Tag Archives: Photography
Penny practices posing
Hey guys!
Mom is busy doing stuff that doesn’t involve me so I stole her laptop. I don’t think she’ll even notice unless one of you snitches on me. Which I’m sure you won’t.
So anyway, it hasn’t always been this way with her being so busy. She’s been taking me to a lot of parks lately.
She says the weather is just perfect, a little cooler, but sunny skies and the trees are just starting to change colors.
She says we can’t waste days like this, so she’s been taking me to a new place almost every day, and I thought you might like to see.
Mostly she’s been training me to pose for her. I wasn’t so sure of this concept at first.
But eventually I figured out that after I pose I get a treat, and that big black thing in front of her face isn’t really scary after all.
Plus I talked to my Angel Sister Katie who told me that treats were an integral part of park visiting and especially posing. I think I’m getting it!
But I could always use more practice, so I’m bugging mom every day to take me somewhere. I find that poking her hard in the knee works pretty good. If you have any other suggestions let me know.
I’m not above taking good advice, no I am not!
Talk later, your professional poser, Penny-girl.
Maybe a last night under the stars
A week or two ago I made a last minute decision to head back up into the thumb of Michigan, because the weather was going to be clear, and because I was able to book a campsite.
I wanted to try one more time to get that elusive Milky Way in a place that is darker than my Bortle 4/5 here at home.
Plus, I knew I’d get to drive through those yellow soybean fields again, and I might find a barn or two or three worth stopping for.
And of course I did.
Once I set up camp at the Port Crescent State Park I meandered further up into the thumb until I arrived at Pointe aux Barques Lighthouse, a place Katie and I had visited a time or two in years past.
There’s a campground attached to the grounds that I hoped was empty. It wasn’t, but it wasn’t as full as it would be in the summer. So I wandered around the lighthouse grounds and then waited for the sky to get dark.
The Milky Way, up in the Southwest early in the evening this time of year, wasn’t in a position to be over the lighthouse, but it was above the other historical structures on the grounds.
The challenge, as it always is with a lighthouse, was the bright light the tower itself was projecting. I tried to time my 15 second shot to be between the beams of light, but it was hard. Plus there was the campground, with it’s green lights and cars coming and going.
So, once again, I wasn’t thrilled with the Milky Way images, but shooting out over Saginaw Bay was fun. There was a tree on the top of the bluff, and the Big Dipper was just above it. Though it’s hard to see the Big Dipper because the camera sees so many more stars than our eyes do.
Regardless of the results, and as always, I loved being out there. The air was warm, the stars were bright, the moon had taken a nap, there were people nearby but not too close and I could hear the waves lapping at the bottom of the bluff.
This might have been my last attempt for this Milky Way season. October won’t have many opportunities, and we’ll have to see what the weather does. I plan to spend the winter studying the information in my Milky Way Photography class.
There’s so much more to learn.
Wanna come play?
Hi everybody! It’s me, Penny!
Mom’s been off doing adventure stuff without me a lot this summer. But don’t worry, I’ve been having lots of fun right here at home.
I have the best backyard and I thought you all might want to come over and play with me!
OK…so maybe it’s not fenced in so it’s a little scary for you humans, especially if we doggies don’t come right back when we’re called.
I mean, I try to do my recalls, but sometimes, especially lately while I’m going through what mom calls my obstinate teenage years, I forget.
Anyway, one of my most favorite things to do is to chase this little frisbee my dad bought for me.
I don’t always bring it back to them, but I sure love to chase it. And sometimes I surprise mom or dad and come running back with it!
Of course I don’t actually give them the frisbee, they have to come get it. After all, I need to maintain the hierarchy around here.
Anyway, I thought you’d all like to see my backyard, and especially me! Mom says it’s not always all about me, though I can’t imagine why not.
Can you?
Heads up, it’s almost Walktober time!
I look forward to it every year. Hosted by Robin over at Breezes at Dawn, it’s so much fun to go for a walk and take a picture or two (or more if you’re me), blog about it and share it with others who are also out there taking walks and documenting what October looks like in their part of the world.
This year Robin needed a little help so I’m going to host our annual Walktober for her. That just means that I’ll be collecting all your posts and will put publish a blog after we’re all done with links to everyone’s walk descriptions.
How about we say the official dates of our Walktober will be October 15 through the 28th? Of course things are pretty informal around here so if you need some extra time just let me know and I’ll wait for you. And of course you can go on your adventure prior to the 15th too!
Even more important, it doesn’t even have to be a WALK! You could roller skate, or go on a bike ride, or ride a horse, or take a drive with your windows rolled down. You could climb a mountain, or dive down to a corral reef. Show us your city, or your countryside, or a favorite river or lake. Explore your own yard or travel to another country, it’s all fodder for a Walktober post.
