Chasing Light

Fog over Forest Grove

Light is, of course, the most important thing in photography. Chasing light and the right conditions is a never ending task for photographers of any skill. Celestial events like the Supermoon early in December prompt people like me to head out trying to catch the perfect scene.
 I struggled with a Supermoon before in Ireland. The moon is surprisingly difficult to photograph. Just aiming your camera at the moon and getting a decent picture is easy. It is so bright that the camera can easily adjust. It is even easier when your brother-in-law lets you borrow his 150mm - 600mm lens and a teleconverter to get a nice close-up ;-)

Clouds moving in across a highly magnified moon

 Taking a landscape picture at full moon is also not that difficult. The picture at the top is an example. I lucked out with the fog and am glad that one worked out because all of my Supemoon pictures from that night did not. Getting the landscape and the moon as anything other than a glowing orb into the same picture is hard. Even HDR struggles with that.
 Running around and waiting for clouds and fog to move just right brought, along with very cold toes, some other delights. Not far from where we live, a neighbor has setup an extraordinary Christmas light show. When I drove by the first time, I thought someone really had gone to town with the blinking lights visible literally from a mile away. Then Lee Ann saw a post on Facebook that recommended to turn on your car radio: The blinking lights are synchronized to music!

 It is very well done and quite artistic and imaginative. I have spent several evenings down there so far, trying to capture it just right. I din't want it to be pitch black with just the lights coming on, although that does look cool. I asked Darin who installed and programmed it, to turn it on earlier in the day. I was hoping more ambient light would make it easier for my camera to capture the show.

 The problem is now there is too much light. At least at the start. As the sun sets, the contrast gets better and the sky light is less distracting. But now my camera is trying enhance the scene and make up for the lack of light. Learning more about shooting video, especially at night, and turning more things to manual helps. One evening was very overcast and that actually helped to keep the ambient light at a more even level:

 And one more:

 January 1st will be a full moon. We'll be out of state, but I hope that just before or after (if the display stays up that long) the weather will clear. I imagine that a full moon, especially with snow on the ground, might provide just the kind of light I envision.
 There are other impressive Christmas displays in our neighborhood. I took the one below two years ago, but it looks puny to what seems to be standard this year.

 At our house we have a few icicles and a small tree with lights that come on when the timer does what it is supposed to do, which seems to be every third night or so. Lee Ann had big plans to decorate the tree in our side yard, but it is so tall I can't reach the top, even with the ladder fully extended. So, we're not even in the competition. Our street alone has much grandioser displays, but there are other areas in Forest Grove that put our whole street to shame.
 Since we cannot compete with artificial lights, I went back out a couple of nights after the full Supermoon. Since now the fog had gone, I needed to think of something else. You can see the neighborhood where we live from across Gales Creek Valley and The Photographer's Ephemeris told me that the moon would come up, nearly full, right behind the hill we live on, I went and took the picture below.

The neighborhood we live in from across Gales Creek Valey

 Sort of. It's actually a composite of two pictures. One of the moon where houses are in complete darkness, and another of the houses with the glaring-like-the-sun moon cut out.

Washington DC

 For my last trip to the East coast I went early so I could spend some time photographing DC and some of the surrounding area. I thought I had shared the images from last time I was in DC taking pictures, but I don't see a blog entry. Well, I went to see the air and space museum and took a few pictures of the monuments on the Washington National Mall. You can see my efforts from 2015 here.

They should light up Lincoln earlier in the day, before the sun is all set

 This time I wanted to see more and I brought a tripod! This allowed me to take pictures later into the night and try out High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. The basic idea is to take several pictures of the same subject and then use a computer program to overlay them to create a new image. For each of the individual pictures you chose a different exposure setting on your camera.

View of the Capitol from the Washington Momument

 My camera has the option to set three brackets. The fist picture is dark and under exposed, but you can see details in the bright areas. The second picture has good exposure but detail in the shadows and in bright areas is lost. The final picture is over exposed with glaring bright areas, but detail visible in the dark areas. An HDR program takes these images and combines them in such a fashion that the detail from all images is preserved.

