Phoadtography

Feb122011

Phoadtography: Vegas and Zion Trip 11/2010 Pt 3 of 3

Hunger gnawing away the insides, thirst becoming unbearable, sleep deprivation making it nearly impossible to see, fatigue making it difficult to type, but muuusst … get .. . throuuuugh last part of Phoadtography post.  Just kidding, it isn’t really that much work, but thinking a Twinkie would really hit the spot right now.  This is the third and final set of phoadtography shots from last year’s Thanksgiving vacation.  Linda and I have been requested not to plan any vacations yet due to some corporate negotiations that are in flight, but hopefully we’ll be out on the road again very soon.  For now, enjoy this final set which appear to come mostly from the Vegas area.

Since we had to rent a vehicle to get up to Zion anyway, we decided to reserve it a few days early and take in some sites near Vegas.  First on the agenda was to check out Hoover Dam and the lake that resulted from the dam construction.  After a long slow trudge through traffic, we finally arrived at the lake.  The bad news is it was unseasonably cold the week we were there (in the mid 30’s for some of the days) so we did not spend a lot of time outside.

Instead, we decided to take the scenic drive and experience it from the car.  It is definitely a nice lake, but there really isn’t much to look at on the coastlines.  Most disappointing was the utter lack of wildlife beyond a few ducks scattered about.

Although we are pretty much burned out on the Luxor having stayed there so many times, it is rare when we actually get to see the front of the casino.  I snapped this as we drove by and it turned out pretty crisp.  For those not familiar with this casino, it has a light on top that can be seen from space and their elevators are actually called inclinators because they travel up the insides of the pyramid corners.  If you want a good physics exercise, try figuring out how they keep the inclinators level so you are not tossed all over the place as you ascend up to your floor.  It is a shame they have essentially removed just about all their Egyptian themed interior decor in place of annoying modern day club-style bars and nightclubs.

Hit the jump to see the rest of this Phoadtography set!

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Feb082011

Phoadtography: Vegas and Zion Trip 11/2010 Pt 2 of 3

It’s quiz time.  What has over 70 pictures, comes in three parts and has the ability to completely clean out your browser’s cache of all that pr0n you’ve been wasting your web time on?  Okay, that was an easy one.  Yes, I’m back with the second installment of the Las Vegas and Zion Phoadtography post.  Unlike last time, none of these are wall worthy which means they generally fall into the category of things that make you go “Huh?”.  I like to get the most out of my vacations and finding those interesting pearls puts the cherry on top.  Now that the Smugmug picture links have been captured, let’s not waste anymore time and get right to this set.

Linda and I stumbled onto this sign just before entering the Zion National Park.  Having to leave the children at home to go on vacations is always tough but I am sure they enjoy the Doggy Spa at the grandparents.  Maybe next time we head out to this park we’ll see if they want to come along – although if they find out they have to work on a ranch their pampered paws will carry them right back home.

It is no secret Linda and I enjoy vacationing in Vegas.  For two people watchers, that place is like steroids for the eyes.  Even with all our trips, the first time we ever saw the Welcome to Vegas sign was a couple of years ago at Linda’s niece’s wedding.  Their party bus took us out there so they could get some pictures under it.  Well, this year was the first time we got to see the downtown Leaving Las Vegas sign.  Our lives are now officially complete.

Hit the jump to see a bunch more Phoadtography pictures!

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Feb032011

Phoadtography: Vegas and Zion Trip 11/2010 Pt 1 of 3

Guess what?… nope, guess again?  nope.. one more try?  Close, but the right answer is “it’s time for another Phoadtography post.”  Actually it is sometimes affectionately called a photo-bomb which is pretty accurate with this particular set since it requires 3 full posts to get through.  This series is brought to you via our Las Vegas and Zion trip we took over Thanksgiving last year.  That equates to two very photographic locations coupled with a road commute between them.  Translated, lots of Phoadtography opportunities.    For those of you who may be new to the blog, here are some guidelines I posted previously regarding one of my favorite means to pass the time trapped in the car.   Let’s jump right into the set!

