Hello again! Once again, I'll edit at a later date with photos.

After three full days in the high desert of New Mexico, i have some strong recommendations. Firstly, HYDRATE. Back home in the Philadelphia suburbs, I thought I drink a reasonable amount of water- 1.5-2 liters a day. I've discovered that's not enough. Keeping in mind I haven't just been wandering around town (yesterday was day one at Petroglyph National Monument), yesterday I put down over three liters, and this morning I'm still a little dehydrated. The air is so dry, a Philly boy like me tends to not notice that it's (1) a lot warmer than I think it is, and (2) that sweat is actually evaporating like it's supposed to, as opposed to clinging like it tends to in the humidity of the east coast. Also, I'm not sure if it's the altitude or what, but my legs are really taking a pounding. I thought That I'm in pretty good shape for what I'm doing, since my day job has me walking six miles a day, but my quads are jello.

If you're exerting yourself like I am, the obscene food portions you find in many restaurants is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as you watch what you're eating. I've been finding that the New Mexican places are not actually that bad for you... lots of beans, lean protein, veg, and of course, CHILE! They're not kidding when they say that the official state question is' "Red or Green." Chile sauce goes on everything. So far, I haven't come across anything too overwhelming, even for people who don't do chiles like I do. I'll get more into food later.

Breakfast burrito from the restaurant at the hotel (Sheraton Uptown Albuquerque).

Clothing: light weight, wicking, and if you go to a place that has clothes labelled with sun protection numbers, pay attention. I haven't seen any clouds worth mentioning, and with the thinner air up here, the sun can be brutal. Also, if you're planning in checking out the natural or ancient man-made wonders around here, solid footwear is a must! Running shoes/open-toed sandals will not cut it.

Really happy I brought the Zamberlans with me.

Watch out for snakes (rattlers), scorpions, et cetera. This is no joke. I saw my first wild rattler yesterday. Just keep an eye out for shadowed pockets under or between rocks, as this is where snakes love to hide out during the day. I was also staying clear of odd holes in the sand (usually an inch to inch and a half in diameter from what I saw) because I really didn't want to know what dug them, and I have to assume that anything that lives in this kind of environment is pretty angry by nature. Just the flies swarming around me by the end of yesterday's hike were acting like they hadn't seen water in years.

Ok, this one is admittedly out of focus, but I did not want to be there long.

Finally, make sure you know where you're going, or at least have GPS with updated maps. I tried to go to the Volcanoes Day use area of Petroglyph National Monument yesterday, and drove right past it, as it wasn't clearly marked [edit- and National Park Service maps leave a lot to be desired]. This left me driving further through the desert than I intended, and left me on the edges of a pert of town I had not yet been to. If not for GPS, it would have taken me A LOT longer to get back to home base. At this point, it's time for me to check out, time to go hiking.

Greetings from New Mexico!

I will be editing this and the next couple posts to include photos... My laptop has decided to stop functioning fully. This is the first time I've tried to post from my iPad, so we'll see how this goes.

As I mentioned before, this Philly boy has left the east coast for the first time in an embarrassingly long time for a photography trip. I spent a good portion of yesterday driving around Albuquerque trying to find a decent view for this evening's annular solar eclipse, and the latter portion of the day catching up with family that live out here.

When I got back to the hotel, I put in for a 3 AM (!!!) wakeup call, to try to get far enough out of town to shoot the particularly bright flyover of the International Space Station. That little trip was a total bust. All I can say is NEVER try to use unfamiliar equipment in total darkness. Due to the short duration of the flyover (roughly 6 minutes), there is very little time to correct any error in composition, exposure, etc. My problem (entirely my own fault) was that in the center of the Nikon MC-36 programmable shutter release cable/intervalometer is a four directional touchpad- think the digital pad on a game console controller- with a button in the center. In my rush to get the shot in total darkness, I didn't realize that the center button is not the shutter release button where I would have put it. It was awesome to watch, though. I'll have to make another attempt at that one at a later date, and also write about how to find out the details of when it will be visible.