Just get out there and show us your world.
Go on your adventure, write about it and include photos if you want to, and then link back to my blog. I’ll post an official kickoff on the 15th of October and you can link to that. But if you accidently link to something else let me know and I’ll go collect it!
We can’t wait to see what you choose to do! Happy Walktober!
Under an umbrella of stars
A few days ago 3 other intrepid women photographers and I ventured forth to a new destination, Big Sable Lighthouse, at Ludington State Park.
We were, of course, looking for a dark place to shoot the Milky Way. We are all members of an online Milky Way photography class, though most of us had never met in person.
We put this particular adventure together quickly, with a barrage of text messages flying between us, when we realized there was a clear night coming up. Then, the day before, someone did some research and messaged the group — “Do you know there’s a 2 mile walk out to the lighthouse?”
Uhhhh, no, no we did not know that. This caused a bigger flurry of messaging and then someone finally just booked a campsite for us all at the park and we decided to go for it.
We had a beautiful night for our adventure, and the walk was shorter from the campground than from the lighthouse parking lot, only 1.5 miles through the woods and dunes. And of course 1.5 miles back in the dark, but underneath a star packed sky.
Our biggest obstacle turned out not to be the getting there but the lights that surround the lighthouse. There is a big streetlight shining in front, and an obnoxiously orange light in back making the whole back of the lighthouse and most of the grounds glow neon.
According to our apps the Milky Way, now pretty vertical, would be right alongside the tower about 10 p.m. We were convinced it would be a stunning shot.
If it weren’t for the orange light…and that big tree.
So we did the best we could with the lighthouse itself and then we spread out across the beach looking for other interesting things.
There was a gentle breeze sweeping away the bugs and the stars were hanging above us and no one was in any kind of hurry to leave.
When we finally did begin to pack up around midnight I noticed my backpack was pretty wet from condensation. I began to realize the trouble I had had focusing on the stars, or anything for that matter, might have been because I had condensation on my lens.
Condensation which would have been eliminated if I had put my lens heater on the camera at the start. The lens heater I bought the week before and lugged 1.5 miles out to the beach, but left in my backpack.
Yep. One more lesson in a whole list of lessons I’ve learned on this Milky Way journey.
As a side note, there’s been quite a bit of death tangent to my life this past week. Not people directly tied to me, exactly, but people important to people important to me. I guess the heavens gained a few more stars.
Late that night while listening to the lake murmur and wandering the dunes, watching the Milky Way slide across the sky I noted the newcomers.
And then we all walked back to camp under the umbrella of the starry night, content in our imperfect images, happy that we went, ready to do it again the next clear, moonless night.
Imperfect perfection.
Almost lost track
I took myself to Kensington a week or maybe more ago, hoping to get some great bird photos. There’s always something to see out there, and the warblers are migrating, so maybe…I hoped.
But the entire time I was at the park I had camera lens focus issues.
My images were so bad I almost forgot about them. But regardless of the quality, I’ll share with you the best of what I consider a pretty sad batch of images, just because no matter what I capture, even if it’s not much of anything new, I’m always glad I went to Kensington.
And I’m always glad to share with you my adventures, as tame as they often are.
A lot of the time on this walk I took pictures of plants. Because, as I told one photographer last year who was noticing me focusing on berries instead of birds, plants don’t move.
In fact, this trip to Kensington I spent most of my time looking at the way light played in the dark woods.
Turns out it plays rather well, don’t you think?
But of course the birds kept bringing me back as they hovered over me, sometimes landing on my camera lens, asking for something to eat. They are very persistent.
It’s pretty hard to ignore them, even if you aren’t happy with the images you’re getting.
Sometimes I just feed them and don’t even bother trying to capture the magic.
Other times the birds and the light work together and I get something interesting.
I had so much trouble on this walk through the woods, capturing anything the way I wanted to, it got discouraging.
Focusing on plants as a last resort I wandered some more.
I eventually decided it just wasn’t going to be my day, and headed back toward the car.
But just before I got to the parking lot I saw one more trail, one that headed out to where I sometimes saw unusual stuff. It wasn’t a long trail.
Maybe it was worth a bit more walking.
And there I found a dead tree, quite a ways away, but full of some sort of woodpecker family.
I thought it might be a group of red headed woodpeckers. The light made it difficult to see anything but silhouettes. But looking at the images later I saw the yellow on the underside of a wing, and I believe this was a flicker family.
Regardless, they were very busy hopping around the tree looking for bugs and flitting from branch to branch.
And while I was focused on them I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye, way down at the other end of the bridge. Something fliting around the touch-me-not flowers, far from where I was standing.
