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See the entire gallery here.
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And then Mom calls! No, the call was not staged!
Click here to see the rest of the gallery.
It is not too late to book your senior portrait session, but time is running out. Contact me today!
]]>The 2 minutes and 42 seconds of total solar blackout was fantastic. When you read about the eclipse and see pictures and video online you know it is something special. But, actually experiencing it in person exceeded all expectations. Nothing you read or see on the Internet prepares you for that moment when the sun is so blacked out by the moon that you can actually see the corona of the sun.
Of course during totality it gets very dark, but not totally dark. The sky is dark enough that you can see Venus and Jupiter. As totality sets in cicadas begin chirping, confused by the apparent early arrival of dusk. There is an eerie blue cast to everything. The temperature drops. (It felt like a 10 degree F drop to me.) The corona is visible to the naked eye and looks like the most brilliant jewel you have ever seen. Everyone around you is awe struck. The experience brings tears to some people's eyes.
I will definitely go to see the next North American total eclipse in April 2024. No question about it.
Like I said, words and screen images do not give you the full sense of awe you feel when you see it for yourself. With that said, here are some shots of some of the people we were hanging with and some screen grabs from a the video I shot.
These are frame grabs from my "not so great" video recording of totality. I think the audio is as interesting as the image. (No, the audio is more interesting -- because no video captures the image as brilliantly as your own eyes.) If you bother to watch the full recording -- it is about two minutes and 18 seconds long. I started recording about 35 seconds after the start of totality and went right through the "Diamond Ring" at the end.
See a few more shots, and the complete video from this event in my eclipse gallery.
This is a fairly long exposure (close to 1 second) of one of the many dams on the River in the so called "flats". I love how the flow of the water paints a texture on the image sensor due to the long exposure.
This is a shot of Houdini Plaza during a night time concert. I wanted to freeze the moment and not have a lot of blurry people in the image. So even though it was dark, I used a relatively fast shutter speed (1/4 second) but I increased the sensor sensitivity with ISO 1000.
Here is another shot of Houdini Plaza.
The Fox Valley area is fortunate to have the Performing Art Center. While walking downtown one night I decided it might be interesting to capture the PAC from a nearby parking garage. Will definitely revisit this shot when there are people out on the street the night of a performance.
This is the iconic (well iconic for people who live in the Fox Valley area!) Lawrence Chapel This is home to many concerts and local performance, besides being the home base for performances by Lawrence University students and faculty.
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Let's do this!
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So, its back to the basement studio for some flower close-ups. I have been kind of obsessed with flower close-ups lately. I have gotten a few good shots, but I feel there are a lot of variations on the theme that I want to explore. So, there may be more to come.
This particular orchid shot was taken with my 24-70mm zoom and a 20mm extension tube. A lot of light from several strategically placed speed lights allowed me to stop this shot down to f22 to increase the depth of field. Even at f22, I did use a little focus stacking.
Well, after working on the flower close-ups for a while, I decided I would try a few water droplet shots. This is something I’ve been thinking about doing for a while and the Alstroemeria would make a nice backdrop.
The extreme close-ups of the water droplets were taken with a 28-70 mm zoom lens and three extension tubes (68 mm total). The 68 mm extension allowed me to approach 1:1 magnification. Drop me a line if you want the technical details of the setup.
This gave me the opportunity to make a few portraits of my mom, siblings and their spouses today. There was not a lot of light to work with so I used a bit of primary flash inside a small Rogue Flash Bender. I also added a touch of flash with a blue gel from the side to add a little depth. I think these turned out nicely. Merry Christmas everybody!
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The Aeroshell aerobatic team is one of my favorites.
The Monday night balloon glow was spectacular.
This is a the tail end of Ted Teach's 1936 Ryan S-T in front of EAA's Vintage Aircraft Club hangar. This immaculate restoration won Grand Champion and a Gold Lindy Trophy in the Antique category. This is a composite of several shots taken one night after the crowds were gone and the sun was setting.
Proud Dad is seen here taking pictures of Tatum and Kola after their ride.