This evening's shoot should be interesting. An annular eclipse is much like any other solar eclipse in that the earth's moon falls between the earth and the sun. This type is different from a total eclipse in that while the moon is centered over the sun, it is too far away from the earth to totally block it, leaving an annulus (ring) still visible. I've brought far too many toys with me, leaving a great debate. Do I go with my questionable quality Sigma 300mm lens on my D300, giving me an effective focal length of 450mm; or do I use my 80-200 on the rental D800 with its 36Mp, which will let me crop out a good portion of the field and still have a pretty good size file?

I should also mention that you should NEVER point your camera (much like your own eyes) directly at the sun with no filtration. After a couple hours online, I found a company in Arizona called Thousand Oaks Optical that manufactures astronomical filters of all kinds, including the screw on type needed for your camera.

On a totally separate note, I'm loving the food out here; and the official state question, "red or green." It seems that everything comes smothered in chile "sauce," being some concoction of chopped or pureed red or green chiles. I've even heard that you can get chile burgers at McDonald's, which I may have to check out. I've just discovered that for some reason (lack of flash?) that I can't upload photos using my iPad, so I'll have to post those later.

Once again, it's been WAY too long.

The day job's been keeping me more than busy, and I've been working on my first real vacation in an embarrassingly long time. Yes kids, an actual vacation.

I was originally thinking about heading to South Dakota and doing a photo tour of the Badlands NP area. Then, one day, a guy I went to High School with posted on Facebook about an upcoming solar eclipse. I did some poking around, and found out that Albuquerque NM is dead center in the path, right at sunset. I thought for about two seconds, and realized that this would be a great photo opportunity. Add to that the fact that I have family in ABQ that I've barely seen in longer than I'll admit to, and the decision was made.

I've spent the last couple months putting together things I think I'll need for the trip. Besides the fact that I'm pretty sure I didn't own any clothes I might need to be wearing in the high desert (we don't see any weather like that in the Philly 'burbs), I needed luggage, and some way to transport the photo gear, as well as some gear I didn't have.

After a couple hours of searching, I found a source for solar lens filters at thousand oaks optical. The eclipse is going to be an annular eclipse, meaning that the moon is going to be too far away to fully block the sun; so there is going to be a good portion of the outer ring of the sun still in full view. I definitely DO NOT want to point my camera at that, so I ordered a few filters to protect my sensor.

Since I've been shooting mostly landscapes lately, and I'm going to be in the desert, I decided to do something about the fact that my 24mm lens on my camera (Nikon D300) is not quite wide enough. I decided to rent a Nikon 14-24 f2.8 zoom from lensrentals.com. While I was thinking of that, the thought that THAT lens on my camera body was OK, but let's look at a body that it would really perform on. Originally, the thought was a D700, but then they got the brandy-new D800 in. I'm happy to say that I'll be writing a daily review of that. The only thing that's worrying me at this point is the idea of putting it back in the box and sending it back. (36Mp DSLR!?) From what I've seen so far, they've fixed several of my gripes about the last couple bodies in that range, But I'll get to that at a later date when it's been in my hands.

Let's put it all together

I should first start off with wishing everyone a happy holiday.

     In the last few posts, I've tried to explain what each of the three main parts of an exposure do individually and now I'll try to put them all together.

     It all comes down to controlling the amount of light entering into the camera. Say for instance it's a really bright sunny day, and you want to use a wide aperture to reduce your depth of focus. Your options would be to reduce your ISO setting number (I always shoot with the lowest number I can get away with), Or increase your shutter speed.

