Waiting for Spring
March 1st, 2010Venga la tormenta
February 28th, 2010
On Thursday I went looking for another local point of interest in the Lake Tahoe area, the famed Bonsai Rock, which rests on the eastern shore of the lake, just below Sand Harbor. Someone on Flickr had posted the location of the rock, but actually getting to the spot was a bit of a challenge.
Bonsai Rock, so called because of the two small trees growing out of cracks in the stone, is not easily visible from the highway, which at that point is quite a bit higher than the shoreline. Tall pine tres block the view of the rock unless you are standing at just the right angle to see down to the water. As I drove past it, Google maps on my iPhone told me I was in the right spot, but I couldn’t see where I wanted to be down on the shore. Another challenge is that there is no good parking area along the highway. So I ended up leaving the car several hundred yards north of where I eventually found the rock. I’d seen something like a path leading down the steep hillside, and followed it to the water, thinking I’d make my way along the shore until I found the rock. But the Tahoe shoreline in this section can by pretty uneven, sometimes composed of smaller granite boulders that one can easily jump from one to the next, and other times going from smaller, low stones to a huge boulder that would require carabiners and pitons to scale.
So I ended up moving up and down as much as along the shoreline as I made my way toward Bonsai Rock, and carrying my photo bag and tripod, this felt like quite an expedition. Eventually I made it, only to find that there is in fact a path from the highway down to the little beach area where one finds Bonsai Rock. It was plain enough from the destination, but I’d not been able to see it from above.
The sunset had been promising as I waited for some color in the distance, but as I’m finding is particularly common with Tahoe weather, things can change very quickly up there. The sky had been more or less blue when I arrived at 4pm, and in the next half an hour had filled up with clouds moving quickly from the west. Things were looking good for a great bloom of warm colors until a thick, low cloud appeared on the horizon and sure enough, blocked the late sun from shining nicely on the moving clouds.
Changing strategies, I got out the ND filter and went for a long exposure instead, getting the image above just as the sun peeked through the small gap in the distant clouds.
Info: Made with a Nikon D700 Digital SLR Camera
Exposure at 30 seconds, f/16, ISO 200, 24mm, processed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2
Sierra Wave
February 17th, 2010
This was taken Sunday afternoon from Speedboat Beach. As I was came over Donner Summit I noticed this amazing cloud over the lake area and wondered if it would still be visible by the time I arrived at the water. It was, but it was too far north to photograph more than this section of it without casinos and other signs of civilization in the image. This shows about half of the cloud, which I was informed is called a Sierra Wave. This info came via a man who joined me on the rocks not long after I arrived, and we chatted a bit as he set up a video camera to shoot the same scene I was photographing.
We spoke for about an hour, I suppose, as the sun set and we went about our work. An enjoyable and interesting conversation in spite of the fact that not once did the other man, Dan, mention that in the early 80s he just happened to have scaled Sears Tower and one of the WTC buildings using suction cups, the former while dressed as Spiderman, no less. Fortunately I’d asked for his card which led to a website where I found the YouTube link above.You can find out more about Spider-Dan at www.skyscraperman.com.
Best Seat In The House
February 8th, 2010
Sea Rocks Watch The Sunset
These rocks are by the old Sutro Baths in San Francisco, and I don’t think anything has a better spot to watch the SF sunsets than they do.
Info: Made with a Nikon D700 Digital SLR Camera
Exposure at 30 seconds, f/7.1, ISO 560, 31mm, single exposure processed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2
Risky Business
February 5th, 2010
The other day I noticed a pretty good break beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, so I thought I’d put my B + W #110 ND filter
The surf happened to be hitting the shore pretty hard every five minutes or so, throwing water up onto the parking area at Fort Point. There were very few cars there at 8am, though every minute or so a jogger or three passed by on their way down to Hopper’s Hands. I backed my truck up to the chains and set up my tripod in the bed, reminded of how Ansel Adams used to shoot from the roof of his vehicle. Things were going fine until a big wave came in and splashed not only into the back of the truck, but all the way to the rear window where I was standing, soaking my pants and boots. Reflexively I covered the lens of my camera with one hand as I braced myself with the other. As the sea water drained out the back of the truck bed, I decided to seek a new position from which to record the pleasing, if a bit dodgy, scene there beneath the bridge.
I pulled forward, away from the water, and into the lane behind the parking spaces. I figured that there was so little car traffic, and no other cars parked in the area, that this wouldn’t cause any problems. It turned out that I was safe enough from getting wet, but the lane I was in was also used by joggers. Several passed by without incident, just moving briefly into the parking spaces to go around the artist at work. But a trio of runners came by just as another large wave hit, giving the woman closest to the shore a wet shoe. “Sorry!” I offered as she glared over her shoulder. I climbed down to move the truck again.
