Fading out of existence

A rose among many others in Hermann Park in the museum district of downtown Houston. Houston's winter is no different from Toronto -- one cannot complain about the weather but leaves fall, roses wane, and another year is about to close. Aperture set at f/8 under a blue sky.

Changing camera settings

I will have to stick a note in between the LCD screen and the LCD cover. During the day, I stopped the lens down to f/22 for a couple of shots. I forgot to reset it right after use so at night time, a few important pictures turned out grainy and dark because instinctively I compensated for the lack of light with a higher ISO setting with flash. Initially, I thought it was the room I was in because of its strange architecture, bouncing the light in different directions but no, it was my camera settings! I have to make it a point to reset my settings as soon as I finished taking those special shots.

Houston, we have a problem

This is the sky over the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The JSC is home to the training facility as well as NASA's control center of the space shuttle missions ...

I waited for over an hour for a tour of the astronauts training facility and the rocket parts of Saturn V. By the time I got on the tram it was already 5pm. Perfect timing I thought for a shot of the western sky. I was hoping to see a rocket in front of a fiery sky but by the time we got around to visit Saturn V it was already close to 6pm.

These shots were taken handheld aboard the tram while it was moving. I focused on the brighter part of the sky (but not at the sun) to capture the yellow and also to counter the motion of the tram.

I think a nicer framing would be to take a larger landscape shot to show the yellow horizon below the blue of the sky.

High contrast

I am in Houston today, but here was a shot of the dome of the Capitol building in Austin, TX. The building has 4 or 5 floors.

I like the symmetry of the photo but the high contrast makes it for a really hard shot to take. Should one use spot or matrix metering? Spot metering would probably lead to a very dark ceiling in the lower levels so I left it to figure an average exposure based on matrix metering.

I had my tripod with me so I should have taken the same shot three times and apply HDR technique on the three shots.



As you can see in the following shot, the inside is quite bright. It was just that the dome is a lot brighter.

Underground

On our way to Austin, TX we stopped by the Inner Space Cavern. This cavern was discovered by accident by the Texas Highway Department back in 1963. They were drilling for 6-inch core samples to determine whether the ground would support a highway overpass. Lo and behold, when their drilling bit suddenly dropped 26 feet, they knew they had found something else.

Texas has many caves. This is the first I have visited (and first cave ever). I would recommend anyone to take a tour. The tour was great. I only wished they had given us more time to take pictures and absorb the wonder of natural earth development of the underground world. I also wished they allowed for tripods -- all the photos I took were on a monopod or handheld with a flash. Flash is ok if you had time to set it up properly. The underground world is not very flat and not small.

Bounced light vs diffused light

For a few weeks, I started playing with the diffuser dome (shown on the left) on my SB-800 speedlight. My thinking was to diffuse and soften the light of the light so my subjects do not turn into a bright reflective object. I got a little carried away with the idea so much so I started using it almost every single time I shoot with flash. Bad idea.

In a room with a ceiling, bounce light is much better. You should really use the diffuser dome only if bounce light is not possible, e.g. extremely high ceilings or coloured ceilings (to which you can compensate with a filter gel).

So here I am in Frisco, TX in my younger brother's house. They have a dog, Winnie. She is a lot of fun, as my niece is having a ball with Winnie over the last few days.

I took a few shots of Winnie with and without the diffuser dome. With the diffuser dome, I would sometimes try to bounce the already softened light off the wall. The results are not impressive, but predictable. Very dark. Very different results with and without the dome.

In the second picture of Winnie this post, I pointed the flash with the diffuser demo directly at her. The light is soft but the photo would look much better without the shadow behind the dog.

The third photo was in a room with relatively high ceiling. The windows face west so the morning sun does not help much to brighten the room so a flash was required. Mind you that Winnie can never be kept still so you take whatever shot you can while in action.

The last shot was taken in a family room. The ceiling is of normal height.

For the third and fourth photos, I directed the undiffused flash straight up the ceiling. The bounced light adds to the ambient light. The result is a softer light casted and the photo is still sharp. I took many other pictures of the family and the house with the bounce light. Much better results there too.

Happy Holidays, from Frisco, TX.

From Frisco, TX

My first day in Frisco, TX, and I was greeted with a full moon. I could not resist. If I do not take it tonight, it will be a long while before I get another chance back in Toronto. It was worth the pain of carrying a heavy tripod along with my Tokina 80-400mm lens around, even if it's 2000 km from home.

This is thus far the sharpest picture of the moon I have taken. This shot was taken at 400mm with auto-aperture mode at f/5.6, center-focused and spot metered. The moon was so bright the shutter speed was auto adjusted to 1/500 sec. I could have taken the shot hand-held.