Hike No. 2 - Knickerbocker Homestead

January 21, 2012
2.5 miles

Our little town of Cool backs up against an area of rolling oak woodlands variously known as Knickerbocker Flats, Pointed Rocks Area, or Olmstead Area. Sitting in the chair in our dentists office the view beyond the tree with the bird feeder is of open grasslands on rounded hills with clusters of oaks and pines. It provides a great sense of freedom to know that I can drive about a mile into town, park in the lot behind the firehouse, hop a barbed wire fence, and just take off into that land of ridges and creeks, leading to cascades that tumble down canyons into the deep canyon of the American River about 1,000 feet below.

A variety of trails in the Pointed Rocks Area meander through oak woodlands

And I did just that, taking the "big" Nikon D300 and a few lenses on a short hike to one of my favorite spots in the area, the old Knickerbocker homestead. From the firehouse I started off on the "Olmstead Loop", named after an equestrian who promoted the many hiking, biking, and riding trails in the area. The trail parallels highway 49 for a short bit, then turns away for some ups and downs through an oak and grey, or "whispering" pine forest. I love the latter name, which is so descriptive of these sparsely-needled pines when there is a bit of a breeze. The woods are to the right, and open rolling grasslands to the left as you trudge up and down the small hills. An old fence of weathered posts and twisted barbed wire parallels the trail, and I played a bit with the idea of contrasting the wire forms against the background shapes of oaks.

A snapshot playing for form and texture. I used a handheld 300 mm lens on this one. This might be worth coming back with the tripod and doing it right - slower shutter speed and small aperture to get more of the posts in focus. Black and white conversion in Lightroom 3.

More form and texture - enhanced by the conversion to black and white in Lightroom 3.

I thought it would be interesting to contrast the harshness of the barbs and the swirl of wire against de-focused trees in the background. Here the "high key" filter in Nik Color Efex 4 separated the wire from the trees and left a bit of color.

I reach the old ranch site via an overgrown access road. Lichen-covered hand-stacked stone supports the bank on one side. Only one partial building still stands at the site, probably part of a small barn. But there are many concrete foundations, and most interestingly, a floor made of rectangular multi-colored tiles half hidden in many years worth of leaves fallen from the overhanging oaks. Also beneath the oaks narcissus have gone wild, with clumps everywhere that bloom in February when the winter rains have soaked the ground and greened the hills with fresh grasses.

The wonderful tile floor at the Knickerbocker Ranch site. I like to think that this was a fun family project, and wonder about what they used the room for. Vertical panorama stitched in Photoshop CS5 from two photos.

 Time has a nice way of "gentling" works of man. I like the accidental textures and colors that develop through years of weathering. Here I've enhanced these a bit with filters in Color Efex 4. I've just recently purchased this software, and am enjoying the way it loosens up my vision. It allows envisioning an image beyond the way the camera sees it in a traditional photographic sense, and more towards the minds eye's imaginative sense of how a subject might appear.

This color version is pretty, but the image is really about the forms of the clouds and that little copse of oaks, and the winter texture of the grasslands. The black and white version brings these things out.

The image was converted in Lightroom, where controls allow emulation of the filters I once used in black and white film photography. In this case i would have used a deep red filter to add drama by darkening the sky and at the same time lightening and adding contrast to the hummocky grasses. B&W conversion in Lightroom 3.

Returning from the ranch I strike out across the hummocky grasslands, searching for new images of a favorite copse of oaks. there always are. Last year's grasses, brown to yellow and blown down in patterns by the winter rains contrast with the fresh green of this seasons sprouts. Trying to capture this keeps enticing me out here, together with the open freedom of the space.