 The reason this is desirable is because the human eye has a much bigger seeing range than even very good digital cameras. For example, the best picture I took last month during the total solar eclipse is an HDR of three images. Even though it shows a lot of detail, humans looking at the sun at that moment were able to see much more in the darkness surrounding the halo of the sun.
 Because it was getting dark in DC, the dark images of my set had quite long exposure times which leads to some strange effects in addition to those that HDR introduces. (Look at the flags in the picture above.) Nevertheless, I'm happy with how these pictures turned out. The program I used to process my HDR images is called Photomatix.

Drummers on Adams Morgan Day

 In the afternoon, before I took my nighttime HDR pictures I went to the Adams Morgan neighborhood in DC. They had their annual festival along 18th street with lots of music, food, and interesting characters out in the street.

The embassy of Panama

 It was so popular that I had to park quite a bit away, in the embassy district among secluded and fancy houses. I didn't stay long because it was hot and a little too crowded for me, so I headed into the Georgetown area. According to this page there are 17 things to do and see there. I didn't have enough time for all of them, but did spend some time walking around and taking pictures.

 

  Off in the side streets, even on a busy nice warm day, it is quiet enough to enjoy the scenery and take some cityscape pictures.

 At the bottom of the hill is the Potomac river and the Georgtown Waterfront Park. That was crowded, but for good reason. It is nice down there. Lots to see and do.

 I spent quite a bit of time there before it was time to head over to the Mall and get set up for my HDR photography at sunset.

 The next day I wanted to see something else. Unfortunately, the weather had turned bleak. I did cross the Chesapeake Bay bridge to spent some time in Terrapin Beach Park on Kent Island. I had hoped to catch the sunset behind the bridge. The Photographer's Ephemeris had told me that I was at the right time in the right spot, but the weather just did not cooperate. DC was getting some of the clouds and moisture that Irma had unleashed over the Caribbeans and Florida in the days before.

 That bay bridge was also disappointing.  It is nice and long, spanning the four-mile gap between the mainland and Kent island, but it is quite ugly. It looks like it was constructed piece by piece. Whenever they had some more money, they went and bought another span and tacked it onto the bridge. Nothing matches.

 While that day was kind of disappointing,  I'm happy with the trip overall and the pictures I got while in DC. You can see all my pictures I took on this trip here.

Big John

 

 Sometimes you get a song into your head and just can't shake it for a while. For some reason, Big Bad John did this to me the other day. So I googled it and just like last time I researched a song, I learned a bunch.

These goats are hard to photograph because their faces are so dark

 I'll let you read the Wikipedia entry; it lead me to three more songs. My Big John by Dottie West, and then The Cajun Queen and Little Bitty Big John by Jimmy Dean again. Listen to the four songs in this order to get the whole story of Big John. It's fun!
 By the way, the photos in this post have nothing to do with the content. I took them earlier in the year on a hike in Switzerland. All my posts show some of my pictures, and just text on a web site would have to be more compelling than what I write, to be interesting without illustrations.

A train down in the Mattertal

 I used to tell people that I had come to the USA because of country music. Growing up in Switzerland we basically had three government-run radio stations that tried to cover all interests and provide the information the population needed to make informed decisions in elections and when voting on new laws or rejecting existing ones.
 While American rock and pop music could be heard all day long, only on Tuesday nights between ten and midnight could you listen to American Country. I found that unfair and came to the US to get more of it ;-)

Clinging to live on a rock. Click on it to see it up close

 One thing I liked about country music was that I could often understand what they were singing. Even today, with much better English, I often don't understand what people are saying in rock and pop songs. Also, many country songs tell a story. Like that of Big John. He was so big, it took four songs to cover it all.
I got turned off to country during the Bush years when the Dixie Chicks were banned from country stations and their CDs burned for speaking out against the Iraq war. So much for freedom and free speech.

My antidepressant when politics and live get to me

 But once in a while I'm drawn back to my old fondness as happened the other day with Big John. Of course, during my search I came across other old favorites I had long forgotten like Harper Valley P.T.A. by Jeannie C. Riley.

These are rare

Or, maybe it is this one. I forget. Need to ask Stef again.

