Fungi to be With

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While wandering through the woods at Armstrong Redwoods SNR, I saw the effect of the permanently damp climate. Fungi were everywhere. I wasn’t traveling with a tripod or a macro lens. The lens was less of an issue but getting shots in the darkness of the woods was a touch problematic. However, the fungi looked cool so it was worth a go.

I know nothing about them so have no idea what I was taking photos of. They could be common or rare. They may be toxic or tasty. None of this is known to me. However, they were interesting to look at and rather cool. That’s all that mattered to me!

Banana Slug

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Close to where I parked my car up on Mt Tam, I saw a banana slug. They are cool looking things so I couldn’t resist the temptation to try and photograph it. There wasn’t much light and he was on the move but I still got a few shots.

Golden Gate After Dark

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A previous post showed the time lapse video I created from me shot sequence on the Marin Headlands. I didn’t just sit and let the sequence go, though. I also had a second body and took shots with that. Unfortunately, I only took one tripod with me so the initial shots were handheld trying to make use of reasonable handholding technique combined with the benefits of image stabilization in the lenses.

Once the time lapse sequence was done, I was able to use the tripod to get some shots in the dark. Cities always look cool at night. The proliferation of lights makes an interesting skyline look even better. Combine with that the motion of some elements and things get interesting. The motion can help or hinder. Streaking car lights are good but planes in the sky can be a distraction since they take on a significance that was never there when you saw the view.

The Golden Gate Bridge is an interesting foreground element. I chose the spot I wanted, even though I couldn’t park there. I parked further up the hill and walked down. (The walk back in the pitch black was a touch more interesting since the path is narrow at points and drops away very steeply!) Getting the white balance right to show the bridge color as it appears at the time is tricky. Auto analysis is not much use and there are few things that you can sample to give an accurate gray.

I have enjoyed night photography since I first started taking pictures. There is something quite peaceful about being out at night with your camera. However, this location probably doesn’t fit that mold. The place was busy the entire time. Meanwhile, I could watch numerous people taking pictures of themselves and the view struggling to understand why the camera “wasn’t working right”. I helped out a few but, after a while, I decided it was easier to just relax and let everyone do their thing. Without a tripod, there was only so much you could do to help.

Golden Gate Sunset Time Lapse

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After my buddy John had headed back into San Francisco, I had the choice to go home or to head back to the Marin Headlands to see whether I could get some shots across the Golden Gate to the city. The sunset was not too far off although the cloud levels looked like they might take away the best light. However, I figured the transition might make it worth a time lapse attempt.

I had come prepared with both a tripod and an intervalometer. As it turned out, I thought I had got this wrong when the intervalometer had dead batteries. However, I did have a backup plan with the Triggertrap iPhone app. (It turned out later that I had brought spare batteries with me for the intervalometer so I actually had more redundancy than I realized. However, I did manage to harm things a bit by nudging the tripod a couple of times when shooting so it didn’t all go well.

Even so, I did get a good set of shots to process. I was more conscious this time of having some spare footage before and after the sequence to make sure it didn’t have a sudden ending or one that cut off some aspect of motion. This ended up being the tour boats. They come out to the bridge and turn around. They provide some good motion in the sequence but also need to be complete or the eye is too aware of their sudden demise. Consequently, after shooting the sequence I wanted, I had to keep it running for a while in order to avoid the boat suddenly vanishing.

All of this was then processed in Lightroom and LRTimelapse, a program I have posted about before here.

Mt Tam in the Clouds

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My friend John from Chicago was out in San Francisco for the weekend and we arranged to get together for a walk up in the hills of Marin County. We headed to Mt Tamalpais to walk the trails there. The weather was not ideal with rain and low cloud when we set off but, as we got closer, the rain eased up, even if the cloud didn’t. Even so, it meant we were going to be okay to walk. What I hadn’t counted on was that I was going to warm up a lot as we walked and the uphill element of the second half of the walk was going to mean I was a touch overdressed! I was dry though.

I left the main camera in the car rather than lug it all around. However, I did have my phone and it was good for some shots. Also, I have been playing around with Photo Sphere from Google recently. I got a sphere while down in the woods. You can see it here. https://plus.google.com/u/0/104745382077938728957/photos/photo/6089868108315918482?pid=6089868108315918482&oid=104745382077938728957

When we got back to the car, we drove along the ridge above the valley where Muir Woods is located. The clouds were beginning to break up a little and the combination of the light and the clouds still on the hills looked great. I struggle to take what I see in those situations and turn it into a photograph but hopefully this gives you some idea of what was there. The dynamic range is one thing to deal with in processing but the feel is something harder to translate.

Calistoga

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During the summer I traveled to Clear Lake for the Splash In which I covered in this blog post. The drive back from that event took me through Calistoga. You descend from the hills to drop down in to the town. That evening, the sun was settings and the light on the hills was absolutely gorgeous. I resolved to go back at a later stage to check this out in more detail. Our Healdsburg trip had us up in Calistoga so I thought it would be worth a second look. Unfortunately, the weather was not too special and the rain was coming down.

We started up the road climbing as we went. The view back over the valley was pretty attractive and we climbed higher. Of course, it didn’t take too long to get high enough that we disappeared into the cloud base. From there it was just rain. We found the first good option and turned around to head back down. Then we stopped off at some of the overlooks to check out the valley.