A goldfinch in an oak

Hike No. 1 - Balboa Island - The First of 100 Hikes

About 100 Hikes - Recently I was inspired by a hiker and photographer, Kolby Kirk. An imaginative video of his, in which he condensed a through hike of the Pacific Crest Trail into 3 minutes, got me to delve deeper into his web site. I found a guy that shared many of my interests. Besides photography, and obviously an appreciation for the outdoors, he also keeps a wonderful hand-written journal and likes to draw. Through his inspiration I decided to commit to 100 hikes during 2012. Notes and photos describing the hikes began as a separate blog. But by the time I'd gotten to the fifth hike, I realized the posts were as much about photography as they were about hiking. Since most of my photography is outdoors, it seemed like they belonged best here. So here goes.

Hike No. 1 - Balboa Island Circumamble




January 14, 2012
3.5 Miles



Seeking a bit of warmth during a California winter, we have parked our trailer at the Newport Dunes RV Park and Resort in Newport Beach for three weeks. Normally "dry" campers, we are living it up in this elegant oasis in the heart of this seaside town. My kayak sits on the beach a few steps from the trailer, ready for floating photo outings among the variety of migratory birds that stopover on Upper Newport Bay in winter. Short drives take us to beaches, restaurants, and shopping. This afternoon I've decided to amble over to Balboa Island.

In the late 1860's, Newport Beach was a small town with a shallow harbor, and Balboa Island was not much more than a sandbar, often swallowed up during high tides. A pier build off of Newport Peninsula was used as a landing to load hides, tallow, hay and other goods for export. By 1900 developers saw the potential of the area, land was subdivided into the present small blocks and narrow streets, and the harbor was dredged. The sand and silt was deposited on the tidelands that would become Balboa Island. Today the island is a cluster of exclusive homes, recreation rentals, and a main street of restaurants and tourist shops. Despite the small and crowded lots, the real estate market here is said to challenge Lower Manhattan as North America's priciest. Approximately 3,000 people live here on two-tenths of a square mile.

My Canon G12 and go-everywhere SnapR bag. Besides the camera, wallet, and phone, this little bag also carries some business cards and a notebook

My photography gear for this outing is simple - my Canon G12 carried in my little SnapR bag, which is just large enough to hold the camera, with my wallet and phone in zippered side pockets. A short leash, fastened to the camera's tripod socket, slides up and down the SnapR strap.

My walk took me through a small park on the slope behind the RV park, and across the intersection of Jamboree Drive (interestingly named for a Boy Scout encampment on the empty dunes here in the 1950's) and Highway 1, then down the hill and across the bridge to Balboa Island.  There are nice views both ways from the bridge of moored yachts and recreational boating activity, including kayakers and rowers.

A right turn took me onto the popular pedestrian pathway that circles the island. Dodging other amblers, dog walkers, and occasional joggers, I photographed boats moored or pulled up on the sandy shore, possibly to use for sketches later. Rounding the west end of the island I passed a gated bridge leading to an adjacent island covered with jam-packed mansions and associated large and shiny watercraft.

Homes on the south side of Balboa Island

A small ferry connects from the southwest side of the island to the Balboa Peninsula. The ferry began to carry cars back and forth in 1919. Three 4-car ferryboats operate today. Earlier in the day of my walk, a van with a family of four plunged from the ferry into the bay. Apparently it was rear-ended while parked on one end of the ferry as it continued to load. A driver of a Mercedes apparently mistook the accelerator for the brake. The family was rescued before the van sank by a man who had been hanging around in his wooden skiff enjoying a morning coffee.

There is a small collection of shops at the ferry landing catering to tourists, and more on the island's main thoroughfare, Marine Street, that leads back to the bridge to the mainland. From the bridge I enjoyed a great sunset view of the channel between Balboa Island and the mainland.

Sunset view from the bridge between Balboa Island and the mainland at Newport Beach. I continue to be impressed with the sharpness and resolution of the G12. The fine detail in this image holds up fine in a 16 X 20 print. 
1/320 sec f4.5

The Capitol Gorge Chukar

Chukar, Capitol Gorge, Southeastern Utah

About this photo:

I don't consider myself a wildlife photographer. To me, those are the folks with massive lenses that go trudging off into the wilds with backpacks full of gear, or sit hunched in a blind for days waiting for an opportunity. Not me - too lazy, too impatient. But I do appreciate the beauty and grace of the critters we share this planet with, and over the years have acquired some images of them that please me. The Capitol Gorge Chukar is one of them.

