Holiday Calendar

SUMMARY: Hummingbird photo.

Back last spring, I posted about a hummingbird nest on my deck and showed some photos illustrating the difficulty of shooting the mom and the chicks.

I kept working at getting photos of the two chicks as they grew, and finally got one that I liked fairly well-- and it's a good thing, because they flew off the next day, never to be seen again.

Of course, it had all kinds of problems anyway--because of the difficulty of squeezing the camera up next to the roof and high enough to see the chicks, and because they're so tiny (the nest is only about 2 inches across), it wasn't even close to straight. Not as sharp as I'd have liked. A little dark. Etc.

Every year, my small company has a contest for employees and their families to pick the art that we'll include on the little fold-out calendars that we send to our clients before the holidays. Each employee can submit up to 3 images, photos or photos of their own art. We usually get 25-30 entries. Everyone votes for their first and second favorites, then votes again in a run-off if necessary. Then our super in-house artist graphics person incorporates it into a nice fold-out calendar.

Our 2010 calendar used my photo of a Monterey morning (actually Carmel, but close enough).

After your art/photo is used, you can't enter the following year, so I didn't for the 2011 calendar, then for 2012 none of mine were selected.

This year I again submitted three photos, including the hummingbird one. But I spent a ton of time on it first--straightened it a bit, cropped in closer to the birds, sharpened it a bit, adjusted the exposure, added some vignetting (darkened the bright corners to keep the attention on the subject), and spent some artful time artfully cloning out the hummingbird poo.

And, yes, hummingbird fledglings got the vote. Woohoo! Coming soon to a 2013 calendar near you--if you're one of our clients.

Happy 2013, a little early! Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Now--notice anything odd about the scene?

Photo Club July Winners

SUMMARY: See my photo and the other print winners.

My Best in Class winning otter photo is now posted with other July photo club winners on the Sunnyvale Photo Club website. (Photos include AM for Award of Merit, BiC for Best in Class, and IoM for Image of the Month.) They'll be on the main page for a couple of weeks, then after that you'll need to click the More link below the slideshow to see them.

July Photo Contest

SUMMARY: I got another ribbon from my photo club!

Most months, my photo club has a digital photo competition and the photos are displayed on a large screen so it's easier for all of us (and the judge) to see them. A few times a year, though, they do a print competition for those who prefer the print media.

I decided to try printing and entering one of my photos. Gah! Hate trying to figure out how to make something that looks nice on the screen then look nice when printed! But I wrestled with it for a couple of hours a couple of weeks ago and then another couple of hours more this week, finally printed it, entered it into tonight's competition, and it won Best In Class in the Nature class!

It definitely looks better up close than in an 8x10 print from across the room. I posted it first in this post, but edited differently. Here's my version as printed.

Sea Otter Eating A Clam

All About My Photos

SUMMARY: The three ribbon winners from last week.

As noted in this previoius blog post, some of my photos won some ribbons. W00t!

The Sunnyvale photo club does this nice thing where the ribbon winners get to say something about how and where they took the photo.

You get a bonus--my notes *and* the original files for comparison.

Mystic Pathway

The Pole Field at Byxbee Park (adjacent to Shoreline and Baylands) is "environmental art" built atop an old landfill. The tops of the poles form a single plane, which gives a little bit of forced perspective, making the crushed oyster-shell path weaving through them take on an even more mysterious air of vanishing in plain sight. Taken in the evening of May 2, 2012, while on a brisk conditioning hike with the Sierra Club. These folks don't stop for nothin', so when I'm with them I take only my Canon S100 set on full auto for quick snapshots. But I'd never seen this Pole Field before and it resonated with me immediately. I let the group get way ahead of me while I found a composition that I liked. The photo was muddy and the sky bland in the automatic photo, so I applied a graduated neutral density filter in Lightroom to bring out the clouds and then brightened the shot in Photoshop Elements. (5.2mm, ISO 100, f/4.0, 1/200)

Original:

Final:

After the Rose is Gone

This rose hip is less than an inch across; lens about 18" away. Taken in January 2010 in my front yard. I was shooting all the flowers that were in bloom as a way to check out my new Canon 100mm macro lens on my Canon 40D and suddenly noticed that even the rose hips were quite colorful. You might laugh that this was also an auto exposure (because I was just testing what the lens could do). I switched to aperture priority and took several more shots at different angles, but after seeing them on the computer, I kept coming back to this spontaneously shot one. I played with exposure, contrast, saturation, and cropping for over an hour, but in the end, this is exactly as shot with only the contrast increased, which really made the colors pop. (100mm, ISO 400, f/4.5, 1/200, pattern metering, auto white balance, probably with a tripod)

Original:

As submitted:
Not how much clearer the red and green are, compared to muddy in the original, and the red seems to shine now and seem more 3-dimensional.

Another possibility:
The judge suggested cropping in one or both sides, and I've also read that sometimes an angle coming in from the left side draws you eye into the picture more (because we read from left to right). How about this?

