Storm chasing, April 17

Last night my wife and I drove around taking pictures of storm clouds. I kept looking for the dramatic, 'about-to-be-ugly-and-tornadic' clouds, but it wasn't that kind of storm.  My wife kept remarking about how the sun was coming below the clouds.  This one took two exposures and quite a bit of blending, but I'm glad I listened to her.  This is my favorite shot of the evening.

Looking at the GPS, we realized we were close to Walburg, TX. We stopped in for steak and a couple beers at Dale's Essenhaus.  It was a good day.

980th Engineer Battalion Dining Out

Whew! I was up until 11:30 last night. I finished a marathon Photoshop session around 8:00 PM, and then started ordering prints. 53 separate orders, some of them multiple poses. I haven't counted the total number of images processed and uploaded but there was a bunch!

The first order has been placed for people who wanted their prints before Christmas. You should see them in about 10-14 days. Last time I ordered prints they took about 7 days to arrive, and the mail carrier required a signature. That added two extra days because I had to pick them up before work, package everything that evening, then drop them off the following day. I made sure that no signature is required this time, so the envelopes will be in the mail the day after I receive the prints.

For those who chose the email option, I'll be sending them no later than Tuesday, Dec 8th. Update - the emails went out. If you haven't received yours, contact me at deckman73@gmail.com. I may have a spelling error or your inbox may be full and rejecting attachments.


The new softbox works great! We had to move it a few times to accommodate different poses, and it wobbled a bit. A small tension adjustment to the corner of the sheet straightened it right out. I'm using a large nylon stuff sack from the WalMart camping section to carry the softbox and my muslin backdrop. Easy!

Funny parallel - I was the first Soldier at the event, because I wanted to get the backdrop and tripods and softboxes and cameras and flags and laptop and all my other paraphernalia arranged before the unit arrived. Once the last picture was taken, nearly everyone else was gone. By the time my wife and I finished packing up, I was the last guy there in a uniform. One of the many mottos of the U.S. Army Combat Engineers is "First In, Last Out." I certainly lived up to that one.

How did the pictures turn out? Here are two of my favorites:






Thanks to everyone who showed up, and thanks to the Copper Tank for hosting our event!

Do it yourself Softbox

Here's how I made my own softbox. I designed it to be collapsible for easy travel. I've still got some bugs to work out as far as balance and stability, but it works.The basic idea is that the sides velcro together, and the fabric on the front is held on with bungee cords. The tension on the fabric is what keeps the box from tilting or collapsing.
Please excuse the lighting. I was using the on-camera flash for two reasons: First, I was building the light source that would give me that nice, diffuse light! Second, I probably could have put the 580 with the Lumiquest diffuser on the camera, but I just wanted to take snapshots and not interrupt the workflow of putting the thing together.

Cutting the foamboard:

The foamboard is 30" on the long side. I measured a 2" on either side of the centerline, and then drew a line straight to the corner. That leaves a 4" square opening for the flash unit.



Aluminum foil:



Testing the velcro:





Tripod adapter:


Adding "wings" to support the bottom of the box and add stability:





Attaching the fabric - an old bedsheet:

Canon 430EX II - duct tape around the plastic stand and velcro-ed to the support.





The whole thing comes apart and packs flat. I may need to attach the tripod plate a little further forward to balance the whole thing - it's a bit front heavy. I could also just add a counterweight on the back. As it is, the tripod will hold it, but it's a cheap tripod and I have to crank down to get it to stay.

But it works!

Portraits

I finally purchased a real flash unit - two of them, even! Last week I picked up a Canon 580EX II and 430EX II. Cool, now I can do wireless flash, multiple light sources, I'm a pro! It'll be easy!

Yeah, right. First I had to make sense of the buttons, settings, icons, options, ratios and other assorted intricacies. Then I had to teach myself how to position the lights. I wanted to eliminate any shadows on the background and maintain a proper exposure. A few Google searches later led me to conclude that I needed at least another flash, an umbrella or large softbox, and any number of expensive accessories. All that stuff isn't in the budget right now, so I better figure out how to most effectively use what I have at hand. One of the accessories I figured I was going to need for portraits was a backdrop. I looked around the net and found those things weren't cheap, either. But I also found DIYPhotography.net and a page describing how to make your own. I didn't go the tie-dye route; I did mine in the washer. The first pass got me a uniform light blue color. Okay, not bad, but I could have got that from a cheap bedsheet at Wal-Mart. Thinking creatively, I rolled up and wadded the material and stuffed it in a large enamel kettle with just enough hot water to cover the fabric. I mixed some dye with hot water and salt and poured that into the bucket and just let it sit for about 15 minutes. That did the trick. Just enough mottling to give it some texture and make it interesting but not so much as to be distracting. Homemade backdrop stand? Oh, yeah, that was easy. I pulled out the old movie screen - remember the kind with the tripod base and the screen that unrolled and hooked at the top? Perfect, and free from the back of your grandparent's closet.

My wife patiently stood there while I messed with different exposures and positions for the flashes. She put her sunglasses on so she wouldn't be permanently blinded. I'm going to need to get another diffuser, though. I only have one, so I made one out of cardboard and a couple napkins. By the way, the cardboard for the homemade diffuser came from the packaging for the Lumiquest Ultrasoft diffuser I bought last weekend. It's not technically irony, but I think it's kind of comical.