I shot blindly, not seeing anything in my viewfinder…
…but hoping for something. And the most beautiful female hummingbird showed up when I looked at the images at home.
She sure made me smile.
And then there was a noise on the other side of the bridge and I found this little female common yellowthroat. She made my day!
So the moral of my story is don’t give up. Walk down that little extra trail even if all you’ve had before is disappointment.
You never know what you’ll find. It could be magic.
And Kensington never disappoints.
Let there be light!
It all started yesterday early afternoon when I noticed a lot of chatter on Facebook about potential aurora borealis that night.
Apparently the indicator numbers were good, and if it weren’t for that pesky 3/4 moon coming up early in the evening there would almost certainly be a spectacular show.
So many times I’ve seen notices of potential northern lights and so many times I’ve decided it wasn’t worth the 4+ hour drive over to the western side of Michigan on the off chance there might be a show.
So many times I’ve kicked myself when I see images posted the next day of what I might have seen if I’d gone.
So this time I decided to just take the chance. I left home at 5 p.m. and was at a dark sky park at Port Crescent in the thumb of Michigan, along Saginaw Bay, by 7:30.
Of course there’s no guarantee that the lights will show up. Or when they might show up. What was guaranteed was the arrival of the moon, about 9:30 which would wash any borealis out.
As you can tell, I sat on the beach and watched the sun set, and then I went back to the car, changed camera lenses, got the camera all ready to go with manual settings and attached to a tripod and snuggled down with a pillow and a blanket to wait for full dark.
I was pretty antsy and never did take a nap. I was worried that I’d be sleeping in my car on one side of the dunes while the light was dancing out over the bay on the other side!
So as soon as it was close to dark I was out of the car and heading for the dunes. There were plenty of other people already out there, so I found a spot between photographers and decided to practice my Milky Way star focus skills while I waited. After all the moon wasn’t up yet, and I could see the Milky Way right there…even though I wasn’t thrilled with the composition, it was better than sitting around doing nothing.
And in the middle of my second shot, with me and my camera facing south I heard the woman just down the path from me begin to squeal. I couldn’t turn my camera around fast enough, and when I did this is what I saw.
Well, not exactly saw, because to the naked eye it was just this moving mass of grey out over the black lake. But the camera saw it for what it was, stunning pink and green light.
The woman next to me told her family, “See?! Aren’t you glad I dragged you out here for this!” I didn’t hear the kids’ answers, but I’m pretty sure everyone out there last night was glad they were there.
I kept clicking as fast as I could, trying different fstops, and shutter speeds. At one point I must have accidently touched the focus ring because I have a whole lot of images that are totally out of focus.
I’m not going to show you those. Just know it happens to all of us.
Luckily I knew enough to check the focus on occasion, so I was able to salvage the rest. Mostly.
After about 20 minutes over my right shoulder I noticed different light. It was the most beautiful, huge, orange 3/4 moon, creeping up through the limbs of a tree.
I wished I had my other lens on the camera (but it was back at the car). I wished I had two cameras going. But there was no time, so I kept focusing on those lights out over the water, knowing they’d soon be fading.
The moon crept higher and higher, and the lights began to fade. People began to leave, shining their flashlights in my face and into my frame as they climbed the dune to head back to the parking lot. I was loathe to go, the warm summer night and soft breeze off of the lake complimented the extraordinary sight of the lights dancing and shooting pillars up higher and higher in the sky.
I didn’t leave until the color faded away, and then I reluctantly put the lens cap back on and started down the dune toward the car.
Lots of people were still walking out over the dunes, headed to the beach. Every group stopped me, a person obviously carrying a fancy camera and a tripod, to ask if I’d seen anything.
I couldn’t begin to describe what I’d just experienced. I just told them all it had been wonderful but had faded now.
I encouraged them all to go out to the beach anyway and stand under the stars to admire the beautiful moon. Most of them did.
As for me? I’m so glad I took a leap of faith and went north to see the lights. I’m so glad I didn’t nap the evening away in my car. I’m so glad the lights decided to cooperate and dance for those 20 or 30 minutes before the moon encroached on our party.
And I’m forever grateful to my Milky Way teacher for instilling in me the confidence to stand by myself (along with 20 or 30 other photographers, all strangers, but all united in one goal) out under the stars and appreciate what I see overhead.
I haven’t stopped smiling since I heard that first squeal and turned to watch the magic explode above us.
Lessons learned: Don’t think about things too much, just go. Bring bug spray. Long pants and sturdy shoes are a must. Check your focus regularly. Don’t forget to stop and internalize the experience, it’s not all about the pictures. Encourage everyone else to stand out under the stars at least once.
And now I’m encouraging you. If you get the chance…just go.
Change Is Hard 