Brown Pelican Fishing

In August 2011, I borrowed a Canon EF 100-400 lens specifically to try to get some bird shots with my Canon 40D. I often see some interesting water birds at Almaden Lake Park, so I went there, expecting to see Canada geese, mallards, and maybe some egrets. This was one of a few pelicans, and he was the only one to get off his wet butt and try feeding himself. I panned with him as he repeatedly scooped with a big splash and flew on, ending up with about 30 shots, most of which were useless. He was about 250 feet away, so even at 400mm, I had to crop in on this shot. It was noon, and the lighting was tricky with the reflections on the water, and--well, yes, i was in auto exposure mode AGAIN. Tried several different crops (including very close and also vertical) but liked this one with a lot of room in front of him because he was moving quickly and I think this crop implies that. Sadly, that cropped out his reflection; maybe that's a different crop for a different feeling. Tweaked the exposure and contrast in the raw editor until it looked right, and sharpened it slightly. (400mm, ISO 640 [set it higher to enable faster speeds], f/10.0, 1/1000, spot metering, auto white balance, had a tripod with me but not sure whether using it at this time)

What most of my shots looked like (this is cropped way in):

Original:

Final:

Couple of other possible crops:

My Photos Have Merit!

SUMMARY: May photo club results.

The Sunnyvale Photo Club, of which I am a fairly new member, runs a photo contest every month for members. Each month, four out of the the several defined categories are made available for members to compete in, and each person can enter up to three photos. Categories are judged according to the club's rules (check out Sunnvale's categories and rules). Clubs can tweak their own rules and categories, but apparently they're all based on some standard set.

Judges come from all over the area and are different every month. The judge reviews the photos as they're displayed on a screen in front of the club (photographers' names aren't known at this point), saying what they like or how they could be improved. Also may disqualify a photo if it doesn't seem to fit the rules for the category in which it's entered.

So the judging is a lot of subjectivity; one could get a ribbon from one judge and not from another for the same photo (although you can't keep entering the same photo over and over).

Judge can award several Awards Of Merit in each category, a best of category, and a best of show.

My previous entries have mostly gotten comments like "huh, it's a photo." [perhaps I exaggerate, but basically yeah.]

In this previous post, I showed the three photos that I entered this month.

I was delighted when "After the Rose Is Gone" got an Award of Merit--my first-ever ribbon! Then Mystic Trail got Best in Category in General Pictorial B! Wow! And then "Brown Pelican Fishing" also got an Award of Merit in the Nature category! Wow wow wow! Guess I'm not completely helpless after all.

View all of May's winners in a quick slide show on the photo club web site.

When my Mystic Trail photo award was announced, someone said that someone else had won a while back in the Creative category with a similar photo by adding a horse skeleton, so I dug around in the previous winners, and here's Robyn's very creative version (she also won this month--shown in the same slide show as my shots-- with her "His Time Had Almost Come" Dali-esque and unusual combination of multiple photos). I guess I'm not the only one who gets a mystic feeling of the unknown or unknowable on that path.

Bits N Pieces

SUMMARY: Stairs from Heck, Agility training, judging, deaf dogs or not, A Day prep, plus bonus photos.

Today's stairs from heck:

Added the 59 steps that are in a separate flight 2 blocks away. Also did the whole normal plan of 2 miles including 2 ascents of the 129+94 steps flight, for a total today of 505 steps.

Some days my legs get tired first; some days, my lungs. Today I was completely out of breath after the 59 plus 2 blocks plus 129 and had to take a breather before the last 94. The second time around, I did fine the entire way up the 129+94. Odd.

This is starting the 4th week of my goal to do this three times a week. Yay me!

Deaf dogs:

One thing about Deaf Tika is not hearing the pretzel bag crinkle. Today, she heard it from about 15 feet away, because she lifted her head and looked over her shoulder at me, but apparently also didn't hear it clearly enough because she then put her head back down.

Agility training:

The only little bit of training I've been doing with Boost is more to raise the value of taking jumps. So, when playing in the yard, I make her take jumps to chase the toy instead of choosing her own path. One interesting difference between Tika and Boost: If Tika turns suddenly and there's a jump abruptly in front of her, she takes it. Boost goes around it.

Judging:

Well, this is it coming up this weekend: My first-ever judging assignment, and it's a UKI event, of which I've only ever run in one. I have read up on the rules (will have to revisit them again, as there are differences from USDAA and from CPE), have designed my courses and they've been approved, have my hotel reservation-- about as ready as I'm going to be.

I said OK mostly because it's a small, friendly trial in which I can get my judging feet gently wet. And I'm judging only Sunday; another new local judge is doing Saturday. Could be interesting. I'll be judging 10 classes for a total of--73 runs! Like I said, small trial.

Photos--A Day prep:

I've been thinking about all the different photos I *could* take to contribute. Have been preparing for some so I don't have to take a lot of time tomorrow to take them. I emailed the site about the issues I mentioned the other day, and they responded quickly--also said that at the moment they've disabled editing one's profile in preparation for tomorrow's big uploading frenzy, at which point we WILL be able to edit our profile again. Huh. Well, we'll see what happens.

Bonus photos:

The photography club I joined last year has a contest once a month; you can enter in four different categories for a total of 3 photos. I don't enter every month, but here's what I've picked for this month. (I've previously posted versions of these, I believe.)

In "General B" (photography as an art form for the less experienced photographer), two photos; in "Nature" (the natural world, telling a story more important than photo quality, one photo. I don't have great hopes--the photos that people enter are really spectacular.  I spent well over an hour each on each of these photos doing gross and/or subtle edits, and I'm still not entirely satisfied. And one can hardly tell, after comparing to the originals! Oh, well, I really needed another addictive, time-consuming hobby.

"Mystical Pathway"

"After the Rose Is Gone":

"Brown Pelican Fishing"