Monthly Archives: March 2010

Working the high water

Friday, March 19, 2010 Posted in Environment, Lightroom, Photography

The past few days have been pretty interesting here in eastern and central Massachusetts.  We picked up close to 7 inches of rain in our backyard, and this on top of a similar storm that passed through just a few weeks ago.  Consequently the rivers and streams in the area have been jumping their banks.

I’ve been trying to take advantage of this situation, although other commitments plus the occasional emergency has made this difficult.  Fortunately, for me, even though the damaging flood waters have mostly receded around here, it’ll be several days before things return to anything resembling normal stream flow.

The photo above was taken at the Powder Mill Dam in Acton where there is a small run-of-the-river hydropower plant in operation.  That’s the dam’s powerhouse reflected in water.  I suspect they are at peak production right now — Concord (who purchases the power) is a bit greener because of this.

This evening I’m off to Nashoba Brook in Acton to do some filming and I’m desperately hoping for some nice evening light.   My Canon 5D Mark 2 recently received its firmware upgrade allowing me to film at 24 frames/second which is what traditional film cameras do.  The difference is subtle but having spent our lives watching moving pictures at different rates there seems to be an almost subliminal change in how people perceive the two and for the little film I have in mind I want the smoother look of 24 fps.

Technical stuff: Photo taken with a Canon 5D Mark 2, 70-200mm f/2.8 @ f/20, 1/8 second, ISO 100, polarizer and 3-stop ND filter, cable release, sitting on a Gitzo tripod and Manfrotto 701HD fluid head (I was shooting video too).  Lightroom: played with fill and black point, removed one big dust spot but not a bunch of smaller ones (yet).  Bit of vibrance and clarity. Slight crop on the right to remove — I was shooting through a fence and it intruded on the right hand side creating a vignette-like appearance.

If you are interested in the river flooding saga here I shot a short YouTube video showing what it was happening here in Maynard near the peak flow:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4b2nNoTFw4[/youtube]

View full post »

Here we go again – another roaring river week

Sunday, March 14, 2010 Posted in Environment, Lightroom, Photography, Staring, Video

Another week, another 50-year rain storm…

I’m partly joking, I don’t know the recurrence level of this current storm but it’s nothing to sneeze at.

Here’s the flow gauge of the river for the past 30 days.  We’re in for another fun few days with the current forecast having the river rise potentially 2 feet above where it is right now, but they said the last storm would reach 7 feet as well, and it didn’t quite hit that mark.

On the other hand we’re starting from a significantly higher point.

All this water means that I’ll have a chance to visit a few more of the local streams and capture some, um, “rigorous” flow conditions.

These two events back to back have me hankering to build a time-lapse movie of the river’s rise.   Today it rose rather dramatically and did so during the daylight hours.  The only problem is that it was pouring rain and we had non-trivial winds as well.  I think I’m going to poke around and see if I can build a watertight box with a plexiglas viewport, perhaps lockable so I can chain it to a tree or something if needed.  This would let me set it up for a 12 hour run and try to bring this dynamic event to life.

As evening drew near I decided the 5D needed a bath, so I headed out into the backyard to take a few images.  I nearly froze my hands off in 15 minutes — the rain must be at 33 degrees (F). Here’s a bit of video from this evening:

[qt:/video/assabet-river-14mar2010.m4v 640 360]

Technical:

Images and video captured with a well-soaked Canon 5D Mark II, 16-35mm f/2.8L.  Image was at ISO 400, 1.6 seconds, f/5.6.  Video was at ISO 3200, 1/60, f/2.8.  Both were taken from Gitzo sticks and a Manfrotto fluid head.

Image processed with Lightroom, bit of fill and black point, moderate clarity.   Video was transcoded to ProRes LT by MPEG Streamclip, which was an unnecessary step because I then imported it into iMovie to trim, add the titles, and adjusted exposure +35%. Exported directly from iMovie to Quicktime H.264.

View full post »

Abstract Kayaker Followup

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 Posted in Lightroom, Photography, Staring

In the previous post on exploring the power of water I discussed an encounter with a kayaker where I decided to use long exposures rather than try to freeze the action with the intent of having some abstract images.   My brother, Pete, noted that I didn’t include any traditional visual “anchor points” in the images.  This was intentional on my part, but I thought it would be interesting to look at the images that did have some reference to solid ground in them.

If I had planned this encounter I would have taken steps to make the background even more stable – providing a more distinct visual contrast between the trees and ground and the chaos of the water.  The sequence here moves from moderately discernible backgrounds to where the they become almost as fluid and abstract as the water.  Feel free to compare and contrast with the initial set.




Technical details:

Canon 40D, 100-400mm f/4.5L IS at f/16, ISO 200 with polarizer and 3-stop ND filter.  Shutter speed 0.6 seconds for the first image and 0.8 seconds for the others.  Camera stabilized on a Gitzo tripod and RRS BH-55 ballhead.

Lightroom post-processing: White balance set to 6000K, exposure unchanged, fill 53, black point 33, clarity 80, and vibrance 25.  Default Lightroom sharpening.

View full post »

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2012 David Griffin Photography | ProPhoto Photography Blog by NetRivet Sites

F a c e b o o k
C o n n e c t