Detrained and waiting,King Street

The call of the Dark Side, offloaded, waiting for the next train, the cell phone suggests, " Try a panaorama, Luke."

Cell Phone Confessions

"I've learned from my mistakes, and I'm sure I could repeat them exactly."-Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling

Carry a camera, any camera.

OK, I said camera, that's my preference, and shows my age, I guess. Let me rephrase for the present time, have a visual device with you and use it. Yes there have been times when I have been thankful for for my CELL PHONE!!! It got me through my visual "Jones". There's just so much to see.

Panic Shot

I got a rush call for this photo of the "Jupiter" locomotive on display at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. I had already photographed the train, but unfortunately it was on a hard drive that suddenly died (I know, "back up, back up, back up). Fortunately,as it was a test, it was one of the few files that had not been backed up to our servers. Anyway now the shot is needed
ASAP. Time and tech have moved forward, so now the shot can be done easily. Using a remote trigger on a Canon 5d MKII and a wireless flash trigger in the camera's hot shoe, I shot a test with a 580EX flash on manual full power, found my exposure, and walked around the train firing the camera and flash remotely. Total shot time, 10 minutes, number of exposures, 26, total assembly time in Photoshop, 1 hour 30 minutes. Tech specs: Canon 5d MKII, 24-70/2.8 lens, 1/30 sec f8 @ISO 400.

More fun with one flash.

Travelling light, a quick multi-layer experiment with a studio object.

Fun with Stuff.

This was shot with an on-camera flash, a 39.00 wireless trigger, and 19.99 wireless flash trigger. I happily strolled by the locomotive and triggered the camera and flash.
Layered together. Be sure to have someone standing at camera so it is still there when you return.

Passing Scene AM

Look out and see.

A Dusting, Manassas, VA, 02/10/2011

This just seemed the right time for a winter picture, a dusting, a gentle fall of snow, far different than last year, and indeed for many this year.

Stop the Carousel, I want the shot!

Once upon a time in the TIME OF FILM, people sometimes painted with light. Now in the TIME OF DIGITAL we can paint with layers, or maybe it should be called lighting with layers, you decide. Anyway this opens a wonderful world of possibilities and problem solving. The problem here was photographing the Smithsonian Libraries exhibition Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn. Lately I go through an exhibit such as this with a tripod and cheerfully RAW my way through several exposures of each scene, but there was this spinning carousel that could not be turned off. Hmm, what if I used an off camera flash gelled for tungsten, did an exposure at say 1/125 and then did my exposure series without the flash, I wonder if that would work?

DSLR Slide Scanning

On the basis of this article: http://www.dpbestflow.org/camera/camera-scanning, I got on Ebay and bought a Bowens Illumitran
slide copier and decided to give DSLR slide copying a try. First thing, the Bowens will not accept a digital camera body, so out went the bellows unit that came with the Bowens. I ended up mounting the camera on a copy stand and using the Bowens light source. I used a Kodak DCS-14n with a Tamron 90mm Macro with 1:1 adapter for the camera set up. Initial tests showed that at the lowest flash setting on the Bowens I needed to add a 2stop ND filter. The first slide I copied was fortunately an extremely contrasty scene of a New England Church in winter. I say fortunately because the resulting exposure holds both highlight and shadow information very well in RAW format and seems to work well with susequent slides. I was able to make a very nice 13X19 print from the file on my coal-fired Epson 1280. Seems to be a great way to digitally dupe 35mm slides,FAST.