Figured I would start with a quick sign shot.  That and I wanted to get a bad picture out of the way before getting into the good ones.  Clearly this one is not up to par in the Phoadtography quality scale.  The camera tilt is over 5 degrees and the trigger finger was a little quick on the draw.  However, at least I knew where I was on the camera card.

I’ll balance the previous shot with probably my favorite of the whole set.  This is primarily due to spotting the opportunity and patiently waiting for the perfect moment to take the shot.  It required taking into account the direction of the road and relationship to the fixed structure on top of the rock.  I have no idea what it is (maybe a weather satellite or cell tower).  With the clever alignment it really looks more like a deathray!

Hit the jump to see a lot more of the pictures!

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Dec282010

Phoadtography Gallery: Maine Trip 2010 Pt 2

Time to close out this year’s posts.  With only the remaining year end summary left, this post essentially puts the finishing touches on the 2010 blog entries.  As with Part I of this Phoadtography Gallery this set comes with a healthy dose of photos as well.  The good news is this closes out all the road shots from the Maine trip allowing me to start fresh with the new year.  Unfortunately, I was unable to get through all the Maine photos (off the road) and now even farther behind with the recent Vegas/Mt Zion trip we took a month ago.   Oh well, plenty in the hopper for 2011 (should I choose to continue this activity for next year). Time’s a wasting, let’s get to the shots.

This should not be a surprise, but I have an affinity towards bridges.  The exact reason is difficult to tell since it is difficult to pin down exactly when I started admiring these structures.  Having built one now, this appreciation has definitely increased.  If pressed, I’d have to say that the fusion of artistic characteristics and functional purpose entwined in physics and math is the compelling factor.  This might be similar to some people’s fascination with sundials seeing how ornate and complex those functional timepieces can be.  This particular bridge has all of the classic features of bridge with its arches, triangles (notice the vertical beams are not straight up and down) and the cross hatch underneath to keep it rigid.  With the height of this beast, there are probably large ships traversing this waterway.

This particular bridge still confuses me in the sense I am unable to figure out the functional component.  It appears to go absolutely nowhere and the railing on the end suggests there was no plan for it to go anywhere.  The metal structure towards the middle of the bridge is interesting as well.  First thought was it rotated in some manner and connected up to another span allowing for easy traversal of the waterway.  This sounds good in theory, but there did not seem to be a pivot point or any span to hook up to.  It is a mystery and if anyone is near 194.75 and knows anything about this, please leave a comment.

Hit the jump to see the rest of the Phoadtography gallery.

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Dec232010

Phoadtography Gallery: Maine Trip 2010 Pt 1

This year is quickly coming to a close, but the blog queue is still deep with 2010 photo collections.  I try to keep it fresh and maintain a balance of photos, interesting viewpoints, service complaints/rants and things that make me go huh?  Linda and I were lucky enough to go on some pretty nice trips this year which means our hard drives have been riddled with photos this year.  It is far easier to make comments on things if they are still in short term memory so rather than push this off to next year, let’s go ahead and dump the Phoadtography collection from the Maine trip we took in June.  There are a lot of them so be warned, your browser cache is going to get a workout.  For sanity purposes (yours and mine) this post will actually be a two parter.  For those who don’t know what Phoadtography is please check out my previous post… especially if you are preparing to unleash your fury on how bad some of these shots ended up being.

Starting off this set is every kid’s favorite toys and more importantly, the machines that pay both our salaries.  Guessing due to the stimulus money (that actually got spent on job creating projects), we encountered a lot of construction on our way out and back to Maine.  Most travelers probably cuss the slow downs and stoppages, but in the case of my wife and I the sound of Caterpillar machines in motion is music to our ears.  As mentioned in the introduction Cat machines are always a good target for Phoadtography shots.  This vehicle is one of our articulated trucks that, if I remember correctly, are produced in Waco TX.

Pretty cool machine if I say so myself.  Hit the jump to see the rest of the pictures in this post.

