Smokies Photo Blog and Musing

Last week I finally got the Kayak out on the lake to do some bird shots. Although it was more of a trial run for the Kayak (making sure everything is ship shape), and the car, (Seeing if the kayak would fit on the car).

Need a bigger boat!

So I lucked into a nice day, although it may have been too nice, very bright out and unseasonably warm by the time to the lake. At least I didn’t have any storms to face that day though. So after working out mounting the kayak on the car, I headed for Douglas Lake. Actually it was on the Pigeon River near where it meets the French Broad River, kind of the beginning of the lake.

I got to the lake and got the kayak into the water about 11am. Pretty bright by that time, and I took the little camera for this outing. I still have to work out a dry system for the larger camera to fit the kayak. But this area is a wetlands area and a little bit of a preserve so the birds were abundant. Herons, Osprey, Ducks, Geese, Anhingas, and many more were out in numbers, along with a couple eagles.

Bright Sunny Day

The kayak is great for its stability. None of the worries of leaning to far that you get in a canoe, but in the end you are shooting from a boat that is moving, albeit slowly, from a sitting position. So stabilizing the camera was challenge, even for the small and light Panasonic FZ50 I was using.  I chose this camera as a small fixed lens camera I could keep in the car for mostly landscape shooting. It does okay for that with a nice 28 – 400 35mm equivalent Ziess lens, but I did find myself missing the big rig on this excursion. In order to try to avoid motion blur from the kayak and bird movement, I used an iso 400, which when combined with the maximum zoom produced quite a bit of noise in the images. Also the write speed of the camera is pretty slow, with little buffer, so a lot of images were missed waiting for the camera to write to the sd card, but this mainly a day to play to anyway. I plan to go back with the big rig next week weather permitting, and try to get some serious shots.

The kayak was excellent for getting close to the birds without spooking them too much. Herons are always a challenge of course, but with some quiet drifting I was able to get into position to get some pretty decent shots with a few of the more tolerant herons.

Heron on a log

Another heron another log

Of course many were spooked as well, so I got a little practice at takeoffs.

At this point I must through a plug for Lightroom 4. I was very impressed with its ability to clean up noise on these shots. These are pretty severe crops on a 10 mp point and shoot, so all things considered I’ll take em.

In Flight

Takeoff

The osprey were in abundance. There are a number of nest in the area in old dead trees, a silo, and an old railroad bridge. So there is a lot of opportunity for flight shots, and nest shots if you can get a good angle. Hard to shoot sitting down in kayak, but a great place to try.

Through in a few gossiping geese and all in all, it was a fun day. I can’t wait to get back out there with the bigger rig at a better hour of the day.  While the little camera did a pretty good job, I know I can do a lot better with a rig better designed for this kind of shooting.

Gossip corner

.

You are only as smart as your actions

Bc Hannold

.

Mowing

I set upon that summer weekly ritual,

Mounting my steed, roaring to life with a sputter of protest.

Whirling steel blades reducing my lawn to the earthy smell of fresh cut grass.

Mindlessly, I repeat the pattern of rectangles, circles and swirls,

Enjoying the overcast sky, restraining the brutality of the summer sun.

A spit of rain, splashes, and is gone. Ah, a relieving oasis on this summer morn.

Around the house, and down the yard toward the garden,

With purple martins clearing the way , as mustangs escorting bombers over Germany.

Swooping and diving, a midair dance clearing the way of insects stirred by the whirling blades.

Bouncing and bounding over the lawn, a somber moment as I trim around Izzy,

My faithful companion for 15 years, missing the fun times and unconditional love.

A bridge between my first life and this one, wondering if she is playing with Nadine,

Who left this earth for a better place. A bridge between Nadine and Lois my current wife.

And I am reminded of all the wonders that I have received, and joy returns with a thankful heart at all I have today.

Each and every person is a singularity

Each person is unique on this planet, and in the eyes of our higher power.

But when we celebrate our differences we stand alone.

When we celebrate our similarities we stand as a community.

If we view another person in light of our differences, then we will stand apart from that person.

If we view another person in light of our sameness, then we will stand together with that person.

So we should decide first how we want to relate to someone, before we decide how to view them.

Fear divides, compassion unites.



The greatest wisdom is to apply what others have learned.

Who among us can learn everything? Have we the time? The ability?

In almost everything we do or use throughout the day, we depend on the knowledge of others. Who has time to build the car before they drive to work? Who will invent electricity before work so they can have coffee. Our modern lives are totally dependent on the experience of others.