So, how did it all look? You be the judge:

I think it turned out pretty well. If I really wanted, I could clone out the shadows in Photoshop. I'll probably do that on single portraits in the future, but I don't see myself doing that on a large shoot where I have dozens of separate orders. That's a lot of work for something that a lot of folks probably won't notice or worry about. I guess that's the difference between a dabbler like myself and someone who does this for a living. I'm thinking the other option is to position my subject further from the backdrop. It may soften the shadows a bit, but it seems it would also produce a greater offset, making the shadows more noticeable. The only way to learn is to play with it! (And spend lots of money on lighting equipment.)

Timelapse photography

This is what happens when Jason figures out how to use the interval shooting mode with the Canon Remote shooting utility. Lots of JPEGs, sure, but lots of fun, too!

This the second try. The first time around I didn't get the angle I wanted, I was trying to focus on two blooms at the same time, and of course the one I wanted to go first went second. To make my job harder, the bloom was turning as it unfurled, and I made the mistake of moving the camera during the series of shots. That made the final product jumpier than an Olympic gymnastics practice. There is a jump in the middle of this one - that was caused by one set of 200 pics ending, a four minute gap, and the second set of 200 pics. Shot interval was 10 seconds, so this short clip took about an hour.

Sadness.

We have two cats, a two-year old calico named Skeezix and a tiny white kitten my wife found hiding under the AC a couple months ago.

Motormouth and Skeezix shred the kitty castle.

The pitiful, scrawny little critter wouldn't stop crying when we brought him inside, so his name is Motormouth. Skeezix was not too keen on the idea of Motormouth invading 'her' space, but after a couple weeks of dirty looks and the occasional hiss, they've become buddies. I have to think that Skeezix is going through a bit of a second kitten-hood, because all the roughhousing and chasing (and being chased by!) Motormouth has made her act like a kitten again. I've even seen her chase her tail!

Motormouth the day he adopted us

Motormouth is now a 4-pound ball of energy who has firmly adopted my wife as 'his human'. He's a cute one indeed, and we've grown very attached to the little bugger. That made this morning's visit to the vet all that much harder to take.

We found out today that little Motormouth is positive for the Feline Leukemia Virus. The vet's best guess is that mama cat passed the virus on to little Motor. There's no telling if his immune system will clear the virus (there's a chance) or how soon the virus will take hold. If he can't clear it, we're looking at losing him within the next 2-3 years. More than likely the virus will weaken his immune system (poor white cell production) and an opportunistic pathogen will do him in. Our primary concern is keeping Skeezix healthy, so separate feeding dishes have been instituted. Skeezix has already had the primary vaccination and a booster, so there's not that much concern, but we brought her in today for a booster just in case. She's is mostly an outside cat, and we'll keep Motor inside from now on to prevent him from spreading the virus to any stray cats in the neighborhood.

I hate to think that by adopting Motormouth we might have put Skeezix at risk. Of course, rationally I know that with Skeezix being outside more than half the time, she's exposed to all kinds of threats, and I don't feel guilty about that, so why should I worry about her exposure to FeLV? There's no reason for it, but I feel I should try to do something to keep Skeezix healthy. There's no telling how much time we have with Motormouth, but we'll treasure it all the more. It's really painful to look at the little guy, with all his energy and exuberance, and think that his doom is already sealed. I love my kitties, and this is pretty hard to take.

So you can probably expect a lot of pictures of Motormouth here in the future.

World Record!

We did it!

Blue River Band - Jason, Beth and Richard

1,859 guitar players showed up in Luckenbach on Sunday to break the world record for the Largest Guitar Ensemble. The goal was 2,000 people, and about 1,600 were pre-registered through the Voices of a Grateful Nation website. A couple hundred of them failed to show, but enough people signed in at the gate to put us over the top. The vibe was overwhelmingly positive - ain't nobody feeling no pain in Luckenbach! We were treated to some amazing singing and playing - and not all of it was on stage. There were impromptu jam sessions popping up left and right, and some of the folks were playing absolutely gorgeous guitars. I particularly like this "Martin on a Martin" paint job. My wife took most of the pictures as I had my hands full of guitar. You can see all of the shots here. The record attempt was scheduled for 2:00 P.M. but they pushed it back to let as many folks sign in as possible. Good thing, or we might not have made it. Anyway, I was standing next to Richard on the hill opposite the stage, and we started griping:

"Boy it's getting hot."

"Yep, and my feet are starting to hurt from standing on the side of this gully facing downhill."

"Can't those ding-dongs on the stage quit fooling around and just play the song already?"

Suddenly, I had a blinding flash of perspective:

"Hey, Richard, you know what? Let's complain about it for a little while. I mean let's really bitch about standing in the shade, playing guitar, drinking beer and setting a world record! Damn, nobody's shot a rocket at me all day long!! THIS SUCKS!!!!!"

Richard chuckled, and even the woman standing in front of us turned around to laugh and agree.

I was interviewed as soon as I walked in the gate, so I'm keeping my eye out for the documentary. In the meantime, you can watch this video. Again, thanks to my wife for being there. It's my fault for not erasing every last image off the memory card on the Canon SD750, as the video cuts off at the end.

I lost count of how many choruses we played, but you get the idea. Can't you just feel the joy and excitement?