South Point in Hawaii is a pretty barren place. I’m not gonna say “no man’s land” because it’s gorgeous, pastoral, and picturesque. But when I posted the boat hoists, I did mention the wind – you’re not gonna miss the wind. Most of the pictures of my wife involve her cupping her hands around her eyes to keep the blowing dust out. Clearly, this wasn’t lost on some people:
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Canon EOS REBEL T1i (Canon) & EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM |
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1/160 s |
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2010:05:24 11:50:44 |
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f/9.0 |
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Photographer: Ari Brown |
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100 |
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Normal program |
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24 mm |
On the 12 mile road from belt road to the point, you pass several banks of windmills. These are some of the older and smaller ones. The missing blades and patina of rust makes it pretty clear that these aren’t newly installed as some recent jump to green energy. These have been here. There are some newer windmills you can’t get as close to. They’re larger and look more modern. These had more character.
Interestingly enough, I took a few HDRs of these. When I was editing the pictures I put them together and really didn’t think they gained much from it. A good note on HDR is that unless you have really dynamic lighting that has a lot of bright and dark spots in the same photograph, you don’t gain as much from it. These shots do have some shadows and blown out spots, but I like this effect just as much.
The other important thing to point out is one item you just can’t do without in Hawaii, or anywhere else where you shoot a lot of sky and water – a polarizing filter. In this modern world of digital cameras and Photoshop, most on-camera filters have fallen by the wayside. You can do many things after the fact, but polarizing the image isn’t one of them. A polarizing filter removes reflections from shiny objects, like metal and water. This means if you want to see the fish in the water, you can. It also means you can remove reflections of people from building windows. At the same time, it can turn your blue sky into a much more intense blue. The downside is that they eat some amount of your light, so I only use them in bright and sunny places. When I go to Hawaii, the polarizer goes on and rarely comes off. The blue sky in this picture really pops from the filter, not from what I did after the fact.
Tags: blue, hawaii, point, polarizer, polarizingfilter, sky, south, southpoint, wind, windmill
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South Point on the Big Island of Hawaii is a wind-blasted expanse of farmlands, windfarms, and dirt giving way to cliffs and ocean. The southernmost point in the US, it was until recently one of two places on the island your rental car coverage wouldn’t allow you to go. The road is fine now – I’m not sure if the rules have changed. I have heard that the locals that fish from the cliffs may take some liberties with the possessions people leave in their cars when they hike to the beach, so we stayed close. Against the backdrop of wind and waves, there are a bunch of these creaky old boat hoists. I think the premise is that this is the shortest route from road to water, but you’d have to be pretty nuts to actually use one. I wouldn’t put it past some of the folks hanging out down there.
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Canon EOS REBEL T1i (Canon) & EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM |
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1/125 s |
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2010:05:24 11:36:45 |
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f/7.1 |
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Photographer: Ari Brown |
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100 |
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Normal program |
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35 mm |
Tags: bigisland, boat, boathoist, cliffs, fishing, hawaii, Ocean, waves, wind
Posted in Photos | 3 Comments »
I haven’t had a chance to get out and shoot much recently, so I went digging in the vault again. This is one of my favorite pictures – not so much because I did anything wonderful, but because I was in the right place and just didn’t mess it up.
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Canon PowerShot S400 (Canon) & 7.4-22.2 mm |
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1/640 s |
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2004:04:07 07:15:32 |
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f/4.0 |
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N/A |
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N/A |
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N/A |
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15.4 mm |
This could have easily been a crappy shot – if you care to here more, click the link and I’ll lay it out. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: cathedral, eiffel, eiffeltower, gargoyle, notredame, paris, seine, statue
Posted in Photos, Technique | No Comments »
Commercial detritus has always been a fascination of mine, especially things like old signs. I’m not the only one – you see the pictures everywhere. If I was making one up in my mind, I’m thinking a rough kinda industrial product, big letters, old peeling paint, decrepit building. I’m thinking something like this:
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Canon PowerShot S90 (N/A) & no lens info |
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1/640 s |
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2010:04:27 22:52:51 |
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f/8.0 |
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Ari Brown |
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200 |
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N/A |
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10.7 mm |
That wasn’t really how things started. If you want to see the original and hear a little more, hit the jump.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: diesel, georgetown, HDR, neon, photoshop, s90, sign
Posted in Photos, Technique | 1 Comment »
Anyone who has taken enough pictures knows two things. Some of the shots you assume will be great turn out pretty blah. On the flip side, some of the shots you didn’t expect much from, or maybe didn’t even take on purpose, will end up being your favorites. Take lots of pictures, worry about it later. So it is with this one.
