Monthly Archives: September 2014

Front Entrance Steps

12 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by in Home Building

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For a year we lived in our nice new home with a small set of temporary steps to the front entrance.   It was functional but not comfortable or appealing but we waited for the ground to settle at the suggestion of our builder.  This spring we contacted a few local masons soliciting estimates for some kind of stonework steps.  Only one bothered to get back to us but he turned out to be the right guy anyway.

Kevin Reilly, of Kevin Reilly Masonry, looked over our situation and suggested a solution that had not occurred to us:  stack two large stones as steps, and forget about building some kind of mortared stone steps.  This had a few advantages: it didn’t require footers, it can be adjusted later if there’s any substantial settling, it’s a clean and simple look, and it was not as labor-intensive for Kevin (which was important as he was already booked with work for the season).

After measuring and ordering the stones, Kevin and his crew prepared a gravel base at just the right height to make the steps an easy and natural progression to the door.  Somehow they slipped the bottom stone into place with about 1/4 inch to spare and without dinging the siding.  The slab was 10 feet wide, 4 feet deep, and weighed almost 3,000 pounds and it fits like a glove into the entrance recess.  Imagine slipping a Buick into a refrigerator carton without dimpling the cardboard–we wish we were here to see how they managed it.

The top stone was positioned into place and then they added a flagstone walk from the driveway to the steps.  We love the look.  Earlier we had changed out the front exterior lights including next to the door, and later we started our landscaping.  All contribute to a transformed front entrance that we’re quite happy with.

Before
After

Bright Field Wildflowers

08 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by in Photography

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Fall Wildflowers

I decided to try putting together a collection of wildflower photos using the bright field lighting technique.  The flowers are isolated against a field of all (or nearly all) white background. It’s a bit of a challenge to get the lighting right without blowing out fine details of the flower, stem, and leaf parts. For example, the following full-resolution section of one of the images shows how individual fine hairs on the stems are still visible without being totally overwhelmed by the bright white background.

Aster detail

Full-res crop of a bright-field photograph shows fine detail maintained.

Each image was shot using a back-lit diffusion screen background (using an umbrella reflector for additional diffusion) and a flash bounced from a reflector umbrella for the specimen’s lighting.  A few key details helped achieve the objective of bright-field isolation combined with preserved subject detail:

  1. The background diffusion screen was positioned far behind the subject to minimize it’s participation in the subject illumination.
  2. A longer focal length lens was used and the camera positioned to just frame the extent of the diffusion screen and have the subject fill the frame for optimum detail.
  3. The exposure was tested and adjusted carefully to make sure the background was just at or near blowing out and the subject lighting was appropriate for a normal exposure.  Essentially, two independent zones of light were calibrated to achieve their respective goals.

Once the lighting and framing were ready, it was just a matter of going out into our field to collect unsuspecting subjects and shoot the photographs before they started sagging noticeably.  In some cases, there is only a couple minutes to get the image made before the flowers start wilting.  Sort of like human subjects.