Storm over the water tower, Columbia, Mo. | Canon 5D Mark II and 70-200mm f/4L IS lens @ 135mm; exposed 10 seconds @ f/7.1, ISO 800.
Last night a line of thunderstorms tracked through Columbia, Mo., changing the hot and humid air for the better, leaving much cooler temperatures in their wake. Before the rain came, I set up my tripod on the balcony of my apartment to try to get some lightning strikes.
Lightning was plentiful, if far away–I counted out the seconds between the light and the sound, lest I be caught outside with my own personal lightning rod–but I had little to no success at capturing a bolt across the frame.
However, I did get one image that was almost surreal: the city’s water tower encircled by the light from the lightning strikes and the clouds as they sped past overhead.
I’ve added some contrast to the image, but the colors are how the camera saw them. A fun, if a bit surreal landscape.
Next time I’ll get lightning bolts.
That said, if anyone has a suggestion for how to capture them, I’m all ears!
In the wee hours of the morning on June 2, 2010, a wave of thunderstorms swept through Columbia, Missouri. I took it as an opportunity to make a “thunderstorm time-lapse,” and set up my tripod. My apartment faces one of Columbia’s landmarks, the water tower, but to get a decent composition of it, I actually had to use a 300mm lens, several feet from the door to my balcony (no need to get wet, though!). I was hoping for some lightning strikes, but the reflections of the lightning on the water tower, and the illumination of the clouds, was all I could get in the hour that I made these images.
I set the camera up on a remote trigger with an intervalometer, and exposed them all at 30 seconds @ f/9 using 200 ISO on the 5D Mark II and 300mm f/4 L lens. The time lapse above is made of 57 such photographs.
I should note that part of the process of putting this time lapse together was discovering opsound.com, a resource of royalty-free music.
Overall, the thunderstorm presented a good opportunity and it was a lot of fun to put the time-lapse together; I hope you enjoy the final product.
Since the explosion on a British Petroleum (oops, sorry, just “BP” as we wouldn’t want to pretend that this energy company works with oil, just as KFC doesn’t “fry” any food) oil rig on April 20, 2010, a tremendous amount of oil has been spewing from the seafloor a mile down and into the Gulf of Mexico. The National Wildlife Federation, home to one of the more competitive nature photography contests in North America, has started a campaign to assist wildlife threatened by BP’s oil as it washes onto the shoreline. I now have a link that will take you to their donation page on the top of the sidebar on the right side of my Blog.
Environmental Effects of Crude Oil on the Gulf Coast
I will soon be on Lake Michigan’s shoreline to work on a story about the potential effects on the tourism industry should Asian Silver and Bighead carp should they successfully colonize Lake Michigan, or the effects on people living in the Chicago area should they close the Sanitary and Ship Canal that forms the artificial connection between the Mississippi River basin and the Great Lakes basin. However, just as I was finalizing my proposal, BP’s oil rig exploded.
Sarah Palin’s mantra during the 2008 presidential campaign, “Drill, baby, drill,” suddenly and perversely betrayed the cruel reality of offshore drilling: “Spill, baby, spill.” (There is always risk in oil exploration: even if you are a staunch supporter of increased energy exploration, you cannot deny that there is always some risk of a catastrophic event, even if you believe it to be unlikely.)
For a moment in time, I contemplated changing my proposed story altogether, and travel to Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Mexico (should oil enter the Loop Current, all of the coastline will be covered). Cuba would be a good place to go as well, but that would be difficult as an American. However, I believed then, as the events of the past month have reinforced for me, that the environmental damage is incalculable and that the story of the effects could only begin when the spilling of oil has stopped.
Instead, I watch alongside everyone else as a commercial industry, which some proclaim hold the answers to all catastrophes, and should therefore be entrusted with the future of our natural environmental, fails to stop the worst oil still in United States history.
A sequence of two images made on the same night as my last post:
Incoming surf, Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, N.C. | Panasonic Lumix G1 and 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens @ 14mm; exposed 1/4 sec. @ f/16, ISO 100.Incoming surf, Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, N.C. | Panasonic Lumix G1 and 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens @ 14mm; exposed 1/3 sec. @ f/16, ISO 100.
Jockey's Ridge State Park and Atlantic Ocean, Nags Head, N.C. | Panasonic Lumix G1 and Lumix 45-200mm f/4-5.6 lens @ 56mm; exposed 1/400 sec. @ f/5.6, ISO 200.
Pictorials from Vacation
Tonight, after checking in at our hotel in Manteo, N.C. on Roanoke Island, site of the “lost colony” (the first English settlement in the New World disappeared with little trace), Elizabeth and I drove over to Bodie Island. Part of the Outer Banks, Bodie Island has some pretty interesting attractions, including the site of the Wright Brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C., Jockey’s Ridge State Park, which is home to the largest sand dune in the eastern United States, and the Bodie Island Lighthouse, which would normally be pretty spectacular. Unless, of course, you get there when it’s wrapped in tarps and scaffolding. Damn.
