Monthly Archives: September 2013

Resuming Raku

29 Sunday Sep 2013

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Raku pots by LoriAfter a 2-year hiatus while without a pottery studio, Lori recently started firing some Raku pottery at her Newfield pottery studio headquarters. Raku is notoriously finicky and there were a few clunkers in these first firings but also some very encouraging results for both glazed and  slip-resist (a.k.a. “naked”) Raku.  The picture above shows 2 slip-resist pots (left and center) and a glazed Raku (right).  Lori is psyched to be back in the groove.

Shooting The Raku Photo

Lori left a couple pots from the recent firing on the kitchen counter and I, being too lazy to set up lighting, thought they would look nice where they were with the background doors and walls out of focus to leave attention on the pots.

I decided to shoot at 200mm to keep the background angle narrow enough to exclude some other distractions.  This also gave me a nice shallow depth of field when combined with a nearly-wide-open f/3.3 aperture.  But the depth of focus under these conditions would be too shallow to keep the features of the pots sharp.   So I shot 5 images varying the focal point from the front to the back of the pieces; then I combined them in a focus stack using Helicon Focus software. The resulting image is sharp front to back of the pottery pieces but nicely unfocused in the background, a combination not possible using a smaller aperture alone.

Shooting the Moon

21 Saturday Sep 2013

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Newfield MoonrisePhotographing the full moon from our Newfield house is a trivial exercise due to our open view to the east and a reasonably attractive view over the valley. I just haul a camera and tripod out onto the deck and watch the show unfold.

Moonrise over Sunnyview AcresWhile shooting some pictures of the most recent full moon, I started thinking about a conversation I had with my brother David recently.  We were talking about hiking in the Sierra Nevadas and that reminded me of a full moon landscape shot I was particularly proud of.

In 1997 I decided to hike up Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48 states. I scheduled vacation time for September after Labor Day to avoid the worst of the crowding.  I noticed that there would be a full moon on September 16th and so I settled on that week for my trip to Lone Pine in the Sierra Nevadas. Although my objective for the trip was to hike Mt. Whitney, I invested in a bit of planning to work out getting a shot of Mount Whitney with the full moon if the weather was cooperative.

Here’s how I planned my shot.  I had a topographic map of the Lone Pine area and Mount Whitney.  I then went to the US Naval Observatory Web site to get the moon’s location information for September 16th, 1997.  There’s a Web page, Sun or Moon Altitude/Azimuth Table,  which provided the location information I needed.  Noting that sunrise on September 16th at Lone Pine was at 6:35 am, I was particularly interested in the moon’s location around that time.  The table showed that the azimuth was around 260-265° for the time I was interested in.  The table also says that at 5:30 am the moon would be approximately 10° above the horizon.  I needed to figure what distance I would need to be from Mount Whitney to have it also appear 10° in altitude.  Whitney is about 10,600 feet higher in elevation than the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine. So tan(10°) = 10,600/x; solve for x giving us about 60,000 feet or 11 miles to the east.  As it turns out, the moon’s azimuth (260°), altitude (10°), and my calculated vantage point 11 miles away, put me in the Alabama Hills close to the road leading from Lone Pine to the Whitney Portal.  Now I knew when and where I needed to be to get my shot.  I packed a 300mm lens for the trip just for this opportunity.

September 16th was the day after my hike up Whitney so I got up early and headed to the Alabama Hills to get my shot.  The weather was perfect and I had plenty of time working between 5:30 and 6:30am getting multiple shots from different vantage points.  I had to drive several miles as the moon set to keep the right perspective.  My favorite of the bunch is the full moon behind Keeler Needle next to Mount Whitney.  Nerd power and planning rewarded me with some nice images that I was pleased with.

Full Moon, Sierra Nevadas

Haystack Hike

19 Thursday Sep 2013

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Little Ray Brook along trail to Haystack MountainLori and I took a break during a nice visit with family in Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks to hike up Haystack Mountain (the little one in Ray Brook, not the big one in the high peaks). The 3.3-mile  hike starts off as an easy stroll through beautiful mature open hardwood forests.  After the initial stretch, the trail runs parallel to Little Ray Brook, a classic little Adirondack stream that had plenty of water running  through it from recent rains.

