Randall's Photo Blog

Last week my son Chris came over and we decided to make a quick photo trip to the nearby Five Rivers Environmental Education Center. It's just a few miles down the road so we tend to go there frequently. It was a cool and sunny day. We did a short walk to the Beaver pond and the Heron pond. There is a bridge across one end of the Beaver pond and I shot this photo of the ice from the bridge.

When I turned my camera towards the cattails I got a nice shot of them backlit:

There was a gentle breeze that was blowing through the cattails and so I shot a short movie which you can watch here:

I also shot the small falls that connects Heron pond to Beaver pond from the bridge:

And this reflection of cattails on the water and ice:

We headed across the road and I was able to get a closer shot of the falls. The sunlight was playing on the water as it came over the edge and I took a number of shots. Each individual shot was different because of the way the light reflected on the water (exposure of 1/13sec.). I decided to combine the shots into a slide show/movie which you can view using this link - Falls Slide Show

This is a single shot of a different part of the falls:

I also took this shot from the road:

We headed back up to the visitor center and were happy to find some turkeys feeding at the bird feeders:

Not bad for a quick trip!

I have posted up my 2011 picks - my favorite images from the last year. I have a gallery up on this website and also on Zenfolio. The Zenfolio page has more options, including a slideshow and you can order prints if you are so inclined.

I also have two 3D cloud images that I didn't know how to post except here. If you align the two images horizontally and cross your eyes to form a center image it will be in 3D. You may have to click on the title to bring up this post alone and then stretch out the browser window.

Enjoy!

It kind of snuck up on me but it turns out that I have been using digital cameras for 10 years now. I got my first digital camera in August of 2001. It was a Sony DSC-S85 model and cost $900. The image quality produced by this camera was pretty good. Not quite as good as a high-quality 35mm camera but close. I made my decision based in part on a review of this camera on the website DPreview. I still rely on this website for reviews of digital photography equipment - it's an excellent resource.

Prior to this purchase I had been scanning my 35mm negatives and slides and manipulating the images on my computer. The leap to an all digital workflow was a pretty dramatic change and for a while I used the digital camera alongside a 35mm camera and a 4 x 5 camera. No single camera, of any format or style, is suitable for all kinds of photography. However, once I started taking pictures with my new Sony digital camera I was hooked!

This is a link to some of the better images I took in August 2001.

That first month I took pictures around my house in New Hampshire, made a trip to Colorado, New York City, and Florida. One of the really nice things about digital cameras is the fact that each image file has a time/date stamp so you know exactly when it was taken as well as all the information about how it was taken. New cameras sometimes even have a GPS that allows a location stamp as well. Often times if I can't remember some detail about a trip or party I will go back to my folders of digital files and review my images. Most of the time this will be enough to jog my memory or tell me what I need to know. In the last 10 years I've taken over 66,000 images with various digital cameras. I have learned how to use them in ways that I hadn't even thought about prior to going digital. I have no regrets and believe that my photography has improved dramatically in this period of time. That's not to say that I didn't take good pictures using my 35mm, 4 x 5, and medium format cameras but there's a certain subtle value to obtaining immediate feedback through the digital process. I'm sure it doesn't improve everyone's photography skills but it certainly has improved mine.

I'm sure a lot of people won't really care but it's my blog so this was my car in August 2001:

My beloved 1997 Honda Civic LX. You can see in the background that my mother was visiting because her Buick is parked in the driveway. This next picture was my living room in the Epping house:

Notice the stereo system and telescope - still important things in my life.

This is how I looked in August of 2001. You may notice that this shot is slightly out of focus. One feature of digital cameras that has improved dramatically over the last 10 years is the speed and accuracy of focusing.

This shot, which was taken in the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, is of my mother. She was a bit unsteady on her feet even 10 years ago but we were able to take public transportation, such as buses and subways, to get to the museum.

Lastly, this is a shot of my brother Lowell taken at the end of August 2001.

Cheers!

I usually post cool photos on my FaceBook or Picassa account but for those who are not FB friends or others who stumble across my blog I'm posting some recent images.

The first is a photo taken in my back yard. I wanted to capture the fireflies that were all over but they are not easy to image. I wound up taking many 15-30 second exposures at ISO 6400 and combining 15 of them into a single image to get the effect I wanted. I know it sounds like cheating but the camera didn't pick up all the fireflies in each shot so this is more like what it really looked like. I used GraphicConverter to combine the images.

I also had one of my digital cameras converted to image the full spectrum. Most cameras have an infrared (IR) cutoff filter over the sensor. If you want to image IR this cam be replaced by an IR filter - which will allow only IR to pass or a full spectrum (glass) filter and use an IR filter to take IR images. I opted to have a glass filter and use the external filters as this would also allow normal use with a "hot filter" or astro-photography. Here are some of my IR images:

The last two were taken at the deCordova Museum in Lincoln MA.

Here are some astro-photos:

Two exposures of the moon combined.

A supernova in the whirlpool galaxy - M51 that Rebecca & I imaged June 18th.

This one is of globular cluster M3 and has a satellite fly by in the frame.

This shot is also a combination of two long exposures to capture lightning from my back porch. This storm produced a lot more lightning than rain.

This is an old shot of me sitting in front of my trusty MacPlus:

Some things never change:

This is just for fun:

Enjoy!

I've posted up my 2010 picks - the usual assortment of sunsets, flowers, frogs etc. Hope you enjoy them:

On my web site or on Zenfolio.