Yet where it matters most, we deny the experience of others. We insist we must burn our own hands to learn the stove is hot, and sometimes we must burn it many times before we learn. To be able to bring the experience of those before us into our personal lives can be our greatest wealth. Why will we spend thousands of dollars and thousands of hours to learn the theorems and paradigms of faceless others, while we scorn the experience of those around us because we believe we are different, we are special.

When last we flew, did we ponder what sort of man Bernoulli was? Whether he was qualified to decide that wings would lift? Why will we trust our lives to a mystic theory of fluid dynamics, yet in the same day deny the experience of those around us when it affects our personal lives, our feelings, our emotions, our morals, and our judgment.

When we refuse the wisdom of those before us, we remain as school children. Forever touching the stove to see if it is hot. It was when we can trust the emotional wisdom of others that we can grow as adults. Using this experience we can grow exponentially. We no longer have to hurt to learn.

It is a weak faith indeed that fears man for God.

When one fears that man can infringe on God’s domain, he must think his god weak indeed. If another faith can instill fear in a man, can that man’s faith be strong? It must be a weak god indeed, if a man must live fear of another man’s god. Through faith comes strength and courage. From strength and courage comes love and compassion. Will my faith today be strong enough to show my fellow man compassion?

What me photoshop?????? Never….

Surely you jest, you say. And I do. Couldn’t resist having a little fun with the “SuperMoon” this weekend.  This is a composite shot from my backyard and the Fox Memorial tower across the street.

Super Moon Over the Fox Memorial Tower

It loses a little in the translation to jpg, should be a little brighter. But you get the idea. With all the hype about the super moon this weekend I had to get out. Although it looked like the clouds were going to sock it in, they managed to clear enough around 10pm to get a little shooting in.  So how do you shoot a shot like this? Beats me, I couldn’t do it. So its obviously a composite of two shots that I threw together.

So first the moon. Shot from my back porch with a Canon 1DS Mark II, 100-400 Zoom @ 400 mm with a tamaron 2x teleconverter.  Shot at 1/100 @ f16 w iso 400. Then in lightroom I added a little contrast to make it pop a bit more.

SuperMoon From Backyard

Next in Photoshop I cut out the moon by selecting the dark background, inverting the selection, refining the edge a little and then copy. Whala! I have a moon.

The next step is to shoot the tower. After shooting the moon from the back yard I headed across the street to shoot images of the tower with the moon in the background. Mostly silhouettes, with the moon above the top of the tower. I didn’t get any shots that knocked my socks off, but of course I remembered to do some playing while I was shooting, so I came up with following shot of the tower.

Fox Tower By Moonlight

This was shot using a Canon 1DS Mark II, 100-400 Zoom @ 160 mm .  Shot at 30 sec @ f13 w ISO 1000. The bright area is the moon moving through the clouds during the 30 second exposure. I also lit the tower using the LED headlamp I was using. I rather like the muted look and the soft sky due to the motion blur. So its a simple matter of pasting the moon into this image after I cleaned up the branches on the left and straightend the tower. Amazing the focus looks okay even though I could not see the tower to focus while setting up the shot, just the silhouette.

So, all in all, a different shot that was pretty easy to do. I didn’t want to spend too much time with it because I knew that it would not be a natural looking shot. This was more for fun than anything else. Although I may play with it a little more to see what  other fun I can create. But the important thing is I got a little practice shooting at night, instead of watching it from the couch.

Here are a couple more untouched shots. The challenge is getting a crisp shot of the moon, while having a long enough exposure to get a crisp silhoutte of the tower. The obvious solution would be to light the tower sufficiently to get the desired shot. But I didn’t have a good light me to be able to do that. And the moon was moving far to fast for the long exposures necessary for a striking silhouette. Again the jpg’s are quite a bit darker than the origionals

Moon Over Fox Silhouette

Soft Moon Over Fox

Keep on Klikin!

Okay, so I made the same mistake today. I took a shower. Fully knowing that when I get into the shower I have no control over the meanderings of my mind. By the time I get out, I never know where I might be.

So today the end point was “All of life is a Schroedinger’s cat. For those not familiar with the thought experiment, Schroedinger places a cat in a box, under certain chance conditions where the cat may or may be killed by a device in the box. The device is activated by a certain random condition. You could almost substitute a flip of a coin. Heads, the device activates and kills the cat, tails nothing happens. He theorizes that at one point the cat is both alive and dead simultaneously. It is not until we open the box and look at the cat , that the cat becomes either alive or dead. So? What does that have to do with the price of gasoline? It turns, out everything!

