Recently in Photography Category

I have no memory of this, but apparently the US Core of Engineers stopped the water flow over Niagara Falls in 1969 to see how stable the rock bed was.  Flickr user, Russ Glasson, took several amazing pictures of the event:  Niagara Falls with no water falling!  Check his photos out at this link.

Related articles:

• They Stopped Niagara Falls (neatorama.com)

I already posted a time lapse of the installation at this link.  But the lighting and the camera settings were a huge challenge.  So you really didn't get to see what the shutters look like, until now.   They are 4" shutters made by Avalon.  The top of the top shutter is 18' from the floor.

I really like going to the El Segundo Antique Car show, held each year near the end of August.  It's free and is sponsored by the El Segundo Police Department, which I think is also cool.  I first went in 2008. I was out of town last year on business and missed it.  This year's show was a little different from the first one I attended.

When I first arrived the sky was overcast with the marine layer which makes for a very nice, diffuse lighting on the cars, perfect for photography.  The sun came out about half way through my visit.  Yikes.  Hot spots reflecting off the vehicles.

At any rate, I had a blast and am getting better and better at shooting cars (or, so I think, anyway—smile).

For this post I am including only a few shots of  hood ornaments, not grills, trunks, engines, or full cars.  To check out my entire collection of photos of automobiles, three albums, click on this link and then select the album(s) you wish to view.  Be sure to click the full screen button in order to view them in full screen, no matter how big your screen is.  (They do look awesome on the huge monitors!)

Click any image below to see a larger version.

When the lights dimmed, she looked at me from across the room.  When I approached her, a single spotlight from heaven filled our hearts.  We were in love.  The Oar House, Pensacola, FL.

Related articles:

• P'cola or Bust (timtyson.us)

We just returned from a very short visit to my hometown of Pensacola.  My FC, favorite cousin, Susan, came down for the visit as well.  We had a wonderful time filled with laughter, good seafood, and great political talk (the FC and I are on the same side of the political coin).  I don't know, it seems the dispersants used in the Gulf, made all of the seafood especially flavorful.  Actually, we made sure none of the seafood we ate came from the Gulf.  This picture, click to enlarge, was taken by the HU at the Oar House, one of my favorite Pensacola establishments.

I just came across the photography and video work of Shaun Reeder. Wow!!

At his site, he comes across as one free-spirited human soul that isn't bound by the force of gravity.  His adventures are stunning.  His music, photography, and videos will probably take you places you will otherwise never go.  In fact, watching his death-defying video work just makes me nervous — to be so balanced, so aware of your location in space, so certain of your center, in such great physical shape.  Even the banner on his site is way cool.

You have to check out his videos which are linked to the image below.  Awesome work!

So nicely done. Be sure to check out Phil's post on the setup for this time lapse. He includes a 12 minute audio podcast about it as well at: Phil's Blog Post.  Oh, and watch this in full screen mode!

Today we went walking along the beach and plopped our beach chairs surf side to enjoy a moment of sunshine and the cool ocean breeze. When I sat down, I noticed I had a glob of tar near the heal of my foot. And since I had forgotten to wear my "official beach shoes," I was going to have a very hard time getting the tar glob off.

While seated I frequently rubbed my heal in the sand. No help at all.

So, when I got home, I Googled "remove tar foot" and saw two suggestions:

• use olive oil and a toothbrush
• use regular white (not gel) toothpaste on a wet washcloth

All of the toothpaste here at the house is gel;  so, I got the olive oil out and the tiny new toothbrush my dentist gave me when I had my teeth last cleaned.  The tedious process took about 20 minutes, but it worked.  Below are the pictures documenting the trauma. Consider this my own personal exhibit of "Crude Awakening" that I blogged about before.

The tar (combined with the beach sand) becomes hard and is completely stuck to the skin.  I couldn't even scrape it off with a sea shell.  It has the dank tar smell.