Bodie Island Lighthouse, Hatteras National Seashore, N.C. | Panasonic Lumix G1 and Lumix 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens @ 16mm; exposed 1/400 sec. @ f/5, ISO 100.
A Note about the Olympus 9-18mm
After the failure at the lighthouse, we drove back to Jockey’s Ridge State Park. It’s a haven for people flying kites as well as hang-gliding. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, the hang-gliding seemed to be over for the day. However, it gave me another opportunity to experiment with the Olympus 9-18mm f/4-5.6 lens for Micro Four-Thirds. It is a sharp and fun little lens. I’m not thrilled with the collapsing barrel design, which makes the lens inoperable when collapsed until you zoom out.
I think that I understand why Olympus has approached zoom lens design this way, because it does give Micro Four-Thirds lenses the (admittedly, false) appearance of being smaller than they really are. In essence, when not in use (collapsed), it makes a nice, tidy package with their PEN cameras. But it also makes them a bit of a pain to use.
However, shortcomings aside, it is a handy and sharp lens to have in the kit. And considerably less expensive than Panasonic’s lens, although I would like to test theirs for a comparison. (Hey, Panasonic: hint, hint!)
Sand dunes at Jockey's Ridge State Park, Nags Head, N.C. | Panasonic G1 and Olympus 9-18mm f/4-5.6 lens @ 9mm; exposed 1/125 sec. @ f/7.1, ISO 200.
Parting Shot
To our collective amusement, Elizabeth and I discovered, on our way back from the dunes, that the boardwalk perfectly framed a row of Pepsi vending machines to greet those who did not know how else to be welcomed back to civilization from their brief connection with nature but to drown themselves in carbonated sugar water:
A boardwalk through nature frames Pepsi Machines? Jockey's Ridge State Park, Nags Head, N.C. | Panasonic Lumix G1 and Lumix 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens @ 45mm; exposed 1/20 sec. @ f/5.6, ISO 200.
This morning I showed my Picture Story class what is really my first draft of a video and photographic essay the MKT Nature and Fitness Trail in Columbia, Mo. The nine-mile trail connects to the state-wide Katy Trail in McBaine, Mo.
This is in rough form, unfortunately, because the past couple of weeks have been consumed by my proposed project to fulfill the requirements of the M.A. program here at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Before I begin work on that project, which will take me back to Lake Michigan, I will be working to improve this essay. Foremost, I plan to speak with Brett Dufur, author of The Complete Katy Trail Guidebook, as well as Columbia’s former mayor, Darwin Hindman, who was a champion of projects like the MKT Trail and Stephens Lake Park.
That said, if you have any other suggestions for people to talk to whose voice would strengthen this piece, I am all ears, so to speak!
Flat Branch Creek, MKT Trail, Columbia, Mo. | Canon 5D Mk. II and 16-35mm f/2.8L II lens; exposed 2.5 seconds @ f/18, ISO 100.
I was out this evening, working on some more pictures and video for my project on the MKT Trail that runs through Columbia, Mo. and connects to the Katy Trail in McBaine, Mo. I’ve been meaning to get into the creek beds, and wore quick-dry pants and sandals with that purpose in mind the other day, but wound up staying dry because many of the creeks are precarious to get down to when you’re laden with camera gear.
Today, however, while walking along a stretch of the trail near the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Garden off of Stadium Boulevard, I found great access down to Flat Branch Creek. Now, my jeans are hanging up to dry, because the only way to get an appropriately low angle was to kneel down behind my tripod, which was only inches above the running water.
Panning blur, MKT Trail, Columbia, Mo. | Canon 7D and 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens; exposed 1/6 sec. @ f/8, ISO 400.
Yesterday, while gathering some video and making images of the “real” nature offered to the people of Columbia along the MKT Trail (vis-a-vis the artificial nature at Stephens Lake Park), I made an unintentional panning blur. Hand-held. And it didn’t suck. As Artie Morris would say, “you gotta love it!”
Normally, the trick to and panning blur is to have the camera on a tripod and to slowly pan downwards. This is hard to do on a ball head, but easy to do if you have a big lens mounted on a Wimberley or other gimbal-style head, or if you’re using a video head.
Usually, the hardest part is going slowly enough on the pan that you get the effect that you want, but not so slow that it just looks out of focus! Start with a shutter speed of 1/15 second and slow down from there. In this example, my exposure compensation in aperture priority brought me to 1/6 sec. before I even realized it–I just heard the slow shutter and cursed under my breath. Only when I looked at it did I jump for joy. Then I tried making more blurs, and they all failed! Again, you gotta love it.
In my picture story & photographic essay class at the Missouri School of Journalism, we have been asked to find some examples of what can make for an effective sequence of images. While I ultimately will be required to produce one that is more about people than wildlife, I did think this sequence of images of a Galapagos Giant Tortoise from this summer was an entertaining and appropriate.
