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April 25, 2008
Spent some time with the Osprey nests in Westborough and Acton, both times in the morning.
The pair in Westborough are building their nest and things seem to be going well there. I’m staying well away from the nest, but they were pretty relaxed even as I approached and set up my watching areas: no warning cries or visual signs of stress. That’s good.
I attempted some video shooting from the kayak. There was a slight breeze that made long shots pretty much unusable for presentation purposes (I’ll be interested if Final Cut Pro’s SmoothCam effect can deal with this at all.)
As I was starting to wrap it up for the morning, the breeze died down. Normally this would be something to look forward to, but the lack of wind was a signal for about a billion insects to fill the air. Aye! They were just gnats, who were not interested in my blood, but their appearance made leaving for the morning not that difficult a decision.
The next morning I headed over the Acton nest site — a bit later than I wanted to (about 30 minutes after sunrise). Not more than a few minutes after I arrived, the pair flew to the tower and mated! I just put the hammer down and hoped the camera’s buffer wouldn’t run out before the event was over!
Having solid ground under me for a change, I shot some video that I hope to include in my upcoming Assabet Osprey presentation to the Friends of Assabet River NWR next week. I wasn’t having much luck with capturing landings - they simply arrive so quickly and my vantage point provided about 2 seconds of lead time.
I did some establishment shots with a slow zoom and pan. My second one ROCKED because one of the birds flew off the nest just as the zoom ended. My first “wow” video moment.
Filed under: Osprey |
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April 18, 2008
Betsy and I spent a few days at the Albany Institute of Art and History, in beautiful downtown Albany, taking part in a workshop sponsored by the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH).
The workshop was an introduction to the process of digitizing historical collections. Day one covered the workflow, day two concentrated on the scanning process, and the final day was devoted to metadata. Ah, sweet metadata.
We had a great time and met a number of people in the New England area who are working on varied historical preservation projects.For our little business here, the workshop helped me understand the total scope of digitization projects and what resources are needed to make them happen. It also opened up some ideas for doing joint projects and possibly creating a “hybrid outsourcing” capability here in DMG Photography (we provide the technology and expertise, but we’ll do the work on-site). We’ll see how that flies.
I’m not a “city mouse”, but Albany’s Empire State Plaza was an interesting place to visit if only in that it was an example of what someone thought was a modern space — maybe it is nicer than what was on the surface. The architecture is contemporary 60’s, complete with sculptures by famous people. But it bright, cold, and almost antiseptic. Washington Square, which is nearby, was comparatively packed with people eating lunch on the lawns.
I really wanted to visit inside the state capitol building, but I was unwilling to give up my tiny pocket knife for the sake of some false sense of security people get by knowing that I won’t be carrying a knife with a terrifying 1.5 inch blade. Sigh!
I’ve added AASLH to my blogroll. They are good people.
Filed under: Technology |
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April 10, 2008
We’ve been receiving reports that the Osprey had returned to their nest in Westborough and have been itching to get out there and see them ourselves. It has been a slow and bumpy start to Spring here in New England and we never seem to be able to synch up with the weather. But yesterday it finally edged out of the 40’s and, despite an increasingly stiff wind, we headed out to the far side of the reservoir to see what was happening.
The Osprey pair have indeed settled in. I managed to catch a shot of one of them grabbing a branch and bringing it to the nest. Later one of the birds, presumably the male, delivered a fish as well.
All in all, a good start for these birds.
My observation protocol keeps me a good distance away from the nest site during these early months. Once the nest is established and occupied, we can test the waters for edging a bit closer. Last year proved to be a big surprise in that the adults were extremely skittish (in past years they were always rather tolerant - leaving me to believe that at least one of the birds is new).
Between the wind and the lack of good light, it was no fun out there - but it was still great to get back on the water again after a long winter and we’re looking forward to many more visits. (The forecast has the temperatures back into the 40’s again in a few days, so it’s not going to be a cake walk…)
Filed under: Osprey, Staring |
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March 22, 2008
[L-R: Carol Noonan, Lisa Saffer, Katie Noonan, Billy McGillvray, Duke Levine, and Tim Ostendorf]
Are these people having too much fun? Quite possibly - but so is the audience.
Stone Mountain LIVE is described as “A Prairie Home Companion”, only from the piney woods of Maine. The description is very accurate.
Between the diverse and really stunning musical performances, the SMAC troupe manages to come up with some pretty bizarre skits — but they are easily on a par with Mr. Keillor. When the snow is up over the windows in March (and this is after it has melted down a foot or so) you can’t really blame anyone for going just a little crazy - but in a good way.
And so what this winter of endless snow gives us is a 7 minute barrage of puns involving the names of towns in Maine punctuated by whistles, kazoos, and horns injected into a potboiler romance story. You had to be there.
For more pictures of the show, visit: http://smac.dmg-photography.com
To get tickets to the next Stone Mountain LIVE, head on over to: http://www.stonemountainartscenter.com
Filed under: SMAC |
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March 11, 2008
Lots of people ask me where to learn more about photography. Here are some great resources that I use regularly:
1. NatureScapes.net - It has free content, but you get a lot more by joining. The forums give you access to top-notch technical, artistic, and business talent in the field of nature photography.
2. TWIP (This Week In Photography) - TWIP is one of several podcasts shepherded by the Pixel Corps (which I recently joined, but haven’t worked my way into yet). TWIP also has a blog and other activities in Flickr. They are striking that fine line between advanced photography and beginners. If nothing else, listening to their weekly or so podcast is a great way to hear different people’s opinions on photography — as if you happened to walk into a room with a handful of smart photographers yacking on some topic.