     In the above example, in the same light and same lens (Nikkor 85mm f1.4 D IF), I shot the image on the left with the aperture wide open to reduce the depth of focus, and got away with 1/50th of a second shutter speed. The image on the right was made with the aperture closed to the ideal minimum on my camera (I start to lose image quality smaller than f16), and the shutter speed reduced to 2.5 seconds- thank goodness for tripods, I never would have been able to hold the camera steady for that long. Due to the much smaller aperture, the image on the right is far more in focus from front to back, but due to the much longer shutter speed, it would have been the epitome of blurry because of camera shake if I had tried to hand hold it.

In this example, I was aiming for a clear image that was focused evenly from front to back, so I stayed with f16 on the same lens as before. At first glance, they're both reasonably decent shots. The first one, again, would have been impossible to hand hold at 2.5 seconds. I turned the ISO all the way up to 3200 and got a more respectable 1/10 of a second for the exposure, which still would have been tricky to hold, but not as much as before. The drawback to that is that with the ISO that high, I've introduced a good deal of noise to the image. If I were to hand hold it, I likely would have compromised a bit on the aperture (widen it a bit) to let more light in so that I could use a faster shutter speed.

ISO demistified.

     Most cameras these days have an adjustable ISO setting. The numbers relate directly back (like it was all that long ago) to the days of film, when the same numbers related to how quickly the film reacted to light. The lower the number, the slower the film was. Typically, slower films also gave much finer photographs. Most of the film typically found was rated at 100, 400, and 800; although there were many others available at higher end photography outlets (I actually still have a roll of Ilford 50 in the freezer I purchased for a shoot that never happened). The differences were both in the film carrier itself, as well as changes in the chemistry of the light sensitive layer. Back then, you had to have an idea of where you were going to be shooting, and load film accordingly. Bright, sunny day? load up a roll of 100. Family gathering at grandma's? Load up 400 (or sometimes 800, depending on how dark grandma's house is).

     Since you can always shoot at smaller apertures, or faster shutter speeds to reduce the amount of light getting to the film, you can always just have 800 in camera (or now, have it set for 800), right? There's the rub. Yes, technically you could, but there are a couple drawbacks. First off, decent high speed film got expensive. Second, due to the difference in chemistry, it was also much grainier. The following photo is actually a digital photograph that I ran through a graphic editing filter that does a particularly good job of simulating different films.

     The left half is simulating Kodak TMax 100 speed, which will be familiar to anyone who took a photography class. The right half is of Kodak TMax P3200, which was the fastest film you could typically find at the camera store. The difference could be used for the effect alone, I frequently did it myself on many occasions, depending on what I was shooting. Many times, though, the grainy effect would not benefit the final image.

     The same type of thing happens in current digital cameras, due to the fact that as you turn up the sensitivity of the sensor, you're trying to get the same amount of information from less input. An audio geek or musician would refer to the outcome by discussing signal to noise ratio. Unfortunately, the effect in digital cameras is less photogenic than in film. The next photo shows exactly the same image taken in my digital SLR at two different ISO settings... the left is at 200, which is the lowest native setting I have available; the right is at 3200, the highest setting.

At first glance, it's really not to bad (it was actually lit reasonably nicely, so there was plenty of information for the camera to process). If zoomed in, though, the noise becomes more prevalent.

     I feel compelled at this point to mention that I did no manipulation to the above photographs, other than zooming in on the chess board.

     This is one of the few occasions that having a higher end camera comes in handy. For the most part, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, a camera is a black box with a controllable hole in it. Higher end cameras, however, do have much better electronics. The above photos were taken with my Nikon D300, which is by all accounts a decent camera. If I could afford, say a D3S (I wish), the noise at ISO 3200 would be significantly reduced; but at three times the price of mine, I'll leave that one to the pros.

Shutter Speed is your friend

OK, It's been an obscenely LONG time since I've been able to actually sit and write anything. It's been a rough couple months.

Only slightly (in my experience) better understood than the effects of the aperture is the shutter speed. Using this is how you either freeze or blur motion, make the difference where you get a decent hand held shot over needing a tripod, or in some circumstances, actually get your camera's sensor to do some strange things.