Capitol Gorge is a deep canyon cut into the Waterpocket Fold, a geologic feature made of beds of sandstone, the erosion of which has created the spectacular cliffs and canyons of Capitol Reef National Park.  It was May 2008, and our pickup had acquired a respectable coating of red dust driving the dirt road along the bottom of the gorge. While passing a cutbank on the driver's side I thought I had seen a biggish, plumpish bird pecking around under the brush at its edge. I slowed, stopped, and picked up the camera. Backing up and expecting to see nothing but desert where I had glimpsed the bird, my heart sped up when I saw it was still there. Seeming not to notice me (vehicles make great blinds - see my December 14, 2011, post) it went about its business while I snapped a few shots. As often is the case, it wasn't until later that I realized that for once, I had capitalized on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

A Bit About the Chukar

The Chukar is a partridge whose native range is Eurasia, from Israel and Turkey, through Afghanistan to India. It is the national bird of Pakistan, and in Punjab (a region straddling parts of Pakistan and northern India) is considered a symbol of intense and unrequited love. It has been introduced widely as a gamebird worldwide, including western united States. (Wikipedia link) I've heard from hunters that they can be an exasperatingly difficult bird to hunt.

Technical:

Nikon D80

1/160 sec at f/5.6

May 8, 2008

Nikkor 18-200 Vibration Reduction lens at 200mm.

Processed in Lightroom 3

What Went Right:

• Having the camera available and ready to go with juice in the battery, space on the card, and the right lens attached.
• Vibration Reduction - a shutter speed of only 1/160 second is risking blur due to camera movement at a focal length of 200mm.. The VR lens probably saved the image, although resting my forearms on the window ledge helped hold the camera steady.

What Could Have Been Better

• Not much - I'm pleased with the image.
• But I should have made more exposures - I only took about six frames - probably still influenced by the film days.
• The chukar feeds in small coveys - waiting around might have revealed more birds and different compositions.

Prints of my images may be obtained via TonysVision.com

The Case for Staying in the Car

We snicker, or shake our heads sadly, at the tourist whose idea of taking in Yosemite is to drive up to Tunnel View, stick the camera out of the window for a moment, then drive off without even getting out of the car. That may be fine, we think, for a casual snapshooting tourist. But our vision of a real landscape or wildlife photographer involves a man/woman encumbered with a healthy dose of L.L. Bean attire, camera equipment in a backpack, sturdy carbon fiber tripod, and chunky hiking boots, stealthily heading up a rugged trail, their mind crammed with knowledge of geomorphology and wildlife habits.

But actually the vehicle is a respected bit of photographic equipment. Ansel bolted a sturdy platform on top of his to achieve a viewpoint with added height. I've often climbed on top of our little Minnie Winnie motor home for the same reason. Perhaps not the same level of results.

In the realm of wildlife photography, a few of my most satisfying results have resulted when not even leaving the driver's seat. The thing is, a vehicle makes a wonderful blind. Critters are used to them. Vehicles can generally be depended upon to stay on the road, and not throw rocks, chase, or otherwise interfere threateningly with their making a living the way humans might.

A few years ago I decided to head out in my pickup on a misty morning. I'd been seeing some deer among the oaks lining the golf course in our community, and I had the idea of an image of trees receding into the mist with some deer sprinkled attractively in the composition. Instead I came upon this pair resting in someone's front yard. I had a 70-300 mm lens on my Nikon D-80. Staying in the truck I was able to back up a bit, then pull forward a bit, to get the composition just right without disturbing the deer. I like the quiet, misty feel of this image, the warmth some of the colors add to the misty day, the way the shapes of the doe's and buck's heads juxtapose just right, and the way he receeds into the mist. I'm sure that if I had left the truck to compose, all I would have seen in the viewfinder would have been oaks and mist.