 If you listen to these songs on repeat for several hours in a row, they start losing some of their appeal and your brain becomes free to think about something else again.
 Or not. One more time and then back to Iko Iko...

Solar Eclipse

Totality

 I had August 21st, 2017 marked in my calendar for more than two years now. Moving to Oregon and realizing that a total solar eclipse would occur right over our heads was fantastic news. And, one day before Anika's 25th birthday! I wish you could have been here with me to see this. Next time!

 I spent several weeks preparing for it. The path of totality passed through Oregon about an hour South of here. Of course, I was going to be there. None of this 99.5% totality nonsense for me! I have seen several partial eclipses and wanted to see the real thing.
 So, I made several trips South of McMinnville to find a good spot, plus some alternatives in case I had to relocate due to cloud cover. In the weeks leading up to it, smoke from Canadian wildfires lowered visibility considerably, but a few days before the event things cleared up.

 I was trying to decide whether high up or low to the ground would give me better picture opportunities. At totality, the sun (and the moon!) would be almost 40 degrees up in the sky. Trying to get Mt. Jefferson right below the sun into the same picture would have been cool. But I would have to use a fairly wide angle lens, which would have left the sun and the mountain tiny and give me a picture of mostly sky in between.

 Then I discovered the solar panels above. Did you know there is a site that shows you where these and other power plants are? I found that and then started looking for places with lots of cables and transformers high above. It might help create a cool picture of the eclipsing sun traveling behind a mess of wires.
 For a long time I tried to find a spot where the solar panels could serve as a mirror showing the flares during totality.
 I'm not sure it would have worked and was hesitant to risk that, plus the access road to the spot I needed to be had a gate across it with big scary signs about trespassing and doing things to people who do (this is the part of Oregon that did not vote for Hillary.)

Buell Park

 Finally, I settled on Buell County Park. Its low-lying which should give me some trees high up that can help frame the spectacle and keep people away who think this would not be a good spot to see the eclipse. Although it is recommended to experience totality in a crowd, I didn't want to be among a lot of people. I wanted to concentrate on taking pictures and I also like nature without a whole bunch of people around me explaining how beautiful and amazing it is.
 Another draw for me was the creek that runs through the park. I was thinking of using it to capture some reflections.

My setup

  Monday morning I got up early and started driving to my chosen spot. Gaston, a village of barely 600 people South of here had a traffic jam and a sheriff observing the caravan of cars and bicycles heading toward the path of totality. At 7:30 in the morning! Luckily it wasn't too bad. McMinnville was a mess but I got to my spot in time.
 I had practiced and planned several shots. One is the sequence below. I took a picture of the sun every 2.5 minutes with my 300mm lens on a cropped frame sensor camera using a 2x teleconverter. That gives me an effective focal length of about 900mm.
 My old camera, which only sometimes works, served as a backup and to help me track the sun. It also took a picture every 2.5 minutes but with a wide angle lens. I.e., it didn't move all morning while I had to adjust my other camera with the long lens every few minutes. Now I have a record of where the sun was in the sky relative to my position. I was going to use that to create one of those images you see often with scenery in the foreground and the slowly eclipsing sun moving across the sky high above.
 I didn't compose that image because it would be a lot of work, and I don't think it would look very good. Instead, I created the one below.

 Of course, the PacMan pictures were taken with a solar filter in front of the lens, while I took off the filter to capture the pictures during totality. If you click on the picture, or download the full-size image, you can see some sun spots.
 Unfortunately, I missed the international space station crossing the view. It must have zipped through between two of my images.
 The phases in the composite above are about ten minutes apart. The center image, which is the one from the top of this post, is an HDR of three images with different exposure times.