I'll start with an amateur car race I photographed right around the time that I actually intended to write this post.

I have to admit that I broke one of my cardinal rules, and I think it's well worth mentioning here as a little side note: Always have a list of intended shots! Since I was photographing the race (at least partially) with this post in mind, I came up with a list of what I wanted to show, but didn't write it down. In the excitement of the day, which included running back to the hotel to change- shorts are not allowed track side, as it turns out; I forgot a couple. If  I'd had a written list, or at least a note on my cell, I would not have so easily missed them.

On with the examples... First, stopping action. Generally speaking, the faster your shutter speed, the less time will be allowed for your subject (or in some circumstances you) has to move during the shot. Easy, right?

In the first example, I cranked up my shutter speed a bit (1/1600th of a second), and got an otherwise decent frame of this car.

The trouble is that you can't tell that this car is actually in the middle of the race. The wheels aren't turning, the grass is clear, as is the corner worker's truck in the background. I might as well have shot it sitting still in the paddock.

For the next frame, as well as turning down the shutter speed, I used a technique called panning. I was attempting to swing my torso in the exact direction as the car, at the same angular speed, keeping the car in the same spot in the viewfinder. At first it sounds reasonably straight forward (I know I thought so anyway), but the more I thought about it, the trickier it became. I have to admit, the first few frames didn't work out so well, but after a couple attempts I started to get the hang of it.

This Corvette was taken at 1/200th of a second- quite a bit slower than the first one.This time, you can actually tell that the guy was actually moving.

To be filed under the photographer moving category, as well as under poor technique, the next frame (taken at 1/320th of a second) shows what happens when the photographer (me) is moving during the frame. To be honest, I can't quite tell if I was swaying too much, or just wasn't panning with the car properly- I haven't looked at it that closely yet.

You'll notice that the car is totally blurry. We all get shots like this, especially when starting out. Considering that I had never even seen a car race before, let alone photographed one, I'm surprised I didn't get a greater quantity of these. There is a reason that every photographer I know goes through every shot from the shoot, and picks out the best ones. Nobody (except for a couple wedding photogs I've seen- and they should learn this rule, too) shows the client everything.

Also in the category of subject and photographer moving is the next one. About a decade ago (in the days of film), I was doing a lot of work with local bands, usually in night clubs. It was a lot of fun, and I had the opportunity to learn how to work in some of the most difficult lighting conditions I could think of. Anyway, I was looking through some prints from back then, and came across this one. Clearly, Wayne and I were both moving (notice the movement in the microphone stand- that's me moving), and due to the nearly total lack of light, I had my shutter speed way to slow to hand hold, but I actually kind of like the nearly surreal way this came out. I likely set it aside back then because it's technically very bad, but have grown to like it in a way. This is why I don't delete (or toss) anything, except for the worst of the worst, even if nobody else sees them.

Deviation from the plan.

This was originally going to be the next part in the "exposure" series, which was actually mostly written. An opportunity has come up that will allow me to get (hopefully) some decent frames showing different things you can get varying your shutter speed. Unfortunately, that's going to be in a couple weeks.

In the meantime, I've been playing with my new-ish macro lens. At some point, I'm going to have to put something together about lens length, distance to subject, and depth of focus (how much of the frame is in focus, and how your distance from it and lens choice will affect it).

First evening playing with Ferro Fluid

The above photo was taken during my first evening playing with ferro fluid. It's a suspension of tiny magnetic particles (their size is measured in Ångstroms) in oil. If you've ever done the iron filings on paper over a magnet trick, this is very similar, except it works in three dimensions, following the flux lines of the magnetic field. I'll be playing with this more later.

from wandering around the back yard

The frame above was from the first day after I had gotten the macro lens, and just wandered around the back yard, trying to get a feel for it (the lens, not necessarily the yard).