I’ve been thinking of adding some character to the loft in our house. I spend a fair amount of time up there – it serves as my home office and photo editing room. I am in the loft right now as I write this. I’ve been thinking that this room needs some black and white aviation photography and I really need to spend some time shooting some airplanes on the ramp at one of the local airports. The weather has not cooperated lately and even if the winter weather was not too bad, there probably isn’t a whole lot activity out at the airport. It is winter in Wisconsin after all. Then it dawned on me that I have a fairly extensive archive of airplane shots taken in years past at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh. After rummaging around through 10 years of photos, I found a few shots that represent my annual pilgrimage to Oshkosh. What is old can be new – with a little help from Photoshop.
The aerial image is of the airport in La Crosse, Wisconsin which is right on the banks of the Mississippi River. This shot is reminiscent of years living in Mankato, Minnesota when I would fly our Cessna 152 to Oshkosh with one of my daughters in the right seat. We would always fly directly over La Crosse, which marks the halfway point of the flight from MKT to OSH.
If you have no idea what I am talking about when I refer to AirVenture on Oshkosh, check it out at http://www.eaa.org/en/airventure
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piece.
Later in the evening, the winds dropped and the powered parachutes took over at the Ultralight field. (I think I should learn to fly one of these) And finally, in what has become a new tradition at AirVenture, the Saturday night fireworks display!
It was an awesome day at the world's greatest aviation celebration.
Click here to see the entire gallery.
This was Maggie's last parade. And that is Mr. James Thaldorf with her after the parade. He is the Appleton North Music Director and Maggie's music teacher for the last four years. He does an awesome job with these kids. Music has been a huge part of Maggie's high school life. I am definitely going to miss the concerts and parades too.
I did not have time to separate the Varsity and JV shots and so they are all together in one gallery.
Link to East Triangular Meet Gallery
Here a few of my favorite shots from this event.
Appleton North Girls Gallery Kimberly 4 x 400 Relay Galllery
]]>I am fortunate to have a chance to display a few of my prints at the Copper Rock coffee shop in downtown Appleton. Thanks to Markatie Mealy for letting me use the space.
The prints went up today. If you get a chance to check them out, please let me know what you think.
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My daughter Anna recently asked me to make some prints for her to hang in the living room of her apartment. She is a junior at the University of MN and lives with four other girls. When I asked her for some ideas she just said something like, “Something big and nice.” Well, that certainly narrows it down doesn’t it! I gave some thought to landscapes or images of some interesting area landmarks. Then I realized she has spent more of her life in Minnesota than Wisconsin so maybe a couple city-scape shots of Twin Cities landmarks or the Minneapolis skyline.
Jean and I were in New York City this past weekend and while visiting some galleries I came upon the idea for flowers in isolation against a black backdrop. Ran out to a local flower store and picked up a few Lilies and went to work. Here are a couple of samples. I think they turned out pretty nice.
Ok Anna, it has been decided. I am going to work on getting you some poster sized prints along these lines. I hope you and your roommates like them!
Good luck at State!
Last week was Maggie’s last high school cross country meet. It was certainly a time to reflect on the past, the present and future of our youngest daughter’s life.
Hey Maggie, Mom and Dad know how much CC means to you and it was bittersweet for us watching you run your last meet. We know how much you will miss the sport, but the life lessons and friends you have made will stay with you and we know your best days are ahead of you. 143 Maggie.
Congratulations to the entire North Cross Country team for a great season!
Link to 2014 Sectional Gallery
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The Appleton North Lightning Girls had another fantastic day running away with the conference meet. The sun came out just as the meet started and provided some really nice golden light. It was definitely a bit of a mud fest, but the varsity girls look really strong going into the sectional meet. Good luck in Manitowoc girls!Links to photo galleries...
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Link to the varsity boys gallery.
Link to the varsity girls gallery.
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These were taken today at AirVenture in Oshkosh. The USAF Thunderbirds are capping off a great another great air show. Took these with only my 200 mm lens at F8 and the fastest shutter speed I could get by with. Even though I am only ¼ mile from the flight line I could certainly use more focal length. I spotted a few of the EAA photographers on a platform not too far away from where I was shooting. I don’t know what they had for lenses, but it looked like they had their cameras mounted on friggin telescopes! I think I need a 2x teleconverter for Christmas – that would give me 400 mm at f5.6.