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Nov282010

Introducing Phoadtography

It is going to be a struggle to make my blog quota for this month.  I only have one to go after today’s entry, but currently in the midst of something that is limiting my access to the Internet which quite frankly is a pretty important component to blogging.  I will try my best, but the Life Intrigued Complaint Department might get a little busy on Dec 1st.  I did want to pull away from my current activities and introduce you to one of my new favorite pastimes (and provide a lead-in to some future posts).  Let’s get right to the topic shall we?  I would like to introduce you to:

PHOADTOGRAPHY: The fun activity of taking photographs of various interesting subjects while cruising down the road usually at a high rate of speed.  This pastime can be performed by anyone in the vehicle except the driver and only requires a digital camera with high shutter speeds and/or high ISO capabilities.

Pretty clever eh, combining two nouns representing the two key components of the activity and forming a new word.  Okay, admittedly it is kind of lame, but there is one key aspect of this …. no one has taken it (yep, I checked Google) which means it is ALL MINE (true to copyright rules, the act of putting this concept out for public consumption today makes me the rights holder!).  Note, the name is unique, but others already have galleries out there with snaps from the road … I just have a new not-so-clever name for it.

As a little background, I have been twiddling around with this for a number of years in a desperate attempt to put some fun into long vacation rides. It really started by trying to take pictures of various state signs as I crossed the borders.  This had a side benefit of putting a place holder in my digital image cards so I knew at least what state I was in when a group of pictures was taken.  It then evolved into a little game trying to get the sign centered on the frame as I flew by at 65+ mph.  From there it evolved into trying to capture other interesting things discovered in our cross-country jaunts.  Due to some inner ear issues, my wife prefers to stay off of planes as much as possible, so our vacations tend to have a lot of car travel in them, giving me plenty of time to hone my craft.

Every activity is a little more exciting if you are trying to reach some kind of achievement/goal.  In the process of refining phoadtography, I have set a context (guidelines if you will) that hopefully make this a little more entertaining and potentially more challenging to boot.

Rule #1: A little blur is okay, a lot of blur is not:  Clearly it is going to be hard to get anything really tack sharp when you are shooting from inside a car traveling down the road.  Not only do you have the motion of the vehicle to worry about, you are often shooting through a window, typically spotting subjects, focusing and snapping in under 2 seconds and with all that trying to compose around other moving objects.  Do your best and I highly recommend fast glass.  My preferred glass is a Nikon 2.8 end to end zoom

Rule #2: Grain is the name of the game:  There is really no way around it unless you want to take a mortgage out on your house to buy the mega-glass and if you are like me, that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.  To compensate, you have to jack up the ISO to help freeze the image and we should all know by now what that does to the overall quality of the image… GRAIN.  Learn to love it and at worst case, employ a little noise cleanup software (the new Lightroom 3 does a pretty awesome job by the way).  On the highway on sunny days, my ISO is usually set on 1600, but off the highway it can go down to 800 without issue.  This changes during the day which just adds to the challenge.

Rule #3: Horizontal trumps Vertical:  When you are at a shoot with your tripods at the ready and your assistants fluttering about, composition separates the men from the boys (and of course the equipment bank account).  On the road, it is a different story.  If you have time to compose, you are probably holding up traffic.  Instead, the task is horizontal centering.  The goal is to hit the shutter at the exact moment in time that is centered horizontally on the frame.  This can be made easier or significantly more difficult depending on the glass you happen to be using.  Over the years, I have become pretty good at the required timing and actually use a 70-200 zoom usually at the extent.  When you are just starting out, you might want to use a wide glass or pull that zoom all the way back to give you more frame space to work with.  One critical requirement comes into play here.  If you are going to be showing off your centering skilz, no cropping allowed in post processing (and yes, we can tell!)

Here is an example of horizontal centering.  Admittedly the car wasn’t going 65 at the time, but this is a good shot of a well centered sign snap (from a lettering perspective).

hit the jump to see the rest of the rules and some examples from the road

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