligning them allowed the analysis tool to do its thing.  I don’t think the result is quite what I want and I may experiment with different analysis methods – median versus mean for example – to see which ones are most effective.  However, there is clearly a smoothing out of the distortion and, if I needed to get a shot on a hazy day when there wouldn’t be another chance, I would definitely fall back on this approach to see whether it produced something more usable.

Palace Sightseeing is No Fun When It’s Hot

On my first visit to Tokyo, a few years ago, I made a brief visit to the park around the Imperial Palace.  I decided to take another look during my first visit this year.  However, while I knew it was going to be hot (it had been incredibly hot and humid all week) but the exposed area around the palace combined with the beating sun meant it was pretty uncomfortable.  There were still plenty of tourists though.

I walked along one side of the palace grounds near the main entrance and then along the moat to some of the more famous viewing locations.  I got a few shots as I walked along but it is fair to say I was not totally in to it.  After I had got a bit further on, the heat was really getting to me and the desire to be back in the shade overtook any desire to explore further.  There was a running club finishing their run which seemed amazing to me as I could hardly handle walking.  Time to retreat.

Smoke the Tires and Make Them Shiny

I was photographing some evening arrivals at Vancouver and, as I went through the shots afterwards, I got to see some detail on the tires that I had not noticed before.  The tires’ surface has a matt finish as you would expect of rubber.  When they hit the runway they go from zero rotation to very fast rotation extremely quickly.  The friction that causes this rapid run up scrubs a bit from the surface of the tire making the familiar smoke.

What I didn’t know is that the heat changes the appearance of the surface of the tires.  They suddenly become very shiny.  In these shots you can see wheels of a 777 just before and just after contact.  Also there is a shot from an A321 where you can see some of the tires have touched down and others haven’t.  Only with the low sum angle was this obvious.

A Different Angle on a Familiar Place

AU0E5159.jpgWhat is one of the basic lessons of photography? Walk around a bit and see the different angles available to you before taking the shot. Given how often I have thought about this idea, I am quite annoyed at myself about the lesson I learned with my friend, Roger, recently. We met up by SFO for a relaxing morning of shooting. If you have followed the blog, you will know the various different places I have tried in the past when shooting at SFO to try and get a different perspective. Given all of these different locations, I have missed an opportunity that should have been obvious.

C59F7965.jpgThe bayshore trail near the Marriott hotel has been a regular spot for me over the years. When you look at the map, it is a place that brings you as close as you can get to the runways. Moving along the bay gradually takes you further away and, consequently, I had not given much thought to heading that way. Roger wanted to shoot along there (he has been shooting at SFO for years so his experience should not be overlooked) so I joined him. Turns out I have been overlooking a great location.

AU0E5096.jpgIt is true that you are slightly further away from the runways. However, you are up near the threshold so have a different perspective on the approaches. Also, anything taxiing out comes past a backdrop of downtown San Francisco. You are further away from the cross runway departures but, with clear weather and less heat haze, the airborne jets are in front of the skyline. It makes for quite a nice shot and brings to mind the photos from Las Vegas that have the skyline in the background.

AU0E4781.jpgAnother benefit comes as the tide goes out. The mudflats at low tide can be problematic from a heat haze point of view. Further along the shore, the water doesn’t retreat too far so you have more water and less distortion. I imagine summer will still be a problem but for winter shooting it works well. A different angle, a nice background, less haze and still not to far away. This is a good option. Also, you can park close by without trouble which is certainly not always possible at the bayshore given how popular a place it is. I am late to the game but glad to have learned my lesson.

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Gratuitous Self Publicist

If you are searching through the TV listings for something to watch, take a look at Strip the City on the Science Channel.  There are a number of episodes from different cities but take a look at the episode about Chicago.  One part of the show features the bridges across the river and they include the Michigan Avenue bridge getting jammed open when the weather was too hot.

If you are a regular reader of this blog or a subscriber to my YouTube channel, the footage might seem familiar.  Have a look here and you will see what I mean.  This is one of a couple of projects where my video footage has been used.  I guess video is a useful addition to the portfolio!