Green!

We were having breakfast on the Lanai as the sun came up this morning.  Something caught my attention on the wooden post nearest the table.  As Hawaiian visitors for the last half a century will agree, it’s not unusual to see geckos around dwellings.  Precisely how they arrived on these islands is not known, but several species of small geckos have been commonplace since at least 1940, perhaps long before.  Polynesian imports, the usual suspects are various shades of grey, beige and brown, and all look quite similar.  They’re highly nocturnal, becoming active only after the sun sets and often seen hunting bugs near porch lights late into the evening.  This morning it took a few seconds for the situation to correctly register in my brain - “Hey, it’s not dark, and this one’s GREEN!”  Wahoo!!!

Since long before my first visit to the Hawaiian islands I’ve been aware that a few species of Day Geckos run wild there.  Indigenous to Madagascar, individuals of a couple of species, including the Gold Dust Day Gecko (Phelsuma lauticauda) and Orange-Spotted Day Gecko (Phelsuma guimbeaui), were released by hobbyists.  More recently Giant Day Geckos (Phelsuma madagascariensis) appeared and persist in at least one neighborhood in Oahu.  A long time ago, in what seems like a different lifetime, I kept a prolific pair of Giant Day Geckos and have been a huge fan ever since.  

This morning we were in for a tiny, orange-flecked, green thrill as we were visited by a tiny Gold Dust Day Gecko.  One of the smaller species, these little guys give away absolutely nothing in flash to their larger cousins.  Distant as they may be to their native Madagascar, it was really exciting seeing one “in the wild”.  

My camera was nearby on the tripod, having finished a quick flurry of activity while the sun rose this morning.  Poor Suzanne was thinking I might sit still long enough to have one complete meal without interruption.  This morning, no luck!  I dashed for the camera, yanked it off the tripod, swung through the bungalow to change the wide angle zoom for the 105 mm macro, cranked up the ISO, squeezed down the aperture, and hoped there would be enough shutter speed to avoid motion blur.  The bright sunlight would help.  I slowly crept up on the tiny lizard and mashed the shutter, focusing manually and hoping like mad there’d be a sharp frame.  

Tech: D700, 105 f2.8 macro lens, f11 at 1/1000th, ISO 800.

Checking in from the Big Island

Hello from Hilo, HI!  Arrived at our rented cottage last evening after an uneventful but long-ish day “on the road”.  It was already fully dark, well past dusk.  No way to get here earlier in the day given our arrival time in Hilo as well as the need to pick up a few groceries.  Pulled in the driveway and was impressed with several things, most of which involved the remoteness of the location and the not-unrelated lack of light pollution.  After quickly unloading I knew it was time to make a few exposures of the amazing night sky.  Shot just a handful of images then started a longer exposure which might have showed some nice star trails if it hadn’t started raining about 20 minutes into the shot.  Felt a bit silly for not having fitted the camera with some rain gear, but it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway because the lens was pointed at the sky.  Bailed on the long exposure, which is going to have to wait for the weather to clear or another less rainy location from which to shoot.  In any event, the first few frames turned out nicely and I thought I’d share.

Technical details: D700, 24 mm f1.4, 30 seconds at f1.8, ISO 1600.  Focused on infinity and taped the focus ring.

Spent the day scouting around a bit, but the weather was uncooperative as the landscape was beautiful.  Huge surf at the coast, incredible flora everywhere.  Can't wait to get out and make some more images.  For now, however, it's time to fire up the grill.  Have Israel on the iPod, fire on the grill and the chorus in the rainforest is warming up.  More to come...

Happy Thanksgiving

Hoping everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.  And some good pie.  ;-)

Fall Desktop

I'm a little conflicted.  I'm sort of bummed that the best fall color here in Boise is quickly passing.  But the good news is that there is already snow in the peaks north of town.  Fall is quickly showing hints of winter, and that means it's almost time to get a fresh coat of wax on the skis.

Before that happens, however, enjoy a nice fall desktop.  October almost got away from me but I thought I'd bring out a seasonal image to download.  I've made it simpler this time, just click on the image and you'll be able to save it.

Backlit maple leaves in the fall sunshine.

Until next time!

Freestyle BMX in the park.

It's gorgeous in Boise right now, clearly fall is in the air and the foliage is about at its peak.  So yesterday morning I went out and chased down a few images of fall.  (Here's a link.)  It was an inspiring start to the day, but I realized what I really wanted to do was shake off the scenics and dig into some gnarly action.

There's a kick-ass skate and bicycle park just up the road from my house and that turned out to be the ticket.  Met some dudes who can really wick it up and we were set!  

Some of the key elements I wanted to accomplish was to set the athletes out from their environment.  There are many ways to put the emphasis on your subject, including depth of focus, careful clean background selection, contrast, etc.  But my goal was to use lights.  I love the look when you overpower mid-day light with strobes to add drama, but that's hard to do with small flash unless the working distance is really close.  It's possible, but not within enough space to allow BMX riders to pull their tricks.  In order to be able to light them and still leave room to move, I waited until the sun was low and the light levels dropped a bit.  The lights themselves make an appearance in some of the images.  Some folks might find that distracting but I left them in there, as I think they add a cool element of style.  

Know what? Enough details, let's get right into the images!

Nik's HDR Efex Pro

Spent a little time playing around with Nik's new HDR program this afternoon and had some thoughts and images to share. I'm no HDR expert by any means, but even a cursory examination reveals there's a lot going on here for everyone from rank beginner to seasoned artist.   My initial reaction is that this program is going to be a great addition to the image manipulation toolkit.  The feature set is remarkable!  You can get an idea of what's available for your image in this screenshot.

Screenshot of Nik's HDR Efex Pro

Let's start at the beginning.  How do you get started in HDR Efex Pro?  I've become a Lightroom 3 user in the last few weeks, so that's where I begin.  Start by selecting a series of images with differing exposures.  There are a few ways to go from this point, but I'd suggest hitting the export button in the lower left.  This brings up an export dialogue where you can select HDR Efex Pro from the Nik Software preset.  This is set up right out of the box, as the program is installed, with the correct parameters including JPEG or TIFF and appropriate color space (AdobeRGB is the default but you can select sRGB and ProPhoto RGB if you desire).  Just hit Export when you're ready.  Lightroom creates the TIFFs and opens HDR Efex Pro right up for you.  The HDR program takes if from there, assembling a basic image.  


Continued after the break.

A big day for HDR

Although I find myself drawn to a fairly "photo-realistic" style, with generally not much in the way of image manipulation being done, it's hard to avoid the fact that HDR-style photography can be a very powerful tool for some images.  Late last evening I got an email from the great folks at Nik indicating that their new, eagerly-ancipated program, HDR Efex Pro, was ready for prime time.  

Over the last few months we've seen some great previews of what will be possible with this program, and being familiar with other Nik products I knew that this was something I was going to want.  Well, today's the day.  If you're interested in what HDR, and more specifically HDR Efex Pro can do for you, head on over to the Nik site and have a look!

I've got some images to go process.  Maybe I can put some samples up later tonight.