Eventually the trail gets serious and quickly steepens for the last mile of the hike.  This is Adirondack style: no wimpy switchbacks here, just scramble up a beeline toward the summit.

Lori searches for view from inside cloudWeather report to the contrary, the clouds had not cleared by the time we reached the top.  As is often the case in the Adirondacks, we found ourselves taking in a panoramic view of the inside of a cumulus cloud.

After we munched on a snack and prepared to head back, the clouds started dissipating enough to give us a few glimpses of the summit view.  Nearby McKenzie Mountain was partially revealed and the lakes around Saranac Lake could be seen through the wisps of cloud. We didn’t get to see the distant high peaks by the time we left the summit though.

Near the end of our return, the sun broke through the clearing clouds, taunting us with what no doubt would be a fine view from the summit for the few late hikers we encountered during our return.

Lori takes in Haystack view as clouds retreat

Apple Cheesecake

14 Saturday Sep 2013

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fresh-picked applesYou are presented with a bucket of fresh-picked apples by Anne and Bill at Toad Hill Farm.  What do you do with them?  You have 30 seconds to come up with the correct answer.

Yes, that was a trick question.  There are many correct answers.  Lori chose to use some of them to make an apple cheesecake, which is one of the more correct answers.

I insisted on shooting some pictures of the end result and invoking the food photographer’s privilege of sampling the subject.  Jumpin’ Johnny Appleseed, that is good!

Newfield Old Home Days Parade

09 Monday Sep 2013

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Every year since the 1920’s, Newfield has held a Old Home Days Festival.  Lori, our neighbor Catherine, and I, as freshly-minted Newfield residents, were eager to see the Old Home Days Parade that we had heard so much about.  So this Saturday, we headed into town to see the 2013 extravaganza.

Let’s face the facts: Newfield is a very small town and the parade is a very modest affair including things like jacked-up pickup trucks, hay wagons, local town officials, lots of farm tractors, several horses, and a variety of other participants marching on a parade route that couldn’t be exaggerated to as much as a half mile long.

That said, it was, well, wonderful!  Newfield is a small town but it’s a small town with a lot of heart, a lot of interesting and interested residents, and the eagerness to put on an unabashed and often whimsical celebration of itself.  It often seemed as all the parade participants knew all the parade watchers as they exchanged waves and greetings.  We had the privilege of meeting several locals ourselves, all generous and friendly to a fault.  The good humor and enthusiasm of all is a tribute to the people of Newfield.

Mystery Light

08 Sunday Sep 2013

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Light from the valleyA few nights ago, we noticed this apparition as we sat on our deck.  This light, emanating from the valley to our east, was perplexing.  Was it a UFO landing?  Some secret government project gone horribly wrong?  A signal to Terrorists™ to commence their diabolical plan against West Danby?  It certainly couldn’t have been the headlights of a car heading up Bower Road–that’s just what the secret U.N. mind-control police would want you to believe.

Lucifer Falls

04 Wednesday Sep 2013

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bottom of Lucifer Falls in Robert H. Treman Park

Lori has been on furlough this week from ΙBM (a program by which thousands of employees are directed to not work in exchange for little or no pay to sabotage development schedules, destroy morale, and set the stage for future layoffs).  We’ve taken advantage of this to get a lot of work done around the house and get in some good hiking in the Ithaca/Tompkins County area such as Robert H. Treman State Park and Buttermilk Falls State Park.  Waterfalls seemed to be our theme.

At the bottom of Lucifer Falls I was shooting some pictures and Lori said, “Why don’t you slap on a 10-stop neutral density filter to get that nice creamy look in the waterfall.”  (Or maybe she said, “What is this, a hike or a funeral dirge?”  I just don’t recall.)

The next day we went to Buttermilk Falls and were beset by cool, perfect, sunny weather, a real loser for photography but I made the best of it by enjoying the hike instead.