Next I brought my gear up onto the hillside beyond the road and shot the above image from there. The rising sun was really sweet and warm on the bridge and the building at Fort Point. I made several exposures, one ruined because I had my German Shepard, Charlie, in the truck with me, and he decided to get up and turn around several times on his backseat bed before lying back down during on of the long exposures. Thanks, pooch!
When I was done, I cleaned the lens and all exposed gear off carefully, so that no salt water would stay in place for longer than necessary. I even rinsed off the tripod legs with the hose when I got home. Back on the computer, I found many more spots on the RAW image than usual, due to the spray from the ocean that hit the lens. So I made liberal use of Photoshop’s mostly excellent Spot Healing Brush Tool. I had several spots on and between the cables of the bridge towers, where this tool would not work, and I had to use the clone tool a fair bit, as well.
In the end the real challenge, not getting washed out to sea, was met and I got an image I quite like. So, another happy ending in landscape photography land!
Info: Made with a Nikon D700 Digital SLR Camera
Exposure at 30 seconds, f/18, ISO 100, 44mm, single exposure processed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2
Tahoe Regional Planning Agency at Work
February 4th, 2010
Several aspects of doing work on our place in Kings Beach have seemed unnecessarily complicated when it comes to what we can and can’t do on the property according to the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. There are strict limits on moving soil, coverage of the land itself, runoff, etc etc. But after this last trip to the lake and the images I got, I am now a full supporter of the TRPA and their efforts to maintain Lake Tahoe and improve its clarity and overall well-being.
Decades ago when the first test of water clarity was done, some guy lowered a plate on a rope down into the lake to see how good the water’s visibility was. At 100 feet deep the plate’s white surface was still visible. Today the lake’s visibility is around 70 feet, and the TRPA is working to get back to 100. The lake itself is beautiful, and surrounded by the snow-covered Sierra, just standing on the shores of Lake Tahoe at sunrise is a magical experience. So fight on, TRPA. And let all of us who enjoy Tahoe’s beauty do what we can to preserve this special place.
Info: Made with a Nikon D700 Digital SLR Camera
Exposure at 1/40 second, f/13, ISO 200, 17mm, processed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2
Setting Moon
February 1st, 2010
The setting moon was visible from where I’d been shooting for about 7 minutes this morning as the clouds were changing pretty quickly. This morning’s colors in the sky were subtle but quite nice. The amount of snow that had melted since last week allowed me to reach several new spots, such as this one right on the water at the north eastern shore of Lake Tahoe.
Push It Forward
January 29th, 2010
Actor Elizabeth Ho approaches the turning point in the film, Kilo.
Last night I had the pleasure of seeing for the first time the film Kilo, which I was fortunate to be involved in when it was in production in August of last year. Kilo debuted in December at the Mammoth Film Festival, but I was unable to make the trip. So I was happy to hear that a private showing was scheduled at the Dolby Labs screening room, in itself a remarkable facility on Potrero Ave. in San Francisco. It was great to see so many people I’d met on set but whom I’ve not seen since then, as well as family and friends in common of the writing/directing duo who’d invited me to be involved, Kiel Murray and Phil Lorin. I was extremely pleased for my friends as I sat in the elegant screening room, watching their nearly-40-minute film unfold.
You know how some indie films have a rough edge to them, either on purpose as a stylistic choice or as a result of the fact that they are far from Hollywood and on a shoe string budget? Kilo has none of that: it’s as polished and as beautiful a production as we’re used to seeing from multimillion dollar studio films. It’s still amazing to me that a small group of people can get together with borrowed or donated equipment, a tight schedule and tighter budget, and add to that paucity of materials such a wealth of talent and skill you’d never tell by looking that such compromises of time and expense were required.
It was fascinating to watch the scenes I’d observed in production in their places within the context of the story, not only to see just how jumbled up the shooting order was, but also to see how what had been to me stand alone snippets fit so tightly together as a whole. (I also had a renewed ache of regret for the days I was not able to visit the set and make photographs as I watched scenes in the film that were utterly new to me. How I wish I’d been able to be there every day!) Being surrounded be some of the actors and friends of the production who had parts in the movie added to the enjoyment–each time someone sitting by me recognized him or herself on screen and uttered a little squeek of delight, the sense of Kilo being a community project only increased. Congratulations to everyone who contributed their time and abilities: Kilo is truly something to be proud of.
I encourage you to go see the film, which will show to the public at the Tiburon International Film Festival in March, 2010.