The Tar Glob Proper

The Tools for the Procedure

Twenty Minutes Later

This is quite the week for tar.  The city of Manhattan Beach is in the process of redoing the slurry on the streets (that black tar goo with little tiny pebbles in it).  They just did the two streets by the house.  It's incredibly messy.  The workers also got black tar on the grass by the side of the house.  Not happy as that oil spill will probably kill the grass.

Oil is gushing freely into the Gulf of Mexico today as BP is trying to cap the well again.  And I just read an article online about the potential of a massive methane gas bubble from all of the methane gushing from the well in the Gulf (40% is methane gas and 60% is oil) rising from the Gulf and causing the extinction of all life on earth as methane gas is deadly.  She claims the sea floor around the gushing well is rising for about a 5 mile radius.  I hope the author is a crackpot.  If not, at least BP was kind enough to only kill all life on one planet in the solar system.

Check out the link at the bottom for a more detailed description of the methane gas theory including a link to the original article.

But the greatest tragedy of all was the realization that I have lived here in Manhattan Beach for about 2.5 years now, and today was the first time I've actually sat out on the beach.  That will be rectified this summer!

Related articles:

• Happy Sunday! The BP spill could trigger a methane explosion, mass extinction (crunchgear.com)

An excellent photo essay entitled Crude Awakening, by Jane Fulton Alt.  Here are two samples...

Well, as you can see, I was very busy working on photos this weekend.  It all started when I found out that people were not only viewing but also comments on my photos on Flickr.  And I had posted very few photos there.  So, I decided to update those with several thousand new photos and tackle coming up to date with my official photo gallery here at tt.us.

I enjoyed working on the photos from Page, Arizona, and from Ireland.  Doing so always brings back great memories from the trips.

So now I need to work on the photos from my fairly recent trip to Thailand and Vietnam.  Hopefully that will happen soon, though I will be spending a lot more time this month traveling and writing for my book project (before my publisher starts to yell at me).

I've included over 600 pictures from my November, 2009, trip to Ireland, in the Ireland Gallery.  Click the image below to enjoy!

My trip to Page, Arizona, back in January, 2010, was filled with amazing places to photograph.  I've finally published the Page Gallery of albums.  This gallery contains my first HDR gallery.  You will want to be sure to check it out!

Click the image below to visit it, and don't forget to view the pictures in full screen mode!

Several years ago I discovered Todd Dominey's SlideShow Pro (SSP), which I use to present my photos here at tt.us.  (Check them out at timtyson.us/photos.)  Over the years SSP has evolved into a really slick, powerful, wonderful tool for managing both photo and video distribution.  As my knowledge and understanding of the various SSP products has grown, I would place this product in my list of Tim's All Time Favorite Digital Tools! It rocks!

In fact, since SSP had an export plugin for Lightroom, it was the deciding factor in my ditching Apple's Aperture and switching all of my photo management over to Lightroom--well, that and the horrendous performance issues Aperture 2 had.  (Now, I understand that a third party export plugin is available for Aperture.  But I haven't tried it.)

But SSP is Flash-based.  This now poses problems because Steve Jobs is having a spat with Adobe, and most people don't foresee Apple mobile products ever making use of Flash.  Sad, but there's nothing I can do about that.

Rather than focusing on the technology issues or the dispute, SSP is focusing on their customers' primary need:  finding excellent ways to share their work.  So they have announced a new component to their fabtabulous SlideShowPro Director:  a photo and video player that is built with HTML5, CSS3, and javascript instead of Flash!  This will allow content to display on the iPod Touch, iPhones, and the iPad!

Here is an overview of the new SlideshowPro Mobile.  I so love SSP!!

Related articles:

• SlideShowPro does HTML5, Flash (blogs.adobe.com)

Every image tells a story.  So, I've decided I should share some of the stories around the images that rotate through the banner images at the top of my blog.  [If you're reading this at blog.timtyson.us, you will not see these rotating banner images.  You have to go to the mirror site at timtyson.us/weblog to see the rotating images.]