A diamond ring at the end of totality

The diamond ring above was luck. It happens at the beginning and at the end of totality when sun light passes between craters on the moon. It is a very brief moment before it gets so bright again that the filter has to go back on. The next picture in the sequence looked like this:

 I had planned a whole bunch more shots during totality, but the time was just too short. Just before totality, it kept getting darker and darker and I thought it would just continue that way into totality.
 But that is not how it went. Totality came suddenly as if someone had turned off a light switch. I was still getting ready, messing with buttons and knobs on my camera until all of a sudden I could not read the LCD anymore. Fumbling for my flashlight, trying to remember the sequence of pictures I wanted and the settings I needed took for ever. And then, just as suddenly, the light was back on. It was a weird light, but plenty of it compared to the darkness before. The sun is about 10,000 times brighter than the corona. That's why we normally cannot see it and one reason total solar eclipses are so special. Even a 99.5% eclipse still lets plenty of sunlight through, endangering our retinas and obscuring the corona.
 During totality, looking up at the sky, I thought I could touch the sun. The flickering corona was a spectacle and it seemed there should be music and sound effects for such a special visual effect. But it was completely quiet. Eerie.
 The one-hour trip that took 1.5 coming down, took 2.5 going home. It seems a lot of people spent the night in the path of totality and then all of them headed home at the same time. I stopped at a restaurant that I had seen on an earlier scouting trip. It had a big sign advertising seasonal strawberry pancakes. Since I hadn't had breakfast yet, that seemed the perfect way to celebrate my first total eclipse and wait out the traffic.

My pictures are here.

Chinese Garden

 

I'm a little behind blogging this, but I had work to do for the total solar eclipse earlier this week (see next post). Ayla and Armin have come back from their exploration of the South West and spent a couple more days visiting us before heading back to Switzerland.

It was another hot day here and we went into Portland to see the Farmers and the Saturday Market. We ran into Dave who was in line for gravy and biscuits before embarking on his fruit and vegetable shopping. When I told Anika about that she asked whether he lived in the market. Close, but not quite, but it does seem that every time we take visitors to the market we run into Dave ;-) Being a head or two taller than most people there, he is not hard to spot.

No, that's not Dave. Just another interesting character at the market.

It was too hot to spend much time at the Saturday market so we ate lunch at Lechon a "Hip Restaurant for South American Fare". Afterwards we walked to the Lan Sun Chinese Garden.

I was surprised at how much garden they were able to put into such a small area ;-) Its a beautiful place and I want go back when there are fewer people and the light is better for taking pictures.

Ayla and Armin took off the next day to head home. East, which seems right after having enjoyed an afternoon in a far East garden in the West.

My pictures from that day are here.

Ayla and Armin Visit

Ayla, my niece, and Armin, her boyfriend, are visiting the USA and the started in the Northwest corner with us. This is the first trip for Armin and, technically, the second for Ayla, although she was only four her first time around and doesn't remember much.
We spent the first day in Portland, including Powell's, and then two days on the coast. Large bodies of water are a bigger draw for Swiss people than some mountains or hills. So, we headed West instead of East. (All pictures are here)

The Astoria Column

View of Astoria from the base of the Column

Driving for more than an hour through the same forest amazed our guests from a country where there are lots of woods, but none as large as the Pacific Nothwest has to offer.
Our frst stop was in Astoria where we explored the Astoria Column and enjoyed the view of the Columbia river entering the Pacific ocean. Initially, the weather was not great, but it cleared up once we had lunch. By the time we reached Fort Stevens State Park, the Northwestern most part of Oregon, we were having a beautiful day.

Cape Disappointment lighthouse in the distance on the Washington State side

We continued our trip through Seaside to Cannon Beach where they make neither printers nor cameras, but do have the interesting Haystack Rock sitting in the water just off the beach.

Haystack Rock

We were lucky and low tide was imminent. A lot of people scoured the ground to find what the ocean had left behind. After dinner, the water had receded so far that we could walk all the way out to the rocks without getting our feet (too) wet.

The view South

Alien ritual markings anticipating sunset

On our second day we vistied Cape Meares lighthouse and the Octopus tree. At Cape Lookout we hiked the 4.8 mile out and back along the peninsula and learned the different ways Americans say Hello.

Cape Meares lighthouse

People learning to fish in ocean water

The last site on our tour was Cape Kiwanda where Ayla and Armin climbed the sand dunes while I took a nap in the sun on the beach.

Chief Kiwanda Rock

Ayla and Armin are off to San Francisco, Yosemite, Death Valley, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and Los Angeles. They'll come back here in a couple of weeks for a day of rest before heading back to Switzerland.