My production photographs are still up in galleries on my website, and Kilo’s official site is here.
A Good Value?
January 28th, 2010
Lake Tahoe, Nevada
When I switched from Canon to Nikon I had to replace not only my camera bodies and lenses, but all of the essential accessories, too. One of my most-used gadgets is a wired remote shutter release, and a friend had just raved about a third-party version that was only $10, compared to the $70 street price Nikon equivalent. Sounded worth a try.
The first thing I noticed that made me regret the purchase was that the connector didn’t quite line up with the pins in the D700 or D300 bodies. The connector on the cable got kind of chewed up after only a few uses. But the thing worked well enough once I’d jammed it in hard enough to make proper contact.
The effort required to make the device work should’ve been a hint of things to come. Though it functioned in the temperate Bay Area, the first time I shot in really cold weather (by Bay Area standards, I mean around 32F) all of my Nikon gear worked fine, but the Zeiko remote couldn’t handle the low temperature. As the day warmed up, it would work again, but when you want something to work and it doesn’t, it’s a drag.
I grew frustrated enough to order the Nikon MC30 Remote Cable Release
So if you don’t have any plans for extreme temperatures, and you don’t mind the dodgy connector, the cheaper option might be a good money-saving alternative for you. Otherwise, you’re probably better off to accept the expense and pay for the real deal.
More Real Life Drobo
January 12th, 2010
Here’s another bit of shared learning for my fellow Drobo users:
Running out of space on my Drobo the other day, I decided to replace a 500GB drive with a 1TB drive (cheap at Fry’s, a Hitatchi 7200RPM 32MB Sata drive for less than $70, which reminded me how the service bureau I worked at while in graduate school paid over $2,000 for the first 1 Gigabyte drive (made by HP) to put in a Mac IIfx). I brought up the Drobo instructions and popped the new drive in the bay of the one with the orange light. Happy flashing all orange then all green? Nope. All flashed RED for some time. I tried to put the old drive back in, but all still flashed red. I replaced the new drive and started looking for my notes about the last time my Drobo had a problem. I’d not noted the tech support phone number so I went to Drobo.com to find it and spent so much time looking, that the Drobo managed to adjust to the new drive and the red lights went away. Is that part of Drobo’s tec support plan? If so, it worked!
Anyway, a new drive requires that the Drobo’s brain resort the mysterious parity scheme to offer its wonderful data protection. The Drobo dashboard informed me that this would take 78 hours. Huh? I’d replaced the older drive mid-day Saturday, and it was supposed to finish up its internal bookkeeping Tuesday afternoon?
I’m glad to say that it finally finished Monday afternoon, nicely ahead of schedule. But for a long time I was looking at a dashboard notice like the one above as it slowly counted down from 78. Progress was very erratic–sometimes I could see the progress bar move over a period of an hour, sometimes it would not move at for a couple of hours. Thinking it might have crashed and sit there indefinitely, I restarted the computer, which seemed to have no effect. The Drobo just had to do its thing at its own pace. It managed in the end and is back in business, so I’m happy to have my data protected.
But I got to thinking again about my choice to format the Drobo for 16TB when I first set it up. I did this because I’d heard on a popular photography podcast that one should do this since the Drobo can swap drives to increase capacity. Formatting for the max would allow me to expand up to 4 4TB drives without ever having to copy data to another source, reformat the Drobo, then copy data back. This sounds great, but my suspicion is that the 16TB format has something to do with the speed of my Drobo and the fact that replacing a drive takes several days to recover. I wish I knew for a fact, but I expect from talking to friends with Drobos who say they use them as primary data sources for Lightroom and Aperture that having formatted theirs for 4TB makes a big difference in performance. With 2.24TB of 16TB active, my Drobo is not a viable partner for Lightroom. Loading a page of previews takes 7 or 8 seconds, and when you’re scrolling through 200 or 300 pages of previews…
So I use a fast scratch disk that backs up to the Drobo and it works fine until I have to write 30 or 40 (or more) gigabytes to or from the Drobo. Then it’s a matter of workflow shutting down for some time. So I’m thinking of moving to a 2GB work disk and using it to store the Drobo’s data while I reformat it to something smaller than 16TB, perhaps 6 for use 4 1.5TB disks. When I fill that Drobo up it will be time for a new one anyway, right?
I’m still very positive about the Drobo as a secure local back up that protects against sudden hardware failure. Combined with my online back up, I feel pretty good about being able to recover from some catastrophe. I just wish the Drobo were faster. What’s the say? You can never be too rich, too good looking, or have storage that’s too fast?