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Canon PowerShot S90 (Canon) & 6.0-22.5 mm |
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1 s |
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2010:02:17 06:20:36 |
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f/4.9 |
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N/A |
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400 |
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N/A |
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22.5 mm |
Taken in a Safeway parking lot. Taken at night, without any real attempt to stabilize the camera, hand holding my S90, at only ISO400. I could have set the camera on the wall. I could have cranked up the ISO (although I didn’t want it any noisier than this). That isn’t the point. It took it, I bought some groceries, and looking at it later, I liked it. Shooting up into the trees means that the cars and other distractions are gone. The floodlights from the lot wash out all the detail (and me playing with the contrast burns some more) leaving just shapes and sky. I didn’t intend it to be exactly this shot – I didn’t really intend it to be anything. I’m just happy with what it is.
Tags: mistake, night, parkinglot, s90, safeway, silouette, tree
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My second favorite part of the port (you saw #1 last week) are those stacks and stacks of shipping containers. I liked them even before season two of The Wire. Something about the sort of adult building blocks nature they have going on, or maybe the bright colors they are often painted. Maybe the fact that they just pile them into mountains and leave them (for sale? to rust?) in large gated yards. I don’t know but something does it for me.
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Canon PowerShot S90 (N/A) & no lens info |
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1/400 s |
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2010:04:01 00:30:01 |
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f/4.5 |
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Ari Brown |
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80 |
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N/A |
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18.2 mm |
My main problem is that they almost always sit behind big fences and if you can’t get close, you can’t get a very good shot. These were behind a fence, but they were close enough to it that I could get close and shoot up. If they’d let me into the middle of the stacks I’m sure I could get some cool shots, but for some reason they don’t seem to love random dudes with cameras in the middle of their business, so I guess I’ll settle for not being chased off for taking pictures from the outside. Once again, shot this hand-held with my S90, set to auto-bracket and attempted to keep things still to get 3 shots for the HDR. The containers came out pretty clean but it was windy – you can see the clouds moving between frames – probably 1 second total exposure time!
Tags: cans, HDR, industrial, port, shippingcontainers
Posted in Photos | 1 Comment »
I never stopped loving big machines. Cranes, bulldozers, all that. One of the first words I ever heard my toddler nephew say was “excavator”, so I guess it isn’t just me. Seattle actually has a pretty sizable industrial area, so getting a view of cranes, trains, etc, isn’t that hard. Doing it without a fence in your way however, can be more of a challenge.
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Canon PowerShot S90 (Canon) & 6.0-22.5 mm |
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1/500 s |
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2010:04:01 00:21:34 |
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f/6.3 |
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Ari Brown |
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200 |
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N/A |
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12.8 mm |
I just stumbled on this “park” the other day. The Port loves providing public access in a way that is so unfriendly and hard to see that you’d never know it was there. This spot is hidden behind a huge stack of shipping containers, but you get a great view of the Duwamish river and the goings on.
I shot this with my little S90, hand held of course. If you want to know the difference between a point and shoot (a very good one, but still) and a real DSLR with L-series lens and a tripod, compare it to this one. I don’t know if you can tell at this resolution, but the fine detail is really incomparable between the two. Even so, I had my point and shoot – I didn’t have my DSLR. You can’t take anything if you don’t have your camera.
Tags: barges, cranes, duwamish, industry, panorama, river
Posted in Photos | 1 Comment »
Spring in Seattle is when all the tulips bloom, especially the big farms in the Skagit Valley. Spring on the blog is when the searches for tulips in Skagit Valley exceed the searches for bokeh.
I was digging in the archives and came across this. Check out the date – serious blast from the past!
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Canon PowerShot S400 (Canon) & 7.4-22.2 mm |
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1/100 s |
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2004:04:06 03:21:55 |
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f/2.8 |
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N/A |
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N/A |
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N/A |
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7.4 mm |
Two things about this shot. First off, it isn’t from Seattle – it is from the Keukenhof outside of the Hague in Holland. The gardens there are an amazing mix of all sorts of flowers, but most notably tulips. I have some other shots but lost the opportunity for some great ones when I learned that my camera battery gives little warning before giving up. The second thing is that (as you can see from the info above), this was shot on my old Canon Powershot S400. Not an SLR and although it was good at the time, really not even a good point and shoot! If you’re careful and pick the right subject, it doesn’t always matter. Make sure you hold steady and definitely shoot outside if at all possible – there is usually so much more light than inside that few things will improve your picture quality as much.
This isn’t my favorite shot in the world – I don’t like how close to the center of the frame the subject is – it makes the balance feel funny. I do like some aspects of it like how the background blurs as you get farther out and how close the main tulip is, but most of those flaws were mine, not the gear. Shoot with what you’ve got – just remember to shoot!
Tags: flowers, hague, holland, koekenhof, neatherlands, pointandshoot, s400, skagitvalley, spring, tulip
Posted in Photos | No Comments »
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