How George got his mowing groove back

As most of you probably don't recall, several Earth Day's ago -- that is to say, three years ago, on Earth Day -- we bought a battery-powered lawn mower. It was a gesture to Mother Earth, but also an opportunity to avoid gas-permeated hands. I remember those days fondly.

But, frankly, the old lady doesn't quite cut it anymore (pun intended). I can mow the front and part of the back in one evening, and the rest has to wait until the next night (which is typically not actually the subsequent evening). I happen to have busy evenings so the grass gets longer faster than I'd like it too, particularly when the weather has been as rainy as it's been. So, we come to the second problem of the mower, which is that it doesn't really like cutting long grass.

I mean, it cuts long grass, but it doesn't cut George-long grass. (Some of you may be familiar with the George-hour... the concept is very similar.) And because of this critical deficiency, I made the painful but necessary decision to seek a replacement.

Meet, the Bull. El Toro, the Magnificent.



This beautiful piece of self-propelled machinery galloped across my jungle of a lawn, dragging me behind while indiscriminately gobbling up all the herbage in its path. This was definitely a sight to see. Instead of taking 2+ hours over the course of multiple days, it took me a total of 45 minutes to cut my entire lawn!

I must admit, the decision to replace my Earth-friendly yet cojones-deficient mower with a gas-guzzling grass-eating beast was not an easy one. It took me two years to actually admit I had a problem. I had no choice but to eventually succumb to reality and accept the fact that my needs can only be met at present by the power of combustion. With that acceptance has come a sense of excitement that only comes when a man gets a shiny new toy. For the first time in a long time, I'm looking forward to mowing my lawn!

But I still hold out hope that one day I can return to friendly energy again, preferably in the form of the Bat Mower!

I'm an idiot, but that's okay

I went to San Francisco today. I packed up my awesome Slingshot camera bag (thanks Carolyn!) with all my gear: D70, 18-200 lens, macro lens, 50mm lens, tripod, circular polarizer, ND-grad filter, extra memory card, micro-fibre cloth, GPS, card reader, battery charger, water bottle, apple, granola bars. It was heavy, but I was all set for a day of shooting.

I got to San Fransisco around 11:30, and I parked at the de Young museum in Golden Gate Park. I was planning on spending much of the day there, and I was happy to finally get out of the car (see this post).

After about 15 minutes of walking about, taking pictures of random statues of Beethoven and Verdi, I found myself at the Japanese Tea Garden. I paid my $4 to enter and proceeded to photograph the serene surrounds when I noticed the battery symbol flashing on my camera. Uh oh. Well, it's a good thing I learned my lesson long ago and bought a spare battery, right?

Right.

Wrong. Thanks to new US Department of Transportation regulations, I couldn't pack my spare battery in my carry-on luggage. Of course I had forgotten this fact, so my battery remained safely packed away in my suitcase back in the hotel. Great.

I still had my battery charger in the car, but of course the other thing I forgot to pack was the car adapter. Even still, I had just paid $4 so I didn't want to leave. I had no choice but to grin and bear it.

As it happens, batteries have a remarkable ability to retain some residual charge - enough charge to focus and flip the shutter. I couldn't actually see the photos I was taken, so for the next 1.5 hours I was doing it "old school". And I really mean old school, because as in the days when they had to replace the photographic plates after each shot, I had to wait about a minute or so for the battery to recharge. In the digital age, this is very frustrating!

But, remarkably, I did manage to get some good shots. In fact, many turned out much sharper than they usually do, so perhaps I haven't been taking enough setup time for my shots. I've posted a few shots below; all but one are unprocessed because I don't have my image processing softare on this laptop. I will post final versions on flickr when I come home.


A Blue Jay that happened to hop up very close to me. If my battery had been charged I would have snapped 20-30 shots of this guy, but I only managed five in the few moments he was around. I'm really happy with how sharp this image came out. I also performed some HDR (or DRI) on this photo to lighten some of the shadows without blowing out the background.


I'm not sure what this is, but I liked the white against the red.


A shot of a tree with pagoda in the background.


A gorgeous Japanese maple, shot from below.


An iris.

I'm glad that a bunch of photos came out nicely, because the rest of the day was a bust. The battery totally gave out by the end of my stay in the garden, so no more pictures were going to happen until I got another battery. I walked around the park some more, and up Haight St. (supposedly quite famous? I saw lots of tattoo parlours and hippie shops... no camera stores though). I then went back to the car, hoping that my trust GPS would take me to a camera store. What luck, there were several camera stores to try! However, I forgot that the GPS takes pleasure in my failures. For the first camera store the GPS led me directly to a residential area where there was no sign of even a convenience store. The second location was much more promising but alas GPS tricked me again. Fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice, shame on me. I wasn't about to be fooled a third time, so I decided I should just go back to the hotel.

