The Sky Was Pink

Tonight’s sunset was dominated by pink. Even clouds in the east benefited from the glow.

I sit right alongside one of the four windows in my office. I look to the right to get tipped off on the sunset. Some are spectacular.

Tonight’s was dominated by pink. Even clouds in the east benefited from the glow.

Here’s a sample of what I saw.

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Working On The Photos

Here’s the math: Approximately 6100 shot which lead to 165 making the final cut. That’s 2.7%. I took a lot of bad shots!

With my back giving me fits I’ve become one with the sofa in the family room. It’s where I’m spending all my waking hours. There’s a good view of the TV, but not much else productive you can easily do on your back or side. I know this because I spent a good part of last night and today wrangling vacation pictures from our Alaska cruise!

Here’s the math: Approximately 6100 shot which led to 165 making the final cut. That’s 2.7%. I took a lot of bad shots!

Each of the 165 got run through Photoshop. No shot leaves the camera perfect. They all need a little help. Sometimes it’s little things like contrast and sharpening. A significant percentage of the pictures need more.

I’ve removed spots from dust on my camera’s sensor, straightened the horizon where it was tilted, cropped, dodged and burned. In a few cases I’ve changed the relationship between the sky and clouds to eek out more detail.

This is very time consuming, but it’s an integral piece in turning a snapshot into a photograph.

There will be three ‘outputs’ from the trip.

  • Animated slideshow
  • Photo book
  • Large prints

I created the slideshow last night (the YouTube video at the bottom of this blog post). In the past I’ve used Animoto and was very happy with the result. This time I used Windows Live Movie Maker, the free video editing program built into Windows. It’s not particularly good nor particularly versatile.

The slideshow itself came out nicely, though it was a time consuming pain in the ass.

The photo book was also labor intensive! I began working on it last night by uploading each of the individual 16 megapixel photos. Today, with the photos online, I worked on putting the book together.

If you’ve never done one of these you should know they’re not difficult. Some sites even allow you to automate the entire process. You still get a book, but I don’t think they’re as good. The quality of your finished product is be reflective of the effort you’ve expended.

My book is 48 8″x8″ pages. Some pages have one photo while others have as many as four. They’re grouped together by geography. I can’t wait to see how it comes out.

A few years ago I stopped by Ikea and loaded up on large picture frames. I will print another five or six images to fill those. That should happen tomorrow.

Most of the time I take pictures they don’t get printed. If I did we’d have run out of walls years ago!

Finally Working On My Photos

I had a goal as today approached: Don’t leave the house. Mission accomplished!

I still haven’t recuperated from our Alaskan vacation! I’m sure my cold has something to do with it, but I just haven’t snapped back yet. Every day has has ended with me still exhausted.

I had a goal as today approached: Don’t leave the house. Mission accomplished!

I still haven’t recuperated from our Alaskan vacation! I’m sure my cold has something to do with it, but I just haven’t snapped back yet. Every day has has ended with me still exhausted.

There were still a few goals beyond remaining in pajamas. My Alaskan photos still needed attention.

Before leaving Connecticut I cleared out 100 gigabytes from my laptop’s hard drive. That should have been enough space, right? In a perfect world, yes, but hard drives need a little breathing room. You shouldn’t fill them to the brim.

I ended up using an old iPod I’d brought along as a backup drive! Ask me how scary it was to move the photos there while at sea and then erase the original photo files? Extremely! You can only pray it works.

Today the iPod and laptop’s drives were spooled off onto a 3 terabyte external drive I ordered from NewEgg before we left ($129 including shipping for 3,000,579,911,680 bytes of storage). Nearly three hours just to move the files!

I shot over 6,100 photos in Alaska. It’s less than you think. I shot with reckless abandon. Often the ‘motor drive’ function kicked in. That’s eight shots a second while hoping a whale would flaps his tail or an eagle take to the sky. Most aren’t worth saving.

In Canon’s RAW format that’s 72.3 gigabytes.

My job is to go through each photo day-by-day choosing the best. That’s harder than it seems. I’m hoping to hang onto fewer than 200 shots from the nine days we were away.

Here are the ‘best of’ shots from our whale watching trip out of Juneau. Tomorrow I’ll try and finish the rest and finally post a blog entry from our day in Seattle.

Doppler’s Latest Photoshoot

I appreciate that you indulge me and look at the photos I take. Photography is satisfying to me. Maybe I’m a little obsessive.

Having Doppler has greatly increased my photo ops. She’s always available!

I took the photos posted here this afternoon and tonight.

I appreciate that you indulge me and look at the photos I take. Photography is satisfying to me. Maybe I’m a little obsessive.

Having Doppler has greatly increased my photo ops. She’s always available!

I took the photos posted here this afternoon and tonight.

Helaine had just made the bed. Doppler was relaxing on it. The sky was dull gray, but bright enough to fill the room with soft light.

All these shots have shallow depth-of-field. That makes what’s in focus pop. The background is very soft and blurry.

The files I work with are immense. Each photo produces a file around 25mb! Everything has to go through Bridge then Photoshop before it’s ready to be posted.

Fifteen shots this afternoon. Four shots tonight. Here are the three keepers.

The Secret To My Doppler Photos

Helaine and I were sitting watching football tonight. Doppler was next to me on the sofa. “That’s what you wanted,” Helaine began, “a stuffed animal.”

Helaine and I were sitting watching football tonight. Doppler was next to me on the sofa. “That’s what you wanted,” Helaine began, “a stuffed animal.”

Correct.

Doppler’s laid back disposition is fine with me. The dog and we are still being molded by each other.

There are lots of Doppler photos on the blog. I like photography and especially dog photography.

Dogs look much more expressive if you shoot them correctly.

The photos in this entry were shot on my cellphone. Technique is more important than equipment.

Here’s the most important thing to remember. You’ve got to get down!

Shooting Doppler on the sofa is my little height crutch. Most times I just lie on the floor to get my shot. The camera is always low.

I Took Clicky To My Favorite Place At FoxCT (photos)

This is not a dainty job. It’s staffed by hard working people who get dirty! They must stay focused. The equipment doesn’t forgive mistakes.

We don’t just produce television where I work. We publish a newspaper, The Hartford Courant. The whole shooting match is done in our building, right down to printing the paper.

Saturday, during a lull in my hurricane tracking duties I went to the presses. They are three stories tall! Powerful. Loud. Massive.

In a typical week well over a million papers run through those presses. On a typical day it’s millions of pages.

This is not a dainty job. It’s staffed by hard working people who get dirty! They must stay focused. The equipment doesn’t forgive mistakes.

Take a close look at the facility. Beautifully maintained. Spotless. A lot of pride on display.

Here’s a little of what I saw.

4th Of July Fireworks Photos

These shots were taken from an athletic field at the Foote School in New Haven.

I enjoy seeing fireworks and, since I now seem to be totally obsessed as a photographer, I also enjoy shooting fireworks.

“It’s not the same,” said Helaine when I came back from shooting the New Haven fireworks. “It doesn’t have the same excitement.”

She’s right (as usual). A still photo will never bring the oohs and ahs you hear from the live crowd.

On my drive home I was thinking this is a technical exercise more than anything. You never really know what’s going to be in the frame during the 5, 10 or even 20 seconds you’ve got the shutter open! The only thing a photographer must/can scope out is the shutter speed, aperture, ISO, lens focal length.

These shots were taken from an athletic field at the Foote School in New Haven. I used a Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 lens and varied my shots from 70mm all the way to 200mm. I was far enough from the fireworks that this was a near perfect lens choice lens.

The view was good but there were some trees that blocked a little of the action.

Click any photo for a larger view.