The colors of the vines were very attractive and the geometry of the vineyards looked great. The hills in the background were also shrouded in low cloud and there was smoke rising from the fires in the buildings scattered across the low lands. While I did take some pictures – obviously since they are here – I did also just stand and enjoy the view for a while. It isn’t easy to appreciate the scale of a view from a photograph. Sometime I like to get the panorama shots just to have something that gives the width of the view. These are best when printed large so don’t translate well to the computer screen. However, they are always stored for possible future use.

Lifeboat Launch

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As a kid growing up by the sea in the UK, I had a fascination with lifeboats which remains to this day. For those of you not from the UK, the sea rescue service in the UK might come as a bit of a surprise. It is a charitable organization, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) formed in 1824 which has continued to this day to provide rescue services around the coast of the UK and The Republic of Ireland. The government has no role in its operations and it is entirely funded by donations. Various members of my family have been involved in fund raising and serving in the crews and I remain a member of the institution despite having left the UK over ten years ago.

The Isle of Wight, where I grew up, had two offshore lifeboats. Cowes, the town in which I lived for many years, is home to the Inshore Lifeboat Centre for the RNLI where they build the boats while Bembridge and Yarmouth both have boats. Yarmouth’s boat is permanently afloat in the harbor while Bembridge’s boat is housed in a boathouse at the end of a pier with a slipway direct into the water.

A few years ago we were in Bembridge for a family wedding. We took a trip down to Lane End where the lifeboat is based and we timed it well since they have a practice launch once a week. I wasn’t going to miss this.

I actually nearly blew the shot. We were on the shore waiting for the boat to come down the slip. I figured I should get as many shots as possible since I wasn’t going to get a second chance. As it happens, the boat goes down the slipway a bit more slowly than I had anticipated. I started firing as soon as I saw it. On the body I had in those days, the buffer wasn’t huge and I managed to fill it up. However, I did still get some shots as it entered the water.

Since that trip, the old boathouse and pier have been replaced with a new facility. I have a shot of it taken from the air. However, if we go back sometime soon, I would really like to set up something with the crew to get shots of the new boat launching from the new ramp. Ideally, I would like to shoot from a boat out at the end of the ramp. I would aim to have a second body mounted on the boathouse with Pocketwizards mounted on both to get simultaneous shots from two angles with both the side on splash and the overhead view of the boat entering the water. I have relatives who know members of the crew. Whether we can make anything happen I don’t know but it would be cool to do!

Apache at Dayton

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One display at Dayton that I liked was the US Army Apache display. I have seen a few displays by Apaches over the years but they are not a regular feature of shows. The Apache is an impressive looking machine and given its nature, it can be kept close in front of the crowd to make a display that never loses your interest. Service pilots don’t tend to put the machine through as aggressive a flight demo as a company pilot might when trying to sell it. However, they do still show it off well.

The subdued finish on the Apache makes for a harder time getting shots on overcast days. However, it does take away the problem of harsh shadows on an already dark airframe. The subtlety of the different greens on the airframe are hard to show in some cases but here they do actually become apparent.

Smoke Squadron

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I previously talked about the visit to the Vectren show at Dayton a few years ago. One of the more unusual acts to make it is a team that apparently has a track record of appearing at Dayton and that is the Brazilian team, Esquadrilha da Fumaça or Smoke Squadron. They are equipped with Embraer Tucano turboprop trainers and the performance characteristics of the Tucano make for a tight display in front of the crowd combined with good maneuverability for the formations and the individual aircraft.

The weather was not great with low cloud and flat lighting but the lower speed of the Tucano meant that a good display could be presented, even if vertical maneuvering was restricted. The formations were tight and some good configurations could be set up with the planes maneuvering around each other during passes. I was disappointed to see how few shots I had of some passes. Now I would have a lot more to choose from but I guess I spent less time shooting in those days.

I suspect a lot of people have not seen this team so I am posting a lot of different shots in here. I would certainly like to see them perform again at some point in the future. I shall have to see where they next appear in the US.

BAe 146 Demonstration at LCY

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In my youth I had one of the coolest jobs I have ever had. I spent a summer working for the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in London as part of their noise measuring unit. I spent a lot of time traveling to various different airfields to make noise measurements of the air traffic. I often took a camera along with me on these jaunts.

One trip was some weekend working – overtime! At that time, London City Airport was relatively new and was a turboprop only airport being served by Dash 7s, principally of Brymon Airways. Very different from its current role, it was still a relatively new airport with a shorter runway. There was a lot of interest in adding jet service to the airport with the BAe146 seen as the type that could meet the requirements of the glideslope as well as concerns about noise. This is where we come in!

A demonstration was set up one weekend with a couple of 146s operating from the airport. We were there to take some noise readings to compare them to the turboprops. (As an aside, I felt the noise from the Dash 7s was far more intrusive, even if the readings were actually lower than for the jets.) We went along with our noise measuring gear and took a bunch of readings. There was a period during the day when the flying wasn’t taking place and we were allowed to go to the airport to get fed. Since we had CAA passes, we also got to head on to the ramp.

These shots are what I got that day. Nothing too impressive as tends to be the case for my old stuff. The original scans showed up a lot of damage to the negatives which required much time in Photoshop to take out the worst of it. Still not the cleanest of images but a day that won’t be repeated which is enough to justify a post and a chance to share an old experience.