Ok, so I was fooled a third time too. I thought I'd try another store supposedly in Palo Alto on University Ave. University Ave sounded promising. Not surprisingly, the Ritz Camera store was not there (I'm beginning to suspect that it's not a real camera chain at all); however, I did find a Wolf Camera store that the GPS didn't know about. Take that little machine! But, it turns out that Wolf Camera sucks. They didn't have my battery. They didn't have the lens I was interested in either (but he could order it... well, so can anyone with an internet connection). Every time I visit the US I gain appreciation for Henry's back home.

Enough complaining. My time in Golden Gate Park was refreshing and memorable. I'm glad I went. I wish I had been able to take some photographs of the Golden Gate Bridge, particularly at sunset, but I suspect I will return one day. Not tomorrow though, as I am through with big cities. Tomorrow is a hiking and relaxation day. And my battery is charging as we speak.

Learning how to flash

I'm sure you were expecting to see some photos and prose regarding my recent trip to Germany. You'll have to wait. All of my photos from Bonn were deleted (by Windows itself, thank you very much), so I'm currently in the process of recovering them.

In the meantime, I had the opportunity this weekend to learn how to flash... or rather, I visited my good friend Richard, and he opened the secret door to the forbidden world of flash photography.

Having recently visited my friends in Germany - one of which is a wonderful studio photographer - I got a little bit inspired to take off my 'outdoor/landscape/nature photographer' hat, and try on something new. I checked out the well-known Strobist blog to get an idea of what flash photography is all about... and I realized that what I don't know about it could fill a warehouse (or a blog about flash-photography).

Richard has been doing more than a little dabbling in studio photography, and I have been impressed with his results, so I was hoping to get a tutorial. I borrowed a flash (SB-600) from Ryan and Richard and I set up shop.

It's incredible to think how much altering the lighting on a subject can change a photo so dramatically. Studio photography is very meticulous work, requiring careful study of the results to determine what should be tweaked (light intensity?, aperture?, angles?, diffusers?, more lights?, less lights?, etc...) to get the shot you want. On the other hand, it opens up a whole realm of creative possibilities, allowing you to simply experiment.

Here is a sample of a series of shots I took of some lillies that Richard bought (uhm, for his wife, right Richard?). I won't explain what I changed between each shot (like I remember!), but the session was a struggle between getting a nice bright shot, while emphasizing the form and depth, and still retaining detail in highlights and shadows.



I think the end result is pretty good, at least for a first-timer.



It was wonderful being able to utilize my macro lens properly - with still subject, sturdy tripod, and good lighting. A pop-up flash doesn't quite cut it for a macro image with 'pop'. I think - one of these beautiful days - that I will invest in my own flash so that I can continue to push my creative boundaries... or, perhaps Ryan won't notice that he's missing his :P

Thanks to Richard for the help, and for a fun (albeit short) photo session.

Sweep and be healed!

Well, doing spot-healing in post-processing is all well and good, but I'm the kind of guy that avoids post-processing as much as possible. I want my best picture to be the one created when I trip my shutter, not when I dress it up in Photoshop (not that there's anything wrong with that). So you can imagine that I hate having to use Photoshop just to make pictures viewable.

I need a solution.

I found it.

It is... the Arctic Butterfly!



This little baby has bristles that can be electrostaticlly charged so that when you sweep the sensor - technically, the low-pass filter in front of the sensor - it attracts dust. And, as the Golden Compass has shown us, Dust is evil!!! So yay for the Arctic Butterfly!

Here are some sample shots:


Before


After the Arctic Butterfly!


So, as you can see, it's quite effective! I will now be able to save myself my yearly trip to the Nikon repair centre in Mississauga, the $80 fee, and the heartache of having to wait until next year to get the darned dust off again! You'll notice there is still residue, but this is likely water or oil stain that requires a wet solution (in the chemical sense of the term "solution"). I'll be posting the results once I buy the required materials. But for now, I can kiss dust goodbye!

Happy Earth Day!

It's such a beautiful day! A perfect backdrop for Earth Day. In order to do our part to. help Mother Earth, Carolyn and I bought a battery-powered lawn mower yesterday.



We have about 12 days before moving, but I'm sure the grass will be ready to go by then. I'll let you know how it goes.