I shot this particular image at Horseshoe Bend in Page, Arizona, in January, 2010.  Perhaps in the larger image (click to enlarge) you can see the snow in the distant mountains.  While it was cool enough to wear a jacket, it was not at all cold.

You have to walk about a mile in the desert from the parking area to get to this location.  The view is very, very flat and you simply can't see the Colorado River winding through the desert until you are very close to the edge.  Speaking of the edge...

Taking this shot was terrifying!  I slowly and "intrepidly" inched my way to the edge of the sheer drop off holding my opened tripod out in front of me as if it were a senior citizen's walker.  Though I'm certain I looked ridiculous, I could have cared less!  The air was rather still while we were there which at least reduced my fear of being blown over the edge.

The view is gorgeous.  Photos can't capture this type of grandeur.

This photo was among my first experiments with HDR that has "gone public."  This picture is actually three shots, each at a different exposure.  I then took the three pictures and merged the detail information into one photograph, which gives the photo its distinctive look and level of detail in the brighter as well as darker areas of the scene.

Finally, I have to tell you about the guys, three of them, that were walking up to the edge and shooting--literally within inches.  One guy, twenty-something, just squatted down within 2 - 3 inches of the edge on a slope (downward!) and was shooting away as if there were no way he could possible fall to his death if the sand slid or crumbled.  I simply couldn't stand to watch him!  My knees were about to turn to rubber!

An amazing, beautiful view.  The scale is astounding.

Related articles:

• Beauty of Arizona (slideshare.net)

More 100mm macro love

Digital Photography School has an interesting article on creating one shot panos and even 360º videos.  The GoPano Optic, by Eyesee360.com, mounts onto many camera lens and comes with software, PhotoWarp, to unwarp the resulting "donut-like" image into the pano.  It's interesting.

My friend Mark, who travels as much as I do, was recently in the Jacksonville, Florida Airport and shot these photos with his iPhone.  This is very clever and creative design!

If we saw the guy's head through the far windows up in the ceiling, I would have foamed at the mouth!

Tim Likes!

"No, no, no!  On this planet you can only use 140 characters when you speak."
(Click the pic to see the larger version.)

Experimenting with the Canon 100mm macro EF 2.8L IS lens while the laundry runs.  I've have this little guy for years.  He sits on my desk looking at me from time to time.  I played with the shot just a bit in Lightroom 3.  (Click the image to see a larger version.)

Back on April 2nd, I wrote about the trip down to Halong Bay, Vietnam, when we stopped at a sewing factory and purchased a tapestry for the house.  Well, it is finally framed and now hanging on the wall in the living room.  As you can see, it's very large!  Though these pictures have a great deal of reflection because of the bright sun at the time of day I shot them, I'm posting them so you can get a sense of the tapestry.  The piece is actually double framed.   (Click on each photo to see the larger version.)

When you click on the two pictures below, you can see some of the detailed sewing work.  (You see the reflection on the flowers through the front window.)

Related articles:

• Vietnam: Day Three - Halong Bay (timtyson.us)

And I mean out of the city. Tom Lowe shares some astounding time lapse work from out in the desert. He also has a couple of breath-taking HD versions available for download at his site, Timescapes. Just awesome! You have to watch these full screen!

Predicting where to setup to catching the galaxy stars as they come by, the sunrise and set, the moon's motion and how it will change the lighting of the scene...  He's quite the artist!

Related articles:

• I Love Ross' Creativity Here (timtyson.us)

A better picture...

Don't mention to Beast that he needs to lose weight.  It upsets him at dinner time.

Beast and Monkey are best buds. I grabbed my iPhone for a quick picture and Beast moved in the low light causing a bit of a blur.

Source: ukaaa

Click for a larger picture.

Comprised of over 6,000 still images, each shot every 20 seconds from the hotel room window overlooking the river below, this time lapse represents almost 2 days of the heat and hazy humidity of Bangkok.  I used my old Canon 30D.  The original project is 1080HD and is filled with interesting detail; but, to be useful for web deployment, this much smaller version is shared.