3. Luminous Landscape - Michael Reichmann’s site is simply full of great articles, equipment reviews, and opinions from both Michael and other authors. Michael has some great friends, like Jeff Schewe and Alain Briot to name just two. The Luminous Landscape Video Journal (LLVJ) is a quarterly or so, professionally produced, video program which you can subscribe to for a nominal fee. It used to be distributed by DVD, but is staying ahead of the curve with all-digital distribution now. (Bravo!) The Camera to Print video tutorial is worth its weight in gold (but only if you pretend that it actually has weight and weighs a lot…)
4. LensWork - Brooks Jensen sets the bar high for everything he does. LensWork is primarily known as a magazine featuring fine art black&white photography. But you can also subscribe to the extended version which arrives as a CD/DVD with audio interviews, extended galleries, and lots of other goodies. PLUS, Brooks does a “bursty” podcast with short essays on photography that are sure to inspire (or confound).
Each of these resources reflects a different way of getting information and spans a wide variety of photographic interests. Do I read other things? Sure. I’ve got five or six things (including two podcasts) on Adobe Lightroom alone that I track regularly. But the four above are the core that provide ideas, entertainment, and the technical background I need to practice my craft. They work for me. They may not work for you. But if you haven’t given them a look, they are definitely worth sampling.
My final recommendation, whether you are photographer or not, is Art Wolfe’s “Travels to the Edge” series, making its way around PBS. If you can watch it HD, do so! I think I’ve seen each episode five times. And now I just have to visit the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge!
Filed under: Photography |
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March 2, 2008
We received yet another snowfall yesterday. The northeast is on track for a record winter snowfall-wise. I’m not sure our little town is near its records, but up in northern New England, they are getting buried. One town in Maine is over 140 inches and there are weeks to go.
Such is our fate, so the climate models are predicting. Snowier winters and drier summers will increasingly become the norm for New England.
Our river, the Assabet, went to flood stage a week or so ago after snow and rains piled on for a few days. Not so long ago winter in my backyard had the river running slowly and nearly frozen across. In recent years it looks more like the spring thaw - in February.
With luck, in a few weeks time, we’ll be putting our kayaks in the river and start to paddle our way into spring.
Filed under: Staring |
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February 20, 2008
Like a zillion other photographers I stood out in the winter night air and aimed my cameras skyward for the total lunar eclipse. I’m sure there’s a handful of folks who did their shooting with a nice equatorial mount and are Photoshopping their HDR captures as I type this. Me, I just pointed the camera and winged some exposures. (Not that I would be in the latter camp if I had the equipment….)
Filed under: Photography |
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February 18, 2008
We’ve had Apple TV “Take Two” installed for about a week now.
Generally speaking it is a great upgrade. It took a few minutes for me to figure out that they have dynamically merged locally synched content with the shared iTunes library (so if you have iTunes running the movies or whatever are dynamically merged into the menus). This is really quite slick.
The ability to directly access movies, tv shows, and especially podcasts is also pretty good. I haven’t rented a movie yet, but we’ll definitely give that a try one of these days.
The ability to access .Mac galleries is wicked cool. I haven’t tried Flickr yet, but I can see how that would be a great feature.
However, I’ve noticed a few changes that aren’t positive, and lately I’ve run into some downright issues.
Apparently some of those nice dynamic features come at a cost (which is almost certainly a software bug rather than a real cost). The UI is extremely “jittery”: freezing up at various points. I checked the Apple user forums and I am not alone. One hypothesis is that dynamic iTunes merging may be the source of the problem and they seem to be correct.
So, for now, we don’t have access to our movie library on the home server — annoying but we use Apple TV mostly for watching podcasts and our music (both sets are synched).
Filed under: Technology |
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February 18, 2008
During the summer of 2007 I covered the Water Wise Workshops sponsored by the Organization for the Assabet River with both photography and video recording. [Here’s an earlier article on the workshops.]
Over the past several weeks I’ve taken this material and produced a video that OAR will use to promote the workshops to potential sponsors. You can take a look at the Water Wise Workshops video on OAR’s website.
The video was produced using a variety of tools. I used Apple’s Keynote to create the graphical base (the text, still images, and transitions) and had it generate the Quicktime video. I then layered the video tracks on top of the Keynote base. There was definitely some weird interaction between different frame rates and Final Cut Express (not sure if it’s a bug in FCE).
Delivery was done with VisualHub to compress the final program for the web (also AppleTV and iPods). I generated some DVDs with iDVD.
Filed under: Environment, Technology |
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February 10, 2008
Today is the day where the phrase “if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute” comes to life:
8a - Snow on trees, heavy clouds, “freezing fog”
8:30 - Hazy sunshine, slight breeze
9a - Sunny
10a - Partly sunny
12:30 - Turns dark, windy.
1pm - Thunderstorm, snow squall, near white-out conditions
1:30 - Sunshine
3pm - Blue skies, windy
3:30p - Sky turns dark again
4pm - Snow squall, gusty winds
4:30 - Sun peeks through
4:40 - Clouds
5pm - Sunset,
6pm - Thunder, windy, snowing
6:30 - strong winds (20-40 mph)
When the sun peeked out in the afternoon I tried running downtown to take a picture of the clock tower lit up against the storm clouds. The sun, literally, disappeared while I was driving up the parking garage — a span of 3 minutes. Augh!
Filed under: Staring |
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