We are constantly bombarded with events throughout the day. Good things happen, bad things happen, and things we don’t care about happen. When things do not go the way we want or expect, we feel like we are losing control of our lives. When this happens often enough, or with events that we really care about, it can become disproportionately overwhelming. There are a host of problems that can occur when we focus on the negative aspects of our lives, including stress, depression, fear, paranoia, destructive behavior, addictions, etc, etc. Put simply we let these events interfere with our happiness. Who wants to slog through life every day, as if we are just waiting for simple release of nothingness. What’s the point?

The truth is, events are not good or bad, they are simply events. The event has no design on you, it simply occurs. It is only when we look at the events, that we judge them good or bad. If you take an event and put it in a box and give the box to someone else, and tell them that there is an event inside, they will not be able to tell you whether it is a good event or a bad event. It is only when they open the box and judge the event, that it becomes good or bad. And it will only be good or bad to the person judging the event. To some the event will good. To some the event will be bad. Some will open the box and find the cat is alive. Some will find it is dead. So again, whats the point?

The point is, that knowing that an event is neither good or bad means knowing that we now have a choice. We can choose to view the event as good or bad. We can decide before or after we open the box whether the cat is dead or alive. We can even choose to bring the cat back to life so to speak, and all it takes to perform this miracle is to believe it. Sounds good. So all it takes is a little belief. And everything that occurs in my life is good. Exactly. I also have some land in south Florida for sale.

Ponder this for a moment. “Some of the best things that have ever happened to me, are the worst things that ever happened to me.” Sounds like dribble to me. Except for one problem. Its true. Every single disastrous event that has occurred in my life, has conspired to place me in this location, at this time, in this state of mind, for which I am truly grateful! Of course so have the so called “good events”. So how I got here today depends not on whether the event was good or bad, but rather on the amount of impact it had on my life. Although it is important to keep in mind that the sum of the multitude of minuscule events in my life is much greater than the sum of the greater events in my life. More on that later. But it is easier for me to look back at the greater events of my life and see how what I thought was bad, really wasn’t. The truth is, most events are both good and bad, when I use hindsight to examine them.

I agree, sounds like more dribble. So lets look at an example. My first wife, who I loved very much, was diagnosed with cancer. We had been together for nearly a quarter century. Subsequently, 13 months later she died from the disease. Who in their right mind could possibly consider this a good event. I certainly didn’t. I had no idea what life afterward would look like. But I went on. I found support, and I went through the grieving process in accordance with the textbooks and I survived. In reality I did much more than survive. I have a friend in Chicago who was constantly promoting the value of the book “The Language of Letting Go” by Melody Beattie. So finally I picked up a copy. I got home, opened it up and found that it was a daily meditation book. Oh great I thought, I already have 3 I read every morning, with this one I may never make it out of the bathroom. So anyway I decided to flip through it and see what it was about. While flipping, I landed on a page about acceptance. What I took from that page was something like “In order to truly accept something, you have to be grateful for that thing”. I thought, Oh great, my wife died four months ago, what the hell do I have to be grateful for? So I thought about it. I began to realize what I had to be grateful for. And looking today there is far more that I have to be grateful for. My wife’s unwavering faith throughout her illness taught me what true faith is about. Until then I had only a castaway’s desperate grip on faith. My bond with our kids grew stronger than ever before. My bond with the rest of my family grew stronger. My finances improved. And these where all short term results. Over the long term, I changed careers, met my new wife, moved to a new location, etc,etc. So I learned to have gratitude. Even for my wife dying. Does that sound backwards or what? But the simple truth is, it worked. This is only one example of the number of seemingly “disastrous” events that have positively shaped my life. Much of what I consider “good” today, would not be possible without the trials and tribulations that I had to pass through. So today, when an “event” happens in my life, I try to realize that it is neither good, nor bad, it simply is. And for each event I have the choice of making it good or bad, or neither. I wish that this was always my natural inclination, but I’m human. So sometimes it takes me a while. I have to constantly work at it. But this realization enables me to wake up each morning, not in a state of despair for my current condition, but rather a state of hope for what is to come.

So today I have a choice. Will I kill the cat, or keep it alive? Or both?

A great many men will strive to achieve much,

It is the wise man who will strive to achieve a little.

Bc Hannold

An ounce of willingness is worth a pound of brains.

or

All the brains in the world wont do you any good if you just sit on them.

Pun intended