Yesterday on the way back from errands, my wife and I enjoyed seeing a beautiful egret that has made itself at home fishing the two ponds adjacent to the entrance to our community. At home I put my 300 mm lens on my D300 and headed back to the pond. Thanks to paved parking areas and roads adjacent to the ponds I was able to move slowly around, working the best light, as the egret did his work. After reviewing the first images I realized that the dark background provided by the water was resulting in a bit of overexposure and loss of detail in those bright white feathers. So I backed the exposure compensation down to minus 1. I used the seat back to help steady the camera. The window sill can work also, but as accustomed as this bird is to passing vehicles, I was cautious of being too obviously a human by appearing in the window. Some OK photos resulted - how could they not with such a beautiful creature to work with. But then it raised its wings for balance as it stepped into some deeper water, and my finger thankfully reacted almost without thought.

Prints of my images may be obtained via TonysVision.com

Bud's la Salle

Bud's La Salle

My wife and I made the short trip today to Bud's Automotive - dropping off the 10-year-old F150 pickup and picking up our 11-year-old Explorer. Bud has been caring for both as long as we've owned them - about 10 years. I had a discussion a few years ago with our gravel delivery and grading guy about the available options for automotive maintenance in our small northern California Foothill community. His comment was that there were three; "Crazy, Grumpy, and Stupid". Awhile ago we made our move from Crazy to Grumpy, and have never looked back. 

Thing is, he isn't. Or else he has mellowed with age. I think he is close to my antiquity - and in the vicinity of three-score and ten I guess we all finally figure out how to accept what life throws at us and be grateful for it. So we share our thoughts about retirement - he's down to working four days a week, I'm down to about the same. It's kinda good to grow old with your mechanic.

So every few months we make these trips down the windy road to his place, narrow enough at the bridges that you stop at the wide spot to let the other guy through, waving his thanks and hello. Today was another in a long series of clear fall days, with that low warm light. A time of year that brings with it a reminder that all things pass. So I pulled out my G12 for a few snaps. 

Working over those snaps, and dumping them onto a Facebook album, I was reminded of a photo essay I'd done of a vintage car with a wondrous patina that he had pulled into his lot several years ago. Those kind of vehicles, as well as restored versions, tend to show up at his place. Which is why he is the only mechanic to have ever layed hands on my TR6.

Anyhow, the photo essay. I love that format, because it allows one to explore a subject with a series of images that describe it more fully than a single one could. Here 'tis - click the slideshow and then the full screen options - it's just a couple of minutes worth and I think you will enjoy . . .

http://albums.phanfare.com/isolated/9Efo5Gjb/1/5383469

Prints of my images may be obtained via TonysVision.com

Hoard . . . or Treasure?

I'm hesitant to part with stuff. Things that may come in useful sometime, or perhaps create a link with the past - and who I am. I hang onto stuff such as a bin of galvanized pipe fittings. When I try to convince myself it should be recycled I recall that recently I used a short piece with an elbow fitted as a tool to break loose a stubborn fitting on my vintage car. Lumber and plywood cutoffs from past projects, deemed special for some reason, accumulate in garage corners, providing environmentally friendly habitats for black widow spiders.

I don't think of myself as a hoarder because occasionally the desire for order counterbalances the need to hang onto stuff. In the past the solution to the accumulation was to buy more plastic bins and build more storage shelves. Since there was no more space for additional shelves, and stuff was beginning to spill out onto the floor, it was time for a more creative solution. I needed more space for fun stuff like projects on my TR6. Time to go through those bins, sort, and toss.

Thus the last couple of weeks have seen dozens of plastic bins hauled out to the driveway. Trash and treasures appeared as I dug to the bottom of every one. Among the treasures was a beat up shoebox filled with aluminum Kodak 35-mm film cans. In each can was a tightly coiled roll of 35mm negatives, representing the early part of my years at San Rafael High School, when I had joined the camera club, and real instruction was beginning to feed what would be my lifelong love of photography. Each can had a numbered blue label. Somewhere, I thought, must be the key. And sure enough, a few days later it turned up buried in yet another bin. Oh, the joy.

