A moonlit night - 6/17/18

Around the middle of June marks a very important point to me. Firstly it is my birthday and I was turning 27. Not that I hold any significance to that, but it was an excuse. I had enough vacation time and was beyond fed up enough with work to take off a week straight over the week of my birthday. Typically I would try and save up my vacation time to take off a week at a time. I preferred it that way. Even if some people (dave) said that’s too much time at once. And for whatever illogical reason tries to count the weekends as days off. So instead of taking 5 vacation days, it was both weekends and I was getting 9 days off.

I don’t see it that way.

But what happened and made this vacation different was that I was taking off just for me. We didn’t have a trip planned. I just wanted to take off from work and do what I felt like. Which turned out to be a good bit of video games and watching streaming services. I also remember putting together a puzzle that I then framed and is hanging on the wall currently. A really nice puzzle from one of my favorite book series, Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss.

Almost sad how badly I wanted to escape from that workplace. But leaving there was the best thing I ever did, twice. I don’t get off work and feel completely drained to the point where I don’t want to explore any hobbies. Sometimes I would come home from work and just lie in bed mindlessly browsing the internet until I got hungry enough to go cook dinner. What kind of an existence is that, you spend the majority of each day, and each week. At a place where you’re unhappy. To come home and let it effect your home life and make you unhappy. So you perpetuate the cycle of unhappy. I’ve been at a different job now for almost a year, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. The collective 6 years I spent at that last company really taught me a lot. And I’m using that as a reference for what I should never put up with again. No amount of money is worth it.

(the funny thing about life is. It’s all random. I don’t believe in fate, or destiny. Not karma or that saying something can jinx something else. But I’m writing this part here later in the day, this morning I wrote that above paragraph. Since then my currently job suddenly ended. First thing this morning we had a company wide meeting where the owner announced we were liquidated and closed effective immediately. 25+ people out of a job just like that. It would appear that I’m heading back to the previously trash talked job. Although on a temporary basis, as I will continue to seek new employment. I am grateful that I even have the opportunity to come back, it would be quite difficult to continue paying bills without it. So, funny enough. No amount of money is worth it, is exactly what I’m heading back to. Because some amount of money is needed so I can continue to function. I can only hope for another job offer quickly)

But back a few years ago, a week off vacation was a nice little break from the monotony and misery. And as I mentioned, photography happened.

It was the first real experience I had with just grabbing my camera and going out somewhere. Without a goal or purpose specifically in mind. I didn’t make it too far the first night, just out to the empty parking lot in the shopping center that is right in front of my apartment. But I went at night, so I could see the moon and try to take pictures. Armed with only a tripod, trigger release, and the 75-300mm. I’ll save you the images I’m looking at now, the fix few… well more than half. Didn’t come out. Night photography is tricky, long exposure and manual focus is tricky.

Canon T3i w/ 75-300mm - 10 Sec - F5.6 - 300mm - ISO 200

There’s a good amount of shots like this.

Canon T3i - 18-55mm - 1/2 Sec - F6.3 - 18mm - ISO 6400

I think I put one of the weird wide angle macro attachment things onto my kit lens. The one that is basically just extra glass that you screw in like a filter. If nothing else it does add some interesting lens flare.

Canon T3i w/ 18-55mm kit lens - 1/30 Sec - F3.5 - 18mm - ISO 1600

That’s about it really. Not too much of a lesson here, just me out playing around with my camera in a parking lot late at night. If you want to take something away from this, not every time you press the shutter button are you going to nail it. It takes time and a lot of practice. But it would be pretty boring if I only shared my successes and not the failures that got me there.

WHERE ARE THE TURTLES?!?! - 6/1/18

Around the beginning of June I brought my camera and new telephoto lens to the local park. After a recent trip there revealed to me there were a large number of turtles living in the little pond there. My girlfriend and I had been playing Pokemon Go at this park when we had a seat by the pond and soon noticed the turtles swarming.

I mean 5-10 turtles all coming right up to the edge of the water expecting us to feed them. So when we went back we looked up what kind of foods are okay to feed turtles, brought a variety and I started taking pictures. Some things I didn’t think about beforehand. It was very overcast and not a bright day. I didn’t know what I was doing in manual mode yet. And the majority of people don’t look up what food is safe to give a turtle, so they spoil them on bread and crackers, etc.

Therefore when presented with nice fresh veggies, they really didn’t care for them.

Looking back over these images there are several things I would do differently. Like a different time of day so there is better light. A CPL filter for the water reflection. Using autofocus. For some reason I decided I needed to do this entire thing in manual focus, and so almost all of these images are out of focus. I also hadn’t learned about the diopter for the viewfinder. Two things that need to go hand in hand.

