It’s been over 100 degrees there lately.
Reminiscing about the Salton Sea tonight and how much I want to go back as soon as possible. I have so many photos that I haven’t even gone through from my trip to California. I didn’t get to spend nearly as much time photographing the Salton Sea as I had hoped. Better luck next time.
It’s been a while since I’ve made any composite photos. I will often go for months without doing any of them and then go on a rampage of making a few of them. I often use 2-4 images. This one was made with two: the photo of the house and a texture image of some plywood.
I had gone to Gettysburg National Military Park with my parents about a month ago when I went to our cabin to relax during my recovery. Gettysburg isn’t too far from our cabin so we often go there when we feel like taking a drive. The sky was really overcast and generally crappy. And it was hot and humid. I didn’t feel like taking photos.
I normally don’t work this dark. But I went for dark. I will probably hate it tomorrow.
11
May
Happy Mother’s Day!
Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mothers out there…especially my favorite of all, my mamapantz!
A few more photos taken at Morris Arboretum….
09
May
Kempton, Pennsylvania
I wrote about the adventure to Centralia last weekend. After Centralia, we briefly explored the town of Shamokin (which was NOT shamokin like Centralia was), another coal mining town in central PA. As we drove back to Philly, we took a slight detour to check out the very rural area of Kempton, near Hawk Mountain. Steve was sharing a spooky ghost story on the way there. Apparently, serial killer Matthias Schambacher and his wife had rented rooms in their house as a wayside inn to travelers. Rumors began to circulate that guests who had entered their house were never seen again.
Although his gravestone is now gone, Matthias Schambacher is buried in the supposedly haunted New Bethel Cemetery. We saw the general location of where he is buried, along with many other gravestones dating as far back as the mid-1700s on one side of the cemetery. The other side of the cemetery has recent gravestones and burials as recent as a few days prior to our visit.
The location of the cemetery was an absolutely stunning view from a hillside that overlooked the church and the valley. We were there at sunset and the weather seemed to make it a bit eerie, in my opinion…even though Steve kept trying to convince us that it was a peaceful place. Even a killdeer seemed be trying to give us a warning to leave the place. ghosts!!
06
May
Centralia, Pennsylvania
My friends Albert, Steve, and I went to Centralia, Pennsylvania on Saturday. For those who aren’t familiar with the history of the town, Centralia is a town in central Pennsylvania that has had underground mine fires burning for the last 46 years. Yes, you did read that correctly. Most of the residents abandoned ship while a whole 21 remain living in what remains of the town (which isn’t a whole lot). I couldn’t summarize it better than WikiPedia.
We explored the entire town…and like I said, there wasn’t much to see. There was a hill where you could see smoke coming out from various areas in the ground. And there’s an old section of Route 61 that has been closed where there are large devouring cracks in graffiti covered pavement. I imagine that it’s even more impressive in the fall when it’s colder. Nevertheless, it was still a sight to see. It’s been on my list of must-visits for many years now and I finally got to check it out.
We were also a bit freaked out by the insane number of tent caterpillars that appear to be taking over the trees.
04
May
Morris Arboretum
Last Sunday, Albert and I went to Morris Arboretum because they were having a 75th Anniversary Celebration, complete with free admission (which is normally $10), tours to areas of the arboretum that are generally not open to the public, free food, free entertainment, and many photo opportunities! Neither of us had ever been there, but had wanted to check it out. I had made it a goal to visit every arboretum and public garden in the general vicinity of Philadelphia this year….we’ll see if it actually happens because there are a lot in the area!!
It’s really difficult to believe that this incredibly beautiful place is located in the city of Philadelphia! And I also think that it’s my new favorite place in Philadelphia. Just gorgeous. I really can’t say anymore than that except that I can’t wait to go back.
And the ferns…..oh, the ferns. And there are redwoods, too!
I never got around to posting my March photos for the Philadelphia Grid Project. I got some useful images, but nothing that I was really happy with this time. However, we did check out a really awesome abandoned house that was in the process of being torn down and had some really cool remnants inside of it. March’s grid fell within west Philly, encompassing the area of Mantua where most of my photos were taken.
We had our meeting last night to review and discuss the photos. My photo to be entered into the archives for the month of March is the first one below: a photo of a Polaroid found in the abandoned house.
I’m going to try to make this macro series the least bit technical as possible so that photographers of all skill levels can understand it. Please feel free to post questions about the articles or any macro topics that you may have along the way so that I can cover them in a future article.
I’ve been doing macro photography for about ten years now. I had no clue what I was doing when I first started (even though I thought I did). I was working as a biologist in the desert at the time and surrounded my many incredible photo opportunities. I thought that I could just pick up my camera and go take incredible closeups of plants, wildlife, etc., but it didn’t take too long before I realized that it didn’t work out that way. I did get some good macro photos, but I was incredibly limited by my lens.
It’s not uncommon for photographers to gawk at the equipment that others are using. I’ve come to realize that this happens most often when I’m doing macro photography. For instance, just yesterday while I was shooting some water droplets on a leaf, a man asked what lens I was using. He was using a standard zoom lens that said “macro” on it, but he wasn’t totally pleased with the results that he was getting with his lens. A lot of lenses on the market do have this built-in macro capability, but they aren’t true macro lenses. If you’re using a lens with this built-in macro capability, you will be able to take macro photos, but you will be limited to what you can capture and you won’t be able to capture 1:1 life size macro images. Most everyday lenses have a ratio that is not 1:1, so you’re capturing the subject at a smaller fraction of its true size.
So what’s the difference between a normal everyday lens and a macro lens? A normal lens has glass elements that move back and forth up to a specified focal distance. When you go get closer than that focal distance, everything is going to be out of focus because the lens elements can’t adjust beyond that point. In a true macro lens, you still have moving elements, but they have a larger distance inside of the lens barrel than they would in a standard lens and one of these elements is floating so that the optics can be changed to allow sharp images at all focal distances. So no matter how close I am to my subject, I can always capture a sharp image (provided that my eyes are working correctly and my technical settings are correct)!
There are macro lenses of many focal lengths…50mm, 90mm, 100mm, 180mm, etc. and you chose the focal length of the macro lens just the same as you would any other lens. For instance, if you want to get a close photo of a person from a distance, you’re not going to use a 50mm lens; you would use a lens that would give you a little bit more reach. So in the macro world, you would use a lens with a longer focal length to capture images of insects or other wildlife that may become easily spooked by your presence. Macro lenses with shorter focal lengths are great for product shots and other inanimate subjects. I use a mid-range macro lens: the Tamron 90mm/f2.8 macro. This is the oldest lens that I have and one of my very first lenses: it’s about 10 years old. It’s great for all purposes, but I do have difficulty photographing some insects that are easily spooked. I have used a 180mm macro, but it’s a lot heavier and almost always requires a tripod. However, I don’t need to get as close to my subject to achieve a 1:1 image with this longer lens.
Close-up diopters and extension tubes are also commonly used for macro photography. While I haven’t used them for a long time, I will eventually touch on them in a future article.
Thank you to Albert Yee for the photograph of me photographing. I was capturing the Columbine flower above.
SPECS:
Water droplets: Canon 20D with Tamron 90mm Macro; 1/125 sec & f3.5 using natural light
Columbine flower: Canon 20D with Tamron 90mm Macro; 1/160 sec & f4 using natural light