Camera Club outing, Point Reyes, 1954

Scanning these long-coiled negatives will likely require mounting them in glass carriers, but I'm looking forward to revealing the treasures - family trips, camera club outings, even some 16-mm photos taken in school with a little "spy" camera.

The wrap up from all of this? I guess, don't worry about being a hoarder, especially if it includes family memorabilia. These are things that remind us who we are. And those plastic bins do a great job of keeping the stuff, useless and otherwise, safe from moisture, dirt, and rodents.

The Polarizing Filter - A Photographer's Magic Wand

That title sounds like one of those little amateur photography pamphlets Kodak published in the 1950's. By the time I was 15 I had acquired several of the pamphlets, as well as my Dad's Argus C-3. In 1956 my folks were outfitting us for a three-month, cross-country trip in our travel trailer. For that trip, in addition to the camera and a couple dozen rolls of Kodachrome, I had received a pair of clip-on, polarizing sunglasses. To me they were magical, the way the sky darkened and lightened, and colors became richer as I tilted my head this way and that as we headed east through the pines of the Sierra Nevada on Highway 40 over Donner Pass.

My Dad's 1952 Plymouth and 18-foot Mainliner trailer

From those Kodak pamphlets I learned the exposures to use for night scenes of the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials. I also learned that a polarizing filter can be used to darken the sky, or to reduce reflections from most surfaces. 

The polarizing filter is still a magical tool, one of the few filters I still use. Digital photography has other ways of obtaining the effects once provided by the colored filters used for black and white photography, and the color correcting filters used with color slide film. But a polarizer is still always with me when I am photographing, since it can produce effects that no in-camera-processing or post-processing can achieve.

Polarized light is magical. Bees even use it to navigate, according to what I read. Normally light waves vibrate in all directions. But some of the blue light from the sky vibrates in only one direction - it has become polarized as it has reflected off of particles in the atmosphere. Or something like that. Light also becomes polarized when it reflects from a non-metallic surface. Why not from a metallic surface? I really don't know. But photographers can use this phenomena to bend light to their will. 

A polarizer can prevent polarized light from reaching the sensor. Thus polarized skylight darkens to become a deeper blue, and glare from surfaces is pretty much eliminated. The glare reduction thing is pretty useful when photographing foliage in sunlight. Leaves look a richer green, and the color of flowers is deepened. In addition to darkening blue skies and cutting glare, polarizers can also reduce the effect of distant haze.

The glare-reducing effect can be striking in the fall. Here's a photo of the two maples that have grown to frame our garden gate. The sun is coming toward the camera from the left, and there is a lot of glare from the leaves:

Without polarizing filter

In the photo below I've added a polarizing filter, and rotated it until the color from the leaves appeared richest.

With polarizing filter

In addition to the deeper color of the leaves, the sky has also become darker. And there is another useful effect which is a bit more subtle. Notice that there is a bit more detail in the fence.If desired, there is enough detail there now that it could be enhanced a bit by post-processing. (Both of these photos are JPEGS straight out of my Nikon D300.) The reason for the increased shadow detail is that by cutting glare, the highlights in the scene have been darkened, and the overall contrast has been reduced, allowing an exposure that provides just a bit more light from those shadows.

If you don't have a polarizer, then get one. I use them even on point-and-shoots that don't mount filters by holding it in front of the lens, after first noting the orientation that gives the best effect. So get one and play with it. I'll bet you will have as much fun as I did with those clip-on sunglasses.

Some links for more reading about polarizers and polarized light:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarizing_filter_(photography)

http://www.dslrtips.com/workshops/How_to_use_polarizing_filters/reduce_haze_deep_blue_sky.shtml

http://www.nikonusa.com/Learn-And-Explore/Photography-Techniques/gl1uy3i0/1/Polarizers-Add-POW-to-Pictures.html