Canon T3i w/ 75-300mm - 1/200 Sec - F5.6 - 240mm - ISO 6400

Canon T3i w/ 75-300mm - 1/60 Sec - F5.6 - 75mm - ISO 5000

As you can see, the camera needed to crank the ISO all the way up. Making for some really grainy images. But after playing around with it for a bit, I must have switched it to an auto mode. Which decided to pop the flash up, I took two pictures that I’ll put below. But I actually hate that I did that, I would never use a flash now on a wild animal. I just think it’s unnecessary and disturbing them too much. They aren’t asking for their picture to be taken, and if I can’t take a good picture without disturbing them in some way, oh well. It wasn’t meant to be and I’ll have to try again some other time.

Canon T3i w/ 75-300mm - 1/60 Sec - F5.6 - 300mm - ISO 400

Canon T3i w/ 75-300mm - 1/60 Sec - F5.6 - 300mm - ISO 400

Lessons learned all around. Although the turtles didn’t seem interested in the food we were offering, they still nibbled at it and gathered around for us.

Another thing this pond had was a little water spray, and after a few trial and error pictures like this one.

Canon T3i w/ 75-300mm - 1/60 Sec - F10 - 75mm - ISO 6400

I figured out how to get the shot I wanted, where I could freeze the water motion. A faster shutter and a smaller depth of field. Which produced this next image.

Canon T3i w/ 75-300mm - 1/800 Sec - F4.5 - 120mm - ISO 6400

I’d still like to go back here at some point and get another shot during much better lighting so the ISO doesn’t need to be so high. I do very much enjoy shooting water, it’s fascinating in two types of shots. Longer exposure where it all flows as one unit, and faster where you can see the individual droplets. I think I do have more images of this specfiic water spout at this park, it’s a little hard to remember as I’ve been there countless times over the last two years. Not sure if I ever went back with a tripod to get the longer exposure.

But I do have one last image to share from this day, it was on the walk back to the car. The sky was absolutely gorgeous.

Canon T3i with 18-55 - 1/100 Sec - F5.6 - 55mm - ISO 1600

Hard to beat a sunset like that. Vary rarely have I see one with such a nice gradient of color.

NC trip - 5/11/18

As I mentioned in the previous post, some of my family members and I all chipped in to purchase a DSLR for my dad’s birthday. He had been asking for one for quite some time, but as my family is usually broke all of the time. It took me chipping in about half the cost while everyone else gave what they could. But he really did want one, he had always wanted a camera. Which is why he owns at least 2 film cameras.

I remember him going all in to buy a film camera, lens and filters for a Florida vacation one year. The idea was to take pictures of the turtles that came up to lay their eggs overnight. I have no idea if those came out, I remember him keeping rolls of undeveloped film in the freezer for a long time after that. I also have no idea if that helps keep them… fresh…

But anyway, we finally got it for him. And a few years later he takes pictures, occasionally. Retirement is a slow moving process. But I was very impressed that he went to take a class at the local community college. He would tell me all about the things he was learning and show me the pictures he would take. But that is jumping ahead by almost a year. First the trip where I dropped it off to him.

(He knew what the gift was ahead of time, he specifically asked for it at Christmas. But here he is pretending)

Let’s see what I can spy in the box that the bundle came in.

That Tamron 28-80mm was not the lens in that box, that had the telephoto I was giving back to him. And as I previously learned it was at least 210mm on the far end, by looking over previous pictures. But everything else in there I believe came with the kit. I see a memory card reader, little cheap hotshoe flash. Memory card, filters of varying kinds and colors. Basically really cheap crappy stuff they the FBA sellers bundle with the main item so they can create their own listing that Amazon can’t get on. As I now work with a very large FBA selling business, I’ve learned these things during my employment.

So we had a day of camera learning and I took some pictures of different stuff while I was up there. Like our dog Falcor.

1/200 Sec - F5.6 - 300mm - ISO 3200

Also that night I did some long exposure attempts using my dads new tripod and a manual shutter release. Up in the mountain of NC the sky is way easier to see than the polluted garbage sky of Atlanta.

30 Sec - F3.5 - 18mm - ISO 6400

I also took a shot of the sun setting behind the trees from my dads driveway

1/250 Sec - F4 - 18mm - ISO 100

1/80 Sec - F5.6 - 55mm - ISO 500

And this was me playing around with the camera on the porch while I was waiting for him to get ready to go out for dinner. I think they had a bag of rocks there for a garden project and I stuck my lens down in.