Tonight the moon was a waxing gibbous and the sky was clear. So I hauled the telescope out and set out to capture another one of the images for my moon series. I got a couple of decent shots but in the process of trying to improve the focus to get a clearer image I noticed a problem. The image below is of the planet Mars slightly defocused. When viewing a slightly out of focus star or planet in my telescope (which happens to be a Schmidt-Cassegrain type) you should see a ring with a dark center perfectly centered. As you can see below, there is a ring but the dark area is not centered. Without getting into all the details of telescope construction, what this means is that the mirrors in my scope are not aligned properly. It is not a big deal and there is a straightforward process for "collimating" the mirrors. But the bottom line is that my images are not as sharp as they should be. So next time I take the scope out, I need to spend some time aligning the mirrors before I take more images.
Mars defocused. Notice how the dark area in the middle is shifted towards ten o'clock rather than perfectly centered.
To be continued.
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The Appleton North Lightning track team competed in the New London Regional Track Meet Today. The boys team took second overall while the girls took third. Tanner Daines (pictured below) took first place in the 3200.
Click here to see the rest of the gallery.
It was a beautiful day for a parade honoring those who gave their lives fighting for our country's freedom. I walked along parade route with the Appleton North HS marching band. Yes, I admit that I was walking in cadence most of the way, but what can I say!? I love marching bands! ]]>
It is Prom day for the Appleton area high schools and Maggie and her best friend Alyssa are all dolled up. They wanted to ham it up a bit for the camera and of course with subjects as cute as this, like this how could I resist!? Here is a link to the rest of the gallery.
http://www.airframephotography.com/p665235838
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It is still cold outside, but the track season is underway. The Appleton North Lightning girls competed in a triangular meet at Neenah on April 8th and the boys and girls competed in a triangular in Fond du Lac on the April 22nd. Here are a few of my favorite shots. Yes, I know the pole vaulter is not from North, but it is a good photo. This guy can vault! He easily cleared 13' 6" on this run and went on to win the meet too.You can find the rest of the images from these two meets by clicking on the following links. -- Enjoy
Here is Maggie looking cute in her new dress for the Spree Dance!
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I have been asked a lot questions about the prints hanging in our dining room. If you have been to our house you may recognize these 20 x 30 inch canvas wraps. They started out as photos I shot last summer at the Appleton farmer's market with the intent of creating these large format "paintings". The process I used in Photoshop to convert the original images to digital paintings went something like this...
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Increase color saturation of the photo to 80 - 90%. I did this because I wanted the colors in the finished print to be bright like acrylic paintings I have seen.
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Because I was going for large prints I increased the number of pixels in the image so the final image would be 240 dpi at 20 x30 inches. The original image from the camera was 3,872 x 2,592 pixels which turns out to be about 130 dpi when enlarged to 20 x 30 inches. I am not sure this step was actually needed but I wanted to make sure subsequent painting steps were being applied to a 240 dpi image. I used bi-cupic smoothing of the "Resize" command to increase the image to approximately 8000 x 5600.
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I applied the Accent Edges brush strokes filter. Command: Brush Strokes Effect > Accent Edges
Edge width 10
Edge brightness 40
Smoothness 5 -
Then I applied the Diagonal Strokes brush filter: Command: Strokes Effect > Diagonal Strokes
Directional Balance ~ 30
Stroke Length ~ 40
If you are not familiar with Photoshop, this may seem like Greek. If you really want to dig in, but want some help getting started, give me a call. Or, if you have an image that you would like me to convert for you -- I would be happy to help.
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I set out to capture the fresh snow that fell overnight. Thought it might be interesting to walk out onto this railroad bridge and get a shot looking back at the Lawe Street bridge. But when I got to the foot of the railroad bridge I realized this was my shot. When the snow makes a scene like this you can't complain too much about the long winter!
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